The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Fudging at Shopian
It’s now for CBI to find the truth

The investigations in the infamous Shopian rape and murder case were conducted in such a shoddy manner that they ended up adding more confusion by the day. The onus has now fallen on the CBI, with the state government making this announcement on Wednesday. The high-profile special investigation team of the Jammu and Kashmir police had not gathered any worthwhile evidence and the investigations conducted by it were falling flat at every level. But the fatal fall came when it was discovered that samples submitted by the SIT to the Central Forensic Sciences Laboratory in New Delhi for DNA tests did not belong to the slain Aasiya and Nelofar who had been found dead near a stream in Shopian town in May 30, a day after they went missing from their orchard.

The CBI has a tickling job on hand, considering that it would have to untangle the mess created by the SIT. There is a lot of false propaganda also to be sifted through, which had been bandied about by those wanted to discredit the state government. For instance, in testimony to a local TV station, one victim’s husband claimed that her wife had called him late on the night of May 29, saying that she was being pursued by CRPF personnel. That is what led to the uproar that police or paramilitary personnel had raped and then murdered the women. Later, the husband admitted before the Justice Muzaffar Jan Commission of Inquiry that he did not receive any call and that his wife did not possess a phone.

As such, the probe will have to virtually start afresh. Gathering evidence – whatever is left of it — will take time and considerable effort. But then as Chief Justice Bharin Ghosh of the Jammu and Kashmir High Court has said, it is not an individual case but pertains to all people of the state. The truth must come out, even if it is late.

Defunct Lokpal
Why maintain the façade?

A Lokpal is meant to be an ombudsman to which people with grievances can go even if they have a grouse against the high and mighty of the land — politicians and public servants. Indeed, the public has any number of complaints against those who govern. To that extent, the Punjab Lokpal should have been up to his neck in work. But facts are quite to the contrary. In the entire 2007, the state Lokpal received only two complaints, down from a dozen complaints received in the previous year. Even 12 is ridiculously low; two is simply laughable. So where is the catch?

The ugly truth is that the government is not serious about the institution — which to some extent makes it accountable — and discourages its functioning in every way that it can. Ever since the constitutional post came into being in 1995, it has remained mostly vacant — from December 1996 to August 1997, and then from December 1999 to December 2000 and for over three years from December 2002 to March 2006. A single advertisement is put out each year and as such many people are not even aware that such an office exists which can be approached for redress.

But to look into these scarce complaints, the whole paraphernalia has to be maintained. The Lokpal and his staff work from two offices — the Lokpal’s courtroom in the mini secretariat and an office in Sector 17. These offices require Rs 6 lakh per month to run. It is unethical to maintain this pretense only for form’s sake. If the government is not serious about an ombudsman, who can embarrass it by its independence, why maintain this façade? In the neighbouring Haryana also, the Act under which a Lokayukta has been appointed has been drafted in such a way that it makes him more or less powerless. Essentially, the issue is who does a citizen approach when bureaucrats and politicians in power become unresponsive and indifferent.

Thought for the Day

One of the most obvious facts about grown-ups, to a child, is that they have forgotten what it is like to be a child. — Randall Jarrell

Corrections and clarifications

n The headline “What you eat or drink may help get pregnant” (Page 12, August 12) in Health Notes should instead have been “Controlled diet would enhance chances of pregnancy”.

n The headline “Only 95% clear LLM exam” (Page 3, August 12, Chandigarh Tribune) was wrong. The intro reveals that the percentage was 9.

n In the report “Allowances on revised salaries notified” (Page 4, August 13) the intro said: “The Punjab government today notified that the allowances the employees would get with revised salaries following the implementation of the Fifth Pay Commission”. The word “that” after notified was wrongly used.

n The graphic “Swine Flu Watch” (Page 20, August 13) was inadequately worded. It should have said:

Total deaths so far (all-India): 17

Total number of cases tested positive: 1193

The line on “fresh” cases should have specified the reference period.

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

This column will now appear thrice a week — every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. We request our readers to write or e-mail to us whenever they find any error.

Readers in such cases can write to Mr Kamlendra Kanwar, Senior Associate Editor, The Tribune, Chandigarh, with the word “Corrections”
on the envelope. His e-mail ID is kanwar@tribunemail.com.

