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Dialogue is welcome
Errant judges
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Jointly against the crisis
Economy in transition
Of chance encounters
Global gamble
Nobel winner ‘feels like deer caught in headlights’
Delhi Durbar
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Dialogue is welcome
LEADER of Opposition L K Advani has at last condemned the anti-Christian violence in Orissa and other states and described the rape of a Catholic nun as “a shameful crime against humanity”. It is, perhaps, the strongest statement a BJP leader has made ever since violence began in Kandhamal in Orissa following the murder of a VHP leader on August 23.
Since then hundreds of churches have been vandalised, dozens of Christians killed and thousands of them forced to take shelter in relief camps or in forests. If Mr Advani had made such a forthright statement when violence erupted in Orissa, much of the mayhem could have been averted. Instead, his partymen have been portraying the violence as a spontaneous reaction to the killing of the VHP leader. But when the Naxalites openly claimed responsibility for the murder, Mr Advani, among others of the Sangh Parivar, demanded a debate on conversion. There is no harm in debating conversion so long as it is within the limits of democratic functioning and choice. In no case does any organisation, be it the VHP or the Bajrang Dal, enjoy the right to kill people, destroy churches, hound out people from their homes and villages and rape consecrated women. Christians are one of the most peaceful communities and it is a measure of their respect for the law that despite so much of violence against them, there has been no violent reaction even in areas where they are in a commanding position. Imagine how some other communities would have reacted if even one of their worship centres was destroyed. In a multi-cultural and plural society like that of India’s there is need for inter-religious dialogue. Violent means to convert people are unacceptable. However, in the name of debate, a lot of propaganda is made about conversion. For instance, nobody can be forced to become a Christian as nothing stops such a person from renouncing the new religion also. In fact, any Christian can leave the religion if he chooses to do so. But in the name of preventing conversion, atrocities are committed on the poor people and that is something which is unacceptable in a country where the rule of law is supposedly sacred. Kandhamal is now witnessing forcible reconversions with the state government — which has miserably failed to check the activities of the Bajrang Dal — looking the other way. Besides talking to the leaders of Christians, Mr Advani needs to talk to the members of the Parivar who must repose trust in the minorities. |
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Errant judges
AT last something specific is being done beyond the banal statements about corruption in the judiciary. The Union Cabinet has after much deliberation approved the Judges Inquiry (Amendment) Bill, 2008, for setting up a National Judicial Council (NJC) to make the judges of the Supreme Court and the High Courts accountable. It is an improvement on the previous Bill which was introduced in Parliament two years ago. Significantly, the new piece of legislation will, hopefully, empower the citizens to file before the NJC complaints against judges about their alleged misconduct or deviant behaviour.
Earlier, for fear of being hauled up for contempt of court, the people refrained from making such complaints. As the Chief Justice of India will head the NJC, this institutional mechanism will have greater authority and freedom from encroachment by the executive and Parliament. Clearly, the NJC is a step ahead of the present system of collegium — an internal mechanism by which a panel of judges headed by the CJI looks into the alleged misconduct of the judges. However, its functioning is not transparent. As a result, the people are not clear about the efficiency of the judiciary’s own in-house procedure. The NJC, on the other hand, will not only investigate charges against the judges of the Supreme Court and the High Courts but also recommend suitable action against them. However, the constitutional provision of impeachment will remain intact to protect judicial independence. They will continue to remain insulated from inquiries based on flimsy and motivated charges. The new Bill was needed in the context of the increasing charges of corruption against judges. The Ghaziabad multi-crore PF scam allegedly involving several judges, the CJI’s recommendation for impeachment of Calcutta High Court Judge Soumitra Sen for embezzlement of funds and Chandigarh’s cash-at-the-door scam in which Haryana’s Advocate General allegedly sent a bag containing Rs 15 lakh to a High Court Judge have all affected the image of the higher judiciary. The NJC is expected to act as a deterrent and help people bring the errant judges to book. Although we have not seen the final shape of the Bill to be introduced, we do hope that the NJC can go someway in deterring the judges from compromising their own integrity and that of the judiciary. |
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Jointly against the crisis
IT is not enough for the Finance Minister to point to the strong fundamentals of the economy or insist on 8 per cent GDP growth or pacify investors when the falling stock markets have wiped out gains of two years and the IMF is predicting just 6.9 per cent growth next year.
