The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Headless schools
Education no priority in Punjab

It may appear unbelievable that 1,175 government schools in Punjab have been without principals for a decade, that 30,000 posts of teacher are vacant, 66 per cent schools are without adequate seating facilities for children and a large number of teachers in the border areas and elsewhere sub-let their posts. But those familiar with the way the government functions in Punjab are hardly surprised. Successive governments have neglected primary, secondary and medical education, squandering limited resources on gimmicks like running parallel “adarsh schools” when so many primary schools in villages lack the basic necessities, including blackboards and toilets.

A survey undertaken by a private institute at the behest of the state government has revealed that the experiment of handing over schools to zila parishads has failed to improve primary education. The mid-day meal scheme too has come a cropper in Punjab as either there are not enough food supplies or substandard, insect-infested food items are made available for children. Teachers at the grassroots level are paid low salaries and many operate from nearby towns or cities where they send their own children to better public schools. There is an appreciable awareness among parents tp provide the best possible education to their children. Even a family with modest means tries to send its children to a private, English-medium school.

The political parties cashing in on their rural vote banks have failed to focus on this primary need of the villagers, who need it badly to come out of poverty and ignorance. The poor have no means to get their right to quality education enforced. Punjab is among the states that spend the lowest on education – just 2 per cent of their revenue. Lack of money is no excuse as ruling state politicians and bureaucrats are notorious for their extravagance at the government expense.

All-party call for peace
Andhra leaders’ meeting a small step forward

The joint appeal for maintaining peace and assisting the Government in controlling law and order issued by participants from eight political parties of Andhra Pradesh at their meeting in New Delhi on Tuesday is a positive step forward in dealing with the vexed Telangana statehood issue. After all the acrimony over the issue, it would have been unrealistic to expect a dramatic breakthrough in the very first meeting held to sort out the tangle. Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram who called the meeting can draw some satisfaction from the fact that politicians representing diverse interests at least met without any visible signs of acrimony and agreed to work for peace.

Evidently, there was acute realization of the fact that the situation could well go out of hand with the Naxalites itching to take advantage of the climate of uncertainty. The increasingly aggressive stance that the students had begun to take also drilled fear into the minds of politicians and their parties that they may lose control over the rival movements which they had fuelled guided as much by personal interest as by regional considerations. Whatever may be the motivation, any lowering of the temperature would be welcome considering that the State is losing so heavily on account of the bandhs and other forms of work stoppages and people at large are being so grossly inconvenienced by frequent disruptions. It is a relief that the Congress has been able to rein in its ministers who had submitted their resignations and were staying away from their ministerial responsibilities. The spearhead of the agitation, the Telangana Rashtra Samithi is also veering round to a less dogmatic position. It is time that other parties too work to sort out their position on the contentious issue in the overall interests of the state and its people.

Clearly, the positives from the January 5 meeting are that the political leaders have agreed to meet again within a “reasonable frame of time.” It is now vital that this limited gain be built upon and that the ‘wider consultations’ process be carried forward until a solution is found that meets with general acceptance.

Thought for the Day

How few of his friends’ houses would a man choose to be at when he is sick. — Samuel Johnson

ARTICLE

Improve military ties with Dhaka
Anti-India mindset is changing
by G Parthasarathy

New Delhi will be welcoming Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina as its first State guest of this decade. Overcoming formidable hurdles, Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League swept the December 2008 polls, winning 230 seats and securing a two-thirds parliamentary majority. Ever since she was sworn in, Sheikh Hasina has not only faced challenges from right-wing parties, including the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) of Khaleda Zia, but also the Pakistani-Saudi assisted fundamentalists of the Jamat- e -Islami (JeI), which unashamedly backed the occupying Pakistan Army during the 1971 freedom struggle. This grouping was reinforced by radical Islamic groups like the Jamat-ul-Mujahideen (JMB) and the Harkat-ul-Jihad-ul-Islami, which also enjoy Pakistani/Saudi backing. All these groups are united in undermining the efforts to improve relations with India.

