The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Politics of hate
The Thackerays must be brought to book

The divisive politics of the Shiv Sena and its breakaway group the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) seeking to drive a wedge between Mumbai’s Marathis and immigrants from U.P. and Bihar deserves to be countered by all right-thinking people. It is regrettable that while both these parties are getting emboldened with each passing day with their agenda of hate, precious little is being done to hold them accountable for spreading disaffection between religions and between communities. Between them the Thackerays — Shiv Sena supremo Bal, his son Uddhav and MNS chief Raj — have besmirched Mumbai’s fair name as an epitome of cosmopolitanism. Their espousal of the ‘Marathi manoos’ card has provoked young men and women to look upon ‘outsiders’ as the cause of all their economic and social ills. In the bargain, these harbingers of hate may have won some votes but they have done irreparable damage to the spirit of the Constitution which guarantees every citizen the right to live and work in any part of the country.

A series of chauvinistic reactions to innocuous statements in recent days have vitiated the atmosphere as never before. When cricketing icon Sachin Tendulkar remarked that Mumbai belonged to all Indians and not to anyone in particular, and that while he was a Maharashtrian, he was an Indian first, he was stating the obvious. But he was admonished by Bal Thackeray for “hurting the feelings” of Marathi manoos. Likewise, when matinee idol Shah Rukh Khan criticised the sponsors of IPL for keeping Pakistani players out of the tourney, Bal Thackeray mockingly suggested to him that he choose the 26/11 Mumbai attacks terrorist Mohammad Ajmal Kasab to lead the team of which he was the franchisee. When Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi stated at a public interaction that every part of India belonged to every Indian, the Thackerays were quick to pour scorn and ridicule.

Enough is enough! It is time the Maharashtra government picks up courage and tackles those who are spreading the virus of hatred and defying the Constitution in the process. Bal Thackeray and his nephew Raj must be brought to book at all costs so that a deterrent is established for others of their ilk.

Blight of leprosy
India must eradicate the disease

India observed Anti-Leprosy Day recently. However, sadly leprosy eradication remains a distant goal. More than one in 10,000 persons in Chandigarh, Delhi, Bihar and Jharkhand still get the disease. Orissa’s position as the most leprosy-vulnerable state is worrisome too. Earlier it was reported that leprosy with grade II disabilities (complete impairment of any body part) is still rampant due to lack of awareness.

In the early 1980s India had nearly four million leprosy patients and accounted for one-third of the world’s caseload. The government of India, WHO and the NGOs have worked towards eradication of leprosy since the introduction of the National Leprosy Eradication programme. The number of cases came down appreciably, especially with the wider introduction of multi-drug therapy. Now the availability of multi-drug therapy itself has become a matter of concern. Shortage of medicines has been observed at several centres and some states have been found wanting in maintaining two month buffer stocks. A study of the National Rural Health Mission performance targets (between 2005 and 2008) pointed out that the total number of leprosy cases as well as new cases is still high. Worse still, the stigma attached to leprosy patients shows little signs of diminishing.

Society needs to be educated and must shed prejudiced attitudes. Leprosy patients should not be shunned. What they need is treatment as leprosy is completely curable if detected at an early stage. Often fear of societal taboo coupled with ignorance inhibits them from seeking cure. The health authorities have to be alert towards new cases as well as the existing ones. The very low prevalence rate in several states shows that WHO norms can be met. However, President Pratibha Patil is right in asserting that the ultimate measure of success would be the day when the disease is totally eradicated. The government has to take concerted steps to ensure it. The dream of Mahatma Gandhi and Baba Amte whose crusade against the disease changed the lives of many leprosy patients must be realised.

Thought for the Day

Winners believe in their worth in advance of their performance. — Denis Waitley

ARTICLE

Bane of Indian science
Need to free scientists from babudom
by Rajendra Prabhu

In his address to the 97th Indian Science Congress, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has admitted that bureaucracy was the bane of Indian science. Later Dr Madhavan Nair said that except in departments under the Prime Minister’s control, every other science section suffered from red tape. Clearly, there are many telling instances of how the bureaucracy had smothered the enquiring mind and innovation in India’s science labs.

