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Gehlot
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Sign of
systemic crisis
Friends
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Beijing
silent on Pak hand in terror MNF’s misrule helps
Congress Dancing girls of
Lahore go on strike
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Welcome ban
AFTER much dilly-dallying and resistance, Pakistan has finally ordered the detention of eight Jamaat-ud-Dawa leaders and shut nine offices of the terrorist organisation which is directly linked to the Mumbai attacks. There was no option before it after the JuD had been declared a terrorist group by the United Nations. Pakistan had been ignoring the Indian demand in this regard, but resisting the pressure of the world body would have been a different ball game altogether. Welcome that the step is, much will depend on how it is followed up. If the “arrested” terrorists, including JuD chief Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, are only to be kept in luxury at state expense, and also allowed to carry on their nefariouos activities from there, then the whole exercise will be no more than a farce. After all, Pakistan has been doing exactly that in the case of Al-Qaida also. In public view, it is fighting a war against it, but it is common knowledge that its army has been going soft on the Taliban and even Al-Qaida. It has also to ensure that the JuD does not re-emerge under another assumed name. That has also been happening in the country where there is a very thin line dividing the state and non-state actors. If it is not the government itself, then the Army and the ISI back the terrorists to the best extent possible. All experts admit that the kind of training that the Mumbai killers had got could not have been possible without official backing. The Jamaat-ud-Dawa is only one of the many terrorist organisations active in Pakistan. Its “war on terror” should not stop with action on this one. The others should also be targeted and weeded out. The real proof of its sincerity would be the action against the training camps being run in Pakistan occupied Kashmir. It has to dismantle them clinically. By now, it should have become clear to it that the killing machines that it sends to India, Afghanistan and many other countries are loose cannons and can turn their fire on it also. In fact, that has been happening with more and more ferocity of late. It will be futile on the part of Pakistan to present itself as being a victim of terrorism itself unless it stops promoting terror overtly and covertly.
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Gehlot at the helm
Mr Ashok Gehlot’s choice for the post of Chief Minister of Rajasthan was not entirely unexpected after the Congress won the Assembly elections by defeating the Bharatiya Janata Party. Though he was not formally projected as the chief ministerial candidate in the event of the party’s victory, it was clear that Mr Gehlot would be picked for the post for the simple reason that he singularly led the party to victory at the hustings. In fact, Congress President Sonia Gandhi had acknowledged this when she congratulated him over the phone on December 8. Against this background, Thursday’s tussle between the supporters of Mr Gehlot and Union Mines Minister Sis Ram Ola at Jaipur -- when the meeting of the Congress Legislature Party was on in the presence of its Central observers -- was surprising and totally unwarranted. Ms Girija Vyas and Mr C.P. Joshi were also in the race. If anything, this exposed fissures in the party. Now that the decks have been cleared for Mr Gehlot’s swearing in as the Chief Minister, he should take every possible step to stem internecine squabbles in the party, strengthen it at the state, district and block levels, and improve governance. The ruling party needs to remain cohesive for supporting the policies and programmes of the government and helping it to function better. Indeed, Mr Gehlot has a challenging task on hand. The state has debt liabilities to the tune of Rs 83,000 crore and there remains the difficult issue of the Gujjars’ demand for Scheduled Tribe status. The Gujjar agitation had paralysed the state and hit the state’s economy. While trying to placate them, the new government needs to keep the interests of the Meena community in mind. The Jats cannot be alienated either, especially after Thursday’s ugly episode. Bad governance and corruption are perceived to have led to the downfall of the Vasundhara Raje government. Mr Gehlot would do well to take corrective action. In the earlier dispensation, there was a complete disconnect between the government and the people. Ministers and MLAs, not to speak of common people, didn’t have easy access to Ms Raje. Not surprisingly, she was dubbed an “autocrat”. Mr Gehlot needs to adopt a people-friendly approach and deliver a result-oreiented administration to live up to their expectations.
