The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Headley alert
Need to get to the bottom of the terror plot

The US may have its own reasons for not allowing at this stage Indian investigators to interrogate David Coleman Headley, alias Daood Gilani, and his associate Tahawwur Hussain Rana, arrested by the FBI for plotting terrorist strikes in India and Denmark. The denial is, however, surprising as it has come at a time when there is much talk of close cooperation between Indian and US intelligence agencies. There are indications that India may be allowed to question Headley later on, most probably after the FBI has done its job, as it has to file an indictment report by January 1, 2010, in a Chicago court. Contrary to this, India had no objection to US agencies interrogating the lone captured Pakistani terrorist, Ajmal Kasab, immediately after 26/11. The US must allow the extradition of Headley and Rana to India which will be sought by New Delhi soon. India is trying to find out if these terrorists had any links with those who attacked Mumbai.

India’s worry is based on the fact that Headley, a frequent visitor to Pakistan, had stayed in five Indian cities, including Mumbai, between 2006 and 2009 to implement a Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) plan of striking at key military installations such as Delhi’s National Defence College and other targets like some elite schools in Uttarakhand. He might have succeeded in setting up LeT sleeper cells. That is why five states — Uttarakhand, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh and Delhi — have been alerted by the Union Home Ministry to maintain strict vigil at all the sensitive places and key installations that may be targeted by Headley’s recruits. But this is not enough. India has to get to the bottom of the Headley plot to expose and punish all those involved in harming the country’s interests.

Interrogation of Headley and his associate Rana and the investigations that will follow may reveal the details about the functioning of the LeT, an otherwise banned terrorist outfit based in Pakistan. Obviously, there is more to it than meets the eye. The LeT, working against India, continues to have the patronage of the ISI. Reports have it that the terrorist outfit is still treated as a strategic asset by Pakistan. This shows Pakistan’s duplicity in its claim of fighting terrorism. Islamabad should have realised by now that terrorists are nobody’s friends, not even of Pakistan.

Faculty crunch
Reforms meaningless without more teachers

The Indian education system, especially higher education, faces many challenges. Shortage of teachers is perhaps the biggest, and now the Prime Minister has rightly asserted that problems of deficiency in quality teaching in our schools, colleges and universities have to be tackled urgently and the present state of affairs cannot be allowed to persist. Last week, at the Panjab University convocation he had also expressed reservations about the quality of education being imparted by universities.

Since Independence, India’s education system has expanded vastly, although a chunk of the population is still illiterate. However, quality has often been sacrificed amidst the mushrooming of education institutions. Time and again it has been realised that higher education in India, barring a few institutions, is at best mediocre and falls far short of international standards. Unfortunately, even premier institutions like the IITs are facing a faculty crunch that is likely to become more acute in the coming years if efforts are not made to bridge the gap. The shortage of competent teachers ails all levels of education. According to a Planning Commission study, both the paucity of teachers and poor infrastructure have affected the performance of Sarva Siksha Abhiyan. An additional one million teachers are needed to implement the Right to Education Act. Besides, structural reforms being envisaged as pointed out by the National Knowledge Commission and the Yashpal Committee will have meaning only if the teaching staff are in place.

Ensuring the quality of teaching cannot be ignored. There is an urgent need to improve teaching standards across the county. Talented teachers can be attracted through higher emoluments and an encouraging atmosphere. The role of teachers cannot be underestimated. If India has to emerge as an education hub and have skilled and educated manpower, it can do so only with quality teaching.

Thought for the Day

The mind in its own place, and in itself/ Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven. — John Milton

ARTICLE

Downhill in Karnataka
BJP’s southern hopes turn into despair
by Inder Malhotra

FOR days on end the country witnessed with growing disgust what can only be described as a combination of fratricidal warfare within the Bharatiya Janata Party and a comic opera over its affairs in Karnataka that are scandalous beyond measure. Then the party announced a “compromise” between the warring factions and danced with joy.

Successful or failed attempts to overthrow chief ministers take place in all states among all parties all the time. But never before has there been anything like what the BJP, in comprehensible decline across the country, has done unto itself in Karnataka.

