The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Rape and punishment
Accused can’t be let off the hook

Rape is the most heinous crime committed against women. Yet its seriousness is not realised fully. While society, by convoluted twist of logic, often shifts the onus of the crime to the victim, even the judiciary can be soft on the rape accused. So much so that the Supreme Court had to pull up Punjab’s lower court as well as the High Court for allowing itself to be hoodwinked in a case involving two men of Nakodar. For some strange reason, observed the apex court, while the accused were not charged with rape, the High Court even reduced their sentence. The Supreme Court, where the case came up for hearing, did well to censure the lower courts and order that the two accused be taken in custody. For, it is because of tardy judicial proceedings and low conviction rates that the guilty get away.

Over the years rape has become India’s fastest growing crime. There has been an astounding increase in the number of rape cases since 1971. According to the National Crime Records Bureau, 20, 277 cases were reported in 2007. In Punjab a rape is reported daily. Add to it the number of cases that go unreported and the actual figures are likely to be much higher. Societal stigma continues to haunt the victims. The insensitive attitude of the police and the apathy of other investigating officials not only add to the trauma of the victim but also create an hostile atmosphere that stops women from reporting the crime.

In a nation where the conviction rate in rape cases is as low as 27 per cent, speedy justice and deterrent punishment alone can curb this appalling crime. The judiciary has delivered some landmark judgements like in the case of a German tourist in Chandigarh which have proved that justice can be both swift and fair. Such convictions should be a norm and not an exception. Courts must ensure that the guilty do not go scot-free. The state must not fail in protecting women’s dignity and basic human rights that are unfortunately being violated with nauseating frequency.

Bodos again
The state is paying for taking militants lightly

Violence unleashed by militants in rural areas, specially in the North-East, largely goes unnoticed for a variety of reasons. But when innocent lives are lost due to carelessness of the state, it should cause serious concern. The indiscriminate killing of 12 villagers in Assam, including women and children, by Bodo militants recently is one such instance. The villagers invited reprisal by refusing to give in to the militants’ extortionist demand for money. But even after the villagers received threats from militants and despite conveying the information to the authorities, the Assam police failed to prevent the massacre when militants belonging to the “no-talk” faction of the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB) attacked village Bhimajuli in Sonitpur district with sophisticated weapons. Angry villagers took to the streets with traditional weapons and attacked convoys of the Director-General of Police and several Cabinet ministers when they tried to reach the village to take stock of the situation. The Army had to be called out to prevent the escalation of violence and a communal flare-up between ethnic Assamese and Bodo tribals.

The state government must be held squarely responsible for allowing the situation to spin out of control. Even after the Bodo peace accord was signed with the Bodo Liberation Tigers in 2003, forcing the NDFB to declare a unilateral truce in 2004, “preliminary talks” with the militants did not begin till August 2009. The militants who favoured talks were lodged in special camps set up by the government while the “no talk” faction, led by Ranjan Daimari, continued with its subversive activities. The faction is accused of serial blasts in Assam in October last year, which left 80 people dead and over 400 injured. The outfit is also accused of being in league with the ISI.

Had the government not lowered its guard after setting up the Bodoland Territorial Autonomous Council and lost the chance of isolating and marginalising the militants, some of the tragedies could have been averted. Neither the Scheduled Tribe status nor the Bodoland Council seem to have made much of a difference to the Bodos on the north bank of the Bramhaputra.

Thought for the Day

People who have given us their complete confidence believe that they have a right to ours. The inference is false: A gift confers no rights. — Nietzsche

ARTICLE

Learning from China
India has the advantage of being young
by K. Subrahmanyam

Our strategists, retired diplomats, ex-service officers and media persons have been engaged in an intense debate on how to deal with a rising China which appears to be playing the game of nations to our disadvantage. China has had a decade and half lead in initiating economic reforms. It has consistently maintained a faster growth rate than India.

China has expanded its international trade at a pace not conceivable by India. Its military modernisation and infrastructure development are very much in advance of India. Its economic decision-making is not hampered by party politics. It is our neighbour and it has an unresolved dispute with us in respect of Arunachal Pradesh. It has ambitions of being one of G-2 with the United States in global financial system.

