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Tactical retreat
Small setback |
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Himachal drifts
Strangest of bedfellows
Tasting a book
North-East in time trouble
Gorbachev: Soviet liberator or destroyer?
Blind soldier ‘sees’ with tongue device
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Tactical retreat
With
the BJP and the Left parties coming together to hem it in, the UPA government is in a bind. After burning its fingers on the Women’s Reservation Bill, it has grown wiser, and as a protective mechanism, swallowed the humiliation of deferring the introduction of the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damages Bill in the Lok Sabha on Monday. It very well knew that it was skating on thin ice and decided to put off the contentious Bill for another day. It was an unprecedented step but the government just did not have the numbers. In a way, the fault lay with its floor managers too. While the Opposition came out in strength, many of the Congress MPs were conspicuous by their absence. With the battle lines drawn along political lines, it would be very difficult for the government to get the requisite numbers, but the fact remains that India’s nuclear power programme cannot proceed along desired lines in the absence of a legal mechanism under which victims of a nuclear accident can claim financial compensation from an operator, who also knows how much his maximum financial liability is. The Bill fixes it at Rs 500 crore. If the damage is more, the additional money has to be provided for by the government up to about Rs 2,200 crore. The liability amounts in some other countries (converted in Indian rupees approximately) are China Rs 202 crore, Canada Rs 331 crore and France Rs 575 crore. The Opposition alleges that the government is rushing the Bill to please American companies. However, even France and Russia have been insisting on such liability legislation. Of the 30 countries currently operating civil nuclear power, as many as 28 have such an act already in force. Only India and Pakistan are neither members of any international convention nor have any national legislation. Nuclear power is crucial for India. Instead of viewing the scenario with political blinkers on, parties should come to a judgement with national interest in mind.
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Small setback
A
Prithvi missile strayed off course after it went aloft and as a result, another missile that was supposed to intercept it was not launched. This setback to the ballistic missile defence (BMD) shield programme is a small one, since what failed to perform was the target missile, not the interceptor. India’s BMD system was tested for the first time in November 2006, when a Prithvi II ballistic missile was successfully intercepted at an altitude of 50 km. Only the USA, Russia and Israel had demonstrated this capability till that time. China announced its success in January this year. Ever since Nazi Germany targeted London with the V-1 and V-2 rockets near the end of World War II, nation-states have sought to defend themselves against such attacks by creating anti-ballistic missiles (ABM) and interception systems to find and destroy enemy targets. The result is systems like the USA’s Patriot Advanced Capability-3, Russia’s ABM-3 and Israel’s Arrow-2 BMD. Of course, they have never been tested in battle conditions. Although late entrants into the ABM sector, Indian scientists and engineers have taken impressive strides in both designing missiles and in developing the Long Range Tracking Radar, the latter with help from Israel. BMD systems are both costly and technologically very complex. However, security requirements make investment in such safeguards essential. The DRDO has already rescheduled another test. Many missiles, both within the 50 km atmospheric range and outside it, will need to be tested and interception rates of nearly 100 per cent will have to be achieved before the system becomes truly operational. A good BMD system is vital for our national security and setbacks should be taken in our stride, as long as they are analysed properly and become lessons for the future.
