The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Obama’s moment
Americans set to cross the colour divide

SENATOR John McCain must have realised after he won the Republican nomination for the November 4 US Presidential election that he will have to fight hard to defeat his Democratic challenger Barack Obama. Like an experienced warhorse that he is, Mr McCain has been leaving nothing to chance.

When recently Senator Obama took some respite from the Presidential campaign to nurse his ailing grandmother, opinion polls showed a major gain for the Republican nominee. Now Mr McCain was behind Mr Obama by only 5 per cent votes from the earlier 13 per cent. But the economy’s meltdown dampened the Republican morale.

Mr Obama has recovered the losses he temporarily suffered with little difficulty. Even those US voters who have reservations against an Afro-American entering the White House are unable to ignore the pitfalls of the George Bush presidency. They want the Republicans to be punished for getting the US unnecessarily caught into two war theatres -- Afghanistan and Iraq.

As if this was not enough, the world has been jolted by a major economic earthquake with the US as its epicentre. Most experts blame the policies of President Bush for the debilitating financial crisis.

Even Mr McCain and his running mate Sarah Palin are denouncing the Bush presidency. But he is all set to lose not only because of the Bush legacy but also owing to his own blunder — opting for Ms Palin as his party’s vice-presidential nominee, a person who reportedly cares for her clothes more than anything else. She is trying to change her style, but it is too late in the day.

The Democrats — Mr Obama and his running mate Joe Biden -- can be stopped in the track only by what they call in the US as the “Bradley effect” (in 1982, very popular Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, who was ahead of his Republican rival by 7 per cent votes in some opinion polls, ultimately tasted defeat in one of the most interesting contests for governorship).

The other factor that can disprove the opinion polls is Mr Obama’s Afro-American background. In any case, the world is waiting for the US election results with bated breath.

Party time
Extravagance politician’s new signature

IN India millions go to bed on empty stomachs. But its political class seems to wallow in wealth. What else can explain the ostentatious birthday bash of the 11-year-old son of Jharkhand’s Rural Development Minister Enos Ekka on which he reportedly spent over Rs 75 lakh?

The son’s birthday in 2006 cost him Rs 50 lakh. While the number of chickens and goats served at the recent celebration ‘befitting a prince’ will provide enough ammunition to his adversaries, the staggering expenses should keep the taxman busy. For, at the time of contesting elections Mr Ekka’s declared cash position stood at a modest Rs 72,000.

This isn’t the first time a politician has indulged in distasteful display of wealth. Rather, Mr Ekka finds himself in the ‘hall of fame’ and in the company of many an unashamed politician like Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati. The state machinery goes into an overdrive to celebrate her birthday, declared ‘Swabhiman Diwas’ for Dalits.

By now her yearly bash is a well-publicised occasion. Opulence has always been the hallmark of former Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu J. Jayalalithaa whose birthday festivities and the lavish Rs 100-crore wedding of her foster son are still fresh in public memory.

Expecting the present tribe of politicians to go back to the days of Mahatma Gandhi when austerity was a virtue, is asking for too much. But would they at least pay heed to the advice of the present Prime Minister, who has cautioned against wasteful lifestyles? Political leaders must live by example and making a public spectacle out of a private event is against all norms of public life.

Such unacceptable hedonism sends wrong signals and can also incite social unrest in a nation divided between the haves and the have-nots. Instead of frittering away money in self-gratifying ways, the leaders should mobilise support and resources for the development of their constituencies.

Simdega, Mr Ekka’s home district, is not the only one afflicted by poverty. Most of India and its people are crying for development.

Thought for the Day

It is only that which cannot be expressed otherwise that is worth expressing in music. — Frederick Delius

ARTICLE

Elections in J & K
Time for reconciliation
by B. G. Verghese

THE window of opportunity opened by the bold decision to go ahead with general elections in Jammu and Kashmir as scheduled must not be wasted. The government has wisely called the separatists’ bluff. The electorate will do the rest.

The staggering of the polls over seven days spread over a month may not be tidy but is nonetheless a prudent arrangement, as underlying the threat of a poll boycott is the menace of the gun.

The invited presence of independent election observers will put these saboteurs and their pious front men on notice that they will be held accountable for sabotaging the democratic process of popular self-determination. A low turnout at some polling stations or constituencies will not invalidate the exercise or the resultant mandate. It will render the obstructionists even more irrelevant than they are today.

