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The road ahead
Deal in doldrums |
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Perfect murder? Rather a case of imperfect investigation THE Arushi-Hemraj murder case of May 16 was handed over to the CBI not because it had any national importance or inter-state ramifications. The central agency had been roped in only because the local police had bungled badly, so much so that even the body of Hemraj was found one day later on the terrace by neighbours.
Emergence of New Nepal
English torture
Triumph of diplomacy
It’s never good
to swap people
for bodies
California to cut use of cars
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The road ahead
WHAT Mr Asif Ali Zardari said during his maiden Press conference soon after taking over as President of Pakistan on Tuesday provides a clue about what is going on in his mind. He pledged to take on terrorism with full force and tackle on priority the food crisis his country has been faced with for some time. The rising tide of terrorism has slackened economic growth, leading to massive unemployment and widespread poverty. If he has his priorities clearly cut out, he will have to devise a policy of no deals with terrorist outfits like the Taliban. The carrot-and-stick approach of Islamabad has only emboldened the militants. The whole world will be watching his government’s handling of the terrorist problem. Mr Zardari seems to be not in favour of restoring the judiciary’s status quo ante and removing the constitutional provision that gives the President the power to dismiss the elected Houses of the people and the governments in Islamabad and in the provinces. He has always been evading questions relating to the two issues despite expressing his desire to do all that is needed to strengthen democracy. Though he is being described as the most powerful elected President of Pakistan, he appears to have chalked out a strategy to avoid confrontation with his adversaries. His request to PML (N) leader Nawaz Sharif to rejoin the ruling coalition and instructions to his party colleagues not to do anything to destabilise the PML (N)-led government in Punjab tell a lot. The new President has asked his people to wait for “some good news” on Kashmir. What exactly he has in his mind may be known in the course of time. But he has been hinting after the February elections that he does not favour a confrontationist approach in dealing with the Kashmir issue. His idea, perhaps, is that Kashmir should not be allowed to come in the way of having better relations with India. This reflects realism, which may help Pakistan’s economy to show better results in the days to come. If Mr Zardari sticks to this approach, the India-Pakistan peace process, too, can continue to move towards its logical conclusion.
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Deal in doldrums
THE bipartite agreement on Singur is in the doldrums. The Tatas want more clarity on the issue. To put it in simpler terms, they are not satisfied with the agreement reached between the West Bengal government and the Trinamool Congress at the initiative of Governor Gopalkrishna Gandhi. Ms Mamata Banerjee’s party has been agitating for the return of 400 acres of land from the total of 1,000 acquired for the small car project. The agreement says that about 300 acres, which are part of the project area, would be returned to the farmers. Within this broad framework, a four-member committee consisting of government and Trinamool Congress representatives will identify within a week the land to be returned to the farmers. The Tatas have in a letter to the government pointed out that if they have to part with land from the project area, it would undermine the viability of the project to sell the world’s cheapest car at Rs 1 lakh. Ms Banerjee has been claiming that the land earmarked for the ancillary units cannot be treated as project land. The Tatas’ argument is that if the ancillary units, which will be supplying components for the car, are situated far away from the project, it will impair the company’s profitability. If the Tatas are piqued by the government’s changing positions on the land issue, it cannot be helped. So long as such fundamental differences remain, it is difficult to visualise a situation whereby the Tatas return to Singur and start their work. The Governor has a tough task in reconciling these differences among the parties concerned. The agreement would have worked better if Mr Gandhi had involved the Tatas also in the talks. Given the keenness of states like Uttarakhand, Maharashtra and Haryana to host the Nano project, it would not be difficult for the Tatas to find alternative sites but for West Bengal it would be a great loss. Investors are keenly watching how the government persuades the Tatas to stay in the state. In fact, industrialisation of West Bengal hinges on the success of the Tata project.
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Perfect murder?
THE
Arushi-Hemraj murder case of May 16 was handed over to the CBI not
because it had any national importance or inter-state ramifications.
The central agency had been roped in only because the local police had
bungled badly, so much so that even the body of Hemraj was found one
day later on the terrace by neighbours. It was a gruesome double
murder all right but the killers were not hardcore criminals and it
was hoped that the premier agency would unravel the case in no time.