Ironically, most of world’s greatest scientists like Dr Sivaramakrishna Chandrashekhar and Dr Subramaniam Chandrashekhar won laurels and recognition abroad and not in India.

A typical example of bureaucratic interference in India is regarding the technology of growing ultra pure silicon crystals to make solar and other silicon cells that convert light into electricity. Two Indian Institute of Science scientists had developed the technology. In the early 80s, Mettur Chemicals (MetChem) in Mettur near Salem tried to install a pilot plant to make pure crystalline silicon as a commercial venture using this indigenous technology. The cells were to be manufactured by bodies like the Bharat Heavy Electricals in Bangalore.

However, MetChem was made to rue the day they applied for an industrial licence for silicon manufacture using this technology. The reason: the government had already entered into a collaboration with an American MNC to import this silicon and make these cells in a Mohali-based public sector concern. A powerful Joint Secretary in the Department of Electronics, who had direct access to the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had said “no” to the MetChem plan.

Similarly, the government aborted another project on liquid crystal devices of the Bharat Electronics with the technological support from Bangalore’s Raman Research Institute. Dr Sivramakrishna Chandrasekhar was to attend the World Congress on Liquid Crystals, but the babus in the Science and Technology and Electronics departments did not sanction his foreign trip, raising queries after queries.

The reason why he was being harassed was his support for the BEL’s attempt to manufacture devices from liquid crystals. The Joint Secretary referred to earlier had already negotiated with a Japanese company to make LCD devices. In those days of socialist mantra in planning, there was no place for competition though BEL with HMT collaboration on the front end and RRI collaboration at the back end was planning to make LCD-based watches for as low as Rs 200 a piece.

The series of newspaper articles exposing this bureaucratic hurdle to indigenous technology led to questions in Parliament and in the Prime Minister’s consultative committee on science and technology and electronics. This shook the establishment and rescued Dr Chandrasekhar as well as the two indigenous technologies. Still the government decided to form the Centre for Liquid Crystal Research only in 1991. By then, the worldwide authority on liquid crystals had stepped into the sunset years. And his basic discovery of discotic liquid crystals had become a multi-billion dollar industry worldwide — not in India.

There are several other instances of bureaucrats creating hurdles in the 70s and 80s. India missed the bus completely in electronics in the 70s. The black and white TV set was a curiosity in the 70s and in the early 80s, a committee of secretaries decreed that a colour TV set would cost over Rs 13,500 and thus will not have a demand in India. Even if these sets were made, how costly it would be to set up terrestrial colour TV transmission studios, the babus argued then.

P. K. Sandell, a technocrat, somehow succeeded in showing Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in her residence that using the Indian satellites colour TV could be transmitted across the country and all that was needed was to have low cost receiving stations to retransmit the signals that could reach up to 20 to 25 km radius. The attraction of Asian Games being shown across the country in colour finally settled the issue with the Prime Minister overruling all objections.

In mid-90s, the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, with its 42 institutions, was set on a path of pursuing discovery in a commercial mode and tied up with local Indian industry. Till then, its huge complex was only tinkering with science and technology, its scientific staff caught in a game of oneupmanship, pushing their seniority rather than their creativity to reach the upper rungs of the ladder. In this environment, merit was the casualty. The environment changed after Dr R. A. Mashelkar took over as its director-general. He forced the labs to earn their bread, go to the industrial units around and introduced tenure system for directors of the labs.

Many senior scientists were themselves guilty of perpetuating the iceberg of seniority-based assessment of scientific work. The annual ISC sessions saw the same scientists on the dais year after year and the awards going round them like musical chairs. That the science congress sessions should relate to a burning problem was an idea that Dr M.S. Swaminathan introduced when he chaired the ISC in 1983. No doubt, awards for young scientists were introduced to meet the criticism that seniors were monopolising the ISC. Lberalisation came in the 90s with the economic reforms in the government in the 90s.

