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Babri trauma revisited |
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Pakistan’s unsafe nukes
Popularise arbitration
Radicalisation of Pak Punjab
Carrying joy to Sukhna
Surging food prices Speed up doubling of single lines
The most relaxed destination
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Babri trauma revisited
The
leakage of the Liberhan Commission report had given the Sangh Parivar a chance to duck the real issue of causing the national shame called the Babri demolition, but the hastened tabling of the report has taken the wind out of its sails. The report presented before Parliament on Tuesday has squarely blamed the inner core of the Parivar, the top leadership of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, the Shiv Sena, the Bajrang Dal and the BJP for the demolition of December 6, 1992, and says that it had been “established beyond doubt” that the events were “neither spontaneous nor unplanned”. That comprises a harsh indictment and the Parivar will be hard pressed to feign innocence. In a way, its responsibility was well known to everybody but the endorsement by the much-delayed report has put it firmly in the dock. The report is unequivocal in saying that the “blame or the credit” for the entire Ram temple movement at Ayodhya must necessarily be attributed to the Sangh Parivar. It is equally harsh on 68 persons “culpable for pushing India to communal discord”, including L. K. Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi, saying that “these leaders have violated the trust of the people and have allowed their actions to be dictated not by the voters but by a small group of individuals who have used them to implement agendas unsanctioned by the will of the common person”. Nor has it spared the then Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Kalyan Singh for his role in the demolition. The bureaucracy went by his wishes in not preventing it. It took the commission all of 17 years and some 4,000 sittings over 48 extensions to reach this inevitable conclusion in the voluminous report. Hopefully, the government will be quicker in taking action against the guilty. The 13-page Action Taken Report (ATR) is apparently a hurriedly prepared document and the real action is yet to come. It refers to cases filed against eight accused and 47 other cases in a special court in Rae Bareli, and a case against unknown “kar sevaks”. It has promised that steps will be taken to expedite the hearing of these cases. But the real test of its sincerity will be if it brings about a law providing for exemplary punishment for all those who disturb communal harmony for gaining power.
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Pakistan’s unsafe nukes
Defence
Minister A. K. Antony’s expression of concern over the possibility of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons falling into wrong hands deserves to be taken with all seriousness by the world community. One can imagine the grave situation that may arise if even a single nuclear bomb goes into Taliban or Al-Qaeda hands. Pakistan’s own control and command system cannot be depended upon in a situation where it is difficult to know who is actually running the political dispensation in that country, as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has pointed out. A recent study of the effectiveness of the security arrangements made with the help of the Pakistan Army’s Strategic Plans Division brought out the truth that “empirical evidence points to a clear set of weaknesses and vulnerabilities in Pakistan’s nuclear safety and security arrangements”. During her three-day visit to Islamabad last month US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, too, stated that “Al-Qaeda and its extremist allies are always on the hunt for nuclear material, and it does not take a lot to create a very damaging explosion with extraordinary political ramifications.” That Al-Qaeda and the Taliban are desperately trying to acquire nuclear weapons is proved by the fact that their suicide bombers have attacked Pakistan’s nuclear installations many times in the recent past. The latest assault by terrorists occurred only a few days back at the Pakistan Aeronautical Complex at Kamra, near Islamabad, believed to be housing some of the country’s nuclear assets. Nothing appears to be safe in Pakistan owing to suicide bomb blasts caused by the Taliban every now and then. For some time the US media has been urging the Obama administration to do all it can to prevent the Taliban from capturing Pakistan’s nuclear weapons because then Washington may never be able to protect its interests in the region. Such an eventuality would seriously endanger peace not only in South Asia but also in the rest of the world. Thus, ensuring foolproof security for Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal should not be the worry of any one country. It is a major challenge for the global community as a whole. Concrete steps must be taken soon to keep the danger at bay.