Karnataka is one state where the saffron party, or whatever is left of it, should have done everything in its power to preserve and promote its unity and control. It is the party’s “Gateway to the South” where it has been non-existent during the last 62 years. This “bridgehead” has now all but collapsed. The possibility of it being repaired is remote, as the performance of the warriors on return to Bangalore indicates.

Mr B. S. Yeddyurappa, who has been allowed to survive as Chief Minister on very strict conditions, had earlier wept on a TV channel, for having agreed to drop from his Cabinet such “valued” associates as Shoba Karandlaje, declared after the compromise that no one was being dropped. But within minutes harsh reality hit him. More of the same should be expected in the days to come.

For the first thing, the second thing and the last thing needed to understand the Karnataka BJP’s turmoil is that it has nothing to do with ideology, shades of Hindutva, factionalism, or personality clashes. It is a blatant case of blackmail by the hyper-rich mine owners of Bellary who have formidable clout. They had financed the election of a great many BJP members of the state legislature and thus command their total loyalty.

To this blackmail the BJP Central leadership, such as it is, has surrendered shamelessly. Two of the Reddy brothers, masters of the rapacious mining lobby, are Mr Yeddyurappa’s colleagues but during the talks in Delhi they refused to sit across the table with him. Eventually, they gave up the demand for the Chief Minister’s replacement but not before imposing conditions that are humiliating beyond words. Apart from having to “sacrifice” his trusted colleagues and bureaucrats (his principal secretary loathed by the Reddys was shunted out during the parleys), everyone saw Mr Yeddyurappa weep on a TV channel for having to “ditch him and Shoba”. He has also agreed to withdraw a tax of Rs 1,000 on every truck loaded with iron ore or any other mineral that he had slapped down in a vain attempt to clip the wings of the Reddys. In short, the mighty mine owners will now have a “free run” of the mineral-rich southern districts, without any hindrance by anyone in Bangalore.

There is a further twist to this tawdry tale that exposes the moral bankruptcy of not only the battered BJP but also of the complacent Congress. Karnataka’s mineral-rich districts adjoin those in Andhra. Needless to add that lucrative mining in Andhra is the preserve of Jaganmohan Reddy, the son of the late of YS Reddy. He is still continuing his campaign to be his father’s successor. On this page two weeks ago I had warned of the steadily growing danger of big money virtually strangulating the democratic process in this country. Today, it is clear that hard cash is sweeping away all other loyalties and values.

Sadly, this is not all. The Bellary Reddys have yet another peremptory demand. At the time of the Beijing Olympics, there was an exponential increase in the Chinese demand for iron ore. The Reddys mined areas that were not covered by their licence. An upright civil servant initiated a case against them. They have the temerity to demand its withdrawal, and the BJP seems inclined to accept it. On the Reddys’ demand, a coordination committee would now supervise the Chief Minister’s work.

Seventeen months ago the BJP managed to scrape through to power in Bangalore - it had virtually to buy the support of four Janata Dal (Secular) members - because of a mild sympathy wave for it. This had resulted from a dismal but expected double-cross of the saffron outfit by the brood of former Prime Minister H. D. Deve Gowda. His son having ruled the state for two and half years as the head of the Janata Dal (Secular)-BJP coalition went back on his commitment to let the saffron party rule for the second half of the coalition’s tenure. It must be recorded that the Gowda family and the Reddys of Bellary have always had most cordial and mutually beneficial relations that can easily be revived when the need arises.

Why was Mr Yeddyurappa chosen as the BJP Chief Minister and not the more senior party leader in the state, Mr Ananth Kumar, who was a member of Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s Cabinet? He had staked his claim to be Chief Minister then and had renewed it now in the hope that the incumbent would be given the order of the boot? There were reasons for Mr Yeddyuruppa’s ascendancy: Unlike other party leaders, he had worked at the grassroots; he belonged to the right caste, Lingayat; he had the all-important backing of the RSS; and he had a clean image. All these advantages have now been washed away like the tens of thousands of homes in the recent Karnataka floods. What cleanliness is left in the image of a man who has had to make the dirtiest compromises with the Bellary moneybags always able to crack the whip?

