|
|
Ensure safe flying
Awash with funds |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
Flawed exam system
Handling Headley
Let the women decide
Sacrifice transcends borders Cotton farmers face an uncertain future Delhi Durbar
|
Ensure safe flying
Imagine
the fate of the 31 passengers on board the Kingfisher plane that flew from Bangalore to Thiruvananthapuram on Sunday if the crude bomb found in its cargo section had exploded. Any explanation for the security lapse that occurred would have been meaningless had the passengers lost their lives. Even if the “country-made bomb-like object” was of the size of a cricket ball, it had 30 gm of “gunpowder”, sufficient to blow up the plane. One fails to understand why those looking after aviation security are unable to realise that even a small security lapse on their part can endanger a number of precious human lives. This is not for the first time that a security lapse of this kind has occurred. On February 14, incidentally a Sunday, a five-inch kitchen knife was found at Chennai in the toilet of a Colombo-bound flight, again a Kingfisher plane. Security, that too relating to an aircraft, is an extremely serious task to be accomplished. Holding an enquiry to fix responsibility for the latest lapse is alright. In the present case, both the Civil Aviation Ministry and the Kerala police have ordered their own separate probes to find out how the “bomb-like object” got into the Bangalore-Thiruvananthapuram flight. But this is not enough. The guilty must be given the maximum punishment possible to serve as a deterrent. There is need for a zero-tolerance policy to be adopted to ensure aviation security. Those dealing with security matters must be made to realise that India cannot afford to allow even the slightest slackness in aviation security, as the country continues to face threats from Pakistan-based terrorist outfits. If these terrorists can target the country’s Parliament, enact the worst dance of death in Mumbai on 26/11 or kill innocent civilians at Pune’s German Bakery, they can cause any kind of harm to India’s interests if we fail to have the tightest security possible. The Lashkar-e-Toiba and most of the other well-known terrorist outfits continue to function with their infrastructure intact despite the US-led anti-terrorism drive in the Af-Pak region. Whatever is possible must be done to ensure 100 per cent safe flying.
|
|
Awash with funds
If
one were to go by the mind-boggling auction figures of the Indian Premier League for two new franchisees who have joined the elite group that owns teams for the Twenty-20 2011 season, one wouldn’t believe that the country is not fully out of the woods from an economic slowdown. The two franchisees — Rendezvous Sports World Limited which clinched Kochi and business conglomerate Sahara which bagged the Pune franchise — have committed more money than that put in by the combined bids of the eight existing franchisees in the auctions held when IPL was launched two years ago. Indeed, the two new successful bids are worth a whopping Rs 3,235 crore against a total value of Rs 2,840 crore for the eight existing teams. While the IPL League is awash with funds, the Board of Control for Cricket in India as the apex body for cricket is even more so. But neither the BCCI, nor the franchisees who are doling out money so liberally with the aim of making a ‘killing’ nor even the IPL have spared a thought for the infrastructure. Take Kochi for instance. While a consortium of five entities bagged the Kochi team for a massive Rs 1,533 crore, the city does not even have a proper cricketing stadium. The same goes for the promotion of sports in general at the school and college level. Barring a handful of relatively-recent cricket academies, there is a woeful lack of sports facilities for budding cricketers, what to talk of other sports which are a picture of terrible neglect. There is no quarrel with the fact that cricket has become a national obsession but it is vital that the BCCI take the lead to use part of its huge resources to discharge the minimum social responsibility of bankrolling the creation and maintenance of playgrounds and other facilities for sportspersons. This should be designed to promote sports other than cricket too and to inculcate a spirit of fitness-consciousness. Business conglomerates too must come forward to lend a helping hand in upgrading the quality of sports in the country.