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Popularise arbitration
The
Delhi High Court’s experiment with arbitration as an alternative dispute redressal mechanism for speedy dispensation of justice and providing relief to the common man is worthy of appreciation. Thanks to the initiative of Chief Justice A.P. Shah, the high court’s state-of-the-art facility has helped resolve many cases in record time and thus reduced the burden of the courts. The arbitration unit has four judges and a governing panel consisting of arbitrators drawn from among retired judges, advocates and chartered accountants. In view of its success story, all courts in the country should emulate this experiment whole-heartedly. The relevance of arbitration has become far greater today because it seeks to effect compromise between litigant parties directly rather than finding a solution through the court system which has proved to be cumbersome and time-consuming. It is noteworthy that statutory recognition has been accorded to arbitration of disputes arising out of legal relationship, whether contractual or not and to all proceedings thereto. Arbitration, if popularised, will obviate the need for parties to seek recourse to the court system besides producing quicker resolution of disputes with cost-effective ways. Owing to globalisation, more and more countries are making use of arbitration today for resolving disputes including those relating to trade and collaboration. Unfortunately, though successive governments have voiced concern over the issue of arrears in courts, nothing much has happened on this front because of the complexity and magnitude of the problem. There are over three crore cases pending in courts of which 2.5 crore are in lower courts, 40 lakh in high courts and about 52,000 in the Supreme Court. No doubt, the introduction of the Lok Adalats, fast track courts, evening and mobile courts have all provided the much-needed relief to the litigants. However, much more needs to be done to tackle the gigantic problem with a sense of urgency. While efforts should be intensified to popularise arbitration, care should be taken to ensure that the arbitration process in the country is thoroughly professional, effective, just and fair so that it would attract no court intervention.
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I am extraordinarily patient, provided I get my own way in the end. — Margaret Thatcher
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Radicalisation of Pak Punjab That Pakistan faces a mortal threat from Islamists who are somewhat conveniently but perhaps erroneously clubbed together and referred to as the Taliban is something that should have by now become clear to even the most purblind not only in that country but also in the rest of the world. The real challenge for both the Pakistani state and society, however, does not lie so much in exterminating the Islamists in the Pakhtun tribal badlands; it lies in fighting these elements in Pakistan’s heartland — Punjab. And no, it is not just South Punjab that one is talking about. If the situation is serious in south Punjab, it is no better in central and north Punjab. The phenomenon of the “Punjabi Taliban” has been receiving a lot of attention in recent months, more so after evidence has emerged of their involvement in almost all the major acts of terrorism in cities like Islamabad, Rawalpindi and Lahore. But much of the focus on this phenomenon has centred on South Punjab. Perhaps, the abysmal development indices in South Punjab coupled with the domination of the feudal classes and the increasingly dysfunctional social and administrative structures have contributed to making this region a fertile recruiting ground for the Islamists of all hues. More importantly, the rising attraction of radical Islam in a society deeply steeped in what is commonly known as “Sufi” Islam is an indication of the inroads being made by the Islamists. But the sweeping tide of radical Islamism is not limited to only South Punjab. The fact is that Islamists have spread their wings all over Punjab. Most of the top Al-Qaeda militants have been arrested not from the dirty backwaters of South Punjab, but from the bustling cities of central and north Punjab —Faisalabad, Rawalpindi, Gujranwala, etc. The core support base of the Jamaat-e-Islami is central and north Punjab. Not only is the Jamaat increasingly functioning like the political arm of Al-Qaeda but also cadres of this party have been found involved in sheltering Al-Qaeda fugitives. Perhaps the biggest jihadi organisation in Pakistan and one which is arguably far more dangerous than the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) is the Lashkar-e-Toiba, headquartered in Muridke (north of Lahore) and having its presence in every nook and corner of Punjab. Most of the LeT cadres come from all parts of Punjab and not just from the much-maligned South Punjab. An indication of the immense power that the LeT wields has come in a recent write-up by well-known Pakistani journalist Shaheen Sehbai. He writes: “the GHQ realises that if the Kerry-Lugar Bill was to be implemented as desired by Washington, Pakistani cities could soon turn into battlegrounds between the Army and the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, the Jaish Mohammed and Taliban forces combined. So far the GHQ has kept the Lashkar quiet by not acceding to the US demands of attacking or even touching Muridke, arguing that once this sleeping elephant wakes up, it could turn around and trample our own forces. After all, the LeT was raised and trained by our military establishment to fight the Indians in Kashmir and they are good at it. Turning their guns inwards, with TTP suicide bombers roaming everywhere, would turn Pakistan into a burning inferno, ready to collapse.” Unfortunately, instead of waking up to the alarming spread of radical Islamist forces in Punjab, the Pakistani state and society has slipped into a mode of complete denial of the problem. In many ways, the denial over the inexorable march of Talibanisation in Punjab is reminiscent of the dismissal