|
|
Punish the Maoists
Still in the process |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
Borrowing and lending
Climate change
Floods, first hand
Insecurity and the state: emerging challenges
Dollar tumbles on report of its demise Internet addiction’s ADHD risk
|
Punish the Maoists
IT is no longer enough to merely condemn the dastardly killing of the unarmed police inspector Francis Indwar by underground Maoists in Jharkhand. The perpetrators, who abducted the police officer while he was out shopping and kept him hostage for several days before beheading him, must be tracked down so that they face the consequences of their barbaric act. The Maoists’ killing-spree has not spared anyone. In Lalgarh in West Bengal, where the Maoists have murdered over two dozen unarmed and innocent people in the past few months, they have even gone to the extent of entering the classroom in a school and killing the teacher, merely because he happened to be a CPM activist. The only deterrent against such senseless violence is to be unsparing. Demoralised policemen in Ranchi demanding greater security for themselves is the last straw. It was a near-rebellion in the city when policemen initially refused on Monday to allow an autopsy of the body of the slain inspector. Even after they were persuaded to return the body to the medical college, the policemen threatened to pull out of rural areas, where Special Branch officers like Indwar are deployed to gather intelligence but are not allowed to carry personal firearms lest they fall into the hands of the rebels. While the state government is likely to review the strategy, it is a matter of concern that men in uniform are being forced to seek armed escorts to carry out their routine work. Restoring confidence in the police rank and file has to be the foremost priority and as Indwar was abducted from the marketplace and in full view of hundreds of villagers, it should not be such a difficult task to go after the culprits. While delivering the sixth Nani Palkhivala lecture in Mumbai on Monday, Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram did well to rule out the possibility of any exchange of prisoners for hostages held by Maoists. “ We are governed by the rule of law and prisoners are under the custody of court,” said the Home Minister while responding to reports that the Jharkhand inspector was killed because of the government’s reluctance to release three prominent Maoist leaders arrested in the recent past. It is time for making the rebels realise that those who live by the sword also die by the sword. If they fail to respond to the state’s call for peace, they must be ready to face what the Maoists themselves describe as annihilation.
|
|
Still in the process
IT is ironical that while India happens to rank second in the world in the production of fruits and vegetables, its share in the world food trade is less than even 2 per cent. The main reason is that food processing facilities are woefully lacking here. While developed countries process 60 to 80 per cent of their produce, in our country, the processing happens to be as low as 6 per cent. Anybody who has seen mounds of kinnows begging for customers on the roadsides of Punjab in season can appreciate the plight of the growers. This despite the fact that government exhorts them to break away from growing wheat and paddy and patronise fruits and vegetables and other cash crops instead. Addressing the food processing ministers of various states in Delhi on Tuesday, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh expressed the hope that India can be a global leader in food processing. But given the tardy progress made during the past, it seems the Centre and the states will have to make a big effort to achieve targets. Food processing has been called a sunrise industry for more than two decades now but nothing much has changed on the ground. In this period the IT industry has grown tremendously. Dr Manmohan Singh put his finger on the pulse of the problem when he said that there was need for changes in the tax structure. Multiple levies have discouraged the whole industry. The small and unorganised sector is particularly vulnerable. The country had adopted a “Vision 2015 Strategy and Action Plan” in 2005 envisaging the enhancement of the level of processing of perishables from 6 per cent to 20 per cent, increase in value addition from 20 per cent to 35 per cent and enhancing India’s share in global food trade from 2 per cent to 3 per cent. If the deadline is to be met, there is need to put in place adequate infrastructure at the earliest across the country, particularly in the agriculturally strong states. |
|
|
Borrowing and lending
BANKS
