The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

	Siliguri signals CPM needs to worry about its future THE Left Front, which has ruled over West Bengal for the last three decades without a break, suffered yet another blow this week when it comprehensively lost the election to the Siliguri Municipal Corporation for the first time since 1981. A resurgent opposition sent the Left Front packing by winning 29 of the 47 wards. The combined strength of the Left Front in the municipal board stands reduced to 17, prompting the CPM state secretary Biman Bose to lament that if there is one lesson from the election, it is that development alone cannot help win elections. Siliguri is symbolic for the CPM. North Bengal for long has been a CPM bastion and this is for the first time that Trinamul Congress has made its presence felt there, prompting an elated Mamata Banerjee to urge the Left Front government to move out and “let people work”. The election result is also remarkable because Mamata Banerjee did not campaign even once while Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee campaigned extensively along with other heavyweight leaders of the Left Front. Opposition unity between the Congress and the Trinamul Congress is clearly the single most important factor for the Left Front’s debacle. But other factors like poor governance, corruption and Marxist arrogance too may have turned the wind against the CPM, prompting one Left citadel after another to fall. The Left Front has only itself to blame for the seemingly irreversible slide. The comrades must be a concerned lot and are visibly at sea while grappling with issues of administration and governance. After nearly nine years in office as Chief Minister, Mr Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee has woken up to the need of a Chief Minister’s Office on the lines of the PMO. Left Front politicians hope this would lead to more effective governance, better coordination and faster delivery. But such cosmetic changes appear unlikely to carry conviction with the people before the Calcutta Municipal Corporation election next year and the Assembly election the year after.
	Tiger killings Alarming rise is cause for concern IN a nation where tiger population is down to a meagre 1,411 any news of tiger deaths is a cause for concern. However, the reports of tiger deaths crossing the 50 mark this year alone is truly alarming and has stirred the Centre to call meetings with 17 tiger-range states. In fact, even the beginning of 2009 saw a disturbing rise in tiger deaths. Not too long ago, the Centre was forced to admit in the Rajya Sabha that the situation in 16 of the country’s 37 tiger reserves is truly alarming. Undeniably, the spectre of extinction looms large over the big cat that has long been fighting for survival. Despite the government spending crores on tiger conservation, threat to the national animal has not receded. As tiger deaths continue unabated, recently the National Tiger Conservation Authority revised guidelines to the states for the formation of a Special Tiger Protection Force on the lines of the India Reserve Battalion. Earlier, the Union Minister of State for Forest and Environment, Mr Jairam Ramesh, came out with a plan to shift people living in tiger reserves to buffer zones as well as involvement of the local community in conservation drives. Since the tiger vs human conflict is one of the reasons attributed to tiger deaths, there is an urgent need to spread the message that the tiger’s survival is crucial for the ecosystem. Roping in local community, both in tiger protection force and intelligence gathering, can be the most vital link in protecting tigers against poachers who continue to make a killing out of trading in tiger parts. According to the Wildlife Protection Society of India, in the period 1994-2007, 832 tigers have been lost to poachers. Besides, coming down heavily upon poachers, tiger habitats need to be improved. The government has realised that it has to move beyond knee-jerk responses and has a holistic plan on tiger conservation in place. The living flame of the Indian forest cannot be allowed to be extinguished.
	Thought for the Day After all, what was a paradox but a statement of the obvious so as to make it sound untrue? — Ronald Knox
	Corrections and clarifications The headline “Cong not to give fresh tickets for relatives in Haryana” (Page 2, Sept 16) is inappropriate. It should instead have been “No Congress tickets for relatives of leaders in Haryana”. The use of the word ‘diktats’ in the headline “HC diktats to check milk adulteration” (Page 3, Sept.16) is improper. Instead, it should have been “directives”. There is some confusion about the manner in which seven members of a family were killed in Rohtak (Page 7, Sept.16). While the intro says they were poisoned and then clubbed, at another place in the report there is a reference to their being poisoned and then strangled with a rope. The contradiction should have been sorted out. 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 appears twice a week — every Tuesday 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