of similar premonitions about the inevitable blowback of the policy of using the jihadis as instruments of state policy in Afghanistan and against India. Then, as now, the arguments given were more or less the same that we are hearing today: the state machinery is pretty much in control and remains effective enough to meet any challenge to state authority; the army and intelligence agencies are competent and powerful enough to turn off the tap of jihad with a snap of their fingers; the jihadis pose no threat to the Pakistani state and people, and are only fighting the enemies of Islam and oppressors of Muslims; a handful of jihadis are, in any case, in no position to bite the hand that feeds them, etc. If all these arguments of yore have fallen flat today, then the arguments being given now to refrain from moving against the Islamists in Punjab, will almost certainly lead to disastrous consequences tomorrow. True, the LeT and other Punjab-based jihadi organisations are not fighting the Pakistani state today. But there can be no denying that the ultimate objectives of “loyalist” jihadi outfits are no different from those of the “rogue” jihadis; only their immediate objective and enemy are not the same. Given the firepower at their command, and their long-term objective of imposing a Wahabi/Salafi version of Islam on Pakistan, a clash between the loyalist jihadis and the Pakistani state is simply a matter of time and quite inevitable. After all, the Taliban, too, were loyalists, even clients, of the Pakistani state not too long ago. None of the “rogue” jihadis ever indulged in terrorism inside Pakistan so long as they were allowed to function unhindered. But the moment obstacles were placed in their path they turned their guns on the Pakistani state. What is there to ensure that organisations like the LeT will not do something similar in the future? A large part of the problem is that Pakistan’s security, political and intellectual circles think that so long as the jihadis do not defy the state or create an insurgency-like situation inside Pakistan but continue to export their violence and virulence outside that country, they are not considered a danger; rather, they are lauded as “mujahids”. In the process, the mindset that has emerged from nearly three decades of sustained brain-washing of society to make it more “Islamic” and exhorting the people to contribute men and material for the so-called “Islamic causes” has been glossed over. This is a mindset that has been actively encouraged and assiduously cultivated by the Pakistani state. And while it is easy to blame it all on the proliferating madarsas, one just needs to read the stuff that is taught in the state-run schools to understand the demonical mindset that is being imbued in Pakistani children. The result is that the innate pragmatism that characterised the Punjabi has given way to an Islamised mind, which, coupled with a false sense of machismo, has created a society that brooks no compromise, tolerance or accommodation of another man’s worldview. The Pakistani Punjabi mind has become so radicalised that many people in Pakistan don’t even realise how extreme they appear to the outside world, both in their actions as well as their words. If the Pakistanis really want to rediscover their traditional moderation and syncretism, then they have no choice but to confront and defeat militarily, philosophically and ideologically the jihadis in their midst. The more the Pakistani state delays action against jihadi infrastructure in Punjab and Sindh, the more difficult it will become to dismantle the nurseries of
terror.
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Carrying joy to Sukhna There
was an endearing photo-portrait of two white geese emerging out of Sukhna Lake onto terra firma in The Tribune on September 10, very aptly captioned “Sukhna Joy”. Well, almost everyone had known of the presence of about a dozen geese in the lake but only a few know how one sultry and hot evening in July 2002 another 28 adult assorted geese were added to the flock at the Sukhna. The story begins with the visit of a well-meaning gentleman to the lakeside gardens at Geneva, in Switzerland. He was charmed by the sight of geese flocks against the back drop of rose-beds and the lake. So back in Chandigarh, he set about purchasing and plundering birds from village ponds in the vicinity of Chandigarh. When his home could accommodate no more, the geese and their pen were arbitrarily installed under a shady spot at Rose Garden. With such rapid changes in the living-environment, the flock appeared bewildered when I first chanced upon them. We were angry that these innocent birds had been exposed to crowds, by the whims of a man who had not fully understood the emotions of geese. There was the added danger that such domesticated pets invariably lose their flying skills and fall easy prey to stray dogs and cats. So, our first concern was to ensure their physical well-being and ultimately translocate them to a suitable water-body at the earliest. With persuasive effort and promises of adequate reward, the first objective was fully achieved. But an unforeseen, associated problem required some smart manoeuvring. The geese were quick to spot the large pool around the water-jet-fountain. It was a pretty sight to see them run on their webbed feet with waddling gait till they plunged into the shallow pool. And only then were they truly happy and in their elements. The initial excitement over, we were now seized of the fact that these geese will not be able to clamber up the vertical walls of the cemented pool. So the water level will have to be maintained never lower than six inches from the brim. We succeed in ensuring that and in the process also learnt a vital lesson, which was to keep all bureaucrats out of our activity at all cost! Having weighed all options for a permanent home for the geese, we chose to shift them for the last time to the Sukhna. The final act will have to be accomplished with the speed and “daring” of a commando raid and sans bureaucratic involvement, as one of them had threatened