The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Our own land
China cannot negate history

THE Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman’s claim that Beijing “has never recognised the illegal McMahon Line” as the India-China border is not surprising. He has asserted that the Chinese have never accepted the status of Arunachal Pradesh as an Indian state. His outburst comes after External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee’s statement on Sunday that the northeastern state is an integral part of India. The Chinese react on these lines whenever any Indian dignitary describes Arunachal Pradesh as one of the 28 states of the country. Beijing protested, though in a low-key manner, when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh referred to Arunachal Pradesh as “our land of the rising sun” while announcing at Itanagar a Rs 20,000-crore package for the development of the state on January 31 this year.

The truth is that the Chinese are keeping the boundary issue in the eastern sector alive to use it for bargaining with India to gobble up the 43,180 km of Jammu and Kashmir territory they have occupied, including the 5,180 km of the Kashmir area illegally ceded to China by Pakistan. The Chinese know that Arunachal Pradesh has an elected assembly and people of the state have their own representatives in Parliament. Culturally and historically, people of the entire mountainous tribal state have always been associated with India. Tawang, the birthplace of the sixth Dalai Lama, located near the border, is regularly visited by Buddhists from India and abroad and India provides all kinds of facilities to the tourists.

In August China showed no hesitation in issuing a visa to the BJP MP from Tawang, Mr Kiren Rijiju, to visit Beijing as part of a delegation of MPs to watch the Olympic Games. This was a departure from the past when China refused visas to Indians belonging to Arunachal Pradesh. The development relating to the Tawang MP was described as a “step forward” in the efforts to resolve the boundary dispute between India and China. The two countries have had 12 rounds of talks so far to find a way to normalise their relations. They have shown an inclination to work as partners in promoting growth and stability in the region. China should avoid raking up the issue again and again in the interest of peace and progress.

Muscle Pawar
Well-deserved treatment for MP minister

THE arrest of Madhya Pradesh Tourism Minister Tukoji Rao Pawar and BJP leader Phool Chand Verma for threatening Ms Sanjana Jain, Sub-Divisional Magistrate and Returning Officer for the Sonkatch Assembly constituency, is strictly in accordance with the law. The nation watched on television the manner in which the minister misbehaved with her. Politicians, including ministers, can meet returning officers and duly file complaints against candidates. However, Mr Pawar had no business to fling the papers and threaten Ms Jain with dire consequences if no action was taken on his complaint. Both Mr Pawar and Mr Verma insisted that the Congress nominee from the Sonkatch constituency, Mr Sajjan Singh Verma, had not filed his nomination papers properly and hence they should be rejected.

Ms Jain, however, strongly reiterated that she had reviewed the objections and found Mr Verma’s nomination papers in order. The minister then flung the papers at her table and abused her. She promptly sent a video footage of the incident to the Election Commission and filed a case against the duo. Interestingly, the Election Commission has transferred the Dewas Collector for his failure to bring this matter to its attention. The incident shows how intolerant and haughty politicians have become. They want the bureaucrats to follow their dictates, whether they are right or wrong. Remember how in May this year, CPM MP Laxman Seth had threatened CRPF DIG Aloke Raj to leave Nandigram during the municipal elections in West Bengal! Of course, Mr Raj showed him the rule book and refused to yield.

Recently, the minister in question went to a state-run hotel in Bhopal and abused the staff after he was told that the kitchen and the bar had closed for the day. Ministers and legislators are lawmakers and they must behave properly with officers. If they themselves violate the code and disturb the peaceful conduct of elections, who will set examples for the common people? The solution lies in electing persons of high integrity and character to Parliament and state legislatures. Not the likes of Tukoji Rao Pawar!

Thought for the Day

Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows. — William Shakespeare

ARTICLE

Plight of Sri Lankan Tamils
New Delhi misses the human dimension
by G. Parthasarathy

A major lesson that the Manmohan Singh government has learnt in recent days is that the otherwise warm and friendly Delhi-Colombo relationship cannot remain unaffected by the dynamics of Colombo-Chennai equations. Significantly, some of Sri Lanka’s most astute officials are appointed as Colombo’s Deputy High Commissioner in Chennai. If people in Punjab get outraged by Sikh children in France being prohibited from wearing turbans in schools, it is unrealistic to expect that relations with Sri Lanka can be conducted smoothly if Tamils in Sri Lanka, who have strong familial, emotional and cultural ties with their fellow Tamils in India, are perceived as suffering, or persecuted by the Sri Lanka government.

