The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Designs on India
Pakistan must not forget its pledge on terrorism

The disclosures made by the FBI following the arrest of two Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) operatives — David Coleman Headley alias Daood Gilani and Tahawwur Hussain Rana — provide enough proof of this banned terrorist outfit being actively engaged in implementing its destructive agenda. The two men in FBI custody, who had been assigned the task of carrying out another 26/11-type terrorist attack, had been looking for an opportunity to strike at India’s National Defence College in the national Capital. Among the LeT’s other targets in India have been two elite schools in Uttarakhand, popular tourist resorts and many key installations. Rana, a Pakistan-born Canadian national, had been a frequent visitor to Pakistan.

What is, however, more surprising is that the LeT, which had started functioning as the Jamaat-ud-Dawa after it was banned, appears to have become overactive as the Pakistan Army is concentrating on its fight against the Taliban in South Waziristan. This indicates that the terrorist outfits targeting India are being allowed to have a free run under the guidance of the ISI. This means that despite the spate of terrorist attacks in Pakistan, there is no change in its policy of using terrorism as an instrument of state policy against India.

The ISI’s effort to revive terrorism in Punjab appears to be linked to its ill- thought-out policy vis-à-vis India. Punjab police chief Paramdeep Singh Gill on Wednesday stated that these days the ISI was busy roping in the activists of dysfunctional terrorist outfits like the Babar Khalsa International and the Khalistan Zindabad Force. Some of those suspected to have been involved in the ISI’s terrorism revival plan have been arrested. India cannot allow Pakistan to succeed in carrying out this destabilising agenda. The ISI’s audacious act is a matter of grave concern. Pakistan must remember the pledge it has made more than once that it will not allow any territory under its control to be used for spreading terrorism in India and anywhere else. It will have to bear the consequences if it fails to live up to its promise.

Disinvestment on agenda
Govt must proceed with caution

Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia’s suggestion about “aggressive disinvestment” is welcome but to fetch a right price, stock market conditions and public and institutional appetite for PSU shares have to be considered too. The government cannot hurriedly offload its stakes in assets, built over the years with public money, at whatever price available and to whomsoever it feels like. The mistakes committed by the NDA government should not be repeated. The IPO route is proper but the public and PSU shares have to be properly priced. Foreign and domestic institutional investors may be offered shares through bidding in a bullish market so that the best possible price is realised.

The second issue is how to utilise the proceeds. Earlier, the government had set up the National Investment Fund (NIF) where the money raised through the sale of PSU shares was to be parked for financing social sector schemes and meeting capital requirements of public enterprises. Dr Ahluwalia has suggested that the proceeds from disinvestment should be used to fund new projects. The third possibility is the government may use the money to bridge the huge fiscal deficit it has run up by announcing two stimulus packages and tax concessions for saving the industry from a downturn. The government should stick to the NIF scheme since social sector spending should be a priority, while new projects can be financed through direct foreign investment by removing procedural, administrative and policy bottlenecks.

The third issue is which PSUs should be chosen for disinvestment. Only the profit-making government firms will get a good price. The others may be given more time, financial help and managerial autonomy to turn around. Those which keep making losses should be privatised. They cannot be allowed to bleed the exchequer forever just to keep some jobs. The labour laws need suitable changes so that PSUs are not caught in endless legal wrangles.

Thought for the Day

Not to go back, is somewhat to dance,/ And men must walk at least before they dance. — Alexander Pope

ARTICLE

Chinese pinpricks over Arunachal
What realpolitik demands
by Punyapriya Dasgupta

One midnight in April 1960 Zhou Enlai addressed a Press conference in New Delhi. It was so crowded that in my firsthand memory I can see a couple of journalists standing on a window sill to be sure of being able to shoot their questions. The Chinese Premier suggested a compromise settlement of the then hotting up border issue between the two countries. His offer was for China conceding to India what was then the North-East Frontier Agency, now Arunachal Pradesh, in exchange for India withdrawing its claim to Aksai Chin in Kashmir.

