The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Charge-sheets in 25 years
How much longer for ’84 justice?

Former MP Sajjan Kumar has been prosecuted in the 1984 riots cases earlier also. He was let off by the courts because very weak cases were mounted against him by the police. Now the CBI has chargesheeted him, full 25 years after the mass killings took place. If it takes a quarter century to reach that stage, one can well imagine how much longer it will take to bring the case to its logical conclusion. Even then, there is no guarantee that ends of justice will be met, because all this while, the tendency of powers that be to let off such criminals has been apparent. When the prosecution itself is more interested in helping a person than convicting him, one cannot be too optimistic. Yet, one hopes against hope that the CBI will do a professional job for once.

The nation’s conscience was pricked by the way former Haryana DGP SPS Rathore merrily misused his authority to circumvent law for 19 years in the Ruchika suicide case. Something far more heinous happened in November of 1984 when thousands of innocent Sikhs were butchered in the wake of the murder of Indira Gandhi. Sajjan Kumar was a Congress councillor at that time. He later became MP from the Outer Delhi constituency in the 14th Lok Sabha.

Despite all the mud sticking to him, the Congress had chosen him to contest the 2009 Lok Sabha election as well. His name was withdrawn only because of a loud public outcry. Thanks to such attitude, many persons like Dharam Das Shastri and former union minister HKL Bhagat allegedly involved in the riots have died and many others still roam free. The Congress, which castigates the Narendra Modi government for being in league with perpetrators of Gujarat riots, must show its impartiality by effectively bringing to book all those involved in the 1984 riots, whatever position they might hold.

Failing the rural poor
Punjab, Haryana must implement NREGS better

It is deeply regrettable that the implementation of the Centre’s watershed National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) meant to redress the problem of unemployment among the rural poor has been found wanting in Punjab. A recent study by the Centre for Research in Rural and Industrial Development (CRRID) bears out that the NREGS has been a flop not only in Punjab but also in Haryana. Both states would do well to learn a few lessons from Himachal Pradesh which has put the scheme to good use.

NREGS offers 100-day guaranteed employment to rural households. The scheme has not only ensured minimum employment and wages but for migrant labourers from Bihar it has also meant increased wages in Punjab. Besides, NREGS has led to women empowerment as a considerable number of women are employed under the scheme. Unfortunately, Punjab’s track record has been unsatisfactory. Even Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal admitted that NREGA is not a success in Punjab. The funds under the scheme stand underutilised. The situation in Haryana too is dismal. The CAG report for 2007-2008 had faulted the Haryana government for the absence of proper planning mechanism in execution of the scheme. According to the CRRID study, corruption in implementation was reported. Earlier, The Tribune had highlighted that in Ambala poor families were not paid wages even after three months though it is mandatory under the scheme that they should be paid every fortnight.

Both state governments have to own up responsibility and see to the time-bound spending of funds on projects beneficial to the community. The Punjab government, instead of demanding that the scheme be dovetailed according to the state’s needs, should ensure that the scheme reaches out to the much neglected rural poor whose numbers are not insignificant. Panchayats, which play a pivotal role in the scheme, need to be trained and offered all cooperation by the state government machinery. NREGS, which has the dual advantage of creating jobs for the rural poor as well as building rural infrastructure, cannot be allowed to be an empty promise because of the absence of political will.

Thought for the Day

If this were played upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable. — William Shakespeare

ARTICLE

India and NPT, CTBT
Need for non-proliferation consistency
by O. P. Sabherwal

The nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) are back on centre-stage. First, President Obama’s renewed commitment to the NPT during his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, and now the Japanese Prime Minister’s quest for India to join the CTBT stare this country in the face. It becomes necessary for India to clarify its standpoint on the two nuclear treaties.

Widely held is the perception that the NPT, and even the CTBT, is a threat to this country’s de facto nuclear weapon power status. The fact of the matter is that the renewal of global interest in the NPT and the CTBT is a fresh opportunity for India to redress a wrong and for winning back its rightful place as a weapon power within the NPT structure, in order to give a momentum to global nuclear disarmament. And in this aim, the CTBT fits in neatly.