Dhaka’s flip-flop
India’s stance should be tougher on terrorism
by Wasbir Hussain

Bangladesh Foreign Minister and senior Awami League leader Dipu Moni’s three-day visit to India that concluded on September 10 has excited the media in Dhaka. The media there described her visit as a “breakthrough” in Indo-Bangla ties primarily because New Delhi agreed to concede Dhaka’s request for connectivity with land-locked Nepal and Bhutan. New Delhi may not quite be euphoric at the visit, but had reasons to be happy. The two sides, after all, concluded agreements in the realm of security that covered mutual assistance on criminal matters; transfer of sentenced persons; and combating international terrorism, organised crime and drug trafficking.

If the handshake between Ms Dipu Moni and her Indian counterpart, S.M. Krishna was a good photo opportunity that was supposed to signal improved ties between the two neighbours, the visiting minister’s meetings with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee was a demonstration of the importance New Delhi was according her. Besides, Ms Dipu Moni’s visit was supposed to lay the ground for a trip to India by premier Sheikh Hasina some time later. Haven’t we heard before that the Awami League, which returned to power in Bangladesh with a thumping majority in 2008, is a party that is friendly to India or even “pro-India”? Well, things may not be as simple as that!

Let’s look at one of the deals between India and Bangladesh arrived at during Ms Dipu Moni’s visit—transfer of sentenced persons. This was something which New Delhi was happy about because this bilateral agreement provided for Indians sentenced in Bangladesh to finish their jail term in India and vice versa. There is a rider though—the prisoners must themselves express their willingness to serve the remaining sentence in their home countries. Among many of its not-so-loyal citizens whom India has been keen to have back is Anup Chetia, general secretary of the outlawed United Liberation Front of Asom or ULFA, one of northeastern India’s dreaded separatist groups. The insurgent leader was arrested by Bangladeshi authorities in Dhaka in 1997 on charges of illegal entry and possession of foreign currency and satellite phones. Chetia was sentenced and imprisoned in Dhaka.

Ms Dipu Moni or for that matter Bangladesh is, however, not prepared to hand over the ULFA leader to India so easily. On her return to Dhaka, she said, “Anup Chetia has already finished his jail term and will not come under the purview of the agreement.” Dhaka has sought to take refuge in technicalities, saying the agreement it reached with New Delhi was applicable only to “sentenced persons”. Chetia, according to Dhaka, is no longer a sentenced person because he has already completed his jail term. More than one crucial question arises here: If Chetia has completed his jail term, where is he? Going by what Ms Dipu Moni has said, Chetia must be surely out of jail and living in Bangladesh a free man. Dhaka says he is still in jail for “security reasons”, a claim difficult to confirm independently.

We do know that Chetia had applied for political asylum in Bangladesh soon after his 1997 arrest on ground that his group was fighting a political battle in India and had to enter that country illegally to escape the law. A local rights group in Dhaka has been fighting his case all these years but we are not aware as yet if Dhaka has conceded to Chetia’s asylum request. The total lack of transparency on Dhaka’s part in dealing with the Chetia case has raised questions about the country’s sincerity in coming down against terror groups or cadres based in Bangladesh for their anti-India activities. A simple question needs to be answered by Dhaka: if Anup Chetia has completed his sentence and if Bangladesh has not yet granted him political asylum, how is the militant leader being allowed to stay on in the country?

Bangladesh, of course, reiterated once again during Ms Dipu Moni’s visit that it would not allow its territory to be used for any anti-India activity by rebels. That could well be the intent of the Awami League government. Because, unlike the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), the Awami League does not regard cadres of groups like ULFA as “freedom fighters” on the lines of the “Mukti Bahini”. Despite the intent, however, it may not be easy for Bangladesh to demonstrate political will because of the dynamics of domestic politics. In India, political parties across the board are usually united on foreign affairs. That is not the case in Bangladesh, particularly with regard to relations with India. Opinion makers in Bangladesh have already questioned Ms Dipu Moni’s wisdom in not having consultations with the Opposition in Dhaka before embarking on her India visit.