Dr Madhavan Nair has recently said that the departments like Atomic Energy, Space, Ocean Development and Electronics under the Prime Minister’s control were free from bureaucratic control. The first two were more or less independent as they were largely independent commissions where the scientists had the final say. It also helped that India was under a technology denial regime. So the first two had to find their own technologies. However, they did it with tremendous energy and imagination. By the 90s, in both areas, India was at the top despite delays in project completion.

After 20 years of liberalisation, the spirit of enquiry is still suppressed in most scientific establishments and in our universities by the heavy weight of seniority and turf battles. If one science department has an expensive equipment for research, other departments in the same institution cannot easily get to it unless they go through an elaborate procedure and feet-touching of the other senior scientists. Faculties are not known for openness; what is right or wrong is decided by who is saying it and not by empirical evidence. The questioning student is sure to be denied an entrance to the Ph.D research enclave.

If many Indian scientists have won accolades doing research in the US, it is simply because as one Indian scientist at Houston’s NASA centre told this writer there in the 80s: “Here if you have an idea and you find the director of the institute passing by, you can buttonhole him and tell him about this. Most likely he would call you for a discussion and let you get all that you need if he finds your idea has even a modicum of logic. That is not the case in India.”

Even in late 90s, the environment for science in India had not changed. This writer’s friend, who was doing doctorate in biotechnology in JNU and later shifted to Purdue University in the US, told me that if she wanted any equipment and if it was available with any other department in the university, she could easily obtain it without any hassle unlike in India.

Sam Pitroda with 51 patents behind him in the US took up the challenge in 1984 of developing India’s own digital telephone exchange in three years. No one believed him. We had extensive research in electronic telecommunications in Indian Telephone Industries (ITI) and in BEL. But no one had made any great advance in electronic exchanges.

Dr Pitke and Dr Mimamsi, who developed the first electronic analogue exchange, got into trouble with the Telecom department. They joined Sam Pitroda’s C-DoT where there was no bureaucracy and intra-institutional communication was free and critical. C-DoT did bring out India’s own digital switch in six years.

MIDDLE

New Delhi in the limelight
by S. Raghunath

With Sri Lanka beating a hasty retreat from its offer to host the 2010 Miss World contest because of unprecedented economic crisis and ethnic strife, will New Delhi step into the breach and host the Gala Show?

I have been talking to an insider who is familiar with the goings-on in the corridors of power.

“Yes indeed, “he said,” it’s almost on the cards that New Delhi will stage this year’s Miss World contest and we’re only waiting for the final green signal from the Prime Minister’s Office to go ahead and tie up the nuts-and-bolts details.”

“Just what’ll it involve staging the beauty pageant? I asked.

“Oh, nothing much,” said the insider, “only some minor infrastructure assets need to be created like a crude ramp to enable the contestants to parade on and because of budgetary constraints,we’ re going to construct it using locally available materials like mud, lime mortar and half-burnt bricks and the whole thing won’t cost more than Rs 150.”

“Rs 150 is certainly a hands-down bargain,” I said impressed.

“Oh,” said the insider, “ I forgot to tell you that an all-steel and aluminium cantilever roof of the latest architectural design will have to be built over the ramp, besides fully air-conditioned VVIP viewing galleries and an amphitheatre with a seating capacity for 90,000 people and all this will cost about Rs 800 million not counting payment in foreign exchange to foreign consulting engineers and architects.

“I suppose the beauty queens will go into a quite retreat to relax and unwind from the hectic tensions and glare of the arch lights?’’ I said.

“That’s right,” said the insider, “a very quiet and laid-back retreat has been planned.”

“Would the venue be a place like Chail in Himachal Pradesh or Gulmarg in Kashmir Valley?”

“No, “said the insider,” you’re wide off the mark.

The venue is to be Pipariya village in Munger district of eastern Bihar.

“What about the Judges?” I asked. “Has a panel been constituted?”

“Thanks to NAM, CHOGM,G-7, Asiad and other international events we’ve successfully hosted,” said the insider, “we’ve become experts in strategic forward planning and I can tell you that the judges’ names have been short-listed and finalised and is only awaiting formal Cabinet nod.”

“Tell me the names of the lucky folk who’ll judge the luscious cuties,” I pleaded.