The Congress, the National Conference and the BJP have endorsed the polls. The PDP has fleshed out its proposals for “self-rule” but has been strangely coy in announcing its participation. If it misses the bus it will have none to blame but itself. The Hurriyat and other separatist groups are an unrepresentative and confused lot who seek a post-facto electoral endorsement of a pre-determined result about an aazadi that means different things to different men.

Other events provide a backdrop to the polls. Cross-LOC but as yet intra-J&K trade has commenced and marks a beginning in what both sides hope will grow quantitatively and qualitatively to embrace Indo-Pakistan commerce across other routes as well.

The commissioning of the Baglihar dam and part of the Valley-segment of the J&K Railway mark two development milestones, with the opening of the Mughal Road and Srinagar international airport to follow. These new connectivities are going to shape a new polity.

Further high-level Indo-Pakistan meetings in recent weeks also signal that the larger Indo-Pakistan peace process based on the Manmohan-Musharraf proposals is still on track despite a hiccup over the Baglihar reservoir filling over which Islamabad has indicated some concern. This last has more to do with the power play of internal J&K politics in Pakistan as the so-called “lifeline” or water issue is evoked from time to time to counter internal charges of a sell-out over J&K.

Public opinion on both sides of J&K as well as in India and Pakistan and international opinion all favour a just and abiding J&K settlement. Federal and regional autonomy and self-rule will be canvassed during the ensuing polls.

All the more reason that the Centre should seriously apply its mind to its own negotiating position and enter into informal consultations with the Opposition so as to move at least some way towards building a national consensus on the next steps and a preferred overall outcome.

This is a time for concurrent rather than sequential thinking. The latter will entail loss of momentum generated by the J&K polls and breed cynicism.

The delay in getting the most critical of the Prime Minister’s five J&K task forces, that on autonomy headed by Justice Saghir Ahmed, to meet and report, derailed that welcome initiative.

The fifth task force should now be written off and the Government of India must independently think through a composite package that should be open for dialogue and decision as soon as possible after the polls. Narasimha Rao had said the “the sky is the limit” within the contours of national sovereignty.

The first thing to remember is that Article 1 and Schedule 1 of the Constitution bind J&K to India. Article 370 is only a mechanism to regulate the federal relationship between Delhi and J&K. Anything beyond the three original heads of accession — foreign affairs, defence and communications — is prima facie negotiable.

As long as the Centre says “no” even to totally innocuous things like designating the two top functionaries as Sadr-i-Riyasat and Wazir-e-Azam, there will be little progress. The moment the Centre says “yes” to considering the retention, abrogation or amendment of links, such as the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court, the Election Commission, the UPSC and the CAG, lively debate will commence within J&K and indeed in the Valley itself, with powerful voices arguing the merits of association. But even if the choice favours dissociation, so be it. What vital interest will be hurt?

The wisdom and strength to say “yes” or “why not” would be the best way to win the big prize even at the cost of possibly losing some consolation prizes. Likewise, scrapping the application of Article 356 matters little as long as the Centre’s “duty to protect states against external aggression and internal disturbance” under Article 355 remains.

As far as regional autonomy is concerned, this can be finely differentiated across regions through creative use of Articles 258 and 258-A of the Constitution.

Meanwhile, the so-called Chenab imbroglio highlights the increasingly urgent need to optimise the harnessing and utilisation of Indus waters. With the uncertainties and perils of climate change rapidly closing in, there is no gainsaying the importance of joint future cooperation in the development and management of the entire middle-upper and lower Indus basin as between India and Pakistan, let alone merely J&K, as mentioned in the body of the Indus Treaty itself.

Cooperation on the whole range of water-related issues would truly make boundaries irrelevant and flesh out the Manmohan-Musharraf package as nothing else.

The forthcoming elections in J&K are, therefore, not a mere end in themselves but a grand opportunity to usher in reconciliation and change in the subcontinent.

MIDDLE

Dehradun today
by Shriniwas Joshi

Immediately after my arrival in Dehradun, The Tribune also arrived here on the 20th of October to be distributed free on the morning of the 21st. “It is exciting to see the newspaper here with which we grew in Shimla,” said a few of my friends who had permanently settled in Dehradun.

My daughter drove to the vendor’s shop near Astley Hall to bring a copy. I also felt a little stirred up with the Dehradun edition of the paper in my hands. I wished that it carried my ‘middle’ on the day but it had the topmost middle-writer Raj Chatterjee’s ‘Hundred Years Ago’; so no regrets.

