The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Sehwag on the rampage
Pity he missed third triple century

SO close and yet so far! Seven runs are all that separated Virender Sehwag from becoming the first man on earth to score three triple centuries and beat the record of Don Bradman and Brian Lara. But wily Sri Lankan Muttiah Muralitharan finally had the Nawab of Najafgarh out, dashing the hopes of a billion-plus Indians on the third day of the third and final Test against Sri Lanka. But forget what has not been achieved. Focus on what Sehwag did manage against the world’s highest wicket-taker and his colleagues. Sri Lankan bowlers were made to look like defanged club players on Thursday by a super-charged Sehwag. His 284 not out – off just 239 balls — was the highest ever scored by an Indian in one day, next only to Bradman (309) and W Hammond (295).

And to think that only recently there were serious question marks on his selection in the national team. After all, he was throwing away his wicket in the one-day international series against Australia last month. But in the Test match it was a different Sehwag on display. That has been the pattern all along. He is an unconventional player who can be at his best only when he is playing his own natural way.

The Brabourne innings is proof enough that he is still the terminator who can make any bowler think of early retirement. His overused back troubles him at times, but once he gets going he can forget all that and simply concentrate on pulverising the attack. If there is one player who can be depended on to have another shy at a triple hundred, it is he. And who knows, even Lara’s 400 may not be too far. The batsman who learnt his cricket in the dusty by-lanes of Najafgarh has taught India to dream big, very big.

The Red Ribbon
Urgency needed in tackling HIV/AIDS

WHILE the first case of AIDS virus came to light over two decades ago, HIV infection is now a major health issue facing the nation, affecting the vulnerable sections of the population, especially women and children. Of the 2.5 million affected one million are women. The National Aids Control Organisation (NACO) says India has as many as 1,00,000 children below 18 infected with HIV. A large number of children below 15 are infected through parent — to child transmission. Thus the extended support from Global Fund for Prevention of Parent to Child Transmission (PPTCT) as well as NACO’s emphasis on early diagnosis assumes significance.

The theme of the World AIDS Day this year is — Universal Access and Human Rights. Sadly in India, the ground realities for the HIV infected remain largely unchanged. The HIV infected continue to face neglect, apathy and discrimination. Infected children are forced out of schools and people lose jobs and even refused burial services. Denial of health services is another stark reality that most HIV patients have to live with. Yet the ambitious HIV/AIDS Bill that could ensure the basic rights of the HIV affected is yet to be tabled.

While steps like flagging off the Red Ribbon Express are welcome, the government needs to step up its drive to tackle AIDS. The people too should shun their prejudices and stop treating the HIV infected as pariahs. Fear of rejection not only makes it difficult for the HIV patients to cope with the dreaded disease but also impinges on the effectiveness of HIV prevention and care programmes.

Thought for the Day

Truth without humility would be an arrogant caricature.— Mahatma Gandhi

ARTICLE

Chasing the dreamers
The youth disillusioned with BJP
by Vijay Sanghvi

THE Sangh Parivar has a penchant for changing names of places and townships in India that they believe were, the Sangh believes, deformed by the Moghul or the British Empires. So it followed the practice and changed the name of Rajgir in Bihar as is known for generations to Rajgriha where the RSS held its conclave under the new chief Mohan Bhagwat.

Though it claims to be a cultural organisation, it does not miss an opportunity to dabble in politics as its praise of the young Congress leader Rahul Gandhi for his visits to the Dalit families in villages and for Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram for launching a concerted assault on the Naxalite groups do indicate.

There has been no change in the Sangh’s approach and attitude. None of its statements and resolutions reflects its realisation of the fast transforming world. Mohan Bhagwat merely repeats what earlier chiefs have been narrating. Only phrases may have changed but the substance is the same.

He defines the word Hindu by saying, “it does not symbolise any particular way of worship, language, province, creed or religion. Actually it signifies an ancient culture, a way of life that has come down to us through ages.”

As his predecessors, he also does not answer the related important questions as to what way of life? Whose way of life and who would decide that? The question has never been answered as to when and where the Indian culture began in their concept?

Can we take the Indus civilisation was the beginning of the Indian civilisation? Or it began with the aggression of the Aryans who came from outside 5,000 years ago to India in search of land and water for their food and survival but destroyed the civilisation of that time that had peacefully existed for nearly eight centuries and that was far more advanced than what had existed in other parts of the world at the time? But it was destroyed and all that remained of it were the relics at Harappan and Mohenjo Daro.

