The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Act of impropriety
Rodrigues’ soft corner for his former aide

The manner in which former Punjab Governor and Chandigarh Administrator Gen. S.F. Rodrigues has given a clean-chit to his former Aide-de-Camp Major Nirvikar Singh is an act of grave impropriety and unbecoming of the high office he held. It also amounts to influencing the ongoing investigation into the officer’s conduct even though Gen Rodrigues had demitted the gubernatorial office. When the CBI has booked Maj Singh in a disproportionate assets case after conducting raids at his residences in New Delhi and Gurgaon, the former Governor should have restrained himself from lauding Maj Singh as a “competent boy” and a “committed” officer. He is charged with having amassed most of his assets during his tenure as the ADC to the Governor before joining the Research and Analysis Wing as its Director. He is known to have seven properties in Gurgaon and three in Delhi, fixed deposits worth Rs 25 lakh and several bank accounts with lockers which have been sealed.

What the CBI has unearthed in the course of its investigation of Maj Singh’s disproportionate assets seems to point to a bigger scam that cannot altogether overlook the likely involvement of the former Governor and many others. Gen Rodrigues may have feigned ignorance about the murky deals involving his former ADC but the question remains: how could the latter take decisions without the former’s approval? Indeed, following media coverage of Chandigarh’s mega projects spearheaded by The Tribune, the Union Home Ministry had ordered a probe by the Central Vigilance Commission. Following the latter’s recommendations, a CBI inquiry into two projects — the Theme-cum-Amusement Park and the Multimedia-cum-Film City — was ordered. Significantly, in the wake of the controversies surrounding these projects, both have been scrapped.

Disturbingly, instances of the Governor-ADC nexus in dubious scams are nothing new. One may recall how the then Punjab Governor, Lt-Gen B.K.N. Chibber (retd), took his ADC along with him to former Union Home Minister Indrajit Gupta when he was summoned to clarify on the questionable deals. Chibber reportedly told Gupta that his ADC could enlighten him about the issues much better than him. The latest incident once again points to the steady erosion of the institution of Governor. This malaise continues because, other than their loyalty to the party and to the leadership, most recruits to the Raj Bhavans over the years are not known for their merit, probity and rectitude in public life.

Naipaul, who?
Babudom can be mean towards all

You have to hand it to the Indian babudom. It can be cold and insensitive towards all. anybody who has come in contact with it — who has not? — can swear that politeness and helpfulness are alien to it. Still, one had expected that it would make an exception at least in the case of a person of the stature and calibre of Nobel Laureate Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul, arguably one of the most prominent Indians in the world. But no such luck. When his wife Lady Nadira visited the Indian High Commission in London recently for a Person of Indian Origin card for the author, the officials there told her that the author could get the card only if he would travel to Gorakhpur in Eastern Uttar Pradesh to find a tehsildar or magistrate willing to certify that Naipaul was indeed a person of Indian origin. “Shaking with rage” and “weeping”, Lady Nadira then inquired if it might be simpler to apply instead for a long-term visa. “Apply in the normal way and we’ll see,” she was curtly told.

It should have been a matter of pride for any country to welcome the Trinidad-born master of English writing. But the Indian bureaucracy showed its true colours. If at all this was done because the Naipauls were seen as being over-friendly to senior BJP politicians like L K Advani, who were in power when Naipaul won the Nobel, it was all the more condemnable because only a sick mind could view such an iconic figure through politics-tinted glasses.

When Naipaul had won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2001, the whole of India had celebrated that an “Indian” had emulated Rabindranath Tagore after so many years. He has been coming here often, and has always been feted like the son of the soil. But when it came to giving him the PIO card, the officials made his wife feel “like a terrorist”. Whether it was the height of bad manners or arrogance, this ugly episode must not be pushed under the carpet. If this can happen to the Naipauls, imagine what can happen to an ordinary person. In fact, the bureaucracy leaves nothing to the imagination. Such haughtiness is an everyday occurrence.

