The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

A deserving winner
Hasina has stood for democracy, pluralism

It is befitting that this year’s prestigious Indira Gandhi Prize for Peace, Disarmament and Development has gone to Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina because she has an enviable track record on all these fronts. If her country is a pluralistic democracy today, it is largely because of her efforts, otherwise there have been many occasions when it seemed that Bangladesh would either be crushed under the jackboots of the military junta or would fall a prey to communal fanatics. Hers has been a life of struggle. A number of attempts were made on her life. That she fought on regardless is an abiding proof of her mettle.

She and her father, the late Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, were in the forefront of the movement for democracy in what was then East Pakistan. Their efforts fructified in the liberation war of 1971. What an irony that she had to bear the murder of her father and other family members during a coup in 1975, for which 12 are to be hanged, 34 years on. She was instrumental in the adoption of the first-ever resolution of the UN General Assembly on Culture and Peace. Bangladesh had been riven by insurgency right from its inception. Sheikh Hasina resolved this perennial problem by concluding the Chittagong Hill Tracts Peace Accord. Not only that, she launched a number of projects for the poor and vulnerable sections of the population as Prime Minister of Bangladesh from 1996 to 2001.

While many in Bangladesh have based their politics on opposing India irrationally despite its help in the war of liberation, Sheikh Hasina has always been a friend of India. At times, she has had to pay a heavy price for this. When she rode to power with a thumping majority in December last year, one of her first assertions was that Bangladesh soil would not be allowed to be used to carry out terror attacks against its neighbour. The recognition that the award has sought to give to her efforts will strengthen forces of peace and development in the region.

Dead fish in the Sutlej
A sad saga of govt apathy

The ghastly sight of dead fish floating in the Sutlej river has become all too frequent. Only in January this year a similar incident had happened at the same spot. Some 10 tonnes of fish had perished then. Yet the authorities concerned did not take any effective steps with the result that once again the same story has been repeated. Two months later, in April, fish and snakes were found dead in large numbers when a huge quantity of furnace oil spilled from the Ropar thermal plant into the Sutlej. This is not the only river where toxic waste is dumped. In July the Sirsa rivulet, passing through Ropar, saw a similar nightmare, which was blamed on the discharge of industrial waste by units located in Himachal Pradesh.

The sickening regularity with which such incidents happen is as shocking as the gross indifference of the pollution control boards, the health and environment authorities. The level of official resistance to corrective action can be gauged from the fact that despite directions from the Punjab and Haryana High Court and persistent media pressure, the Punjab government has not cared to stop the contamination of Budha Nullah in Ludhiana. After the usual exercise of collecting samples, the authorities sleep over the inquiry reports and industries carry on with their routine pollution. The health authorities too take it easy as fish from the polluted rivers is sold in markets with total disregard to customer health.

Fish can die for lack of oxygen in a lake or pond where water is stagnant. In a river it is usually the high level of pollution that experts say is responsible for the death of fish on such a large scale. Yet the managements of the industrial units discharging toxic waste into the rivers, canals and nullahs get away with murder because they have a strong lobby, which a spineless government refuses to take on since its survival is at stake.

Thought for the Day

Emulate the learned and the pious in all your thoughts and deeds — The Upanishads

ARTICLE

Review of NPT
An opportunity for Indian diplomacy
by Manpreet Sethi

The nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) is coming up for its five-yearly review in May 2010. The last of the three mandatory preparatory committee (PrepCom) meetings held earlier this year was successful in finalising procedural decisions such as designating the committees that would deliberate particular issues and also the Chairs and post holders for the RevCon. However, the PrepCom was unable to forward a set of recommendations to the RevCon owing to lack of agreement among member nations.

While it remains to be seen how the forthcoming RevCon will unfold, it is fairly certain that it will be dominated by discussions over two specific Articles of the NPT. The first of these would be the status of Article IV which is widely interpreted by the non-nuclear weapon states (NNWS) as granting them the right to the entire nuclear fuel cycle, including enrichment and reprocessing (ENR) technologies.

The problem, however, arises from the fact that these capabilities can be put to dual use and hence they exacerbate the risk of proliferation.

A renaissance in use of nuclear power for electricity generation is being widely projected owing to the volatility in prices of hydrocarbons and growing environmental concerns over increased carbon emissions directly traceable to large-scale thermal power generation. This makes it necessary that adequate attention be paid to the safety and security of nuclear materials and technology as the number of facilities and volume of nuclear commerce and transportation increases.

