The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Upward Ho!
FIIs driving up Sensex

THE Bombay Stock Exchange Sensitive Index has crossed another milestone in its upward journey that began six months ago. It has been a swift comeback rally with the last 1,000 points added in just 16 trading sessions to push the Sensex past the 17,000-mark. The upturn has rewarded investors who did not sell in panic last year when faced with a global meltdown. While the number of such investors riding the financial storm may not be large, others who reinvested around March this year, when stock markets the world over had bottomed out, must have recovered their losses and even made profits.

Three factors are driving up stock prices. First, foreign institutional investors (FIIs) and hedge funds are parking huge amounts of dollars in the Indian equity markets. According to the official data, they have pumped in Rs 13,000 crore since the second week of September and there is yet no sign of the flow of dollars coming to an end. Second, the US Federal Reserve has kept the interest rate between zero and 0.25 per cent. FIIs and hedge funds are lapping up the easy money and deploying it in gold, commodities and equities. Third, stock markets across the world have gained substantially since March, thanks to positive data about the strengthening of the economic recovery. Corporate results have been better than expected in India and the filing of advance tax indicates the positive trend will continue.

It is the retail investor who generally blunders in making entry and exit decisions. Anyone buying stocks at this time will put himself at greater risk than the one who entered the market in March or April. The latest figures show that retail investors and Indian mutual funds have turned wiser after burning their fingers last year and have been seeking the exit door since the Sensex crossed 16,000.

Pursuit of perfection
Manna Dey deserves Phalke award

THE news that singing maestro Manna Dey has been chosen for the prestigious Dada Saheb Phalke Award for the year 2007 should be music to his admirers. A perfectionist to the core, whenever his flawless voice has touched a song it has become a classic. His immortal film songs like Ae mere pyaare watan, Ae meri zohra jabeen and Zindagi kaisi yeh paheli have delighted listeners, cutting across time and age. Manna Dey, who belongs to an era when film music was sublime and soothing, truly deserves the highest award for his life-long achievement.

Born Prabodh Chandra Dey, the singer’s tryst with Hindi film music began with the movie Tamanna in 1943. Since then his inimitable voice has graced innumerable films spanning decades. Melancholy, chutzpah, love and its pain, his voice has mirrored an entire gamut of emotions. Trained by his uncle, the legendary singer of his times, K C Dey, and Ustad Aman Ali Khan and Ustad Abdul Rahman Khan, his forte lay in raga-based compositions, and versatility has been his hallmark. Romantic duets, qawaalis, folk compositions, playful songs — his repertoire has been wide-ranging and included all possible genres. He could blend classical notes with popular music with ease. Having sung many Bengali songs, he is equally comfortable with Rabindra Sangeet. Honours are not new to Dey who has won many national awards. He is a recipient of the Padma Bhushan.

While many may feel that the award has come to him rather late in the day, the singer has expressed no rancour, rather he is “extremely happy and honoured” with the recognition. Having bid adieu to film music, he proclaims: “the old must give way to the new”. His aficionados, however, would anyday choose to tune in to his eternal songs that have a life of their own.

Thought for the Day

The state is like the human body. Not all of its functions are dignified.
— Anatole France

ARTICLE

Pak’s Gilgit package
Can clear way for a settlement along LoC
by Justice Rajindar Sachar (retd)

President Asif Zardari’s address at the U.N. General Assembly reiterating his priority for the resumption of composite dialogue with India and seeking a peaceful resolution of outstanding issues, including Kashmir, has again opened a window through which possibly a permanently workable solution to the J & K imbroglio can be worked out between India and Pakistan.

I am more than optimistic now, notwithstanding the brooding presence of 26/11 in all communications between the governments of India and Pakistan, because of the recently announced Gilgit-Baltistan package by Islamabad. It needs to be emphasised that since April 28, 1949, Pakistan has had administrative control over this region, and it was governed through Pakistan’s presidential ordinances.

This admission that a good part of old J & K is under the occupation of Pakistan and the Gilgit area is now to be directly under the Pakistan Prime Minister’s Council coupled with Pakistan having ceded hundreds of miles area in Aksai Chin permanently to China is a clear admission by Islamabad that all talk of part of J & K on its own side of the LoC was an independent state was nothing but a concerted move to malign India as if India was forcibly occupying the whole of J & K. It deceived no one but quite a few years back that was the understanding of quite a number of international community members, facilitated, no doubt, by the reluctance by our Foreign Office for years not to highlight it at international fora. Much less were they aware that the Gilgit-Baltistan part of erstwhile J & K was directly under the Pakistan Government’s control. But such was the unexplained attitude of our Foreign Office that it preferred to take all this blame on the misplaced assumption that this will strengthen the case of India to be able to retain the whole of erstwhile J & K.

