The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Reining in khaps
Making DCs, SSPs accountable is apt

WEDNESDAY’s directive by the Punjab and Haryana High Court asking the Haryana government to entrust the responsibility of bringing the recalcitrant khap panchayats to book on Deputy Commissioners and Senior Superintendents of Police is well thought out. A Division Bench consisting of Chief Justice Mukul Mudgal and Justice Jasbir Singh has rightly observed that the state government cannot absolve itself of blame for the continued menace of these extra-constitutional bodies in the state.

There is neither political will nor bureaucratic support to root it out. As the DC and the SSP are the eyes and ears of the state government in every district, there is due justification for the High Court to make the two top functionaries accountable for lapses. Going a step further, Justice Mudgal observed that if a DC or SSP failed to control the situation, their failure should be reflected in their annual confidential reports. Such a fiat is timely because the state government has failed to rein in these bodies. Not a day passes in Haryana without these members passing orders annulling marriages, asking couples to live like brothers and sisters and socially ostracising them if they flouted their diktat.

Significantly, Chief Justice Mukul Mudgal’s directive to the state government to initiate exemplary action against one or two khap panchayats expeditiously is worthwhile because it is bound to act as a deterrent. If these pseudo bodies are able to flout the rule of law and continue to act against the due process of law with impunity, it is only because of the lack of fear the law and the system evoke. Unfortunately, since these panchayats claim to represent the region’s dominant caste, the political leadership is reluctant to lay its hands on them for fear of losing vital vote banks.

The Division Bench’s proposal to the government to invoke the Prevention of Unlawful Activities Act, 1967, against the khap panchayats also merits attention. Clearly, the legislation, under which a maximum imprisonment of seven years can be awarded to each person found guilty, will come in handy for the district officials while reining in the khap panchayats. The state government, instead of opposing this move on the pretext of the “law and order situation”, would do well to implement it in letter and spirit.

Haryana slips up
Pays a price for Hooda’s giveaways

Haryana’s fiscal fitness has suffered a jolt. From being surplus for three years the state budget for 2010-11, tabled on Wednesday, has left a deficit of Rs 3,912 crore. Last year, ahead of the elections, Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda had separately announced Rs 700 crore worth sops on the day his Finance Minister presented the budget. As Chief Minister he had doled out concessions, including a debt waiver, of about Rs 4,200 crore to farmers alone. Though Mr Hooda returned to power with a reduced majority, his populism, if unchecked, could push the state into serious financial trouble.

The government staff’s pay and pension revision has cost the exchequer Rs 4,000 crore. While the downturn slowed tax revenue, especially from real estate and mining, the Rs 1,500 crore stimulus helped the industry but depleted the treasury. Shortly before this budget the government had raised the value added tax (VAT) from 4 to 5 per cent. Now a surcharge has been imposed to collect Rs 300 crore for the urban and rural local bodies, which have been facing a resource crunch since octroi was scrapped.

Though the surcharge is seen as the only new levy in the budget, the proposed public-private partnership (PPP) model for infrastructure building will put an additional burden on the industry and the public. Since people generally protest a new tax, the government resorts to heavy borrowings every year. Haryana’s debt has reached a scary level at Rs 44,000 crore. Though the Finance Minister, Capt Ajay Singh Yadav’s priorities are right – the focus on infrastructure, social welfare, education and health – he has to guard against the deteriorating financial condition of the state, which fortunately still hopes to grow at 8 per cent or so. The government has to ensure that benefits of growth are evenly distributed and the growing rural-urban income disparities are taken care of.

Thought for the Day

The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living. — Karl Marx

ARTICLE

Case for closer Indo-Saudi ties
Handling Pakistan may become easier
by Syed Nooruzzaman

Never before was there an atmosphere as conducive as it exists today to ensure closer relations between India and Saudi Arabia. Both need each other to protect and promote their varied interests. Both can be useful to each other considerably. Both have certain common concerns, which call for urgent attention.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s recent visit to Saudi Arabia, which came after Saudi King Abdullah’s visit to India in 2006, highlighted the need for greater concentration on how to take their relations to a new high. The Riyadh Declaration, issued at the end of Dr Manmohan Singh’s visit, is a reiteration of the resolve taken four years ago when the Delhi Declaration was issued. As the two countries move towards having a “strategic partnership”, it must be pointed out that both face a serious threat to peace and progress, directly or indirectly, from the same forces wedded to an extremist ideology.