to impound them with the SPCA! The rear seat of a Maruti van was removed. The two of us and three domestic staff lured all the geese inside their pen first and allowed them time to feed and to regain composure. Soon after dusk, the birds were caught in twos and threes and loaded inside the van. Despite the cacophony and the struggle put up by the birds, in about 45 minutes all geese and two maids were safely “stuffed” inside the van. In a situation of this nature, birds have fortunately the good sense to becalm themselves, probably concentrating on what may happen next. On reaching the lake site we drove the van to the arched gate and pretending not to have noticed the policemen on duty, the van was reversed onto the pavement and up to the steps leading down to the lake water. As I lifted the rear door, and before the maids or we could move out of the way, the 28 geese leapt over and in a flash slithered into the bosom of the Sukhna! The crowd gathered and silently stared at our dishevelled hair and crumpled clothes amply splattered with the watery geese-goo. Today, those geese have multiplied to over 50 and are a joy forever. But the gentleman who had conceived the idea by the shores of the Geneva lake is no more. Swaroop Krishan Sharma died on Friday
last.
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Surging food prices
It
is quite pleasant to learn that India’s Wholesale Price Index (WPI) rose marginally (1.51 per cent) during last 12 months, indicating a very low level of inflation. However, despite the low level of WPI-based inflation figures, food prices have remained inordinately high. This is because the WPI-based inflation number is not the right indicator of food commodities' prices due to the lower weightage of the food commodities on the WPI index. Therefore, to see the rate of inflation in case of food commodities, it is essential to look at the food articles index which represents food items like cereals, pulses, vegetables, milk etc. During the last few months, the surge in this (food articles) index has been reported to be phenomenal. The rise has been particularly significant in case of potatoes (127.6 per cent), vegetables (54.5 per cent), onions (50 per cent), sugar (41 per cent) and pulses (21.2 per cent). Moreover, meat, eggs and poultry index also rose by 25 per cent. Thus, the prices of primary food articles have been unrelentingly high lately. Consequently, the poor, who spend a higher proportion of their income on food, have been hit hard. While releasing the Economic Outlook (2009-10), Dr C. Rangarajan, Chairman, Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council, said an unambiguously spelt-out strategy and a clear time frame for returning to more normal monetary and fiscal times will curb inflationary pressures. Similarly, the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM) has urged the Reserve Bank of India to enforce Selective Credit Control Measures (SCCM) to restrict hoarding, and tame food inflation besides ensuring adequate supplies of essential commodities. In addition, it has also been suggested that interest rates to traders be increased to discourage speculative hoarding and thereby alleviate the pressures on prices. Should the RBI start raising rates in response to the food price inflation as is being suggested by different experts and institutions? To answer this question, it is essential to examine the nature and drivers of inflation. If inflationary pressures are due to and accompanied by rising demand, then the RBI has no better alternative to a rate hike. Three main factors are responsible to drive up the inflation rate in the short to medium terms. First, the rise in food articles’ prices is basically due to the weaker and delayed monsoon this year. Though the consolidated monsoon picture has been satisfactory, the delayed monsoon has impacted the agricultural yield, and hence there have been a lower crop yield this year. The skewed demand-supply equation has kept the prices firm in the short to medium terms. Weakest monsoon rains in the last seven years and floods in parts of the country have hurt farm output and pushed up the food prices. Secondly, floods that have ravaged parts of southern and western India, particularly Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Goa have adversely affected the grain production in the country. In Andhra Pradesh alone, some two lakh hectares of paddy fields have been submerged in water. In northern Karnataka, 1.5 lakh hectares of farmland is lying immersed. This also restricted the supply of essential commodities such as rice, pulses, jowar, bajra and certain categories of vegetables. From demand side, the stimulus packages and the flow of funds from foreign institutional investors (FIIs) have resulted in injecting liquidity in the economy. This high liquidity, coupled with a soft interest rate, is resulting in higher demand. Hence, the prices of goods and services in some pockets have gone up considerably. The festival demand has also contributed to the rising prices. Initiatives such as the one guaranteeing employment also improved demand for food items at the subsistence level of the population. This may worsen the demand-supply imbalance in case of a shortfall in supply. Thus, the key pressure point on inflation continues to be the supply shock from food articles. It is well established in economic theory that if the food prices have hiked due to the shortage in supply, the monetary policy’s effectiveness in curbing inflation would be curtailed further. Monetary tightening at this juncture would have little impact on inflation, and can actually impair the ongoing economic recovery. The trade-off between growth and inflation will become more pronounced as we go ahead. The RBI’s recent mid-term credit policy meeting saw the central bank keeping the reverse repo rate and the repo rate unchanged, at 3.25 per cent and 4.75 per cent respectively. The statutory liquidity ratio has been increased from 24 per cent to 25 per cent. However, to keep the price level on keel, the Centre has resorted to various administrative and other