Though China disavows ambitions of being a hegemonic power, it shows all signs of moving towards that goal. This is evident from its nuclear proliferation to Pakistan and supporting Pakistan’s role as a counter-vailer to India, opposing the waiver of Nuclear Suppliers Group for India and permanent seat for India in the Security Council.

China is likely to overtake the US in terms of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the next couple of decades. In Asia there is only one nation which is comparable to China in terms of population, skilled labour force and potential in terms of GDP in the longer run and that is India. It is, therefore, natural in spite of all public declarations to the contrary that China should view India as a likely future rival and attempt to slow down India catching up with it. This should be a natural expectation in realpolitik.

There is no point in complaining about it and bewailing that China is playing the game of nations to our disadvantage. It is up to us to catch up with China in a realistic way.

We should bear in mind that some 50 years ago China was bracketed with India. China had its successful revolution two years after Indian independence. China had two man-made disasters, the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution which resulted in 30 million deaths.

China from its revolutionary birth till 1990 for 40 years faced continuous security threats from superpowers. In spite of all that travail, China has become the second powerful nation in the world and its manufacturing hub and one of the significant leaders of international financial system. How did they do it and are there lessons in it for India?

The Chinese knew how to manipulate the international system to their advantage. Even as they were fighting their revolutionary war to capture power they made overtures to the US arguing they were not Soviet-type Communists.

However, the Americans in their short-sightedness, rejected their signals and firmly aligned themselves with the Kuomintang. Mao set out to woo a not- too-friendly Stalin. He agreed to Stalin’s harsh terms and obtained the Soviet military and economic aid.

China had to fight the Korean war and incur hundreds of thousands of casualties. The Soviet aid was used to industrialise China rapidly and develop its military forces and the military industry. The US used to transgress China’s territorial waters and its airspace regularly. The Chinese used to issue 457th, 571st and so on serious warnings to the US but observed restraint.

Their relationship with the Soviet Union deteriorated due to ideological differences with the Soviets cutting off their technology transfer on the nuclear weapons progrmme midway and withdrawing their technicians and stopping all their industrial aid programmes. The conflict worsened to the extent of erupting into armed conflict on the Ussuri river in 1989. There were signals of Soviet nuclear threat.

The great ideologue Mao, who conducted an annual ‘Hate America’ campaign, who talked of fundamental antagonistic contradiction between capitalism and socialism and whose pilot son had been shot down in the Korean war, had no hesitation in allying himself with the US to obtain extended deterrent security vis-a-vis the Soviet nuclear threat.

China provided bases for the US in Xinjiang to monitor Soviet nuclear tests when the Iranian Ayatollahs closed down the US monitoring bases in Iran in 1979. Then came Deng Xiao Peng’s economic reforms and opening up of China to US multinationals. The US companies used Chinese soil, Chinese labour and Chinese raw materials to make cheap goods to be exported to the US and the rest of the industrial world. The profits went to the multinationals. The Chinese export surpluses were not used for the benefit of the Chinese population but were invested in the US to enhance the credit availability to the US population to make them buy more consumer goods. Simultaneously, the Chinese reserves grew making China a major holder of US treasury bonds, giving it a leverage over the US.

By collaborating with the retail stores chains of developed countries and providing them access in China, the Chinese products are being marketed all over the world. And China has been transformed from an isolated ideological fundamentalist to a major member of the international community holding spectacular Olympic Games in three decades. No one will question today the independence of Chinese foreign and strategic policies.

All this has been achieved not by China ploughing a lonely furrow and insisting on self-reliance. From the beginning, China realised that it has to absorb investments and technology from the international system wherever they were available. Then came the added realisation that market access was needed and that in turn called for international collaboration. Instead of adopting a jingoistic attitude towards the challenge posed by China, there should be calm unsentimental strategic planning on how to deal with this problem.