In the post-9/11 scenario, there has been near-unanimity of views between India and Saudi Arabia on how to handle the Taliban in Afghanistan. Saudi Arabia is appreciative of India’s role in the reconstruction of the violence-torn country. During Dr Manmohan Singh’s Riyadh visit the Saudis made a special mention of the development projects undertaken by India despite the threat to the Indians working there.

India’s commitment to carry on its humanitarian mission in Afghanistan has been reiterated after National Security Adviser Shiv Shankar Menon’s latest trip to Kabul. The Saudis, who had a soft corner for the Taliban before 9/11, want such elements to be dealt with sternly if they refuse to change their ways. Riyadh appears to be apprehensive of any formula that can help the Taliban strengthen its position in Afghanistan. The obvious reason is the Taliban factions continue to work as extensions of Al-Qaida.

The Saudi view cannot match the perceptions of Pakistan, which wants to use certain factions of the Taliban to achieve its objectives in Afghanistan, including that of having strategic depth. Islamabad has also been pursuing a policy of using Pakistan-based terrorist outfits working against India to realise its geopolitical ambitions in South Asia. These outfits, functioning under the patronage of Pakistan’s intelligence agencies, are believed to have established close links with Al-Qaida. Thus, Pakistan can be held guilty of indirectly helping Al-Qaida to sustain itself.

The Saudis cannot be comfortable with the situation that prevails in the Af-Pak region. If Saudi Arabia has been the target of attack from Al-Qaida’s bases in Yemen and elsewhere in West Asia, there is also a serious threat to its interests from Al-Qaida allies in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Saudis cannot forget the string of bombings they experienced in 2003 by Al-Qaida. The terrorist outfit’s long-term agenda includes toppling of the monarchies in the Arab world, including that in Saudi Arabia.

There is, perhaps, realisation in Riyadh that the extremists operating from the Af-Pak region must be fought with cooperation from different countries, particularly those directly affected by the destructive activities of these elements. The India-Saudi Arabia Extradition Treaty, signed during Dr Manmohan Singh’s Riyadh visit, should be seen against this backdrop.

India will have to continue to remind Saudi Arabia that the interests of both countries remain threatened by the same forces of death and destabilisation. Once the Saudis are convinced, they can be expected to make Pakistan mend its ways. As is well known, Saudi Arabia enjoys considerable influence over Pakistan. No other country is better placed to force Pakistan to abandon its policy of using jihadi terrorism for achieving geopolitical objectives. Any policy that can jeopardise stability in any part of the world cannot be tolerated.

If India and Saudi Arabia together can break the back of terrorism, they can also contribute tremendously to the cause of the emergence of an Asian century. Saudi Arabia, which is flush with funds, has been looking for investment opportunities in Asia after the situation in the post-9/11 world took a turn for the worse for Arab investors in the West. Riyadh has been showing considerable interest in India with India’s growth story becoming a subject of serious discussion the world over.

The time has come to impress upon the Saudis that they have ample and safe opportunities for investment in India’s infrastructure projects. India needs huge investments in this sector. As a fast-developing economy, it is striving to have world-class infrastructure that includes roads, railways, airports, seaports and power generation facilities. Besides, there is enough scope for industrial ventures in different fields.

India’s financial system has stood the test of time. It remained unaffected by the 1997 East Asian currency crisis. The global recession, now on the wane, too, has had only a marginal impact on the Indian economy. This has highlighted the robustness of India’s economic edifice. The Saudis investing in India have, therefore, little to worry about.

The Saudis can bring about a qualitative change in their oil-based economy by enabling India to participate in its development projects in a big way. India has the necessary technological expertise to bring about an industrial revolution in the Arab kingdom. In the process, India can get Saudi help for ensuring adequate energy supplies for its industrial, agricultural and other consumers.