But even the CBI is set to end up with egg on the face considering
that even four months after the murder, it has no material evidence
against the three accused in its custody. It would not file
chargesheet against them -- one of whom is already on bail -- within
the stipulated 90-day period which ended on Wednesday. It is not as if
the CBI sleuths are admitting that they have got wrong men. They are
convinced that the three servants are the killers, because it has
enough “scientific evidence” against them. But the courts demand
material evidence, which is lacking. The CBI has no clue to the
murder weapon, and has announced a reward of Rs 1 lakh for leads.
Similarly, Arushi Talwar’s mobile phone, which may contain vital
evidence, may have been smuggled to Nepal by the accused while Hemraj’s
telephone, which may contain the numbers of the people the Talwars’
domestic help called the night he was murdered, might have been
destroyed. The end result is that the CBI is groping in the dark. If
this can be the state of helplessness in a simple murder case, one can
well imagine how safe the professional criminals are before the might
of the investigative agencies. What is worse, the incompetent
policemen have destroyed many reputations, including that of Arushi’s
father. Her own SMS messages were leaked out to the Press as if the
14-year-old girl was engaged in some illegal activity. More than
anything else, the announcement of the Rs 1-lakh award shows its sense
of frustration and desperation. It should know that the public also
shares it.
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Nothing is beautiful from every point of view. — Horace
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Emergence of New Nepal
FOR the first time in modern history has any ultra-left guerrilla force espousing Maoism come to power through the electoral process — to put it in its ideologue Baburam Bhattarai’s words, “through the fusion of the bullet and ballot”. To be more precise, after the April elections the Maoists, under their supremo Pushpa Kamal Dahal aka Prachanda, have emerged as the single largest party and earned the moral and political right to form a Maoist-led government. Prime Minister Prachanda will be in Delhi on September 13 for his “first political visit” to this country. Not since the Taliban took power in turbulent Afghanistan in 1996 has another non-state actor become the state. Equally unprecedented was the five-month delay in forming the government: not a national government of consensus as required but an alliance of Communists — Maoists and United Marxist Leninists — and a new Madheshi party, the Madhesh Jananadhikar Forum, led by a former Maoist Upendra Yadav, now the country’s Foreign Minister. After being sworn in as Prime Minister, Prachanda was in such a terrible hurry to catch the closing ceremony of the Beijing Olympics that he left behind an incomplete government and its principal ally UML’s demand for the number two slot in the government unfilled. The UML ministers absented themselves from the swearing-in. For Prachanda the trick was to first become Prime Minister and then tackle the squabbling for office. The swearing-in of the Prime Minister was unique. Prachanda was sworn in by the first President of the republic, Mr Ram Baran Yadav, a Madheshi from the Nepali Congress whose own election was turned into a game of snakes and ladders. The Vice-President, another Madheshi, took his oath in Hindi, creating a nationwide stir and becoming the unharmed target of a bomb attack as part of the protests. Nepal’s second revolution, according to Maoist Vision 2020 was meant to be economic in nature. Instead it is sartorial, as “guerrillas-turned-politicians” rejected the traditional Nepali Daura Suruwal for Western attire for the swearing in. The only Nepali item of dress was the black Bhadgaunle (and Dhaka topi), even that, Prachanda dropped in Beijing. The Madheshis wore kurta-payjama and gamchcha. Prachanda, not taking his oath in the name of God but in the name of the people and violating the dress code, did not provoke any protest like the Madheshi Vice-President had done. The oldest political party, the Nepali Congress, has chosen to stay out of the government and sit in the opposition, miffed by the Maoist refusal to allot the defence portfolio, the office they hoped to use profitably for the integration of the 19,000 PLA members with the Nepal Army. Not surprisingly, Mr Ram Bahadur Thapa (Badal), the deputy commander of the PLA, has been appointed Defence Minister. He will become the new political guide and mentor of COAS Gen Rukmangad Katawal, both till recently Enemy Commanders. In his first televised address to the nation, Prachanda defined his national objective as the creation of a New Nepal based on three mantras of nationalism, republicanism and socio-economic change guided by the principles of Panchsheel. He urged the Army personnel — whom he had once called “rapists” — and security agencies to forget the bitter past and help maintain national unity. Contrary to the fear of the Maoists establishing a one-party totalitarian rule, Prachanda announced his government’s commitment to modern democracy based on multi-party competition, periodic elections and the rule of law. “Democracy now must belong to the people and remain a formal system”, he added. Going by the Maoist track record of unkempt promises to implement past agreements, skeptics say that they will judge the Maoists by their actions and deeds, not by words. A common minimum programme worked out by the coalition partners has to be implemented in letter and spirit. The immediate task for the government will be to draft an inclusive constitution within two years. Divisiveness among and between political parties and the tendency to forge ad-hoc alliances will hinder the evolution of an inclusive constitution. The present government, which can be toppled by one-third vote, has the requisite two-thirds majority for the passage of various articles and clauses of the constitution.