To address the risks involved in spread of peaceful use of nuclear technology, it has been suggested that nations operating nuclear reactors should source their nuclear fuel requirements from a few ‘authorised’ multinational or multilateral fuel centres instead of acquiring individual ENR facilities.

Though the technical and operational details or the political implications of these proposals are still unclear, they envisage a surrender of the access to the nuclear fuel cycle by NNWS. This submission is only possible if accompanied by credible guarantees of fuel supply without risk of commercial or political manipulation.

For this, the political climate between states would have to reflect greater mutual trust and confidence. Also, all NPT members will have to feel a sufficient sense of stakehood in the treaty to be willing to accept restrictions on their nuclear activities.

This could be possible if the twin objectives of the NPT — non-proliferation and disarmament — are better balanced. In fact, the lopsided focus on non-proliferation is largely responsible for the less than satisfactory state of the NPT today, where its membership is at a record high but the risk of proliferation has not diminished. This sense of dissatisfaction will have to be addressed through meaningful deliberations over Article VI that commits the nuclear weapon states (NWS) to undertake negotiations on disarmament.

India’s position on NPT is well known. As a non-member, technically it has no role to play in the treaty. However, even as an outsider, India has consistently supported the principle of non-proliferation and is a participant in several other components of the regime such as the IAEA safeguards, the UN Security Council Resolution 1540, commitment to early conclusion of an FMCT or the voluntary moratorium on nuclear testing.

In fact, the country does have a stake in how the challenge of non-proliferation is tackled and some of this will be dependent on the decisions/outcome of the RevCon.

Therefore, RevCon 2010 offers an opportunity to India’s nuclear diplomacy to publicly endorse the principle of NPT while exhorting treaty members to resolve the internal contradictions that weaken it. In this context, India could offer two concrete suggestions that would help the NWS to make good on their commitment to Article VI and this, in turn, could make it easier for the NNWS to accept restrictions on Article IV.

The first of these could be for the NWS to offer comprehensive security assurances to all NNWS that they would not be subject to the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons and that others would come to their aid in case they were threatened with nuclear use.

Such a complement of negative and positive security assurances would be far more reassuring for the NNWS than a mere reduction in arsenals of NWS, which is certainly useful, but only up to a point since even a few hundred warheads are as threatening as several thousands. Therefore, conclusion of a legally binding agreement that pledges this assurance would reduce the attractiveness of the weapons for the non-possessors.

The second proposal could be the finalisation of a universal no first use (NFU) commitment, which would minimise the possibility of a nuclear exchange between NWS and thus reduce the utility of the weapon. Adoption of NFU would be a crucial step towards the eventual elimination of nuclear weapons since it would involve an assurance from every country that it would not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons into a conflict.
Since there will not be a first, it would effectively mean no use of the nuclear weapon and hence a reduced dependence on the weapon in national security strategies over time.

Acceptance of NFU would enable de-alerting, de-mating and de-targeting, all three steps that are critical for reducing the dangers of an accidental, unauthorised or mistaken launch of nuclear weapons. This would lessen inter-state tensions, increase mutual confidence and thus reinforce a cycle of positives.

It would provide a boost to non-proliferation by sending a strong signal of the diminishing utility of nuclear weapons and would have great symbolic value. Gradually, the desire to possess or improve an unusable weapon would lessen, making it easier for the possessors to give up the weapon. Therefore, this step would work towards enhancing the irrelevance of the nuclear weapon, quite on the pattern and experience of the 1925 Geneva Convention.

The NPT RevCon offers a platform for NNWS and NWS to jointly consider these proposals. A show of sincerity of intention and action by NWS would strengthen the cause of both the pillars of the NPT — non-proliferation and disarmament. Acceptance of credible initiatives on disarmament by NWS would make it easier for NNWS to accede demands on their right to the nuclear fuel cycle.

With each giving up some of their prerogatives borne out a sense of ownership of the challenges afflicting the NPT, international security would be the winner. And India, an inevitable gainer.

The writer is Project Leader, Nuclear Security, at the Centre for Air Power Studies, New Delhi

MIDDLE

The Paris dream
by Ashok Kumar Yadav

I CAN vividly recall even today when as a young student I once bunked the school to stealthily see a movie An Evening in Paris with Sharmila Tagore sizzling in a double role.

While I was completely lost fantasising as the hero rowed past the Eiffel tower in the Seine river with the heroine, my brother appeared on the scene from nowhere and jettisoned me mid-air from Paris to be grounded at Bawal, my home town, without any ‘immigration clearance’.