Once the Saudis acquire a considerable stake in the Indian economy, Pakistan will have no guts to continue with its strategy of bleeding India through a thousand cuts. For the sake of its own economic viability Islamabad will have to abandon its negative approach. In fact, the time has come when the people of Pakistan themselves will not spare a government that refuses to bother about their economic interests. Pakistan’s Kashmir-centric policy, which has brought only misery to the people, will have to be given up forever when India and Saudi Arabia are seen together.

Interestingly, Saudi Arabia, like India, stands for safeguarding the “sovereignty and independence” of Afghanistan after the US-led multinational troops leave that country, as announced by President Barack Obama. This means the Saudis are against meddling by Pakistan in Afghanistan’s internal affairs through proxy Taliban factions. Closer relations between India and Saudi Arabia can, therefore, restrain Pakistan from playing a negative role in the region.

MIDDLE

Sparkle in speech
by I.M. Soni

The way you speak indexes your personality. It is a highly-prized quality.“The man or woman who talks well is easier to admire than the one who doesn’t talk; and talking well is necessary for anyone who aspires to cultivate the art of success,” says J.F. Bender.

Most, in quest of a career, talk carelessly. What they utter is little better than drivel, dull and toneless. The garrulous ones talk twenty to the ten. Some are tongue-tied so that they find it hard to utter a few words. Then there are those who have to torment themselves to say even a few words.

You may not fall in any of these categories but you like to sparkle in your conversation. It is an art which you can learn by mastering its techniques.

If you have a single-track mind, just one subject, and can talk about nothing else, you will be regarded as a bore who drags his tale.

Having a variety of interests can make you confident to talk on a number of subjects. Your talk should range from cabbage to kings rather than the performance of Team India. Don’t run the whole gamut of emotions from A to B.

Be inquisitive, curious. Find out. Be intellectually curious. The full, the dead and the duffer ask no questions.

Learn something new, giving it a part of leisure time. In a few years, you will become familiar with a number of subjects and be able to talk confidently about anyone of them.

Read newspapers and magazines to keep abreast with current events as well as cultural, political, social and economic aspects of life.

Lace your talk with wit and humour. Humorous anecdotes add sparkle to your talk. You cannot be an Oscar Wilde but you can see the funny side in everything and laugh at it.

A bore talks in the first person, a gossip in the third, but a sparkling conversationalist in the second. Talk of the interests of others in your company. Listen to them. Dale Carnegie says: “Listening is one of the highest compliments we can pay to anyone”.

Don’t dominate. Nor be selfish. Conversation is like badminton. If you keep the shuttle-cock to yourself you kill the game.

Anecdotes are the raisins in the bun. These must be well-chosen. Cultivate the art of using expressive and telling anecdotes to point a moral, to drive an argument, to add vim to talk, and to amuse your audience.

Avoid banality.Vary the pitch of your voice. Avoid monotonous tones. A well-modulated voice, a voice which rises and falls pleasantly on the ear is winsome. Read aloud poetry for a few minutes every day.

Be clear. Your listener should understand it without effort. Utterances which do not give emphasis to the ending of sentences are jarring. Make your speech crisp and clear.

Speak in a cheerful tone. A moaning mournful voice scares the listener. Voice should be warm-hearted and touch the right chord. An icy voice casts a chill and depresses the listener.

Avoid inanities like “did I not tell you”? “Sort of”, “You know”, “I mean” “kind of”, “that’s what I said”, “yaar”, “bastard”, “bitch”, “shit”. Use clean vocabulary. It pays to do so.

If you are a small fish, do not talk like a whale.

OPED

Step up heat on Maoists
Politics should not supersede military operations
by Major Gen (retd) Ashok K. Mehta

When Ms Arundhati Roy added her voice to the elusive Maoist leader Kishanji for a 72-day ceasefire and talks, it was sure that the Maoists were feeling the pressure of the counter-Maoist operations.The past operations were inside states allowing the Maoists to escape to the inter-state boundaries. These are places you're least likely to have maps of, observed Gen Bill Slim, one of World War II's finest military commanders.