H.K. Dua
Editor-in-Chief

ARTICLE

The Afghan elections
US busy building relationships
by Maj-Gen Ashok K. Mehta (retd)

After the first ever non-state actor takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban in 1996, elections in the badlands are still an alien activity. The polls have become necessary to give legitimacy to the present Hamid Karzai government. Who the Afghans will choose on August 20 --- a second term for Mr Karzai or a regime change through Dr Abdullah or Mr Ashraf Ghani, both of whom served in the Karzai Cabinet --- is not certain. The Americans have distanced themselves from the incumbent President.

Whoever is the winner, little will change for the Afghan people, caught between foreign forces and the Taliban and for whom the new NATO Secretary-General, Mr Anders Fogh Rasmussen, has sought “better life opportunities”. The long-awaited military surge timed with the elections is under way - Operation Khanjar met by the Taliban’s Operation Fauladi Jal, which vows to disrupt the elections.

After some years of US meandering in Afghanistan in March President Barack Obama unveiled his new strategy for Af-Pak which includes metrics to measure “success and progress” to determine whether or not the strategy is working. The President’s National Security Adviser, General James Jones, has come up with a set of nine broad objectives on the civil and military side for metrics to steer Af-Pak with weightage to development and nation-building. These include rule of law, justice, self-reliance of the Afghan security forces, democracy and governance.

According to Rory Stewart in the London Review of Books, “the new US Army and Marine Corps counter-insurgency doctrine sounds like a World Bank document, replete with commitments to rule of law, economic development, governance, state building and human rights. In Mr Obama’s words, ‘security and humanitarian concern are all part of one project’. Implementing on the ground, these objectives require stamina and resources and measuring success or progress is not easy.”

Meanwhile, Mr Obama’s Chief Counterterrorism Adviser John Brennan has advocated replacing the global war on terror with more narrowly focused assault on Al-Qaida and engagement with the Muslim world. Are the Americans fighting the wrong enemy? The current surge is against the Taliban in South and East Afghanistan and around Kabul whereas the hardcore Taliban elements are in sanctuaries around Quetta in Pakistan. The Americans say that the precondition for the defeat of Al-Qaida is the defeat of the Taliban and, similarly, for fixing the Afghan state, Pakistan has to be fixed first.

The new US strategic insight emphasises protecting Afghans and building relationships rather than the usual fixation on head count. Avoiding civilian casualties has become a prime concern, especially from errant air-strikes which have reduced from 35 to 17 per cent in June. As many as 1000 civilian deaths up to July 31 are the highest in the war, the majority caused by insurgents. Foreign soldiers killed in July were 75, the highest in a month and bulk of the toll taken by American and British troops. Morale of the fighting forces is dented but operations bash on regardless.

From January to mid-July this year, US combat forces recorded 129 suicide deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq, more than the number killed in the battle and a three-decade high. This is less than the average Indian Army fratricidal rate in counterinsurgency operations.

Things are far worse in the British camp where mounting complaints from Field Commanders against fighting the war “on the cheap” - shortage of helicopters, paucity of troops and fragility of mine-resistant vehicles - have bruised morale and raised in Britain the question: why are we in Afghanistan? To make matters worse, the Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee has noted the absence of higher political direction to Commanders.

The Taliban, too, has switched tactics. Gone are pitched battles, the killers are roadside bombs, improvised explosive devices and suicide squads for which R&D has not devised any antidote. Out of every three soldiers killed, two are victims of IEDs. The British, who have a long history of counterinsurgency in Northern Ireland, have drawn a plan involving a necklace of fortified watch towers to spy on Taliban planting bombs as they did in Ulster against the Irish Republican Army (IRA). The biggest challenge of the war is to get to the roadside bomb and human bomber-making networks.

In the sights of the Taliban are Afghan security forces and foreign troops. Attacks on Afghan forces, which number 170000, could go up to 6000 this year from 81 in 2003. The Afghan Army is expected to grow from 90,000 to 134,000 by 2011. With nearly 100,000 NATO forces from 42 countries, the operational force level is 270,000 whereas the requirement is for nearly 500,000 to quell the insurgency while winning hearts and minds. These figures can never be made available by Western nations, terribly averse to troop casualties. There is a limit to what the US and the UK, the main burden-bearers, can provide and do in Afghanistan.