Political parties in Tamil Nadu inevitably have linkages with one or other Tamil group in Sri Lanka. New Delhi also has maintained links with several Tamil leaders, political parties and even with militant outfits in Sri Lanka.

Attitudes in Tamil Nadu towards the LTTE changed when the LTTE provoked a conflict with the Indian Peace Keeping Force in Sri Lanka in 1987 and thereafter engineered the brutal assassination of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in May 1991. In Mr. Karunanidhi’s third term as Chief Minister, the LTTE was given a free hand to enter and establish havens in Tamil Nadu. But, what is not well known is that till the IPKF was compelled to act against the LTTE in Sri Lanka, Mr. Karunanidhi was one of its strongest critics, for the LTTE’s role in assassinating his protégé — the founder leader of its rival, the Tamil Eelam Liberation Organization — Seeri Sabarathinam.

The LTTE and its leader Velupillai Prabhakaran were, in fact, protégés of Mr. Karunanidhi’s arch rival, then Chief Minister M.G. Rmachandran. MGR, as he was popularly known, however, was angered by Prabhakaran’s obduracy and when I met him on instructions of the Prime Minister in October 1987, when he was convalescing in Baltimore, he expressed his understanding of Rajiv Gandhi’s compulsions, in ordering the IPKF action.

New Delhi should have anticipated the growing disquiet in Tamil Nadu, where the LTTE still has effective propaganda machinery, when the Sri Lankan army was preparing to crack down on the last LTTE stronghold in Killnochchi in the Island’s Northern Province. While the LTTE does use innocent Tamils as human shields as it did during the operations of the IPKF, the fact remains that since 2005, when the conflict escalated, 20,000 Tamils have fled to India as refugees and about 500,000 displaced internally.

The European Union has voiced its concerns about these developments. But what New Delhi has failed to do is to explain to people in India that while it sympathises with the Tamils caught in the conflict, it also recognises that LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran has no inhibitions in deliberately using civilians as human shields and that with the defection of its key military commander Karuna in the Eastern Province, the LTTE is isolated internationally and domestically.

People in Tamil Nadu cannot support an organisation that is designated as a terrorist group by 31 countries, including India, the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and 27 members of the European Union. Prabhakaran is responsible for the assassination of one President (Premadasa), one Prime Minister (Rajiv Gandhi), nine Sri Lankan ministers, including the island-nation’s most prominent Tamil and former Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar, and 18 other well-known Tamil politicians. They include top leaders who could challenge Prabhakaran within the Tamil community like the highly respected TULF President, Appapilai Amirthalingam, Sam Thambimutu and human rights activist Dr Neelan Tiruchelvam.

Prabhakaran started his career by assassinating the Tamil Mayor of Jaffna, Alfred Duraiappan, in July 1975. One reason why the Indo-Sri Lanka Agreement of 1987 could not be implemented was Prabhakaran’s refusal to allow any role for anyone other than those he wanted in the interim administration — an approach MGR disapproved of. When the DMK administration gave some elbow-room to the LTTE in Tamil Nadu in 1990, Prabhakaran responded by assassinating Padmanabha, the General Secretary of the rival EPRLF in Chennai — an action that compelled EPRLF leader Varatharaja Perumal to seek political asylum in India. These are issues that the Manmohan Singh government failed to highlight in securing public support in Tamil Nadu.

Speaking at the all-party meeting in Chennai on October 14, and recalling the killings of TELO founder Seeri Sabarathinam and EPRLF leader Padmanabha (by the LTTE), Chief Minister M Karunanidhi made it clear that it was “fraternal wars” caused by the LTTE in the past that had proved to be a major setback for the Tamil cause in Sri Lanka. He regretted that “the present situation we are facing in Sri Lanka is due to the fraternal wars of the past”.

The DMKs’ patriarch, whose party was routed after the Rajiv Gandhi assassination by the LTTE in 1991 and who led the UPA to a resounding victory by capturing all 40 seats in Tamil Nadu in the 2004 elections, was signaling that while he recognised the excesses of the LTTE, he wanted New Delhi to spare no effort to prevent the killing of innocent civilians in Sri Lanka. Interestingly, while opposition leader J. Jayalalithaa in Tamil Nadu also vows to protect the interests of Tamils in Sri Lanka, she has shown by actions in the past that she is fully cognisant of larger national interests, in dealing toughly with the LTTE.