The thrust of the ongoing operations is on state borders between Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh, Orissa and Andhra and Jharkhand and Orissa. Trapping the Maoists will take one more year and several Operation Greenhunts which are being coordinated by Mr Vijay Raman, DIG, CRPF.

Already 58 CPMF battalions, which include a few from the BSF and the ITBP, assisted by the IAF, are assembling to assist the state police to launch the new strategy of clear, hold and develop.

Rather naïvely, Home Minister P. Chidambaram has sought four words from the Maoists before considering their call for a ceasefire. He wants Maoist supremo Ganapati to say: "We will abjure violence".

Ganapati is known to have told Swedish journalist Jan Myrdal last year that their people's war will be protracted. In 2004, before peace talks with Andhra Pradesh, he observed that negotiations are unlikely to achieve anything. The last thing Mr Chidambaram should do is to accept the offer for talks, even if we need time.

Home Secretary G.K. Pillai provided last week at the IDSA, New Delhi, new insights into Maoists' long-term strategy of seizing power by 2050-60. He expressed doubts about the success of ongoing operations but claimed that 400 sq km of territory had been reclaimed from the Maoists. He expected the current counter-Maoist strategy to succed not before seven to 10 years.

No wonder the Maoists have expanded their presence to 233 of India's 626 districts with 76 districts under their influence and control, and 33 of these have been chosen for treatment by the special security and development package.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has been saying since 2006 that the Maoists pose the gravest internal security threat to India. Mr Chidambaram, who is trying to turn the situation around, has admitted that successive governments under estimated the threat and operations at the very least should have been launched in 2004 when the MCC and the PWG merged to form the CPI (Maoist).

In his Budget speech last month, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee devoted nearly three paragraphs to the Maoist challenge while disposing of defence in four lines, he underlined the importance of the Cabinet Secretary's task force on LWE (Maoists) of 2008 and the Planning Commission's integrated action plan for the Maoists-affected areas.

It is heartening that eventually the government is seen to be acting but a great deal more work is required to contain and defeat the 10,000 or so Maoists operating under a centralised command with skills and resources far in excess of what states can muster.

Fifteen of the 33 top Maoist leaders have been killed or arrested with Kishanji's deputy, Dipak, nabbed only last week.

With political will and synergy between the Centre and the states the Maoists can be quelled but the task must be completed in the next two to three years and not a decade.

The Naxals (Maoists) restricted to West Bengal were militarily defeated in 1971 five years after their birth through a joint Army-state police operation called Steeplechase. Three Divisions of the Army, including the 50 Para Brigade, were employed. More than 40,000 troops were deployed in the country's largest and most successful internal security operations.

A counter-Maoist strategy will succeed when there is a political consensus between the Centre and the states on eradicating the Maoist menace and accepting it no longer is a law and order problem under the exclusive charge of state governments.

Like in the North-East, where, politicians have invariably maintained links with the underground, the Maoists too have strong political connections.

Found after the Silda camp massacre last month in West Bengal was the diary of the late Surajbhan Thapa. It read: "threat to life is all the time. The threat of party politics of a few people has endangered the existence of the country".

The state police is mainly armed with .303 rifles, is poorly trained, motivated and led. Funds for modernisation which increased after Mumbai are under-utilised and being diverted to housing and welfare of the police rather than spent on buying smarter weapons. Moulding the police to effectively tackle the Maoists and other internal security threats requires implementation of police reforms and its depoliticisation.

The CPMF, though not designed for counter-insurgency, is the best force available and with right training and equipment can contain the Maoists. Bihar is set to raise an ex-servicemen battalion — and lateral induction of serving personnel in the police will bolster capacity

The Army has been involved since 2006 in helping conceptualise the counter-Maoist strategy, training the state police forces at counter-insurgency schools and assisting the states in establishing 20 such schools in the most seriously affected states.

The Army is establishing cantonments in the Maoist-affected states and the proposal to raise Rashtriya Rifles battalions to counter the Maoists has been rejected. It does not wish to be sucked into fighting the Maoists.