Zhou brought the matter out of the diplomatic closet and hoped for public opinion in India to press Jawaharlal Nehru to accept this swap offer. There were signs that Nehru personally was inclined to view the proposed formula favourably but as Prime Minister of India he could not ignore the political forces arrayed against. He was even reported to have said that if he surrendered Aksai Chin he would “cease to be Prime Minister”. Zhou’s mission failed.What followed was the India’s utter humiliation in 1962. Unending logrolling has gone on since then with China scoring an advantage most of the time.

In the latest phase China has been creating problems on visas for residents of Arunachal, protested against Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to India’s north-easternmost state and the Dalai Lama’s tour of Tawang. Has Beijing then withdrawn the swap offer Zhou Enlai made nearly 50 years ago? Perhaps, not. Why then is it refusing to accept the status quo south of the McMahon Line? One important fact should not be forgotten. In 1962 the victorious Chinese march stopped on its own at NEFA’s internal boundary with Assam although Nehru declared that his heart went out to Assam, clearly meaning that the despirited Prime Minister had given up that state too as lost. The Chinese went back to their side of the McMahon Line. Had they been serious about treating that line, which they have never formally accepted, as irrelevant for them they would not have vacated Arunachal. They never retreated even an inch from what they took in Aksai Chin

On the Indian side, patriotism has played a role all along in holding up a settlement. The people and Parliament have accepted the Nehru government’s version of the dispute as the only truth and supported it fully. It is, of course, true that India has never in its history been an expansive country. In fact, post-1947 India has showed some keenness to humour some neighbours which led to domestic protests. West Bengal stopped Jawaharlal Nehru from handing over Berubari to East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). Indira Gandhi ceded to Sri Lanka the tiny island of Kachchativu over Tamil protests. With China it has been different. In spite of “Hindi Chini bhai bhai”, the Indian establishment has eyed Communist China with suspicion after its occupation of Tibet. May be, that was not unjustified then.

China clashed soon after with the Soviet Union and Vietnam over their borders. The hostilities on the Burma (now Myanmar) border were an extension of the Chinese communist-nationalist civil war with the Burmese facilitating the task of the communists. All of the Chinese border problems have been sorted out except the one with India.

In 1947 India inherited the border with Tibet-China from the British. The British rulers had no problem drawing lines on the map as they thought fit. On the Kashmir-Tibet border they, in fact, drew more than one. One British official was censured for taking his line too far to the east but he had the satisfaction of seeing his projection as the claim line of the imperialism he had tried to expand. Neither this one nor the McMahon Line in the east was ever accepted by China but it was in no position then to make an issue of maps.

Tibet remained unconcerned since the situation on the ground remained anchored in tradition, unchanged by cartography. It was only when the assertive Chinese communists occupied Tibet and extended their sway up to the Indian border that questions arose. India decided to go by the maximum of the British claims. But since these were not always supported by ground reality New Delhi considered it expedient to withhold all maps of the Chinese border from all but a few and so too literature which created doubts about New Delhi’s arguments. The bureaucrats went to absurd lengths. After Major Kathing with an army detachment raced to Tawang and expelled the Tibetan officials from there and ensured Indian control, the government tried to censor, officially or unofficially, all references to the area as Tibetan.

In his “History of Frontier Areas Bordering on Assam” Robert Reid, one of the last British Governors of Assam, wrote in 1942 that the 1914 convention resulting in the McMahon Line was never published nor was anything done to give effect to it because the Chinese never accepted it. As a consequence, many maps by the British “still show the frontier of India along the administered border of Assam” that is, the status of the whole of NEFA or Arunachal was left undetermined.

Reid’s book somehow went out of circulation a decade before Zhou Enlai said that although he did not accept India’s claim to NEFA, he was willing to concede in exchange for India’s forgetting Aksai Chin, which was, to him, indubitably Tibetan-Chinese. In its zeal for concealing unhelpful maps, New Delhi went to absurd lengths.