|
|
|
Flawed exam system
There
can be little doubt that the school examination system in India is riddled with lacunae. Reports of paper leakage and cheating undermine its credibility even more. In a shocking incident in Jammu Division the paper leakers found an ingenuous way of leaking papers through use of cell phone SMS. While this particular episode has exposed the functioning of the Board of School Education (Jammu) who did precious little even though it had known of the paper leak, clearly this is not an isolated incident. Similar incidents are from time to time repeated from various parts of the country cutting across education board boundaries. Not too long ago the Haryana School Board of Education cancelled the English paper of Class XII due to reports of a leak. Yet another incident of anomaly of a different kind cropped up when students of two CBSE schools in Chandigarh got same question papers on different days. While it cannot be strictly called a leak, it gave undue advantage to certain students. Such lapses are avoidable. However, the issue of paper leak deserves more serious concern and action. The Board of School Education (Jammu) has done what was necessary to hold an investigation and also promised strict action if any board employee is found involved. It is clear that such leaks are not possible without the connivance of someone within the system. Such wrongdoers must be identified and taken to task. The misuse of technology would result in the perpetrators leaving an electronic trail, which would make the task of the investigators easier. While the HRD Minister Kapil Sibal is constantly claiming credit devising for upgrading the quality of education, the education reforms will have meaning only if we first ensure that the examination system is fair and free from such leaks. While those who leaked the paper must be duly punished, there should be some way to make students who bought the papers accountable too.
|
|
|
Style is the dress of thought; a modest dress,/ Neat, but not gaudy, will true critics please. — Samuel Wesley
|
Handling Headley The
Headley case and the US decision on plea bargain and shielding him from the custodial interrogation by the Indian authorities even while providing them access to him have generated understandable dissatisfaction in India. It is pointed out that the kind of information that can be obtained in custodial interrogation cannot be elicited during such an exercise conducted through mediation by US officials. It is also pointed out that the US insisted on rendition by Pakistan of Aimal Kansi, the Pakistani terrorist who killed CIA operatives at the gates of CIA headquarters in Langely in 1993; Ramzi Yousuf, the Pakistani terrorist who attempted to blow up the World Trade Towers in 1993; and some of the senior Al-Qaeda leaders, in particular the Pakistani mastermind of the 9/11 plot, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Of these, Kansi was executed after trial and Ramzi Yousuf is undergoing life imprisonment in the US. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is yet to be tried though he was renditioned by Pakistan. There has been no plea bargain with him. He was subjected to repeated water-boarding torture and information was extracted from him by methods now repudiated by President Obama and his administration. Other terrorists and terror-related Pakistanis are in Pakistan with the US either not pressing Islamabad strongly enough for their rendition or Pakistan not willing to hand them over. One is Omar Sheikh, who led US journalist Daniel Pearl into a trap, ending in his murder. The Sheikh confessed to the murder and was sentenced to death, but he is still alive in prison some seven years after the sentence of death. Omar Sheikh was also the person who wired $100,000 to Mohammed Atta, leader of the 9/11 plot, presumably under instructions from Gen Mehmood Ahmad, then chief of the ISI. Though the US got General Mehmood removed from his post, he is doing well in Pakistan. All the US efforts and pressures have not resulted in Washington or the IAEA being allowed access to Dr A.Q. Khan, the notorious nuclear proliferator. Recently in the case of Mullah Baradar, the Afghan Taliban leader, after initially refusing access to him by the US authorities Islamabad has agreed to allow them on Pakistani soil. But Baradar was captured after the US agencies in Pakistan first located him and then called the ISI to arrest him. The US, however, has not succeeded in getting access to all the persons whom it might have wanted