The greatest challenge that Sheikh Hasina overcame in her first year was the mutiny by the Bangladesh Rifles, which erupted on February 25, 2008, at its headquarters in Pikhana and soon spread across the country, to 12 other locations. The mutineers killed their chief, Major-General Shakil Ahmed, and his wife and dozens of others. Sheikh Hasina acted deftly in getting a large number of the mutineers to surrender and then permitted the army to crackdown using tanks and heavy weapons. While the mutineers had some genuine grievances, it soon became apparent that outsiders from the BNP and JeI were actively involved in fomenting the unrest.

Complementing the crackdown by Sheikh Hasina’s government on the mutineers was immediate and effective action by India, which sealed its borders with Bangladesh and forced back mutineers, attempting to cross over. The depth of anger felt at senior levels of the Bangladesh Army was reflected when the new Director-General of the BDR, Major-General Moinul Islam, referred to the mutiny as the “most heinous crime”. He added that what transpired reminded him of “the liberation war of 1971”.

Referring clearly to Pakistan and its friends in the BNP and the JeI, Major-General Islam noted that “external enemies still exist” for Bangladesh. Sheikh Hasina has reciprocated India’s assistance, by acting to force the surrender of ULFA leader Arabindo Rajkhowa, its deputy military commander Raju Barua and others operating from safe havens in Bangladesh. It has been made clear to North-Eastern separatist groups that they could not consider Bangladesh a safe haven. She has also cracked down on the JMB and the Lashkar-e-Toiba and acted to pre-empt cross-border attacks on India and on the Indian High Commission in Dhaka.

Sheikh Hasina is now facing domestic criticism spearheaded by the BNP and the JeI for allegedly having sold out to India.

She was earlier the target of assassination attempts by pro-BNP/JeI Islamists during her years in the opposition. She will have to show that relations with India are producing tangible benefits to Bangladesh and that long-pending differences are moving towards resolution. Under the 1974 Indira-Mujib agreement, India is required to return around 111 enclaves to Bangladesh and in return get 51 enclaves from Bangladesh. It took us 18 years to lease a small corridor of land near Tin Bigha to Bangladesh, which we were required to do, under the 1974 agreement. Barely 6.5 kilometres out of the 4096 kilometre land border remains undemarcated.

Measures need to be agreed upon that the border is expeditiously demarcated. Moreover, a political consensus needs to be built in West Bengal, to resolve the remaining pending issues of “adverse possessions” and enclaves, which have bedevilled relations through the past four decades. If New Delhi could get the assistance of then West Bengal Chief Minister Jyoti Basu in the 1990s, to resolve the vexed Farakka issue, there is no reason why we cannot take a similar initiative soon to deal with the boundary issue.

There was substantial progress achieved in moving forward on a number of issues when Bangladesh Foreign Minister Dipu Muni visited India in September 2008. The most crucial issue for India is “connectivity,” which would involve developing road, rail and river communication facilities in Bangladesh, for promoting access to our north-eastern states. India should express its readiness to invest in the development of Chittagong and Mongia ports in Bangladesh and agree to provide access for goods from Nepal and Bhutan to these ports. This could be coupled with approaches to Bhutan for a joint study of projects to augment river water flows. India would also be well advised to provide assistance soon for the Akhaura-Agartala rail link and undertake action to meet Bangladesh’s immediate energy requirements, by sale of 300 MW of electrical power. Indian investment in the development of road, rail and port infrastructure in Bangladesh should be seen in Dhaka to be mutually beneficial.

While Bangladesh has agreed to provide access to Ashuganj Port for the Palatana Power Project in Tripura, there should be a conscious effort to counter propaganda by the BNP against the construction of the Tipaimukh Dam across the Barak river in Assam. Contrary to malicious propaganda by Khaleda Zia and her cohorts, even experts in Bangladesh agree that this project will actually help in flood control, in augmenting lean season flows and assist in de-silting within Bangladesh. The BNP propaganda is motivated, considering the fact that experts in Khaleda Zia’s government, who were kept informed about the project in 2003 and 2005, raised no objections when the BNP was in office. Another emotive issue in Bangladesh is sharing of waters of Teesta river.