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Himachal drifts
The
Himachal Pradesh budget for 2010-11 has hiked the VAT by 1 per cent and levied an entry tax on goods for hydroelectric projects. The Prem Kumar Dhumal government has, however, left foodgrains and edible oils untouched, saving the poor from the heat of the rising food prices. The bus fare increase became unavoidable after the Centre had pushed up the oil prices. When a government raises the tax burden on the people it is legitimate to ask: What has it done to curb its wasteful expenditure and shed administrative flab? Where does it propose to spend the taxpayers’ money? Judged on these questions, the state government stands on slippery ground. It has not cut the employee strength. No administrative reforms have been undertaken. There is no proposal to get rid of unviable PSUs. The state finances have got unsettled by a stiff hike in the salary and pension bill. In the past successive BJP and Congress governments had resisted tax hikes and relied on debt to meet their financial commitments. Two years ago the state debt stood at Rs 22,930 crore. This time Mr Dhumal’s budget has buried the latest debt figure but put the annual interest liability at Rs 2,236 crore, which is astronomical for a small hill state. On top of it, the state’s share of the Central taxes will get slashed according to the allocation formula set by the 13th Finance Commission. The BJP leadership is quick to blame the Centre for its fiscal woes and the price rise, but won’t own its share of fiscal irresponsibility. The political leadership is on the boil over the non-extension of the Central tax holiday package for industries expiring on March 31. The BJP government may draw political mileage out of it but won’t accept its failure to develop adequate infrastructure to attract and retain new industries. The government must set its fiscal house in order, spend on development and improve the delivery system to justify the additional tax dose on people.
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A dance is a measured pace, as a verse is a measured speech. — Francis Bacon
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Strangest of bedfellows What began last year as a tactical adjustment against the Indo-US nuclear deal by the Left and the BJP has now developed into a virtually full-fledged alliance, though still on an informal basis. However, the sight of Ms Sushma Swaraj and Mr Gurudas Dasgupta, the latter in a red sweater to underline his ideological colour, standing shoulder to shoulder outside Parliament after walking out in protest against the fuel price hike suggested that the comrades and the saffronites will be on the same side of the fence in the foreseeable future. One could see again when the Bill for the reservation of seats for women in Parliament and the state legislatures was passed by the Rajya Sabha. There is little doubt that the present basis of their partnership is more durable than the earlier one. The tie-up on the nuclear deal was an improvised affair considering that the clinching of the deal itself took a long time during which the Congress and the communists tried to resolve their differences even if the latter were not wholly insincere. The comrades may have even been hopeful about settling the matter to their satisfaction since Mrs Sonia Gandhi was apparently not in favour of the deal initially as she hinted by saying at a conclave organised by The Telegraph that the Left’s objections had some validity. In the end, it was Mr Rahul Gandhi’s support for the measure which brought the Congress round. The BJP, on its part, was unsure why it was against a step which it would have gladly taken if it was in power. The party also knew that its main group of supporters, the urban middle class, was for the deal. Yet, a perverse interpretation of its oppositional role made it go against its own instincts. In contrast, its present stand is more logical even if it reflects the standard view of myopic politicians that the prices of all consumer items should be kept stable for years and years even if the government has to subsidise the producers. Since the Left is of the same view, there is every chance of its cooperation with the BJP in the name of aam admi continuing for some time. The possibility of parties like the RJD, the Samajwadi Party and the BSP jumping on to the anti-fuel hike bandwagon makes the motley combination look quite formidable. Even if the petrol and diesel prices are modified, these parties are bound to find other issues to speak in one voice. Except for the RJD, which has never acted in concert with the BJP before, all the others have had overt and covert links with the party of the temple movement. While the BSP was an ally of the BJP when they were in power in UP, the Samajwadi Party had struck a deal with the BJP to deny the Congress a chance to form a