The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Security and privacy
Need for transparent, uniform policy

The government is again pressurising Research in Motion, the company that provides BlackBerry phones and services, to reveal the encryption code that will enable the security agencies to monitor the encrypted BlackBerry email and instant messaging services used by Indian subscribers. The Indian government is by far not the only one that is keen to have access to the Blackberry users’ data. Recently, RIM has been under pressure from the United Arab Emirates, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia, too. For long the preferred choice of businesses, Blackberry’s encryption processes make it secure, and thus there is an obvious commercial reason for the Canadian company to ensure that the security of the communication of its users remains intact. There are around 460 lakh Blackberry subscribers worldwide, over 11 lakh of them in India. The stake of Blackberry is apparently quite high, since it can’t be seen as making individual deals with governments to address specific national security concerns.

The government’s security concerns arise out of the possible misuse of technology for anti-national activities, including terrorism. It says Google and Skype will also need to be intercepted, and wants access to their decryption codes as well. Encryption of communications is an integral part of Internet traffic. All vendors do provide governments with access to any material that is demanded by law enforcement and national security officials. They do, however, want the request to adhere to proper procedure and laws. In this case, it seems that the security agencies want more interception capabilities, and hence the reluctance on the part of Blackberry and others.

Individual privacy should be inviolable unless deemed otherwise for specific legal reasons. The government should have transparent and universal norms, proper procedures and oversight to prevent abuse of power that such access would provide. For its part, the foreign companies, too, should remember that even though the world is increasingly borderless, they all have to conform to laws of the nations they operate in, and should, therefore, be sensitive to their concerns. Both security and instant communication are taken for granted by the denizens of today’s world. Indian citizens, too, have the right to demand both from the government and those who provide means of communication.

Land of grabbers
A benign government relaxes rules

In the absence of good governance Punjab is losing its green cover. Concrete structures are replacing trees. Land meant for maintaining the forest cover is up for grabs. On the pretext of helping farmers of the kandi areas get back their land for cultivation, the Punjab government has “delisted” areas in which construction is prohibited under the Punjab Land Preservation Act. Punjab politicians, bureaucrats and police officers had bought large chunks of land cheap in Chandigarh’s periphery. An inquiry by DGP Chander Shekhar has detected 350 unauthorised colonisers. In a report to the Punjab and Haryana High Court he has noted that SSPs are not acting against the colonisers. This is understandable since 145 IAS officers and 180 PCS officers are among the beneficiaries.

For years land grabbers have flourished in Punjab, thanks to a very benign government which relaxes rules and policies to help those it wants to. The state government has now decided to bring in policy that will find ways and means to circumvent the law to regularise illegal colonies. In Mohali alone there are 3,500 illegal colonies. Quite likely, the helpful state policy will be in place near the elections. If the top leadership succumbs to pressure from colonisers, why should junior civic officials play fair and square and take the trouble to stop or demolish illegal structures being raised in their areas?

Floods this year have again shown what havoc encroachments on government land and illegal constructions on the beds of seasonal canals and rivulets can do. Since colonisers follow the only rule they know, that is, how to make money, they observe no bylaws of town planning and leave behind clusters of unplanned houses without any functional drainage or sewerage. The already tottering municipalities are left with the responsibility of clearing the mess once the ruling politicians graciously regularise unauthorised colonies. Citizens pay the price for urban chaos, created with the blessings of politicians.

Thought for the Day

Near all the birds/ Will sing at dawn, — and yet we do not take/ The chaffering swallow for the holy lark.

— Elizabeth Barrett Browning

ARTICLE

Trouble in Sino-US ties
Obama needs to focus on Asia
by Harsh V. Pant

What a difference a few months make! Sino-US relations are their most turbulent ever today. This is indeed surprising after all the hype surrounding the Obama Administration’s outreach to China in its early days in office.

The Obama Administration tried to pursue a policy of cooperative strategic engagement vis-à-vis China. It attempted to construct a cooperative partnership under the assumption that China wants to operate within the international order, given that the US and China share the same threats and interests, including terrorism, economic instability and nuclear proliferation. As was suggested by the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, the multi-polar world would be a multi-partner world where the US could use its unique global role to foster cooperation among major powers for collective benefits.