India has a number of advantages. It is an English-speaking, democratic country. Its rise as a power does not cause concern to the international community unlike the case of China. The entire global arms market is open to India while China has at present no access to the US and European markets. India’s entrepreneurial system is better tuned to the international one.

Major powers have a stake in not allowing China from becoming an untethered hegemon in Asia. In the longer term, India has the advantage of a younger age profile even as China will be ageing. Therefore, the debate on the Chinese challenge should be conducted on constructive lines instead of the present display of unbecoming chauvinism.

Most of our people have forgotten that India did invoke the countervailing Soviet factor when faced with the Pakistan-China-US line-up in 1971. It is the stake of major powers in India as a potential balancer in Asia that resulted in technology denial regime against us being ended.

For Jawaharlal Nehru, nonalignment was a strategy in a bipolar world and not an ideology. Now that the Cold War has ended and the world has globalised, India is in a position to exploit the international system to its advantage without ideological hang-ups.

MIDDLE

Straws in the wind
by Uttam Sengupta

A “calm” chief minister sips tea, read the photo caption in the newspaper. One is yet to see an “agitated” person sipping tea, I reflected. Hotter the tea, I guess, the more calm one is required to be lest the lips get scalded. I know because this has happened to me a number of times. Upset over something or the other, but unable to give vent to my anger, I have often unmindfully swallowed tea so hot that part of the delicate skin on the lips peeled off.

But I am digressing. Chief Ministers sipping tea rarely make for a newsy photograph. But after a crucial election and while awaiting results, it acquires a significance of its own. Jagannath Mishra opening his mouth wide to bite into a relatively large piece of chicken made the covers of several periodicals which carried inside reports of corruption in his government. But a ‘calm’ CM sipping tea was meant to signal that he is cool and confident of his success. Or it could have been meant as a calming influence on his more agitated followers?

And everyone tells me Bhupinder Singh Hooda is returning as Chief Minister in Haryana. Being a Congressman, even Hooda cannot be certain, I am sure. But there is little harm in letting people know that he is “a candidate and not a claimant” to the CM’s office, provided of course that he leads the party to secure an absolute majority in the Assembly.

That seemed a foregone conclusion a month ago. The opposition was in complete disarray and everyone was fighting against everyone else. With the index of opposition unity so low, there was much to be gained by advancing the election which was not due till next year. It helped when a periodical anointed Hooda’s Haryana the ‘No. 1 state’ in the country just ahead of the election. There was no correlation, of course, between the advertisements placed in the periodical by the Haryana government and the ranking.

The Congress, gushed another periodical, was on the cusp of creating history in Haryana by winning two successive elections. Hooda, it declared, would be the first Haryana Chief Minister to complete a full term and then return for a second innings without taking off his pads.

But a few days into the campaigning and I found the Chief Minister complaining in his election speeches about the opposition’s unfair campaign. In one newspaper he fumed that the campaign was a slur on the good people of the state. Another newspaper quoted him as declaring that the rival’s campaign was an ‘insult’ to the state. This cannot be the cool, calm and confident Hooda, I reflected. Why does the man sound so rattled ?

Colleagues conceded that infighting within the Congress had peaked. A large number of rebels were eating into the official candidates’ support base. The party had made mistakes while putting up candidates and in the choice of their constituencies. All the heavyweights in the party were busy clipping the others’ wings, etc.

And all of them conceded that the Indian National Lok Dal, Hooda’s main rival in the state, had improved its position. “The Congress might lose 10 to 15 seats,” they said, “ and the INLD may double its strength in the House but the Congress will still form a government.” Hooda, it seemed, had reasons to be ‘calm’.

But the very next day the newspapers carried the photograph of the outgoing ‘transport and education’ minister (now we know why the state is not No. 1 in either transport or education) Mange Ram Gupta, who was far from being ‘calm’. The anguished minister was quoted as wondering aloud, “ I don’t understand why the bureaucracy is so weak that it gives in to pressure from INLD chief Om Prakash Chautala.” The minister was accusing Chautala of pressurising the administration to register a case of intimidation against him, his sons and grandsons.