The need is to clear confusion and come out with facts to bolster sentiment. Indian banks, no doubt, do not face the heat that many others do. The RBI should accelerate the cash flow. A financial daily has a report that banks have advanced Rs 2.92 lakh crore to listed firms without any collateral. The regulators need to learn a lesson from the US subprime crisis. Media reports say a telecommunication company has lost $100 million in deals through a UK bank. A private bank has borrowed at 17 per cent and a realtor at 35 per cent to meet their liabilities. Obviously, the RBI’s CRR cut of 0.50 per cent, releasing Rs 20,000 crore in the system, is not enough. More needs to be done to improve liquidity. There is no investor panic in India. The stock indexes are plunging largely because of FIIs running for the exit. Because of limited exposure to the US and European markets, India is insulated from the financial turmoil. While the $700 billion US rescue plan has yet to show any result, the financial contagion has engulfed Europe and a number of banks have gone under. The situation is no better in Russia, Japan and Latin America. The central banks the US, Europe and elsewhere have reduced interest rates to keep banking activity going. It is time for the RBI too to start cutting interest rates as softening commodity prices will take care of inflation. |
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If money is your hope for independence you will never have it. The only real security that a man will have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience, and ability.
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Economy in transition THE Tatas have finally pulled out their Nano car project from Singur. That will be a great loss to West Bengal’s aspirations of becoming a major industrial region in India. In the last decade and a half after the advent of reforms, it was West Bengal which posted the highest economic growth rate in the country. This was mostly due to the great leap in productivity in agriculture. This high growth took place despite a palpable slowdown in industrialisation, unlike other fast growing states where growth was driven mostly by industry. It is possible that if West Bengal had similar growth in industrialisation it would have also had China like growth. The issue of land for non-agricultural development has come to the forefront in the recent past, thanks mostly to the ham-handedness of the West Bengal and Orissa governments which have diddled poor people to lure industrialists like the Tata’s to invest in their states. But this reverse Robin Hood method of taking from the poor and giving to the rich has not been unique or new. Most of the DDA acquired lands in and around Delhi were acquired from villagers at ‘official’ prices, which meant that they were many times lower than the prevailing market prices. These lands were then ‘developed’ for housing for Delhi’s vast army of transient babus and settler middle classes. While it is the justified aspiration of every family to own a home, it does not mean that villagers have an obligation to surrender land at decreed prices to benefit the urban middle class. This then becomes nothing more than a subsidy extracted from the poor to keep the middle class happy. This story is repeated in so many other areas as well. Take milk sold by the state dairies, which is subsidised by a rigid fixation of prices to the producers. It’s the same story for wheat, rice and sugar. This also means that when the prices of onions or cotton rise, the State begins to import them to beat down producer prices. Socialism in India has largely come to mean that our middle classes have to be kept upwardly mobile by imposing costs on the poor producers. This has become a rigid mindset that has determined our politics and policies for many decades. Now let us get back to the question of land. Quite clearly true economic and social justice requires that the acquirer must pay true market prices for a commodity owned by another. And market prices can never be determined by the State. Market prices must be determined by the market. Very simply this means that if Mr. Ratan Tata wanted to set up a factory to build Nano’s then he should have bought the land by making an offer that the landowners of Singur could not afford to pass over, rather than getting his friend Mr Buddhadeb Bhattacharya to make them an offer they could not refuse! But what Mr. Tata did, and this is wrong, is that he got various state governments to bid for his project with concessions on land prices, taxes etc. This is may be good business, but is bad politics. Thus our Communist friends in West Bengal, who still swear to expropriate the expropriator, actual became willing expropriators for India’s biggest capitalist. This is not only wrong Marxism but also wrong Capitalism. Now about the other side of the issue. Economies in transition require the change in land use patterns, particularly of land near industrial centres, railroads and highways. Even so the total projected land requirement for Industry over the next ten years is projected at less