It is only later that gradually and mostly because of the representatives from the Gilgit-Baltistan area that it became open knowledge that Pakistan, which in public expressed so much support for independent J & K, had put under its tutelage the area without even the pretence of formal democracy and self-rule. Such was the disdain of Pakistan for the sensitivity of J & K people that it has permanently ceded thousands of sq miles to China in Aksai Chin which goes against the proclaimed desire to maintain the integrity of the whole of J & K as one unit. In a practical sense, these acts obviously were (though not expressed openly) a silent recognition by Pakistan that it would be agreeable to settle the J & K question on the basis of the existing factual boundaries with the LoC being made a permanently soft border and with more friendly ties of trade and travel between the two sides of the LoC.

Much has happened since 26/11 which has put further pressure on Pakistan, accentuated by the US debacle in Afghanistan, to genuinely take some effective steps against terrorists, the Taliban. This as well as the army involvement in Swat and Pakistan’s quiet acceptance of Taliban leader Mehsud being killed by a US drone (but no doubt with complicity from the Pakistan government) has opened a route through which a mutually acceptable solution to J & K could be found between India and Pakistan.

Some people in India have justifiably voiced their criticism at this sham of democratic set-up for GilgitBaltistan. The Government of India has obviously taken the usual official line to protest against Pakistan seeking to incorporate the Gilgit-Baltistan region on the obviously technically correct argument that as the whole of J & K (which included the Gilgit-Baltistan region) acceded to India in 1947, the action of Pakistan is illegal. Speaking purely in legalese, this official position is incontestable. As a matter of fact, Mr Alstair Lamb, the internationally known jurist, who had been briefed by Pakistan to opine on the accession by Maharaja to India, has said that the accession is legal. He has gone further to say that the announcement of Pandit Nehru that there will be a plebiscite subject to conditions approved by the UN General Assembly was only obiter and had no legal sanction, because India’s Independence Act only empowered the ruler of the state to decide on the question of accession and the Maharaja having acceded unconditionally, the validity of accession cannot be called in question by invoking a subsequent statement of Nehru.

No, I am not so cut off from practical realism as to advocate India’s claim over the whole of J & K because of the validity of the Instrument of Accession. Both in India and Pakistan we have to realise and accept practical realities and the acceptable formula. For India to lay its claim to the whole of Kashmir is as unrealistic as is for Pakistan to insist on a plebiscite — which can only be voting for India or Pakistan. The Hurriyat and other groups in J & K should also realise that the question of independent J & K , outside India and Pakistan, is a non-starter.

Is it not clear to even a novice in the political domain that no government in Pakistan or India can agree to give up the territory of J & K which at present falls under its respective jurisdiction, and no government either in Pakistan or India can survive if it acts differently? That is the ground reality, which constraints not only the governments but also any honest appraisal of the matter.

But this does not mean that India can underplay the sentiments and aspirations of the people of J & K, especially of the valley, which has been in a state of turmoil and has raised many uncomfortable questions of violation of human rights in the state. Consequently, it is incumbent for all political parties in India to commit before the public their agreement that only subjects such as defence, foreign affairs, currency and communications as were ceded by the Instrument of Accession will be Central subjects. All other subjects will be within the jurisdiction of J&K. Article 370 will continue and, therefore, the Centre will have no jurisdiction over any other subject unless the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly so permits by a resolution.

The Central government should withdraw all the Central legislation which the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly had authorised it earlier. (In practical terms, this would not create a void because these are normal pieces of legislation like the Municipal Act and the Industrial Act which the state government itself will have to provide for proper governance).This exclusive autonomous power to legislate has already been given to certain areas in Assam and Meghalaya decades ago by a constitutional amendment. Can one hope for some such silver lining in India-Pakistan relations, clouded as they are at present by the 26/11 syndrome?n

The writer is a retired Chief Justice of the High Court of Delhi.