“Messrs Lal Krishna Advani, Laloo Prasad Yadav and Dr Karunanidhi.”

“My word, what a galaxy!” I exclaimed, “but one last question. Any idea what the Miss World contest will cost the hard-pressed Indian tax-payer?”

“Oh, about Rs 36-24-36 crore.”

OPED

Beyond iPad razzmatazz
Not revolutionary, but definitely a game changer
by Roopinder Singh

So much more intimate than a laptop, and so much more capable than a smart phone – Steve Jobs’ description of the latest offering by Apple defines it quite well. Now that the hype over the much-anticipated iPad has decreased, we can have a look at the device and what it will mean to computer users.

The physical description of iPad is simple enough: It measures 9.56 inches, is 7.47 inches wide and just half an inch in height. At 680 grams for the Wi-Fi model (seven grams more for 3G), it is light and sleek. A 1GHz Apple A4 custom-designed, high-performance, low-power system-on-a-chip makes it powerful, and the 9.7-inch (diagonal) LED-backlit glossy widescreen multi-touch display provides a rich visual experience. I have not used one, but the description as a “bigger iPhone” is enough. The iPhone has really changed the way smart phones are perceived, used and sold. The elegance of Apple’s operating system is beguiling – there is nothing like it in any other computing universe.

It is interesting that the iPad’s screen is slightly larger than that of the Macintosh, the first Apple that I owned in 1985. It was the first commercially successful personal computer (PC) to use images, rather than text, to interface with the user, and was way more elegant and user-friendly than comparable PCs, like the IBM PC AT that operated on the Microsoft’s archaic MS-DOS 3.0.

It was simply a walkover. The Mac was fun, and the MS-DOS didn’t even know the word! The screen was black and white, you could not customise anything, but everything you needed, the hardware as well as the software was available out of the box.

Computers and the mouse had existed before Apple took Xerox’s GUI, tweaked it and made computing far more approachable to the normal user. It was not innovation, but implementation that set Apple apart. In fact, Apple normally uses various things that are already available, and puts them together in such a way that not only do they work well together – they also provide an experience that makes users pay a premium.

iPad is getting rave reviews already from the few who have used it. It is a tablet computer, which simply means that it is a slate shaped computer device that has a touch screen and is mobile. The multi-touch screen, which we have seen on iPhone and iPod Touch too, responds not only to touch, but also to gestures. It has access to literally over lakh applications, some free.

All this sets it apart from an ordinary tablet PC or e-reader. The iPad will let you use content – see it, hear it and read it – and also input content through the virtual keyboard on the screen will allow you to do so, say in case you want to answer your e-mails or write something. For many, the announcement that iPad has a keyboard dock is significant, as virtual typing has its limitations, especially when one is typing long documents.

Your digital photos will be displayed and organised in various ways, and you can see movies, or play games. The organiser has a great look and feel, and there are also good word processing, spreadsheet and presentation programmes.

The New York Times was the first paper to come on board the iPad. With a motion sensor, you get the landscape mode, and thus you can read your paper, magazines, etc., on the go. They will come with advertisements, a point which scores over Kindle and enhances the Apple appeal for publishers. Macmillan, HarperCollins, Penguin, Simon & Schuster and Hachette have already come aboard the iPad — you can buy their latest books online.

As of now, Apple store sells books at a higher price than Amazon’s Kindle. There is much speculation that iPad’s media-rich platform will soon have books that just won’t just be words...they will have sound and video, too. Apple has also inked a deal with ScrollMotion, a content technology company based in New York, to handle textbooks for iPad. Will this be the end of the heavy school bag? Not yet, and certainly not here, since iBooks is initially only for the US, but a beginning is being made.

Incidentally, both Kindle and its competitor Nook, brought out by the Barnes and Noble bookstore, use a technology called iInk, which is better for reading long texts, since the screen is not back-lit and thus does not cause eyes to strain.

Browsing on the Web, indeed downloading newspapers and magazines will be significantly impaired by the fact that like there is no support for Adobe Flash, which has become a standard in displaying interactive graphics, animations, etc., while browsing.