than 1,00,000 hectares, an insignificant amount when you consider that we have a gross cropped area of 176 million hectares and a total land mass of 326 million hectares. Rapid urbanisation is already underway and within the next two decades over half of India will be urban. Another 1,00,000 hectares is projected for this. Both these uses together entail a requirement of about 0.1% of the cropped area. So what is the fuss about? Wouldn’t farmers want to sell their land at good prices? Don’t they have a right to accumulate capital and aspire for a better standard of living? Or is it for Mamata Banerjee and Medha Patkar to decide? India is an economy in transition. Unlike in the early 1950’s when agriculture accounted for almost two thirds of the GDP, it accounts for less than a fifth of the GDP today. Note the description of India as an economy in transition and not a society in transition. That is simply because despite the years in between it is still largely and sadly true that over 60 per cent of our population depends on Agriculture for sustenance. Today the average size of a farm holding is about 1.15 hectares and marginal farmers who account 66.8 per cent of our landowners on an average own about 0.40 hectares. The problem arises because it is these people who are mostly expropriated by the State to encourage industrialisation and urbanisation, both of which are the more significant benchmarks of development. Thus, if land is not made available for industrialisation and urbanisation, growth and change will become near impossible. This is what the neo-Luddites like Medha Patkar desire. Whatever we may accuse Mamata Banerjee off; we cannot accuse her of being committed to any ideology. To her and the radical chic like Arundhati Roy theatre is politics and their proclivities do not require any comment. Land must be acquired to transform our society. However, economic justice demands that the exchange takes place at the full market value not economic value. The economic valuation suits the crony capitalist and the conniving State, as agricultural returns are really low. Market valuation however takes into account the future value of that land and more economic justice can be built into it by giving the original owner a permanent residual interest in the land he is required to sell. This means in every future transaction involving that land he will continue to get a part of the value added. Now the last question left pending. Can an individual refuse to sell when the common good is involved? Clearly societal rights transcend individual rights and once an area is designated for a certain land use for the common good, only a subversion of the true market valuation should be reason enough to prevent the acquisition. In case the State wants to acquire it too must enjoy no privileges when it comes to price of the acquisition. But both, our crony capitalists and phoney socialists will never be happy with
this. |
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Of chance encounters
During
the course of our professional and personal interactions, we come across innumerable and varied encounters, some pleasant, some not-so-pleasant. The ones that leave us decimated, are best forgotten and pushed back into the dark recesses of our psyche, and very rarely do working relationships grow to mean more than casual, mutually convenient arrangements. More often than not, we are purely transactional in that, we consciously set down for ourselves parameters of experience, so that not very often do chance encounters linger on in our minds and memories. Yet there are times when, intuitively and for some inexplicable reasons, we At times these intimations become so overwhelming and enriching that we These ineffable, keenly-felt emotions keep us alive and vibrant even while they help restore our sense of self-worth. We feel, but cannot say what, how and why we feel the way we do. Yet, in the rough and tumble of an increasingly competitive, predatory, dog-eat-dog world, we recall and live by these unfathomable but true rainbow-moments. Moments which, even while they leave us incomprehensibly revved-up and renewed, carry with them the exhilaration, the romance, the delight, of a walk in the rain. An instant, a thought, a glance, a gesture, a smile, a genial touch, can sometimes overtake us with the suddenness of a shower that promises ebullience more radiant than reams of thoughtlessly uttered praise. Nonetheless, in our mundane everyday existence, we have to move on and then all we can do is thank god for small mercies. As we continue to struggle against the challenges and compulsions that life keeps throwing up with unrelenting regularity, we consciously or otherwise, revisit the precious instants that invest our lives with charm, exuberance and the will to go on purposefully. When life drags us into the pits of despondency, despair and self-pity, these are the bright snapshots, the flagged messages saved to be retrieved later, signposts that juggle our minds as well as serve as attestations of our faith in the richness of life. Unfortunately most of us either tend to be too