B.K. Nehru, Jawaharlal’s nephew and one of India’s ablest administrator-diplomats ever, wrote in his memoirs that in 1962, when he was India’s Ambassador in Washington, he asked his defence attaches to show him maps of the NEFA area the Chinese had marched into and he was told those were classified and even they were not entitled to see them. The ambassador found the “classified” maps sold across the counter at the National Geographic. Two decades later, as Governor of Kashmir, B.K. Nehru wanted detailed maps of the Kashmir valley he was touring and was told that for “security reasons” those did not exist. Again, according to this Nehru, the maps he wanted “were available for public sale only in Washington. At the same time the government did not even know for a few years that the Chinese had built roads in the territory claimed as India’s.

Machiavelli laid down the principle: ends justify means. The assumption is that the ends will be achieved. In the present context India’s ends have not been achieved — at least not yet. India was also not prepared for war, even as a contingency, at any time. Jawaharlal Nehru believed that India and China would not fight each other in his lifetime. Yet he precipitately ordered the Army in 1962 to “throw them (the Chinese) out”.

After the disaster that followed, Parliament in New Delhi resolved to recover every inch of lost territory and Nehru led a marching contingent of MPs in the next Republic Day parade. But nothing worked and yet the Parliament resolution is still treated as unalterable.It would have been great statecraft had India been able to implement that resolution.

Everyone knows that this parliamentary pledge cannot be redeemed in the foreseeable future. Not unnaturally, problems have been arising for half a century now. The Chinese are giving India pinpricks over Arunachal. It would be realpolitik for New Delhi to take facts into full account if it wants to root out the problem with China.

MIDDLE

Anger — a rifty gift
by Chetana Vaishnavi

A hungry man is an angry man and an angry man is a savage. Josephine Licciardello warns us saying, “Anger is just one letter away from danger!” Anger is an emotional state from minor irritation to intense rage making one to punish oneself with other people’s mistakes. It is a part of fight or flight response to certain real or perceived threats.

Phil Barker describes anger as a natural and potentially productive emotion. It can serve positive functions when expressed properly. A certain amount of anger is in fact necessary as it allows us to defend ourselves and can be useful in expressing how we feel to others.

Expressing anger makes one feel more powerful than the other. At times it can even help to solve a problem. But venting anger does not always work.

Anger can be suppressed by focussing it on something else. Well-wishers often advise us to count ten before saying or doing anything. It has been rightly said, “Never reply a letter when you are angry!” If you are prone to violence then walk away from the provocation before pressure builds up. You can calm down by taking a deep breath and relaxing. You may not get what you want at all, and yet in remaining calm, you may discover something else that you need even more than what you thought you wanted.

People who become social doormats do not admit feeling hurt about anything, but usually have resentment underneath their calm appearance. Whining, as said by Al Franken, is anger through a small opening. Apathy is a veiled form of anger with deep sorrow for all humanity. People get angry when their expectations are not met. Personal biases and emotions take over leading to aggression. Anger is the wish for harm to come upon someone that one believes has injured one. Often an angry person hurts innocent persons by manipulating circumstances.

Remember that when the boss slams his fist on the table and yells, “I’m the BOSS!” - he no longer is! Anger takes him off his rocker, thereby sending him up the air to hit the ceiling! He starts going bananas and beats his breast in anger, crying out aloud. This makes him lose his cool, his blood begins to boil and most likely he would have burst a blood vessel by looking daggers at someone!

Nevertheless, the best form of revenge is to forgive and never allow the sun to go down on your anger so that you can balance your stress.

Angry people commit many mistakes in life. But mistakes that lighten your mood can be real fun. For example, a furious teacher says, “Write down your name and father of your name!” Yet another one shouts, “Why are you looking at the monkeys outside when I am in the class?”

May God increase such angry people’s tribe! After all, like laughter, anger is also nature’s gift to us!

OPED

One-child legislation leaves China’s aged in cold
by Vijay Sanghvi, who was recently in Beijing

China has fast become old before it could become rich. The unwelcome and undesirable demonstration of the law of unintended consequences and a positive impact of its health care services have become a serious matter of worry for the authorities as the proportion of the aged population, people above 65, has already crossed a mark of 10 per cent.