access to and who are in Pakistan’s custody. It is clear as daylight that Headley was selected by US agencies to penetrate the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT). His name changing, the facility with which he travelled in Pakistan and India, his attending LeT training camps, his cultivating LeT operatives, even his reconnaissance missions in India and his cultivating potential LeT sympathisers and collaborators in the country all fit in with such a mission assigned to him. In such cases, often the penetrator may have to prove his commitment to the cause in order to gain the LeT’s confidence by carrying out the commissioned tasks. The task given to the agent may well be a terrorist act. It is for the penetrating agency (the US handlers and their superiors) to decide whether to permit the assigned agent to carry out a terrorist task to gain the confidence of the terrorist organization (LeT) or to withdraw him at that stage. If the ultimate objective of the penetration operation was considered so important as to necessitate the agent to prove his credentials to the LeT the agency might have decided to authorise him to go ahead. It is also possible the penetrating organisation or the agent may not know the full scope of the terrorist act. A reconnaissance campaign need not necessarily mean all the targets would be attacked simultaneously in one operation. There was always the risk as it happened in this case — the agent crossing over to the other side. That might be due to his ideological affinity or it might be a case of buying off once the LeT discovered the penetration operation. Headley himself may not have had much choice once he was discovered. As soon as the US agencies realised that Headley had crossed over to the other side, they had to arrest him and put him on trial. It cannot be asserted whether this is what happened. But this hypothesis has greater plausibility than the various alternatives advanced. If this had been the case the US will not hand over Headley because it cannot afford to expose its penetration operation. The Headley story may be only one of the several simultaneous ongoing operations. He may have intelligence on some others. Intelligence obtained from him may be relevant to continuing other operations. The Pakistani media has carried numerous stories of US security organisation Xe services (formerly Black Water) operating in Pakistan. Apart from Mullah Baradar’s arrest in which US agencies appear to have played a role, there are reports of other extremist personnel being targeted by the US well inside Pakistan The US suffered the 9/11 attack plotted in Pakistan by a Pakistani. It has been subjected to various attempts at terrorist attacks on its homeland by Al-Qaeda and the LeT. While the US initiated an attack on Afghanistan within a month of the 9/11 outrage because the Taliban government gave asylum to Al-Qaeda, it has been patient in respect of Islamabad though the Pakistan Army-led administration over the last eight years had harboured, nourished, re-equipped and unleashed five terrorist organisations — the Afghan Taliban, the Pakistani Taliban, the Haqqani network, Al-Qaeda and the LeT. Washington could not take any punitive action against Pakistan since Islamabad had shielded itself with nuclear weapons and the threat of nuclear weapons falling into terrorist hands. Dealing with Pakistan called for a strategy of sleeping with the enemy. According to US accounts, Pakistan has been persuaded to initiate action against the Pakistani Taliban, the Afghan Taliban and Al-Qaeda. It is likely that the US itself may have to deal with the Haqqani network after its surge ends in North Waziristan with concentrated drone attacks. But the LeT is the Pakistan Army’s most precious terrorist asset and it is mostly Punjabi with its headquarters at Muridke, close to Lahore. A US-Pakistan strategic dialogue has been convened in Washington on March 24. The Pakistan Army Chief and the ISI chief are attending the meeting besides its Foreign Minister. The US side will be led by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and US Defence Secretary Robert Gates. Ambassador Holebrooke and CIA Director Leon Panetta are also scheduled to participate. Now that the Headley case and his involvement with the LeT have attracted worldwide attention, it will be of interest to see how the issue is handled during this dialogue.n
|
||
Let the women decide
According
to the Book of Genesis, God created the world in six days, relaxing on the seventh which he called the Sabbath.