MIDDLE

Women lib and washing machine
by Navjit Singh Johal

ABOUT a quarter century ago, when we were in the process of settling down after marriage, we didn’t have a washing machine. A guest, who came to stay with us for a few days, asked me whether we had one. After getting a positive reply he asked about the brand. “Anguri,” I replied. “Anguri?” he asked with a big question mark and mysterious smile on his face.

Next morning when he brought his dirty clothes for washing, he asked about the location of the washing machine. I told him to hand over his dirty clothes to our maid servant, whose name was Anguri. I could see the same smile on his face again.

After a few months we bought a washing machine, but I never seriously thought about it until recently when I read a news item from the Vatican stating that it had found that the washing machine has done more to “liberate” the women than even the contraceptive pill. In an editorial published in its official newspaper to commemorate the International Women’s Day, 2009, the Vatican stated that washing machine has liberated women from tiresome household chores. “Put in the power, close the lid and relax”, was the catch line of the editorial.

These editorial comments forced me to think about the plight of crores of Indian women living in the rural areas who wash truckloads of clothes everyday. I could also not understand why these rural women used to “beat” the clothes with a cricket bat-like wooden stick, “thapi”.

When I was going through a tense period, one day suddenly I found something very different that brought the smile back on my face. While surfing the TV channels, I found a woman singing a song. The starting lines instantly attracted my attention:

“Saara din TV utte sundi main gaane

Machine aape dhondi te sukaundi Kapde.”

(I listen to songs on television the whole day, the machine washes and dries up the clothes.)

For the first time I realised that washing machine has not only liberated the “Angrezi” women, it has also emancipated the “Desi”, too. The body movements, facial expressions and gestures of the singer were a testimony to the great feelings of that “relaxed” Punjaban.

Over the years, like most of the urban husbands, I have learnt the art of “putting the powder and closing the lid,” and my wife has learnt the great art of “relaxation”.

I don’t think I’ll ever be able to know the Vatican’s views on men’s liberation as no day is celebrated as men’s day.

OPED

Mahatma’s message is still relevant
by Mohan Dharia

Mahatma Gandhiji would have completed 140 years on October 2, 2009, had he been alive. He had always expressed his desire that he would live for at least 125 years with his regular exercise, simple living and high thinking.

On January 30, 1948, Gandhiji succumbed to bullets fired by a communal fanatic. Though he had always opposed “partition of India”, unfortunately he was held responsible for it.

Coming from a modest family, Gandhiji completed his graduation at his birth place, Porbandar, in Gujarat and proceeded to England to be a Barrister at Law. Gandhiji had never shown any spark as a student.

After his return to India, Gandhiji moved to Bombay and started his practice at the Bombay High Court. Those days his earnings were meager. On one day he was invited to South Africa by a Muslim merchant to conduct his civil matters.

Being a Barrister, Gandhiji was entitled to practise in any court in the countries occupied by the British empire. While in South Africa Gandhiji was agonised to see discrimination by the white people against the black, including some Indians.

One day Gandhiji was thrown out of a train with his bag and baggage by a British traveller, though he had reserved his berth in the first class compartment. This event proved to be the first turning point in Gandhiji’s life. From then onwards, Gandhiji resolved to fight injustice in a peaceful manner.

When Gandhiji started the non-violent, he was ridiculed by all sections of society. Everybody felt that it would be impossible to fight the mighty British empire through a non-violent struggle by non-cooperation. He was determined to succeed in the movement.

Gradually, black people extended all possible support to Gandhiji and it became difficult for Britishers to rule or carry their day-to-day affairs without cooperation of the black people. General Smutts, who was in charge of South Africa, was left with no other choice but to negotiate with Gandhiji.

After learning about various stories of atrocities, General Smutts decided to ensure justice for Gandhiji and his supporters.

The House of Commons agreed with the suggestion of General Smutts and ultimately Gandhiji succeeded in his first non-violent peaceful struggle in South Africa. He was in South Africa for a few more years. He made several experiments through his Tolstoy Farm and decided to come back to India. By then the story of successful struggle of Gandhiji had reached various parts of India.

After his return to India, Gandhiji resolved to join politics. He went to Pune and met Lokmanya Tilak — the most formidable leader. He was with Tilak for two days and he felt that he was standing at the foothills of the Great Himalayas. He then met another eminent leader — Gopal Krishna Gokhale, from Pune. He felt Gokhale was like the slow flowing river of Ganga. Anybody can have a dip and purify himself.