measures which include reducing import duty to zero, pumping in cheaper commodities on the Public Distribution System (PDS) for needier consumers, imposing export restrictions etc. Despite all these measures, the rise in prices for key commodities has failed to abate. Therefore, there is very little that the government can do to curtail the suffering of the Aam Admi at this juncture. One solution to this problem lies in understanding that the issue of food inflation is not one of one-time poor monsoon or food price rise in a given year in a particular country, but of an emerging food shortage in the whole world. Moreover, this is not the first time the world is facing food crisis. Even after World War II, we were confronting this problem. At that time, science and public policy, with the help of Dr Norman Borlaug, stepped in to modernise the traditional practice of agriculture. Today too, there is a need to boost farm production through higher investment across the world in general and developing countries like India in particular. In addition, we need to check the extravagance of food consumption and wastage. In the US alone, about 50 per cent of all food produced is thrown away. The UK and Japan squander 20 million tonnes and $100 billion of food each year. Developed and developing countries like India waste a vast amount of food every year. If this is checked, the world can perhaps manage with current levels of production and, possibly, feed all of its poor everywhere and, that too, without inflation. n The writer is Senior Fellow, Department of Economics, Punjabi University, Patiala
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Speed up doubling of single lines For
a country with an area of 3.29 million square km, rail network is only 63,327 km. On Aug 15, 1947, India had a total route kilometreage of 54693. Since the figure of 63,327 km refers to March 31, 2007, during the 60 years of Independence, India has been able to add only 8,634 km of new lines to the rail network in as many years. This comes to a little less than 145 km a year in this not so short history of Independence. During this period, Indian Railways did have some remarkable achievements to its credit, the greatest being the establishment of an east-west rail corridor between West Bengal and Assam across the north-Bengal virtual wastelands, avoiding the East Pakistan territory. This line was known as the Assam Link railway of about 146 km of metre gauge track, built by the redoubtable civil engineer, Karnail Singh, within less than the two-year time frame given to him by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and Union Home Minister Sardar Patel between January 27,1948 and January 26,1950. Karnail Singh had completed the line by November 1949 in spite of the task of rebuilding the formidable Teesta bridge which had collapsed after construction in June 1949.This line had provided rail connectivity between mainland India and the left over portion of Assam and the north-east as a result of the Partition. We had a number of railway ministers during this period with extraordinary merit. One of them, Sir N. Gopalawami Iyyengar, had done a Sardar Patel with the Railways, by integrating 46 separate railway entities into just six zones by the end of 1952. With time, this rose to 16. However,none can deny the role this remarkable civil servant-turned-Minister had played in the railways’ development. Then we had the redoubtable Jagjivan Ram. One can make the flippant remark that the number of rail accidents during his time was rather high, but this science graduate from Calcutta’s Presidency College before Independence had done a signal service for the railway electrification programme. He accepted the French National Railway’s proposal to adopt the newly-developed 25,000 volts alternating current (25 KV,AC) system, only the second country after the then Soviet Union, to accept this technology, proven effective by running an electric locomotive from Dangoaposi to Rajkharswan on the then South Eastern Railway by the end of 1957. Then, we had Madhavrao Scindia, who had boldly accepted the proposal to computerise the passenger reservation system. However, there was no Minister yet who would go all out to expand the system but for George Fernandes who used to tell railway correspondents that he would like to restore the British practice of building about a thousand kilometres of new lines every year. But then, his government led by V.P. Singh had collapsed within one year. During the P.V. Narasimha Rao government, Mr Jaffer Sharief, had bridged this wide chasm not by building new lines as such but by converting under the Project Unigauge campaign, thousands of kilometers of metre (1000 mm) and narrow gauge (720 and 620 mm) lines to broad gauge (1676 mm) which had benefited the southern Peninsula very well. Probably the only major metre gauge section still to be fully converted is the Ajmer-Secunderabad Meenakshi Express route, some portions of which are already converted. What is now required is to take up massive doubling of single-line broad gauge lines and electrifying such huge “missing links” like Allahabad-Jabalpur-Itarsi routes. If the Government of India had decided that the minutes of the meetings of the Railway Convention Committees and the Standing Committees on Railways to throw open to the media, we would have been able to hear the anguish with which Railway officials plead for finances to complete these schemes and opening new lines for enhancing line capacity. It is a hopeful sign that some progress has been made in obtaining external assistance for building the eastern and the western dedicated freight corridors. But their completion may be a good decade away. Meanwhile, the Planning Commission and the Railway Board should reconsider the recommendation made in the Status Paper on Indian Railways (May 27,1998) during Nitish Kumar’s dispensation: “Should fixation of tariffs for freight and passenger business be done by a Permanent Tariff Revision Machinery?” The answer should be yes because Indian Railways is now a highly technology-oriented
system.