However, Bhagwat says that the nature of Hindu society is tolerant because Hindutva accepts every one and rejects none. Yet he emphasises on dangers to Hindu society from forces unleashed by monotheist religions Islam and Christianity. No wonder, the Sangh Parivar could not find words to condemn events of the communal carnage in Gujarat in March 2002 as it already condoned what had happened.

Apparently, he would not accept another view that danger to Hindu society did not emanate from two religions because most part of the Hindu society was already under destruction by globalism. It certainly had brought in dramatic changes in the 30 per cent of upper crusts of society as the new concepts have dealt a severe blow to what is essentially a Bharatiya culture in the eyes of Bhagwat and his followers.

A decade has passed since the horrifying events in Gujarat. In these years, the entire world has undergone a radical change that has virtually demolished traditional concepts and theories of politics, economies and social and cultural aspects of human life. The expansion of ideas on the global level have brought down boundaries that had separated states and their sovereignty, redefined the concepts of patriotism that had held sway for centuries and crossed barriers of religions, castes and creeds all over the world.

As the lid over the creativity of Indians that had remained bottled up for four decades of Independence was taken off in early nineties with the economic reforms, the young Indian mind has undergone a metamorphosis in its thinking, in its ambitions and aspirations. Indian of any caste, creed or religion has inherent talent of creativity that surpasses any else in other parts.

Even those who take the criminal routes to fake the modern means have talents. Without talents no one can fake a passport or hack any of computer systems. The only problem is that they have no access to positive utilisation of their talents. Nevertheless, it is a talent and in abundance in India.

Mohan Bhagwat wants change of drivers of its political wing — the Bharatiya Janata Party. He did not ask the leadership to go on a trip of introspection to understand causes of its failures in two consecutive elections to the Lok Sabha. He has merely assumed that the seven-decade old ideology that the Sangh adapted was adequate to meet challenges in the changing world.

The BJP’s failure in the Assembly elections in Maharashtra and Haryana has triggered a crisis for the party. Change has now become imperative. Though it has postponed the crisis to a later date, it would not enable the BJP to solve the crisis it faces to its identity. It is not a question of merely raising hands in praise of the Almighty differently. The young have already installed a different symbol in place that was earlier occupied by the concept of God.

For every young mind, the symbol is same because the definition of his Heaven or his Jannat has changed. But Bhagwat does not want to recognise it and also wants the BJP leaders not to ponder over it though Pramod Mahajan had insisted before the 2004 elections that the party needed to do introspection to understand what constitutes the political mind of the young generation that constitutes more than half the electorate.

Bhagwat and the BJP leaders need to understand the essential difference between need and desire. Needs are in the present and can be easily satisfied with little more toiling. But desires are for the future and mental conceptions. They cannot be easily realised as desiring has no end.

The young mind is no more worried about his needs. He is after his desires. To catch the young, every political party and social activist would need to change and walk with the young to entice the young by offering an attractive package for realisation of that new dream. A cow-centric approach would not entice because the young is enamoured by the Internet offerings.

The Sangh and the BJP spokesman were at unnecessary pains to deny that Bhagwat had freed the volunteers from obligation of campaigning for the BJP during the elections in states. Their campaigning or not is the least relevant factor as the outcomes in the state assemblies and the Lok Sabha elections indicate.

The Sangh did not support the BJP in Gujarat and yet Narendra Modi won through his independent machinery. Shivraj Chavan and Raman Singh won on the basis of their performance but Vasundhara Raje could not despite full support of the Sangh campaign.

The message is written in large letters in these results but the Sangh would need to change its ideological lenses to read the message. It refuses to change the lenses as its prescription for the rectification of the BJP fortunes does say. Bhagwat cannot limp out of his dream to chase the young who are after a new dream.

MIDDLE

Many faces of friendship
by Geetanjali Gayatri

Our friendship began over a decade back, on a pleasant March evening, just around the time I began my career as a journalist. A chance introduction with three persons and we hit the friendship trail almost instantly, our age difference notwithstanding.

I was in my early 20s and, they were, for me, “just over the hill” at 30 plus, as I often joked with them. But then, gender, age, names, castes and positions have very little to do with friendship, in fact nothing at all. So, as the days changed to weeks, months and years, our friendship blossomed and bloomed.

Friendship has a way of infusing new energy and I wasn’t untouched. It brought a spring in my step along with the confidence that in a world where people are forever waiting to pull you down, I had my friends to fall back upon. My support system was only a call away. They, I believed, were there for keeps.