With the accent on counter-terrorism, development has been inadequate. The NATO concept of Provisional Reconstruction Teams has not proved successful and the proposal to send experts will not work either. Defence and development need to be applied in tandem, not staggered, contingent upon resource availability. Building institutions and capacity is a long-term objective and cannot be achieved in two or three years with an eye on an exit strategy.

Britain’s Chief of General Staff-in-Waiting, Gen David Richards, who has been the NATO force commander in Afghanistan, dropped a bombshell recetly when he told The Times that the mission in Afghanistan could last up to 40 years. He said while the Army’s role will evolve, the whole process of nation-building might take as long as 30 to 40 years. For President Obama and Prime Minister Gordon Brown, this generational commitment would be politically unacceptable and, more importantly, unaffordable. Contextually different, the Indian Army’s sizeable deployment in J&K has become open-ended.

President Obama’s evolving Af-Pak strategy will falter, even fail, if it attempts any short-cuts. Avoidable are past mistakes: misreading the Taliban defeat as the end of insurgency; not reconciling with some Taliban elements earlier; failing to prevent the revival of the Taliban; not holding the captured ground; defaulting on reconstruction; engaging in errant air-strikes to compensate for boots on the ground and backing warlords, sidelining the moderate Taliban. The view of some Kabul think-tanks is that the US strategy is too little too late.

Af-Pak is in for a long haul. Last week the death of terrorist mastermind Baitullah Mehsud in Pakistan was a boost to counter-terrorism and a blow to Al-Qaida. Remarkably atypical is the absence of terror strikes on India since the attacks on Mumbai. Some hidden hand is holding back the jihadis, but sudden turbulence in Af-Pak could shatter the calm over Delhi. The spillover of the Taliban is a real possibility.

During a recent TV debate, to the question “Should Indian troops be in Afghanistan?” the panelists offered the following: a retired General emphatically said “no” but “we should have contingency plans”; an IDSA scholar, simply “no”; and a journalist, “it’s not our war”. The contingency plan refers to our notional base in Tajikistan which is usable courtesy Russia’s approval. Three “noes” do not mean India should be caught off-guard, exercising merely its soft power across the Hindukush. President Karzai is a friend of India. His re-election will not be unwelcome.

MIDDLE

Chicago by the window
by Rajnish Wattas

Chicago from Chandigarh is a long way. But for me and my wife it’s almost our summer home, a place of annual sojourn with our daughter and her husband. My favourite perch in the living room of her 39th floor apartment is by the window-interestingly designed with two perpendicular faces, providing two strikingly different views. One of the Chicago Downtown with soaring skyscrapers and the other a sweeping panorama of Lake Michigan.

Idle gazing, musing and perchance to dream by its side, is my favourite holiday vocation — to notice an American summer unfolding its drama of life.

Looking towards the lake — the wide expanse of cerulean blue waters is divided into two halves by the soaring landmark of the Lake Shore Point Tower coming in between. A legendry building of both fame and “notoriety” it is the only one ever to come up on the Lake Michigan shore, breaking the city laws! The promoters of the project took advantage of a legal loophole by stating that it was not built on land but a landfill! Of course the legal loophole has been since plugged and other buildings respect the coastline and deferentially stand back away from the lake front.

But with its “iconic” status many of the rich and famous have their apartments there-including Oprah Winfrey and Tom Cruise!

On the left hand side of the tower is the popular touristy place called Navy Pier from where all boat cruises begin. A popular one is on the speed boat called “Sea Dog.”

The guides keep you regaled with fast-paced anecdotal history of Chicago matching that of the speed boat itself, with all the thrills and spills.

Also can be seen are the myriad sail boats on gossamer wings moving like butterflies flitting around, including a vintage sailing ship with costumed “pirates” thrown in for tourist delight.

And in summer, every Saturday night you get to see the most dazzling fireworks display-pyrotechnics, creating “Smileys” and Valentine hearts on the Chicago skies.

From the other face of the window, the city lights dazzle you. One can see the lit up cafes along the Chicago river that meanders its way through Downtown as would a rambling tourist, looking for serendipity at every bend; and Chicago gives you that joy of exploration.

One can also spot the soaring pinnacles of the iconic, luxury abode the Sheraton Hotel along the river, where even US Presidents stay!