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When you discover your mission, you will feel its demand. It will fill you with enthusiasm and a burning desire to get to work on it. — W. Clement Stone
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Sign of systemic crisis TILL early 2008 it was believed that certain economic entities are too big to fail, hence safe. Companies like, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, AIG, Merrill Lynch and Citibank each with assets running into hundreds of billions or trillions of dollars were supposed to be in this category. Their turnover was larger than the GDP of most countries in the world. Each one of them has failed since August 2008 and has been bailed out by the US government or bought over by other companies. General Motors, another giant, has been pleading for help. Earlier, even if such companies faced financial problems they could stay afloat for years before going under. Now these companies have collapsed in a matter of months. Citibank with reported assets of $ 2 trillion and operations in 100 countries was considered to be healthy and was to take over Watchovia bank in early October but in the third week of November, it has had to be bailed out by the government. Fannie and Freddie were supposed to be healthy in May 2008 but had collapsed by September. Governments the world over are pumping in trillions of dollars to shore up their economies. The mega package on offer from the US government amounts to $ 7.8 trillion. $ 1.7 trillion is being offered as loans to companies whose hard to sell securities are being accepted as collateral. Since there is substantial chance of failure in this, it could amount to a dole to these companies. Investment worth $ 3 trillion is being poured into buying stocks, corporate debt and mortgages. $ 3.1 trillion is the amount of guarantees on offer to corporate bonds, money market funds and money in specified deposit accounts. Britain, China, Germany, Japan, etc. have also offered their own packages, each running into hundreds of billions of dollars. The Indian government has pushed liquidity and additional budgetary provisions of $ 100 billion. Thus, the total amount committed world over has swelled to above $ 10 trillion (eleven times India’s national income). For a world economy of $ 65 trillion, this is a staggering amount of money and most of it is committed since September. Yet, things seem out of control even though the pace of the collapse maybe slower compared to two months back. Rates of economic growth have plummeted. In August 2007, the US economy was slated to grow by a healthy rate, by mid 2008 marginally and now a recession has been declared since 2007 (anticipated by this author in these columns on Feb 6, 2007). An even sharper decline is expected in the next quarter. European zone, Japan, Taiwan, etc., have been declared to be in recession whereas they were supposed to have positive growth till early 2008. Chinese economy has slowed down considerably since mid 2008 and so has the Indian economy (whatever be the government’s claims of healthy growth). Demand is plummeting everywhere and companies are laying off people many of whom were anyway losing their houses in the US due to foreclosures. There are reports of people living in their cars in parking lots and also of worried banks requesting some people not to vacate their houses till they find a buyer. Temporary employees are losing jobs and the permanent workers are working fewer hours because of plant closures. Failure of banks and companies is rising in the USA. This could spread to other countries too. Nationalisation and government intervention have suddenly become acceptable. Minimum government is no more the desirable state of affairs. The kind of liquidity being released into the markets in a short space of time would have resulted in massive increase in demand and possibly hyperinflation if the situation was normal. Yet, in the present scenario, these steps are neither able to stem the decline of the financial institutions nor demand in the economy. Can the governments go in for even larger packages of intervention? The US Fed has said that it will print whatever notes would be required, to prevent a collapse of the US economy and that seems to be the stance of most of the Central banks in the world. Investment is falling everywhere since companies are not only facing a collapse in consumer demand but also are not sure of their own financial situation and would like to strengthen that before going in for fresh commitments. This is aggravated by drying up of credit since everyone is suspect in the eyes of others. Exports have collapsed as demand has fallen and nations are buying less from others. Thus, all the major components of demand — consumption, investment and exports — have declined drastically. Only the government is left. This is the reason that the various economies are headed into deep recession and possibly a depression. So much spare capacity is emerging in each industry that it will take a while for this to be depreciated and for new investment to become worthwhile. It is only then that growth can pick up. The nature of the crisis being faced today is different from the ones in the last 75 years. Hence analysts are groping for answers and specially those in policy making who led the world into this crisis. Governments can try to keep demand going by spending more on infrastructure (both physical and social). However, that may have limited effect unless it is on a massive scale, something that the present policy makers seem to be uncomfortable with. The US financial system as it existed till the beginning of 2008 has now failed and a new one is needed to replace it. The moot point is since it was such an integral part of the US economy does it not need revamping instead of just the financial sector. The nationalisation/government takeover of major institutions and the introduction of regulation in the hitherto unregulated parts of the financial structures is itself changing the economy in fundamental ways but even this maybe mere tinkering and more basic change maybe required. The failing mega institutions located in the US commanded huge amounts of the world’s resources and not just those of the US. This is what capital does; it enables control of institutions and resources in a few hands. So, failures on this scale will lead to a collapse of major economic structures in the world and will affect production world wide (as is already happening). When those entities that were thought of as “too big to fail” actually fail, it signifies the failure of the system of which they are a part. It is not that the world suddenly cannot produce what it was producing till say July 2008. It is the organisation of that production (with control by finance) that is failing and hence the decline in the world economy. The marginalised who hardly benefited from the boom are hit by the bust. Remedy requires that controls over resources be reworked, monopolies need to be split up and their control over resources and political power and the resulting increase in disparities all need
overhaul.
