The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Adding adrenalin
Govt still has challenges ahead

THREE significant policy announcements have come over the weekend to shore up sagging growth and investor sentiment. First, the government has cut the petrol and diesel prices but not in commensurate with the fall in the global oil prices and another cut may soon become inevitable. Second, the RBI has loosened the monetary policy to increase credit flow. This too is not up to public expectations. There is sufficient liquidity in the system but credit offtake is low due to slumping demand and high interest rates. The RBI may soon have to revisit the interest rates to make a favourable impact. Prospective house buyers may still like to wait for further easing of the interest rates before taking a decision.

The third component of the much-awaited stimulus package, which came on Sunday, addresses needs of some of the interest rate-sensitive sectors further hit by the slowdown: housing, automobile, power and exports. The government has slashed the Cenvat (Central value added tax) by 4 per cent, allowed a government firm to issue tax-free bonds to raise Rs 10,000 crore for investment in infrastructure, announced a 2 per cent interest rate subsidy for exporters, allocated Rs 1,400 crore more for the beleaguered textile sector and given concessions to labour-intensive small and medium enterprises. It is in the interest of corporates and transporters to pass on benefits of cheaper prices to consumers to perk up demand.

The stimulus package, which will take time to make an impact, amounts to only $4 billion. This is good enough, given the condition of the government finances, especially the fiscal deficit, but quite tiny when compared with China’s $586 billion and the $750 billion US bailout. Something is, at least, better than nothing. While the Indian banking system still draws respect of the people, in the short term, investor confidence has improved, partly because of the US rescue plan for its automakers. The reach of the global meltdown is too widespread to let India remain isolated from its side-effects. Our policy-makers will continue to face a challenging situation for some time.

Man of dishonour
Misuse of religion for convenience

AFTER more than a month of “mysterious” absence, raising more eyebrows than political concern, Mr Chander Mohan, has resurfaced. No one knows where he was during his furlow from the mundane duties as Deputy Chief Minister. It is easy to guess while away from public glare, if not gossip, Mr Chander Mohan was mooning over one Anuradha Bali who also found her assignment as Assistant Advocate-General, Haryana, rather unromantic, may be boring. To marry his ladylove, he apparently converted to Islam. So, the love -struck politician — now Chand Mohammad — who has given a new twist to “rab ne banayee jodi”, is also singing paeans in favour of his religion of adoption. Ironically, he is not the first celebrity to use religious conversion for convenience, not as an article of faith.

Politicians with a roving eye have often been a subject of drawing room discussion and corridor whispers. For in the public eye, they try to maintain dignity. Mr Chander Mohan’s, now Chand’s, audacious act is not only in clear violation of political conduct but more seriously infringes upon the rights of his legally wedded wife Seema Bishnoi. If a 1995 Supreme Court judgement has to be borne in mind, he may invite penal action. He has not only become a subject of public ridicule, but has also earned the ire of his father, Mr Bhajan Lal, former Chief Minister of Haryana. Mr Bhajan Lal, in this hour of politico-domestic crisis, has rightly stood by his daughter- in- law and grandchildren. He has now spoken sharply and disowned his lovelorn son. The state Chief Minister had suddenly dropped him from the Haryana Cabinet, whatever the reasons.

Public sympathy is bound to be with wife and children. If the husband has walked out of her life, she might take recourse to the thought that it’s a good riddance, after all. She had been tolerating enough nonsense from him.

Thought for the Day

Then I saw that there was a way to hell, even from the gates of heaven.
— John Bunyan

ARTICLE

Pakistan deserves sanctions
Libyan precedent can help tame terrorists
by T. P. Sreenivasan

THE crime has been established. The criminals stand exposed. The job of the jury is to determine the degree of punishment and to decide how to administer it. Pakistan cannot escape on the ground that the actors were “stateless”. As Ms Condoleezza Rice made it clear, the country, on whose soil the terrorist act in Mumbai was hatched, must take the primary responsibility for it even if it remains to be established whether the state itself was involved in the dastardly act.

Apart from the dictum that the act itself leads to the perpetrators, there is enough evidence to show that Pakistani elements were deeply involved in the planning and execution of the Mumbai murders. The need of the hour is to determine an effective and immediate international response.