But more worrisome is the problem that the proportion of the population in the age group of zero to 14 has registered a heavy drop. It will be telling on China in the next four years when China suffers labour shortage and shrinking of the state revenue and will need more funds for the care of its growing and graying population.

In a country where care for the aged is a cultural tradition from the time of Confucius, the issue has become a major worry for the nation and the authorities as less than 30 per cent of the aged have benefits of pensions and social securities.

They had worked for the public sector before retiring. Hence, they have some support system but the remaining 70 per cent have to depend entirely on the state, which is already suffering from a resource crunch.

A 97-year-old farmer, Ma Wenlong, is a worried person in the state-run home for seniors in a suburb of Beijing as he has none to look after him. His two sons are already above 70 and need care themselves. His grandsons are above 50 and close to retirement and do not have any child to look after them in the old age.

The entire family does not have benefits of social security and pensions as none of them had worked in the public sector ever. No one had obviously anticipated that the consequences of their policy measures would be so undesirable.

There is an improvement in the life expectancy due to various factors, including the health care schemes of the last 60 years. The life expectancy when China became independent in 1949 was 35 years. It is more than 73 years now, according to the official statistics. Hence more people are surviving today to grow old.

But the drastic impact was caused by the policy measure that China implemented nearly 40 years ago when it made it compulsory by a stringent law for one family to have one child. It was then hailed as a revolutionary measure for birth control that no other country had adopted.

The birth rate certainly dropped but now the country has to grapple with a bulging problem of seniors who have fewer relatives to take care of them in their old age.

The work force is also fast dwindling. More alarming for the authorities is the drop in the young population of China. It means more old men and women on hand and lesser numbers available as its work force. Every country suffers from the problem of an increasing number of old people due to improvements in life expectancy but it has become acute in China because the per capita incomes in China are only one-fifth of the developed nations.

That is why it can be said that China has become old before it could become rich unlike Japan that became rich before it became old. Japan and Italy are other nations that are also plagued by the problem of a fast-ageing population but they have a much higher per capita income as well as the young in the family to take care of the ageing people.

Zhuang Jian, a senior economist with the Asian Development Bank, feels that the ageing of society is coming much faster and much earlier than expected in China. Caring for such an enormous number of old people would be a burden as China is not well prepared for such dramatic demographic changes in such a short time and at a pace unseen in human history.

By 2030 China’s 65-plus population would almost double from more than a hundred million now. It was estimated to cross the mark of 235 million. Five years before that stage is reached one in every five Chinese would be above the age of 65 years. A similar pattern can be seen only in two other nations with much higher per capita gross national product.

However, Cai Fang, Director of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, is more worried about a different aspect. He sees a fast drop in the work force available in China sooner than expected.

China’s rapid economic growth was entirely due to the availability of a cheap labour force. It made China a fast-growing manufacturing hub of the world with its manufactured goods flooding the world markets in the last two decades.

However, the demographic advantage that China has enjoyed for the past two decades will soon begin to diminish. In fact, he predicts that China would begin to suffer from a shortage of labour.

There are no prospects of improvement in the situation for a long time as other features of the Chinese demography are even more alarming. The proportion of the population in the age group of zero to 14 has registered an arming drop from 40.6 per cent in 1964 to 17.8 per cent in 2007.

In other words, the work force will continue to shrink and the number of the aged continue to increase. Thus, it will automatically lead to a heavy crunch of resources. The young may not be able to maintain the age-old tradition of caring for their elderly as their work removes them from their homes.

The private sector has grown fast in the recent years but the private sector does not provide social security and old-age pensions or insurance. So also millions of farm workers and odd-job men and women are without such benefits of social security.

The World Bank statistics released recently paint a horrible picture of future. It estimated that only 160 million urban people nearly 15 per cent of the population, will have the protection of a social security net. The rest will need to depend on the ability and mercy of the state. A more pessimistic projection of the World Bank is that China has already suffered from a shortage of resources. Its need for expenditure was one and a half times more than its fiscal revenue last year.