It is this that reduces to utter nonsense the tall talk at the BJP’s headquarters at 11 Ashoka Road, New Delhi, about a “reunified” BJP in Karnataka progressing from strength to strength, lasting its full term of five years and recapturing the state. Anyone with eyes to see the ground reality knows that for the BJP in Karnataka it is down the hill all the way.

Equally, it should be obvious that the future of the BJP even in states where it is in power at present cannot be independent of what happens to the party as a whole across the country. At present it seems to be inching towards oblivion largely because of its own efforts at self-destruction.

MIDDLE

On the run
by Pramod K Chaudhari

Bhag Dilli bhag, Chak de India, Jai ho, cried out runners during the Delhi Half Marathon recently.

This year also, I spread word in my local circle asking everybody to join feet for the big occasion on November 1. I have been taking part in the marathon ever since it was started in 2005.

First of all, I asked a gym-mate Ginni Singh. He refused, “No, I can’t run with you. You swallow a Viagra pill and then run”.

His remark reminded me of a horse who is fed gram before the wedding walkathon.

I used my persuasive power on old friend Dr Zaheer as well. He promised to run in the year of Commonwealth Games as he had not practised this time.

All the same, I started practising for the big event. Just a couple of days before it, I met Hansraj, a long-time marathoner. He promised to accompany me..

On the D-day, we put on our running shoes and made it to the venue on a slightly misty Sunday morning. All the world and his wife seemed to be there.

Soon the race started amidst a galaxy of stars like Shah Rukh Khan. My new-found buddy Hansraj was quite fast and did a vanishing trick shortly. Before disappearing, he did say, “I’ll be with you in the race of life, but in this race, ‘goodbye’.”

I was left alone having been outrun in the beginning itself. However, there was no question of quitting. I soldiered on, keeping in mind the saying of a wise soul: A man is not finished when he is defeated. He is finished, when he quits!

I made many friends during the race. There was a group of laughers. The race was all ha ha, hee hee for them.

On the way, I saw a runner vomiting; another was sitting on the pavement holding his head. I felt consoled that I held my horses in the beginning and did not rush in like Hansraj.

Soon I heard fellow-marathoners shouting ‘Bharat mata ki jai, Bharat mata ki jai’. I saw that a fair foreign filly was leading a group of runners. “This is a British mata who is winning,” I joked.

Inching towards the 21-km race, I kept saying to myself, ‘Ab Dilli door nahin’, joking all along with the co-marathoners.

As I had run for almost three hours and about to finish the line, someone among the spectators pulled my leg, “Bhago bhago, first prize to mil hi jayega.” (Run fast, you’ll get the first prize). That tongue-in-cheek remark had me in splits. I forgot my fatigue and pain, and sped up.

The game was worth the candle. I cherish the event every day of the year. Only half a km was left, I ran towards the finishing line despite my failing limbs, remembering the inspiring words written on the T-shirt of a runner: The pain is temporary; the pride is for ever. Jai ho! I cried out as I hit the end line.

OPED

India’s is a plural society
Why can’t the RSS understand this simple truth?
by Kuldip Nayar

The Rashtriyaswyam Sewak Sangh (RSS) is bad enough to represent an antediluvian philosophy which has injected the poison of parochialism into the body politics of India. But when the organisation continues to pursue the same agenda by digging up old controversies, it harms the country’s integrity.

The latest from the RSS is that it wants the mosques standing close to the temples at Mathura and Varanasi to go. This is not the first time that the RSS has made such demands. It had raised them some time ago. But then the opposition was so vehement that the matter was allowed to disappear from the public gaze. The inference was that better sense had come to prevail in the organisation and it had left pursuing what could destabilise the country. Apparently, the perception was wrong.

The RSS has again justified the demolition of the Babri Masjid at Ayodhya and has demanded the construction of a temple. This is at a time when the guilty are being tried in court for the heinous crime of pulling down the mosque. It means that the RSS has no respect for the law and order and it is bent upon fomenting trouble.