are often driven by commercial interests and tend to disregard their social responsibility. They pay minimum possible interest on public deposits and charge the maximum on loans. The vast difference between their rates of borrowing and lending covers up their bad loans, frauds and administrative inefficiency. They discriminate against old and new customers. There are hidden and processing charges, which are imposed or waived at will. Since even some public sector banks indulge in unethical practices, customers virtually have no choice. Legal action becomes difficult since no rules or laws are violated. One latest example of unethical banking to surface is about banks charging prepayment penalty. If a customer wants to repay his loan in advance, banks charge 2 to 3 per cent penalty on the remaining loan amount. Instead of appreciating such customers as repay their loans before the due date, banks penalise them for depriving them of interest income. This is patently unfair and unjust. There are willful loan defaulters. Influential people take huge amounts as loans and refuse to pay back, engaging banks in prolonged litigation. Banks are either forced to waive bad loans or reach a settlement on clients’ terms. Instead of rewarding good customers and punishing bad ones, banks do the opposite. The Reserve Bank of India is aware of various malpractices banks indulge in, but it has limited its role to cautioning them or circulating lists of dos and don’ts, which banks conveniently ignore. Responding to a query under the Right to Information Act the RBI has admitted that it does not “approve of charging penalty” on the prepayment of loans. But instead of telling the banks to stop this practice, it has left the issue at the discretion of banks with an advisory. Fortunately, consumer courts are coming to the rescue of customers who are forced to pay foreclosure charges to banks. But why make customers do the rounds of courts for justice? |
|
|
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. — Oscar Wilde
|
Climate change
WITH a new United Nations climate treaty due to be agreed in Copenhagen in December, the developed world and the emerging economies are trying to bridge their differences on how to curb greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming. The US wants developing countries like India and China to agree to control the emissions being produced by their rapidly galloping economies by setting specific targets. India argues that this would hurt its economic growth and wants the industrialised world to curb its pollution as well as fund new technologies in the developing world by underlining that it has one of lowest emissions per capita. Even as both agree on the need for an agreement at Copenhagen, India has made it clear that it cannot accept legally binding limits on carbon emissions. Though around 80 per cent of world growth in carbon emissions is coming from fast growing economies like India and China, New Delhi has argued that even if India’s economy continues to grow at current levels for the next decade or two, its per capita emissions would still be below those of the developed countries. A recent bill passed by the US House of Representatives seeks to impose tariffs on products from countries that do not undertake emission-cuts targets. This has elicited a strong negative reaction in India which views such tactics as non-tariff barriers. This is largely viewed as a protectionist measure imposed by the developed world to shield its businesses from the costs of its own national emission targets. One of the major stumbling blocks in global negotiations on climate change has been the reluctance of the developed world to make adequate transfers of finance and enabling technology to the developing world, thereby helping the developing world reduce emissions without incurring as many out-of-pocket costs. India is seeking a bilateral arrangement with the US on this issue with an understanding that this can serve as a model for an agreement between the developed and developing world at Copenhagen. A number of obstacles remain to be overcome before the crucial climate change negotiations at Copenhagen in December. The US under the present administration has also made a commitment to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 80 per cent by 2050 compared with 1990. Japan’s new Prime Minister, Yukio Hatoyama also outlined that his country will reduce its emissions by 25 per cent by 2020. As a consequence, the emerging economies are now under increasing pressure to demonstrate their commitments to tackle climate change even as they continue with their efforts to reduce poverty. It is, therefore, significant that China and India have given positive signals at the recent summit on climate change at the United Nations in New York. It became an iconic image of India’s defiance on the issue of climate change when during US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s visit to India in July, India’s Environment Minister, Mr Jairam Ramesh, publicly asserted, “India’s position is clear and categorical that we are simply not in a position to take any legally binding emissions reduction.” As