Even more daunting is the second task: restoring governance, law and order, human rights, controlling food prices, ensuring fuel and gas supplies and relief for conflict victims. People have voted the Maoists to power with high expectations. Remember the Maoist election slogan was: “You have tried monarchy, you have tried democracy; now try us”. The Maoists have to deliver in the next two years a clean and action-oriented agenda so that in the next general election they can emerge with a two-thirds majority to fine-tune their New Nepal agenda. Dismantling of the parallel revolutionary structures, especially the hyperactive Young Communists League, is essential for the recreation of democratic institutions ravaged by the youthful cadres. Integration of the PLA will become the most emotive issue, given that the PLA members have been languishing in camps supervised by the UN whose extended term will expire in January 2009. Both sides will have to handle the issue with care and gentleness, making compromises as previously agreed to. Mr Thapa will be committing a cardinal sin if, as Defence Minister, he attempts to break the chain of command and bulldoze a quick fix. The CMP has provided for six months and an All-Party Committee to steer the integration process. But Mr Prachanda seems to be in no hurry to do so. Barring the UML, neither of the other two parties has experience in government. The NC with maximum expertise is in the Opposition. This will not lend stability to the government though a younger and more dynamic leadership could be an offset. What has hit India hard is the apparent snub delivered by Mr Prachanda in preferring to travel to China, ostensibly for the closing ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, over visiting India which invited him first. Calling on Delhi first has been a long-standing practice for newly elected Prime Ministers of Nepal. Mr Prachanda was unmoved by hints that it would not be helpful in relations with India. That’s not all. In Beijing he spoke about Nepal - China relations being taken to a new high while Chinese President Hu Jintao pointedly noted that “Mr Prime Minister has come within a week after being sworn in”. Meanwhile, Maoists echoed Nepal’s founding father King Prithvi Narayan Shah’s dictum: equidistance from India and China. Soon after the Maoists emerged as the single largest party, Indian leaders were quick to welcome the outcome and the prospect of forging a new relationship. Mr Prachanda has thanked India for its assistance in the peace process and elections, noting happily that Delhi had changed its two-pillar policy. The Chinese, on the other hand, were on the wrong side of history, putting all their eggs in the King’s basket and castigating the Maoists for being anti-government rebels and “miscreants” who had hijacked Chairman Mao’s name. The Chinese have not only closed the gap but also taken a diplomatic gold. The Nepali press had noted that “India’s Ambassador Rakesh Sood was absent from the airport while diplomats from other countries saw off the Prime Minister to China”. Mr Sood was away on a previously scheduled assignment. Earlier, National Security Adviser M K Narayanan, in one of his candid comments, is reported to have said, “India is more comfortable working with the NC …” That was an avoidable Narayanan faux pas . Whatever India’s reaction, is Mr Prachanda’s new game running with the hares and hunting with the hounds? His visit will help clear the air. For Delhi it is both an opportunity and a challenge to address New
Nepal.