The pension and social security system of China is already under-funded. However, it will come under a severe strain when medical expanses increase due to health problems of the aged.

The fast-ageing population and shrinking work force will have a double impact on the economic system of China as the revenue will decrease while the need for spending increase. It is a perfect prescription for undermining the fiscal position of China in future.

World economists and social scientists are watching the developments in China as the fastest-growing economy in the world aspires to reach the top in a few years. A report by the Strategic and International Studies says that the economic and social stakes are so high that China’s leadership, despite being in the midst of a financial crisis, cannot afford to delay necessary changes in its policy.

How China navigates its coming demographic transformation will go a long way toward determining whether it achieves its aspiration of becoming a prosperous, stable and developed country with an expanding role in the global economic and political order.

Economist Zhuang says that the graying of China must be on the top of the political agenda of the leadership with immediate measures as well a long-term strategy. It will require political ingenuity that understands both the economy and human aspirations and knows the art of combining both the without creating new problems. The law imposed of one child per family was hailed as a revolutionary step only 40 years ago. It is now looked upon as a measure that brought only human miseries.

Warming up for Games
by V.S. Ailawadi

The baton-handing ceremony for the Commonwealth Games 2010 was held in London’s Buckingham Palace on October 28 with the usual fanfare. But with this begins the countdown.

The recent spat between Kalmadi and a CWG Federation official raised a question mark about our preparations and readiness for the event. It is unfortunate that a seasoned sports administrator like Kalmadi should have chosen this time to express his ire on an important official and it was aptly commented that it was a wrong fight.

That there is growing uneasiness about the apparent delay in completing the important infrastructure projects can’t be called unwarranted. The CWG OG is coming under fire because one of the reasons is that it has centralised every activity.

The organisational structure is different than what was at the time of Asian Games. There was high-powered co-ordination under the respective administrative heads, e.g. Lt Governor was the key stake-holder for all works to be executed by DDA, NDMC and NCT and the Urban Development Secretary was responsible for the infrastructure works entrusted to CPWD and so on in order to fix responsibility.

During 1980-82 an important feature was active coordination, cooperation and confidence building with various stake-holders and watching progress of the works by the Press and sports federations’ representatives.

One believes that institutional arrangements made for the Commonwealth Games are well thought out, but somewhere effective coordination seems to be lacking.

For Delhi to host the 2010 Games, there were never more fortuitous circumstances; CM Sheila Dikshit and the UPA government getting the mandate for continuity, ensuring smooth flow of funds. Expert advice is freely available from CGF officials like Mike Fennel, Michael Hooper and even Sebastian Coe, Chairman, OG committee for London Olympic Games. Shenanigans of the CWG OC have never missed the opportunity to interact with them here or in London.

Former Sports Minister Manishankar Iyer, may have been critical of huge public spending on some of the avoidable projects, but he was quite firm on fixing responsibility for the implementation. He had set up sub-committees with domain knowledge and experience in project implementation, in technology and in banking and finance. That is now history.

What matters now is to ensure that the projects are completed in time. The OC is not to be blamed entirely because even as late in 2007 projects like Games village had not been approved. It is unfortunate that planning and approvals for the projects went beyond the standard practice followed for hosting such mega sports events.

But given that, the organisers had sufficient time for completing several of the venue projects — Games village, LNL stadium, Indra Gandhi Indoor stadium — all of which are running behind the target dates for completion. Completion of all infrastructure projects for the Games are important.

All facilities which are mandatory are to be checked from the point of view of international standards. The Commonwealth Federation officers will carry out checks on the standard of facilities created in the Games village. Various functionaries of different bodies will check all ancillary facilities to satisfy the standards required.

It may be stated here that during Asiad’82 the international authorities checked the accuracy and adequacy of facilities provided in the completed works a few days before the date of the event, and certain important deficiencies / defects were found. It was very difficult to rectify the same at the last moment.

Public memory is short and we seem to have forgotten that an entirely new infrastructure was to be created for the Asian Games. But until 1980 it was uncertain whether we would be able to host the Asian Games as the janata govt had been dragging its feet. It was in February 1980 the then Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, took the decision to hold the Asian Games and the entire infrastructure was to be created in about 22 months.