It left me shattered. As a ruralite middle class lad, I had obviously no opportunity to visit the tourist places even within India, what to speak of spending an evening in Paris. Though I was evacuated forcibly from the movie, nobody could restrain me from revisiting Paris in my imagination with which I had fallen in love at first sight.

I would climb the Eiffel tower, sail past the replica of Statue of Liberty, enjoy my rides in Disneyland and visit the Champs Elyse christened as the fashion capitol of the world. It appeared as if I was a green card holder enjoying dual citizenship with liberty to cross the international frontiers at will.

It was like a dream come true when one of my friends living in Paris invited us there. What an offer! I felt as if my beloved-with-dimple had prompted my friend to entice me for a passionate break.

On arrival in Paris, our host took us through the serpentine lanes in his GPS-guided Mercedes. En route we saw the Concorde, world's only supersonic passenger aircraft that flies faster than the speed of sound.

I apprised the host about our agenda of making a whirlwind tour of all those romantic locales filmed in the movie. He obediently chartered the itinerary to be covered in four days.

What a visual treat to see the city known for its architecture and grandeur from the top of the Eiffel tower! A momentous occasion indeed to have home-made-dinner in the backdrop of a fully illuminated tower with sparkling colours!

The Louvre Museum with rare objects d’art and paintings was simply fabulous. But the biggest attraction was a half-length portrait of Mona Lisa whose expression is often described as enigmatic. However, my son and daughter found the Disneyland most entertaining.

As I was enjoying an early morning stroll along the Seine with the moon blushing and trying to hide at the sight of my beloved wife, I felt at the top with my little world merging into Paris. I wished the earth had stopped moving so as to make the moment acquire eternity as Robert Browning would have put it.

While the sun was just beginning to interrupt our privacy, I was reminded of John Donne chiding the sun in his masterpiece The Sun Rising calling it “busy old fool” and rebuking “Must to thy motions lovers’ seasons run?” Like the poet who considered the place with his beloved as the “world’s contracted thus”, I too considered four evenings spent in Paris as a manifestation of a long-cherished dream!

OPED

Discourage ‘honour killings’ through mass marriages
by Usha Rai

One way of countering the so-called honour killings, that despite our immense progress and modernity seem to be on the increase, is to have mass marriages of young adults very much in love but without the resources or the support needed to tie the knot because of panchayat objections. It is also a simple, practical way of checking the trend for lavish, five-star weddings.

Later this month at the Guild of Service in Delhi 20 couples of different ages, castes and religions will be joined in holy matrimony with the blessings of some VIPs, families and friends. This year a Muslim couple and two widows will be joined in holy matrimony.

Ranjit and Parineeta, both 23 and working for different IT companies, will be among the couples getting wedded. The couple have had to resort to this run-away marriage because their parents, who know each other well, would not accept the marriages because their grandparents were related through a second marriage.

However, there is no blood relationship between Ranjit and Parineeta. The boy will have to move out of his father’s house. With their combined income of Rs 11,000, they are a little nervous but confident that they can build their lives together. They are also hopeful of their families accepting the relationship after a few months.

The address of the Guild of Service, which conducts mass marriages twice a year, was given by their friends Poonam and Johnson Mathew, who had also married at the Guild the previous year. Mathew’s parents were Catholics and totally opposed to his marrying a Hindu girl. The young couple are doing well and inspired Ranjit and Parineeta to follow in their footsteps. They will be present for their wedding this month.

Last year a Hindu boy from Jammu and his Muslim girl friend, both educated and one of them from an affluent political family, had run away from their homes and come to Delhi to get married. The girl’s parents accused the young boy of kidnapping their daughter who they claimed was a minor.

The chairperson of the Guild, Mrs Mohini Giri, with the support of Lawyers Collective, went out of her way to get the records that proved that the girl was an adult and got her to testify before the courts that she was marrying out of personal choice.

The Guild gave shelter to the couple and police protection was sought because of threats to the couple’s lives. Their marriage was first conducted in a temple and then registered in the courts. The couple are living happily in Delhi and both of them are working and earning well.

For the Guild that runs a home for widows in Vrindavan called Ma Dham, this is merely an extension of its work of providing succour to the poor, needy and marginalised women. Widow rehabilitation, sometime if the widow is young enough through remarriage, is part of its on-going service,

In fact over the last 35 years the two organisations that Mrs Giri has been associated with – the War Widows Association and the Guild of Service – have conducted close to 6,000 marriages. It all started after the war in 1971. In 1972 mass marriages were held for war widows in Jhajjar, Meerut and Rohtak.