Alas, I was wrong because good times don’t last forever. The hands of the clock run at their own pace no matter how hard you try holding them back, wearing off relationships, chipping away at precious moments, hiding beautiful beginnings behind misty curtains to bring painful endings. Time devours!

All relationships, it seems, have a shelf life. Times change, memories fade and people move on in life. My friends, too, moved on, leaving me behind. Keeping in touch was entirely my prerogative. They had a thousand things to juggle and loads of excuses. I had fond memories of my “picture-perfect friends” from the times gone by.

I clung to those memories and made desperate bids to save a withering friendship. Through it all, I never once doubted their commitment to our friendship. However, after years of single handedly running the friendship network among us, I realised it wasn’t working out.

The magic was gone, lost in the hurry of reaching personal and professional milestones as the years went by. And, one day, 11-and-a-half years later, the proverbial straw, finally, broke the camel’s back. Peeped by their attitude, I decided to close the chapter, our chapter, realising I was only dragging my feet on the inevitable and that I had waited too long to let go.

Now, after a few months, my anger has subsided and the bitterness has all gone. As I gather pieces of a friendship that was, to tuck away in a corner of my mind, my conscience is not weighed down by guilt that I didn’t try hard enough.

Today, I am glad our paths crossed. For, as long as it lasted, we had our own happy times ... those that belong entirely to us. Our times of togetherness bind us in this separation as well. The present may not be ours but at least, together we shared a past.

Maybe, they had compulsions I didn’t realise. Just maybe. So, I have decided to keep my illusions about undying friendships intact. For, friendships are just not about having a good time but sticking around in times of need, not about nursing grudges but forgiving and forgetting and not about fretting and fuming over what didn’t work out but being grateful for all that clicked.

As I muster courage to move on, I am reminded of the oft-quoted lines: Talk not of wasted affection, affection never was wasted!

OPED

What the world missed
Some reports got less attention in 2009
by Joshua E. Keating

Sometimes it's those news stories that don't feel the love from cable talk shows or the blogosphere that reveal the most about what really happened in a given year. 2009 had plenty of them. From a naval alliance that could shift the balance of power on two continents to the risk of another housing bubble, these are the stories that got less attention they deserved this year – but could dominate the conversation in 2010.

Northeast passage opens for business

The mythic Northwest Passage still captures the imagination, but in September, two German vessels made history by becoming the first commercial ships to travel from East Asia to Western Europe via the Northeast Passage from Russia through the Arctic. Ice previously made the route impassable, but thanks to rising global temperatures, it's now a cakewalk. "There was virtually no ice on most of the route," Captain Valeriy Durov told the BBC. "Twenty years ago, when I worked in the eastern part of the Arctic, I couldn't even imagine something like this."

The significance depends on your perspective. The passage could be a gold mine for the commercial shipping industry, as a shorter and cheaper route from Asia to Europe. But the news is also a sign that climate change may be reaching a dangerous tipping point.

Iraq's new flash point

With attention riveted on President Obama's review of Afghanistan strategy, almost any news from Baghdad got short shrift this year. But the Iraq war is far from over. From a persistent insurgency to a distressing lack of political reconciliation in Baghdad, Iraq has any number of potential flash points. Most troubling may be the growing fears of a new conflict between Iraq's Arab and Kurdish populations.

The attention this subject has gotten has focused on the Kurdish claims to oil-rich Kirkuk, but analysts say developments in nearby Nineveh province might be more dangerous. The area is south of the Kurdish border but contains a large Kurdish population eager to incorporate the territory into Kurdistan. After the U.S. invasion, the Kurds became politically dominant in Nineveh and stationed pesh merga militia troops there.

That changed in January, when Sunnis rallied around the hard-line Arab nationalist party al-Hadba-a – which campaigned on a platform of countering Kurdish influence – and handed it a narrow majority in Nineveh's provincial elections. The Kurdish Fraternal List, the region's main Kurdish party, walked out of the provincial council, vowing not to return unless it was given several senior leadership positions.

With both sides threatening violence to resolve the dispute and insurgent attacks continuing, Iraqi and U.S. authorities increasingly view Nineveh's conflict as a key threat to Iraq's stability. "Without a compromise deal, (Nineveh) risks dragging the country as a whole on a downward slope," Loulouwa al-Rachid, the International Crisis Group's senior Iraq analyst, said in September.