the global climate change negotiations to be held in Copenhagen in December have come nearer, there has been growing pressure from the developed world on countries like China and India to accept quantifiable targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. India has been steadfast in underlining that there is no case for any pressure given that it is among the lowest emitters per capita. Moreover, India has expressed its strong disapproval of the threat of carbon tariffs on its exports being talked about in the West. It now seems, however, that India is gradually changing its position as exemplified by the remarks of Mr Ramesh at the recently held high-level Climate Change Summit at the UN Headquarters in New York. He suggested that India “cannot hide behind any excuses and we (Indians) have to be aggressively taking on voluntary mitigation outcomes.” While accepting binding targets internationally still remains out of question, India is now underlining that it is important for it to take on national commitments so as to enhance its global credibility. This change of heart is a result of two inter-related factors. One is the evolving Chinese response on climate change. China has declared that it is pursuing its National Climate Change Programme that includes mandatory targets for reducing energy intensity and discharge of major pollutants as well as increasing forest coverage and share of renewable energy during the time period of 2005-2010. India was caught unawares by the specific measures that China announced at the UN General Assembly recently and is now planning to follow suit. Toward this end, India plans to conduct regular dialogue with China to exchange views on their respective action plans on climate change. The other factor driving India’s new approach to climate change negotiations is a sense among Indian strategic elites that a rising India should engage the world on its own terms and with a degree of confidence that befits its stature as a rising power in the international system. In tune with this assessment, India agreed at the Major Economies Forum meeting in Italy about two months back that all countries would work to reduce emissions in order not to let global temperatures rise more than 2 degrees above the pre-industrialisation level. The critics argue that this will restrict India’s diplomatic space in the Copenhagen Summit. Yet India hopes that such steps will help it in overcoming its traditional image of a deal-breaker in global negotiations. India has committed itself to a mandatory fuel efficiency cap to begin in 2011, a change in its energy matrix whereby renewable sources will account for 20 per cent of India’s power usage by 2020 as well as announced an ambitious solar energy plan. India does not want to be seen as a spoiler in the climate change negotiations and would like to bolster its image as a responsible global actor ready to offer constructive help in mitigating global problems rather than being a persistent nay-sayer. Despite this, its far from clear if the climate change negotiations will succeed as the developing countries want to be supported financially and through technology sharing with the rich industrialised world. That commitment has not been forthcoming so far. Without any financial and technological assistance, states like India will not be willing to open their efforts at greenhouse emission reductions to international verification. Climate change talks not only involve competing economic interests but also raise matters of broad principle for the West’s relationship with developing nations. India has shown itself ready to lead coalitions of developing nations in the past, vetoing those global agreements they see as discriminatory. The issue of the West’s “historical responsibility” for atmospheric pollution is being seen as a case in similar terms and the Indian agreement will be hard to secure. Yet the fact that India has started to gradually change its approach towards one of the biggest challenges facing the international community portends well for the
future.
The writer teaches at King’s College, London
|
||
Floods, first hand
CAN we borrow your boat”, asked one of the six doctors on the embankment. He had a stricken look on his face. They had been there for the past 48 hours, treating people marooned on the embankment which stood up like a long, thin island in the middle of an ocean of water. But unlike the villagers who had taken shelter on the barely 20-feet wide embankment, they were unable to relieve themselves in public. They badly needed to go to the toilet. He pointed to a building at a distance. It was almost completely submerged in water with only the roof sticking out. “That is the village secondary school,” the doctor groaned, “Please allow us to row the boat there.” The request could have been comic but for the scene around us. Thousands of villagers had taken shelter on the embankment with