In Haryana there has been a tradition of widows being remarried to the younger brother of the dead man. It was called the ‘chaddar badlo’ ritual. The idea was that the widow would continue to stay in her marital home and would be looked after. This was also one way of ensuring that property, including land, stayed within the family.

While the Association was not involved in these remarriages within the family, through the Zilla Sainik Board that had the responsibility of rehabilitating the widows, it organised widow marriage to other soldiers and civilians looking for a bride. Close to 1,000 widows were remarried by the War Widows Association.

Ninety per cent of the marriages that the Guild and the WWA have been involved in have been successful. When a marriage goes sour, the couple comes back to the Guild which tries to resolve the misunderstandings etc through its counsellors.

There was also the case of Jasbir (name changed), a very young war widow who was extremely keen to get married. However, within a month of her remarriage she came crying to Mrs Giri that her husband was impotent. The man was sent to a doctor in a hospital and after treatment for three to six months he was able to satisfy his wife. They now have grown-up children.

In 1972-73, the Guild of Service was set up in Delhi and remarriage of other widows was taken up in earnest. Now those getting married include poor, young lovers who do not have their parental consent and those marrying out of their caste. It has also solemnised Hindu/Muslim and Hindu/Christian marriages. A Maulvi is called in when a Muslim couple has to be blessed.

Two days in a year have been identified for group marriages – April 14, Baisakhi, and November 19, National Integration Day. However, the group marriages do not always occur on the specified days but around those days. The largest group marriages that Mrs Giri has organised are of 183 couples in Chandigarh and an equally large number in Kangra. Gian Zail Singh was the chief guest at the Chandigarh function. The presence of VIPs elevates the ceremony. Sometimes the chief guest may be a minister or a representative of a Commission for empowering women.

The Guild of Service raises the funds for organising the group marriages and providing the basic requirements for beginning a new life. In addition to the wedding clothes of the bride and groom, they are provided with watches, a steel trunk, a sewing machine, a gas cylinder, a set of utensils, pressure cooker, sheets, blanket and ‘payals’ (anklets) and ‘bichuwas’ (toe rings) for the bride.

Within a week of the marriage, the couple get a marriage certificate from the Guild and their wedding photographs. Those who want a proper marriage certificates then go and register their marriage in the magistrate’s courts and get the certificate after a month. These are largely young people who have married out of caste or run away and got married. Fearing reprisal from parents, they do go and register their marriages in the courts.

Accordingly to government rules, the marriages have to be registered in the court of the magistrate where the couple or the husband resides. This could be in Gurgaon, Noida, Vasant Vihar, Janakpuri or any where else. However, because this can be quite a hassle, several poor couples, whose marriages are not opposed, do not go in for proper registration of the marriage and make do with the Guild’s certificate.

The government should facilitate such group marriages by asking the marriage registrar to attend the ceremonies and register the marriages then and there. The marriage registration certificate can subsequently be posted to the couples. Providing a marriage certificate on the spot would make group marriages more attractive for the common man.

Stem cells: First human trial
by Steve Connor

People suffering from a form of incurable blindness could soon become the first patients in the world to benefit from a new and controversial transplant operation using stem cells derived from spare human embryos left over from IVF treatment.

Scientists working for an American biotechnology company applied for a licence on Thursday to carry out a clinical trial on patients in the US suffering from a type of macular degeneration, which causes gradual loss of vision. They expect the transplant operations to begin early in the new year.

The development is highly controversial because many "pro-life" groups are opposed to using human embryos in any kind of medical research but scientists believe that the benefits could revolutionise the treatment of many incurable disorders ranging from Parkinson's to heart disease.

The company has applied for a licence from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and is confident of its application being granted.

"We've seen absolutely no adverse effects whatsoever in any of the preclinical experiments and our cells are more than 99.9 per cent pure," said Dr Robert Lanza, the chief scientific officer of Advanced Cell Technology (ACT) in Worcester, Massachusetts.

"We certainly expect them [the FDA] to come back with comments and questions but our hope is that we will start sometime early next year. We're optimistic and certainly confident in our own data. We've been in dialogue [with the FDA] and we know what was on their mind and what they wanted us to do," he said. "We're hoping, assuming no hitches, to begin early next year, perhaps March."

Stem cells derived from human embryos that are only a few days old have the ability to develop into any of the scores of specialised tissues of the body. The hope is that they could be used to repair the damaged organs and tissues of patients with a relatively simple transplant procedure.

ACT has filed an "investigational new drug" application with the FDA to treat a form of progressive damage to the retina of the eye called Stargardt's macular degeneration, which destroys the central part of the retina involved in recognising faces and reading words on a page. They also intend to follow this with an application to treat age-related macular degeneration, which affects more than 500,000 people in Britain and is the most common cause of blindness.