Gandhiji was thoroughly impressed with the approach of Gopal Krishna Gokhale and accepted him as his “political guru”. At the outset Gokhale advised Gandhiji to first get acquainted with India, Indian people and their abject poverty. Accordingly, Gandhiji started his all-India tour.

While Gandhiji was touring Bihar, he witnessed atrocities on the downtrodden committed by rich landlords in their farms. This event proved to be the “second turning point” in the life of Mahatma Gandhiji. Then and there he resolved to free these people from the clutches of landlords.

Gandhiji advised people to take up constructive programmes. These included sanitation, primary education, spinning and weaving that would give some financial relief to the poor people.

Gandhiji was opposed to partition of the country. Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru became the Prime Minister of India because of Gandhiji’s suggestion. Sardar Patel and some leaders gave their consent for partition. They were extremely worried over killings and atrocities. Barrister Jinnah was once a Congress leader. His ego was hurt and the Britishers took advantage of the situation. He became the spokesman of the Muslim League and was instrumental in partition. His role suited the Britishers, who were interested in weakening and dividing India.

During 1946-47 Gandhiji went to Naukhali (now in Bangladesh) and started his mission to establish peace.

Gandhiji always believed in peace, non-violence, discussion and dialogue. He had a great faith in moral values. He was a staunch believer in God. Though Gandhiji is no more, his philosophy of peace and non-violence is the need of the hour as the present world is filled with hatred.

It is not the nuclear or hydrogen bombs which could save the world, but the philosophy of Gandhiji that could save the world. Even his message to live with nature is relevant with the growing threat of global warming.

The writer is a former Cabinet minister and Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission

China has come a long way
by Nina Hachigian

WHAT better way to celebrate a birthday than to take to the world stage? Last week, Hu Jintao became the first Chinese president to address the U.N. General Assembly, a privilege seemingly reserved for the U.S. president and colorful despots such as Moammar Gadhafi.

The People’s Republic, which turned 60 on Thursday, has evolved from tin-pot polity to powerhouse. And among the spectacular transformations China has undergone, its dramatic turnabout in how it relates to the world stands out.

China began as a pariah state, rejected by and hostile toward the world community. Marxism shaped its view of international organizations as the “instruments of capitalist imperialism and hegemonism,” and for decades China had little to do with them.

Fast-forward to last week, when Hu proclaimed the “important role” of the United Nations and entreated the international community to “continue our joint endeavor to build a harmonious world of enduring peace and common prosperity.”

Today, China has joined every major international organization to which it is eligible and signed more than 300 international treaties. It even has had a hand in creating new regional groups. “They are acting like the new us,” a U.S. official told me.

They prepare, send huge delegations to summits and carefully cultivate diplomatic capital. And this is not just lip service. In many cases, China’s engagement with global entities such as the World Trade Organization and the International Monetary Fund has prompted Beijing to bring its conduct in line with international standards.

The next step, though, is an important one. Now that China is fully engaged and has earned considerable clout, what will it do? Will it increasingly abide by and support international standards? Could it eventually become a genuine leader for the global common good, with the risk and sacrifice that often entails?

Beijing sends mixed signals. On the hopeful side, we see China’s leadership on the North Korean nuclear issue — playing host to many rounds of the six-party talks, producing draft agreements and now, for the first time, enforcing U.N. sanctions against its nominal ally. And although it once objected to the whole idea, China now has 2,000 of its citizens in U.N. peacekeeping operations.

China also has done an about-face since the 2003 SARS debacle, when it covered up the outbreak and deceived international health officials. This time, it is sponsoring international conferences on swine flu and vaccinating millions of its people. In the economic realm, the stimulus package Beijing enacted in response to the global meltdown was huge — exactly the scale that the IMF and the U.S. recommended.

Of course, every nation acts in its own interests, but in all these cases, China also promotes the broader safety and prosperity of the world.

However, other areas show the zero-sum side of China’s international engagement. On climate change, China is one of the big bumps in the road on the way to a binding treaty at the Copenhagen summit in December.

Thankfully — as it is now the world’s largest emitter of carbon dioxide — Beijing is going gangbusters on efficiency standards and renewables. But unless those domestic ambitions can be turned into specific and verifiable international commitments, there will be no deal, and the world will continue toward climate calamity.

There are other concerns. Chinese companies are signing billion-dollar energy contracts with Iran just as the international community is trying to ratchet up the pressure on the Tehran regime over its nuclear ambitions. And Beijing is still holding out against tougher sanctions as the U.S., France, Britain and even Russia push forward.