whatever they could salvage. Men, women and cattle huddled together, braving incessant rain, eating, weeping and shitting together. The pregnant among them delivered babies there with tattered saris held up as a screen. The team of junior doctors was obviously a harried lot. They hoped for a fresh team to arrive and relieve them. In the middle of the inclement weather, they had only their waterproofs and tarpaulin sheets to help them cope with the situation. They examined patients in the rain, arranged saline and glucose to be fed through the veins with some of them holding the bottles with raised hands while villagers chipped in by holding up a tarpaulin sheet over the patient. In contrast, we had arrived for a “dekho” in relatively royal comfort. We boarded the country boat just outside the civil surgeon’s office. To our surprise we found a cot with a mattress and pillows on the boat, placed for a comfortable ride. There were water bottles and a few oranges too. It looked too good for a visit to the flood-affected areas. Our amusement turned to consternation, however, when we found two teenagers joining us with each holding a utensil. The boat leaked, we were casually informed, and the boys had been drafted to collect water from the boat and pour it outside. Soon we were silently cursing our “misplaced” sense of adventure. Boats roll in water and if you are not used to it, it can be quite frightening. It was fascinating to see the road, fields etc. 15 to 20 feet below us. None of us spoke. I am sure most of us were praying quietly to the Good Lord above. As the embankment came into view after an hour or so, the water level started receding. Soon we could see villagers wading through neck-deep water, the tip of the lamp posts jutting out of the water at places. The water was placid, still but frightening. Floods occur almost every second year in north Bihar. Flood waters cause untold misery and devastation, often forcing men and snakes to take shelter on branches of the same tree. They sweep away roads, houses and cattle along with tender plants and crops even as experts debate on the feasibility of flood-control measures and environmentalists blame the ‘dams’ and the failure to desilt rivers for the catastrophe. The voice of an old lady is what rings in my ears every time I read about floods. “We have witnessed floods even when we were children,” recalled the octogenarian, “but flood-waters then would come slowly like a cat on the prowl.” But these days, she shuddered while saying, they pounce like a tiger, giving us little time to scurry for
safety.
|
||
Insecurity and the state: emerging challenges
IT is essential, in the first place, to comprehend insecurity. The dictionary meaning is fear or anxiety stemming from a concrete or alleged lack of protection. It could relate to individual or collective insecurity, could be self-centered, state-centric or society-centric. Its manifestations and sources could be multifarious. It could emanate from natural or human causes. For purposes of today’s analysis, our focus would be on collective insecurity that affects particular segments of the population or even society as a whole. A typology of insecurities, present and anticipated, thus needs to be developed. This takes us to the very purpose of being in a society. Hobbes depicted the pre-society stage as one in which life of a person was “nasty, brutish and short”. Others dwelt on an essential implication of being in society. “The strongest man”, said Rousseau, “is never strong enough to be always master, unless he transforms his power into right, and obedience into duty”. Hence the need for an association which takes upon itself the obligation to, in Rousseau’s words, “defend and protect with the whole force of the community the person and property of every associate.” Furthermore, fear is not a correlate of underdevelopment and, to use Ashis Nandy’s felicitous phrase, is to be found “in the interstices of anxiety” even in the most developed societies. Consequently the community encapsulated in a territorial state seeks collective and, by implication, comprehensive security and, in today’s world, does so without wishing to be homogenised and deprived of identities within its fold. The same would hold for the global community. An observation made in the Report of the 6th ARF Security Policy Conference held in May 2009 is indicative of some new thinking. Noting that as a result of globalisation the international community has become more vulnerable to non-traditional security threats, it underlined the importance of “a whole-of-society approach” to respond to these questions. It observed that “both traditional and non-traditional security threats need to be balanced in terms of setting priorities and policy planning.” What then should be the priorities for the world of tomorrow in terms of elements of insecurity and the imperative to address them? It is evident that given the