On the streets below from the dizzying heights of our apartment — cars look like toy vehicles moving in straight lines with flashing lights and hooting sirens of the police cars, screaming into the silence of the night. Although the historic mafia gangsters of Al Capone and associates have long since vanished, the Chicago police don’t seem to perhaps believe that!

In the hushed silence of the apartment, I finish my armchair travelogues and reveries for the night, wondering what sights await me tomorrow. For Chicago never sleeps.

OPED

Training diplomats
The IFS has lost the shine
by Surendra Kumar

The training of the Indian Foreign Service officers is an issue which agitates many serving and retired Indian diplomats. But it can’t be seen in isolation; it has to be looked from the angle of recruitment, role of the Foreign Service Institute, adequate administrative and financial decision-making autonomy and the need for compressed and intense training with a maximum exposure to diverse viewpoints interspersed with on the desk experience.

For years the Foreign Service Institute has been treated like a parking lot and a dumping ground for officers who couldn’t be accommodated elsewhere. They were always looking for opportunities to get back to the South Block and had no interest in training the budding diplomats.

The Dean, even when he was the second seniormost officer in the MEA after the Foreign Secretary, was not a member of the FSB or DPC who could be of any assistance in terms of cushy foreign postings or promotions. He wasn’t associated with major decisions of the MEA and was seldom invited to receptions/dinners for the visiting dignitaries.

The professional course for foreign diplomats run by the Foreign Service Institute has been a successful tool of training diplomacy and won admiration from several friendly countries. Several Presidents and PMs have requested our PM from time to time for organising special courses for their diplomats.

Unlike Rio Bronco Institute in Brazil and its counterparts in Mexico where the Diplomatic Institute also recruits diplomats of tomorrow, the FSI has no role or say in the recruitment. Instead it is expected to train whosoever is given to train as the fresh recruit of the IFS.

Over the years the background of the young men and women joining the IFS has undergone a sea change. At one time, engineers, doctors and agriculture scientists couldn’t become diplomats. Today they can. In the past you have to have a good command on the English language,but now candidates can write some exams papers in their mother tongue and, if they score well, can land up in the Indian Foreign Service. This raises the problem of articulation.

In the last few batches roughly 80 per cent of the IFS officers hadn’t given IFS as their first choice. Every batch has around 40 per cent officers from medical, engineering and agriculture background! Some have done even MBA. What draws them to the IFS? The lost shine of the IFS!

In an increasingly consumerist society even the young, intelligent and educated people crave for a high lifestyle, comforts and money. Some relish a sense of power and authority. The IFS is not for those who look for money, power and authority. Foreign travel is no more an attraction.

Barring some 25 capitals in the world, the living standards are not much better in foreign postings compared to India. The opening of the Indian economy has also opened new career openings. All these factors have eroded the earlier glamour and halo of the IFS and led to a drift to other careers.

The argument that intellectual standards of Indian diplomats have gone down on account of affirmative action of the government is invalid. Ability to transform into a consummate diplomat is not anyone’s monopoly, so many gold medalists, university toppers have come out as croppers as diplomats as they couldn’t adapt to the requirements of the service and never learnt the craft of diplomacy.

Based on my own experience as the Dean and keeping in mind what I learnt from my interaction with several diplomatic institutes, I feel a good diplomat should have or acquire or inculcate the following attributes:

(a) A knack for making friends and curiosity to know about different religions, races, peoples, political and economic systems, social values, cultures, thoughts, ideas, mindsets, ways of life, arts, literatures, music, dance, cuisines, dresses and everything which connects with different peoples.

(b) Adaptability: one day one might land in Washington from Tripoli or vice versa. Without quick adaptability and adjustment a diplomat is doomed. One must keep improvising in different surroundings without getting one’s output affected adversely. Innovative and imaginative ideas are the survival kits for a diplomat.

(d) Ability to listen and appreciate others’ viewpoints.

(e) Patience in every sense (in negotiations, interaction, inter-personal dealings with foreign counterparts…)

(d) An eye for details, ability to read between the lines.

(e) Hard work, good stamina, mature and responsible negotiating skills and a pleasant demeanor are positive attributes needed in all services, including the IFS.

(f) Good reading habits to keep abreast with the fast-changing world and also be informed about one’s own country as well as the country one might happen to be in.

(f) Flair for public relations and high standards of hospitality, many foes have been turned into friends, thanks to the hospitality at the residences of Indian ambassadors.