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English torture
THE sun may have set on the British Empire, but the British have not lost their talent for keeping a foreigner in line and letting him know who is cock of the walk. They have a weapon guaranteed to silence the most voluble Italian, send the most persistent French scampering back whence he came, reduce the most stolid Indian to tears. It is called the English language. The best illustration of the way it works is the sad tale of a Frenchman who was walking on a street, cudgelling his brains on a variety of words whose pronunciation he couldn’t quite fathom: words like rough, cough, tough, plough and through. He turned a corner and came upon a theater poster that read: “Cavalcade — pronounced success”. So taken aback was he, that he took to his heels and never showed up in England again. The language has a veritable lexicon of everyday words and phrases sure to throw any foreigner out of gear. Here are a few examples of English bound (tied) to fool (a kind of soft dessert) every Jack who thinks he knows the language. He is on form (He is doing well). He has form (He has been to jail). He is humming (He is making a musical note). He hums (He has a nasty smell). She showed him to the door (She politely said goodbye). She showed him the door (She threw him out). He got a chop (He got a cut of meat). He got the chop (He was sacked). My wife joins club (She joins associations). My wife is in the club (She is pregnant). She does it in a family way (She does not stand on ceremony). She is in the family way (She is expecting). Some more pregnant words. A cub reporter was sent to cover the annual class play of the local school. His glowing report described the excitement in the hall and concluded with “…and the auditorium was filled with expectant mothers, eagerly awaiting their offspring.” In this language, you not only eat salad, but you go through salad days. You take the cake (in brilliance or stupidity) and you eat the cake. It is in this language that you have a bachelor girl and bachelor’s wife. Then this one should take the cake in Pidgin English: A Chinese attaché entered the room of an English ambassador and said politely: “Sorry to cockroach on your time, your excellency, but may I have a word with you?” Careful not to cause offence, the Englishman replied: “Your excellency, English is a very fine language, I think what you mean is encroach on my time.” “Oh! I stand corrected,” regretted the Chinaman, “You see, it is very difficult to master the gender in a foreign language. I thought hencroach was used in speaking to females. Once the English reach the stage where they are the only people who know what they are talking about, foreigners will give up even trying to learn the language. They will simply have to accept that what the English say may not mean what they (foreigners) think it means. Which, of course, is how the English got the empire in the first
place.
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Triumph of diplomacy
Vienna, as expected, was no cakewalk. The Iranian ‘Press TV’ reported at the end of the first day of the NSG that India had failed to get a waiver, which it characterised as an effort by the United States to impose double standards on the world. At that point, China was not yet out in the open and it looked as though it was a number of small states which had countered the US initiative. While the Chinese position that any exemption should be based on criteria and not for a particular country was known, the revolt by the mini states came as a surprise. The only explanation for the intransigence of Austria and others was that they were hands in glove with the United States in a last ditch effort to extract more concessions from India. But in actual fact, the real reasons for the mini-revolt in the NSG are not far to seek. They boil down to a number of positions the government spokesmen had taken over the last three years in response to the debate that raged inside the country and outside. The most fundamental of these was the Indian line that the nuclear deal was exclusively for civilian trade, with no implications for non-proliferation. The whole world, including the United States, was very clear that the deal was yet another brick to strengthen the non-proliferation edifice. In the face of the campaign by the non-proliferationist lobby against the deal, US spokesmen stressed again and again that the deal would strengthen rather than weaken non-proliferation. If India had acknowledged right from the beginning that the deal was as much about non-proliferation and disarmament as about energy, this fundamental contradiction could have been avoided. Indian envoys, who were in touch with NSG countries failed to sense the problem or took no corrective action till the eleventh hour when Mr Pranab Mukherjee conceded the non-proliferation dimension of the deal. The right to test rigmarole was another mystery for the mini states. For them, a strategic alliance with India or its major market was no consideration. They are also not blind followers of the United States on several issues. For instance, Austria’s policy of friendship with the Arabs has been of concern to the United States. In their minds, the cornerstone of the deal was the Indian moratorium on testing, which was enshrined in the Joint Statement between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President George Bush. No one will ever dispute the right of India to test in exceptional