Normally ministers are the ones who pressurise the administration. Why would things be different in Haryana, I wondered.

If these are straws in the wind, I reflected, can Bhupinder Hooda afford to be ‘calm’?

OPED

C’wealth Games: chalta-hai culture delays projects
by Chandra Mohan

Stalwarts of the organising committee like Kalmadi and Chauhan were stung by Fennel’s chilling comments on poor preparedness for the next year’s Commonwealth Games and request to see the Prime Minister.

Politicians that they are, one could forgive them for their tongue-in-cheek reaction that all would be hunky dory for the opening.

What should make us all sit up and think is the response of a performing CM like Sheila Dixit: “Last-minute readiness is Indian culture. All will be fine by next October”. Isn’t this our real character?

Kaya-palat promises for Delhi had been made by great Kalmadi and his crew when they went to Sydney to fight our case for hosting the Games. Eleven world-class stadiums with metro-connectivity; phenomenal extension of the metro sprawl and tens of flyovers across Delhi and NOIDA to smoothen traffic; a jazzy games village to house 8,000 athletes in NOIDA and a 1-km covered rail corridor to sound-proof it; 10,000 new hotelrooms for the visitorinflux etc.

All those promises had been forgotten by the time they landed back at Palam. Blue-page notes which followed got lost in red files in our easy-going please-all style. Can you believe it, responsibility was finally put in the lap of a 500-member organising committee. The task of building seven new stadiums entrusted to the great CPWD which has yet to finalise the design of one. The fate of road-carpeting of and pedestrian walkways along all roads in Delhi and NOIDA, dozens of flyovers etc. is no different.

M.S. Gill, Union Minister for Sports confirmed Fennel’s anguish. A special visit of the PM’s Special Secretary, TKA Nair, to the main sites reflected the Prime Minister’s concern.

Fennel’s remarks hurt the flourish with which we have been flaunting our democracy and the superiority of our growth model in facing the recent global meltdown. But if you look deep, our standard habit of late reaction has helped Dame luck. It is time we admit that last-minute reaction, over-shot targets and shoddy quality have now become our accepted norms. We love to build fancy edifices, but their maintenance is no one’s cup of tea. Primitive systems dominate objectives. Performance and merit do not matter, seniority dominates rewards.

While skeletons of chalta-hai casualties pile up in our cupboards, we have become experts in finding alibis, excuses and scape-goats.

The monotonous frequency of MIG-21 crashes year after year and loss of their pilots could not shake the decision-makers to the urgency of replacement of obsolete maintenance rigs purchased in the sixties.

What jolted them into action were only incidents like a near-miss collision of a VIP flight at Mumbai and accidental dropping of a bomb by an air force pilot in civilian areas during a peacetime exercise.

Santhanam’s recent revelation of exaggerated claims of our thermo-nuclear capabilities in Pokhran II tests reflects the depth to which the disease has spread.

For the last few years we have been show-casing Delhi Metro as the national epitome of our construction and organisational skills. Two major accidents in quick succession during its extension in Zamroodpur three months ago followed by two derailments have punctured that lone symbol.

We must understand that detailed planning, PERT charts and meticulous execution have become global Standards in the cut-throat competition of today’s Internet-linked and instant-anywhere communication world. Six-Sigma Quality is taken for granted.

Shrinking time between order and delivery is driving the fine-tuning of systems. Delegation down the line to the lowest coupled with accountability is a sequel to shorter lead times. Performance is rewarded and laggards are dumped on the roadside.

In the backdrop of this global trend, the appointment of a Secretary in the Prime Minister’s Office for monitoring all projects above Rs. 50 crore comes as a total surprise. Cure lies in correcting the system; not adding another layer of monitors. It only wastes more energy in useless paperwork and adds to costs.

It is time we forgot to live in our world of illusions and overplay our democracy card. What is driving global corporations and capital to India is its billion-strong market at the cusp of better living and lifestyles. Opportunity offered is infinite. But let us not forget that their motive is totally mercenary. What is the RPI? If we fail to add to their profits, they will not blink an eye and shift elsewhere.