Unfortunately, influential sections of the leadership in Sri Lanka appear to believe that with the LTTE in retreat, they can ignore the issue of guaranteeing a life of dignity, equality and honour for the Tamil population. New Delhi has to persuade both the Sri Lankan government and public opinion in Tamil Nadu that while it will back the Sri Lankan government in dealing with the psychopathic Prabhakaran, it expects early implementation of the 13th Amendment of the Sri Lanka Constitution, which guarantees devolution of power to the Northern and Eastern Provinces of Sri Lanka, while urging that measures that former President Kumaratunga proposed in 1997 on the issue should also be taken into consideration.

As major aid donors like the US, the European Union and Japan have similar views as India on dealing with the ethnic situation, it should not be difficult to forge an international consensus to persuade Sri Lanka to move positively to resolve the ethnic issue. Moreover, with the agreement reached with Sri Lanka on the vexed issue of fishermen from Tamil Nadu crossing the international maritime boundary, a major irritant causing ripples almost daily in the state appears to have been addressed.

MIDDLE

“Store” arithmetic
by Anita Gill

I am a compulsive shopper. Shopping has always been my favourite pastime — be it for jewellery, clothes, shoes, cosmetics, or even the humble grocery. This statement should not raise any eyebrows, for is it not what we females are (in)famous for? The only thing that sets me slightly apart, according to my own perception, is that being a teacher of economics, I am extra cautious about the MRPs, discounts, sales, EMIs, etc. However, the current “malls and stores culture” left me totally stupefied, negating all the economics and arithmetic that I had ever studied, or taught over 20 years.

It so happened that, attracted to a well designed and decorated outlet of a famous chain of grocery stores, I decided to “ditch” the humble baniya shop that I had been frequenting for years and shop from this modern outlet. Accompanied by my son, I entered the store, got hold of a trolley and paced up and down the store happily pausing at each stack of goods, although I did not buy much.

My son’s frowns finally compelled me to put an end to my revelry and stand in the queue at the cash counter. When the customer just ahead of me was making the payments, I heard him arguing feebly with the cashier regarding return of change, but was told that it was not to be so. The old customer did not deem it fit to argue further for a small amount and went away quietly.

My turn was next. I emptied the trolley on the counter, the goodies were duly scanned, and a printout of the bill was handed over to me. The bill was of four hundred and twentyfour rupees and seventy paise. Taking a five-hundred rupee note from me, the cashier returned me seventyfive rupees, “rewarding” me with a big smile and a bigger ‘Thank You Ma’am.

Returning the smile, I politely asked for a change of 30 paise. The casher’s smile vanished quicker than it had appeared, and somewhat curtly I was told that he was unable to pay back the change. On being asked to give a candy instead of the change, like most shopkeepers do these days, the cashier sounded horrified —“the candy costs fifty paise Ma’am, and we owe you only thirty”. Meaning thereby that I had to leave thirty paise with him but he could not give me a candy worth twenty paise extra!

My persistence forced the cashier to call over the store-in-charge, who took one look at my extra casual, crumpled salwaar suit, decided that I was thoroughly naïve and patiently started explaining to me on a piece of paper the arithmetic of rounding off the digits — anything more that 0.5 ought to be considered as one and hence 0.70 paise equaled one rupee.

Stifling a grin, I told him that being a university teacher, I was well aware of this ‘rounding off’ arithmetic, but applied it only to marks and percentages. And that I could well afford to let go such a petty amount but it was a matter of principles, not paise. I also took the liberty of asking him as to how many customers a day were subjected to the same arithmetic and how much money was “earned” this way. Needless to add, exasperation gave way to impatience, and I was told to leave. Leave I did, but not before returning back all the items I had bought.

Once outside the store, I asked my son, a mute spectator during the entire ‘episode’, if he was ashamed of what I did just now. He raised his thumb and said, “for once you have taken the right decision mom!”

I chose to take it as a compliment. And decided to stay loyal to my humble baniya shop.

OPED

Missing daughters
Need to change mindset
by Nonika Singh

India might be living in the 21st century but when it comes to its heartless insensitivity towards gender issues, the society that revels in edifying feminine power goes many a step backward. India has always been having more men than women.

Earlier, it was because of high female mortality right from the cradle to the reproductive period. Today the advent of modern technology, the ultrasound boom and the consequent sex selection have threatened her existence in the most unlikely of all places— the mother’s womb.

For centuries many a right has been denied to women. Now under the scanner is her right to be born. In India, particularly in the three states of Haryana, Punjab and Himachal Pradesh that have an abysmal child sex ratio (age group 0-6 years) of less than 900 females per thousand males there is an obsessive son fixation and the abominable practice of aborting daughters before birth.

Experts feel that the phenomenon can’t be viewed as sudden but is yet another manifestation of unrelenting discrimination and violence against women. While Punjab leads the dubious race, the child sex ratio in many districts of both Punjab and Haryana is below 800. This despite the Pre-Natal Diagnostics Techniques Act becoming operational in 1996.