circumstances, even if India is a party to the CTBT. But equally, no one can test with the prior approval of the international community in today’s world. Testing by anyone will be an aberration, which will invite its own penalties, regardless of regional and other alliances and affiliations. In the case of the deal, the voluntary moratorium is at its centre. The questions about testing and the constant refrain from the Government day in and day out naturally raised suspicions as to what India was looking for. This was discussed at every stage and India’s allergy about the word “test” was fully taken into account in the 123 agreement. It was this attachment to the tests that prompted the mini states in the NSG to find ways in which they could show something in the waiver to reassure them that they were not parties to any test by India in the future. The Indian statement about the moratorium enabled them to satisfy themselves on this score. India’s obsession with the Hyde Act and the repeated statements that the Hyde Act does not apply to the deal also must have caused consternation. The Hyde Act is the basis on which the 123 agreement was authorised by the US Congress and the Bush Administration has to ensure that future actions should be within the parameters of the Hyde Act. India could claim legitimately that the extraneous elements in the Hyde Act were not included in the bilateral agreement, but to claim that that the Hyde Act was of no consequence was a ready provocation for the non-proliferationist lobby. But the biggest provocation of all was the demand for an unconditional waiver from the NSG. To ask for an unconditional waiver from the NSG was to ask for its own liquidation because that would mean that the NSG would have nothing to do with the deal anymore. Liquidating one’s own empire is not the happiest thing that any group would do. The conditions, in whatever guise they were established, would remain with us at every stage of the implementation of the deal. India could have conceded long ago what it did on September 5, 2008 after the NSG countries stood their ground on conditionalities. We should have asked for a clean waiver without new conditions right from the beginning. And that is what we obtained at the nail biting finish in Vienna. The victory in Vienna has come after we called a spade a spade. The woes of Vienna have ended in victory, but the way ahead is far from clear. Some claim that, regardless of what the US Congress does, India can now proceed to import fuel and technology from other countries. This will depend on the language of the waiver. But logically, the waiver was sought and obtained as a step in the direction of operationalising the 123 agreement. It follows, therefore, that the waiver is contingent upon India signing the 123 agreement. Having said that the agreement with the US is an agreement with the rest of the world, it is unconscionable to say that we can deal with everybody else except the United States. But once the deal is sealed, commercial considerations alone will determine the source of supply of fuel and equipment. The focus should now be on the action in the US Congress and the immense opportunities and challenges that the deal entails. Indian diplomacy has triumphed once again, but the challenges ahead will be daunting as Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon stressed at the end of a grueling marathon in Vienna.
The writer is a former Ambassador of India to the United Nations, Vienna
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It’s never good to swap people for bodies AL-Jazeera — much praised by the now-dying US administration until it started reporting the truth about the American occupation of Iraq (at which point, you may recall, George Bush wanted to bomb it) – is back in hot water. And not, I fear, without reason. For on July 19, its Beirut bureau staged a birthday party for Samir Kantar, newly released from Israel’s prisons in return for the bodies of two Israeli soldiers. “Brother Samir, we would like to celebrate your birthday with you,” allegedly gushed al-Jazeera’s man in Beirut. The problem, of course, was that “Brother Samir” – whose moustache looks as if it has been modelled on that of a former German corporal – had been convicted in Israel for the 1979 killing of an Israeli father and his daughter. The Israelis claim he smashed in the head of the four-year-old with a rifle. Kantar denies this – though he does not deny that another child, this time two years old, was accidentally asphyxiated by its mother when she was trying to avoid giving away their hiding place. Kantar received a conviction of 542 years – long, even by Israel’s standards – and had been locked up for 28 years when he was swapped (along with other prisoners) for the bodies of the dead soldiers, Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser, whose capture started the 2006 Lebanon war. Kantar received a hero’s welcome home from Hizbollah – even though Hizbollah did not exist when he was convicted – and was received by the Lebanese government. I reported this whole miserable affair and referred to the cabinet in Beirut “grovelling to this man”. I was right. Al-Jazeera has now done a little grovelling of its own – but this has been accompanied by an extraordinary article in the American and Canadian press by Judea Pearl, attacking Kantar’s reception in Lebanon and al-Jazear’s treatment of the man, announcing that Kantar’s royal procession in Lebanon had brought “barbarism back