insensitive, or choose not to take cognisance of the signals we receive from such chance encounters in the tumultuous drive towards worldly recognition and success. We neither have the time nor the inclination to reach out beyond superficialities. Smiles seldom reach the eyes and sympathies seldom touch the heart. But if and when they do, we break into a music all our own. These then become our most precious compositions; lyrics that are closest to our hearts; creations woven intuitively, intensely, into the fabric of our mundane lives, for ourselves and ourselves alone. They are the diary-entries, the revived memories of lived experience that our minds and hearts open out to; entries that never fail to touch and encompass us with their warmth. We often relive these fondly for the many ways in which they have helped us reconnect and extend ourselves to other kindred souls. These are the recollections that drive home the real import of a truism learnt early in childhood--“the more you give the more shall you
receive”. |
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Global gamble
THE world’s central banks and governments appear to be running out of ammo in the face of a financial crisis that has been intensifying by the hour.
Even the unprecedented global interest-rate cut of half a percentage point on Wednesday had only the most limited effect, while the IMF called the credit crisis “the most dangerous shock in mature financial markets since the 1930s” and warned of a recession in the UK and elsewhere next year. The government action was, as one analyst summed it up, “like throwing a pistol at the problem once you’ve emptied the chamber”.
The longest day in the global economy started at first light in Downing Street as Gordon Brown and the Chancellor, Alistair Darling, went public to announce up to £500bn of new capital to prop up Britain’s ailing banks. Within an hour of the opening of trading, the FTSE 100 index had fallen by 7 per
cent. Then, at lunchtime, news broke that the Federal Reserve, with the Bank of England, the European Central Bank, and the central banks of China, Canada, Sweden and Switzerland had cut their interest rates by a half a percentage point. In Britain, that meant a cut in the base rate from 5 to 4.5 per cent – a day sooner than expected; and the first time such an emergency move has taken place since the September 11 attacks in 2001. As a result, the US Dow Jones and other indices did rally. But not for long, as trading soon returned to its characteristically febrile, volatile state.
The Dow now stands some 33 per cent below its peak last year and the US Treasury Secretary, Henry Paulson, warned: “One thing we must recognise – even with the new Treasury authorities – is that some financial institutions will fail.” Later, it emerged that the US Federal Reserve had agreed to provide the insurance giant American International Group (AIG) with a loan of up to $37.8bn (£21.8bn) on top of another for $85bn made last month.
By now, Americans have lost some $2trln (£1.15trln) from their retirement funds – they are “disappearing faster than you can count” in the words of Barack Obama. He echoed the words of Ronald Reagan’s election campaigns, when he asked the voters to ask themselves if they were better off than they were four years ago: “The rate things are going you should ask whether you’re better off than you were four weeks ago.” The Bank of England’s move and the Treasury’s £500bn package have also failed to reassure in any sustained sense. The FTSE 100 index finished the day extending the huge losses already witnessed this week and this year; down another 5.8 per cent, completing the global round of losses that saw the Tokyo index down 9.4 per cent to a five-year low. Trading in Indonesia and Russia was so chaotic the exchanges were suspended. France’s Cac 40 index ended 6.3 per cent lower and Germany’s Dax lost 5.9 per cent. In London, traders and investors were encouraged by the sheer scale of the package – £500bn, of which some £400bn can be counted as “new money”, but still fretted that it would not be enough. The Prime Minister told a Downing Street news conference: “Extraordinary times call for the bold and far-reaching solutions that the Treasury has announced.” Wednesday’s unparalleled peace-time extension of state ownership and control, and the interest-rate cut was given only a nervous welcome. Researchers at Capital Economics said: “The provision of massive amounts of liquidity and enhanced depositor protection are all very well, but they do not get to the root of the problem. We are dealing with a crisis of solvency that is not going to disappear until banks are adequately recapitalised. The UK Government has finally got the message, albeit late in the day. But this is not a domestic problem. It is a global problem. And until the financial sector in the world’s largest economy is recapitalised, there will be negative spill-over effects in equity markets around the world.” Pressure is growing on the US Treasury to take more equity stakes or make more loans to the large American banks and even other, non-bank corporations.