There is a forgotten history of the NPT worth recalling. The NPT was launched on the plea for freeing the world from the nightmare of nuclear weapons — as a nuclear weapons non-proliferation organisation that curbed their spread not only horizontally but also equally vertically. These objectives are enshrined in the NPT preamble, in the shaping of which India contributed a great deal. The operative structure of the NPT, however, contains little that makes it binding on the weapon states to curb their nuclear arsenals. India’s plea for such a binding insertion in the NPT text was deliberately not accepted by the NPT promoters — primarily, the United States, aided by Britain and the erstwhile Soviet Union.

The preamble is thus no more than an illusion to lure the non-weapon states into permanent inferior nuclear status so as to perpetuate Big Power nuclear hegemony with the help of the NPT. The upshot: the NPT has belied its promise and, instead, has become a major proliferation agent — vertical proliferation at first, allowing the big powers a free run in the nuclear arms race.

The Cold War years witnessed a frightening build-up of nuclear arsenals by the two super powers, the US and the erstwhile Soviet Union, to the extent that the two — or either of them — could destroy entire world civilisation twice or three times over. This realisation pulled the two super powers back from the brink, resulting in rewinding of the Cold War. But the damage had been done. The real face of the NPT was revealed, and countries desired to free themselves from the big powers nuclear straitjacket.

Countries like Libya that unsuccessfully sought to build nuclear weapons were termed “rogue” states by the United States. So was North Korea, who not only pulled out from the NTP but also defied the big powers by openly building nuclear weapon devices. India had special relevance for the NPT, for this country alone — among the non-weapon states — had acquired nuclear weapon capability when the NPT was formed.

The question has been posed: was India cheated of its right to a weapon status in the NPT structure by virtue of its acquisition of weapon capability well before the 1979 deadline? The answer is in the affirmative.

Indian nuclear scientists assert that BARC, the premier Indian R&D centre, was delivering weapon-grade plutonium 239 from 1964 onwards — five years before the NPT proclaimed Lakshman Rekha. And this weapon grade plutonium was tested in 1974 and found perfect. True, India did not go in for a nuclear test by the NPT deadline. Instead, India used its plutonium capability for peaceful purposes. The NPT, with its declared purpose of curbing nuclear weapons, should not have had a problem in this regard. The criteria for the NPT should be nuclear capability, including weapon capability, and not the explosions, for which India had ample know-how, as was shown, first in 1974 and later in 1998. But the United States was bent on bringing India in the NPT with a non-weapon status for obvious reasons.

Consequently, India refused to join the NPT because it was a discriminatory treaty, debarring the bulk of the nations from testing nuclear weapons while giving a free run to the five declared nuclear weapon states. Also, because it barred India from nuclear tests if and when it considered it necessary to do so for its national security. For 20 years India successfully fought a tug of war with the US on this issue and has now emerged a victor.

That phase is over, with the US recognition of India’s advanced nuclear capability built indigenously, and urging the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group to allow India international nuclear commerce and interaction even while it retained its nuclear arsenal. By virtue of entering a “separation” clause which allowed India a free hand in retaining and building its nuclear arsenal, the Indo-US nuclear accord accepts India’s international nuclear commercial and scientific interaction — keeping the imported nuclear material and technology for peaceful uses under International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards.

It is, therefore, time to re-examine India’s status vis-à-vis the NPT. If India joins the NPT, it would be as a weapon state. It would be in the interest of the NPT to restructure its relevant clauses to accept India as a weapon state member. If India joins the NPT as a member with weapon status, it would use its standing to propel the NPT for complete non-proliferation — not only horizontal but even more vertical — aiming at total nuclear disarmament. The forthcoming NPT review conference should be an occasion to bring about these changes in the interest of ending the nightmare of nuclear weapons.