New Delhi also seems to be happy at Dhaka agreeing to the use of the Ashuganj Port in Bangladesh to transport machinery for the Palatana power project in Tripura. But Dhaka has said it would allow the use of Ashuganj Port only to transport oversized components of the power project. As if to pre-empt the Opposition in Dhaka from levelling a sellout slur on the Hasina government, Ms Dipu Moni clarified: “It does not mean that we have agreed to let Ashuganj be used as a new port of call under the protocol of the Inland Water Transit and Trade.” The permission to use Ashuganj Port, in all probability, will be a one-time arrangement, and that is nothing to be really excited about from India’s point of view. Yes, the visiting Bangladeshi Foreign Minister also did not give a firm commitment to India’s long-standing plea for use of the Chittagong Port to service the landlocked northeastern states.

A few questions arise: Why has India been finding it so difficult to tackle Bangladesh? Why is India’s eastern frontier, particularly the 4,000-kilometre-long border with Bangladesh, spiked with problems? Dhaka denies the presence of Indian militant camps or militants on its territory; it claims there has been no illegal migration of its citizens to India; it is still not sure whether or not it should give India access to the Chittagong Port, and generally pursues a blow-hot-blow-cold relationship with India.

New Delhi’s predicament is understandable: a country that is the undisputed “super power” in the subcontinent cannot be expected to acknowledge its problem and its failure to resolve such problems with a small neighbour. That, perhaps, explains New Delhi’s so-called magnanimity towards Dhaka despite the irritants. Dhaka, however, does not think that New Delhi is magnanimous, but that’s another matter.

What India needs to do is to shake off its 1971 hangover and not expect Dhaka to be still grateful for New Delhi’s contribution in securing the country’s freedom. Perhaps New Delhi should start treating Bangladesh and deal with it in a manner it would deal with any other nation outside the sub-continent. Dhaka should not be taken for granted and being a bigger and more powerful neighbour, India should be a little more liberal with Bangladesh on such issues as trade and help remove the trade imbalance to the extent possible. But on issues such as dealing with terror, particularly Northeast Indian militants operating from that country, New Delhi should adopt a tougher stance and force Dhaka to act. Not handing ULFA leader Chetia is one thing and not acting against anti-India terror groups operating from Bangladeshi soil is another.

The writer is Director, Centre for Development and Peace Studies, Guwahati.

MIDDLE

Handkerchief and ‘Hema Malini’
by Justice S.D. Anand

THE only time our father, also a Judicial Officer at that point of time, visited us was when me and my sister were posted at Gurgaon. We were a trio, the third incumbent of the residence being one of our younger sisters, then a student of B.A. Part II.

After visiting certain relations at New Delhi and scanning the market at Ajmal Khan Road, we landed at a tri-junction which had a “by request” stop for buses bound for Gurgaon. Though the bus service between Delhi and Gurgaon was fairly quick, the wait on that day grew longer. Of course, our father being around and in wait was also weighing on our mind. The waiting crowd, in the meantime, increased manifold.

Ultimately, the bus to ferry us to our destination came over. We pushed ourselves into it and, in an endeavour to ensure that all of us got seats, placed a handkerchief on one of the seats. We had done nothing novel because that was an acknowledged conventional method of “occupation” of a seat. However, an unmanageably fat man would not accept that methodology. He removed that handkerchief and occupied the seat. When reminded that the practice adopted by him was unfair, he retorted by saying: “Ab tum Hema Malini par rumaal rakh doge to kya woh tumhari ho zayegi” (If you were to place your handkerchief upon Hema Malini, will she be yours).

We did not relish his ‘rejection’ of the practice existing since hoary past. However, we ‘swallowed’ the act and remained incognito. My only satisfaction was that at least my father and both sisters were comfortably seated.

After about a month, I was at the fag end of day’s cause list. It was the last working day of the month. The non-appearance of the plaintiff in an exparte case was holding up my departure for the residence.