Dehradun has considerably changed since I came here for the first time in the fifties. It had then a couple of tongas running in narrow streets. Honking and whirring was almost non-existent. A pedestrian then used to walk carelessly.

The streets have been widened now with flowing water canals by their sides going underneath the earth. Even then the congestion due to a fleet of three hundred thousand four-wheelers that finds an addition of another 30 thousand every year makes leisure walk on the streets a forgotten pastime. Tongas have vanished.

Dehradun, this year, had the blessings of monsoons to crown it as the wettest State capital of India. The roads, however, are not as potholed as in Himachal Pradesh. Whether the rains here are not as damaging as they are in my State or is it the PWD that has to exchange notes with its counterpart here? I wonder.

I am mentioning two memorials of Dehradun here. The first one is most seen but little known to the denizens. It is ‘Balbir Ghantaghar’, the signature-landmark of or the epicentre of activities in Dehradun that was erected in 1953 in memory of Balbir Singh Raees, a philanthropist and a judge.

It was inaugurated by Lal Bahadur Shastri. Bewilderingly its six clocks give the right time. Probably crows or monkeys are not on ‘hand-shaking’ terms with the clocks here as they are with those at Christ Church in Shimla.

The other one is Kalanga monument on the Sahstradhara road where there are two towers raised side by side in memory of the victor and the vanquished. The year 1814 saw the clash for Nalapani Fort between the Gurkhas under the leadership of Balbhadra Singh Thapa (the grandson of Amar Singh Thapa) and the British, under the leadership of General Gillespie. Both the leaders fought bravely and died in the battle.

Today, Gillespie and Balbhadra stand together evenly at Kalanga. I call this monument exemplary as nowhere in the world have the memorials been raised in the name of the champ and the crushed together on the same ground, at the same place and having the same style.

Humans are humans everywhere but the monkeys here are less violent towards the fair sex as compared to those in Shimla. I observed on a morning walk on the old Mussoorie road that a female sweeper cleaning the entrance of the garden-cum-villa scolded an approaching monkey, “Kahan ja raha hai, badmash? Dekhta nahin gate band hai?” The monkey took the command seriously and immediately about-turned.

OPED

Arabs rely on Britain and Israel for their history
by Robert Fisk

IN Damascus, a massive statue of the late President Hafez al-Assad sits on a mighty iron chair outside the 22,000sq m Assad Library, a giant book open in his right hand. Behind him lie the archives of his dictatorship. But not a single state paper is open to the people of Syria.

There are no archives from the foreign ministry or the interior ministry or the defence ministry. There is no 30-year rule – for none is necessary. The rule is for ever. There is no public record office in the Arab world, no scholars waiting outside the national archives.

It is the same in Cairo, in Riyadh, in Beirut and in Tripoli. Dictatorships and caliphates do not give away their secrets. The only country in the West Asia where you can burrow through the files is called Israel – and good for the Israelis. But the result is obvious.

While Israeli scholars have been able to deconstruct the traditional story of little Israel – proving that there were no Arab radio stations calling for the Palestinians to leave their land, that the Arabs were indeed ethnically cleansed from their towns and villages by Irgun and the Hagana – there is no Arab scholar who can balance the books by drawing on the archives of his own history.

They must go to the National Archives in London to read General Cunningham’s dispatches from 1948 Palestine, or quote from Israeli books. The record stops there. Aside from the self-serving biographies of Arab dictators and generals, that’s it. Even Walid Khalidi’s huge tome on the destroyed villages of Palestine relies heavily on the work of Israeli historian Benny Morris.

Slowly, though, a little bag of history is being filled across the region. If we can’t read the private papers of the leaders of the lamentable Arab Liberation Army of 1948, we can still hear the personal testimony of the Palestinian survivors.

Rosemarie Esber, for example, has put her degrees from London and Johns Hopkins universities to good use by interviewing – in Jordan and Lebanon — 126 Palestinian men and women who lost their homes and lands in 1948 and 1949. Her soon to be published work (Under the Cover of War) helps to balance documentation and diaries by one side with verbal recollection on the other.

The book does not spare the Arabs – least of all the Arab atrocities or the Iraqi volunteers who turned up to fight for Palestine but didn’t even know their geography – yet the suffering of those who fled is all too evident.