China was key to this worldview. The Obama Administration went all out to woo Beijing - Obama refused to meet the Dalai Lama, did not raise the issue of human rights while visiting China last year, postponed the decision to sell arms to Taiwan and downgraded India in America’s strategic calculus. But China read it as a symbol of US decline and saw in it an opportunity to assert itself as never before. The regional allies of the US became nervous and urged the US to restore its traditional leadership in the region.

It was China’s growing economic and political clout that forced the Obama Administration in the early days to toy with the idea of G-2, a global condominium of the US and China whereby China can be expected to look after and “manage” Asia-Pacific. This was enough to shake up the US allies in the region from their slumber. Realising that their security concerns were being sidelined in Washington, Tokyo, Seoul and Canberra made a concerted effort to make the new US Administration realise that such an arrangement would permanently marginalise the US in the strategic landscape of Asia-Pacific.

Moreover, major players in the region started re-evaluating their own security doctrines. Even Kevin Rudd, the recently ousted Australian Prime Minister and a great Sinophile, was forced to come up with a security strategy for Australia that sought to hedge its bets vis-à-vis the potential threat from China and an unwillingness on the part of the US to play the role of a regional balancer.

The misguided notion of “Chimerica”, however, soon faced its inevitable demise. After the Obama Administration notified the US Congress that it planned to sell weapons systems to Taiwan worth $6.4 billion earlier this year, China was markedly aggressive in reacting to these developments as compared to the past. Not only was the US Ambassador to China called in by the Chinese government to protest against the arms sales and warned of serious repercussions if the deal went through, China also cancelled some of its military exchange programmes with the US and announced sanctions against American companies that are supplying weapons systems to Taiwan. This announcement of sanctions came as a surprise and was a sign of a new assertiveness that China had been displaying on the international scene for sometime now. For the first time, China decided to penalise US companies that were engaged in commercial arms transactions and were not in violation of global non-proliferation norms.

The idea of “Chimerica” was always too good to be true. But the rapidity with which the Sino-US ties have unravelled over the past few months has even surprised those who were cynical about Barack Obama’s overtures to China to begin with. The state of Sino-US ties has been so pitiful in recent months that while the Chinese Commerce Minister was openly warning the US that it would suffer more if it decided to levy punitive tariffs on Chinese imports, Chinese military leaders have been contemplating the possibility of an all-out war with the US to gain the status of global super power.

This changing Sino-US dynamic is palpable on the issue of China’s expansive claims in the South China Sea and America’s response to the challenge. The US has undertaken military exercises with South Korea to underline commitments and has even offered to mediate on disputes in the South China Sea much to Beijing’s irritation. It should be a surprise to no one that China wants the South China Sea issue to be resolved through bilateral negotiations rather than between China and ASEAN. This allows China to divide and rule. The disillusionment with China in South-East Asia is at an all-time high and the US is being asked to restore its leadership role in the region.

Geopolitical competition between China and the US is in full swing in East Asia as China’s growing economic and military capabilities as well as assertive diplomatic posture upend the regional balance of power. Washington is struggling to make itself relevant in the new strategic realities in the region. In its attempt to court China, the Obama Administration was quick to downgrade the burgeoning strategic partnership with India forged during the Bush period. If there is a meta-narrative in Obama’s foreign policy approach, it is defined by a desire to court America’s adversaries while ignoring friends and potential allies.

After rejecting the balance of power politics as a relic of the past, the Obama Administration no longer has a strategic framework with which to view and organise its Asia policy. In any case, it has been much too preoccupied with domestic issues to give any serious thought to Asia’s rapidly evolving strategic landscape. It is to be hoped that the emerging problems in its relations with Beijing will convince Washington that it needs to take its friends and allies in Asia more seriously.n

The writer teaches at King’s College, London

MIDDLE

God’s own fruit
by Tushima Rattan

Aam meethe hon aur bahut se hon,” said Ghalib while describing this succulent fruit. As children we never understood why we gorged on them just once a year, but were happy to be able to pounce on them. The aromatic alphonsos, the green dasheris, the luscious chausas and the golden-skinned langdas, sparkling in their red, yellow and dark green tones, had a magical spell on us.