The law was amended and a stronger PCPNDT Act that prevents the use of diagnostic techniques for gender selection and also bans advertisements of sex selection came into force. Still female foetuses are done away with, without compassion or guilt in connivance with the medical fraternity.

Only the sex selection business, estimated to be worth about $100 million in India, has gone underground and a large part of it operates through mobile clinics.

Official machinery galvanises into action but in fits and starts. For instance, Haryana has conducted 7,182 inspections of ultrasound clinics and sealed 107 ultrasound machines. In Punjab there have been 98 prosecutions, but 70 cases are still pending.

The absence of witnesses coupled with weak investigations results in negligible conviction. Persistent campaigns by state governments notwithstanding, the apathy of authorities is writ all over.

The law-enforcing agencies go hoarse proclaiming that the law alone can do little in this “social” issue, which requires attitudinal change through positive measures.

Yet, the incentive approach followed by the governments of Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh has not brought about a paradigm shift. Various schemes like “Laadli and Kanyadaan” are in place but the trickle- down effect is not perceptible.

Ironically, both incentives and pressures work better in the rural areas. So is female foeticide more prevalent in the educated middle class or in families where the status of women is low?

Many studies have found a link between prosperity and sex selective abortions. At the same time, in the nirmal gram villages of Haryana where better amenities for women raising her status have been developed, the sex ratio at birth is better than the state as a whole.

Yet, there is no doubt that the urban educated class is no less guilty in killing daughters before they are born and has to be awakened more proactively.

The change in mindset is gradual and can come about only if society comes out of the denial mode. Civil society has reacted but sporadically. Efforts of men like Shyam Sunder in Bhiwani, who has coined the “aathwan phera” concept to dissuade couples from the termination of a female foetus, are appreciable.

Since religious half-truths have whetted societal hunger for the male child, religion can dent prejudices. Akal Takht has issued a directive against the killing of the girl child.

The Shiromani Gurdwara Prabhandhak Committee’s endeavours like “Nanhi Chhaon” combining an environmental issue with a concern for the girl child are more than heartening. The “sarva-dharma” meets too have been a welcome move.

Till society, the government, NGOs and the corporate world combine synergies, girls in India will continue to go missing. Around 2000 it was reported that out of 100 million women missing in the world, one-third were from India.

Daughters can become desirable only if they are projected as equal to sons who can take care of parents. The media can play a crucial part by restating their success stories and by creating a positive image of the girl child.

Reliving the spirit of the sixties
by Shelley Walia

After a deeply spirited campaign in the US presidential elections, we finally arrive at an incredible historic moment. Gradually, the world digests the reality of an unimaginable victory. It is the birth of a new era, probably the most historic moment after the release of Mandela and the end of apartheid.

It is historic because a black will now occupy the White House in a country weighed down with its dark racial history. It is historic because after centuries of slavery and injustice, the African-Americans stand redeemed.

The Republicans are overwhelmed and the Democrats are in a state of jubilation at the new afterword to their long history of slavery and racism. And it is all because of the support of American youth.

It is now clear from the post-election analysis the new generation of the post-cold war era in America has spoken and made its presence felt. It is urban, intellectual and young, reminding us of the sixties when revolutionaries believed they were on the verge of a new society, especially those of us who were college-going youngsters then.

Barrack Obama too grew up in the post-cold war era. My mind often returns to the 1960s and its message of the counter-culture opposing the Vietnam war. Anti-war in its motivation, the decade witnessed young people burning their draft orders to show their resentment against relentless killings.

These are similar times when the young, who are a massive force behind Obama’s race to the White House, have also been outraged by the war in Iraq or Afghanistan. They share a deep commitment to democracy, a world embodying ideals of liberty, equality and justice for all.

Though the New Right campaigns have consistently castigated and disparaged the progressive movements of our times, many of the young in America have kept the spirit of the sixties alive. Over half a century has gone by, but the sixties remains as heady as ever.

And seeing youth come out in all their numbers and strength to back Obama against a candidate, who would have duplicated the Bush regime he remains so loyal to, shows their involvement in the presidential elections and their keeness to face contemporary politics and deeply motivated towards the interrogation of their social and historical situation.

They have indeed come out of the apathy of their generation to a realisation that it is time to set themselves behind the struggle for social justice and freedom of inquiry.