Yet such measures may not be enough to prevent recession and further financial meltdown.
Wednesday was a day when the world woke up to the historic nature of the times, and the realisation that the downturn will almost certainly now turn into recession and may even turn into a slump of a kind not seen since the Great Depression. The real fear is that no bank rescue plan or internationally co-ordinated interest-rate cut or programme of tax reductions and public spending can do much now to stave off the inevitable unemployment and company failures as the credit crunch spreads. The IMF’s latest World Economic Outlook said “the major advanced economies are already in or close to recession” with “a cascading series of bankruptcies, forced mergers and public interventions” battering the West’s banks. Perhaps the only bright news is the belief that inflation will soon peak and then decline rapidly. Few disagreed with yesterday’s Bank of England statement that: “Inflation is likely to rise further, to above 5 per cent in the next month or two. But inflation should then drop back, as the contribution from retail energy prices wanes and the margin of spare capacity in the economy increases.” On the back of such an upbeat assessment, many economists see interest rates falling to as low as 2.5 per cent, their lowest since 1951. For those in secure, well-paid work and with good credit ratings, the credit crunch may not hurt too much; for everyone else, the pain will be intense. — By arrangement with
The Independent |
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Nobel winner ‘feels like deer caught in headlights’
A
pharmacologist from the University of California, San Diego, and two other U.S.-based scientists won the 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry on Wednesday for their development of a green fluorescent protein from jellyfish that has provided researchers their first new window into the workings of the cell since the development of the microscope. Roger Y. Tsien, 56, of UC San Diego, Martin Chalfie, 61, of Columbia University, and Osamu Shimomura, 80, a Japanese-born researcher who works at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass., will share the $1.4 million prize for developing the protein that the Nobel committee called “a guiding star for biochemists, biologists, medical scientists and other researchers.” The protein can be attached to any of the 10,000 individual molecules within a living cell, allowing researchers for the first time to trace their paths as they wind through the complex pathways of life. It is “an essential piece of the scientific toolbox,” said Jeremy M. Berg, director of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, which has funded work by all three of the prize winners. “It is impossible to overstate the impact of these investigators’ work on scientific progress.” In a hastily arranged news conference Wednesday morning, Chalfie said he had slept through early morning phone calls from Sweden and did not know about the prize until he woke up and checked his laptop. “It’s not something out of the blue, but you never know when it’s going to come or if it’s going to come, so it’s always a big surprise when it actually happens,” he said. Shimomura told the Japanese broadcaster NHK that he was surprised to receive the chemistry Nobel “because I was rumored as a potential candidate for the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine.” In a telephone news conference, Tsien said he felt “a bit like a deer caught in the headlights. ... Fundamentally, I’m no smarter today than I was yesterday.” The story of the fluorescent protein starts with Shimomura. In 1953, he was hired as an assistant in the Nagoya University laboratory of biologist Yashimasa Hirata, who assigned him to discover what made the remains of a crushed mollusk glow when moistened with sea water. Hirata had considered the project so difficult that he would not assign it to a graduate student for fear that its failure would prevent the student from receiving his degree. But within three years, Shimomura had isolated the protein. When Shimomura was later recruited to join Frank Johnson at Princeton University, Hirata arranged for Nagoya to award him his doctorate, even though he was not enrolled as a student. In summer 1961, Shimomura and Johnson began collecting bioluminescent jellyfish in Friday Harbor