Forestalling the Mughals by millions of years, God laid out a pleasure garden which he called Eden. In this he planted trees of many varieties, some bearing fruit, others for beauty enhanced by a bubbling brook that ran by them. Someone had to look after the garden and enjoy its fruit and its peace. So God created a man called Adam who remained naked as on the day he was born till he was compelled to end his blissful state by the presence of a lady. And there was the snake in the grass, like any other snake except that this one could talk. This snake, as we shall see later, had greater rapport with women than with men, hence the expression “snake in the grass” to describe a sly, mean fellow who enjoys the hospitality of his best friend while trying to seduce his wife. God being a kind and understanding person, realised that Adam was going to be very lonely with only a snake for company. So one day he artfully extracted a rib from Adam’s chest while the latter was enjoying a siesta in the shade of a tree. The purloined rib God fashioned into the shape of a lovely woman whom he named Eve and presented to Adam for a playmate. The two of them, alas, were not destined to live happily ever after. The fault lay with Eve who was a restless and ambitious creature, bored with what God had given her and her mate. One night she had a heart-to-heart talk with Adam as they lay naked and unashamed under the stars. Millions of years later these after-dinner talks between husband and wife came to be known as “curtain-lecture” with the wife doing most of the talking. Eve spoke to Adam on the following lines: “What the hell are we doing holed up in this place at the back of beyond? Nothing in this garden belongs to us. We can be turned out any moment by your boss without a stitch on our backs. And all your boss does is to give you orders like forbidding you to eat the fruit from the one tree in the garden that I fancy. “Let’s get out of here while we are still young. The snake told me that there are millions of acres of land outside the garden. We could stake our claim to as much of it as we need. We could grow things on it and extract its minerals. We could be millionaires in no time at all.” Adam, whose mouth was watering by this time, spoke in a whisper: “But supposing the boss doesn’t allow us to go? He watches our every movement, night and day.” “You leave that to me,” said Eve with a cunning smile on her face. Soon after she went into a secret session with the snake who was only too happy to be rid of Adam and Eve so that he could have the Garden of Eden all to himself. The snake suggested a plan of action to Eve in which Adam, being a spineless fellow, readily acquiesced. That the plan bore fruit in more ways than one we know to our cost, or we wouldn’t be here in this crazy world!n
|
||
Sacrifice transcends borders
The
martyrdom of Bhagat Singh and the Pakistan National Day fall on the same date, March 23. But hardly does any one remember him in Pakistan. There is no arch, no plaque, not even a stone to commemorate the execution of Bhagat Singh and his two comrades, Sukhdev and Rajguru. Three years ago, some of us located at Lahore the place where Bhagat Singh and his two comrades were hanged. Ironically, the locality where the scaffold for hanging was put up, has been named Shadman (abode of happiness). I asked residents of the colony if they knew who Bhagat Singh was. Many of them had heard the name. Some had a vague idea of his confinement and hanging. “When we came here, there were only police quarters, which were pulled down as the colony expanded,” said a man in his fifties. The then Lahore Deputy Commissioner had not even heard of Bhagat Singh’s name. Fortunately, the place of hanging is a bit removed from the main road. There is a pond which gives serenity to the site. We paid homage to the martyrdom of the three on March 24 to avoid the Pakistan National Day celebrations. The following year, we could not hold even a meeting because the authorities had clamped Section 144. The recurrent blasts at Lahore this year kept us away. The busy roundabout, near which the scaffold for hanging was put up, has a story which is told and retold. This is the place where Nawaz Mohammad Ahmed Khan, father of Ahmed Raza Kasuri, then a member of Pakistan’s National Assembly, was shot at. Former Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had reportedly “instructed someone” to kill Kasuri, a staunch opponent. When the bullets were fired through automatic weapons, Kasuri was negotiating the roundabout. His father, sitting next to him, received fatal injuries near the scaffold. Kasuri’s grandfather was one of the officials who had identified the bodies of the three revolutionaries. Old timers believe that nemesis caught up with the Kasuri family when Mohammad Ahmed Khan was wounded at the roundabout. Ironically, Bhutto himself was hanged some 25 years ago. Bhagat Singh was a staunch secular who knew no borders of prejudice or bias. For him the world was divided between the haves and the have-nots. Religion or caste did not figure anywhere. In an essay on “Why am I an atheist?” he argues: “Any man who stands for progress has to criticise, disbelieve and challenge every item of the old faith. If after considerable reasoning one is led to believe in any theory or philosophy, his faith is welcomed. His reasoning