Bangladesh has shown a measure of realism by agreeing to “Joint Hydrological Observations” so that future actions are taken on the basis of realities and not unfounded fears. We should be able to agree to mechanisms to address mutual concerns on this issue, as we did in resolving the Farakka tangle.

Sections of the Bangladesh Army and its intelligence apparatus have been traditionally anti-Indian and supportive of the BNP and the JeI. There appears to have been some change in this mindset in the aftermath of the BDR mutiny. New Delhi would be well advised to strengthen military ties with Bangladesh and encourage a greater participation of the Bangladesh military in international peace keeping, which will encourage them to avoid Bonapartist ambitions.

Past experience shows that the political mood in Bangladesh can be volatile and one could well see a return to the BNP order if Sheikh Hasina falters and cannot fulfil the people’s growing aspirations. India should demonstrate that while it will assist in the progress and welfare of the people of Bangladesh, rulers in that country who show sensitivity for Indian concerns can and will receive Indian goodwill in return.

MIDDLE

Unforgettable arrow signs
by Satwant Kaur

My husband, officer in the Ministry of External Affairs, was transferred to Embassy of India, Vienna (Austria) in September, 2005. As there are good international schools in that city, my schoolgoing son and daughter also accompanied us.

It is needless to mention that like any European country, Austria is very beautiful and idyllic. It is a small country full of historical places, theatres, opera houses, restaurants and whatnot.

Just to two or three month before our transfer to Turkey, I started feeling some pain in the lower part of my abdomen. The X-ray report showed an ulcer in it. The doctor advised me to go in for an operation to remove it. I readily agreed to his advice. After one week I was discharged from the hospital and advised a rest of one month.

Unlike most husbands, mine loves office more than home. He took leave only of two days to take care of me. My coaxing and cooing for extending it fell on his deaf ears. Not only that. As was his wont, he used to go to office not in time but before time. My children would return from school not before four o’ clock. As a result I was feeling bored and confined to the house.

On one fine morning on a Sunday I asked my husband to take us for some outing. My husband is very fond of walking in forests, meadows and mountains. So not surprisingly, instead of taking us to some restaurant or an opera show, he lost no time in driving us in the car to a forest located on the outskirts of Vienna.

We parked our car near the entrance on the main road and started walking in the forest on a narrow kutcha road lined with bushes and very tall trees. Willy-nilly we staggered along behind our self-styled walker and went deep into the forest. To show himself as a good pathfinder, my hubby took a different way while returning from our odyssey of sorts. Lo and behold! We lost our way in the forest. Luckily these forests have only bears, deer and other herbivorous animals .We were, therefore, free at least from fear of being pounced upon by the dangerous animals like lions, leopards etc.

I was distraught, dead tired and left with no energy to walk further. At the same time, there was not a soul round to help us to find our way. After one or two hours, we saw an old couple passing by. We stopped and explained them our problem. They listened to us very attentively and asked us to follow them. They were from a nearby village bordering the forest and going to attend the evening prayer in the church which was also near the entrance of the forest where our car was parked.

We told the couple about our inability to follow them as our children and I could not walk fast. I still had some stitches on my stomach. The old couple also showed their helplessness to slow their pace as they were to reach the church in time. But they proved to be very ingenious. They told us that they would draw an arrow sign after every half kilometre or so, on the path while they walked on and we should follow those signs. We thanked them profusely for their kind gesture and they moved on.

We followed the arrow signs without any difficulty. But we had hardly walked for half an hour when it started raining. The rain water started washing away the arrow signs. We were completely at our wits’ end. However hoping that that the same foot path would take us to our destination, we went on walking. To our great surprise, after some distance we saw arrow signs made with wooden sticks obviously by that gracious couple. We followed them and reached our car.

When I recollect that incident, I cannot help thanking that old couple wherever they are. Some people leave a life-long unforgettable impression on our mind through their selfless acts of kindness, help and sympathy.

OPED

Pakistanis want to move beyond Mumbai, Kashmir
by Major Gen (retd) Ashok K. Mehta

At a Track II India-Pakistan conference in Singapore recently sponsored by the German Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES), not only were Pakistan’s internal challenges like Balochistan discussed with astonishing candour, but also the appeal was to talk, not fight, because Pakistan was coping with enormous pressure.

