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Telangana on
backburner Shopian falsehood |
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Mockery of justice
Copenhagen and
beyond
Flying into sunset
Continuing mistrust
makes India, Pak dialogue difficult Does Japan still
matter? Brazil’s China
headache
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Shopian falsehood The
lie that two Shopian women (a 17-year teenager and her 22-year-old sister-in-law) were raped and murdered and then thrown into a nullah in May has been finally nailed. A CBI enquiry into the incident, conducted with the consent of the aggrieved relatives and their supporters, has brought out that the women had, in fact, died of drowning. The Flood Control Department of Jammu and Kashmir has provided proof that the nullah had enough water in May when a person not knowing swimming could get drowned. This has falsified the claim of those who stated that drowning was not possible in the nullah in May. The CBI report, submitted to the Jammu and Kashmir High Court on Monday, is based on a medical examination of the victims done by doctors of the All-India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, and the findings of Central Forensic Science Laboratory experts after the bodies were exhumed. The CBI report is enough to bring the matter to an end. But, at the same time, the guilty men and women who fabricated evidence to give a bad name to the security forces must be brought to book. The CBI has charge-sheeted 13 persons — six doctors, five Shopian lawyers and two others — who must be proceeded against without delay. Apparently, they invented the theory of rape and murder after the two women were reported missing in support of their political game-plan. The PDP and the outfit that came up with its support, the Majlis-e-Mushawarat, to “fight for justice” to the affected families, launched an agitation to mislead the gullible public, saying that the official claim of drowning could not be believed. As a result, violent protests have been continuing in Shopian with the security agencies and the state government being at the receiving end. The politically motivated agitation following the unfortunate incident has been part of the pattern in the valley involving anti-national forces. They have always tried to exploit every development to promote their nefarious designs. These forces deserve to be fully exposed in the interest of peace and progress in the sensitive state.
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Mockery of justice
To
the victims of the 1984 riots, the words of regret and shame expressed by various functionaries of the government every now and then do not provide much solace because even 25 years after the genocide, the political perpetrators and the guilty policemen are yet to be punished. The government has admitted as much, and has now announced a deadline of December 31, 2009, for Lieutenant Governor Tejinder Khanna to decide on giving sanction to the CBI to prosecute Congress leaders Jagdish Tytler and Sajjan Kumar. Unfortunately, many such deadlines have come and gone but the wheels of justice have remained stuck. Cornered by all-round criticism, all that the Home Minister, Mr P. Chidambaram, could say was that “I cannot undo what had happened 25 years ago and also cannot be held responsible for the inaction for the last 25 years”. That is as good an admission as any that there has been inaction during this quarter century, whatever the reasons or excuses might have been. Leave alone punishing the guilty, the issue of suitable relief to the victims has also been hanging fire. As many as 1,115 requests for jobs from the affected families are pending with the Delhi government. Mr Chidambaram has himself admitted that “usual bureaucratic excuses” are being given for the delay in processing these requests and he intended to deal with the matter directly to see that jobs were provided as early as possible. The nation would be watching intently how effective the Home Minister is against the bureaucratic stonewall. Unfortunately, delays are the order rather than an exception in any action against those who spread communal fire. What has happened in the case of the perpetrators of the 1984 riots has been replicated in the case of the 2002 Gujarat guilty also. A systematic attempt has been made to either prove the guilty to be innocent or to let them go away lightly. When the government of the day itself decides to back the wrong-doers, the cries of the victims tend to go unanswered. It is thanks to the judiciary that some of the blatant instances of miscarriage of justice have been reversed. But then, as the old saying goes, justice delayed is in itself justice denied. |
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I submit to you that if a man hasn’t discovered something he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.