The orderly, charged with the duty of calling out cases, was a harried lot. He informed the Reader, in an apparently concealing tone, that the plaintiff to that case was present outside the court but was ‘reluctant’ to enter the court.

It was his counsel who ultimately brought him in and got his statement recorded. After decreeing that exparte suit for recovery, I just called upon the plaintiff to tell me if the practice of ‘occupation’ of a bus seat by placing a handkerchief thereon had undergone a change. He was obviously the gentleman who had authored the above quoted dialogue in the bus. He gave a sheepish smile and ‘evaporated’, much to the amusement of all those present in the court.

The writer is a Judge of the Punjab & Haryana High Court.

OPED

Tradition, old values still alive in Bangalore
by Kuldip Nayar

I have come back from Bangalore, impressed and struck by its prosperity as well as cosmopolitism. Slums are there, but not like the ones in Delhi, which has hordes of them with new ones coming up all the time. Politicians, bureaucrats and corporate chieftains are hand in glove with one another. But the nexus is so open in Delhi that some top families in the political field are in the background.

At Bangalore the scale is less and the involvement of top ruling families is comparatively minimal. People spend money on clothes and on eating out. Yet the number of expensively dressed people is fewer and there is no ostentation. In Delhi, it is spending money for the sake of spending and a craze for brands, which is practically absent in Bangalore.

People there have a sort of simplicity which the Delhi-ites had some 40 years ago. The country of traditions and values still peers through the opulent Silicon Valley of India. There is a touch of orderliness.

One thing which pleased me the most was that a Muslim could seek accommodation anywhere in Bangalore and get it. There is no last-minute excuse to bar him on the plea that he is a non-vegetarian, an excuse given in Delhi or, for that matter, in many big cities.

Traffic is bad but not like what prevails in Delhi, where it is the survival of the fittest. And one shower does not put the entire city out of gear. Even to get out of your locality in Delhi, you take 45 minutes during the rain. Bangalore has much more rain but the drainage system is far better.

In Delhi you hear about the preparations to tackle rainwater before the monsoon. But there is hardly anything when the rain comes. It is the same story year after year. Rulers and bureaucrats appear to have a nexus with contractors and most funds go to their pockets. People in Bangalore also criticise their government on the limited facilities. But they are more civic-minded than the ones living in Delhi.

When I compare the Karnataka state with Punjab from where I come, I find the former is better off. True, farmers earn less than the ones in Punjab. The latter are hardy and adventurous. This year when the rains failed, their hard work would give the country as much rice as they did in the past.

However, the Karnataka farmers are not addicted to booze and drugs as farmers in Punjab are. This is depriving farmers in Punjab of their land. The bug of going abroad has not bitten the Kannadas yet. The obsession of Punjabis, particularly of Sikh youth, is to settle in a foreign country. They will spare no effort to do so. In the process, they sell even their small land-holdings.

Corruption is seething in both states and it is difficult to say which one beats the other. However, you can still find in Karnataka many civil servants who are honest. In Punjab, they can be counted on fingers, thanks to politicians.

Former Prime Minister Deve Gowda, who was in the same plane in which I travelled from New Delhi to Bangalore, told me how the owners of Bellary mines had corrupted public life in the state and how there was an illegal makeover of the Bangalore-Mysore corridor that has left slum dwellers on the road and the Supreme Court helpless. It is a scandal which should have rocked the nation, but it did not. That is the complaint of Gowda. True, corruption by the corporate sector is galling in Karnataka.

Justice N.Santosh Hegde, the state’s Lok Ayukta, was more telling while exposing the entire political machinery for corrupting society. Corruption killed good governance. He pointed out that on the one hand Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had declared there would zero tolerance on corruption and, on the other, he had removed or eased the laws relating to corruption.

New Delhi has again brought back the legislation that an official of the rank of Joint Secretary and above cannot be touched even for inquiry without the government’s prior permission. The Supreme Court had rejected this distinction. The law has been challenged before it but awaits disposal.