can be mistaken, wrong, misled, and sometimes fallacious. But he is liable to correction because reason is the guiding star of his life. But mere faith and blind faith is dangerous; it dulls the brain, and makes a man reactionary.” Bhagat Singh maintained a notebook throughout his internment. A voracious reader as he was he would write down in his notebook the sentences he liked. Dwelling on his lack of faith in any religion, Bhagat Singh quoted from the notebook Upton Sinclair, an American socialist. The latter wrote: “Just make a man a believer in immortality and then rob him of all his riches and possessions. He shall help you even in that ungrudgingly. The coalition among the religious preachers and possessors of power brought forth jails, gallows, knots and these theories.” The saddest day was March 23. It began like any other day when the political prisoners were let out of their cells in the morning. They normally remained out during the day and returned after sunset. But on March 23 when warden Charat Singh showed up at 4 p.m. and asked them to get back in, they were surprised. It was too early for them to be locked up. They had often stayed long after sunset despite the warden’s rebukes. But this time he was not only strict, he was also adamant. He would not say why. All that he muttered incoherently was “orders from above.” They guessed that it was the hanging of Bhagat Singh and his two comrades. The scaffold was old, but the hefty hangmen were not. All the three men sentenced to death stood on separate wooden planks, with a deep ditch of water running below them. Bhagat Sigh was in the middle. The noose was tightened around each one’s necks. They kissed the rope. Their hands and feet were tied. The hangmen pulled the rope and removed the rafters from under their feet. It was a crude mechanism. The bodies, limp and drooping, remained hanging from the scaffold for a long time. They were brought down and examined by a doctor who pronounced them dead. I have not been able to understand why the government is reluctant to put a copper plaque at the place in the Central hall of Parliament where Bhagat Singh threw a bomb, purposely of low intensity, to draw the attention of authorities to the two proposed Bills relating to public safety and trade disputes before the House. He said: “It takes a loud voice to make the deaf hear.” These are immortal words uttered on a similar occasion by Valliant, a French anarchist martyr, who said: “We strongly justify this action of ours” to open the ears. During my six-year-long membership of the Rajya Sabha, I requested all Lok Sabha Speakers of different political parties to put the plaque at the bench in the public gallery from where Bhagat Singh threw the bomb and the place on the floor where it landed. My efforts bore no fruit. This is the least homage we can pay to the memory of Bhagat
Singh.
|
|
Cotton farmers face an uncertain future A suicide is a criminal offence but suicides in large numbers are a phenomenon which needs serious thinking. The recent suicides by farmers examined by a number of individuals and organisations arriving at varied inferences is just like describing the shape of an elephant by blind persons by touching different parts of its body. The view expressed by the Farmers’ the Commission attributing the phenomenon to drug addiction too is not a comprehensive analysis. The cases need to be examined in the light of the socio-economic framework. Like other states, the phenomenon of farmers’ suicides in Punjab is associated with the failure of the cotton crop in the mid-nineties. Economic pressures on farmers had increased. Cotton being the predominant crop in such areas has seen a severe fall in profitability. Both the crop yield and the market price have witnessed wide fluctuations, disobeying the economic phenomenon of inverse movement of prices to production. As an expected outcome of the fall in production, price increase could have saved the situation but it was guided by global prices. The yield declined to the lowest levels in the mid-nineties while the cost of production increased substantially due to perpetuating pests. The Punjab cotton belt was relatively better off till the early nineties as farm size was comparatively large and cotton-wheat rotation was paying. The level of living of farming families in the area was thus set high. When the downturn began, it was quite difficult to cut down consumption expenditure, make social ceremonies simple and less ostentatious, give up liquor or lower spending on the education of children. The falling profitability from agriculture and an unabated rise in family expenditure resulted in disinvestment in farms through the sale of tractors, land and other farm assets. The coming up of a large number of tractor markets in the area was peculiar in this belt during the economic slump. A survey of such markets by the writer revealed that sellers of farm assets outnumbered buyers, thus depressing prices and further piling up economic misery for the owners. A way out was to obtain credit from alternative sources. Visualising the low networth and repaying capacity of farmers in the area, the institutional agencies were hesitant to advance loans. Non-institutional agencies, particularly commission agents (arhtiyas), came forward but charged exorbitant rates of interest. For easy