Two examples of response to terrorism are fresh in our minds. The US response to 9/11 was the most lethal and effective of them all, but the way the US has got bogged down in Afghanistan and Iraq should be sufficient not to follow the same route. Even if India is prepared to undertake strikes, it should be cautious not to provoke a nuclear war. A clinically planned and executed strike against terrorist camps may be an appropriate response in the circumstances.

India’s own response to the attack on Parliament appeared effective at the time, but any threat, which may not be carried out at all, is no threat and the exercise cannot be repeated. Armies should not be mobilised unless there is a will to strike. International reaction to the drums of war will always be hostile.

An earlier clear case of tackling terrorism through united international action, that of Libya, comes to mind as the most suitable approach to deal with Pakistan. Ten years before the Pan Am Flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie on December 21, 1988, the United States had taken the first measure against Libya for engaging in terrorist activities. Military equipment supplies to Libya were suspended in 1978, citing terrorism as the reason for it. By 1986, there were comprehensive trade sanctions against Libya and Libyan assets in the United States were seized.

In 1991, India was on the United Nations Security Council, when the US, the UK and France moved the Council for sanctions against Libya, claiming that they had concrete evidence to show that Libya had a hand in blowing up the Pan Am flight, even though the Libyan leader repeatedly asserted that he had no knowledge of the people behind it.

A total air and arms embargo was imposed on Libya by the United Nations Security Council in March 1992 with India’s support. It had crossed our minds at that time that similar sanctions should be contemplated against Pakistan, but the major powers merely promised to study the possibility and took no action. The evidence that the international community had at that time about the perpetrators of Lockerbie was not much stronger than the evidence we have today against Pakistan. The difference was that three permanent members of the Security Council initiated the proposal and ensured that the international community went along with them. We should move in the same direction and secure at least symbolic Security Council sanctions against Pakistan.

Initially, it could be an arms embargo, even limited to the kinds of weapons used by the terrorists. Once the principle of sanctions against Pakistan is accepted, it will be easier to move to more substantive sanctions as new evidence turns up.

The talk of international sanctions will immediately raise a hue and cry about the economic plight of Pakistan and the need to make sure that Pakistan does not fail as a state. The US has always believed in strengthening Pakistan rather that weakening it economically and it has also convinced us that a stable and prosperous Pakistan is in our interest.

But here it is a matter of principle, the same principle that was applied, with our concurrence, to Libya. The measures could be identified with care to ensure that Pakistan does not go bankrupt. A limited arms embargo will do no harm to Pakistan’s stability or strength. But it will be a demonstration of the determination of the international community to fight terror, wherever it originates from.

Even after the attack on Mumbai, with the frightening agenda that has been revealed, the Western Press, particularly the British Press, is apparently reluctant to call a spade a spade. They would rather call the terrorists by some other name. This is nothing but an old prejudice that anything that happens between India and Pakistan is sui generis and related to Kashmir.

The fact that the footprints of terrorists from Pakistan were all over ground zero in Manhattan has not convinced some of them that terrorism is a scourge that cannot be compartmentalised or categorised. Giving a benign name to a crime and sparing the perpetrators is as bad as punishing an innocent person by assigning malign motives.

The West should realise at least now that what plagues India is the same virus that caused conflagrations in the US, the UK, Spain and Indonesia. The permanent five should be called upon to follow the Libyan precedent and begin consultations on limited sanctions against Pakistan.

If the efficacy of sanctions is in doubt, Libya, again, is a good example. In 11 years, Libya completely changed its attitude to terrorism. It even abandoned its nuclear programme and surrendered the nuclear material to the IAEA. The old belief that sanctions, once imposed, cannot be lifted is not true. Libya today has virtually become a respected nation and the Western countries are making investments there. Pakistan should have the same chance of turning from a rogue to a responsible state. Islama”bad” should become Islama”good”. A strong medicine of sanctions will be the right way to go.

The permanent five will also have a chance to give substance to the protestations of sympathy and expressions of willingness to help. International peace and security is threatened as much by the Mumbai attack as by Lockerbie, and the Security Council should rise to the occasion.

The writer is a former ambassador.