government in 1999 by frustrating Mrs Sonia Gandhi’s claim to have secured the support of 272 MPs. The Left’s ties with the saffron outfit goes back to 1967 when the CPI was a part of the Samyukta Vidhayak Dals in the Hindi heartland which included the Jan Sangh. The Left’s view on such arrangements was that even if the SVDs were representatives of the same ruling class which also backed the Congress, their positive aspect was that they were against the Congress, the main enemy. This distinction can be regarded as the basis of the inveterate anti-Congressism which has guided the comrades virtually throughout their history. An unavoidable corollary of this attitude was that the communists had no option but to come to terms with “communal” parties like the Jan Sangh. To explain this policy of supping with the devil, the CPI said that while it should expose their “narrow sectional outlook”, it should also approach them “from time to time and issue to issue” while taking into account the “nature, extent and mass appeal of these organisations”. The Left also considered it possible to wean away the supporters of these parties to its side by bringing “these masses into democratic struggles”. Clearly, the comrades were living in a dream world, overestimating their own influence and underestimating those on the right side of the spectrum. According to historian Bipan Chandra, the Left sought to explain its proximity to the communal outfits by pointing to the Italian Communist Party’s links with the Catholic organisations although the Indian comrades were “ignoring the difference between a religion-based conservative party in a single-religion society and a communal party which was not religion-based but was based on communalism and, therefore, on antagonism towards the followers of other religions”. In the Left’s view, the stand that the communal parties “should not be touched with a pair of tongs” was tantamount to making “a present of the masses behind them to the Congress party”. It is evident from this uncompromising anti-Congressism that the Left considered the Congress as “the most reactionary political force in India”, to quote Bipan Chandra again. However, the stridency of this line can be explained by the fact that the Congress loomed over the Indian scene like a colossus, and had done so in all the years before Independence, with the result that it seemed irremovable. All the other parties, whether of the communists or the socialists or the “narrow sectional” outfits, were pygmies compared to the Congress and saw no possibility of ever replacing it, especially at the Centre. Hence the desperate cobbling together of all the parties from the left to the right of the political spectrum as was evident, first, in the SVDs and then in the Left Fronts of West Bengal and Kerala. At the Central level, the Janata Party of 1977 and the Janata Dal of 1989 were examples of such cynical cohabitation. A significant fallout of this obsessive pursuit of anti-Congressism was the gains the BJP made from the early nineties. This was a development which the Left apparently did not anticipate. The BJP, too, probably did not expect its rising fortunes and might have realised only after the two successive general election defeats that it had overreached itself. But there is little doubt that it has outrun the Left by far. While the BJP is in power in eight states — in six of them on its own — the communists are not sure whether they can hold on to West Bengal, their strongest bastion. Any advantage, therefore, from the teaming up of the BJP and the Left will accrue to the former. It is this danger of the communists helping a “communal” party to grow which belatedly dawned on leaders like Jyoti Basu and Harkishen Singh Surjeet, persuading them to move closer to the Congress. It is the same fear which made Basu advise Prakash Karat and other hardliners against withdrawing support from the Manmohan Singh government even if they opposed the nuclear deal. The reason was that Basu and Surjeet regarded communalism as a greater threat than the Congress’s supposedly reactionary character, which was why both of them favoured Basu becoming the Prime Minister in 1996 with the Congress support. This was a rejection of Namboodiripad’s equation of the two with his description of the BJP as the “plague” and the Congress as “cholera”. The Left’s present stance, however, is a return to its earlier view that the communal parties should not be considered untouchable. Although the Congress is no longer the colossus that it used to be, its recent gains are evidently due to the realisation among the voters that neither the BJP nor the Left represents the future. While the BJP wants to return to a mythical Hindu India, the communists are sinking under the weight of their dead ideology. For all their opportunistic calculations, their partnership is a case of the blind leading the
blind.