The lack of multitasking support is as inexplicable as that of a camera, or for that matter a USB port to enable easier exchange of data. Some of these are things that will probably get sorted out soon, some may never be, and if so, will impact the user experience. Gaming on iPad will probably find many users, but the real aficionados will want (even) more power, and many games run on Flash and Java, both of which are not supported by iPad.

The iTunes store has sold millions of songs and redefined the way people access music online. Over a lakh of applications have been developed for the iPhone, and can be used on the iPad, many are being optimised for this task right now..

iPhone may not be an e-book reader to beat Kindle or Nook, both of which are easier on the eyes in the long run and have a longer battery life; it may not be like the regular Net-books, which have real keyboards and can fold into the pocket; it may not even be a communication device that can replace your smart phone. The iPad is a product of its own kind and how it evolves will depend on what use its owners put it for. Apple has a history of making devices that sell well and shape the future, because they already have a foot in it.

India, China show the way
by Hamish McRae

Just about every day some piece of news comes along that highlights how the balance of the world economy shifts a little further – away from the developed world and towards the emerging economies. This morning it is some calculations by the National Institute that China will this year become the world’s largest importer, and will become the world’s largest economy within a decade.

That is an even swifter shift than that envisaged by Goldman Sachs in its renowned report on the BRICs, the acronym it coined to bring together the four largest emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China. If the NIESR proves right, the defining moment of the decade we have just entered will be the US ceding its position as the world’s largest economy, a place it has held for more than a century. When that happens it changes everything.

Deep down most of us can’t quite believe it will happen, perhaps because it forces us to rethink all our embedded ideas about global leadership, the importance of the North American/European consensus on democracy, the market economy, the rule of law and so on. But the evidence of the shift of power becomes harder and harder to deny.

As it happens, the OECD’s report on China was out yesterday and it too has a startling comment. It is that China could well overtake the US to become the leading producer of manufactured goods in the next five to seven years.

There was, however, something else in the comments of the NIESR and the OECD that affects us more immediately. It is the extent to which the economic recovery has been driven by policy in China and the reason why China could afford to do it. The country has had a massive fiscal stimulus, far larger than that which the countries of the West put into action, and this seems to have worked most effectively.

The Chinese were able to do so, partly by a huge infrastructural investment programme but also by switching production for export to supplying the domestic market, because financially both public finances and the balance of payments were very strong.

Total debt in China, that is including government debt, personal debt and company debt, is only 159 per cent of GDP – with the government part of that only 25 per cent of GDP. By contrast total US debt is 300 per cent of GDP, while here it is 466 per cent of GDP.

China also had leeway on its balance of payments. During the boom it had a surplus of around 12 per cent of GDP. That has come down closer to 9 per cent, which is still extremely high, but at least Chinese imports have risen somewhat, so some sort of correction has begun.

Unfortunately for the West, more than half of those imports have come from other countries in Asia. Just 1 per cent of Chinese imports come from the UK and only another 7 to 8 per cent from the US. So there has been an Asian recovery, not yet a European or North American one.

Indeed it is not even right to talk of Asian “recovery” because there wasn’t any recession in many countries. The other giant, India kept growing at around 6 per cent a year, while Russia, which is of course part Asian, has also just reported growth of some 6 per cent in 2009.

So what lessons should we take away from all this, once we have got over the shock that we – and I don’t just mean Britain – have messed up big time?

I think the first lesson is that, if a country has a strong budgetary position, it really can do things that will help iron out the economic cycle. Actually there was an example of that here during the early years of the Gordon Brown chancellorship. By building up fiscal surpluses during the late 1990s, he was able to offset the fall in demand that hit other developed economies after the collapse of the dot-com boom. As a result the UK kept growth while other countries dipped into recession.

We here in the UK don’t need to see our plight in apocalyptic terms. We still have options. The large economies of Continental Europe still have some leeway to determine their own policies, particularly Germany, which has been relatively disciplined with its public finances. And the US, despite its gradual relative decline in economic importance, still has a huge reservoir of human and technical capital from which it can draw. But every day that passes, we all slip a little in the world pecking order and we had better think hard about why that is happening and what we might do to slow the shift.