The present scenario of the scourge of globalisation and its Orwellian companions in the IMF, WTO and G20 has resulted in the interrogation of the myth of progress. I remember that the genesis of this opposition to dehumanised profiteering began in the sixties when the forces of the New Left stood up for instant answers to the problems of oppression and poverty.

At this defining moment, the world can savour the victory of democratic forces that seemingly point towards the near future when the detention centre at Guantanamo Bay would be history and when politics would be kept out of issues of justice.

The enormity of the pressing issues of a “planet in peril”, in handling Iran, Iraq, Pakistan and Russia will be the testing ground on which Obama would face the daunting task of his presidency.

His manifesto aims to ‘enact budget cuts in the range of tens of billions of dollars, stop investing in unproven missile defence systems, not weaponise space, slow development of future combat systems, and work towards eliminating all nuclear weapons.

Obama favours ending development of new nuclear weapons, reducing the current U.S. nuclear stockpile, enacting a global ban on production of fissile material, and seeking negotiations with Russia in order to take ICBMs off high alert status. He has always advocated a phased redeployment of U.S. troops from Iraq and an opening of diplomatic dialogue with Syria and Iran.

There would be more challenges in a scenario of the worst economic crisis in American history that further put this so-called raw hand at politics to a rigorous test at a very critical juncture. Will he be able to reach out to foreign leaders in his efforts to deal with a suspect foreign policy he has inherited from George Bush Jr.? With no government experience, will he be able to handle an office that demands an unmatched acumen?

Cool, calm and thoughtful, he has undoubtedly done his homework as was obvious in the run-up to the election day. He is no “political virgin”, and knows that his success would depend on a team work for which he would need some of the best minds in the country, may they be Republicans.

Bipartisan in his stance, he wants to bring red and blue together and would not hesitate to reach out to his antagonists for support and advice for reasons of continuity. The world awaits his entry into the White House with anticipation and fingers crossed to see if he lives up to his manifesto or buckles under political expediency that has always underpinned the American presidency.

Pakistan’s tribesmen try to tame Taliban
by Candace Rondeaux

THE sign above the bed in the surgical ward at Lady Reading Hospital, Peshawar, was simple and discreet: Patient #247, Bomb Blast. Beneath the sign lay a man swaddled from the waist down in dirty bandages. His face was pocked with black scars from a suicide bomb attack on a meeting of tribal elders who had decided to fight the Taliban. The man had been in the hospital for nearly a month, but was barely conscious.

In that time, more than 120 tribal leaders who decided to take up arms against the Taliban at the Pakistani government's urging have been killed in suicide bombings. Scores more have been injured in firefights with insurgents. Burned by blasts, wounded by artillery fire and hit by bullets, most have received only first aid from the government. A few have been lucky enough to survive the long ride to the hospital in Peshawar.

Many of the injured tribal leaders at Lady Reading were supposed to form the front line in a government campaign to tame the Taliban insurgency in northwest Pakistan. As the army's efforts to stamp out the insurgency in the rugged areas along the Afghan border have faltered, Pakistani officials have turned to tribal militias to make up ground in an increasingly complex conflict.

But, so far at least, the tribal militias have been no panacea. Instead, the use of the militias, known as lashkars, has set off a debate over whether such a strategy will contribute to a civil war in the northwest that could eventually engulf all of Pakistan. Yet some tribal leaders say they have little choice but to fight their brothers, cousins and neighbors: The Pakistani military, they say, has threatened to bomb their villages if they do not battle the Taliban.

"They are between the devil and the deep sea," said Akhunzada Chitran, a tribal representative from the Bajaur area. "On the one side, there is the Taliban, but on the other side they are being forced by the government to fight the Taliban or flee or the government will bomb them. It's a very difficult choice to make, but we have made up our minds to take on the Taliban."

The use of tribesmen to fight the Taliban in Pakistan could prove instructive for U.S. and NATO military leaders who are considering similar tactics in neighboring Afghanistan. Top U.S. military officials have pointed to the example set in Iraq, where tribal sheiks turned against al-Qaida in Iraq insurgents, as a potential model. But analysts in Pakistan and Afghanistan have cautioned that such a strategy could inflame, not extinguish, tensions along the troubled border without proper government support.

Feelings of distrust toward the government's strategy are especially high in Bajaur, where, for the last three months, the Pakistani military has pounded suspected insurgent strongholds with artillery fire and air raids. Pakistani military officials say hundreds of fighters have been killed since operations began in August. But they have made little mention of the unknown number of civilians who have also died as a result of the campaign. More than 200,000 people have fled clashes in Bajaur, setting off a humanitarian crisis as the refugees struggle to find food and shelter.

— By arrangement with LA Times-Washington Post