The discussion on Balochistan sourced to its mention in the joint statement at Sharm el Sheikh and a concession to Pakistan was the first ever of its kind. Unfortunately it boomeranged on Pakistan despite the categorical assertions about Indian involvement in destabilising Balochistan, including training of 600 Baluch dissidents in Afghanistan.

A Baloch participant traced the history of grievances, insurgency and alienation which had made Balochistan ripe for another Bangladesh. The demand for independent Balochistan was created by Islamabad’s wrong policies and bad governance and also lack of development.

While the assassination in 2006 of Nawab Akbar Bugti became the turning point in the insurgency and alienation, forced disappearances and torture in military custody drove the last nail in the coffin. Excesses by security forces and the dominant role of the Quetta Corps Commander have militarised governance.

The narration of the Baloch tragedy was a major embarrassment for the Pakistanis who, for strategic balance, demanded a discussion on the Maoist civil war in India. The first political and economic package for Balochistan was presented in a historic joint session of Parliament in Islamabad on the very day the topic was discussed at the conference.

Balochistan will not allow gas pipelines through its territory as it has been deprived of its share of revenues from its provincial resources of copper, gas and gold. Royalties for gas came only in 1991 whereas the gas went commercial in 1951, Baloch leaders say, and want the Federal government to pay the province the arrears it is owed.

It is the same story – although the Pakistani delegation did not agree – with Gilgit-Baltistan, (previously called Northern Areas) the Shia part of Azad Kashmir which has ethnic and linguistic connections with Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh and has been under the control of Pakistan for 63 years.

The strategic location of Gilgit-Baltistan – which is sandwiched between China, Central Asia, Afghanistan and India – makes it crucial for Pakistan to prolong its ‘occupation’ of the region. The year 2009 saw more sectarian killings than the previous two years put together.

When you consider how Baltistan is governed, you are struck by the time warp. Even today Baltistan is neither a part of Pakistan nor an autonomous region or an independent country. The region is ruled through legal framework orders and presidential ordinances and a recently announced empowerment order is yet another ordinance without a constitutional cover.

This package is a prelude to the Governor’s rule and will only strengthen Pakistani colonialism since the Pakistani Prime Minister and the Governor will have a veto to any laws passed by the Legislative Assembly. However, the delegates from Pakistan objected strongly to these assertions.

But notwithstanding objections on Gilgit-Baltistan, the Pakistani side showed amazing flexibility on Kashmir. Kashmir, a Pakistani said, was no longer a high priority issue in Pakistan after Gen Pervez Musharraf. But there was consensus that a settlement could be reached on Kashmir.

The four-point Kashmir formula, which was even endorsed by Hizb ul Mujahideen supremo Syed Salahuddin as the ‘first step’, has such wide acceptance among political parties in J&K that the PDP had made it the basis for its autonomy document. It was agreed that a historic opportunity was missed in 2006 to clinch the Kashmir issue.

The session on India-Pakistan relations began with a Pakistani painting two scenarios – the removal of President Zardari and the formation of a national unity government; and President Zardari staying but deprived of the powers under the 17th Amendment. The erstwhile troika was redundant as the Army Chief, Gen Kayani, was calling the shots after the Army resurrected its image post-Lal Masjid.

The new players in what was described as New Pakistan were a fiercely independent media, a strong judiciary and a vibrant civil society. There was also mention that the Pak Army had said ‘tauba’ (enough) and so had the ISI to dirty tricks. That the ISI had bitten off more than it could chew was the broad interpretation though some Pakistanis did not believe the Army and the ISI were on the mend.

There was a consensus that the joint anti-terror mechanism was not of good design and would not work in its present form. The ISI and R&AW have to engage each other and get the Indian military intelligence also involved. One Pakistani suggested changing the framework for dialogue without mentioning specifics but insisted that some outstanding issues like Siachen, Sir Creek and Wullar barrage were ripe for settlement.