— Martin Luther King
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Copenhagen and beyond The
Copenhagen summit has brought the issue of rapid environmental degradation and climate change onto the centre-stage. Sceptics abound but evidence is growing of mounting environmental distress and weather patterns becoming highly variable and uncertain, leading to droughts, floods, melting of polar ice-caps and glaciers, growing intensity of cyclones and so on. Of course, fluctuations in weather are normal both in the long and the short run, but experts opine that the current changes go beyond the observed historical patterns and are directly linked to the unprecedented scale of human activity. This last fact and that it is having visible effects on the environment is undisputed. The climate sceptics only contest that this is leading to a tipping point, which may cause a global disaster. They have faith in technology providing solutions, as in the past. Scientists are working hard on ways to deal with the green house gases (GHGs) through sequestering. However, the environmentalists argue that the weather system and the earth itself are complex systems, which we only partly understand so that the visible deterioration can suddenly accelerate, giving us little time to react. The world is confronted with growing damage to the environment (there is unanimity on this) because human kind equates its well-being with growing consumption. So, every nation, rich or poor, is in a race to increase production. Even the rich nations with historically unprecedented levels of consumption remain unsatiated and desire to consume more. In Europe, in spite of the Green movements, consumption per capita has increased. It is not just that their poor aspire to consume more but even their rich want to consume more. The developing world ruling elite, brought up on the notion of modernisation being Western modernity, has blindly copied this model, including its consumerism. The elite in the developing world wish to quickly join the global elite, so they have embarked on a path of rapid increase in their consumption. Thus, consumerism, both in the advanced and the developing countries, is resulting in growing pollution. The advanced countries, to reduce their own pollution, have increasingly encouraged the poorer countries to undertake the production of dirty goods - metals, chemicals, etc. Thus, the developing countries are polluting on behalf of the richer nations. They are competing with each other to increase exports and under-cut each other by overlooking environmental concerns. If all the people of the world were to consume like the average US citizen, several earths would be needed to support this consumption. Pollution is taking a heavy toll on the poorest since they are at the edge of survival and depend most directly on nature itself. Food stocks started dwindling after 1999 and for some time food prices have been climbing steeply. While droughts have played a role, development- related factors like crops used to produce fuel and land being used for urbanisation or for providing services are no less important. While the accumulated GHGs are mostly due to the past consumption by the rich countries, the current additions are substantial not only by the rich but also by the poor countries. This has come in handy for the rich countries (trying to maintain their own life-styles) to shift blame on to the large poor countries. They are demanding cuts by India where the largest number of the poor in the world reside. The Indian ruling elite argues that cuts will mean a slowdown of development and check elimination of poverty. Actually, the Indian ruling elite wishes to preserve its consumption, just as the rich nations wish to. The poor are only a bargaining chip. There was a time when India used to give the lead to the rest of the world by taking morally correct and just stands as it did on the nuclear or trade issues. This position has now been given up in favour of narrow stands to protect our short-term interests. So, on the issue of environment we want to retain the right to increase pollution and, therefore, appear to be no different from others and are unable to assert strongly enough that the rich must consume less and pollute less to save the planet and help the poor. Our elite has hardly shown concern for the poor in its mad rush for `growth at any cost, and to catch up with the West, with all costs to be borne by the poor and the environment. If we cut our emissions, we can set an example, especially to the rich nations to also drastically reduce their own consumption. It is possible that the rich nations will only use that extra space to increase their consumption further. Given that the environment is global, the problem would not go away. What would be the consequence of our emissions cut? Would we lag behind? Indeed not. Our rapid growth (if the figures can be believed) is based on the growth of services, which has major components that have low-energy intensity compared to industry and modern agriculture. Further, if we focus on human development in ways other than growing consumption, like on education, health and culture, the output of material goods need not rise fast. The preservation of the environment itself leads to improved health and welfare. For instance, we are using energy very wastefully and if we check this, we can have a given level of output at much less energy consumption. For instance, transportation needs much energy. In the pattern of development we have chosen, this need is being increasingly fulfilled by private motorised vehicles - cars and motor cycles. However, efficient public transportation can handle this at a fraction of the cost and less pollution, but the auto lobby comes in the way. We could also plan differently so that people could live close to their places of work and either walk or use bicycles and minimise motorised transport, wide roads, flyovers, etc, and save energy. Our buildings could be environment-friendly, requiring less of cooling and heating. A large amount of energy is wasted due to non-standardisation of gadgets with consequent leakage, sparking and heating of the equipment and eventual burnout. If this is minimsed energy intensity would fall. Corruption leads to the theft of power from the lines in inefficient ways. Modern agriculture is energy intensive and polluting so that there is need for alternatives. Goods can be optimally moved through the railways, leaving only the short haul to the roads. We can promote collective consumption rather than private individual consumption. In brief, even without sacrificing consumption, we can improve welfare and yet consume less energy. All this and much more was suggested in the Alternative Budget in 1994 but the elite has no place for it since it desires to have the Western life-style. If we can make people believe in their environment we may also convince them to consume less with even greater gains. As a nation, let us do what we can for our poor and our environment and for that we do not even need money or technology from the rich nations. This would show the rich nations up for what they are. Unfortunately, our elite lacks the imagination, has become more and more greedy and wants the easy
wayout.
