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Education,
a birthright Unfair to
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Ban on Charandas
Chor
After
the Hillary visit
The
shawl
Myanmar:
India needs to guard its interests Why
direct payments to farmers? N.Korea-US
nuclear standoff may ease
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Unfair to Bundelkhand
The
Congress idea of creating a Bundelkhand Development Authority (BDA) in the drought-hit backward region, falling in Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, is being strongly opposed by the BSP and the BJP, ruling in the two states, respectively, purely on political grounds. Their attempts to disrupt the proceedings of the Lok Sabha ended on Tuesday when the Centre assured the House that there was “no proposal before the government which will alter the federal character of the country”. How much the BSP feels threatened by the move for the BDA can be understood from the fact that the Mayawati government on Monday got a resolution passed by the UP Assembly, describing the idea as being aimed at an infringement of the states’ rights. The worry of those who oppose the drive for the BDA is that the projects to be launched by the agency in Bundelkhand will be controlled by the Centre, which will provide the necessary funds. Thus, the maximum credit for all that will be done to alleviate the suffering of the people can be claimed by the Congress-led UPA government in New Delhi. The BSP cannot swallow this, as the Dalit-dominated seven districts in UP’s Bundelkhand area have been the party’s stronghold. In the 2009 Lok Sabha elections the BSP suffered a major jolt in Bundelkhand, but it is doing everything possible to ensure that it does not have a similar experience in the 2012 assembly polls. It is, however, sad that political parties are the least bothered about the people’s problems when these do not fit in with their own electoral calculations. Under no circumstances should any measure for socio-economic development of the area be opposed. A way can be found to protect the rights of the states, but this should not come in the way of promoting the cause of development in Bundelkhand. Politics should not be brought in where people’s welfare is involved.
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Ban on Charandas Chor
For
decades, the play Charandas Chor written, directed and produced by the late Habib Tanvir, has been hailed as a landmark in Indian theatre. An adaptation of a local folk tale, exposing double standards and hypocrisy, it has never failed to delight audiences across the nation. The Chattisgarh government’s decision to ban the book and the play Charandas Chor is shocking for theatre aficionados and all those who espouse the cause of creative freedom and expression. The BJP government has acted on a protest lodged by a religious leader of the Satnami community who has taken umbrage at the reference to its Guru Ghasidas who the complainant insists has been put in bad light. This is not the first time that India’s intolerant and bigoted brigade has bared its fangs. Their myopic view hounded M F Hussain, India’s most celebrated contemporary artist, out of the country. The saffron organisations have a track record of intolerance which can only be criticised. Not too long ago, the BJP government in Himachal Pradesh even decided to drop a chapter on Hussain from an NCERT book. The late Punjabi poet Avtar Pash’s much acclaimed poem Sabse Khatrnaak, too, came under the BJP’s censure when it was included in the NCERT syllabi. In Tanvir’s lifetime, the BJP locked horns with him for his play Ponga Pandit. Its latest move banning his seminal work defies all logic. It is ironic that the man who put the Chhattisgarhi dialect and its actors on the national stage should find his play “banished” in the state to which he devoted his theatre and his life. Tanvir’s art may have been anti-establishment but was aimed at the betterment of humanity, certainly not targeted against any person or sect. He was always a broadminded visionary.
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Sir, I have found you an argument; but I am not obliged to find you an understanding. — Samuel Johnson
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After the Hillary visit Ms Hillary Clinton’s first visit to India as Secretary of State was, unfortunately, overshadowed by the Sharm el-Sheikh fiasco. The visit was important for her personally and also for addressing doubts about the Obama Administration’s policies on India. President Obama’s comments about the need for US industry to promote jobs in Buffalo rather than in Bangalore suggested unwarranted protectionism from an administration seeking trade liberalisation from India. The US-sponsored G-8 resolution banning the export of enrichment and reprocessing nuclear materials and technology to India was viewed as a return to the days of policies designed to “cap” India’s nuclear programme. Mrs Clinton’s visit also came at a time when voices in Washington were claiming that she was being sidelined by the White House, with one commentator remarking: “It’s time for Barack Obama to let Hillary Clinton take off her burqa”! Mrs Clinton rejected the advice to combine her visit to India with a ritual visit to Pakistan, signalling that she was not returning to “re-hyphenation”. Her sensitivity in visiting and staying in the Taj Hotel in Mumbai was intended to show continuing solidarity with India in the quest for bringing the perpetrators of 26/11 to justice. But the visit also highlighted that we could no longer paper over differences over high-profile initiatives being undertaken by the Obama Administration on climate change and nuclear
nonproliferation. Interestingly, the statement that caught the widest international attention during the Clinton visit was the blunt assertion of Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh: “’There is simply no case for the pressure that we, who have among the lowest emissions per capita, face to actually reduce emissions. And as if this is not enough, we also face the threat of carbon tariffs on our exports from countries such
as yours.” Mr Ramesh also made a detailed presentation on actions we are taking, in our own interest, to curb carbon emissions, ranging from the regeneration of natural forests to the increasing use of non-conventional sources of energy, nuclear energy and improving efficiency of coal-fired reactors. But there has not been an imaginative initiative to educate world public opinion about the measures we have taken on environmental protection and on our approach of demanding equity on issues of carbon emissions. Moreover, there has been an assiduous Western attempt to drive a wedge between developing countries, including the two most populous ones --- India and China. China has, however, taken a far more comprehensive and imaginative step than us to globally publicise the measures it has taken for environmental protection. This shortcoming needs to be addressed, as American and European pressures grow on us to fall in line with their demands, with disastrous consequences for our economic growth. We also need to work with China and other developing countries to make it clear that our acceptance in Italy of the desirability of limiting temperature rise due to global warming to 2 degrees does not indicate the acceptance of the binding targets for our reducing emissions. The US action to persuade the G-8 group to target India by agreeing that no enrichment or reprocessing technology or items can be transferred to the countries not a signatory to the NPT was not unexpected. The Atomic Energy Commission Chairman, Dr Anil Kakodkar, had warned publicly that such moves were afoot. He stressed that these actions would be contrary to the “clean waiver” granted by the Nuclear Suppliers Group, constituting a “breach of trust,” which would be “contrary to the spirit which has been spelt out in the bilateral agreement with the US”. It remains to be seen whether countries like Russia and France, which are positioned to be major partners in nuclear energy cooperation, actually go along with this decision, or, like in the case of Russian cooperation for the first two nuclear reactors in Kudankulam in Tamil Nadu, they abide by the spirit of bilateral agreements for nuclear cooperation signed with India before the G-8 decision. In the meantime, given the influence of American nonproliferation lobbies, India will have to ensure that there are foolproof and irrevocable arrangements in place for the guarantees of fuel supplies and reprocessing of spent fuel before any agreement for nuclear energy cooperation is signed with American companies. There was unwarranted criticism of the “end users agreement” for defence supplies, signed during the Hillary Clinton visit. India, after all, signed an agreement for such monitoring when the previous government decided to acquire “gun-locating radars” from the US when this acquisition was considered an imperative after the Kargil conflict. Moreover, we have accepted such inspections for over two decades now for dual use technologies in areas ranging from super-computers to our space programme. The Prime Minister has clarified that the timing and location of inspections of the US-supplied defence equipment will be determined by India and that foreign powers will, therefore, have no access to operational deployments. While Russia, France and Israel have been reliable suppliers of defence equipment and spares, one has naturally to ask whether India’s confidence in the US has reached a stage where we can give the US a major or predominant role in any sector of national defence. Given our recent experiences, confidence in India on the reliability of US supplies of equipment and spares needs to substantially increase if the US is to play a significantly enhanced role in defence supplies. On the other hand, Russia, France and Israel have never let us down, even in moments of crisis. Thus, in selected areas, where US-supplied equipment, which is not available to China, is cost-effective and gives us a clear edge in dealing with threats in our neighbourhood, we should not fight shy of cooperation with the US. It would, however, only be prudent to keep our sources of defence supplies, production and development
diversified. The Clinton visit produced an agreement that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will pay a State visit to Washington later this year. There are vast and uncharted areas to be explored, ranging from space and high technology cooperation to education, health, energy security and agriculture. But it should be remembered that in areas ranging from nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament to climate change and trade liberalisation, much ground needs to be covered to bridge the existing differences. Moreover, with the British, who deploy “obese” soldiers, “too fat to fight”, showing signs of wanting to cut and run from Afghanistan as soon as possible, New Delhi needs to carefully assess whether the US is prepared to stay the course and ensure that a rejuvenated Taliban does not return to power in Kabul. There are, after all, voices even in the Pentagon, averring that it is Al-Qaeda and not the Taliban that threatens US
interests.
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The shawl I
was
fortunate to live in Srinagar when life in the valley was placid and free of all turmoil. A flood channel flowed behind my home and every evening itinerant salesmen of Kashmiri handicrafts would arrive in their shikaras. With the non-stop requests from friends and relatives for various craft items, I became a fairly regular customer. One of the more infrequent salesmen was a serene, dignified gentleman whom everyone addressed as Haji Sahib. While displaying his wares for the benefit of my landlady, he showed us “the shawl”. It was not an exotic Shahtush or Jamawar, but the workmanship was so exquisite that it immediately marked it as
expensive. The intricate design of flowers and birds of various kinds was done on a pale beige background. The shading was so fine it seemed to have been done with a single-hair brush. I counted as many as seven shades of red in one of the flowers. It was, for all the world, not a shawl at all, but the representation of a secret, magical garden. I am sure none of us had seen anything so beautiful. My landlady did not ask the price, perhaps because she knew it would be far too expensive. But her eyes kept darting back to it because, besides it, all the other shawls paled into dowdiness. When finally the Haji Sahib folded the shawl and put it away, I saw my own longing and regret reflected in her eyes. All through the rest of my stay
in Srinagar, every time I bought a shawl, my mind would go back to that shawl. When it was finally time for me to leave Srinagar, I filled out my long shopping list quite easily. But I failed to get one item — a shawl for my mother. Nothing seemed good enough. Finally, after his fourth visit, Ghulam Rasool, our regular salesman asked : “What exactly is it that you are looking for?” I described Haji Sahib’s shawl to him. Next day he returned with Haji Sahib and the shawl. I was relieved that it hadn’t been sold. But as I caressed the shawl, I still did not dare to ask the price. The silence stretched on till it became awkward. Finally I could bear the suspense no longer. “How much is it?”, I asked, in little more than a whisper. The Haji Sahib smiled a beatific smile. “Whom do you want it for?”
“My mother” “And you are a student?” “Yes” “Then give me whatever you can give me.” My heart pounded with excitement. The shawl was mine. I ran to my room, dug out all the money I had and put it into Haji Sahib’s cupped hands. He closed his hands over the money and touched them to his forehead and turned away. My heart still fills with ecstatic joy, whenever I think of that moment. But there is sadness, too – the person, who inherited the shawl from my mother will never know the kindness, compassion and generosity of spirit that came along with
it.
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Myanmar: India needs to guard its interests
Aung San Suu
Kyi, the pro-democracy leader of Myanmar, went on trial on May 18, 2009, on charges of allowing a foreigner to stay in her house for a night without government permission. By all accounts, this foreigner, an American, who swam across a lake and entered Suu Kyi’s house, appeared to be a fool and obviously someone who Suu Kyi did not know. Quite understandably, the trial sparked public outrage both in Myanmar and elsewhere. In India too it aroused some anger and found its way in the print media, not the least because Suu Kyi happens to be an alumna of Lady Shri Ram College, New Delhi. Be that as it may, the protests and the outrage really amounted to tokenism. There is no denying of course that the Myanmar military junta allows neither political dissent nor what it perceives as interference in its internal affairs. But then, this is not peculiar to the Myanmar regime only, all sovereign nations bristle at what they regard outside meddling in their internal matters. It was hardly surprising then that while Gen. Than Shwe received the UN Secretary General, he rebuffed any attempt of the latter to meet Suu Kyi. It is unfortunate that Suu Kyi has been under house arrest for the last 19 years and for almost 13 of these years has had little contact with the outside world. Ever since the National League of Democracy challenged the strangle-hold of the army some 19 years ago, the military has systematically come down upon it with a heavy hand and made it clear in no uncertain terms that it was the armed forces that called the shots. While we in India have generally had cordial relations with Myanmar, there have been periods when these have been rather strained. When we were fighting insurgency in the North-east and various militant groups of Nagas and Mizos were travelling to south China through north Myanmar (then Burma) for military training and acquiring weapons, the then government had accorded our army the ‘right of hot pursuit’ into its territory to track down Naga and Mizo groups. This was the situation as it prevailed from the early 70s. There was, however, yet another attendant problem. The writ of the then Myanmarese government did not run over vast tracts of land inhabited by various other ethnic groups. These included the Kachins in areas bordering China, the Karens bordering Thailand and the Shans inhabiting the Golden Triangle area bordering Myanmar, Thailand and Laos. The ‘right of hot pursuit’, therefore, was not enough to solve our problem. In view of this, it was decided to make an approach to the Kachins and the Kachin Independent Army (KIA), whose help was imperative to prevent the Naga and Mizo insurgents from going to China for military training. India did achieve limited success in its efforts to prevent the Nagas and Mizos from getting to China, specifically the Paoshan area where the Chinese military used to provide training to them. It was, however, not very easy to keep the arrangement under wraps as KIA elements used to cross over to the Myanmar army every now and then. In fact, the Myanmar army got wind of the whole thing from some KIA deserters. When this happened the Indian military attaché was summoned to the military headquarters in Yangon and confronted with the facts available. Naturally, he could not say much and reported the matter to his Ambassador, who conveyed the displeasure of the Myanmar government to the Indian foreign office. The Ambassador requested for a grant running into some millions of dollars which he suggested could be distributed among various ethnic groups that were making attempts to overthrow the military junta. Mercifully, the Narasimha Rao government shot down the hare-brained idea. Anyone could see that disparate ethnic groups did not have the wherewithal nor the capability to accomplish this task. It is, however, possible that some of our Indian policy planners might have been encouraged to come up with these notions because of the rather ambivalent policies of the previous VP Singh government, in particular the rather crazy things that George Fernandez used to come up with where the Myanmar government was concerned. Much to the chagrin of the Myanmar government, some students opposed to the Yangon regime were permanently housed in the official residence of George Fernandez. Some Myanmar opposition groups had also set up a government-in-exile somewhere near the Thailand border. While they succeeded in getting themselves heard at the UN General Assembly, VP Singh’s government was also willing to be pushed by the Americans and other Western powers to raise the pitch against the government in Yangon. So much so that it was willing to allow Sein Lwin of the government-in-exile to visit New Delhi along with his other ‘cabinet colleagues’ and organise a high-profile meeting in New Delhi. Mercifully, better sense prevailed and this meeting was called off. All along, however, in total disregard of realpolitik and our own interests, we went along with the Americans. It is interesting, however, that in spite of the so-called diktat of their government, American companies, particularly in the oil and gas sector, continued to work in Myanmar and reap rich dividends. We, on the other hand, went out on a limb and condemned the Myanmar government for crushing human rights and the incarceration of Suu Kyi. It took some years to undo the damage done by both the VP Singh and Chandra Shekhar governments. Looking at it from yet another point of view, would the American troops march into Myanmar to dethrone an ‘evil’ government much as they did to throw out Saddam Hussain? The answer is a clear no. After all, in the American perception, and otherwise as well, there is enough disregard for human rights in Myanmar as there was in Iraq under Saddam Hussain. This is for the simple reason that China, straddling over to the north of Myanmar, will brook no non-sense from the Americans in a region, which is of strategic importance to it and which it regards as falling within its area of influence. It also has high stakes in the infrastructure and oil and gas sectors in Myanmar. In the Gulf, however, all neighbouring states of Iraq acquiesced in the American designs and it also had the support of Israel. In Myanmar, however, given the dynamics of the world economic situation and the military might of China, the US dare not interfere. India, therefore, needs to understand what realpolitik is all about and take a hard look at where its national interests lie and avoid getting carried away by issues it could ignore. After all, for all its protestations on human rights, the US has chosen to look the other way where the oppressive Kyrgyz government is concerned because it is wary of jeopardising the status of its air base in Kyrgyzstan from where it augments its operations in Afghanistan. We too need to get
real. The writer has served as a Joint Secretary in RAW
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Why direct payments to farmers? The
immediate fallout of the Punjab government’s recent notification on marketing of agricultural produce will be that the arhtiya will deny credit in advance to the farmer. The small farmer, who entirely depends on the arhtiya, will suffer the most. The notification directs the purchase agencies to make payments direct to the farmer for his produce instead of through t arhtiyas as is the practice at present. Most farmers take money in advance as per their needs from arhtiyas. It appears the government has not done proper homework before issuing the notification. The previous Congress government had also issued a similar notification but had to retreat when the arhtiyas protested. The government thinks that the direct payment will emancipate the farmer from the arhtiya’s clutches. In fact, the real advantage to the farmer is the credit available conveniently from the arhtiya. He does not bother whether the arhtiya delays the payment after receiving it from the purchase agency or whether the arhtiya utilizes it somewhere else. Secondly, the arhtiya may fudge figures while settling a farmer’s account. Thirdly, an arhtiya could manipulate the price of a farmer’s produce and its weighment in connivance with the purchase agencies. Arhtiyas are notorious for all such trickeries. Farmers organisations can form teams of their educated volunteers as vigilance squads to check these wrongs by arhtiysa. The arhtiya charges an exorbitant rate of interest on the advance money. In fact, this is the Achilles’ heel of the farmer, where the arhtiya-money lender squeezes the farmer the most. But the direct payment is no remedy. It will rather deprive the farmer of a financial source convenient to him. The malady can be checked by a fiat of the government that the arhtiya should charge interest only at the bank rate. The real problem of the farmer is the absence of a credit agency which can replace the arhtiya. At present Punjab farmers are availing quite a sizeable amount of credit from a slew of institutions functioning in the state’s in rural and semi-urban areas. Agriculture cooperative credit societies cover all the 12,278 villages of the state. The cooperative system is the most non-cooperative. It is controlled by stiff-necked bureaucrats and is notorious for corruption. The commercial banks have yet to assimilate the rural ethos. None of the staff members of village branches of commercial banks and not even of the cooperative banks stay overnight in the village. How can they know at first-hand farmers’ financial condition, social reputation etc. without mixing with them? This is where the arhtiya defeats the banks and has hardly any bad debt. A farmer at times needs money for an emergency, say a police case or a sudden illness. Will any bank help him at an
odd hour? In view of the infirmities in the institutional system of finance, the arhtiya as a source of money should not be crippled by making “direct payments”. The present system be continued and in the meantime steps be taken to protect the farmer. A trial run of the direct payment system be made in one selected district.
The farmers be properly informed about the system and arhtiyas’ cooperation ensured. A team of selected officials from the Agriculture Department, the market committee and banks should educate farmers to eliminate the hassles, if any, in its working. If successful, it can be made applicable to other districts. Secondly, it should be made optional for farmers whether they want direct payments or through
arhtiyas.
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N.Korea-US nuclear standoff may ease As
always, it is hard to read the mind of North Korea, and never more so than now, after a string of provocative missile tests by the regime and speculation over Kim Jong-il’s health and grip on power. It is widely believed that he is about to transfer power to his youngest son Kim Jong-un. It would nonetheless have been astonishing had what was clearly a carefully choreographed event not led to freedom for the two journalists. For Mr Clinton to return empty-handed after meetings, not just with the two women but with Mr Kim and some of his senior aides, would have been a humiliation that would have served the interests of neither party. Beyond that however, nothing was certain. The White House yesterday was sticking to the fiction that the visit was “solely private”, denying reports that Mr Clinton had delivered a message from President Obama during his meeting with the North Korean leader. In fact, this first high-profile use in the Obama era of the former president as a special envoy, surely is anything but a freelance operation. The opening for it came with a change of language by Mr Clinton’s own wife. The Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently began urging an “amnesty” for Euna Lee and Laura Ling, implicitly conceding that the two had broken the laws of North Korea. Such adjustments do not happen by accident – nor does a full dress meeting with Kim Jong-il within hours of a visiting dignitary’s arrival, welcomed by a high-level party including the North Korea’s chief nuclear negotiator. Given the regard in which the former US president is held in Pyongyang, the visit might do a lot more than secure the release of the two women. It may also pave the way for a breakthrough in the tortuous nuclear dispute between the US and North Korea. North Korea may have decided that after the recent escalation of tensions with Washington, it is time to cool things down – and that Mr Clinton’s visit, ostensibly a mercy mission, is the ideal vehicle for something much broader and of mutual benefit. Unfiltered talks with a top American of the stature of the former president satisfy the North’s craving for direct bilateral dealings with the US. For Pyongyang, this is something of a coup, as it represents confirmation of the regime’s legitimacy and importance. Some will say the former president’s visit is a mistake that rewards bad behaviour. But Washington may be prepared to concede this in the hope of making gains on the nuclear issue. Ironically, the last former US president to go to North Korea was Jimmy Carter in 1994. The then occupant of the White House was Mr Clinton, grappling with an earlier crisis over Pyongyang’s secret nuclear programme in which Washington came close to bombing the North’s key nuclear facility at Yongbyon. By the end of his presidency, relations improved to the point that Madeleine Albright, the Secretary of State at the time, went to North Korea, and only lack of time prevented Mr Clinton doing so himself. His officials counselled against an 11th-hour mission that might have ended in failure. That ambition has now been
fulfilled. — By arrangement with The Independent
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