A hot line for China and India

"Hot lines" between world leaders, such as the legendary Moscow-Washington "red telephone," are designed to prevent misunderstandings from escalating into nuclear confrontations. China and the United States have one. So do India and Pakistan. This year, the leaders of India and China agreed to set one up, highlighting concerns that a worsening border dispute could deteriorate into a major confrontation.

Asia's emerging superpowers are at odds over the Himalayan region of Tawang, a district of India's Arunachal Pradesh state that China claims is historically part of Tibet and therefore within China's borders. The countries fought a war over the territory in 1962 that killed more than 2,000 soldiers.

The area has been increasingly militarized, and the Indian military documented 270 border violations and almost 2,300 cases of "aggressive border patrolling" by the Chinese in 2008. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh visited the area in October, drawing official protests from Beijing.

In June, the Times of India reported that Chinese President Hu Jintao suggested to Singh that the hot line be established so that the border dispute didn't lead to military – or even nuclear – confrontation.

A new housing bubble?

Ill-advised speculation on U.S. real estate helped set off the global financial crisis. But even after millions of foreclosures and their secondary effects rippled through economies around the world, U.S. homeowners might be making the same mistakes again.

After suffering their largest month-to-month drop in history, U.S. home prices began to increase again in May. The S&P/Case-Shiller index, a top measure of housing prices in the United States, rose 3.4 percent between May and July, with gains in 18 of the 20 cities the index measures. Prices were still 13.3 percent lower than last year, but that figure was less than expected. The release of this data coincided with other positive indicators, including an increase in existing home sales and home construction.

The "civilian surge" fizzles

In November 2007, Defense Secretary Robert Gates delivered a now-famous speech at Kansas State University in which he acknowledged that "military success is not sufficient to win" counterinsurgency wars such as those in Iraq and Afghanistan, and called for a larger role and increased funding for the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development. In its Afghan strategy announcement in March, the Obama administration called for a "civilian surge" of State and USAID personnel to complement the increased number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

Just one month later, however, the administration asked Gates to identify 300 military personnel to fill jobs in Afghanistan intended for civilian experts, as not enough civilians were available. Undersecretary of Defense Michele Flournoy acknowledged in a speech that the government was "playing a game of catch-up" after years of not developing civilian expertise.

The Pentagon has also been taking over some traditional State Department functions in neighboring Pakistan. Under a supplemental funding bill passed in June, the Pentagon was given temporary authority to manage a $400 million fund aimed at boosting the Pakistani military's counterinsurgency capabilities. Assistance of this kind is usually supervised by the State Department, but Gates argued that State lacked the capability to administer it.

The State Department may yet live up to the initial vision of Gates and Obama – a "civilian response corps" that would be able to deploy as many as 400 people to conflict areas seems promising – but for now, the dream of a civilian surge seems far off.

— By arrangement with LA Times-Washington Post

Can Karzai stabilise Afghanistan?
by Anita Inder Singh

India's interest in Afghanistan's stability was reflected by the presence of S.M. Krishna, the Minister for External Affairs, at the inauguration of President Karzai's second presidential term in Kabul on November 19.

Karzai's declaration that the Afghan security forces should take responsibility for running the country in five years; that another loya jirga (tribal council) would be set up to tackle the thorny issue of political reconciliation; and that corruption that has undermined his government's standing over the last five years would be tackled, will coincide with the views of any country which would like to see extremism defeated in Afghanistan.

None of these aims will be easily achieved. Another loya jirga will not end Afghanistan's political crisis or guarantee more efficient governance.

Corruption certainly needs to be addressed if Karzai is to deliver essentials, including food, irrigation and employment, and enhance the legitimacy he himself weakened by rigging the vote in the second presidential poll on August 20.

But the West is not infallible, and its own record on corruption is not squeaky clean. In 2001 the US defeated the Taliban with the support of some very unsavoury warlords, some of whom it now wants Karzai to distance himself from.

They include Muhammad Qasim Fahim, one of his two vice-presidents, and Abdul Rashid Dostum. Fahim is alleged to have been involved in drug-trafficking, while Dostum's poor reputation on human rights is apparently an embarrassment to the West.

But the power of the warlords in the post-2001 dispensation owes much to the fact that the West turned a blind eye to their involvement in the narcotics trade, which filled their coffers with cash to buy weapons for their private militia.

That is one reason why they are now in a position to challenge any government in Kabul and exacerbate insecurity in Afghanistan. Defiance of the centre with private armies is not synonymous with democratic decentralisation, and the West has belatedly realised that some of its former warlord friends have turned out to be a double-edged sword.