Many had doubted the country’s capability and there were similar visits by the Asian Games Federations to Delhi to take stock of the situation. But the various bodies which had been entrusted to do the unthinkable had risen to the challenge, and pulled about a fine example of giving the country the best of the sporting infrastructure and winning accolade from international federations.

Sports Minister MS Gill assures us that Commonwealth Games “di gaddi ab tez chalegi…..” To complete all infrastructures in the next 200 days will be a herculean task. We, the people, particularly the Dehliites, have a stake to give the country the honour it deserves and ensure an orderly conduct of the Games to save the honour of the country. It is possible, indeed.

Can’t we latch on to the affirmative?
by Christina Patterson

Newspaper offices waste quite a lot of paper. So, in fact, do newspapers, as yesterday's splendid pine tree becomes (depending on your point of view) today's finely crafted chronicle of our times, or semi-literate showbiz goss, and tomorrow's guinea-pig toilet.

They like flights, too – indeed they have entire sections devoted to jetting round the world, and not just to report on wars, or elections, or famines, or corruption, but on luxury holidays in the Caribbean, or spas in the Seychelles, or massages in the Maldives. It's disgusting. It's really disgusting. I'm going to complain to the editor. In fact, I think I'll take him to tribunal.

There are other things I could mention, too. Women, for example. Newspapers like pictures of women. In this one, they usually have their clothes on, but not, frankly, always that many. I think the women could have more clothes.

And while we're at it, what's with the gloom? Why do we have to write about people dying, and starving, and killing, and embezzling, and fiddling elections, and fiddling expenses, and abusing, and being abused, and generally being miserable? Can't we, you know, ac-cent-tchu-uate the positive, eliminate the negative, latch on to the affirmative?

Can't we write stories about people who've been happily married for 40 years, who have held on to their jobs, which they enjoy, and who go on nice holidays where they don't get food poisoning or drown?

You see, I'm a feminine feminist environmentalist positive thinker, and my beliefs are very important to me – so important that you could regard them as a philosophy, a religion, even, and I think that by disregarding my beliefs (my religion!) my employer is discriminating against me.

This, apparently, is the view of Tim Nicholson, the "head of sustainability" (whatever that might be) of one of Britain's biggest property firms, who was very, very, very cross when his boss did things like tell a colleague to get on a plane, when he shouldn't, because flying when you shouldn't is very bad. It's not against the law, but it's naughty. And people shouldn't be naughty. Tender-hearted Tim (the kind of man, one assumes, who has ten different bins in his kitchen and gives his children lovely wooden toys for Christmas), was made redundant last July, and went weeping to his lawyers.

Now a Mr Justice Michael Burton has ruled that his beliefs about climate change qualify as a philosophy or a religion and are therefore subject to the laws applying to religious discrimination. Yes, he has. He really has.

So, cheer up, everyone! The floodgates are open. And it's all about you. Vegetarian offended by your colleague's bacon sarnie? Bring on the lawyers! Feminist, who thinks that girl in advertising's skirt is just a little bit too short? Bring on the lawyers! Fundamentalist Muslim who doesn't like being told what to do by a woman? Well, gosh, that one's a tiny bit complicated.

— By arrangement with The Independent

Corrections and clarifications

In the intro of report “Rail, road traffic disrupted” (Page 1, November 4) instead of “Punjab came to a near stop….”, the sentence should have been “Punjab came to a near standstill….”

In the headline “Sensex cos’ log growth in profit” (Page 17, November 3), the apostrophe after cos is inappropriate. A better headline would have been “Profits of 30 blue chip firms zoom”.

The headline “Obesity greater evil than alcohol for liver” (Page 17, November 2) should instead have been “Obesity bigger risk to liver than alcohol”.

In second para of report “PEC Prof hangs himself” “(Page 1, November 2, Chandigarh Tribune) “a doctorate in science” has incorrectly gone as “a directorate in science”.

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