The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Pumping in fake currency
India must take up matter with Pakistan

Pakistan has been trying for decades to make India bleed through a million cuts. It mainly does so through covert means and by fuelling terror. The other cheaper but equally effective method it has been employing is the flooding of Indian markets with fake currency notes. There is ample evidence that counterfeit notes arrive in bulk from Pakistan and Dubai to launching points across Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Singapore. The influx has reached alarming proportions, with some Rs 1,69,000 crore worth of fakes in circulation. Minister of State for Finance Namo Narain Meena told the Rajya Sabha the other day that “involvement of Pak officials suspected to be working for intelligence agencies of Pakistan has been revealed”. CBI director Ashwani Kumar has also indicated the “hand of a state actor; a neighbouring country”. This provocation is tantamount to an act of war and there is urgent need to take up the matter with Pakistan forcefully.

At the same time, we must take tough measures within the country also. It is unfortunate that some government officials are actively involved in facilitating smuggling. They must be weeded out ruthlessly. Moreover, the country is yet to put in place a foolproof mechanism to detect fake notes. A machine made by the CSIO to do so hasn’t found many takers. Only 4,271 currency chests have note sorting machines, while the country has nearly 70,000 bank branches.

The fakes are near perfect because the 2005 design of the Indian currency has been leaked out. Under the circumstances, the country should consider the introduction of polymer currency notes. This option was considered way back in 1999 also but was put on the backburner because of the extra cost involved. Indeed, polymer notes cost twice as much to make, but are far more difficult to fake. They are also more durable. The higher production cost would be worthwhile, considering that the damage done by the circulation of fake notes is far greater.

Khaps call the shots
Tough steps needed to stop ‘honour’ killings

THE mysterious death by hanging from a tree of a young couple in the fields of their native village in Jhajhar village on the eve of the sarva mahakhap panchayat meeting that was to pass judgment on their fate for having eloped is yet another reminder of the sordid drama being played out in Haryana’s villages in the name of ‘honour’ and morality. If this was ‘honour killing’ as is being surmised, it is the third such shameful and despicable incident reported in the last one month. Recently, a couple had been strangled allegedly by the girl’s family in Rohtak district. This was preceded by the terrible lynching of a young man when he went to his village in Jind to fetch his wife. The hidden hand of the ‘khap panchayats’ has evidently been there in all these and many more such incidents.

The untrammeled power that the khap panchayats wield without any legal basis to it, the obscurantist and dogmatic attitude of people at large in villages, the shocking inaction of the police, the reluctance of the state government to catch the proverbial bull by the horns show that Haryana still has a long way to go in jettisoning outdated beliefs based on caste and gotra. . Clearly, the culprits are emboldened by police inaction and lack of governmental sensitivity to the plight of those who are wronged by the village elders who have no qualms about even ordering death of those who do not conform to their obscurantist ‘principles’ on caste and gotra in regard to marriage.

Enough is enough. The state government cannot abdicate its responsibility of protecting its people from such onslaughts. It must track down those responsible for either killing or driving the young couple of Jhajhar to suicide. Likewise, the earlier cases too must be pursued with vigour. Unless the fear of law is drilled into law-breakers, incidents such as these would continue to happen to our eternal shame.

Thought for the Day

There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision.

— William James

ARTICLE

Pakistan’s search for identity
World propping up a failing State
by B.G. Verghese

GEN Pervez Musharraf, as Pakistan’s newest military dictator, stated soon after taking over that if the Kashmir question were ever resolved, Pakistan would have to invent another “Kashmir”. He is not the first Pakistani leader to have made such a remark, and Farzana Shaikh explains why in her latest book, “Making Sense of Pakistan” (Hurst Press, London, 2009), one of the most fascinating books written on that unhappy country which has yet to discover its soul. Indians have made the argument before, but it takes courage, insight and integrity for a Pakistani to do so.

In brief, the argument is that the battle for Pakistan was almost entirely fought by the Muslim League in what is now India and that at Independence Jinnah and his cohorts arrived in the new Muslim homeland as “migrants” to take over a country whose people had never truly sought Pakistan and did not fully understand what it was all about. Pakistan, therefore, started with what Shaikh calls a “negative identity” of being assertively not-Indian, reluctant to accept or even repudiating its Indo-Islamic history, syncretic religious tradition, culture and ethos. This hothouse plant obviously had difficulty in taking root, with Mohajirs (refugees) overlording proud Sindhi, Pathan and Baloch ethnic identities that had established traditions, languages and histories of their own.