Thought for the Day

Journalists belong in the gutter because that is where the ruling classes throw their guilty secrets. — Bernard Ingham

ARTICLE

Legacies of the Emergency
We as a nation must learn from history
by M.G. Devasahayam

The 1975 Emergency has just completed 35 years. As could be seen from an article in The Tribune on June 26 Mr Ravi Mahajan, a teenager at that time, pleads for “another ‘emergency’ minus excesses”. As if there could be sunset without darkness! His main ground was that buses were running on time and people were standing in a queue! How naïve could a citizen become? It is time the legacies left by Emergency to the writer and his next generation are made known.

To start with is the Bhopal holocaust. Mythl Isocynate (MIC) is a lethal poisonous gas. In January 1970 Union Carbide applied for a licence to manufacture pesticides using MIC that had been discarded in the US. Serious objections by the Ministry of Industrial Development were summarily overruled soon after the Emergency was declared and the licence was granted in October 1975. This very gas had turned Bhopal into a mass graveyard past midnight December 2-3, 1984, and even today there are thousands of “walking-dead” and water is toxic. Bhopal’s death and devastation is a standing legacy of the Emergency. A little known fact among the cacophony of noises!

In the early seventies Jayaprakash Narayan had launched a massive movement against corruption and state tyranny. He was “enemy number one” of the state, arrested in Delhi under MISA and detained in a PGI (Chandigarh) ward, notified as jail. While in custody, devious means were used to silence him permanently. Dr M.K. Mani, Chief Nephrologist of Bombay’s Jaslok Hospital who saved JP’s life in1975, had this to say to me: “If there had been a delay of two weeks in taking JP to Jaslok Hospital he would have been dead.”

I was then the District Magistrate of Chandigarh and custodian of JP in jail. Some time in October 1975, I sensed that something was amiss and JP’s life was in grave danger. So, I launched a silent three-pronged pincer assault on Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s office with a common message, “If JP dies in jail” with the objective of creating a “crisis mindset”. Details can fill pages. Suffice it to say that the plan, hatched and executed at grave risk to my career and liberty, worked and JP was released in mid-November 1975 and taken post-haste to Bombay, thereby saving him from possible death in custody. Though the despicable attempt failed, it was another sordid legacy of the Emergency.

Even otherwise the “Emergency era” is remembered and recalled whenever any blatantly unlawful act is done or statement made. In the wake of Outlook expose on government tapping telephonic conversations of Nitish Kumar, Sharad Pawar, Prakash Karat and Congressman Digvijay Singh using latest technology, Mr L. K. Advani asked, “Is the ‘Emergency’ back?”

When the state threatened Naxal sympathisers with imprisonment under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, civil rights activists retorted: “We consider this as an attack on civil society reminiscent of the Emergency era.” Anchoring the CNN/IBN “Face the Nation” debate on the harsh censorship of Prakash Jha’s political movie Raajneeti,” Sagarika Ghosh’s poser was, “Are we under Emergency?”

When knowledgeable sources faulted Rajiv Gandhi for the “escapade” of Union Carbide chief Warren Anderson, they were dubbed as “unpatriotic” by Congress minions, reminiscent of the Emergency days when anyone criticising Indira Gandhi was imprisoned!

The worst legacy of the Emergency is the suspension of freedom and liberty of the citizens. During Emergency rule, the Fundamental Rights under Article 14 (Equality before Law), Article 21 (Protection of Life and Personal Liberty) and several clauses of Article 22 (Protection against detentions) stood suspended. In addition, Parliament enacted several autocratic laws and the executive ordered many stringent measures to tighten the noose around people’s neck. MISA rules were made draconian, and courts were prohibited from reviewing them, leave alone giving any relief to the detainees.

During the Emergency’s 20 months the media was severely muffled. People moved in hushed silence, stunned and traumatised by the harrowing goings on. The bulk of the civil service crawled when asked to bend. The higher judiciary bowed to the dust and was willing to rule that under the emergency regime citizens did not even have the “right to life”. Politicians of all hue and colour, barring honourable exceptions, lay supine and prostrate.

The Emergency was far more devious than just denial of personal liberty, arrest and torture of a few thousand individuals and forced “sterilisation” by the State. It was about basic violations of democratic norms and crude attempts to legitimise a new type of regime and new criteria of allocation of rights and obligations. It was the abrogation of any sense of boundary or restraint in the exercise of power, and the striking growth of arbitrariness and arrogance with which citizens were turned into “subjects”. Governance was devastated by the imposition of a highly concentrated apparatus of power on a fundamentally federal society and the turning over of this centralised apparatus for personal survival and dynastic aggrandisement. These are debilitating legacies.

The “Emergency masters” easily achieved their aim “without a dog barking” because things happened overnight and people were too perplexed to react. Yet, hardly anyone, barring some professional sycophants and social climbers, welcomed it. And when the time came during the general election in March 1977, an enraged public threw out the Emergency establishment lock, stock and barrel. The political fallout of this landslide was significant in that 30 years after the Indian nation came into being people had ushered in a democratic alternative to the long-ruling Congress party.

Despite its convincing defeat, the Emergency still evokes fear and horror! This is because even today Emergency excesses are being benchmarked and have become reference points for gross violation of human rights by fascist-minded “leaders”. On the pretext of attracting foreign investment, governments are mortgaging the nation’s land and resources to multinational companies and are attempting to “militarise” the tribal territories to enforce this! And the bulk of electronic media is rooting for this!

This time around if the Emergency is brought about, there will be at least two more legacies. One is aggressive mind-management and “manufacture of news” by a tech-savvy media. The other could be the ravaging of the Dandakaranya forests, the elimination of tribals and handing over of land to the mining-MNCs for “development”.

This is so because of the biggest casualty of Indira Gandhi’s assault on democracy — the sharp fall in the moral standards in everyday life in our country. She had a deep and enduring relationship with corruption. She so honoured and exalted corruption that it became an integral part of the texture of our national life. In short, she made unabashed corruption an authentic badge of government-sponsored greatness in India. Now it stands universalised and brutalised as a standing legacy of the Emergency.

In the event, Winston Churchill’s famous words ring loud and true: “Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” Unfortunately, this is the Emergency’s most fearsome legacy!

MIDDLE

And what remains in the end?
by Robin Gupta

THE day my mother suffered a cardiac arrest in the 100th year of her life I had promised to return from office at tea-time. “4:30 means 4:30” trailed her clipped command; and I was made to dress in a suit to office each day through the hot summer months and the muggy monsoon, thereafter.

When I pleaded that I had become a laughing stock, mother ruled: “there are winter suits and there are summer suits. Do not be a disgrace to the service!”

At 5 p.m. I was called to the military hospital where mother lay lifeless with Belgian diamonds in her ears and on her fingers; her hair beautifully coiffured. The nurse on duty told me to remove the jewellery. I froze. From some distant past I could hear mother: “Darling, when I go please see that all this is consigned, with me”.

There was a heavy downpour and amidst thunderous skies, patches of red and orange emerged. I returned home choking, for the hands of the clock had stopped. A friend exhorted me to tears: “Robin, you must cry”.

For years I remained inconsolable and went through ‘The Autobiography of a Yogi’ to engage time’s vacuity. The Divine Mother is eternal and appears in different forms, writes Paramhansa, a postulate which I found unconvincing for I had lost my only friend and companion.

A few years before, I had shifted mother to Villa Kalighat that was designed according to her aesthetics and after placing heavy iron gates at the driveway to shut out the world, I spent all my time with mother for I had fallen in love with her helplessness. Soon a beautiful garden was laid out with fountains and waterfalls and singing Budgerigars and together we savoured the winter flowers taking in their fragrance through a mild haze of pink gin.

To create the illusion of a forest I planted rows of Araucaria trees along a curving pathway. Mother told me about Lahore and Punjab: “Do you know Robin, the British were circumspect about this Province. The Central Province and the United Province were not always noticed, but the British addressed this region as the Punjab”.

Shortly after her first death anniversary I envisioned a cenotaph for mother, in a dream. It is not a small structure and has tall pillars that hold together a wall of Agra stone bearing mother’s bust in bronze; with bird baths and water bodies on either side. Alongside, on marble tablets between lattice work screens, are incised words that appear to encapsulate the quest for life “And what remains in the end? It is the beauty of space freed from strife and sorrow; from the anguish and pain of evolution; from the veil of miscalculation; from the checks and balances of judgement; and merging with the cleansing breeze of the limitless desert, the soul is filled with understanding, with the equipoise of silence!

And when the moon is at its meridian, often, I sit on the steps of the cenotaph with a little dog by my side; a tear in my eye.

OPED SPORTS

Footballers’ personality holds the key
By Sam Wallace

The German Youth Development Scheme is turning out balanced, confident players while England's club system is producing talented footballers but more confused and insecure individuals.

The Germans, after another sensational victory over Argentina in the quarter-finals, wandered out of their dressing room to share their thoughts. There was the usual pushing and shoving from the television crews to get the prime spot in front of Thomas Müller and Miroslav Klose, but as things calmed down you got the measure of them.

I watched Marko Marin, one of the heroes of last summer's Under-21s European triumph, chatting away to a group of reporters. Lukas Podolski talked for a while, in no rush to go anywhere. Per Mertesacker walked past drinking a bottle of beer to greet a group that he knew. It was - how to put this - very civilised.

David Villa (L) holds the key for Spain in the semi-final today Photos: Reuters

No football team's success has ever been decided on their relationship with the press. That is not the point. The point is that the Germans, for those of us observing from a distance, looked like a balanced, confident bunch.

Less isolated and less persecuted. Less likely to leave a stadium wearing a pair of oversized headphones, or drinking a cup of coffee, or eating an apple - all avoidance tactics employed at points by certain England players during their short, unhappy participation in this World Cup finals.

Of course, winning works wonders with a footballer's mood and Germany do have the occasional awkward character. Bastian Schweinsteiger stomped out with the belligerence of those autobahn drivers who flash their lights an inch from your back bumper. It should also be pointed out that English players such as Steven Gerrard, John Terry and Frank Lampard, always talk after matches, whatever the result.

Ten years ago, when Germany began their now famous overhaul of their youth development system in response to their failings at Euro 2000, one of the principles that Matthias Sammer, the technical director of the German Football Federation (DFB), insisted on was that the players should be well-rounded, confident individuals. Over the next few months we will be hearing a lot about the shortcomings of English football's youth development. No doubt Germany's year 2000 model will be held up as an example to follow with their 121 new talent centres and the investment of up to 500 million ((pounds sterling).

Those English footballers, at least those who make it to Premier League clubs, are fantastically well-rewarded. It is impossible to justify their salaries to a state-sector teacher or a nurse. Footballers earn what the market dictates and carping about their wages is pointless. What is required is a youth development system that teaches footballers, however wealthy, to act responsibly and behave like well-rounded adults.

Their development has to be a more complete package than just simply working on their weaker left foot or building them up in the gym. It might have surprising effects on their performance. Despite England's 4-1 defeat to Germany, technically there was still little to choose between the two teams: England's Under-17s won the European Championship in May. As a country England is not that far behind. The more you speak to those within Fabio Capello's camp, the more it is evident they are convinced that the sheer scale of the occasion and the pressure - call it "the fear" - contributed to their poor performances.

On Saturday, it did not seem to me like Müller looked stressed. Nor Mesut Ozil, Philipp Lahm, Jerome Boateng or Sami Khedira. Yet they all play for a nation of 80 million people with enormous expectations. This is a country that has already played in seven finals and won the World Cup three times. Historically, English football clubs have offered a fairly basic apprenticeship to players. Lately that has changed and apprentices are now known as academy scholars. Quite rightly, time which could be spent on education is not wasted on menial tasks like boot-scrubbing. Now, as in the past, the most talented players often come from difficult backgrounds and there is a limit to what a club, like a school, can do for a child from a severely dysfunctional family.

I have been invited a couple of times to a progressive Premier League club who ask newspaper reporters to speak to their scholars about the media. The boys are like any other teenagers - some a bit cocky, others less so, all of them likeable - but what stops me in my tracks is how young they are and yet how close to being thrown into the world of professional football.

All of them have left school at 16 for a chance at being a footballer - not a move that is going to give them much of an advantage if they have to pursue another career. Most of them will not make it. For those that do there is immediate promotion into a complicated world of instantaneous wealth and adulation mixed with huge pressure and equally instantaneous condemnation.

Judging by the performances of some of England's players at this World Cup, they are not entirely suited to it. A lot of clubs have done their best to prepare them but in the macho, make-or-break culture of football it is not always enough.

The Independent

Triumph of strategy over ball play
By Sam Wallace

Battle of two coaches: Joacchim Loew (left) & Vicente Del Bosque

Lahm has the statesman-like air of the big German footballers of the past and like most of them he can speak English too. He even cracks jokes in his second language.

When it was put to Lahm - not altogether seriously - that at least at this World Cup finals, England managed one goal against Germany to Argentina's zero he said, with a smile on his face, "You actually scored two goals".

That was one in the eye for those who believe that the German nation has not always benefited from a full and functioning sense of humour.

Lahm first came to the notice of English football with a brilliant performance as a 19-year-old for Stuttgart when they beat Manchester United at home in the Champions League in October 2003. That makes him something of a veteran in a team whose average age is 24.

The march of Germany to the semi-finals of the World Cup has been remarkable. This happy band of young men who counter-attack joyfully and score goals at will is the obverse of England's team of players with expressions like desperate fugitives and a style of football to match.

Listening to the Germans speak, the masterplan sounded painfully simple.

Lahm and his manager Joachim Löw were open about how they had stopped Carlos Tevez and Lionel Messi in particular. "We wanted to restrict them [Tevez and Messi] in the middle," Lahm said. "We pushed them to the wings, where we did not mind them being. You saw that in the middle they did not have a big chance against us. They did not have one proper goal-scoring opportunity, so it was a good match for us."

"In both games we were ready and you saw again that the better team wins against the better players. Winning 4-1 against England gave every player a lot of confidence and this victory against Argentina is good for us, especially the young players. We are ready to go to the final. Before the England and Argentina games we watched a video of our goals celebrations and now for the semi-final we will do the same."

If anyone can beat Spain then it is surely this team of fearless young players and their coolly analytical approach to games. They do not seem the types to have hang-ups about what Xavi Hernandez or David Villa might have achieved in the past. In March they were beaten by Argentina in a friendly match in Munich which was regarded as a wake-up call to Löw's young side and now within four months they have reversed that result impressively.

Löw is a difficult character to read but like many of the current great managers in Europe, he had a thwarted career as a player followed by an up-and-down record as a club manager. There is a vanity about him - perhaps that craving for recognition - and there was a deliciously awkward moment after the first goal against Argentina when he snubbed an enthusiastic embrace from his assistant Hans-Dieter Flick. But his stock as a manager is soaring.

Just the brief outline of the career of Löw, in charge of Stuttgart when they lost the 1998 European Cup Winners' Cup final to Chelsea, with its periods of obscurity and misfortune in Turkey and Austria demonstrates that one sacking on a CV does not make a bad manager.

He was uncompromising in his analysis of Argentina, whose defenders Gabriel Heinze and Martin Demichelis he described as "highly experienced" - a clear euphemism for "slow and old".

"They have four or five excellent attackers who perhaps don't support the defence at all times," Löw said. "That creates space in their defence if you attack quickly. I told my young players they were faster than them and, if they keep [Argentina] under pressure, players like Heinze would struggle because they're not as young as they used to be. We did that and took their defence apart completely."

After Thomas Müller had headed in Bastian Schweinsteiger's free-kick in the third minute, Argentina were never settled. They relied upon their deep reserves of individual talent to find a way through while Germany's well-organised system never flinched. Then, in the last 22 minutes of the match, Argentina's defence splintered.

The Independent