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Tasting a book How, why, and for what purpose do we read a book? Do we read a book for pleasure, entertainment, and relaxation? Or do we read for acquiring knowledge to improve and refine the quality of life. We may turn and toss over all sorts of authors, and not find anything in them. The vastness of human knowledge chills us with despair. In our college days, an English teacher, one of the best of his type, learned and fluent in expression, told us that nothing matters in life except what one has stocked in brain. I did not like the word “stock”, as it sounded somewhat commercial, nor did I think that knowledge only matters because beyond knowledge, there are many things intangible that matter much to enrich life. In our village Viran Dattan, which lies sulking on the Indo-Pak border, Mehta Bhim Singh, an old man of 80, was respected for his wide learning and affable manners. He was fond of reading Urdu and Persian literature. Whenever he saw a book in someone’s hand, he would seize it and start looking into it, shuffling its pages quickly, and after a few moments, return it to the owner of the book. His quick reaction indicated that the book was not to his taste or liking. Of course, reading is related to time, mood and occasion. Some read books for their professional advancement. The poet Mohammed Iqbal expected the readers of books to be serious minded enough to derive the maximum benefit by application and devotion. He wanted the readers to be the master of books, not their slaves. He regarded the acquisition and assimilation of knowledge as the key to all improvements and the regeneration of society. Karl Marx was a voracious reader of books. He worked vigorously for years in the British Museum and produced his masterpiece Das Kapital. He incorporated in his book not only what he derived from several authors, but also imported his reflections drawn from his participation in the contemporary revolutionary activities. When I start reading a serious historical work of a specialised nature, I first look at the bibliography to assess the nature and extent of the source material the author has used. To put it differently, to see the base on which the work rests. But, fair enough, to judge the quality of work only on the basis of the bibliography would be unsound as numerous works of striking originality have been produced without the conventional apparatus of bibliographies, notes, and footnotes. Originality in any creative activity consists not in the collection and compilation of source material but in its analysis and flying sparks of path- breaking inventions. In our undergraduate days, Siraj ud Din’s Essays: Ancient and Modern was prescribed as a textbook for our course. We read in the book Francis Bacon’s essay entitled “Of Studies”. Bacon took all knowledge to be his province. His reading was various and extensive. In his essay, he wrote: “Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested”. There is an interaction between the author and the reader. Too much reading is a weariness of the spirit unless the reader is engaged in books with critical discrimination and interrogates the author. Both the author and the reader work on the same wavelength and on equal terms. Learning is not enough: beyond learning, there are flights of imagination and human experiences, which provide insight into the vicissitudes of life’s manifold complex problems. Einstein wrote, “Imagination is more important than
learning”.
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North-East in time trouble People in the country's North-East seem to have woken up to a new enemy. Following the Indian Standard Time ( IST), they are convinced, has been their bane. It has made them less productive, deprived them of precious family time, has given rise to both physical and psychological disorders and led to a breakdown of values. The IST, which they are forced to follow, compels them to have breakfast when it is actually close to noon by local time, lunch in mid-afternoon and dinner close to midnight. They are serious. Spearheaded by Jahnu Barua, who is better known as an acclaimed film director and screenplay writer than as a former scientist with ISRO ( Indian Space Research Organisation), they have produced research findings to show that the North-East has used Rs 94,000 crore worth of extra electricity, which could have been saved, since Independence because of their compulsion to follow the IST. Following Barua's campaign, the Assam Assembly has taken up the issue and the state government has called for a meeting of experts in April before taking it up with New Delhi. The country's political establishment is in the habit of fighting fire and not preventing one. But in this case at least, the wise men in New Delhi would do well to address the issue before it becomes more emotive and disinformation begins to prevail over an informed public opinion. Barua certainly has a point when he says that while the region cannot change its geography or history, it