India has always taken pride in its diversity and has adopted a Constitution which gives freedom to all religious communities, not only to follow their faith in the way they want to but also to propagate its teachings without any bar. The struggle for Independence against the British had one distinctive feature: pluralism. That, in fact, is India’s ethos.

That the RSS never imbibed those values is understandable because it did not take part in the freedom movement. If it all, it was inclined towards the British rulers. Nonetheless, after 62 years of Independence, the RSS should have realised that the Hindus can be instigated to go wild as they did during the “rath yatra” before the demolition of the Babri Masjid.

But the last two Lok Sabha elections should have taught the RSS that the community comes back to the intrinsic belief in the spirit of tolerance and the sense of accommodation.

The RSS should have learnt a lesson from what is happening to its political instrument, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). It is speedily going down the hill and losing byelection after byelection because it fails to understand the country’s pluralistic temperament.

By keeping apart the RSS agenda of Babri Masjid and common personal law, the BJP was able to come to power at the Centre with the support of those who saw it separating religion from politics. But it turned out to be wrong. The BJP had to follow the dictates of the RSS.

The personality of Atal Behari Vajpayee, the BJP’s stalwart, gave a message that the party did not adopt the policy of Hindutva: the RSS ideology. Even Pakistan put its faith in Vajpayee since he spoke the language of pluralism.

His speech at Lahore is still remembered as one of the best efforts to bring the Islamic Republic of Pakistan and pluralistic India closer. In his absence, the other BJP leaders have tried to fill the space and be acceptable as he was. But they do not have the same stature or the sway in the country that Vajpayee has enjoyed.

Whether the present BJP leadership would regain the ground they have lost is difficult to say. But the RSS, particularly its new chief, Mohan Bhagwat, is creating more and more difficulties for them. In his craze for publicity, he has occupied the centre of the stage. He is dictating who in the BJP would serve in which capacity and for how long. Whatever prestige the party had regained by lying low after the reverses in the polls has been frittered away by this loud-mouthed RSS chief.

In any case, who is he or, for that matter, his colleagues in the organisation sitting at Nagpur, the RSS headquarters? They issue fiats (like fatwas) which have nothing to do with the reality on the ground. They have never faced any election to know the pulse of people. There is no inner democracy. They live in the shadows and initiate from there the dark deeds which affect the BJP adversely. Their problem is that they are still in the dark ages when the 21st century is already 10 years old.

In fact, the RSS resembles the Taliban in thinking and working. Both do not want liberalism. Both believe that religion is the beginning and end of all. They are a bigoted lot and have no place for tolerance in their methods.

India is fortunate in having a stable democratic system. The RSS, unfortunately, executes the Gujarat-like ethnic cleansing of Muslims or on a limited scale victimise Christians in Orissa. Yet the system is able to prevail, although it weakens every time it is hit.

Were India’s pluralistic society to give in, the RSS would convert the entire country into a theocratic, intolerant polity. The example of Pakistan is before us. It is in the midst of a fierce battle against fanaticism and parochialism. Due to a weak system, it is facing great difficulties.

The weakening of the system needs to be emphasized because some BJP-run states are hitting at it by contaminating the police which are reluctant to take action against the Taliban-like Hindus. The law and order machinery is evoking less and less confidence. Both the RSS and the Taliban do not believe in the means. For them success by itself is the end. People on both sides should be vigilant because the RSS and the Taliban are targeting the entity of the respective country.

Mosques next to temples at Mathura and Varanasi are a proud heritage of India’s secular society. Those who are trying to destroy the heritage are as fanatic as the Jammat Ulma, which has given a fatwa that the Muslims should not sing Vande Mataram, a song that goes back to the national movement against the British.

Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, the greatest Muslim authority, had seen to it that only the first two stanzas are sung so that Vande Mataram does not hurt the tenets of Islam in any way.