in the San Juan Islands of Washington state, returning to Princeton with extracts from 10,000 of them. From this material, they isolated a blue luminescent protein called aequorin and a green fluorescent protein, commonly called GFP. In subsequent studies, Shimomura found that GFP absorbed ultraviolet light and emitted a green glow. What was revolutionary about the protein was that — unlike, for example, the light-emitting chemicals in the firefly — it did not require the addition of any chemical additives. In 1988, Chalfie heard about GFP and thought it would be useful for tracing the fate of proteins in the roundworm, Caenorhabditis elegans, which is widely used in biological studies because it is transparent, allowing researchers to study its organs under a microscope. When Douglas Prasher of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution isolated the gene for GFP, Chalfie assigned graduate student Ghia Euskirchen to insert the gene into the bacterium Escherichia coli. Within a month, she had produced a bacterium that glowed green. Next, Chalfie attached the gene to receptors in C. elegans that are involved in the sensation of touch. The cover of the journal Science in February 1994 showed a picture of the organism with the touch neurons glowing bright green. Tsien, who won the prestigious Westinghouse Science Talent Search at age 16 for a project that examined how metals bind to organic compounds, also received a copy of the gene from Prasher. He intended to use it as a marker as well, he said, but Chalfie beat him into print. Tsien is careful to note that he did not discover GFP or use it to make any groundbreaking biological discoveries. “I’m the guy who makes the tools,” he said. One memorable experiment with the new technology tagged mouse brain proteins yellow, cyan and red, producing a mouse whose brain glowed in the colors of a rainbow — a “brainbow,” as it was tagged. — By arrangement with
LA Times-Washington Post |
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Delhi Durbar NOW that SP chief Mulayam Singh has dismissed his trusted lieutenant Amar Singh’s threat to withdraw support to the UPA government if a judicial inquiry into the Jamia encounter was not ordered, the reason for Amar Singh’s two-week late visit to the site of the encounter can probably be explained. According to the grapevine, Amar Singh, who claims some familial links with Azamgarh, is keen to enter the Lok Sabha this time and has zeroed in on Azamgarh as the best constituency that could return him to Parliament. With Azamgarh in the news for all the wrong reasons, Amar Singh has naturally adopted Azamgarh and even announced his intent to call himself “Amar Singh Azmi” henceforth. And what better place than Jamia to visit since “terrorists” or “victims of the fake encounter”, as the case may be, all hailed from Azamgarh!
The DTH war
Over the last couple of weeks, viewers got to see a 10-second television It was rumoured to be a “teaser campaign” released by Bharti Airtel, which is expected to launch its DTH service in the near future. Big TV, quick to grab the opportunity, released its own 10-second TVC produced in the same fashion with a similar red sofa but ending with the logo of Big TV and a voice over saying “Come back home soon” and adding a unique Big TV feature like 32 Cinemas, 200+ channels and MPEG 4 technology for digital quality audio and video. Big TV has taken full advantage of the curiosity the Airtel teaser managed to Rice’s visit
So excited was US Ambassador to India David Mulford after the nuclear deal was passed by the US Senate that he held a press conference as soon as he landed in New Delhi from Washington and cut a huge cake to mark the occasion. However, he had apparently started the celebration a bit too early. The disappointment on his face was quite palpable two days later when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived on her “farewell” visit to New Delhi to sign the deal with the External Affairs Minister but India was not willing to ink it. Despite all efforts by America to convince India to operationalise the deal during Rice’s visit, India insisted that it wanted to see whether its concerns would be addressed by President Bush while signing the nuclear cooperation agreement bill
Contributed by Faraz Ahmad, Girija Shankar Kaura and Ashok Tuteja |
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