The binding element came from resort to “Islam”, which became the “ideology of Pakistan”. By the territorial logic of the two-nation theory, Jammu and Kashmir (being majority Muslim and contiguous) was by definition an integral part of Pakistan (though this would confound the issues of Hyderabad, Junagadh, et al). Yet the two-nation theory was not easily validated in the new homeland, which started out with a 12 per cent minority population and soon had Bangali nationalism trump Islamic nationalism.

There were other contradictions too. Was Pakistan to be an ideologically Islamic state based on the Sharia or a Muslim homeland with a minority population that was to be hostage to India’s fair treatment of its residual Muslim population? Having won Pakistan, Jinnah declared on August 12, 1947, that religion was a personal matter and that Muslims and Hindus would be equal citizens of the new state, a view that shocked his following which repudiated the thesis. Jinnah himself backtracked in January 1948 and spoke in favour of an Islamic state based on the Sharia. But then who was a good or true Muslim? When the Ahmediyas were declared a minority, Pakistan’s ulema could not define a true Muslim in evidence before the Munir Commission. With Bangladesh’s winning independence in 1971, some in West Pakistan felt ideologically liberated, being rid of a somewhat dubious Islamic excrescence. But with the two-nation theory destroyed, the Islamist narrative gained ascendancy.

Shaikh traces the further development of Islamisation. Bhutto was determined to develop an Islamic Bomb that would re-establish parity with India and put Pakistan in a position to claim a certain Islamic leadership. Then Zia-ul-Haq forged a military-mullah alliance to stave off the Movement for the Restoration of Democracy. HUJI’s Binori Madarsa in Karachi, LeT’s Mudrike seminary and the Lal Masjid and associated Quranic schools in Islamabad were products of this time. Benazir and Nawaz Sharif thereafter variously sought to curry favour with the Islamists in their competition against one another and the military. Pakistan had by now become a pan-Islamic hub of jihadi terror in places as far removed as Chechnya, the Philippines, Bosnia, Xinjiang, the Arab lands and, of course, Kashmir/India.

The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan brought everything together in favour of the Islamists. The US once again adopted Pakistan as a “frontline state” and shut its eyes to proliferation, drug trafficking, the Kalashnikov culture (which it indirectly bankrolled) and Talibanisation by Islamabad, first of the jihadis, who swarmed J&K, and then the “good Muslim” who would fight atheist communism in Afghanistan. Pakistan handed this enterprise to the ISI under men like Hamid Gul and Javed Nasir. Pushtun Afghans were favoured by it against the Tadjik-led Northern Alliance so that Pakistan would gain “strategic depth” against India and inherit its Taliban protégés once the Russians and Americans left as expected. In Pakistan’s search for identity territorially as an Islamic “state” and as an Islamic “nation” operating on a wider canvas, “parity” with India in international councils and as a nuclear power and protector played out in the new Great Game to keep India out of Afghanistan where, it was feared, its presence spelt danger to the idea and security of Pakistan. Both its nuclear and Afghanistan policies are designed as Indian equalisers.

Once unleashed, Talibanisation spread back into Pakistan. General Musharraf was forced to change tack after 9/11 and more surely brought to heel in 2002. But despite US pressure, he limited his fight first to Al-Qaeda and then to the Afghan Taliban. Mounting opposition to him at home saw him cosying up to the Islamists and he was instrumental, through the military, in building up the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), a coalition of the religious right, which took office in the NWFP and Balochistan after the 2002 elections, thus paving the way for the Talibanisation of Pakistan which is the monster that is now devouring the state

The Army has not been free of Islamist tendencies as recent conspiracies have shown. Both have fed on one another. The West fears that a failed or Talibanised Pakistan state could enable non-state actors to acquire nuclear wherewithal. Hence, Shaikh believes, the international community is engaged in propping up a failing state and putting a brake on needed political reforms, and thereby buttressing the military, for fear of its consequences. This, at a time when a new civil society in Pakistan — the media, the artistic community, writers, historians, the legal community and human rights activists — sees the need to move away from perennial confrontation with India and over Kashmir and return to the country’s real roots which lie in its cultural heritage of a syncretic Indian Islam.

Sections of Indian opinion, too, are veering round to a similar view that would reorient Delhi’s policies towards Pakistan. This calls for a paradigm shift that we should foster and not repel.