Lies, damn lies and Berlin speeches
by Adrian Hamilton

One by one, the leaders of the West trooped out in front of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin this week to say what a great blow for freedom the fall of the Wall had been and how that momentum must be sustained throughout the world today.

"The fall of the Berlin Wall rings today as an appeal to fight oppression," declared President Nicolas Sarkozy. "A wall, a physical wall, may have come down but there are other walls that exist that we have to overcome and we will be working together to accomplish that," said Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State.

Gordon Brown went further and enumerated these walls, declaring that "an Africa in poverty, Darfur in agony, Zimbabwe in tears, Burma in chains, individuals, even when in pain, need not suffer forever without hope".

One can forgive a bit of hyperbole on these occasions. This was, after all, a celebration of an historic occasion in 1989 when politicians – without grand visions, one should add – clutched, in the words of Chancellor Helmut Kohl quoting Bismarck, "the cloak of history as it passed by".

One can even forgive the sheer vacuity of Brown's attempts at rhetoric (just what exactly does "you know that while force has temporary power to dominate, it can never ultimately decide" mean? It sounds portentous but the more you think about it, the less it makes sense).

What cannot be so easily forgiven, however, is the wilful denial of reality in all this high-flown claim of walls and liberty. And the worst of it is that the same people stepping up to the podium in Berlin are the very same people who are ensuring that it isn't so.

Take Brown's list of good causes. Darfur may be "in agony". It is in agony. But the whole Western pressure to free its people, punish the perpetrators and bring the chief culprit, President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan, before the International Court of Justice has gone into reverse. What the West now wants is a settlement, not justice, and for that it feels the need to co-operate with the President, not hound him.

And so with Burma and even Zimbabwe. The former may be "in chains", the latter "in agony", as Brown would have it. But he, like the US President, has shifted tack from confrontation to co-operation with their murderous regimes. The ruling military junta in Burma is now being brought in from the cold by the US. President Robert Mugabe is being kept in power.

We are backing a regime in Afghanistan which we know to have stolen an election through fraud. We support a President in Pakistan whom we acknowledge as corrupt. We treat with a regime in Tehran which is now busily locking up its democratic opponents. We beg for admittance at the doors of North Korea in the full knowledge that here is a regime starving its own people for the sake of brandishing nuclear weapons at its neighbours. We give money to allay our concern for "Africa in poverty" but achieve, and try, little towards the overthrow of the rotten governments that keep their people in poverty.

We are back, in other words, to the old world of propping up discredited and oppressive regimes because stability has once again become more important than values. But before the old guard of the British Foreign Office and the US State Department get too carried away with welcoming back the traditional policy of a country pursuing its interests not principles, it is worth saying that it need not be so. We can still have values in our international relations without ruining their cause by our actions.

The whole concept of an ethical foreign policy, it is true, has been debased by the experience of former president George W Bush and his companion in arms, Tony Blair. But the problem of the doctrine of spreading democracy and humanitarian intervention was not that the aims were necessarily wrong, but they were used as cover for a Western assertion of power that was entirely contradictory to them.

You don't go around invading countries and waging war under the guise of "Christian values". Nor do you wage a "War on Terror" which forces international relations back into a Cold War format of enemies, who behave the worst through isolation, and friends, most of whom are the very authoritarian regimes you have been criticising on democratic grounds. You have only to travel almost anywhere abroad to understand just how much damage the charge of hypocrisy has done to "our cause" as we talk of "democracy" and "freedom" while all the while interfering to the opposite effect.

And yet democracy and freedom are what we do believe in. The answer has to be to forget the rhetoric, and the speeches of those in Berlin trying to keep alive a propaganda hollowed out by the actions of the past decade. It is also to accept that, in the post-Iraq and post-recession world, we have lost the moral high ground to go around telling other people what to do. They are no longer interested in listening and, in a globe where the US is becoming just one of a number of competing players and Britain is a middle-ranking country stuck uneasily on the fringes of Europe, there is no reason why they should listen.

We can huff and we can puff about Israeli settlements, Iranian double-dealing, Burmese government intransigence, China's suppression of its ethnic minorities, but there is nothing we will – and probably not much we can – do about it.