MIDDLE

Deadly excuses
by Ramesh Luthra

A recent report about an employee of a company manipulating to get leave on strange, rather weird, grounds shook me badly. First his grandparents, next his father, mother et al were declared to have left for the heavenly abode. This would be followed by the high drama of shedding copious tears encircled by his colleagues. Feeling something fishy the director of the company managed to expose the game plan of the wretched fellow.

This episode reminded me of an incident during my long stint in the teaching profession. A student of B.A. I clad in a casual cotton suit and hair tied in two plaits came to me in the staffroom. Her tearful eyes betrayed some deep sorrow. Bending on her knees she told me that someone from her neighbourhood specially came to inform her about the sudden demise of her grandmother. Hence she pleaded to be excused from my class.

As a matter of principle I won’t permit students absenting themselves from class, but considering the cause to be genuine (as her looks betrayed) I did allow her on humanitarian grounds.

Perhaps the stars of Meenakshi (I still remember her vividly) didn’t favour her. Accompanied by a colleague, I happened to visit the canteen (which I did very rarely) after a few minutes only. I got the biggest shock of my life. The nasty girl was relishing sumptuous “samosas” and “channas” giggling amidst her friends. Had humanity gone so depraved and perverted that the dearest ones were pronounced dead for petty reasons?

In a spilt second, I was there in front of her. Utterly stunned and dazed she stood speechless. “Hi dear! You have thrown a party to commemorate the death of your grandmother! How about the cremation you were to attend? I said and came out of the canteen. From then on, no excuse worth the name to be cared for became my mantra.

Even after written apology she tendered the next day I didn’t forgive her for this serious moral lapse on her part. Whenever I travel back to old times the incident flashes before my mind and I ponder how debased, degraded and perverted human nature is.

OPED

CIA’s secret prisons in Afghanistan forgotten
by Robert Fisk

I knew I was in Tajikistan this week when my Lebanese roaming mobile phone welcomed me to “Russia” on arrival at Dushanbe airport. Yup folks, Alpha Beirut really believed I was in Mr Putin’s empire. And, wondrous to behold, the phone pinged again when I was on my way to the Tajik town of Panj on the Amu Darya, welcoming me to Afghanistan.

An hour later, when I was still in Tajikistan north of the ancient Oxus River – traversed by Alexander, who actually married a Tajik (later murdered, of course) – my mobile pinged once more. This time it welcomed me to the United Arab Emirates.

Forgetting the whole of Afghanistan, part of Pakistan – or a hunk of Iran, depending on your flight path – my mobile actually believed that I was among the gleaming towers of Dubai when I was in one of Stalin’s poorest Muslim former republics.

It reminded me of how, back in the mid-1970s, a foreign editor on The Times used to keep a spinning globe on his desk as a sign of his global importance and would place the tip of his thumb on the scene of a catastrophe in order to dispatch his nearest reporter to the location.

Thus he once sent my predecessor in Lebanon by road to a northern Turkish earthquake on the grounds that – despite a Syrian border crossing for which a visa took a week to negotiate – Beirut was only half a thumb from Trabzon. Ping. Welcome to Turkey.

I suspect this is pretty much how the Bush administration regarded Muslim south-west Asia. One bunch of Muslims in Dushanbe was pretty much the same as another in Kabul or the Emirates.

After all, Dushanbe boasts a French air force squadron flying close air support to the Brits in Afghanistan’s Helmand province while Dubai welcomes the Royal Navy, the French air force and successive US secretaries of state. Those pesky Muslims are just about covered by a finger and thumb. Why bother with the detail?

An oddly similar parallel has emerged since the election of Obama. During the campaign, President Ahmadinejad of Iran announced that the “Israeli regime” would be destroyed. That’s actually what he said in Farsi – not “Israel”, though the distinction might appear to be splitting hairs.

Immediately, Mrs Hillary Clinton announced that if Tehran attacked Israel, she would “flatten Iran”. And now she is to be secretary of state, the Iranians are understandably a little bit angry. Was the new pussycat in the State Department going to take over from the previous pussycat by threatening violence against Iran when Obama supposedly wants “dialogue”?

And a kind of inverted hypocrisy immediately followed. Mrs Clinton, American “officials” let on, should not be taken too seriously because this was an election campaign.

Indeed, Obama – putting distance between the mutual recriminations of both Democrat candidates a few months ago – this week blithely dismissed their own election speeches. What he meant was that they both told lies to get votes.