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Friends and funeral I
WOKE up hearing the news that Kamleshwar Prasad Sinha, former Associate Editor of The Tribune, was no more. I live in the same house where he lived until his retirement in 2003. Though we were not friends, it was through him that I heard, first, about how employee-friendly The Tribune was. At that time Sinha was contemplating a move to Patna, the city where he had many relations. He told me that Chandigarh was a great city to live in so long as one was employed. “Once you are retired, nobody would ever bother about you”. But his plan did not materialise and he never left The Tribune. Our paths seldom crossed. After he shifted to a private residential colony near Pinjore, we stopped meeting altogether. He had a good command of the English language and was a stickler for grammar. Those who were trained in sub-editing by him have only good words to say about Sinha. I felt a little painful when I found only a few people had assembled for his cremation at Pinjore. Sinha, who knew Sanskrit well, having learnt it in Santiniketan, must have turned on his pyre when an inappropriate mantra was recited. The “pandit” who supervised the rituals was as amateurish as the others who put together the pyre. Every visit to a funeral is a reminder of how ephemeral life is. That could not have hit me harder than when I reached home after the funeral. Avadesh Kaushal, who runs the Rural Litigation and Entitlement Kendra at Dehradun, called me to say that “our dear friend V.J. Thomas” had died an hour ago. It was Thomas who once introduced me to Kaushal, whose friends include President Rajapaksa of Sri Lanka. What brought Thomas and Kaushal together was their abiding anthropological interest in the Van Gujjars. Thomas wrote several features on the community in the Times of India, where he worked at the desk. When Thomas began his journalistic career at the now-defunct National Herald, Sinha was his senior colleague. An unassuming journalist, he had to struggle to make both ends meet. He used his spare time to report for the Mathrubhoomi. As he once told me, he wrote for the Malayalam daily to keep his parents informed about his own welfare. Remember, those were not the days of instant communication. While Sinha left the National Herald for greener pastures, Thomas stayed on in Jawaharlal Nehru’s paper till a lockout virtually finished the newspaper. After a short stint in Mid-Day, he joined the Times of India, where he earned the respect and affection of all his colleagues. During Prime Minister Narasimha Rao’s tenure, Thomas did a story on his cook, a semi-literate Malayali by the name Nair, on whom the International Herald Tribune published a huge story on its back page. Rao was in Paris those days. It had an accompanying picture of the cook preparing a special South Indian dish for the Prime Minister in a five-star hotel. Thomas interviewed Nair, who was originally a cook at Andhra Bhavan. It was there that Rao came in contact with him. In the interview, Nair did not know that he was letting out state secrets when he dwelt at length on Rao’s dietary restrictions. The poor cook had to pay a price for his indiscretion. But that was not what Thomas wanted. It was a mere coincidence that this morning my wife and I discussed how good a friend Thomas was. Little did we know that he was at that time admitted to a hospital after a massive heart attack from which he never recovered. And Thomas could not have known that Sinha preceded him by a few
hours.
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Beijing silent on Pak hand in terror
SOME 46 years ago on November 26 when Mumbai witnessed a terrorist attack, India was in the midst of an invasion by China. After its unilateral ceasefire on November 21, we were licking our wounds. On that day, as I wrote in my diary which I maintained then, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru received a letter from the most unexpected quarter. This was from President Ho Chi Minh of Vietnam. He had described the Chinese ceasefire proposals as being “very reasonable and conducive to a peaceful settlement of the border question.” There was an appeal to Nehru not to interfere in any way with the implementation of the Chinese unilateral ceasefire proposals. What pained Nehru was that there was no word about the Chinese occupation of extensive areas of Indian territories. The Manmohan Singh government is equally pained because China has not given India any real support when New Delhi faces one of the biggest challenges following the terrorist attack in Mumbai. The government expected that China would influence Pakistan to cooperate with India and tell Islamabad that what its terrorists had done could not be tolerated by any nation. Apart from mumbling a few words of regret, Beijing has been conspicuously silent. I thought that much water has flown down the Yamuna since the border clashes and many meetings between the two sides at the highest level would have changed China’s mindset. But it has not if one were to remember the axiom that the taste of the pudding is in its eating. It turns out that the outcry of Hindi-Chini Bhai-Bhai, even from the visiting Chinese soldiers, is a mere rhetoric. Beijing nourishes the same old animus against New Delhi and tilts towards Islamabad to have an advantage of sorts. In contrast, India has put shackles on the Dalai Lama because China does not want him to say whatever he likes from the Indian soil. New Delhi has per force approached Washington for taking action against the activists of Lashkar-e-Toiba. It would have preferred China putting pressure on Pakistan and agreeing to New Delhi’s demarche to take action against Lashkar-e-Toiba and