Pakistanis were convinced that India would not resume the composite dialogue till action was taken against the culprits of Mumbai. It was said that when even Gen Pervez Musharraf could not discipline Hafiz Saeed, how could a weak civilian government? Pakistanis want to move beyond Mumbai, even Kashmir, focussing on defusing the proxy wars in Afghanistan and Balochistan and discussing the vital waters issue.

For breaking the impasse over the dialogue, Indian generosity was sought and the ‘ball is in India’s court’, it was said. Not so, was the Indian retort. Whenever Pakistan runs out of good Taliban, it invokes India’s generosity: big brother/bigger country and land (Kashmir) for peace deal.

They were told that India had been extravagant in its generosity (and tolerance) in the face of ceaseless cross-border terrorism even after several Pakistani pledges not to allow the use of its soil for the same.

Now that it is reasonably clear that the Western troops will pull out of Afghanistan sooner than later, what should India and Pakistan prepare themselves for in a post-US Afghanistan? The feeling was that a greater South Asia, that includes China, Myanmar, Iran, Afghanistan should be attempted – Pakistanis said this is a reality that India should learn to live with. They noted with some satisfaction that the rise of China and the decline of the US inevitably meant an eclipse of India.

In the circumstances, there had to be a difference in the way India and Pakistan look at Kashmir. That this was already happening was clear. But this change should be reflected in the conversations Indians and Pakistanis were having on a variety of subjects. For instance, the ISI and Indian intelligence have had some contact. The Mumbai crisis was handled quite deftly, with restraint. It was, after all the Pakistani news channels that said Ajmal Kasab was a Pakistani.

The sense was that 2005-06 the best period for India-Pakistan relations. No breakthroughs were expected in 2010 but no major Pakistan initiative should be expected because Pakistan was bogged down in problems of its own. The bracing news from the Pakistani delegates was that there was no constituency in Pakistan that sought conflict with India any more. But India needed to be bighearted.

It was agreed that terrorism, Afghanistan, Balochistan and water issues constituted the priority list – Kashmir was an afterthought – and pending revival of composite dialogue, the back channel could be reactivated. Media jingoism and the war of words had to be stopped. Summing up the mood, a Pakistani had the last word: ‘If we cannot be best of friends, let us be good friends’.

How CIA is misled
by Robert Fisk

In the vast American embassy in the hills outside the Jordanian capital Amman a senior US Special Forces officer runs an equally special office. He buys information from Jordanian army and intelligence officers – for cash, of course – but he also helps to train Afghan and Iraqi policemen and soldiers.

The information he seeks is not just about al-Qa'ida but about Jordanians themselves, about the army's loyalty to King Abdullah II as well as about the anti-American insurgents who live in Jordan, primarily Iraqi but also Iraqi al-Qa'ida contacts with Afghanistan.

It's easy to buy army officers in the Middle East. The Americans spent much of 2001 and 2002 buying up the warlords of Afghanistan. They paid for Jordanian troops to join their own occupation army in Iraq – which was why the Jordanian embassy in Baghdad was ruthlessly bombed by Washington's enemies.

What the CIA's double agent Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi did – like so many al-Qa'ida followers, he was a doctor – was routine. He worked for both sides, because America's enemies long ago infiltrated Washington's "allies" in the Arab intelligence forces.

Even Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who effectively led the al-Qa'ida side of the insurgency in Iraq and was himself a Jordanian citizen, maintained contacts within Amman's General Intelligence Department, whose own senior officer, Sharif Ali bin Zeid, was killed along with seven Americans this week in the CIA's greatest disaster since the Beirut US embassy bombing of 1983.

There is, however, nothing romantic about espionage in the Middle East. Several of the CIA men killed in Afghanistan were in fact hired mercenaries while the Jordanian "mukhabbarat" spooks, for whom both bin Zeid and al-Balawi worked, use torture routinely on Jordan's supposed enemies; indeed, they tortured men who were equally routinely "renditioned" to Amman by the CIA under the Bush administration.

The mystery, however, is not so much the existence of double agents within the US security apparatus in the Middle East, but just how a Jordanian "mole" could be of use in Afghanistan.