To some extent Nato's inability to ensure security could explain Karzai's wish to be on good terms with them. And Washington and London must surely know that any deals that they might advocate with 'moderate' Taliban — whoever the moderates may be — will involve hard cash, and that bribery may not win over the fence-sitters, who could pocket western goodies — and line up with extremists.

Moreover, the West should not forget that Afghans are a proud people and will resent western dictation to their government, just as they have resented the killing of innocent Afghan civilians by Nato soldiers in their anti-Taliban military campaign.

Karzai cannot afford to appear a western stooge. By publicly berating Karzai the West could further weaken his legitimacy.

That would be bad, if only because reconciliation is essential in Afghanistan. But without a strong government in Kabul, the chances of having any political reconciliation are bleak.

It may not be Karzai's fault that reconciliation has yet to take off. The Taliban don't want to talk. Since their overthrow by the US in 2001 they have turned down every overture for peace parleys, which they regard as an admission of defeat by Karzai and Nato.

Will Nato and Karzai prove them wrong? The next five years will establish whether they can contain extremism and stabilise Afghanistan.

Inside Pakistan
by Syed Nooruzzaman
A rudderless nation

Hardly a day passes when there are no bomb blasts or suicide bombings in Pakistan, particularly in the NWFP and Balochistan. People have never felt more insecure than they do today. In 2009 alone, over 1800 civilians and 800 security personnel were killed in more than 60 suicide attacks. As a result, the country’s economy is in tatters. Inflation is as high as 22 per cent. There are unending shortages of essential commodities. Their prices have gone sky high, beyond the common man’s reach.

To cap it all, there is no capable leader to anchor the ship of the Pakistani nation. As Mushfiq Murshed says in an article (The Nation, December 3), “The Pakistani people are seeking a leader to follow. At this moment, however, the ship is rudderless”.

President Asif Ali Zardari, who continues to have all the powers Gen Pervez Musharraf wielded as a military ruler, is getting weaker and weaker day by day. According to The News (December 2), “He has scant support by the military, and is being harried by an effective opposition. At the grassroots, his popularity is at rock-bottom. Internationally, the US is said to be fearful of presidential ‘collapse’… To say that Mr Zardari is the wrong man in the wrong job at the wrong time understates the case….”

President Zardari is under tremendous pressure to get the infamous 17th Amendment scrapped. If this happens, parliament will have its status restored to what was envisaged by the 1973 constitution. The Prime Minister, in that eventuality, will have more powers than he has at present.

Mr Zardari is being criticized for wearing two caps at the same time – being the President of Pakistan as well as the co-chairperson of the ruling PPP. This is against the Pakistani constitution, which wants the President to resign from his party.

As the situation prevails today, his survival in office is no longer possible. As The News commented, “the die is now cast – it is a matter of ‘when’ and not ‘if’.”

Waiting for court verdict

A Dawn report says, “Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry constituted on Thursday a 17-judge larger Bench to hear from Monday legal challenges to the amnesty granted to thousands of politicians and bureaucrats under the National Reconciliation Order (NRO)”. The verdict of the Bench, to be headed by the Chief Justice, will seal the fate of President Zardari, who is among the prominent beneficiaries.

Legal experts reportedly believe that the court will “not only decide the fate of the beneficiaries, but also determine the scope and parameters of the constitutional immunity from prosecution for the Head of State”.

Aitzaz Ahsan, a former president of the Supreme Court Bar Association, has said the result of the case will have “far-reaching and widespread effects on the constitutional and political landscape”.

But will this end the leadership crisis? Pakistan has always had this problem. The only difference between the situation that prevails now and the one that existed in the past is that nobody knows who is more powerful today in real terms.

Gilani the gainer

Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani is the real gainer under the circumstances when Mr Zardari has little support from the army and has lost much of his popularity among the public. The situation is ideal for an army takeover, but that is unlikely to happen as Chief of Army Staff Gen Ashfaque Kiyani has been saying that he does not nurse such ambitions.

The truth, however, lies elsewhere. The present US administration wants the democratically elected government to survive in Pakistan. Besides this, the army does not want to be openly in the driver’s seat when frequent suicide bomb blasts are making Pakistan ungovernable.

The Prime Minister has emerged as a front for the army. He does nothing which is not in accordance with the wishes of the army top brass. He must be waiting for the day when Mr Zardari is finally shown the door. That day may come with the 17-judge Bench pronouncing its verdict on the cases relating to the NRO beneficiaries.