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Flying into sunset School
vacations for me meant undertaking an arduous and seemingly unending journey to our farm in a non-decrepit village, to join my grand-parents where they tended to it. Time, as a factor, was inconsequential and the days yawned themselves out. Yet, I enjoyed my stay there. In winters, the lure was greater when the fields were lush-green, with sprinkling of a splendid yellow colour of the mustard flowers and the sugarcane fields adding ruggedness to the landscape. Early mornings drew me to the fields, when I could see the dewdrops perilously placed on the tip of the grass in an almost suicidal position and lovely cobwebs shining in the soft morning sunlight depicting the work of its creator. Another thing that fascinated me was a pair of grey long-legged cranes with red beaks, which unfailingly were a part of the landscape, majestically striding around the farm. I would watch their graceful movements smitten by the sight as they would stretch their necks at a jaunty angle to give out a loud cry. The whole day they would lord the territory and in the evening they would fly against the orange skyline into the red glow of the sun as if flying into oblivion, to disappear for the night. While doing so, they would straighten their legs parallel to the ground, to form an extremely graceful posture of a perfect flight. They came every year. I never bothered to chek up on ornithologists’ view to learn more about them, lest it add a clinical and zoological odour to my fanciful creature. However, I learnt they came from afar. I continued my winter sojourns at the farm, and so did the cranes and one year, I found to my amazement, three cranes strutting around. There was a young one with them, who took short half flights when left behind by the elders to catch up with them and they took it around the farm frequented by them so often. In the evening, all three flew into the sunset and disappeared for the night. I realised later that this was the last flight of the older pair, as the next year, only a pair, leaner and not as full as the older cranes had returned — presumably the young crane with its newly acquired partner. The older ones had not returned. Probably the age had consumed them or it had taken its toll on their strength. It was, perhaps, nature’s way of showing that life is a relay race where the old make way for the young while they take their flight into the sunset never to return leaving the younger progeny to continue. As if on cue, that year my grandfather gave up active farming and came to settle down with us in Chandigarh. A little later my father died abruptly and the baton passed on to me. I still go to the farm and take my sons along to make them have a feel of the earthy rustic life and to acquaint them with their roots. I show them the cranes, who still come there and who are now fully grown. In a peculiar way, I have started to feel akin to the older cranes who had brought their young offspring to the farm to acquaint it with the existence of life, and one day as I watched the cranes disappear in the evening sun, I realised, that as I wait, it shall soon be my turn also to take a flight into the sunset and
oblivion.