Yet the crackpot president of Iran’s threat was still to be taken with the greatest seriousness. Not difficult to get the message, is it? The future secretary of state should not be believed when she threatens Iran – but Iran must be taken seriously when it threatens Israel.

I guess we ordinary folk are going to go on sipping at the same creepy narrative under Obama’s regime. Take the easy way we have already accepted the story of the “highly disciplined”, “professional” and “military” way in which Mumbai’s T-shirted butchers slaughtered their way through hotels and railway station last week. Were they from Pakistan’s Kashmir or trained in the camps of Afghanistan?

Well, I wonder. I recall how, when Algeria’s obscene civil war began between Pouvoir and “Islamists” in the early 1980, we were regaled by the authorities with stories of “terrorists wearing police uniforms” cutting the throats of civilians.

This went on for months before Dumbo Fisk realised – and later confirmed by interviewing members of the Algerian security forces – that the men in police uniforms were policemen.

And I rather suspect that the “highly disciplined” and “professional” killers of Mumbai come from the same stable. The Pakistani Inter Service Intelligence? Quite possibly. The Pakistani army – many of whose men have been mysteriously captured and equally mysteriously vanished in the tribal territories? Maybe.

Or the Indian security services, whose inter-religious makeup is never discussed, but against whom there is substantial evidence of massacres in Kashmir? These days, all such acts of cruelty should be referred to by what the police used to call an ‘“open mind”.

Just look how we’ve forgotten the CIA’s secret prisons. In Afghanistan, a Fisk source who has never – ever – been wrong, tells me that there are at least 20 of these torture centres still active in the country, six in Zabol province alone. But we don’t care about Afghans.

Yet I was struck by a tiny – irrelevant, you might say – incident at Herat airport a couple of weeks ago when two Afghans invited me for lunch beside the runway. Our small Kandahar-Kabul aircraft was refuelling while I shared their bread and tea and boiled egg, leaving my web of eggshells on the burned grass.

Imagine my embarrassment when I stood up and turned to find them gently collecting each piece of eggshell and placing them in a plastic bag. Keep Afghanistan clean. Will we? Ping. Welcome to Afghanistan.

— By arrangement with The Independent

Perception and experience of corruption
by N Bhaskara Rao

IN 2000 when CMS first initiated annual studies on corruption involving citizens, some people wondered why we were frittering our resources, since corruption had become a “fact of life” in India and was beyond redemption.

Even when the CMS studies in 2003 and 2005 showed that corruption involving citizens had declined, however marginally, in certain public services, those who rely more on perception were skeptical.

The Planning Commission had in its 10th Plan Report noted that “corruption is a most endemic and entrenched manifestation of poor governance in Indian society so much so it has almost become an accepted reality and a way of life”.

In the 11th Plan too it somewhat reiterated that “good governance” is not possible without addressing corruption in its various manifestations, especially in the context of basic services.

The ultimate proof of “inclusive growth” for “bridging the divides” and equity goals is the extent of access to essential services by those “below the poverty line”.

Inadequate access means denying them an opportunity to share the benefits of national growth. Also because the poor are disproportionately affected by corruption since they depend more on public services.

The India Corruption Studies of CMS cover precisely this aspect in the context of the basic and need-based public services that a citizen frequently avails. A unique feature of this methodology has been to recognise that corruption has two sides, each sustaining the other and reinventing itself.

One is perception, the dimension of which is relatively easy to talk about and track. The second is the actual experience of corruption difficult to quantify without a rigorous research methodology.

Perception and experience are often two separate issues requiring separate, but parallel efforts. That is what “CMS PEE model” is all about.

This model has brought out “the gap” between “Perception” and “Experience” in the context of citizen. The other aspect is “Estimation” of total money involved in corruption. It is arguably as yet another tool to sensitise the nation about its seriousness so that corruption is not seen as “high-return-low-risk activity”.

Perceptions are accumulated impressions, based on one’s own immediate and past experience and those of neighbors/friends. More importantly, perceptions these days to a large extent are also molded by the way corruption is portrayed and hyped, particularly in the visual media and in a competitive mode.