The training includes lectures by JNU professors, retired Indian diplomats, attachment with divisions in the MEA, other ministries, trade promotion organisations, IDSA,IIM Bangalore and Army training.

To streamline training and make it more productive and focussed, I had formed the Abid Hussain Committee in 2007 which has already submitted its report to the ministry. It has made some valuable recommendations. Maybe, the MEA will implement some of them some day.

Each FS tries to keep the FSI under his/her thumb. In my view, the FSI should have a high profile and be given maximum possible functional autonomy and administrative and financial decision-making.

Shyam Saran had issued an order introducing some very positive steps to strengthen and expand the role of the FSI when he was the Foreign Secretary. He wanted it to be a training institute and also to emerge as a credible think tank with facilities for an in-house research centre. Unfortunately, his successor didn’t agree with those ideas and never implemented them.

All knowledge and wisdom doesn’t reside in South Block and JNU alone. In today’s fast-changing globalised world, multi-layered and multi-dimensional training is essential for creating a multi-tasking, multi-faceted diplomat coping with complexities of the 21st century.

Making it possible for academics, scholars, economists, successful entrepreneurs to join the diplomatic career at the mid-level is not a bad idea. But it should be to enrich the service rather than to diminish the role of career diplomats.

The writer is a formerly Dean, Foreign Service Institute.

Nuclear threat from Iran
by Dore Gold

Defying history and logic, the idea that the West should diplomatically engage with Iran still commands an important following. Despite the massive waves of demonstrators across Iran who charged their government with rigging the June 12 presidential elections, there still are officials in the Obama administration who seem to believe that engagement with the Islamic Republic should “remain on the table,” as columnist Roger Cohen put it in The New York Times Magazine this week.

Javier Solana, the European Union foreign policy chief, agrees: “We would like very much that soon we will have the possibility to restart multilateral talks with Iran on the important nuclear issues,” he said on June 24.

But they’re wrong, just as they have been from the start. Indeed, there are plenty of reasons to be skeptical about sticking to engagement. The main one is that it has already been tried — and utterly failed. Iran has consistently used the West’s willingness to engage as a delaying tactic, a smoke screen behind which Iran’s nuclear program has continued undeterred and, in many cases, undetected.

Back in 2005, Hassan Rowhani, the former chief nuclear negotiator of Iran during the reformist presidency of Mohammad Khatami, made a stunning confession in an internal briefing in Tehran, just as he was leaving his post. He explained that in the period during which he sat across from European negotiators discussing Iran’s uranium enrichment ambitions, Iran quietly managed to complete the critical second stage of uranium fuel production: its uranium conversion plant in Isfahan. He boasted that the day Iran started its negotiations in 2003 “there was no such thing as the Isfahan project.” Now, he said, it was complete.

Rowhani’s revelation showed clearly how Iran exploited the West’s engagement. Moreover, the Iranians violated their 2004 agreement with the EU and brilliantly dragged out further negotiations that followed. Equally important, they delayed Western punitive moves against them, keeping the U.N. Security Council at bay for years.

Mohammed Javad Larijani, a former deputy foreign minister and brother to Rowhani’s successor as chief negotiator, admitted the logic of diplomatic engagement from the Iranian side: “Diplomacy must be used to lessen pressure on Iran for its nuclear program.”

Advocates of engagement with Iran often use an unfair argument to advance their case: Their cause, they claim, is opposed mainly by Israel, which is pushing its own narrow agenda. True, Israel is a target of Iran, whose leadership calls for the “elimination of Israel from the region” — to quote the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who said this years before President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. So that there would be no confusion about Iranian intent, Khamenei’s words were hung from a Shahab 3 missile in a military parade in 2003.

But Israel is not Iran’s only target. If that were the case, the Iranians would have had no reason to develop missiles that fly well past Israeli territory to Central Europe and beyond.

Arab officials don’t need prompting from Israel. Their common fear is that a nuclear Iran will embolden groups such as Hezbollah, which will feel it enjoys a nuclear sponsor protecting it from any retaliatory action. Unlike their Western counterparts, these Arab officials are savvy enough to distinguish between status quo states that just want to assure the security of their borders and ideologically driven revolutionary powers like Iran with expansive aims.