should be allowed to have a little more sunshine. India and China are the only two large countries which persist with a single time zone. Australia has three time zones, Brazil has four, the United States and Canada six each while Russia has as many as eleven. Scientifically, the sun rises an hour later after every 15 degrees of longitude. There being 28 degrees longitude between India's east-west span, the sun rises in Kohima virtually two hours before it does over the Rann of Kutch. China covers a range of 75 degrees longitude and indeed in western China the sun may not rise until 10 am whereas eastern China by then would have received four hours of sunlight. Both the countries, however, had more than one time zone. While China had five time zones till 1949, India too had different time zones till 1905 with Calcutta, Madras and Bombay presidencies following their own time. The Andaman and Nicobar islands followed the Port Blair Mean Time. All that changed when 82.5 degree E longitude was chosen as the central meridian for India. China too switched to a single time zone in 1949. Simplicity, administrative convenience and the need for unity obviously were the prime considerations in both the countries. Both countries happen to be large, diverse and had illiteracy and poverty to contend with. With a large section of the population engaged in the cultivation of land, people were not really concerned with the official time. They were more preoccupied with the cycle of the sun and the needs of the crops they grew. But with the growth of travel, trade, business and commerce, the need for time differentials is felt more acutely. In his article in The Tribune on this very subject, Sanjoy Hazarika provided an illuminating example. A flight takes off from Guwahati at 10 am and lands at New Delhi at 12.26 pm after nearly two and a half hours. But if New Delhi time is two hours behind Guwahati, then the flight would land at New Delhi at 10.26 am local time, providing passengers longer time to do business in the national capital. Time differentials enable places where the sun rises first to use daylight hours more productively and reduce the use of energy in the evening. To cite another example, when the sun sets at 6 pm in New Delhi, it had actually set an hour and a half earlier in Kohima. If offices there are to remain open till 6 pm, then they do use up electricity which they would save if there had been a time difference between the two places. Even a parliamentary standing committee on energy had recommended multiple time zones for India so as to stagger office and school timings by one to two hours. This would have spread out peak-hour demand for electricity and reduced pressure on electricity grids. But the government has been steadfast in its refusal to consider multiple time zones. The thinking possibly is that if China can make do with one time zone covering Hong Kong, Tibet and Beijing, why should India complicate matters by going in for more? One unstated reason is perhaps the thinking that a separate time zone for the north-eastern states would somehow give a fillip to separatists. A deviation from the Indian Standard Time could be divisive and strengthen the case for a separate identity for India's North-East. But then does the rest of India really lose anything if the north-eastern states gain a few hours ? The Union government had, in fact, set up an expert committee to study the issue in the year 2001. The committee submitted its report three years later but recommended the continuation of a single-time zone or the Indian Standard Time ( IST) throughout the country. But now with Bangladesh opting for Daylight Saving Time ( DST), the clamour to break away from the IST has intensified in the North-East and with good reason. There is no scientific basis to oppose the demand, which essentially seeks to harmonise time with the rising and setting sun. Although the demand had been opposed in the past on primarily three grounds, these need to be reviewed. Critics who argue that in a largely illiterate and large country like India, more than one time zone would lead to confusion, forget that the IST itself is barely one hundred years old. The country is certainly not more illiterate than it was at the turn of the last century. What is more, in the North-East, there is already what is known as ‘Tea Garden Time’ or Bagaan Time, which is one hour ahead of the IST to enable tea-garden labourers to start early and use daylight better. Bangladesh put the fat on the fire when it opted for the Daylight Saving Time (DST) last year. Earlier Bangladesh Time was half an hour ahead of the IST. But today it is one and a half hours ahead of the Indian Standard Time although Bangladesh lies to the west of India's North-East and the clock there, therefore, should have been behind the north-eastern states. There is, thus, a strong case for shedding the security-centric approach to the North-East and adopt a more people-friendly policy. Acknowledging the need for a separate time-zone will, hopefully, break the
ice.