Here, for example, is Abu Mohamed from the village of Saqiya, east of Tel Aviv, describing what happened on 25 April, 1948: “Jews entered the village and started shooting women, men, and old people. They arrested girls, and we still don’t know what happened to them. They came from the settlement that was near the village... They used Bren guns. Then armoured vehicles entered the centre of the village. Fourteen were killed that day... Two women could not run so they were killed in the village... The villagers ran together in the direction of al-Lid (Lod, the site of Ben Gurion airport in modern-today Israel). After that families started to leave separately... We left everything in the village... We thought it would be a short trip and we would come back.”

In Lebanon, too, there is a flourishing market in books based on diaries and personal archives. Among the most intriguing is A Face in the Crowd: The Secret Papers of Emir Farid Chehab, 1942-1972, the private documents of Lebanon’s post-Second World War intelligence boss.

Apart from proving that Lebanese-Syrian relations could be as awful in the 1940s as they could be in the 1990s, he was an assiduous spy, nurturing his agents in Jordan in 1956 to find out why the young King Hussein had fired the British commander of the Arab Legion, Glubb Pasha.

“Glubb was a spendthrift, tightly controlled the army’s finances and secret expenses, and refused to share relevant information with Arab commanders and officers,” a still unknown informant writes to Chehab on 11 March, 1956.

“His interference (extended to) ... control over various ministries’ telephone lines... A telephone employee in Amman admitted to me that even the Palace’s and Prime Ministry’s communication networks were under the army’s surveillance. A secret communiqué addressed by Glubb to all British heads of army units was recently discovered; it said that in case of an Israeli attack they should retreat and not resist. The free officers took this communiqué up to the King.”

So goodbye Glubb Pasha. But did this also, perhaps, have something to do with the equally secret Operation Cordage, first highlighted by Keith Kyle in his excellent book on Suez and even more rigorously investigated by Eric Grove of Salford University. “Cordage” was Britain’s plan for defending its Jordanian ally from Israeli attack if Israel assaulted Egypt.

The plan, according to Grove, included “an air campaign carried out by (RAF) Venoms based at Amman and Mafraq in Jordan to knock out the Israeli Air Force in 72 hours... A fighter wing of swept-wing aircraft (Sabres or Hunters) would be provided from Germany to operate from Cyprus...”

A parachute brigade group would be flown to Jordan to defend British air bases and then – along with Glubb’s Arab Legion – to defend Amman against the Israelis. It was at the end of February 1956 that Hussein dismissed Glubb; which, as Grove diplomatically puts it, “created problems”. So how much did Glubb know about Operation Musketeer?

— By arrangement with The Independent

Failure is an option ... But losing without learning isn’t?
by Dan Zak

Sometime late into Tuesday evening, many Americans will feel like losers. Some will have worked months, maybe years, to elect someone who is staring at defeat. Some will have invested a heaping helping of hope into John McCain or Barack Obama, only to face four years under the opponent. There will be tears, denial, anger.

As this epic season barrels to a resolution, there is much at stake besides ideology and leadership. Namely: winning and losing. Success will send one side into shared ecstasy. Failure will deaden the other side with lonely grief. It will hurt.

“I would argue there’s no starker dichotomy in American culture than in the idea of success and failure,” says Scott Sandage, author of “Born Losers: A History of Failure in America.”

The sting of failure ripples through all aspects of life, yet we’re quick to write it off, or deflect fault, or deploy banalities to soften the blow.

“There seems to be no way in American public life to talk about failure without resorting to cliches,” continues Sandage, who teaches history at Carnegie Mellon University. “Like, `You’re not a failure unless you quit,’ or `Failure is a learning opportunity.’ They’re kind of true, but they presume failure is always shameful. They presume failure is excusable only in the context of a continued all-out quest for success.”

Sandage’s book covers failed capitalist ventures from the past 200 years, a period during which Americans have broadened “failure” from a word that describes an outcome (as in, “a failed business”) to a word that describes an identity (“I am a failure”).

And it’s this redefining of failure that gives people trouble, says Edwin Locke, professor emeritus of leadership and motivation at the University of Maryland. Just because you fail doesn’t make you a failure.

“Some people may generalize a loss to dissatisfaction with themselves,” Locke says. “But that’s hugely mistaken, because not reaching a goal is limited to that goal. It’s not a condemnation of your life.”