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The most relaxed destination The
very roots of Christianity, Islam and Judaism are here. Now, in Jordan, the Middle East’s most relaxed destination, fresh life is being breathed into at least one chapter of that vast oeuvre. The Al Ayoun Trail, at a little more than seven miles in length, is just one short section of a route called the Abraham Path, which stretches 1,200 km (745 miles) from south-east Turkey to Israel. I began this part of the trail at Orjan's Soap House, an initiative opened in 2006 by Jordan's Royal Society for the Conservation of Nature (RSCN). Here, local women have established a small co-operative, making organic soaps perfumed with herbs including lavender, pomegranate and mint. Over cups of verbena-infused tea, I poked around the small shop, tempted by dried herbs, bath gels, and even olive-stone worry beads. The trail continued into nearby Wadi Orjan, passing walls with extensive irrigation channels, aqueducts and traces of mills n all Ottoman-era remains. We climbed to Baoun village, and made for a local home for lunch. Sitting cross-legged in its spacious salon with Ibrahim, the men of the house and some of their friends, we tucked into a dozen dishes spread on a mat, a special feast laid on for us. Bridle paths wind into the hills beyond Baoun towards Tel Mar Elyas, or Saint Elijah's Hill. This is possibly the birthplace of Elijah, and the foundations of a 7th-century church dedicated to him still have fragments of the original mosaic flooring. The main motivator of Jordan’s developing eco-tourism is the RSCN and its Wild Jordan offshoot, and I spent my first night at the society’s tented camp on a hilltop in the Ajloun Forest Reserve. At 13 sq km, this is a small reserve yet it is still rather beautiful, with commanding views across the undulating highlands. Carob, evergreen oak, and pistachio trees predominate, though I also noticed a few wild strawberry trees with peeling rust-red papery bark and small red berries used locally as a remedy for upset stomachs. By sunset, my stomach was in need of sustenance. I ate heartily on the roof terrace overlooking the forest, with views stretching to the Jordan Valley and the West Bank’s twinkling lights. The heat of the day was tempered by an evening chill. The sounds of village life wafted up from the valleys – exuberant music, heady merriment and then, rather later and more theatrically, what sounded like gunfire. “It was gunfire,” confirmed Ibrahim next morning. I was visiting during wedding season, and although the traditional volleys (no shotgun weddings here) have been outlawed after several gruesome accidents, the habit has not been totally eliminated in the highlands. In contrast to Ajloun, Dana Biosphere Reserve, at the southern end of the Dead Sea, is Jordan’s largest reserve at 320sq km. Centred on the celebrated and part- restored village of Dana, this is the site of the RSCN's first major eco-tourist initiative and its guesthouse is now firmly on the tourist trail even if it’s just a pause for lunch. Again, I’d come for the walking, and at Dana you’re almost spoilt for choice. The Dana Village Trail initially skirts village terraces by shady irrigation channels. We met a father who promptly ordered his chubby young son to sing for us, while his shy, giggling daughters looked on, cooling their feet in the gurgling water. The path contoured around the edge of Wadi Dana through increasingly rugged terrain, across bald domes of sandstone, between boulders and ravines, and wriggled across the foot of limestone cliffs that loomed overhead.n —
By arrangement with The Independent
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