Where does the CTBT fit in? After having failed to hook India for the NPT, the US conceived of another stratagem for the same purpose, namely, to draw India in its “non-proliferation” plans through the CTBT, thus debarring an Indian nuclear test. That is why India vetoed the CTBT at the Geneva disarmament conference. Subsequently, the US virtually blocked the CTBT by refusing Congressional ratification. China too followed suit, by refusing to ratify the CTBT till the American Congress ratified it.

Now we are being assured by President Obama that he will pressurise the American Congress to ratify the CTBT. If and when this transpires — and ensures a full global endorsement of the CTBT — a new situation would arise, as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has said. Having built a nuclear deterrent for its security concerns, it would be in India’s interest to join the CTBT and become a leader of global nuclear disarmament. While retaining and strengthening its nuclear deterrent, Indian objective henceforth should be to side by side campaign for global nuclear disarmament. The CTBT, in such an eventuality, can be acceptable to India.

This may not be to the liking of our hydrogen bomb nuclear fundamentalists, arduously campaigning for more nuclear tests to further add to Indian nuclear lethal capability by perfecting a super hydrogen bomb. That is not Indian thinking and strategy, which has since its inception aimed at global nuclear disarmament, hitherto not acceptable to the big powers. If the CTBT comes giving parity to all nations, India should welcome it.

MIDDLE

Rites of passage
by Vijay Oberoi

Mayank, all of 14 years, became a man at 10:30 pm on a cold and windswept evening on the wide four-lane Gurgaon Expressway on the 27th of December 2009, when a somewhat older young man, having imbibed too much, recklessly drove his brand new car and smashed it into the taxi carrying Mayank and others and severely injuring one of the occupants — Mayank’s mother.

Mayank, his 11-year-old sister and their mother had taken the taxi at Palam airport and were proceeding sedately to their home on Sohna Road, when the speeding car hit the parapet, bouncing off and smashing into the taxi, which in turn hit the parapet on the other side and rebounded, to be hit again by the rogue car, which had turned full circle and smashed once again with full force on the left side of the taxi. All this took only moments, but left behind in its wake a lady with multiple fractures and deep muscle and flesh injuries, with profuse bleeding and two stunned and shocked kids.

It was precisely then that Mayank transited from a carefree boy to a mature adult. He neither cried nor stood by helplessly, but took immediate charge, retrieving the cell phone of his mother, ringing up friends of his mother, his grand-parents at far away Panchkula and, more importantly, the emergency number of the police.

The aftermath of such an event leaves one wondering about what propelled this boy in his teens to act the way he did. In situations of this type, even most adults display a sense of helplessness and bewilderment and here was a boy, still wet behind the ears, who not only rose to the occasion but did so with confidence and panache. He never wavered from what was of immediate importance and did not reduce his efforts till help in the form of friends arrived.

Having analysed and reanalysed the behaviour of Mayank, I can only conclude that it were qualities of character, which we in the army hold in great esteem in both our officers and men alike, which came to the fore on that cold wintry night.

The military spends a great deal of time and effort in character building of their personnel, right from the time they join the defence forces and thereafter continuously as they rise in rank and service. However, Mayank is not a soldier, at least not yet, although he has aspirations to be one! It could therefore only be the environment in which he has been brought up, at home and in school that has influenced him.

There may be other reasons too. However, the important conclusion one can infer is that it is such young men and boys on the threshold of becoming mature adults who are destined to carry forward the destiny of their families, the society and the nation to greater heights. Our nation does need more such youngsters.

OPED

Look beyond packages
States should try regional cooperation
by Nirmal Sandhu

The Central tax sops for industry in Himachal Pradesh, granted in 2003 and due to end in March, 2010, have soured the good neighbourly relations among the north-western states.

Political leaders are engaged in a dirty war of words for and against the extension of the Central package, which covered Uttarakhand and Jammu and Kashmir also.

The five-year income tax exemption and the 10-year excise duty waiver, among other benefits, have not helped Himachal to the extent expected.

In seven years Himachal Pradesh has got an actual investment of Rs 6,230 crore only though proposals amounting to Rs 40,123 crore have been cleared.