The mobilisation of resources to better administer the Maoist-affected zones is underway. Operations must not be delayed or postponed for negotiations as once the monsoon sets in, it will be advantage Maoists.

A unified command is always useful to achieve optimum resource mobilisation and results. Since the new strategy envisages developing the task force on governance, development must follow in tandem with the operational units as is being done in Afghanistan.

The Cabinet Secretary task force is to ensure coordination between development and security in 33 districts identified as severely affected by the Maoists. According to one survey, 85 of the country's 100 poorest districts are in seven of the ten Maoist affected states.

The socio-economic development campaign is elaborate and government figures on laying new roads and improving existing ones, providing benefits of the Forests Rights Act and other central schemes for the last three to four years are impressive. For example, disbursement under the guaranteed rural employment scheme is Rs 5,050 crore; electrification Rs 2,300 crore; drinking water Rs 600 crore; sanitation Rs 1,122 crore; education Rs 2,154 crore and housing Rs 413 crore.

National and state road construction under the Rs 7,300-crore package has suffered due to interference by the Maoists. Even the famous Border Roads Organisation, which has completed projects in Afghanistan and Tajikistan, has been unable to make much headway in Chhattisgarh. A lacuna is the absence of a mechanism to verify the conversion of funds into projects on the ground. A task force to monitor projects is essential.

Last year's casualties in the Maoist attacks read: 591 civilians, 317 security forces and 217 Maoists. These figures are higher than casualties from violence in J&K and the North-East. The monsoon must not rob the security forces of having a go at the first Centre-state joint operations.

It's time to step up the heat and not fall into the familiar Assam charade of politics superseding military operations. The on-today, off-tomorrow operational philosophy will make Surajbhan Thapa turn in his grave.

Merkel’s team begins to unravel
by Tony Paterson

The parties in Angela Merkel's increasingly embattled government were struggling to digest their worst popularity rating in nearly a decade on Wednesday, less than six months after the German Chancellor had described her ruling alliance of conservatives and liberals as the country's "dream" coalition.

The damning appraisal came from the Forsa poll group, which found that a massive 84 per cent of Germans thought that Ms Merkel's coalition partners were locked in perpetual dispute. Only 8 per cent believed that the government showed unity of purpose.

The popularity of Ms Merkel's conservatives has sunk two points to 33 per cent, while that of her liberal Free Democrat coalition partners has fallen to a mere 8 per cent. Stern magazine, on whose behalf the poll was conducted, concluded: "The two parties used to be regarded as natural partners, but their popularity has now sunk to its lowest level in nine years."

Ms Merkel has herself been the target of mounting criticism since forming her new coalition last year, on matters from her leadership to her judgement.

However Ms Merkel's own shortcomings – a term which only a year ago would never have been used in connection with Germany's first woman leader – pale when compared to her chief partner in government: Germany's gay liberal leader, Guido Westerwelle, who is also both Foreign Minister and Free Democrat Party chairman.

The abrasive Mr Westerwelle was ridiculed in the media and elsewhere last September when he refused to answer a question in English that had been put to him by a BBC journalist. Since then hardly a week has gone by without his attracting negative attention.

Buoyed up by one of his right-wing liberal party's best electoral performances, Mr Westerwelle has been engaged in a bitter dispute with the conservatives over the tax cuts which he pledged to introduce during his campaign. But these have been dismissed as "unrealistic" by the conservatives.

The issue came to a head last month when Germany's constitutional court ruled that the low amounts paid out under the country's hugely unpopular social security system – known as Harz IV – were inadequate. Mr Westerwelle was again widely criticised for claiming that Germany had become a country of "late Roman decadence" in which the unemployed were better rewarded than those who went to work.

Mr Westerwelle has also failed to score many popularity points for the government as Foreign Minister. His main claim to fame has been to encourage the removal of all remaining US nuclear warheads from Germany. Many argue that such an initiative harks back to the early 1980s and is almost irrelevant today.

If that were not enough, Mr Westerwelle was yesterday again under fire for allowing Michael Mronz, an events manager who is his gay partner, to accompany him on his current whistle-stop tour of Latin America. Mr Mronz was said to have used the tour to tout for business. But Mr Westerwelle refused to accept criticism and insisted that his partner had paid for himself.