— By arrangement with The Independent

Inside Pakistan
A policy of ‘strategic death’?
by Syed Nooruzzaman

Islamabad’s policy of seeking “strategic depth” in Afghanistan has very few takers in Pakistan itself. Certain sections in the Pakistan media want the dangerous policy to be buried forever to prevent it from leading to Islamabad’s “strategic death”. The most interesting comment was carried in Daily Times on February 3, referring to Army Chief Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani’s rare Press briefing this week.

The paper quotes the General as saying, “We want a strategic depth in Afghanistan, but do not want to control it.” Then it chastises the policy makers in Islamabad as well as those at GHQ, Rawalpindi, “These words (of General Kayani) underlie the fact that the Pakistan Army has still not given up on the idea of ‘strategic depth’ in Afghanistan – a policy that has proved to be disastrous for Pakistan in the past few decades. If one reads between the lines, General Kayani’s statement is also indicative that though Pakistan may not want to control Afghanistan, it wants a government of its own choice in place to control the war-torn country.”

This shows why Pakistan continues to clandestinely back the Taliban groups in Afghanistan. Islamabad hopes to be able to realise its dream of “strategic depth” once there is a Taliban regime in Kabul again. But that is not as simple as it appears.

“What if the Afghan Taliban, after coming to power in Kabul, supports the Pakistani Taliban? After all, nuclear-armed Pakistan is a bigger prize than Afghanistan. GHQ should revisit the infection in the armed services of jihadi sympathisers. A nightmarish scenario is looming …” for Pakistan, as Daily Times warns. The idea of “strategic depth” may “turn out to be strategic death” if Islamabad refuses to see the writing on the wall.

“Pakistan is hugely disliked by the non-Taliban, non-Pakhtun forces in Afghanistan, while its ability to influence the Taliban and the broader Pakhtun community may be in question. What, then, are Pakistan’s options?” asks Dawn (Feb 3).

Expanding peace constituency

The success of the civil society movement led by lawyers in getting Pakistan’s sacked judges reinstated seems to have ignited a feeling that the peace constituency too can become a major force to change the negative mindset in the country controlled by the military. Of course, bringing about a mindset transformation is as difficult as was the task of ensuring the restoration of the pre-November 2007 status of the Pakistani judiciary.

A well-argued article in The News (Feb 4) by a senior editor of the paper, Muhammad Umer, says that there are “two big challenges that must be met” for the success of any India-Pakistan peace initiative. However, before looking at the challenges he points out, it must be stated that Umer’s article is one of the many such pieces carried in The News in support of the Aman ki Asha peace drive jointly launched by the Jang newspaper group and The Times of India.

In the writer’s opinion, “The first key challenge is to change the public mindset that has been so firmly moulded in insecurity that altering it could require dogged perseverance... The second big challenge the joint peace initiative is going to face will come from their (Indian and Pakistani) establishments’ security paradigms.” Umer’s accusations against India have, however, been proved hollow with New Delhi’s latest proposal for Foreign Secretary-level talks with Islamabad.Talking of Pakistan’s security establishment, he makes an interesting observation: “The Pakistani military alone decides the country’s foreign policy, particularly on matters of defence and relations with India.” How to change the military’s mindset is, therefore, the real challenge.

The Aafia Siddiqui case

For some time Pakistani newspapers have been carrying articles and reports about a woman neuroscientist in US custody on charges of links with terrorist outfits. On Thursday, as reported in The Nation, a large number of people held protests in major cities of Pakistan following a US jury’s verdict against her.

The 37-year-old scientist is accused of shooting at US interrogators at a prison in Afghanistan, where she was lodged after her arrest in Karachi some time ago. According to prosecution, she grabbed a US warrant officer’s riffle while she was detained for questioning about her terrorist links in July 2008 at a police station in Ghazni, Afghanistan, and fired at the FBI agents and military personnel present there. She was charged with attempted murder and assault and other crimes and faces 20 years in prison if convincted.

The protesters, mainly from political and human rights organisations, demanded release of the US-educated scientist soon.