structure of the international system, traditional and more recent norms of state security would remain in place in the foreseeable future and make ever increasing demands on resources of individual states. Going beyond the traditional security paradigm, the ambit of discussion does not remain confined to maintenance of state sovereignty and territorial integrity. Once we begin to address other threats, two characteristics rapidly emerge. We find, in the first place, that the initiating actors and eventual recipients are states as well as individuals and groups; secondly, because the latter do not always fall within the ambit of a single state, it necessitates departures from the traditional structure of command and compliance. The latter, in effect, would often depend upon demonstrated good rather than its a priori acceptance. Both, together, necessitate a paradigm shift. Another aspect is the nature and diversity of challenges. Together they demonstrate the inefficacy of unilateral action and the imperative of a comprehensive and cooperative approach. The terms of this cooperation, and their equity, remain work in progress. A case in point is terrorism. It has domestic and external dimensions that are not mutually exclusive. Some states indulge in it as an act of policy to conduct, what Kautilya called, “secret war”. Globalisation and technology has made it trans-national in organisation and reach and devastating in its impact; hence the approach, mechanisms, and commitments developed through various Security Council resolutions as also the innumerable bilateral and regional arrangements that are unevenly implemented. These are essentially focused on preventive or punitive steps, on the dismantling of the infrastructure of terrorism, and do not deal sufficiently with the mental orientation that leads to terrorist acts. The latter emanate from a radicalisation of the mind induced by an ideological or faith-based impulse and propelled by a perceived grievance. Combating terrorism thus becomes a sociological and political effort as much as a security one. Another threat of trans-national dimensions is pandemics. Their impact on societies is and would be devastating, apart from the havoc they bring about in terms of loss of human lives. A Princeton University Project in 2006 visualised the scenario in the wake of an apocalyptic pandemic. The report recommended that “we must broaden our understanding of national security so that health and development experts are included at every stage of the threat assessment and decision-making processes and not just consulted after the outbreak of a crisis.” Similar arguments hold for environment and climate change. These too are not coterminous with political units. At the national level and despite the good work done by a number of dedicated environmentalists, public awareness is still in its infancy and there is merit in Vandana Shiva”s observation that “the environmental movement can only survive if it becomes a movement for justice.” Official efforts, on the other hand, have often sought to strike an uneasy balance between Despite frequent articulation of principles, especially at Kyoto and Bali, the harsh reality is that individual nations and particularly those in the developed world are dragging their feet on implementing their commitments. Two conclusions emanate from these examples of dimensions of insecurity, transcending national frontiers and beyond solutions in the traditional security paradigm. They suggest that solutions have to be sought in a multilateral framework of equals; they also have to be equitable. The process would be tortuous and slow and would depend on the speed with which the gravity of the emerging threats sinks into public perceptions and governmental action. Insecurity clearly goes beyond challenges to state sovereignty and its territorial integrity. It is also evident that comprehensive security needs to focus on citizens and their right for a dignified existence. This does not limit the role of the state; instead, it changes it. The responsibility of the citizen and of the civil society is to keep the state glued to its purpose. This, in our case, is inscribed in the Preamble of the Constitution. From this emanates the imperative, at the conceptual level, to redefine the social purpose: to ensure that each citizen is assured freedom from fear and from want so that he/she is able to partake of all other activities open to a citizen. Such an endeavour at the national and global levels would help bring forth a new world, more in consonance with a sustainable existence in tune with human rights and the environment. The need for a new approach to comprehensive security is underlined by a survey of both the traditional and non-traditional threats faced by us in the past three
decades.
Adapted from the Vice-President”s 14th Field Marshal K. M. Cariappa Memorial Lecture at DRDO Auditorium, New Delhi on October 7.