An Iran with hegemonistic aspirations will not be talked out of acquiring nuclear weapons through a new Western incentives package. Only the most severe economic measures aimed at Iran’s dependence on imported gasoline, backed with the threat of Western military power, might pull the Iranians back at the last minute. Until now, U.N. sanctions on Iran have been too weak to have any real effect.

It is critical to understand that an Iran that crosses the nuclear threshold after repeated warnings that doing so is “unacceptable” would be even less likely to be deterred in the future. It would provide global terrorism the kind of protective umbrella that al-Qaida never had back on 9/11, including Hezbollah cells located at present in Central Europe and Latin America. Some Arab states, like Qatar, have already been largely “Finlandized,” to borrow a Cold War term for states that make their foreign policy subservient to the wishes of a powerful neighbor. But as Iran’s nuclear program continues unopposed, more Arab states will follow, changing the Middle East entirely.

Halting the Iranian nuclear program is a global imperative; acquiescing to a nuclear Iran in the hope that it will pragmatically understand the limits of its own power would be a colossal mistake.

— By arrangement with LA Times-Washington Post

A quarter-life crisis after graduation
by Lindsay Minnema

Armed with a degree in political science from Northeastern University, Heidi Buchanan came to Washington in June 2006 to find her dream job in public policy. What she found instead was that life after college wasn’t all she had hoped it would be.

There was the job she didn’t like, the new city in which she had no friends and the nostalgia she felt for the happiness of her college years. Put them all together, and what Buchanan had was a severe case of post-graduation blues.

Call it a quarter-life crisis, the 20-something version of a midlife crisis, in which sufferers struggle to establish their sense of identity and purpose. It’s not a new phenomenon, but today’s young people seem to experience it more acutely than the young people who came before them. And with the tumultuous economy and job market meltdown of the past year, recent grads are getting a double helping of quarter-life anxiety.

Unlike young adults of generations past, many of whom were married and settled in their careers by their mid-20s, today’s college grads experience a longer period of transition to the settled-down stage, said Jeffrey Jensen Arnett, a research professor of psychology at Clark University in Massachusetts and author of “Emerging Adulthood: The Winding Road From Late Teens Through the Twenties.”

“It is a unique time of life when people are not entirely dependent on their parents ... but they don’t have a stable life structure with marriage and parenthood and stable work,” Arnett said. “They go in a lot of directions, change jobs a lot, change love partners. They go through a long period of figuring out who they are and how they fit in the world.”

Arnett believes this transition period can be positive, with its opportunities for growth and adventure. But for some people, the turmoil brings worry, fears of failure or of being trapped by responsibilities, or depression.

In the case of Buchanan, who is now 26, her job made her unhappy because she didn’t know what she really wanted out of her career. Then in March this year, the bad economy made her decision for her: She was laid off. Suddenly she found herself having to re-examine her life.

“Maybe I want a career totally out of the ordinary — say like being a flight attendant,” she wrote on her blog, Life in Pink. “I’d love to travel and meet new people. But to be honest? I just ... don’t know. At all.”

Lauren Kellar, a counselor at the Center for Well Being in Falls Church, Va., has seen many of her quarter-life clients laid off or facing pay cuts. Some have to ask their parents for help with paying bills, and some even have to move back home — a big blow to the self-esteem, she said.

In a recent online survey by CollegeGrad.com, a job search Web site, 68.9 percent of the more than 2,000 respondents said they would move back with their parents after graduating from college and stay there until they found a job. That is up from 64.6 percent in 2008 and 62.6 percent in 2007.

Even those with jobs sometimes feel stuck doing something they don’t enjoy because they fear they have no other options. “They want to go back to school for a master’s or MBA, and they’re not doing it because they’re already in debt,” Kellar said.

“Kids are changing their dreams,” said Leslie Seppinni, a marriage and family therapist and doctor of clinical psychology in Beverly Hills, Calif. They are “going for things more pragmatic in terms of earning a living and getting a job later. Kids are now thinking about what is the safe thing to do to get a paycheck.”

But the anxiety over the future and the disappointment in not landing passion-fulfilling jobs makes the quarter-life depression worse. At the same time, Seppinni said, technology is breeding a generation of online sulkers. No longer limited to sharing their woes at the family dinner table or while hanging out with friends, quarter-lifers have countless opportunities to brood in blogs and on Twitter and Facebook — anytime, anywhere. And finding fellow victims to commiserate with is never more than a click away.

— By arrangement with LA Times-Washington Post