Also, China’s human-rights conduct does not live up to international standards, and, often to ensure access to natural resources, it supports and shelters dictators who abuse their people. Its concerted efforts at industrial espionage undermine international law, and its no-strings-attached development assistance, while doing some good, is setting back anti-corruption efforts.

The Chinese say it is unfair to expect a still-developing China to shoulder so much international responsibility. But the forces of globalization that made China the major power it is today are the same ones breeding threats that only nations acting in concert can address.

China has come a very long way in two generations. Let’s hope that the next 60 years see China’s growth into a model citizen and stalwart supporter of the international system — for its own sake and for ours.

— By arrangement with LA Times-Washington Post

Neither worldly nor philosophers
by Harold Meyerson

THE worldly philosophers” was economist Robert Heilbroner’s term for such great economic thinkers as Adam Smith, Karl Marx, John Maynard Keynes and Joseph Schumpeter. Today’s free-market economists, by contrast, aren’t merely not philosophers. They’re not even worldly.

Has any group of professionals ever been so spectacularly wrong? Pre-Copernican astronomers and cosmologists, I suppose, and for the same reason, really: They had an entire, internally consistent, theoretically rich system that described the universe.

They were wrong — the sun and other celestial bodies save the moon didn’t actually revolve around the Earth, as they insisted — but no matter. It was a thing of beauty, their cosmic order. A vast faith was sustained in part by their pseudo-science, a faith from which such free thinkers as Galileo deviated at their own risk.

As it was with the pre- (or anti-) Copernicans, so it is with today’s mainstream economists. Theirs is an elegant system, a thing of beauty in itself, as The New York Times’ Paul Krugman has argued. It just fails to jell with reality. And unlike the pre-Copernicans, whose dogma posed a threat to those who challenged it but not, at least directly, to anyone else, their latter-day equivalents in the economic profession pose a clear and present danger to the well-being of damned near everyone.

The problem with contemporary economics, at least with the purer strain of free-market economics associated with the University of Chicago, is not simply that it failed to predict the near-collapse of the world financial system last year.

The problem is that it believed such a collapse could not happen, that all risk could be quantified by mathematical models and that these quantifications could help us correctly price just about everything. Out of this belief arose the banks’ practice of securitization, which put a value on all manner of mortgages and enabled buyers to purchase and swap them with the certainty that such transactions reflected an accurate judgment of the value of the properties and the risks associated with them.

Except, they didn’t. So long as economists insisted that they did, however, there really was no need to study such things as bubbles, which only a handful of skeptics and hopelessly retro Keynesians even considered possible. Under mainstream economic theory, which held that everything was correctly priced, bubbles simply couldn’t exist.

The one economist who has emerged from the current troubles with his reputation not only intact but enhanced is, of course, Keynes. Every major nation, no matter its economic or political system, has followed Keynes’ prescription for combating a major downturn: increasing public spending to fill the gap created by the decline of private spending. That is why the world economy seems to be inching back from collapse and why the nations that have spent the most, China in particular, seem to be recovering fastest.

But Keynes’ vision has yet to reestablish itself among economists, who, like the Catholic Church in Galileo’s time, aren’t about to change their cosmology just because the facts demonstrate that they happen to be wrong.

— By arrangement with LA Times-Washington Post

Corrections and clarifications

n The expression “ Today night” used in the highlights of the Air India report on the front page (October 1) should have been just ‘tonight’.

n In the fourth paragraph of the report, “ Top businessman’s office, house raided” (Page 6, September 30), it should have been ‘hiding’ and not ‘hibernation’.

n The highlighted part of the report, “ Rebels opt out, much to Congress relief” (Page 7, September 30) should have clarified that none of the major parties has opted for a ‘woman candidate’ in the Yamunanagar constituency.

n The headline, “ Economic slowdown may ease power situation” (Page 10, September 30) was misleading because the report merely stated that power consumption in Himachal Pradesh has grown but at a slower rate.

n The headline, “ 2 arrested ultras may have brought along kids” (Page 6, October 1) was also misleading because the report clearly stated that two minor children were held along with the two militants.

n In the first paragraph of the report, “ Hooda’s rath draws frenzied crowds” (Page 7, October 1), it should have been ‘rent’ and not ‘rant’.

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