In the meanwhile, the BJP, ruling the state, is doing all it can to saffronise society. The fight put up by the secular forces is equally strong, but government machinery is on the BJP side.

Since the Kannada people are not a biased lot, the BJP would find it hard to have its Hindutva methods making any headway. If the BJP does not mend its ways and goes on needling Muslims and other minorities, I would not be surprised if the party is defeated at the polls next time.

One thing disturbing from the point of India’s unity I found in Karnataka was more and more use of English in place of Hindi or even the mother tongue, Kannada. The state is not as bad as Tamil Nadu where Hindi is a taboo. Still English is allowed as the medium of instruction.

When challenged, the Supreme Court has held that it is not necessary to be taught in the mother tongue or the regional language. This goes against the spirit, if not the letter of the Constitution which has laid down the switchover from English to Hindi as the link language from 1955.

Many developments have taken place since to give a veto power to the non-Hindi speaking states. Now the switchover to Hindi depends on them because it is they who have to say that they are ready for the switchover. They should be saying soon.

Karnataka Chief Minister Yediurappa may well be the first person to initiate birth control. No political party is talking about it. The impression is that the Congress lost the election after the Emergency in 1977 because Sanjay Gandhi sent policemen to bedrooms.

That step was bad enough, but in the process the family planning has got a bad name. The Congress lost elections in northern India because of the excesses during the Emergency, not because of birth control. The Karnataka Chief Minister has revived the slogan, Hum do, Hamare do. This should be propagated by the Centre’s Health Ministry, which seems too occupied with the swine flu.

True, India’s population growth averages less than 2 per cent a year, although some states are above it. Still this growth is negating the advantage of development. India has to aim at zero per cent growth, as China is doing, to ensure the elimination of poverty. After having crossed the one-billion mark, the birth control is a must.

When the waste is nuclear
by Frank von Hippel

THE Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository project is now comatose, if not dead. And that puts us back at square one on a crucial question: What are we going to do with all the radioactive waste being discharged by U.S. nuclear power reactors?

Many conservatives on Capitol Hill favor the French “solution”: spent-fuel reprocessing. But reprocessing isn’t a solution at all: It’s a very expensive and dangerous detour.

Reprocessing takes used or “spent” nuclear fuel and dissolves it to separate the uranium and plutonium from the highly radioactive fission products. The plutonium and uranium are then recycled to make new reactor fuel, thereby reducing the amount of fresh uranium required by about 20 percent. But based on French and Japanese experience, the cost of
producing this recycled fuel is several times that of producing fresh uranium reactor fuel.

In the past, about half of France’s reprocessing capacity was used to process spent fuel from foreign reactors. Because of the high cost, however, virtually all of those foreign customers have decided to follow the U.S. example and simply store their used reactor fuel.

The French reprocessing company AREVA claims that its method reduces the volume and longevity of the radioactive waste produced by nuclear power reactors. But when you take into account the additional radioactive waste streams created by reprocessing and plutonium recycling, the volume of the long-lived radioactive waste is not reduced. And most of the recycled plutonium is neither destroyed nor reused. Its isotopic makeup makes it difficult to use in existing reactors, so AREVA simply stores most of it at the reprocessing plant.

Reprocessing as practiced in France amounts to an expensive way to shift France’s radioactive waste problem from its reactor sites to the reprocessing plant.

For some of AREVA’s customers, that is the point. When I asked the fuel managers of Japan’s nuclear utilities why they reprocess, their answer was that they would love to store their spent fuel on site as the U.S. does until an underground radioactive waste repository becomes available.

But local governments have vetoed dry-cask storage at their nuclear power plants. The stark choice for the industry, therefore, is to either pay for reprocessing or shut down all of Japan’s 53 power
reactors.

Reprocessing is enormously dangerous. The amount of radioactivity in the liquid waste stored at France’s plant is more than 100 times that released by the Chernobyl accident. That is why France’s government set up antiaircraft missile batteries around its reprocessing plant after the 9/11 attacks.