Industrialists are hesitant. There is no infrastructure worth the name. Roads are in bad shape. Water availability is poor. There is no reliable hospital or a proper school or college where employees and executives can send their children to get quality education.

The government rules say employ local people. But trained manpower is unavailable. The industrial package has not motivated the ruling politicians in Himachal to train enough local youth for upcoming jobs.

Baddi has attracted industrial and real estate investment. But the town lacks basic civic amenities. Those working there live in Panchkula or Chandigarh and commut to their workplace daily. They are often caught in traffic snarls.

In the past seven years the state has failed to develop Baddi as a self-sufficient industrial, commercial and residential centre. This is true of other Himachal towns which have attracted industrial units after the tax bonanza was announced.

Industry is ready to come in, but Himachal is not. So this is not the right way to help a state grow. If a bigger, inter-state approach had been adopted to develop this region by involving the governments of Himachal and Haryana and the administration of Chandigarh, such lop-sided growth could have been avoided.

Politicians in this region spend more time and energy on fighting over Central relief than joining hands for growing together. If the industrial package is not extended beyond March, the Himachal politicians would start blaming the Centre for industrial development coming to a halt. They won’t own responsibility for not doing enough on their own.

The ridiculous practice of politicians begging for Central help prevails in Punjab also. The Chief Minister blames the Centre for every problem in Punjab. Politicians actively oppose the package to Himachal and hold it responsible for the so-called flight of industry from Punjab.

This is to cover up their own non-performance. Industry is moving out of or languishing in Punjab for one major reason: the non-supply of quality power. Besides, poor governance, red tape and corruption are driving or keeping industry away.

Haryana’s proximity to Delhi gives it a tremendous advantage. The state is growing at a fast pace. That is why it is less concerned about the tax benefits to Himachal.

If the governments in Himachal Pradesh, Haryana and Punjab as well as the Chandigarh administration together build world-class common educational institutions, health centres, infrastructure and help one another in maintaining law and order, it would lead to sound and balanced development. Baddi could get a fast-track rail link with Pachkula and Chandigarh.

If the state governments work together to create a congenial atmosphere for growth, there would be no need for any tax or other financial relief for the industry. In fact, in their own interest, the industrialists should give up the habit of demanding crutches from governments.

In Punjab and elsewhere there are industries that thrive on evading taxes and stealing power. This is because of the poor enforcement of the law. What the industry really needs is good infrastructure and clean and responsive governance.

The existing politician-bureaucrat-industrialist nexus is bad for responsible governance. It is time to leave industry alone. The taxpayers’ money should not be used to bail out industries which are inefficient and cannot face competition, domestic or global.

Those who make mistakes should be allowed to fail. This way only those companies will survive and flourish which are strong and can stand up to global competition.

If states fight over packages it is partly because the Centre plays an unfair role and doles out assistance on political considerations rather than adopt some transparent and objective criteria to help those in need. Over the years it has taken over too many sources of revenue and deprived states of their rightful share. It is time for some financial decentralisation.

If growth is to gain momentum, the Centre should adopt a region-specific approach instead of the present state-specific one. The northern region is not attracting enough foreign investment because of the poor quality of political leadership, infrastructure, red tape and corruption in the northern states.

If an integrated development model is adopted, each state can encourage industries that suit its resources, terrain and people. Himachal, for instance, has a huge untapped potential for developing hydroelectric projects but it lacks funds to exploit it.

Instead of collaborating with Himachal Pradesh to generate electricity from water, Punjab is opting for coal-based power plants disregarding the damage to the environment. Since Haryana is going in for a nuclear power plant, Punjab too has woken up to this source of clean energy.

There is no need to squander the limited resources on duplicating facilities. Inter-state barriers must come down. If the Berlin Wall could fall to unite Germany and if the European states could sink their differences to form the European Union, the states too should not find it hard to share their resources and strengths for mutual advantage.