to the public square”. Professor Pearl – who teaches at UCLA – is the father of Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal correspondent butchered by Islamists in Karachi. They cut off his head. And only someone with a heart of stone could read Judea Pearl’s words without being moved. Here, after all, is another father grieving for a cruelly murdered child. Not long before he died, Daniel Pearl had shown great kindness to me after I was badly beaten on the Afghan border. He shared all the numbers in his contacts book with me while he and his wife made me tea and cookies in Peshawar. After his abduction, I wrote an open letter to Osama bin Laden (whom I knew), pleading for his release. I was too late. Daniel had already been murdered. Judea Pearl currently runs a foundation named after his son and dedicated to dialogue and understanding. I will not go on at any length about a vindictive letter he wrote about me before his son was abducted – in which he claimed that I “drooled venom” and was “a professional hate pedlar”, adding that the 2001 international crimes against humanity in the United States were caused by “hate itself, of precisely the obsessive and dehumanising kind that Fisk and bin Laden has been spreading”. This, of course, is the kind of incendiary stuff that produces a deluge of crude hate mail (which, indeed, is exactly what it did). But Judea Pearl has a point. Yet he wants al-Jazeera to apologise formally for that infamous party which has, he writes, robbed journalism of its “nobleness” and “relegitimised barbarism”. The narrative is being cut off and rewritten. For if Kantar represents barbarism, why on earth did Israel release him? Indeed, Israel released Kantar and other prisoners and 200 corpses of dead Hizbollah and Palestinian fighters at the demand of the Hizbollah militia. And when you get into the bodies game – swapping long-held prisoners for corpses – then the prisoners are going to be greeted when they are freed, whether we like it or not. Ehud Olmert, the Israeli Prime Minister, suggested there was indeed something noble about the prisoner exchange because it showed that Israel always cared for the return of its missing soldiers, alive or dead. So here we go again. The truth is that Israel uses these men as hostages – the American press employ the weasel words “bargaining chips” – and if you’re going to get into the grisly game of body swapping, then the result is Samir Kantar parading himself around Lebanon and celebrating his birthday on al-Jazeera.
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California to cut use of cars LOS ANGELES: California is poised to pass the first law in the nation linking greenhouse gas emissions to urban planning, a departure from the growth approach that spawned the state’s car culture and urban sprawl. The measure, known as SB375, aims to give existing and new high-density centers where people live, work and shop top priority in receiving local, state and federal transportation funds. The idea is that such developments check sprawl and ease commutes, in turn cutting the car pollution wafting through the Golden State. Authored by Sen. Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, the bill reflects California’s push to slash its greenhouse gas emissions by 25 per cent by 2020. Sponsors say the measure is part of a much-needed growth policy for a state whose population is expected to swell to 50 million from the current 38 million in two decades. “Many places across the country have realised that if you just build spread-out developments, with the expectation that everyone will have to drive for everything, it should be no surprise when the result is excessive burning of gasoline,” said David Goldberg, spokesman for Smart Growth America, a Washington D.C.-based nonprofit group that helps cities and towns plan more workable, environmentally friendly growth. “SB375 breaks new ground, because it specifically links that pattern of development to excess driving and what we need to do to address climate change,” he said. Two years of intense negotiations have satisfied several critics of the bill and galvanised support from an unusual alliance of environmentalists, home builders, local governments and affordable-housing advocates. But other home builders and several business groups are among the bill’s opponents. They say it adds a new layer to an already complicated approval process, opens projects up to delays and frivolous litigation, and could threaten the state’s economy. “It will hamper or completely stop infrastructure throughout the state. It will jeopardise buildings, the transfer of goods and services,” said Tom Holsman, chief executive of the Associated General Contractors of California, which is joined by the California Chamber of Commerce, the California Grocers Association and the California Retailers Association in opposing the bill. “Basically, you’re looking at all of California’s economy, not just the housing industry,” Holsman said. He added that it supports Steinberg’s environmental goals. The state’s legislature recently green-lighted the measure, and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, R, who aims to make California a trendsetter in fighting global warming, is expected to sign it into law once the state balances its long-overdue budget. California is the 12th-largest emitter of carbon in the world, with cars and trucks emitting one-third of the state’s greenhouse gases.
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