But then there could also be no greater opportunity for us to propel us into the club of developed nations.

Whichever system or law which stands in the way must go. The world will not wait; it will only laugh and find a better place. Like Ratan Tata’s ultimatum to the West Bengal government on Nano, Honda’s threat to close their scooter plant in Manesar (near Gurgaon) in the face of persistent labour trouble might not be empty.

Let us go deep and find permanent solutions. The euphoria of large capital inflows should not lull us into creating an “unbalanced, unstable, uncoordinated and unsustainable” economy.

We will have to realise that our current run of welfare measures, howsoever desirable, are only tenable for a rich affluent economy, which we are not. Cautionary bells of oncoming inflation are already being rung by the RBI Governor. What we must begin is to emulate what Japan did in the fifties and South Korea in the eighties.

Pakistan: The enemy within
by Omar Waraich

Pakistan was reeling last night after the Taliban intensified its bloody campaign of violence, launching five separate attacks in a single day, including the first ever with female assailants.

At least 28 victims died in three attacks carried out by gunmen on police targets in Lahore and two car bombs in Kohat and Peshawar. “The enemy has started a guerrilla war,” said the Interior Minister Rehman Malik. “The whole nation should be united against these handful of terrorists, and God willing we will defeat them.”

Thursday was the fifth day of bloodshed in Pakistan in the past week-and-a-half. The violence, which has claimed more than 100 victims and demonstrated the Taliban’s brutal reach across the country, comes as Pakistan launches a series of air strikes on South Waziristan, paving the way for what it has promised will be an ambitious army ground offensive on the Taliban stronghold.

The highly co-ordinated Lahore attacks began at 9am, unfolding simultaneously in three separate locations including the Federal Investigation Agency, the national law enforcement body. They represented the region’s most sophisticated militant assault since last November’s bloodshed in Mumbai. Like those attackers, the Lahore teams were equipped with dried fruit, apparently prepared to dig in for the long haul.

Normally-bustling Lahore was brought to a standstill as security forces spent hours exchanging gunfire with the militants. The longest siege took place at an elite commando training facility in Badian, near the airport.

The attackers scaled the back wall, with some standing on the roof shooting at security forces and throwing grenades in a stand-off that lasted four hours. “They [the militants] were wearing black, all black,” said Inam Mansoor, an ambulance driver who helped recover the injured from the compound. “They were carrying guns and had backpacks.”

The Interior Minister said that the attackers included three women – the first time that women have been involved in militant violence in Pakistan. There is speculation of the involvement of female madrassa students from Islamabad’s Red Mosque, the scene of a deadly siege in July 2007, who travelled to southern Punjab in the aftermath.

Lt. Gen. Shafqat Ahmad said five attackers died in the fighting – three were killed in the firefight and two more were killed when they blew themselves up.

Meanwhile, in the heart of the city, gunmen entered the Federal Investigation Agency building, which was targeted with a truck bomb eighteen months ago, when 21 people were killed. yesterday, four government employees and a bystander lost their lives. At the Manawan police training academy, which had already been targeted earlier this year, nine police officers and four militants were killed.

Before the violence escalated in Lahore a suicide car bomb was detonated near a police station in the north-west city of Kohat, killing three police officers and eight civilians. Finishing off the bloody day, another car bomb exploded in Peshawar, outside the residence of the province’s chief minister’s driver. A six-year-old boy was killed, while nine others, mainly women and children, were badly wounded.

The attacks, which came just days after a daring raid on the army quarters in Rawalpindi, have raised fears of a deeper plunge into chaos as Taliban militants based along the Afghan border and in the north-west have demonstrated their ability to strike across the country. Last night security was being beefed up in Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city, and residents in the capital, Islamabad were also braced for the worst.

Of particular concern is the apparent operational nexus that has emerged between the Pakistani Taliban, based in the tribal areas, and militants from the heartland province of Punjab.