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Continuing mistrust makes India, Pak dialogue difficult One
year after Mumbai and seven dossiers later, the Pakistan threat quotient is still on the high side, given the stunning David Headley trail. An attack on India has been constrained by several factors, vitally the US hand, which could not prevent suicide terrorism against the Indian Embassy in Kabul. After 9/11, non-state actors have removed the conventional firewall between intention and capabilities; and being unamenable to negotiation, dealing with them requires not just excellent human and technical intelligence but a swift and decisive response mechanism too. In both these areas, India is still deficient which encourages jihadi terrorism to expand and prosper. Pakistan’s military and intelligence establishments combine the anonymity of their patronage of terrorist groups with their WMD capability for the denial of this strategic asset. Further, the government has begun blaming India for the internal mayhem to reduce its own culpability. Yet, surprisingly Pakistan has not taken any credit at Track I or II levels for the unprecedented record in India of a year free from terrorist strikes. It has repeatedly called for the resumption of the composite dialogue, suspended since 26/11, saying terrorists should not be allowed to keep the peace process as hostage. This line does not wash in Delhi where the bottom line has been watered down to action against the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba’s seven plus their Amir, Hafiz Saeed. Last month against this background, the German Friedrich Ebert Stiftung held in Singapore, its seventh round of India- Pakistan peace process to locate how best to revive the stalled dialogue. Here are some snapshots relating to Afghanistan and Pakistan (Af Pak) The Pakistan expert on Afghanistan who has met Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar more times than anyone else said that both US and Pakistan had underestimated the Taliban they were fighting, due to poor intelligence. This is surprising as Gen Pervez Musharraf had recently claimed that the ISI has penetrated all the terrorist organizations in Pakistan and is particularly strong inside Afghanistan. There are some straws in the wind that the tide may be turning, this expert said. The internet images of a young girl being flogged in Swat caused indignation and elicited widespread criticism in Pakistan. The point was made that the Pakistan Taliban is very different from the Afghan Taliban: for the latter the priority is to get forces of occupation out of their land, while for the former, it is a tactical struggle for power. Moreover, for the people of Balochistan, Swat and South Waziristan, Punjabi domination and the identification of Punjab with Pakistan has put into place a distrust of non-natives: and as many of those who want to impose shariah law in these regions in the guise of the Taliban are Uzbeks and non-Pakistani nationalities, a distrust of the Taliban elements is discernible in these three provinces. In military terms, reliance on air power and heavy weapons by both countries had caused civilian casualties, displacement of civilians, destruction of property and infrastructure and alienation of the people. Both had resorted to peace accords when it was either not possible or unwise to fight the Taliban and its associates. Comparing the US-led Nato troop strength with the Soviet force levels in 1979 is untenable as only 65 per cent of the troops of the western alliance was engaged in actual combat. The new US strategy will be people-friendly, protecting them rather than killing Taliban. Winning hearts and minds is basic to any counter-insurgency operation which the US military is reinventing in Afghanistan. India has used minimum force – almost never, air power and heavy artillery – towards bringing insurgents to the negotiating table. The carrot has been favoured over the stick. Pakistan has relied mainly on military means to quell insurgencies rather than the strategy of reconciliation and reintegration. Reconciliation with the Taliban was unlikely to work as they believe they are winning. While 98 per cent of the Taliban are loyal to Mullah Omar, the use of private militias by the state would be fruitless. Mullah Omar will not annoy Islamabad as he needs sanctuaries in Pakistan. After 26/11 he said that were India to attack Pakistan the Taliban would stop the war in Afghanistan and join the Pakistan Army to defend the country. There was disagreement between Indians and Pakistanis on the credentials of good and bad Taliban. For India there is no good Taliban – all are terrorists. Pakistan owes its strategic depth in Afghanistan and Kashmir to good Taliban though many Pakistanis felt that Kashmir is not the core issue any longer. This is the first time the Pakistan Army, civilian government and civil society are on the same page in the war against terrorism. Still only 51 per cent continue to support the war but its ownership is not doubted as in the past. There were few Pakistani