Few Arabs speak Pushtun or Dari or Urdu, although a larger percentage of Afghans would speak Arabic. What it does suggest, however, is that there have been much closer links between the anti-American Iraqi insurgents based in Amman and their opposite numbers in Afghanistan.

Hitherto regarded as a purely inspirational transfer of operations, it is now clear that – despite the vast landmass of Iran between the two states – Iraqi and Afghan/al-Qa'ida operatives have been collaborating.

In other words, just as the CIA blithely assumed that it could make friends with and trust the local intelligence men in the Muslim world, so the insurgent groups could do the same.

The presence of an anti-American Jordanian spy in Afghanistan – one who would sacrifice his life so far from home – proves how close are the links between America's enemies in Amman and in eastern Afghanistan. It would not be going too far to suggest that anti-American Jordanians have connections that reach as far as Islamabad.

If this seems far-fetched, we should remember that just as the CIA first supported Arab fighters against the Soviet army in Afghanistan, it was Saudi money which paid them. In the early Eighties, Saudi Arabia's own intelligence commander held regular meetings with Osama bin Laden in the Saudi embassy in Islamabad and with the Pakistani secret service, which gave logistical help to the "mujahedin" and then to the Taliban – as it still does today.

If the Americans believe that the Saudis are not sending money to their enemies in Afghanistan – or to their equally fundamentalist enemies in Iraq and Jordan – then the CIA hasn't much idea of what is going on in the Middle East.

— By arrangement with The Independent

Men are in touch with their feelings
by Terence Blacker

A few days into the new decade, it already feels as if an age of surprise and paradox is dawning. In a warming world, we are experiencing the coldest winter for years. It has been discovered that the human gender which is more in touch with its innermost feelings, most emotionally honest and consistent, is... male.

No one was prepared for that. Men have been in the doghouse for so long that it has begun to feel like home. Women's comfortable settlement on the high moral ground is now accepted as part of the age-old natural order.

But wait. An authoritative study, published in the Archives of Sexual Behaviour journal, has investigated 132 surveys, involving 4,000 interviewees, in order to analyse truthfulness when it comes to sexual matters.

The results are startling. Whereas men's mental and physical response to desire was found to be perfectly aligned, there was a disastrous mismatch between what women felt and what they said they were feeling. Some reported that they were aroused when, physiologically, they were not. Others claimed to feel nothing when in fact their bodies were absolutely fizzing with erotic need.

The report has been spun various ways in the press. Female sexuality is more subtle and nuanced than male randiness, one argument has gone. Another interpretation suggested that a terrible burden of guilt has afflicted many women whose bodies are sending them all the wrong signals. The truth, surely, is simpler than that. Men are more mature, less in denial, about their sexual natures. The male mind and body are in a healthy state of balance.

Once this simple fact has been accepted, then the great G-spot scandal, one of the week's other big news stories, is easy to explain. Back in 1981, an American author called Beverly Whipple wrote a bestselling book heralding the discovery of an erogenous zone which provided women with a brand new type of orgasm, far better than the standard-issue one.

The report caused heartache, muscle sprain and disappointment for couples all over the world. The search for the G-spot became a late 20th-century version of a previous era's quest for the Northwest Passage.

Now, according to scientists at King's College London, the lovers' holy grail was little more than a fantasy. Its existence, they argue, was based on the subjective opinions of women. In the matter of sex, these turned out – once again – to be a highly unreliable source.

As happens so often in these intimate matters, things have turned nasty. Whipple has defended her G-spot. Others have argued that the discovery of the new zone depends on the quality of the male lover. Ungenerously, it has been pointed out that, in this survey, the partners would tend to be British. Thus, in one easy move, the male – at least the blundering male of these islands – is back in the doghouse.

Let us hope that in this new decade, some sort of gender balance will be established. An early hero of the new age will be Warren Beatty whose mental and physical alignment is so perfect that, according to a new biography, he has had 12,775 lovers.

To gain a sense of scale, imagine an average crowd at a Queens Park Rangers match consisting entirely of women who have had sex with Warren Beatty. The star's lawyer has issued a denial while Beatty himself has kept a tactful silence. That is how men deal with these things – honestly and with quiet dignity.n

— By arrangement with The Independent