Even more dangerous, however, is the fact that reprocessing provides access to plutonium, a nuclear weapon material. That is why the U.S. turned against it after 1974, the year India used the first plutonium separated with U.S.-provided reprocessing for a nuclear explosion.

President Gerald Ford and Henry Kissinger, his secretary of State, managed to intervene before France and Germany sold reprocessing plants to South Korea, Pakistan and Brazil, all of which had secret weapons programs at the time.

Since that time, the U.S. government’s argument that “we don’t reprocess, you don’t need to either,” has been extremely successful. Japan is the only non-nuclear weapon state that still does today. If the U.S. began to reprocess again, that would legitimize another route to the bomb for nuclear weapon wannabes.

The U.S. made the mistake with Yucca Mountain of trying to force a repository on an unwilling state. One alternative would be to follow the path of Finland and Sweden, which have placed their underground repositories in communities that already host nuclear power plants. They have found that once people in a community have accepted a nuclear facility, they view the addition of an underground repository as a relatively minor issue.

In the meantime, spent fuel can be safely stored on site in dry casks for decades. It is not a permanent solution, but there is no reason to panic until we can build more permanent facilities. Reprocessing would be a panic solution.

The writer, a physicist, is a professor of public and international affairs at Princeton University

— By arrangement with LA Times-Washington Post

Where are role models?
by Sudarshan Agarwal

TWO Central ministers have stayed for over three months in five-star hotels; one of them occupying a presidential suite in Taj Palace which costs a lakh of rupees per day for occupancy.

When the ministers were advised by their senior colleague to shift from the hotels, both asserted that they would be paying from their own pockets. It is yet to be seen whether they would personally foot the bill.

I think these ministers and all others will do well to take note of the Prime Minister’s exhortation to captains of industry at the annual session of the CII in 2007 when, inter alia, the Prime Minister said: “The media often highlights the vulgar display of industrialists’ wealth. An area of great concern is the level of ostentatious expenditure on weddings and other family events. Such vulgarity insults the poverty of the less privileged, it is socially wasteful and it plants seeds of resentment in the minds of the have-nots. If those who are better off do not act in a more socially responsible manner, our growth process may be at risk, our polity may become anarchic and our society may get further divided. We cannot afford these luxuries”.

The Prime Minister’s exhortation to industry to eschew conspicuous consumption, to save more and waste less, to be role models of probity, moderation and charity, equally applies to our ministers who are committed to serve the poor and downtrodden of this country. If only some of our ministers had the sensitivity to public perception about their lifestyles, they would think twice before continuing with those luxurious lifestyles.

I cannot comprehend why some of the ministers are reluctant to travel economy on domestic and business class on international routes. If they do so, they would endear themselves to the Indian public. This will enhance their public image as men and women committed to serve their countrymen.

In 1991 when serving as the Secretary General of the Rajya Sabha, I had written to Dr Monmohan Singh, then our Finance Minister, requesting for the withdrawal of first class air travel facility from officers of Secretary level as also the entitlement of a suite while staying in a hotel abroad.

Within six days, the Finance Ministry issued orders that no officer of the rank of Secretary to the Government of India would travel first class on international routes and that their entitlement to accommodation in the hotels would be restricted to single-room accommodation.

When I received this communication from the ministry, I wrote a congratulatory letter to Dr Manmohan Singh and appealed to him to travel business class on his foreign travels.

I wrote to say that people in high places must set the moral tone by their personal example. It is heart-warming to share with the readers that Dr Manmohan Singh travelled business class on this visit to Japan. It is another thing that the bureaucrats later on got those orders reversed and resumed first class air travel on foreign visits.

I served as the Governor for five and a half years and had always travelled economy class on my domestic visits. I faced no problems or inconvenience.

Lal Bahadur Shastri exhorted the nation to miss a meal in a week. There was a telling message of austerity, economy and concern for the less fortunate. But where are the role models today?

The writer is a former Governor of Uttarakhand and Sikkim