takers for India-Pakistan cooperation rather than confrontation in Afghanistan. They are convinced that India was up to no good with its new-found generosity amounting to $1.2 b in developmental aid in Afghanistan and asked: where was India when Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan? The only dialogue Pakistan now wants is allaying its concerns over Indian activities circumscribing its interests in Afghanistan. Surprisingly, a Pakistani delegate said that Islamabad must recognise that India as a regional power has a role to play in Afghanistan. Their respective agendas must be discussed to allay each others’ concerns. Ideally they should undertake joint projects in sectors like IT, communication, power, health, etc. Such was the mixed picture on cooperation in Afghanistan. Compared to the broad consensus on such a dialogue last year, this is a negative development reflecting the erosion of CBMs post-Mumbai. Pakistan’s stand on not providing trade corridor for India to Afghanistan has also hardened despite the US-Pakistan-Afghanistan tripartite talks earlier this year where such a facility appeared feasible. Finding common ground and common enemy for India to help Pakistan in its war against terrorism proved elusive. The Indian offer that Pakistan could relocate its troops from east to west to intensify the army offensive against Taliban without fear of Delhi taking advantage was rejected on the grounds that after what happened in 1971 in East Pakistan, India could not be trusted. This too is a retrograde step signifying the total breakdown of trust. The suggestion by a Pakistani that Kashmir be put aside while helping stabilise Afghanistan was shot down by a fellow countryman as it contradicted Pakistan’s case that resolving Kashmir was key to its active cooperation on the Western front. Given the suspicion and mistrust over Af-Pak and Pakistan’s reluctance to act against Lashkar-e-Taiyyaba’s seven plus Hafiz Saeed, early revival of composite dialogue was considered a remote possibility. But given the avalanche of suicide terrorism in Pakistan, India was asked to extend the hand of friendship and resume official
dialogue.
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Does Japan still matter? As
China rises, Japan's economy has stalled, and its population is dwindling. The island nation – feared during the last century first as a military power, then as an economic conqueror – barely registers in the American imagination. But Japan still matters. And despite the "crisis" set in motion by the electoral defeat of the party that had ruled for half a century, the United States has more to fear from Japanese defeatism – from its own uncertainty about whether it still matters – than from the assertiveness of its new government. At a seminar in Tokyo last week organized by the German Marshall Fund and the Tokyo Foundation, and in separate interviews, one Japanese after another delivered variations on gloom, doom and pessimism. Polls confirm that this is no anomaly; in one taken by the Asahi Shimbun newspaper last spring, the three words offered most often to describe the current era were "unrest," "stagnation" and "bleak," as the paper's editor in chief, Yoichi Funabashi, noted recently in Foreign Affairs. "Japan's presence in the international community is rapidly weakening and waning," one prominent businessman said this week. "We have to bring Japan back to high growth, but that possibility now is nil. ... There are heaps of difficulties facing Japan ... insurmountable ... Japanese people are so anxious. ... We don't need to remain a major country. ... `Small-nation Japan' is my thinking." Japan's fiscal challenges are daunting, as is its declining birthrate. Yet the negativity seems overblown. Japan retains the world's second-largest national economy and will be third or fourth biggest for decades to come. It is the world's second-largest aid donor, the fifth-biggest military spender (despite a constitution that bars the waging of war) and a technological powerhouse. It is a crucial player, and frequently America's closest ally, in international organizations such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. And as the longest-standing and most successful democracy in the non-Western world, it is a hugely important role model, and potentially a leader, in supporting freedom and the rule of law. That potential was sharply enhanced by the landslide victory of the Democratic Party of Japan in August, ending what one speaker at the seminar called the Liberal Democratic "shogunate." The Democrats have promised to disrupt the cozy relationship among bureaucrats, the ruling party and industry, and to govern with more public input and accountability. But they're also disrupting the U.S.-Japan relationship. An agreement to realign U.S. Marine bases in Okinawa has been put on hold, despite what U.S. officials took as a promise from Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama ("Trust me," he privately told President Obama, according to Japanese officials) to implement the deal. The Democrats' coalition partners, as well as voters in Okinawa, loathe the pact. "So we are in a situation where the U.S.