handover its leader and two other persons to India to stand trial. It is Washington’s pressure that has worked and it feels that some action has been taken against the activists of the terrorist organisation. But what about handing the three people who have been responsible for a series of attacks and bomb blasts on India? I thought former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif would take an objective stand and see merit in the stand taken by India. But he has preferred to be hawkish because of internal compulsions. Sharif should recall how he was not consulted by General Pervez Musharraf, the then Chief of the Army Staff, before sending the Pakistani army to Kargil and destroying the chapter of amity that Sharif had initiated with Atal Bihari Vajpayee. I concede that President Asif Ali Zardari, similarly, was not aware of the plan by the ISI to arrange a terrorist attack on Mumbai. But he could have taken action when he came to know of the plan. Obviously, Zardari’s drawback is that he cannot challenge the army whose wing is the ISI. Had Sharif criticised the ISI, Zardari would have gained strength to tick it off. I still believe that the two together can do so. Otherwise, what is the use of documents like the Charter of Democracy which Sharif signed with the late Benazir Bhutto at London? Both had promised to get rid of military dictation in the affairs of Pakistan. How can any country take Sharif or Zardari seriously when the real power continues to be with the armed forces? True, India should not push the fledgling democracy to the point where it An open, democratic government has more obligations than the one led by the military. True, the Zardari government is caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. So is India. Knowing that the Zardari government has no legs to stand on, New Delhi has joined hands with Washington which has taken upon itself the responsibility of fighting against terrorism globally. What the US is doing in chastising Pakistan serves its purposes. But in the process, India is getting sucked into “a strategic alliance” with America, something New Delhi does not relish. It has tried to stay away from Washington’s “desire to have a real alliance,” but how long? America must have thought many a time before deciding to stay by the side of India. The Pakistani army is fighting against the Taliban in the Federally Administered Tribal Area. The army, already beleaguered, may move its troops from there to the border against India. It would look legitimate and have the people’s backing since they have their mindset when it comes to India. Perhaps, it would have been better if New Delhi had taken up the matter with the UN Security Council earlier. Pakistan’s hand is as visible as the day light. Most member countries would have supported India because they are afraid of terrorists who can strike anywhere, any time. The only thing which may have handicapped India is New Delhi’s belief that China would use the veto if the matter were to reach taking action against Pakistan. I personally think that New Delhi’s going to the UN will expose such member-counties as are pledging to fight against terrorism, but developing cold feet at the last minute. If not today, then tomorrow, the world powers will have to cooperate among themselves to combat and eliminate those who are out to killing thousands of people in the name of Islam which says that taking the life of an innocent is like killing the whole humanity.
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MNF’s misrule helps Congress The
resounding victory for the Congress in the Mizoram assembly elections has well compensated for the party’s debacle in the Meghalaya assembly elections earlier this year. The return of the Congress to power has been long awaited in the tiny Christian-dominated state in the North-East where the anti-incumbency factor was heavily staked up against Pu Zoramthanga and his party, Mizo National Front (MNF), that failed to deliver despite being in power for the last ten years. The Congress battle-hardened veteran, Lalthanhawla, who gauged the mood of the people well in advance, carefully crafted the party’s election strategy on the plank of promise to bring about winds of change in the hill state that reeled under sluggish development, rampant corruption and nepotism during MNF rule. Such was the level of confidence in the Congress camp before the Mizoram polls that the party led by 64-year-old Lalthanhawla spurned the offer for an election alliance from a few anti-MNF groups and went ahead with his plan to field its own candidates in all the 40 assembly constituencies. The strategy hit the bull’s eye with the party recording the biggest-ever election victory in Mizoram by bagging 32 seats out of the total 40. The MNF has been made to pay heavily for its lack of vision, utterly inefficient governance that was virtually based on smooth tongue-wagging by Pu Zoramthanga and dogged by charges of corruption. Finally, the lacklustre election strategy saw the MNF reduced to a mere three-legislator party in the Mizoram assembly. The devastation of the MNF in the election was well reflected in the loss of its leader, Pu Zoramthanga in both the constituencies — Champhai North and Champhai South. What a fall for the rebel-turned-politician, who is cited as a glaring success story of the political settlement of the insurgency problem through peace negotiations ! At the final calculation, the Congress bagged 32 seats leaving its rivals the MNF (three seats), the United Democratic Alliance (four seats) and the Mara Democratic Front (one seat) far behind. The Congress polled over 38 per cent of the total vote cast as against 31 per cent polled by the MNF and 20 per cent