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Gorbachev: Soviet liberator or destroyer? For many Russians, though, the accession of 54-year-old Gorbachev after a string of old and sick men is a muted, even bitter, anniversary. Celebrated throughout the Western world as a liberator, Gorbachev is widely reviled in his homeland for destroying Soviet power. Vladimir Putin only articulated what many of his compatriots also felt, when he described the Soviet Union's collapse as "one of the greatest catastrophes of the 20th century". It will take many years for that judgement to be revised across the great Eurasian land mass, if it ever is. But it is not only the people of the once-feared Soviet Union who are labouring under an illusion about the legacy of Mikhail Gorbachev. So is Gorbachev himself and, for quite different reasons, the outside world where the last Soviet leader is still lionised and – rightly – protected. In an article to commemorate this anniversary, Gorbachev allowed himself one of his periodic critiques of today's Russia. With Putin, unnamed, but clearly in his sights, he regretted what he saw as Russia's failure to embark on serious modernisation and the way the democratic process had, in his words, "lost momentum" or, "in more ways than one, been rolled back". He also suggested that the reform plans of Dmitry Medvedev, Putin's successor in the Kremlin, had stalled because he was scared of civil society. Now you can agree or disagree with Gorbachev here: much remains to be played out. But there is less room for divergence on Gorbachev's view of his years in power. He still believes that he could have brought democracy to the Soviet Union, if only he had set about reforming the Communist Party sooner; if only misguided and malevolent individuals had not set out to thwart him; if only the coup-plotters of August 1991 had stayed their hand. Even 25 years on, Gorbachev maintains that evolutionary change, through his twin projects of glasnost and perestroika, was feasible and the Soviet Union could have stayed intact. This is not quite how I remember it, as a witness to the country's death throes as a correspondent in Moscow. Gorbachev came across always as just one move behind history. There is no shame in that: would any leader have kept pace, given that communism throughout Europe was already dead and food shops throughout Russia were empty? Was it not rather that even incremental reform was too much for the system to bear? The most compelling reason for favouring this view – aside from the small fact of the Soviet collapse – is that the contest triggered by perestroika was in the end about Russia as much as communism. The collapse of the Soviet Union was a victory for Russia, and for Russians' frustrated sense of national identity. Boris Yeltsin's trump card was that he presented himself not just as communist apostate, but as champion and leader of Russia. Steeped in the internationalism of communist orthodoxy, Gorbachev had no national card to play. The anniversary of Gorbachev's accession may help to mark, belatedly, the passage of time. It means that no citizen of the former Soviet Union under 30 has any first-hand memory of life under communism; no one under 40 has had their career dictated by the regime. Those in their mid-40s – among them Medvedev, but not, it is worth noting, Putin – were students when perestroika began. Tossed around by the chaos of the 1990s, they benefited from the stability Putin imposed as they settled down to family life. A generation unscarred by Soviet communism is the legacy Gorbachev bequeathed – through strength or weakness is still not clear. And it is a worthy one, even if it is not the peaceful evolution of the Soviet Union he still
laments. — By arrangement with The Independent
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Blind soldier ‘sees’ with tongue device The Liverpool fan, who plays blind football for England, lost his sight after being struck by a rocket propelled grenade while serving in Basra in 2007. He was faced with the prospect of relying on a guide dog or cane for the rest of his life. But he was chosen by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) to be the first person to trial a pioneering device - the BrainPort, which could revolutionise treatment for the blind. The BrainPort converts visual images into a series of electrical pulses which are sent to the tongue. The different strength of the tingles can be read or interpreted so the user can mentally visualise their surroundings and navigate around objects. The device is a tiny video camera attached to a pair of sunglasses which are linked to a plastic "lolly pop" which the user places on their tongue to read the electrical pulses. L/Cpl Lundberg explained: "It feels like licking a nine volt battery or like popping candy. The camera sends signals down onto the lolly pop and onto your tongue. You can then determine what they mean and transfer it to shapes. You get lines and shapes of things. It sees in black and white so you get a two-dimensional image on your tongue – it's a bit like a pins and needles sensation. "It's only a prototype, but the potential to change my life is massive. It's got a lot of potential to advance things for blind people. One of the things it has enabled me to do is pick up objects straight away. I can reach out and pick them up when before I would be fumbling around to feel for them. "There is no way I'm getting rid of my guide dog Hugo, though - I love him. "This is another mobility device, it's not the be-all and end-all of my disability." The MoD said it expected to pay the US around £18,000 for the device and training to enable the trial to take
place. — By arrangement with The Independent
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It
A soldier blinded by a grenade in Iraq today described how his life has been transformed by ground-breaking technology that enables him to "see" with his tongue. Lance Corporal Craig Lundberg, 24, from Walton, Liverpool, can read words, identify shapes and walk unaided thanks to the BrainPort device, despite being totally blind.