MIDDLE

Ends of Justice
by Uttam Sengupta

KILL him, son; if you want justice, kill him, advised the police inspector to the baffled young man. His father had fought a protracted legal battle but in his own lifetime failed to get the powerful tenant evicted from his property. But after his death, the court did rule in his favour and ordered the police and a magistrate to hand over possession of the house to the petitioner’s heir and son.

A posse of policemen had duly arrived and “evicted” the tenant, who had already removed most of the valuable goods. The young man was handed over possession of the house and was asked to sign a paper to this effect. They also demanded sweets and a little baksheesh on the occasion and left with the satisfaction of a good job done.

But celebrations turned out to be short-lived as the “tenant” returned within a few hours and at gun-point re-claimed possession of the house. The young man rushed to the police station, only to be told there was nothing the men in khaki could do. “ We did hand over the house to you, fair and square, didn’t we,” asked the inspector sternly, waving the receipt the young man had signed. “You can file another case in the court,” he was told, “when the next eviction order comes, we will certainly execute it,” the inspector said reasonably.

That is when the young man broke down. His father had spent over 10 years of his life in the courts, trying to get his tenant to give up the house. He himself had spent the last five years paying lawyers and the court clerks. He sobbed unabashedly at the thought of spending many more years in search of justice. That is when, moved by pity, the inspector patted his back and casually dropped the suggestion. It had the desired effect of instantly calming the young man, who stopped crying and looked wide-eyed at the inspector.

The wise inspector had patiently explained: “ See, there is nothing we can do now; you will have to move the court and spend the next few years re-establishing your claim. But there is another way out. Shoot him and own it up. You will go to jail but with some luck, you should be out in seven or ten years. You not only save money on litigation but you also get back the house immediately.”

The young man luckily did not accept the advice. But his experience, which he shared with me, was an early lesson I learnt about how enterprising and original our policemen can be.

Several years later, the Model Jail in Lucknow was releasing a dozen convicts after they had served their sentence of ‘life imprisonment’. A newsman asked them if they now regretted committing the crime. He was shocked at the response. Seven of them, including two women, burst out crying and claimed to be innocent. They had not killed anyone but had been framed.

It came as no surprise, therefore, to read the report that at the intervention of the Punjab & Haryana High Court, which was tipped off by an anonymous letter, Nachchatar Singh will meet next month the man he allegedly murdered 13 years ago and for which he has already been convicted and spent five years in jail.

OPED

Suu Kyi verdict
Legalities matter less than political expediency
by Tim Johnston

Supporters of Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi during a march near the Myanmar embassy in Paris on Tuesday. — AP/PTI

THE decision by the generals who run Myanmar to extend Aung San Suu Kyi's incarceration by 18 months has abruptly snuffed out the dim hope that the regime was becoming more sensitive to international pressure for democratic reform.

The verdict was widely expected: governments and international rights organizations came out with prepared condemnations only minutes after it was announced.

But it has illustrated the West's inability to change the direction of the Myanmar government and the paucity of its arsenal when it comes to punishing repressive regimes.

In a short closing statement at her trial, Suu Kyi said that such a verdict would condemn the authorities as much as her and her companions.

"The court will pronounce on the innocence or guilt of a few individuals. The verdict itself will constitute a judgment on the whole of the law, justice and constitutionalism in our country," she said.

Before Suu Kyi's arrest, there was growing international support for the idea that isolating the regime with sanctions had failed to persuade the generals to improve democratic freedom or human rights, and that some form of diplomatic and commercial reengagement might be more effective.

However, Tuesday's verdict appeared likely to give new ammunition to the highly vocal international pro-sanctions lobby, making it harder for governments to explore a more nuanced approach. At the same time, the international community also is likely to find it difficult to toughen its stance.

Analysts say the ruling junta was determined to use the case to keep Suu Kyi — still the generals' most formidable opponent despite having spent 14 of the last 19 years under house arrest — out of circulation ahead of elections scheduled for next year, even though the constitution written by the regime guarantees the military 25 percent of the seats in the new parliament.

"She is not being imprisoned because an American swam to her home but because she is viewed as a strong threat to the legitimacy of this regime and its plans for next year's elections," said Jared Genser, a lawyer who represents Suu Kyi overseas.

Suu Kyi's supporters in her National League for Democracy say that although her freedom would be vital for a free and fair ballot, it would not be enough in itself, given the constitutional guarantee of a quarter of parliamentary seats for the military. The fact that the international community used every measure and threat in its arsenal and still failed to influence the outcome of the trial gives little hope to those who are looking for overseas pressure to help get the constitution amended.

The beginning of the case was bizarre enough. On May 5, police arrested John W. Yettaw, a 54-year-old American veteran of the Vietnam War, as he was using home-made flippers and an empty plastic water bottle to swim across the lake that backs onto the dilapidated villa where Suu Kyi has been held.

Yettaw, a native of Falcon, Mo., who relatives say suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder stemming from his war service, was given a seven-year sentence, including four years hard labor. One of the years of his sentence was for the municipal crime of illegal swimming.

Yettaw told the court that he was returning from warning the Nobel Peace Prize winner that he had had a vision in which she would be killed by terrorists. He had apparently been carrying a Muslim chador so that she could escape in disguise.

Yettaw had tried to visit her before, last November, and succeeded in reaching the house, but she had refused to see him and informed the authorities once he had left.

The fact that he had been given another visa to visit the country spawned conspiracy theories suggesting that the junta had arranged the visit to create a case against her, although Suu Kyi's more sober supporters came to the conclusion that Yettaw was probably too much of a loose cannon for even the Myanmar authorities.

Even if the government was not behind the visit, it offered an opportunity to undermine Suu Kyi's status as possibly the world's most famous prisoner of conscience by trying her on criminal charges in courts that have long done the government's bidding.

She was moved to Yangon's Insein prison pending trial. The international reaction was instant. President Obama called the charges spurious and said she should be released; European powers threatened to widen sanctions against the regime; even China, one of the regime's few remaining allies, signed a regional statement calling on Myanmar to release political prisoners.

Authorities responded by making sure the case had all the trimmings of due legal process: judges, defense attorneys and a system of appeal when the judges barred some of the defense witnesses.

They even allowed diplomats and the media to attend the trial intermittently.

But there was a surreal quality to the performance. The fact that the court was trying to ascertain her guilt when she was the victim of a break-in at her compound was only the icing on a cake that might have been baked by Franz Kafka.

The defense argued that since the government originally took Suu Kyi into "protective custody" after a drunken government mob attacked her convoy, it was the guards surrounding the compound who should have been in the dock. The defense told the court that she had neither invited nor welcomed the intrusion, and they pointed out that the law under which she was being charged was part of a constitution that the generals themselves had repealed.

But in the end, for the courts in Yangon, legalities mattered less than political expediency.

— By arrangement with LA Times-Washington Post

More at stake than bird flu
by Aloka

IT seems that bird flu has now come to stay in this country much like foreign companies which reached the land and then overtook the traditional economy and industry. A fatal disease, which affects poultry in the rural areas, this strain of virus seems bent upon finishing off traditional cottage industries in the rural areas.

Most of the areas affected by this disease are largely tribal where farmers have taken to poultry breeding as a source of income for tribal and rural families over generations. Particularly now , as current trends go, chicken has become part of the food platter across the country and in fact the world over, giving a big push to this indigenous industry .

From the traditional breeds of chicken, which were once sold in the local village markets or Haats, the demand has opened up new markets on a larger scale. As this trade grew, “broilers” replaced the traditional breeds of chicken fetching a higher price.

Bird Flu, however, threatens to destroy this budding industry. Over time, it has received a wide coverage in the national media resulting in culling of millions of birds. The attempt has been to kill millions of traditional breeds in the rural and tribal areas.

If one just steps back to get a wider picture of serious health hazards facing our people, then the attention given to bird flu seems gigantic and out of proportion. In our country, the problem of malaria is widespread in both rural and urban areas taking lives of hundreds of common people.

Now one can clearly see the absence of chicken in rural areas. In contrast to the reports in the press and the nation-wide hysteria, rural communities have a perspective. They say that it strikes at the fundamentals of their economy, way of life in which they see a larger design of economic powers that are pushing them out of this space, the markets that they have so naturally accessed.

The neglect of other life-threatening diseases in comparison to the attention and resources ploughed into curtailing bird flu is apparent to village locals. Padah Raja and social activist Polus Hember of Adaki panchayat maintains that malaria is more devastating than bird flu in our country.

On the ground the situation is pathetic. For many of those living in rural areas local availability of medical facilities or even transportation facilities to reach hospitals are sorely lacking, thus leaving them at the mercy of the killer disease. Yet it is not reported in the media in the way bird flu gets widespread coverage. Ironically, bird flu has not claimed a single life

Malaria is a disease which is rampant and can be cited to illustrate the gravity of the health hazards that common people face. There are several dreaded water borne diseases which take a heavy toll as well. Diarrhea, typhoid, dysentery, cholera kill millions every year.

For scores of rural communities across the country, access to potable water lies at the core of these diseases and their vulnerability towards it. Polluted water leads to the widespread prevalence of these diseases. Malnutrition and hunger stalk the land while diseases like leprosy cause ravage.

In hospitals in villages across the country, there are neither doctors nor medicines available. People are forced to go to cities for treatment an excruciating effort for rural people, one which not many survive. Those who survive face a financial ruin as they do not have resources to meet the escalating costs of healthcare. Often have to take loans against their land to pay for their treatment which they are unable to pay back.

In large parts of our country malaria claims lives in the absence of adequate public health facilities for the poor to access. On a lesser scale but equally pathetic is the situation of leprosy patients. The government claims it has eradicated leprosy from India.

Belying this claim is a leprosy colony which exists just four kms away from Ranchi, the capital of Jharkhand. The government has constructed mud huts which house the 500 affected families. Basic facilities are poor, abysmal.

There is no availability of power or provision for sanitation. The 10 kg of rice provided by the government to each family is often rotten and worm-infested. People prefer not to take this rice and instead rely on begging.

Diseases widely prevalent like malaria and those on a smaller scale like leprosy are taking a huge toll on human lives. This is apparent to anyone who even visits villages. It is, however, not apparent to the government nor the media. It does not move them enough to act upon it.

Meanwhile, those who are poor and struck by disease continue to die from it as a final solution, a chilling statement of our times. In the midst of such raging problems, we continue to focus all our attention on bird flu, putting everything else on the backburner. Is this justified?

— Charkha Features

Health
Loss of balance can be delayed
by Lenny Bernstein

WHEN most people think about exercise and being healthy, they normally think about their cardiovascular health, about running and doing endurance exercises, or we think we have to keep our muscles strong, so we do resistance exercises, says Chhanda Dutta, chief of the clinical gerontology branch of the National Institute on Aging.

As we spend middle age sweating away pounds to ward off obesity, watching our diets to keep arteries from clogging, and strengthening our muscles to retain vigor into old age, we might want to stop and think about our balance.

You take it for granted, right? You get up from your office chair, walk across the room, get a drink of water, walk back to your desk, and nothing terrible happens. You glide across a tennis court and smack a forehand without stumbling, take out the trash and return unscathed, step in and out of the shower without incident.

And then one day, without warning, that can change. "It isn't until we lose that ability that we realize how important these things are," Dutta says.

Falls among older people are common, costly and debilitating. More than one-third of people age 65 and older will fall this year. Every 18 seconds, someone in that age group is treated in a hospital emergency room for a fall-related injury, and every 35 minutes an older person dies from a fall, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Men are 49 percent more likely than women to be killed in falls. But women are much more likely to suffer nonfatal injuries or fractured bones. Women make up nearly three-quarters of the people admitted to hospitals for hip fractures, one of the most debilitating results of falls.

Your ability to stay upright and move confidently through space is determined by a complex combination of muscle strength, nerve function, visual inputs, the vestibular function of your inner ear and your proprioception — the work of sensors, including nerves in the soles of your feet, that orient you in relation to other objects.

These abilities can decline with age, though people age differently. Disease, head trauma, compromised blood flow to the brain, medication problems and many other factors can affect them.

Loss of balance and mobility can be prevented or delayed if we work at keeping these abilities sharp. Yet unless you practice yoga, karate, tai chi or a handful of other fitness regimens that emphasize balance training, you probably haven't done anything about it in years, possibly decades.

"We don't put ourselves in the situations very often where we have to maintain our balance," says James S. Skinner, a professor emeritus of kinesiology at Indiana University and a past president of the American College of Sports Medicine. The good news, as with most things concerning health and fitness, is that you can make substantial gains, even well into old age.

Dutta wants you to start such efforts now, in your 20s or 50s, not your 80s. (She would add flexibility exercises to the list of fitness imperatives, but that is a topic for another day.) The exercises are quick, easy and effective, she says, even if researchers don't entirely understand how the body rewires itself to yield such improvements.

— By arrangement with LA Times-Washington Post