polled by the UDA, the alliance of the regional Zoram Nationalist Party (ZNP) and the Mizoram People’s Conference (MPC). Obviously, the UDA ate into a sizeable portion of anti-Congress votes in the hill state adding to the distress of the MNF, which has isolated itself from the masses during the last ten years because of its leaders’ obsession with power and position. For the MNF, the writing on the wall was visible well in advance before the election. Unfortunately, it failed to read it and made the mistake of underestimating the Congress under the leadership of master craftsman Lalthanhawla, who never lost hopes despite being out of power for 10 long years. Had the MNF anticipated what was in the store, it would have made desperate efforts to keep all the regional parties with it during the polls. It did strike an alliance with the Mara Democratic Front (MDF), but that was of no use as the MDF managed to win only one seat. As a matter of fact the MNF lost the moral right to remain in power in the state much before the polls after it utterly failed to deliver on tall promises made to the people to improve the economic situation. The gloomy state of affairs continued though the MNF government was provided generous financial assistance by the Central government on more than one occasion during its tenure. It received a substantial peace bonus during the last National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government for being the most peaceful state in the troubled North-East. But Zoramthanga failed to translate the prevailing peaceful atmosphere to a launching pad to achieve development and economic goals. The MNF’s desperate last-ditch but sophisticated efforts to rebuild its image as a party of Mizo masses failed to convince the people this time. Its sustained attempts to keep the influential church in Mizoram in good humour to win over people through it failed to deliver. Rather it ended up creating an insurmountable wall between the masses and the ruling MNF. The Congress launched a star-studded campaign during the polls to add to the agony of the MNF, which was already buckling under the pressure of its inefficient governance. All the three top-bracket Congress poll campaigners — Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh, party president Sonia Gandhi and high-profile Rahul Gandhi — hit the campaign trail. Rahul Gandhi was an instant hit with the younger section of voters that played a crucial role in the election this time. There were over 60,000 first-voters out of the total over six lakh voters in Mizoram and the younger generation was clamouring for an immediate change.
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Dancing girls of Lahore go on strike The
dancing girls of Lahore, the cultural capital of Pakistan, are on strike in protest against the tide of Talibanisation that is threatening to destroy an art form that has flourished since the Mughal empire. The strike, which is supported by the theatres where they perform, was sparked by the decision of the Lahore High Court last month to ban the Mujra, the graceful and elaborate dance first developed in the Mughal courts 400 years ago, on the ground that it is too sexually explicit. “The Mujra by its very nature is supposed to be a seductive dance,” says Badar Alam, a cultural expert. He recalls that attempts were made to ban it during the 1980s. “Gradually, it returned to commercial theatre, mostly by paying off officials. The question remains: does the government have the right to engage in moral policing?” The government and the High Court in particular have no doubt about their right to do just that. They have tried to encourage “family friendly” dances, but once-packed theatres are now near empty, despite dropping their prices from 300 rupees to 25 rupees a seat. In the face of the strike and the lack of enthusiasm for alternative entertainment, the court has suspended its ban. It has, however, ordered dancers to cover their necks with shawls and wear shoes (they used to dance barefoot but the court deemed that too erotic). “Do they expect girls to dance in a burkha?” asks stage manager Jalal Mehmoud. “Mujra has been going on for so many years it is part of our culture.” The dancers are also distressed by the situation. “Theatre needs dance like food needs water,” says Rabia, a dancer and actress. “Some girls were making up to 15,000 rupees in one night. Hundreds of these girls from poorer backgrounds will be out of the work if the crowds do not come back.” The ban on dancing is a symptom of a more dangerous trend in Pakistani society. “If the government engages in moral policing,” says Badar Alam, “it gives vigilantes licence to do the same. It fuels intolerance and de-secularisation by violence and intimidation and opens the door to extreme Jihadi Islamic movements.” Over the past few months, there has been a crescendo of violence in support of fundamentalist morality in Lahore. In the middle-class Garhi Shahu neighbourhood, young men and women used to meet in fruit-juice bars. There was nothing particularly salacious going on but, two months ago, three bombs exploded among them, killing one man and wounding others. One bomb went off in a juice bar called Disco, where Mohammed Zubair Khan said he doubted if his customers would ever come back. “Everybody’s frightened,” said Saeed Ahmed Afiz, the owner of a another bar. Asked what he thought of those who had ruined his business, he declared surprisingly: “They were not terrorists because they did not kill anybody. They did the right thing.” Asked about the man who died, Mr Afiz added unfeelingly: “Maybe he was just here to see the show.” — By arrangement with
The Independent
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