recovery, they even mortgaged the land and put social, moral and legal pressures on the borrowers. In spite of tall claims by governments that institutional credit is easily available, complicated procedures discouraged illiterate farmers from availing the facility of cheap loans. With the economic, moral and legal tightening of the noose, farmers and their family members succumbed to pressures and resorted to suicide. A clear negative relationship between the cotton yield and the rate of mortality in the 1990s is observable. A large number of cases go unreported due to the fear of legal complications. In an attempt to improve farm income, many farmers switched over to the paddy-wheat crop sequence. Although the groundwater in the cotton belt is brackish, a heavy investment was made in deep submersible tubewells. Paddy is less risky and helps in the timely sowing of wheat, providing some relief to farmers. But the subsequent fall in the water table, depletion of soil fertility and the pest menace make the sustainability of paddy doubtful. Farmers with an access to canal water have also started paddy cultivation and supplant canal water with underground water. On the contrary, the cotton crop has witnessed an improvement in yield with the introduction of Bt gene. Farmers are at the crossroads whether to continue with paddy or switch back to cotton. Ruling politicians have been silent spectators, making consoling statements now and then. A policy to convert non-institutional debt into institutional is essential to minimise the burden of fast-accumulating interest on farmers. In the areas having a high potential of revival of cotton the supply of quality and cheap seed along with an integrated pest management calls for top priority. Institutional arrangement for ensuring Bt seed supply needs to be made so that farmers get rid of loot by private traders. The pressure on farming has to be minimised in the area by improving education and promoting non-farm and agro-processing
activities. The writer is a former professor of Punjab Agriculture University, Ludhiana
|
|
Delhi Durbar Former
Law Minister Ram Jethmalani is known for repartee. He was at it in the Supreme Court last week during the hearing of a case against Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi in connection with the 2002 riots. Acknowledging this, Jethmalani said, “At present, only I am on board.” At this, Justice Aftab Alam quipped: “I hope you won’t go overboard.” Unperturbed, the former minister said he vouched for the grand old school of thought which viewed every judge as a god and as such the question of going overboard did not arise. After he argued for some time, the Bench said it had taken his case on board. At the end, one lawyer told Jethmalani, “Sir, you managed to get on board.” A top police officer from Gujarat complimented him for scoring a point. Jethmalani was modest in his response: “I am 86. At least this is expected of me.” The high-flying minister Union Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal has no time to waste. So while his critics are busy running him down, he is flying high. Next on his itinerary are Australia and New Zealand. He plans to the land of kangaroos from April 7 to 10 and the Kiwis from April 12 to 14. He will be accompanied on the trip by his mandarins from both the school education (joint secretary S.C. Khuntia, handling school exams and education reforms) and higher education departments (V. Umashankar, working on all major bills, including foreign education providers). Also in the team will be UGC Chairman Sukhdeo Thorat Mayawati’s antics A senior Congress leader was heard telling a BJP Lok Sabha member, “Your old Maya ‘behenji’ has introduced in Uttar Pradesh a new vocation — learn garland making after money making”. The Congress MP laughed but the BJP member preferred to just smile.n Contributed by R Sedhuraman, Aditi Tandon and Ashok Tuteja
|
|
|
Corrections and clarifications
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. Raj Chengappa
|
|
|
|
| HOME PAGE | |
Punjab | Haryana | Jammu & Kashmir |
Himachal Pradesh | Regional Briefs |
Nation | Opinions | | Business | Sports | World | Letters | Chandigarh | Ludhiana | Delhi | | Calendar | Weather | Archive | Subscribe | Suggestion | E-mail | |
Lahore Central jail, where the three revolutionaries were hanged on the day in 1931, has been practically demolished. Their cells have been razed to the ground as if the establishment does not want any sign of their hanging to remain. It is a pity because Bhagat Singh’s sacrifice, long before partition, could have been a link of sorts between the two countries.
When he rose to make a point, the rival lawyer objected, stating that Jethamalani’s matter was not on board (not listed for hearing) for the day. 
The minister had gone to the US and the UK, inviting universities there to set up campuses in India. In October last, he went to the US, covering Harvard and some other world-class institutions. In January this year he toured the UK for the same purpose. 
UP Chief Minister Mayawati’s garland tamasha is hotly discussed in Delhi’s political circles. Everyone in the Central Hall of Parliament talked about the garland made of Rs 1,000 notes the day her pictures were splashed by television channels wearing the huge ‘mala’ on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP).