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Terrorists eyeing Pak nukes
Peace over ULIPs |
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Kabaddi on the upswing
Pitfalls of localism
A basket case of mangoes
Reinventing the Left
Politics of development in Haryana
Delhi Durbar
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Terrorists eyeing Pak nukes
That
terrorists and extremists have been desperately looking for nuclear weapons for some time is well known to the world. But it is quite startling to be told that Al-Qaida already has such nuclear capabilities or weapons”. Their claim has been discounted by John Brennan, the White House counter-terrorism chief, during his briefing on the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington DC on Monday. Yet, the threat appears to be real. If Al-Qaida or any other terrorist outfit has not succeeded in acquiring weapons of mass destruction so far, they can get these in the future if the world community does not take the threat with utmost seriousness. President Barack Obama is believed to have bluntly told Pakistan Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani during their Sunday meeting that under no circumstances should Islamabad’s nuclear weapons fall into terrorist hands. However, the situation in Pakistan is such that the world cannot totally depend on what Islamabad says. An international security strategy, independent of Pakistan, must be devised urgently. There is no time to delay the task. Terrorists have not only tried to acquire nuclear knowhow and bomb-making material in the past with the help of Pakistani nuclear scientists, but have also targeted Islamabad’s nuclear facilities thrice since 2007. This clearly shows how desperate they are in having the ultimate weapon. The Taliban, which has been closely linked with Al-Qaida, has no dearth of sympathisers in the Pakistan Army. The pro-Taliban elements in Pakistan’s armed forces may help the terrorists and extremists in achieving their dangerous objective if steps are not taken to weed them out. International pressure must be brought to bear on Pakistan to act in this direction soon. Pakistan is playing politics when it says that its nuclear assets have to be kept in the areas having Taliban influence because of the heightened tension on its borders with India. Instead of bringing in the India factor, Pakistan should be forced to eliminate all kinds of terrorists, including those working against India. Most of the Pakistan-based terrorist outfits have been functioning as the offshoots of
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Peace over ULIPs
For days together two regulators were locked in an undesirable and avoidable turf war, with the Finance Ministry remaining a silent spectator to the unseemly controversy. On Monday senior Finance Ministry officials finally intervened and persuaded both SEBI (Securities and Exchange Board of India) Chairman C.B. Bhave and IRDA (Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority) Chairman J. Hari Narayan to “seek a binding legal mandate” from a high court. The fight is about the jurisdiction over the sale of ULIPs (unit linked insurance plans). On April 9, SEBI, after taking legal opinion, banned the sale of ULIPs on the ground that the insurance companies selling these products were not registered with it. This annoyed IRDA, which came out in defence of the insurance companies and asked them to continue the sale of ULIPs regardless of the ban order. On Monday they agreed to the ceasefire brokered by the Finance Ministry under which the status-quo ante is to be maintained until the court verdict. There is a “High Level Coordination Committee” under the Reserve Bank which takes care of financial sector disputes. But in this case it was not approached and the issue instead has landed in the court. Such squabbles along with market risks and uncertainties and the limited spread of financial literacy have come in the way of the growth of mutual funds and insurance products in this country of billion-plus people. There are not many takers for financial schemes and people still prefer to invest their surplus cash in gold or land. According to a March 2010 report of Boston Analytics, less than 10 per cent of Indian households have invested in mutual funds despite these being available in the market for about two decades. The recent global meltdown has added to public fears of investing in financial products that they do not understand. Though India has escaped unhurt, thanks to strict vigil by the regulatory mechanism put in place by the RBI, public apprehensions remain. And avoidable controversies like the one created by SEBI and IRDA drive investors away from volatile financial markets where risks are high and rewards limited.
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Kabaddi on the upswing
Who
would have thought that the traditional sport of kabaddi would get the kind of attention that is normally the preserve of cricket and generate international euphoria! But surprises never end. The just-concluded inaugural Pearls World Cup Kabaddi, 2010, in which India emerged as befitting champion defeating traditional rivals Pakistan, has proved that there is life beyond cricket. Perhaps holding it in the mother state of Punjab contributed a lot, but the excitement of participants and spectators was to be seen to be believed. TV channels dutifully came into the loop and made stars out of the players almost overnight. The full backing of the Punjab government did the trick, what with a prize money of Rs 2.2 crore. That was the second highest after the IPL, eclipsing even tennis. There were attractive prizes for individual players also. Circle kabaddi has been a huge draw in Punjab. National kabaddi is quite different and it is good that the traditional form is also getting due recognition. What is heart-warming is that now it is played in scores of countries. While most of the players are of Indian origin, it has also started attracting many foreigners. If the authorities build on the initial success, it can indeed find its way into the Asian Games, Commonwealth games and even Olympics. For that, it will have to be promoted in a systematic way. Many private persons like Purewal brothers of Canada have been backing it but now all lovers of the game will have to come together to give it a massive heave. Here is hoping that the government will also chip in enthusiastically by building infrastructure in all districts. For instance, many matches of this tournament had to be played in unbearable afternoon heat because of the absence of floodlights. The offer of jobs to members of the victorious Indian team was a step in the right direction which might encourage many other budding players.
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Cruelty has a human heart,/ And jealousy a human face;/ Terror the human form divine,/ And
secrecy the human dress. — William Blake
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Pitfalls of localism The
people in two Mumbai households wake up every morning mulling over a suitable topic for their propaganda, which always has a mean streak. To retain public interest and for the sake of variety, their views keep changing. One day it is a tirade in favour of Marathi number plates in cars, on another day it is an agitation against a mobile phone company for not using Marathi and on a third against Bollywood’s preference for white girls for dance sequences instead of locals. There is also occasional recourse to violence as when Bihari taxi-drivers and vegetable vendors are roughed up or when demonstrations are held in front of Shah Rukh Khan’s residence in protest against his preference for including Pakistani players in IPL 3. But the general tendency is to sustain a certain atmosphere of tension by an aggressive display of parochialism. The task of the two families was less onerous when they were one. It was obviously easier then for the members to put their heads together to choose a subject which offered scope for campaigns with the potential for boosting the family’s political fortunes. But ever since the nephew, Raj, walked out of uncle Bal Thackeray’s house to launch his own political career, each family has had to think up an issue of its own. However, the selection process cannot be easy since their focal point of interest is limited to Maharashtra. Their restricted vision rules out themes on a wider scale. What may be of greater concern to uncle and nephew is that they cannot but undercut each other because of the identical nature of their politics. Yet, the clash of egos left no alternative for them but to part company although they must have anticipated the hurtful impact of their decision. As is known, Balasaheb’s promotion of his son, Uddhav, as his heir meant that Raj’s thwarted ambition forced him to walk out and form his own party. Such divisions are, of course, a feature of virtually all parties - national and regional - although familial rifts are usually not the case where the all-India parties are concerned. The Congress, for instance, has split more than once - in 1907, 1969 and 1978. In all these instances, personal ambition in the garb of ideology was responsible. “Extremist” Tilak and “moderate” Gokhale were the leading personalities behind the rupture in 1907 while the “progressive” Indira Gandhi pitted herself against the “reactionary” old guard in 1969 and decided to plough a lonely furrow in1978 after her tryst with autocracy. Similarly, the undivided communist party broke up in 1964, mirroring the Sino-Soviet split, and then the breakaway CPM disintegrated with the Naxalites walking out in 1969. But if these parties managed to survive and even recover some of the lost ground, as the Congress did in 1980 and 1984 and, more recently, in 2004 and 2009, the reason was that their all-India spread gave them some kind of a cushion against too precipitous a fall. The problem with the local parties is that they lack such a buffer. It is obvious that the Shiv Sena and the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena cannot but hurt each other as they battle for political supremacy within the confines of a single state. Inevitably, one of them will be surreptitiously used by a party with a wider base to erode the support base of the other, as the Congress is suspected of doing by being soft on the MNS in the context of its law and order violations. A similar scene may well be enacted in Tamil Nadu where another regional party, the DMK, is beginning to feel the tremors of a succession battle between two brothers, M.K.Azhagiri and M.K.Stalin. The parallels between what happened in Maharashtra and what is happening in Tamil Nadu are evident. Just as Raj left the Shiv Sena when he saw that he would not be allowed to head the party by Bal Thackeray, there is a possibility of a similar rupture in the DMK if party supremo and Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi sticks to his decision to anoint his younger son, Stalin, as his successor in the DMK as well as the government. It may be recalled that another rising star in the DMK, V.Gopalasamy or Vaiko, left the party and formed his own outfit in 1994 when he realized that he had no chance vis-à-vis Stalin where the leadership of the organization was concerned. In that case, blood proved to be thicker than water for Karunanidhi. In the tussle between Azhagiri and Stalin, however, the doting father clearly favours his younger son. If the sibling rivalry undermines the DMK, the fallout will be debilitating not only for it but also for the entire Dravidian movement. The DMK escaped relatively unscathed from its first split in 1972 when M.G. Ramachandran broke away to set up the AIADMK because it had no serious opponent outside the Dravidian fold. The Congress at the time had lost its footing in the state after its 1967 defeat, the 1969 split and Kamaraj’s death in 1975. The scene is different now. While the AIADMK has lost its sheen because of Jayalalithaa’s diminishing popularity, as the recent poll outcomes show, the DMK also is no longer as influential as before. This is evident from the fact that it needs the Congress support to be in power. There is little doubt, therefore, that the party will lose ground in Karunanidhi’s absence, especially if the two brothers slug it out. Since the AIADMK is unlikely to fill the breach, the Dravidian movement may fizzle out. The fatal trajectory of the regional parties can be discerned in these developments. They begin on a high note as the champions of local causes. This was, of course, truer in Tamil Nadu than in, say, Maharashtra where the Congress was strong enough to keep the Shiv Sena on the periphery. But their vulnerabilities are in-built because their tunnel vision restricts their expansion beyond the state. As a result, once the original euphoria about their sub-nationalism begins to dissipate and internecine fights weaken their organizational cohesion, it isn’t only the parties which lose ground but their ideas, too, seem to be overblown to their supporters. The rise of regionalism was an inevitable aftermath of the Congress’s decline and the failure of any other party to grow at the national level. The BJP has been able to fulfil the requirements of a second all-India party to some extent by its 100-plus Lok Sabha seats and two-digit percentage points along with being in power in eight states. But it is hamstrung by its communal image which keeps virtually all the minorities outside its ambit. The regional parties, however, are apparently reaching the end of their tether by their refusal to grow beyond the borders of their respective states, a deficiency highlighted by the fact that Azhagiri could not function effectively as a Union minister because he knows no language other than Tamil. Similarly, the insistence of Raj and Uddhav Thackeray, though not of Balaseheb, to speak only in Marathi shows that they do not have the wish to play a larger role. Tamil Nadu, of course, is an exception. It is the only state where the regional parties have ruled continuously for more than four decades. But as their decline suggests, they have begun to run out of steam. The reason, as also in the cases of the Telugu Desam or the Akali Dal or the various splinter groups of the original Janata Dal, is that they lack the ambition and also, perhaps, the ability to climb up to higher
grounds.
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A basket case of mangoes
I
am sending you some mangoes from my home garden. Do make sure someone is at home to receive them”, said the text message from a colleague a few summers ago. “Sorry for the misunderstanding. I hope you will forget and forgive.” This contrite note from a friend of several years came with a basket of ripe mangoes. “From my backyard,” she had added. A few days later, the teenager from across the road showed up with a small cane basket wrapped in tissue paper. “Mangoes!” he yelled and careened precariously on a pair of skates. “From our own tree!” he added proudly. I presumed they were a “Welcome to Chandigarh and the neighbourhood” gift, for I could not think of any other reason for this lovely gesture. Our groaning refrigerator door could barely stay in place. Everything inside smelled of mangoes. We ate the tropical fruit with some start-of-the-season relish, then graduated to mixing it in ice cream, whipping it up in milk or making valiant attempts to concoct a pudding. Mango kadhi in curd came next, followed by attempts to convert the cache into pickles, jams or jellies. The value additions like cardamom and star anise cost quite a bit and I wasn’t sure the results were that great. There was enough to pass on as takeaways to other friends too. But apparently there were enough people growing and sharing their produce in the city so it seemed as if the amateur baskets were criss-crossing the sectors all season! How could one hurt these avid horticulturists, though! I had, however, run out of acquaintances who did not have a mango tree in their backyard or similar enthusiastic mango-growers for friends and could therefore appreciate a share of our treasures. I was also fast running out of ‘return gift’ ideas. “This is one amazing city”, I said to myself. I was impressed by the spirit of its citizens. They seem to have managed to preserve fruit trees and many grow fairly decent quantities of mango, litchi and jamun. But even more, they are all heart. Wanting to share their goodies with friends and colleagues is not an insignificant trend in these indifferent and insensitive times when people did not know their neighbour’s names and did not care either. I remember metro-dwellers sneering, “It is really only a small town.” Perhaps. But such overtures of friendship are hardly seen in big cities nowadays. The thought and care that went into such gestures never failed to touch me. The pre-schooler in the house proposed, “Can we have some watermelon, please?” In relief, I agreed it was about time and proceeded to the fruit shop located in a small ‘booth market’ named for an erstwhile village. I bought some watermelon and guavas and looked around at the display of fruits. There were no mangoes. Sold out? I wondered. “We don’t stock too many mangoes, Didi. They don’t sell much here.” He brightened up a minute later. “But if you need any baskets, they are only Rs 25 each……”
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Reinventing the Left Serious scholars have suggested ways of restructuring the Left within the so-called “New World Order” where environmental degradation, war, terrorism and poverty remain serious issues facing the world. Within this context, the urgent questions that take up Marxist concerns are a reassessment of economic progress, prognosis of the future of Marxism and the uncertainty of democratic institutions. At the outset there arises the need to break away from the economistic version of Marxism, which emphasises the unproblematic nature of change brought about by laws of history independent of political movements and human will. Within the context of the rise of right wing economies like the US, Germany, Japan, France and Asia, wider processes of society need to be studied, especially the role of the media and the building of a new alliance between feminists, marginalised groups, gays, lesbians, ethnic groups, teachers, doctors, etc. thereby developing a new hegemonic outlook based on radical philosophical and moral ideas. This would enable a relevant review of the Marxist belief that change can be brought only through the working class, whereas it is clear that it is not the only agency of change. Has the working class not been incorporated in the consumer class, leading to the shrinking of its role in the ushering of a classless society? Positively, the agents of change lie elsewhere in the Green movement, peace movements, and ethnic and national movements. Consciousness-raising groups among women and self-help groups have developed new forms of social change through new radical politics. Our age is full of uninterrupted disintegration and renewal, of struggle and contradiction, of ambiguity and anguish: the recent economic meltdown indicates that the grandnarratives of globalisation and capitalism stand suspect and progress seems only to be an illusion. The last decade of the previous century saw the end of the Cold War punctuated by the short-sighted theory of Fukuyama that history had come to an end. But it soon floundered in the wake of the economic downturn. The euphoria lasted a brief period and it seemed that the eulogy to socialism was a premature gesture that had overlooked the lurking presence of Marx. The defeat of national dignity by hunger and war, the unrelenting siege of many developing nations by bankers and by the ‘commercial masters of the world’, as Eduardo Galeano has put it, are some of the factors that have prompted Marxists to condemn the systems that usurped socialism. Marxists in India like Jyoti Basu have come under attack for not teaching the political and theoretical Left to re-read Marx from a new perspective and show ways of developing and living a constantly renewable stream of ideas where the cultural and political logic of the notions on liberation and ideology would help in reconceptualising the nature of power and the conditions of existence in modern societies, particularly in West Bengal. Marxism, indeed, gets locked directly into the structures of technological dominance, military violence and ideological legitimation and its role becomes an act of intervention with an emancipatory potential that is both ethical and political. Upholding the virtues of such a standpoint, intellectual intervention into Marxism becomes a hopeful sign for its reinvention with the underlying queries: Are we ready never to regard a point of view as completely false or beneath contempt? Are we ready to fight for truth tenaciously but concede error graciously? Any meaningful answers need to take into consideration the place of Marx and the impetus towards socialist thinking that can reach out to millions. It is imperative to keep this fact of our social and economic history in the forefront in order to come to grips with the need to offer resistance to an increasingly exploitative world. In our view of liberal democracy, we need to emphasise its shortcomings: if it is a superior form of governance, why are there problems in implementing it? Is the present world not replete with mass unemployment, homelessness, violence, inequality, famine and economic oppression? How, then, can the conservative Right occupy the moral high ground? With the victory of free market economics arise conditions which are deeply critical, fragile, and in certain regards, catastrophic. A unilateralism of the school of thought that favoured the triumph of liberal democracy has to be countered by a resurrection of Marx, thereby questioning the sincerity of political programmers, the working of free market economy and the notions of freedom and human rights. With the passing away of Jyoti Basu, an era has come to an end. But let us not forget that history is full of beginnings and ends, replete with moments of hope and forward-looking expectation as well as an obsession with a haunting past. The question of the “end of history” syndrome, which arose with the collapse of the Berlin Wall, is far-fetched if we take into account that Marx will be relevant wherever there is a need for political and economic
reorganisation. The writer is a Professor of English at Panjab University, Chandigarh |
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Politics of development in Haryana
Both the major political parties in Haryana — the Congress and the INLD — are up in arms regarding the development of Sirsa district. But one needs to check the facts very objectively. Sirsa district has been identified as a backward district in the state and figures in the list of 144 most backward districts at the national level where the backward development initiative (BDI) has been launched. The exercise of identification of backward districts in the country is meant to break structural backwardness of a place and its people. The Planning Commission (2003) adopted three parameters to identify the backward districts: (i) value of output per agricultural worker (ii) agricultural wage rate and (iii) percentge of SC/ST population. The districts with low wages, low productivity and a high SC/ST population were ranked as backward. On the basis of these criteria, none of the districts in Haryana can be counted as backward given the all-India scenario.The rank of all the districts in Haryana starts from 406 out of 447 districts in the country, as ranked by the task group of the Planning Commission. Sirsa ranks at 415. Later on, it was decided that since there are pockets of underdevelopment within most developed states of the country, hence one least developed district in each state would also be chosen for BDI schemes. One would be surprised to find that Sirsa district figured on that list. The fact is that it cannot be classified as backward at the state level, taking any criteria of development i.e. human resource, infrastructure and development in the productive sector etc. And if one takes the 3 parameters as adopted by the Planning Commision, then the report (2003) reveals that output per agricultural worker is the highest in Sirsa district. It is the districts of southern and south-western Haryana — Gurgaon, Bhiwani, Mahendragarh, Rewari and Jhajjar — which lag much behind in terms of agricultural productivity. Further, if one takes the indicators of demography and social development, Mahendragarh, Bhiwani, Gurgaon (more particularly now Mewat) and Faridabad are placed in the category of less developed districts of the state. Sirsa district certainly lies in the middle-ranking districts in terms of many indicators of socio-economic development taken together. The state government has shown least respect to the criteria and objectivity and selected the district for launching BDI on political considerations in 2003. The faulty mechanism of delineation of a backward district has lead to the diversion of resources to the relatively developed areas, which would further widen the existing inequalities in society. There are studies which have revealed that in AP, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Orissa, MP, and UP where 55 districts have been identified as backward, as many as 32 districts do not satisfy the criteria of backwardness. There is a need to have a relook both at the state and national levels. The writer is an Associate Professor in Geography, Kurukshetra University. |
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Delhi Durbar Congressmen just can't stop talking about one another. First, it was the turn of flamboyant HRD Minister Kapil Sibal to face the ire of party men who thought he was going too far with his reform agenda. Then it was the reticent Commerce Minister Anand Sharma, whose Rajya Sabha extension controversy kept the Congress pinpricks going. Now it is the hard-to-ignore Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh suffering the love of his colleagues. So you have at the AICC headquarters in the capital routine murmurings about how "pretentious and publicity hungry" Ramesh is. First, he does all this public hearing stuff on Bt brinjal to hog the headlines and now he publicly removes his convocation gown at the Indian Institute of Forest Management ceremony in Bhopal. He even terms the practice of wearing such "colonial relics barbaric". Well, if the gown was so barbaric, why did Ramesh don it in the first place, ask his Congress friends. Others offer a prompt reply: "Donning the robe is no news. Removing it is. That's why!"
Why is Shahnawaz sulking?
The lone Muslim MP of BJP Syed Shahnawaz Husain is sulking. Since BJP president Nitin Gadkari announced his new team of office-bearers, Shahnawaz has kept away from BJP headquarters, 11, Ashoka Road, though he did attend the first office-bearers' meeting as the outgoing convener of the party's Minority Cell. But that was an exception. The excuse is his apparent illness. But there are those who believe the illness was also the result of the shock he got for not being made the party general secretary. Worse his bete noire Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi has managed to return yet again as the party vice president. There is, therefore, some speculation of Shahnawaz looking for greener pastures. And as if to confirm this, one can often see vehicles flying the Congress flag parked in and around his Pandit Pant Marg House.
Chatwal stays in news
Controversial NRI hotelier Sant Singh Chatwal appeared mighty pleased as he came to receive his Padma Bhushan from President Pratibha Patil at the Padma Award function at Rashtrapati Bhavan last week.
Dressed in his trade-mark red turban, Chatwal was seen shaking hands with all and sundry, looking relieved that he was finally receiving the coveted award despite all the controversies surrounding his nomination in view of allegations of financial irregularities against him. But much to everybody's surprise, he was seated away from other Padma awardees and not amongst them.The apparent reason was that the organisers did not want lens-men present in large numbers at the function to focus their cameras on him. However, as soon as the function was over, Chatwal was quick to hog the limelight, giving on-the-spot interviews to reporters and posing for the photographers. The US-based Sikh after all knows how to remain in the news. Contributed by Aditi Tandon, Faraz Ahmad and Ashok Tuteja |
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Wider processes of society need to be studied
Congressmen just can't stop talking about one another. First, it was the turn of flamboyant HRD Minister Kapil Sibal to face the ire of party men who thought he was going too far with his reform agenda.
Then it was the reticent Commerce Minister Anand Sharma, whose Rajya Sabha extension controversy kept the Congress pinpricks going. Now it is the hard-to-ignore Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh suffering the love of his colleagues.