Experience, on the other hand, is where a citizen or household does not get the service as a matter of course, but as a discretion and on exchange of certain money as bribe for attending to or deprived of access for not paying bribe or having to use “a contact” to influence the discretionary role. These studies also provide a benchmark for the extent of awareness about the RTI Act in households across the country and their use of the three-year-old Act.

The latest TII-CMS India Corruption Study–2007, focussing on BPL households covering 31 States and UTs should be viewed as a tool to sensitise the larger public, the stakeholders and prompt governments and civil society groups to take locally relevant initiatives.

The report, hopefully, helps put social activism on the right course in the fight against corruption and the governments on a competitive course to take initiatives for good governance and inclusive growth.

Our experience with the previous India Corruption Studies, particularly the 2005 one, where we ranked the States for their overall level of corruption, was a mixed one. But consultations with experts and social activists convinced us that it is better to group States on levels of corruption than ranking them individually.

Hopefully, such field research based on tracking methodology would bring more seriousness nationally and in taking up systemic solutions for serving the poor more reliably.

Delhi Durbar
Media fatigue

Barring a lone correspondent, the media, both print and electronic, failed to turn up at a Supreme Court function last Saturday when Chief Justice of India K.G. Balakrishnan inaugurated the third Lok Adalat.

Though it appeared to be a media boycott, the actual reason was the weekend fatigue and the early morning chill. The function was held at 10 am.

Realising that the media was absent, the CJI just lighted the auspicious wick-and-oil lamp, signalling the inauguration, and remarked there was no need for any speech.

Accepting a request, he, however, made a brief announcement on the Legal Aid Services’ decision to provide free-of-cost assistance to victims of the recent terror attack in Mumbai. At the high tea that fo lowed the inauguration, the CJI, who is normally surrounded by journalists and cameramen on such occasions, and his fellow judges had only senior advocates for their company.

Control freak

With the departure of P Chidambaram from the Finance Ministry, the bureaucracy in the ministry is feeling at ease. Finance Ministry mandarins, who were averse to meeting journalists, courtesy the minister, have all of a sudden decided to speak on “forbidden” topics like the health of the economy.

Chidambaram, many observers feel, does not suffer fools and has a special contempt for bureaucrats. He is a “control freak” as one of them describes him.

However, the mood in the Home Ministry, which also happens to be located in the North Block in which the Finance Ministry is housed, is now sullen.

It’s not because of the ministry’s failure over the Mumbai terror attacks but because the bureaucrats are facing the new minister’s wrath.

To begin with, there is uncertainty over the term of bureaucrats. The Intelligence and RAW Chiefs, who are likely to complete their terms at the end of this month, may be pink-slipped before time. It is heard that the minister is also looking at easing out Home Secretary Madhukar Gupta.

Wooing media

The RSS is currently in an overdrive to court the media. The other day about two dozen select reporters covering the BJP got an invitation from Jhandewalan for a special session with senior Sangh leader Mohanrao Bhagwat.

But the news seemed to have leaked out and about 50 journalists, mostly from the visual media, turned up, making it an impromptu press conference. Later when those left out complained to Ram Madhav, handling the media for the Sangh, they were told this was “an interactive session”.

Contributed by R Sedhuraman, Bhagyashree Pande, Faraz Ahmad

Corrections and clarifications

n The headline on page 2 of The Tribune on Dec 8 should have been “Fewer passengers on Samjhauta Express”, and not “Lesser” as published.

n Some words had got dropped from paragraph 3 of Amar Chandel’s article “Healing is more than just tests and surgery” on December 6 (page 13). The complete sentence should have been: “Tiny clues help weave an elegant diagnostic garment from threads readily at hands”.

n The caption of the page 3 photo on December 8 should have been “A policeman asks Congress activist Harmesh Bansal Pakka to leave the polling booth in Bathinda on Sunday”.

Despite our earnest endeavour to keep The Tribune error-free, some errors do creep in at times. We are always eager to correct them.

We request our readers to write or e-mail to us whenever they find any error. We will carry corrections and clarifications, wherever necessary, every Tuesday.

Readers in such cases can write to Mr Amar Chandel, Deputy Editor, The Tribune, Chandigarh, with the word “Corrections” on the envelope. His e-mail ID is amarchandel@tribunemail.com.

H.K. Dua, Editor-in-Chief