Yet we should not apologise for what we hold (or should hold) dear. We must keep developing and displaying the benefits of freedom and democracy at home – for all the expenses scandal (which has gained rather greater play abroad than people over here are aware of) and for all the effort of the Government to chip away at our liberties in the name of fighting "terror". We must make real efforts, as we do not, to prevent the corruption which our companies and agencies encourage by countenancing it abroad (what the French or Chinese may do is irrelevant).

Above all, we should stand here saying to those who want freedom abroad: "Yes, we are on your side, we won't keep quiet as to your plight and if you want a safe haven, our doors are open here." Instead, we sound the clarion call abroad while failing even to preserve it at home.

— By arrangement with The Independent

Scientists develop apple that won’t rot
by Chris Green

Ever since somebody suggested that eating one a day kept the doctor away, the health benefits of the apple have been trumpeted by grandmothers and government ministers alike. The fruit's only drawback is its tendency to lose its glossy sheen and crunchy texture within a few days – a problem that a team of scientists in Australia now claims to have solved.

For the past 20 years, researchers at Queensland Primary Industries and Fisheries (QPIF), a department of the Queensland government, have been developing a new variety of apple which they claim can stay fresh for months.

Its name, RS103-130, might not have quite the same ring as popular varieties such as Golden Delicious, Pink Lady or Braeburn, but the scientists have described it as "the world's best apple" thanks to its sweet taste, longevity and ability to resist disease.

The apple, which is a deep red in colour, stays "crispy" for up to 14 days if kept in a fruit bowl, and if stored in a fridge it can remain edible for four months. The Queensland government is seeking a commercial supply partner to distribute the fruit and hopes to begin selling it next year.

Tim Mulherin, Queenland's primary industries minister, said: "This new variety is sweet. It ticks the other boxes too because it is disease resistant, so requires few or no fungicides. Initial taste tests have been outstanding. Out of the five apple types tasted, the new variety scored the highest."

The RS103-130 variety has a naturally strong resistance to apple scab, also known as black spot, a disease caused by the fungus venturia inaequalis which affects both the foliage and fruit. The apple is not genetically modified but is produced conventionally using a gene from the Asiatic apple variety Malus floribunda which has a proven resistance to black spot.

In Britain, apple producers need to spray each crop 14 times to protect against the disease, a process which costs the £200m-a-year industry up to 10 per cent of its turnover. A variety which did not require spraying could mean huge savings for the producers.

"If you're an apple grower and this [new apple] lives up to its promise, then it really is quite a breakthrough," said Dez Barbara, a senior research scientist at the University of Warwick's Horticulture Research International.

However, he added that the new apple was not guaranteed success in Britain and would have to be trialled. The Saturn variety, which used the same gene, was introduced to the UK in 1980 but didn't catch on.

"With apples, you've got to take into account things such as how easy they are to grow and pick," Dr Barbara said. "Above all, consumers have got to like them – if consumers won't buy them, producers won't grow them."

Guy Barter, chief horticultural adviser for the Royal Horticultural Society, said the new variety's longevity could give it a major advantage.

"Apples that have ripened in storage are never quite as nice as those that ripen naturally. There's also a huge environmental cost in running the cold stores to keep the apples, so if you had a variety that required less cold storing, that would be valuable," he said.n

— By arrangement with The Independent

Corrections and clarifications

The headline “Demedicalising women’s health released” (Page 2, November 11, Chandigarh Tribune) is wrong. It should have been “Book on demedicalising women’s health released”.

In the headline “Withdraw summon order, school urges education dept” (Page 2, November 11, Chandigarh Tribune) instead of “summon” the right word would have been “summons”.

The headline “Kidnapping finger at father-in-law” (Page 3, November 11, Chandigarh Tribune) is incorrect. It should have been “Man accuses father-in-law of kidnapping wife”.

The report “One held with 2 liquor boxes” (Page 5, November 9, Chandigarh Tribune) is incomplete. The last sentence has been chopped off abruptly.

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