Ranting against Iran
by Adrian Hamilton

What to do about Iran? The country is in the throes of a protracted and profound internal struggle whose outcome no one seems able to predict. The plight of the reformers is real and getting worse as the authorities clamp down on dissent, arrest protesters and harass their leaders with increasing brutality.

The difficulty of dealing with the regime, and knowing how best to support its people, is made all the more difficult by its position in the region and its nuclear ambitions. It's hard enough trying to decide how to treat with a regime such as Burma's, where our interests are fairly distant. With Iran you are approaching a country whose future and whose ambitions could reshape the region and even bring on war.

The problem, however, may lie more in the question than the answer. We've done "doing something" about difficult regimes and achieved little but harm. Castro, Mugabe, the Sudanese government and the Burmese military regime still stand, while as for our invasion of Iraq, the least said the better. It's not ours to "do something" about Iran.

There's no shortage of voices here, as indeed within Iran, calling for us to condemn the Iranian regime in the strongest terms, to declare it a pariah among nations, to load it with sanctions and even to cease contact altogether.

Life would be so much easier if one could be morally righteous in one's dealing with other countries and leave it at that. But quite aside from the sheer hypocrisy of singling out Iran for punishment while totally ignoring China's much greater breaches of human rights, just what good would isolation do?

Sanctions rarely work, as we know from Zimbabwe and Burma and, for that matter, pre-invasion Iraq. Indeed as the Iraq example showed, they actually serve to entrench autocratic regimes in power by enabling them to monopolise such goods and services as do come into the country.

The sanctions already imposed on Iran by the US Congress have greatly increased the profits of the Revolutionary Guards, who now control a major share of the country's economic activity. Doubling them up, as the US and Europeans are now urging, will only increase the regime's control of resources and hence power.

The same with isolation. It's done nothing to undermine President Mugabe or Kim Jong-il in North Korea, quite the opposite. Nor is it easy to cease relations with a country whom we are desperately anxious to engage on the subject of its nuclear ambitions, its interests in Afghanistan and Iraq, and its position as backer of Hamas and Hizbollah. Nuclear need must not override moral imperatives, say the callers for confrontation with Tehran. But nuclear issues are a need, and an urgent one if we are to avoid an arms race through the region and possible pre-emptive action by Israel.

Whatever one's feelings about President Ahmadinejad and the legitimacy of his regime, the world cannot afford to pass up a chance of constructive negotiations over nuclear issues – and there still is a chance for all that Israel and the right in the US say – because of distaste for the people with whom we are talking.

The collapse of the Soviet Union 20 years ago gave the West too seductive a view of the inexorable march towards freedom and democracy. It was not that simple, and we didn't do that much to help. The major changes were wrought in occupied countries.

Those like Ukraine, with large Russian populations, or the Central Asian Republics in need of Russian support, have moved a lot less swiftly down that path. We could do far more to support occupied peoples – the Palestinians and the Tibetans spring to mind – but we don't seem inclined to.

Iran is a sovereign country, and a proudly nationalistic one. Outside intervention quickly brings back memories of foreign intervention and Western support for Iraq in the Iran-Iraq war. It is also a peculiarly difficult country to read, thanks partly to the opaqueness of its power structure.

The current struggle embraces not only the obvious groups of students and professional classes seeking greater freedom but also a battle within the theocratic elite between conservatives who came to power in the Islamic Revolution and the younger more militant groups forged by the Iran-Iraq war.

The rural population, which has been the recipient of President Ahmadinejad's populist policies in the past, now seems more restive under the tightened economic circumstances and the withdrawal of subsidies under way. So far workers and the urban population have not joined the so-called "Green Movement" for reform, as they did when the Shah fell, but then the country has a large majority of under-21s who could jump either way – towards oppression or revolt.

The trouble with most comment is that it is suffused by what people on the outside, and the exiles, want to happen rather than what they think will. Opponents of Tehran's policy on nuclear, Palestine and the region wish for a velvet revolution that would produce a pro-Western government which would reverse all those plans.