Locke has researched goal-setting theory, which says that specific, hard-to-achieve goals produce better performance. He has found through experiments that people who set higher goals accomplish more but are more likely to fail. People who are terrified of failure set their goals too low, so they “succeed” by substandard markers but fail in a broader sense. The trick is to unleash a healthy ambition, set specific goals, and remain resilient and adaptable in the face of failure, Locke says.

Sometimes hard work leads to failure, as Sandage writes in his book. It’s an un-American reality, but Katie Fox-Boyd and Farah Ahmad know all about it. They worked hard to get John Kerry elected president in 2004. We know how that turned out.

Yet there they were a couple of weeks ago on K Street, canvassing through Grassroots Campaigns, working full time to get Obama elected. What if their guy loses again?

The drive to rebound is an indispensable part of recovering from a loss. It’s part of a simple equation for living successfully, regardless of failures, says Frank Farley, a professor of psychology at Temple University in Philadelphia who studies motivation, leadership and the psychology of sports and politics. That equation: Self-knowledge plus motivation equal a successful life.

The trick is to be a constant student of your evolving strengths and weaknesses, and keep moving forward, whether or not you deserved to lose.

“If you lose in some venture, in any aspect of your life, learn from it,” Farley says. “That’s the motivation part. You learn about yourself, and you do something based on that. Some people when they lose — they blow it off, they don’t think more about it. They may be mad about it. But sensible people tend to reflect. `What happened there?’ Successful people get better at it. A loss, to them, is information.”

Life coach Ed Modell encourages a similar plan. “Rather than tell a client to not be upset about losing, we ask them powerful questions,” says Modell, a past president of the D.C. chapter of the International Coach Federation. “Questions like `What have you learned about yourself from this experience?’ and `What do you need to do to get closure around this situation so you don’t keep thinking of yourself as a failure?’ “

The only good way to lose is to be open to learning from it and avoid the temptation to leap to two extremes: dismissing a loss as meaningless or considering a loss the final judgment on a matter. Land somewhere in the middle, the experts say. A loss should be a source of wisdom.

— By arrangement with LA Times-Washington Post

Chatterati
Tickets and candidates
by Devi Cherian

THE BJP is desperately trying to find a candidate to field against Shiela Dixit. First, it found a television starlet, Vani Tripathi. Remember last time it was Poonam Azad, who just managed to save her deposit.

Then it was Vijay Goyal, who is upset for not being declared the chief ministerial candidate. Now Vijay Jolly seems to be the chosen one.

The first list of Congress candidates has left many upset. MLA Taj Dar Babbar has been denied the ticket. The party has given the ticket to Talvinder Marwah, who was the Youth Congress president. A whisper campaign has been started against the chosen party candidates.

Will Shiela Dixit’s charisma and her development work help her party win the elections? The failure to control the price rise and the complete collapse of internal security is what has left the public so unhappy with the UPA.

BJP upbeat

The BJP seems to be upbeat about the coming state elections. Its campaign material highlights the Congress’ all-around failure, which includes inflation and terrorism.

A popular slogan says: “Mehangi Padi Congress”. Strategist Arun Jaitley is behind the campaign. He was the head of the campaign in Gujarat, Karnataka and now is in charge in all states going to the polls.

The UPA seems to be in tatters. Amar Singh seems to have shed a lot of his weight along with his allies. He is a one-man army against all. The latest on the hit lists are Lalu and Paswan for not resigning from the Cabinet in protest against the killings of North Indians in Maharashtra.

Of course, Amar Singh finds it easier to deal with male politicians rather than women in politics. It could be Sonia Gandhi, Mayawati, Mamta or Jayalalithaa. They do keep him on his toes by keeping him guessing about their next moves.

Raj of the rich

Raj Thackeray may want to be a man of the masses, but surprisingly all thinking men who surround him travel in Mercedes, Pajeros and other fancy cars. He is surrounded by white-collared executives too. The elite Marathis are silently now sending feelers to this “elite” leader of the common man.

Chief Minister Deshmukh thinks twice before taking any action against him and Home Minister Shiv Raj Patil, who hails from Maharashtra, also is soft towards him. Bal Thackeray obviously under-estimated Raj Thackeray’s nuisance value when he bypassed him for his son to take over the part command.

Mumbai’s local thugs are now employed by Raj’s political party. It is said Raj studies the video of young Bal Thackeray very carefully.

Local politicians of Maharashtra have realised that Raj may be the next Bal Thackeray and so to keep him in good humour may be beneficial in the long run.