Sajjad Bhutta, a senior government official, said that the attackers who unleashed yesterday’s violence appeared to be a mixture of both. Many were wearing suicide vests and blew themselves up when cornered. “They were not here to live. They were here to die. Each time they were injured, they blew themselves up,” he said.

In recent years militant groups, once nurtured by the Pakistan army to lead an anti-Indian insurgency in Kashmir, and vicious sectarian groups have drawn closer to the Pakistani Taliban and al-Qa’ida.

Splinter groups of the notorious Jaish-e-Mohammad were recently involved in fighting against the Pakistan army in the Swat Valley. Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, considered by some to be al-Qa’ida’s Pakistan “franchise”, is believed to have been involved in attacks on the Islamabad Marriott and the Sri Lankan cricket team.

In June Pakistan’s government ordered the army to launch an offensive in South Waziristan, believed to be the lair of Osama bin Laden’s top lieutenants. Since then the military had been conducting air and artillery strikes to soften up militant defences. The government says the land assault against an estimated 10,000 hard-core Taliban militants is imminent, and that the army will decide when to send in the ground troops. But in the meantime the Taliban is getting plenty of retaliation.

In a statement, Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi last night said that the country would not be swayed from its tactics. “Such barbaric, inhuman and un-Islamic terrorist acts only strengthen our resolve to fight terrorism with more vitality,” he said.

— By arrangement with The Independent

Chatterati
Navjot Sidhu says no to ‘Big Boss’
by Devi Cherian

The reality show “Big Boss" has produced many celebrities — right from Shilpa Shetty, Rakhi Sawant to Rahul Mahajan. So wonder why cricketer-turned-politician Navjot Singh Sidhu backed out of "Big Boss". He had even accepted the first installment of his payment, but backed out at the very last minute.

The deal was finalised and only the contract remained to be signed. A chartered plane was especially sent to pick him up from Chandigarh and fly him to Mumbai. But Sidhu did not show up. Sidhu refused to come to the airport and told the channel that he didn't want to be a part of the show anymore.

Why did he develop cold feet at the last minute? Did his political party object? Remember Sanjay Nirupam, the Congress MP from Mumbai, who went for "Big Boss" but left in a week? Once out, he made rude remarks about the show and its participants.

Downsizing govt

Austerity has become a big thing for the UPA Government. The basic issue is: Why do we need so many ministers? Who needs them after all? We started with less than 20 departments after Independence. Then why do we have to head towards the century mark?

To support so many ministers we need an army of IAS babus, who do not have to deliver but only keep things in check. Why do we have departments for subjects that are already decontrolled?

In good old days we could remember the names of central ministers on our fingertips. Today you have to scratch your head after naming a few. The position no longer carries the importance and dignity accorded earlier. Yet almost every MP wants to become a minister and tries more for a lucrative ministry than for anything else.

What is the point in asking ministers to go in for an economy drive when all IAS babus get free air tickets for their jumbo-sized families and continue to enjoy amazing perks? Are these perks meant to reward them for their notable contribution in turning the corporations into red? Why are these babus still being pampered? Does it serve the cause of austerity?

PSUs, which should be managed by junior or middle-level technocrats, are headed by IAS babus with all the privileges and trappings of power. Wonder, what happened to the lofty, grandiose plans of downsizing the government!

Lastly, look at the joke called "security cover" in our country. At best there are only 15 to 20 persons in the entire country who actually deserve security but see how thousands flaunt the security cover.

‘Amitabh chalisa’

A fan has penned an "Amitabh chalisa" on the lines of the legendary "Hanuman chalisa", summing up the superstar's 40 years of film career in 40 lines. This Bollywood super hero turned 67 on Sunday. There is also a temple built in South Kolkata by his fans.

“Amitabh chalisa” is both poetic praise and prayer to the superstar who has inspired generations of Indians since his 1969 debut film “Saat Hindustani”. It contains snippets from the star's eventful life.

Kumar, the writer, gathered information from magazine articles and blogs about his idol to write the poem. He started writing the "Amitabh chalisa" in June and finished it on October 8. He has never met the superstar. Well, Amitabh must be really touched by all this adoration of his fans.