-Japan alliance is being tested," Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada acknowledged. Democratic Party officials have said they want to put the U.S.-Japan relationship on a more equal footing, and Hatoyama and others have at times gone further, suggesting a desire to improve relations with China while downgrading those with the United States. But Okada dismissed suggestions that the suspension of the base agreement reflects a deeper-seated resentment of America or a fundamental questioning of the alliance. Citing North Korea's nuclear weapons and China's growing military, Okada said, "I don't think anyone would think that Japan on its own can face up to such risks. That is why we need the U.S.-Japan alliance. I don't think any decent politician would doubt that as a fact." Frustrated by Hatoyama's amateurish handling of the issue, Obama administration officials are scrambling to come up with the right mix of tolerance for the coalition's inexperience and firmness on implementing an agreed-upon deal. They're right to insist on the importance of the military alliance, long a force for stability throughout the region. But they shouldn't lose sight of the larger picture. For years now the United States has been trying to engage China's government in strategic dialogues and high-level commissions. It should do no less with Japan, its most important democratic ally in Asia, and the advent of an untested government still feeling its way provides both reason and opportunity to do so. So far, Japan's new government has not defined policies that could restore economic growth and lift the country out of its funk. But America should be hoping that it can. And if it wants Japan to regain some confidence, it makes sense to treat Japan as though it matters. Because it
does. — By arrangement with LA Times-Washington Post
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Brazil’s China headache The
country of the moment is Brazil, that melting pot of almost 200 million people. A thriving democracy, it has a hugely popular president and rapidly falling poverty. It recently won contests to host soccer's World Cup and the 2016 Olympics. It is opening diplomatic missions all over the world. Its economy was one of the last into the financial crisis and one of the first to escape. And yet Brazil's achievements are vulnerable. To keep its marvelous success on track, Brazil may have to do something that horrifies its diplomats: Confront China. Brazil's vulnerability comes from its currency, the real, which has jumped by a third against the dollar in the past year. A further rise could undermine exporters and make it impossible for domestic producers to compete with cheap imports, puncturing the vitality on which the Brazilian miracle is predicated. And a further rise seems all too possible. The forces driving up the real are not about to reverse themselves. The first driver is the fragility of the U.S. economy, which causes the Fed to hold down interest rates, inducing capital to seek higher returns elsewhere. Brazil is a favorite destination: Its interest rates are high and financial conditions inspire confidence. Most forecasters expect the U.S. recovery to remain sluggish for the foreseeable future. So the logic of low U.S. interest rates probably won't change, and the upward pressure on the real is likely to continue. The second force driving up the real is China. If economic logic prevailed, the real would fall against the Chinese yuan: China has a vast current account surplus, while Brazil has a deficit. But last year China re-pegged its currency to the dollar, so the yuan has followed the dollar down, hammering Brazil's ability to compete against Chinese producers. Meanwhile, the illogically weak yuan hurts producers in other countries, encouraging central banks to keep interest rates low and driving yet more capital into Brazil. This pressure from China is likely to grow along with China's economy. What can Brazil do about its rearing currency? It could cut interest rates to deter money from coming in, but Brazil's economy is hot and lower rates would risk inflation. It could fight capital inflows with taxes — it has already experimented with this option — but such restrictions tend to leak like umbrellas made of icing. It could intervene in the foreign-exchange market, selling reals and buying dollars, but then scarce Brazilian savings would get tied up in the depreciating greenback. Or Brazil could protect its industry with tariffs. But protectionism could spark a cycle of retaliation. The grim truth is that Brazil's domestic tools aren't powerful enough to stop its currency from threatening its success. With U.S. unemployment around 10 percent and an additional 7 percent of the U.S. workforce obliged to get by on part-time jobs, there is no way the Fed can raise interest rates to rescue Brazil from its
predicament. — By arrangement with LA Times-Washington Post
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