Ms Merkel has clearly sensed that her coalition with the liberals has failed to produce the dream-team results she expected six months ago. With key elections in North Rhine-Westfalia – Germany's most populous state – less than two months away, she has refused to be drawn into a damaging public row with the liberals. Instead there are suggestions that she is preparing to ditch them. Ms Merkel's party is already working out plans to join forces with the environmentalist Green Party in the state.

Last week she dismissed as "nonsense" the idea that such a coalition might work at a national level, but, as one commentator remarked on Wednesday: "Her reaction was so heavy that she seemed to have been caught red-handed planning such an alliance." Already, 46 per cent of Germans think that a conservative-Green coalition would be better for their country. By contrast 62 per cent think that conservatives and liberals "simply don't fit together".

— By arrangement with The Independent

Male-female divide gets worse with age
by Joan Smith

Wouldn't you know it? Just as the popular press is getting up to speed with the idea that older women enjoy sex – a notion so scary that some have been dubbed "cougars" – a new piece of research suggests that men can expect a longer and more satisfying sex life than women.

You can relax, guys: according to the online BMJ, studies in the US show at least twice as many men as women in the 75-85 age group are still sexually active. And they're said to be enjoying it more.

"Sexual activity, good quality sex life, and interest in sex were higher for men than for women and this gender gap widened with age", the researchers conclude.

Now there's a surprise: a woman who has reached her late 70s or early 80s would have grown up before the sexual revolution and the Pill, both of which drastically changed women's expectations about sex. There are always exceptions, but most of the pre-Second World War generation became wives and mothers at a time when women lacked a language to talk about what they liked and didn't like in bed. Maybe some read The Hite Report and caught up, but my guess is that lots of them didn't.

Take a high-profile couple like France's President Sarkozy and his glamorous wife Carla Sarkozy-Bruni, for instance: according to the research, Ms Sarkozy-Bruni at 42 has fewer years of active sex life ahead of her than a man of the same age. By the time she reaches 55 (her husband's current age) the gap will be around four years; the President can expect to go on having sex until he is 70 whereas his female peers face a sexual drought at the age of 66.

As it happens, rumours sweeping Paris this week suggest that the marriage of this sexually-adventurous couple is in trouble: Ms Sarkozy-Bruni is said to have found herself a younger man, a 37-year-old musician, while her husband's new love interest is supposedly a 40-year-old female minister in his own Government.

Whether there is a shred of truth in the rumours is unclear; since the French press abandoned its reputation for Gallic restraint, it seems to have become as obsessed with the private lives of celebrities and politicians – the Sarkozy marriage conveniently offers both – as any British red-top.

What is clear is that Ms Sarkozy-Bruni is magnificently unconcerned about her age, appearing at an official function last week in a dress which technically covered her whole body while revealing every curve. She didn't look like a woman who intends to retire from the sexual arena any time soon or indeed at any time at all.

Why should she? Unlike one shame-faced British footballer after another, she has never pretended to value monogamy; she belongs to a generation which seized women's new-found sexual confidence with both hands, at a time when it hadn't yet become fashionable to complain endlessly about young women looking too sexy.n

— By arrangement with The Independent

Corrections and clarifications

l The first sentence in the report “Haryana imposes surcharge on VAT” (Page 1, March 11) is incomplete. It says “Goods subject to VAT in Haryana will cost” and ends at that abruptly.

l The second deck in the lead headline of Page 1 (Page 1, March 11, Chandigarh Tribune) is “Forms to be sold free of cost from today”. The forms can either be sold or they may be free of charge. They can’t be both.

l In the report “MoD clears pending pension orders” (Page 1, March 11) the abbreviation PBORS has been expanded as ‘person below other ranks’. The correct expanded form is ‘personnel below officer rank’.

l The first sentence in the report “After Didi’s outburst, govt focuses on survival” (Page 18, March 10) is incomplete. It says “Faced with the fury of key ally Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee” ends abruptly at that.

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