|
|
Dollar tumbles on report of its demise THE price of gold is surging on world markets amid fears that the old economic order, based on the supremacy of the US dollar, could be breaking. A new spike has sent the cost of the precious metal to a level not seen before. The dollar slid sharply after yesterday’s report in The Independent that Gulf Arab states are secretly planning to stop trading oil in dollars, and a senior UN official said that the US should be stripped of its position as the main source of currency reserves for other countries. The developments come on top of speculation that the Obama administration is operating a policy of benign neglect of the dollar, engineering a devaluation that could help repair some of the economic damage caused by the recession. Not since the collapse of the Bretton Woods system in 1971 has gold been treated as the equivalent of a world currency, but The Independent reported that it could form part of a basket of currencies that would be used for oil trading by the end of the next decade. The dollar index — which measures the greenback against other currencies — fell 0.7 per cent yesterday and the dollar was lower against all major currencies except the British pound. The US government’s $11.86 trillion debt would be easier to repay if the value of the dollar was lower. There is growing concern among economists that the Obama administration could be content to see the currency fall. That would make US exports more competitive and could spark a manufacturing jobs revival. Overseas governments are in a bind because they hold trillions of dollars as currency reserves. The situation is particularly sensitive for oil-producing nations, who are paid in dollars for their exports and therefore hold particularly high dollar reserves. Gulf Arabs have begun planning n along with China, Russia, Japan and France n to end dollar dealings for oil, moving instead to a basket of currencies including the Japanese yen and Chinese yuan, the euro, gold and a new, unified currency planned for nations in the Gulf Co-operation Council, which includes Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and Qatar. Secret meetings have been held by finance ministers and central bank governors in Russia, China, Japan and Brazil to work on the scheme. The revelation was met with public denials yesterday. The Saudi central bank governor, Muhammad al-Jasser, said: “The future is in God’s hands. Today, the conditions are good for the arrangement we have.” The Japanese Finance Minister, Hirohisa Fujii, said he “doesn’t know anything about it”. Dennis Gartman, the US investment guru who writes the daily Gartman Letter, said that no one should be surprised to hear denials. “We are certain that spokespeople for every single nation will be brought to the fore to deny that any such meetings have occurred, that no such decisions have been made, that it is not in anyone’s interest to have held such meetings or made such decisions,” he told clients as The Independent’s story broke. “The market will care not a whit.” Simon Johnson, the IMF’s former chief economist, said the countries involved would calculate it was not in their interests to drive the dollar down. “ It would only be great news for the US. They have to pay lip service to the strong dollar policy, but if someone else were to engineer a devaluation, that would be lucky break for the US.”
— By arrangement with
|
|
Internet addiction’s ADHD risk Psychiatrists struggling to draft a new manual to diagnose mental illness haven't agreed it's a mental illness yet. But mental health professionals are already gauging, parsing and analyzing Internet addiction, which bears all the hallmarks of addictive behaviour. And they are asking, as Washington University's Drs. Dimitri Christakis and Megan Moreno did in a commentary published in the Archives of Paediatric and Adolescent Medicine on Monday: Will Internet addiction becomes a 21st century epidemic? If there were a medication for it, this process of declaring Internet addiction a true illness would probably go faster. But for now, there's little more by way of treatment than pulling the plug. We live in a world where going online has become as essential and inescapable as, say, eating. And pulling the plug isn't much of an answer. So prevention becomes a pretty important strategy. And if professionals are to prevent Internet addiction (if it exists), they must know who is most likely to fall prey to the affliction, so they can, perhaps, intervene early to avert it. A two-year study tracked more than 2,000 young teens in 10 middle schools across southern Taiwan, and found that 233 subjects —10.8 percent — could be classified as having an addiction to the Internet. Males were more likely to fall into that category. Those who played online games were more vulnerable. And teens who used the Internet every day and/or 20 hours a week or more were more likely to be deemed addicted. And what other features did potential Internet addicts show? For boys, those with attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and those who exhibited significant hostility were more likely to have a dysfunctional dependence on the Internet. For girls, having ADHD and hostility also heightened the risk of Internet addiction. But two more groups of girls — those with social phobias and those suffering depression — also were at greater risk. ADHD had the strongest association with Internet-addicted behaviour. And no wonder, observed the study's authors: “Internet behaviour is characterised by rapid response, immediate reward and multiple windows with different activities, which may reduce feelings of boredom or delayed aversion in adolescents with ADHD.” The study was conducted by psychiatrists from Kaohsiung Medical University Hospital in
Taiwan.
— By arrangement with
|
|
|
|
| HOME PAGE | |
Punjab | Haryana | Jammu & Kashmir |
Himachal Pradesh | Regional Briefs |
Nation | Opinions | | Business | Sports | World | Letters | Chandigarh | Ludhiana | Delhi | | Calendar | Weather | Archive | Subscribe | Suggestion | E-mail | |