The one near-certainty is that, if changes comes, it will be from within the country not without and that when, and if, it comes it cannot be seen to be at the behest of the West and to the detriment of Iran's independent standing. Our policy should be what it should have been these past 10 years – to forget all the nonsense of sanctions and forcing Tehran to the table, to keep negotiating in good faith and with due understanding of its imperatives, and to support reform by keeping communication open, constantly reiterating our concern and providing a refuge for any who need it.

— By arrangement with The Independent

China accounts for 1 pc of Google revenue
by Stephen Foley

There was something deflating about Google's decision to set up in China, like hearing an idealistic student had cut his hair and gone to work for an investment bank. The search engine company had not only revolutionised the internet, it had also promised to change how corporations operate. For a decade it had held fast to its motto of "Don't Be Evil"; and yet the price of admission to China was submission to the Communist regime's rules on censorship.

The new Google.cn – launched in 2006 – filtered out the foreign websites and internal content that apparatchiks deemed subversive. Executives argued at the time that it would at least be able to encourage web use in China, and that the leaky, cacophonous internet would ultimately overwhelm censors – but the cynical viewed this as a fig leaf for what the company's new motivational force: making money.

By mid-2009, China had 338 million internet users, more than any other country in the world, but that still represented less than a quarter of the population. Google has turned itself into a $200bn company by selling adverts alongside its search results, and it anticipated repeating its stellar growth in China.

A campaign against Google's self-censorship remained an embarrassment to executives, however. From day one, the company was deluged by complaints. In June 2006, Amnesty International published Undermining Freedom of Expression in China: the role of Yahoo, Microsoft and Google, and took Western internet firms to task for supporting the repression of dissidents in China.

And in the US, the company has come under uncomfortable scrutiny from Congress, along with other US internet firms operating in China. Controversy flared when it was revealed Yahoo had given the authorities information on one of its users, journalist Shi Tao, who was arrested and imprisoned for leaking a government document.

At the subsequent Congressional hearing, Google's public affairs director, Elliot Schrage, told lawmakers that complying with Chinese censorship laws was "not something we did enthusiastically or something we're proud of at all". Democrat Tom Lantos said: "I simply don't understand how your corporate leadership sleeps at night."

In New York, where Google's shares traded lower yesterday, financial analysts were trying to count the cost of its exit, should the Chinese authorities refuse to allow it to run uncensored web searches. The company has about 30 per cent of the search market in China, behind local competitor Baidu, but was growing fast with new ventures in music downloading and phone software, which could be hurt if this turns into a bigger feud with the government.

For all its future potential, though, China so far accounts for barely 1 per cent of Google's revenues, and probably even less of its profits. Jeetil Patel, an analyst at Deutsche Bank, thought China accounts for only $4 of the $580 Google share price.

By contrast, by standing up to the Chinese authorities, Google closes a public relations sore, and puts pressure on rivals Yahoo and Microsoft. Last night, Yahoo said it was "aligned" with Google in condemning the cyber attacks, but made no similar threat to change its operating policies in the country.

— By arrangement with The Independent

Corrections and clarifications

In the lead headline (Page 1, January 14) instead of ex-Congress MP the right expression would have been Congress ex-MP.

In the headline “Now, D-Mat accounts for academic degrees” (Page 1, January 13) ‘D-Mat’ should have been spelt as demat. That short form of dematerialisation is the correct expression.

The headline “Nothing much to choose” (Page 16, January 13) should instead have been “Nothing much to choose from”.

In the headline “Help improve apple quality, Mir asks scientists” (Page 6, January 12) the appropriate word in place of ‘asks’ would have been ‘tells’.

Despite our earnest endeavour to keep The Tribune error-free, some errors do creep in at times. We are always eager to correct them.

This column appears twice a week — every Tuesday and Friday. We request our readers to write or e-mail to us whenever they find any error.

Readers in such cases can write to Mr Kamlendra Kanwar, Senior Associate Editor, The Tribune, Chandigarh, with the word “Corrections” on the envelope. His e-mail ID is kanwar@tribunemail.com.

H.K. Dua
Editor-in-Chief