The treatment for eye disease uses stem cells to recreate a type of cell in the retina that supports the photoreceptors needed for vision. These cells form the retinal pigment epithelium – which keep the light-sensing cells of the retina alive – which are often the first to die off in macular degeneration, which in turn leads to loss of vision, he said.

A single cell from a human embryo left over from IVF treatment was used in the creation of the stem cell "line" that Dr Lanza and his colleagues cultivated in the laboratory. By bathing the stem cells in a suite of chemical messengers, they were able to stimulate them to develop into fully mature retinal pigment epithelium cells.

Tests on animals found that transplants of the human cells into rats with macular degeneration resulted in a "100 per cent improvement" in vision with no side-effects, Dr Lanza said. Transplants into the 12 human volunteers chosen as guinea pigs for the first clinical trial will involve giving them mild immuno-suppressant drugs to prevent tissue rejection.

"We're going to take a precautionary approach and use low-dose immuno-suppression after the operation and after six weeks we'll taper it off. We don't know whether we will really need it," Dr Lanza said.

He said the clinical trial could well be the first in the world because the only other company that had received a licence from the FDA had had to delay the start of its own clinical trial until the end of next year.

— By arrangement with The Independent

Inside Pakistan
Are Zardari’s days in power numbered?
by Syed Nooruzzaman

President Asif Ali Zardari tried to prove during Monday’s meeting of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Central Executive Committee (CEC) that the entire party was with him as the Head of State enjoying sweeping powers. The unqualified support extended to him might have helped in setting at rest, at least for the time being, the rumour that one group in his party wanted him to give the way to someone else to occupy Aiwan-e-Sadr (President’s House) because of the controversies associated with his name.

Despite the CEC support, Zardari remains under pressure to resign because of various factors. The pressure has increased with his unsuccessful attempt to get the controversial National Reconciliation Order (NRO), issued by former President Gen Pervez Musharraf, approved by parliament.

An article by Ijaz Hussain in Daily Times (Nov 18) has it that the Establishment in Pakistan “wants the exit of Zardari” in the interest of stability in that country. This inference, he says, can be drawn from the fact that “there is general consensus that Altaf Hussain (the founder of the MQM, a member of the ruling coalition in Islamabad) did what he did (refusing to support Zardari on the NRO question) on a signal from the Establishment. It is true that there is no evidence to prove this. However, the history of the MQM’s relations with the Establishment suggests that such a conclusion may not be far from the truth.”

There are many reasons why the Establishment, which includes the Pakistan Army and the bureaucracy, is unhappy with Zardari’s performance. “First”, as Hussain points out, “there is lack of governance, and the Zardari government appears to be utterly rudderless.

“Second, there is rampant corruption in which he and others are allegedly involved. To compound the matter, he is not willing to show the door to the latter. In such a situation, will it be possible for Zardari to survive as President of Pakistan?

Vows to fight back

Zardari, as Business Recorder says, is not bothered about those “who write our obituaries almost daily….” He pooh-poohs them by asserting that “the more they write our obituaries, the more they are disappointed and frustrated”. He will not hesitate to play the “Sindh card” if it is needed, the paper points out.

He is, however, ignoring the fact that the Pakistan constitution does not allow him to continue as the co-chairman of the PPP when he is the President of his country.

If Zardari does not give up either of the two caps he is wearing he will be violating the constitution. This situation will remain unchanged even if the 17th Amendment and Article 58-2(b), which have given dictatorial powers to the President, are removed from the constitution, as Business Recorder adds.

Zardari has been saying off and on that he is in favour of scrapping of the controversial features in the constitution, vestiges of the past dating back to the days of Gen Zia-ul-Haq, but in vain. Now there is sustained campaign that the Pakistan constitution must be restored to its original form to allow democracy to grow deeper roots. The Establishment, too, is supporting this drive in its own way.

Controversial provisions

The situation has come to such a pass that the PPP-led government may have to go in for the removal of the constitution’s controversial provisions. This may help Zardari to continue as toothless Head of State and that too because PML (N) chief Nawaz Sharif is so far not interested in doing anything that can lead to the fall of the government. Yet it seems Zardari’s days are numbered.

According to The News, “Some legal experts have questioned protection for the President” now that the move to get parliamentary sanction for the NRO has been abandoned. “The Supreme Court may be asked to look into the matter”, as the paper indicates. That may lead to Zardari’s disgraceful exit as President.