During summers there was seldom a day when we did not have a mango. This irresistible fruit not only makes hot summer days tolerable, but also stirs in a whole lot of memories. Mangoes are here today, gone tomorrow. So mom found ways to keep them as long as she could. Though I have forgotten the names of endless dishes she used to make, the taste lingers.

Decades later, mango still has such a charismatic hold. To get that heavenly juice spurting all over one’s chin reminds one of carefree childhood days. One of my mango memories includes the endless wait for a gush of wind to waggle the branches laden with mangoes — with the hope that one would fall near me, of aiming a slingshot at a neighbour’s mango-laden tree, of climbing trees and throwing down the fruit, of wounds received from toppling down the branches and being chased by an irate ‘mali’. The enticing fruit had such a hold on our psyche that it turned even a goody two-shoe like me into a mango thief.

It is entwined with our country for centuries. People have always enjoyed ripe and raw mangoes alike and perhaps no other fruit, when unripe serves us so much as mango does. Even Amir Khusro, the greatest of poets, in his Persian verse called it ‘the choicest fruit of Hindustan’, and declared, “For garden pride the mango is sought. Ere ripe, other fruits to cut we ban, but mango serves, ripe or not.” And for a full-blooded Indian like me, any time is mango time and a dollop of aam ka achaar enhances my meals.

Don’t we know stories of kings and nobles who sent their friends gifts of choicest mangoes? Even our PM and the Pakistani President forget about Kashmir once a year and exchange baskets of the delectable alphonsos. Its beautiful paisley shape has found its way into everything from ethnic jewellery to Kashmiri shawls and even into ancient Indian literature.

What is life without the king of fruits? I am going to miss the sinful delight, as it is that time of the year when the fruit is on its way out. And the days are not too far when the dasheris, langdas, safedas, chausas, alphonsos, totapuris, sindhooris and fazlis will start teasing me in my dreams. Can’t it be summer all the time, if it means eating mangoes round the year?

OPED WORLD

China’s secret service
Johann Hari

Chinese products sell at very cheap prices for a very good reason. It is cheap labour that has been driving Chinese exports and corporate profits outside China. But winds of change have begun to blow.

China’s industrial muscle rested on slave labour. Picture shows skyscrapers in Shenyang. Photo: Reuters

He might have pushed a crucial component of the laptop I am writing this article on, or the mobile phone that will interrupt your reading of it. Yan Li was a typical 27-year-old worker at the gigantic Foxconn factory in Shenzen, Southern China, which manufactures i-Pads and Playstations and mobile-phone batteries.

Li was known to the company by his ID number: F3839667. He stood at a whirring line all day, every day, making the same tiny mechanical motion with his wrist, for 20p an hour. According to his family, sometimes his shifts lasted for 24 hours; sometimes they stretched to 35. If he had tried to form a free trade union to change these practices, he would have been imprisoned for 12 years. On the night of 27 May, after yet another marathon-shift, Li dropped dead.

Deaths from overwork are so common in Chinese factories that they have a word for it: guolaosi. China Daily estimates that 600,000 people are killed this way every year, mostly while making goods for us. Li had never experienced any health problems, his family says, until he started this work schedule; Foxconn say he died of asthma and his death had nothing to do with them.

The night Li died, yet another Foxconn worker committed suicide - the tenth this year.

For two decades now, you and I have shopped until Chinese workers dropped.

Business has bragged about the joys of the China Price. They have been less keen for us to see the Human Price. KYE Systems Corp run a typical factory in Donguan in southern mainland China, and one of their biggest clients is Microsoft - so in 2009 the US National Labour Committee sent Chinese investigators undercover there.

On the first day a teenage worker whispered to them: "We are like prisoners here." The staff work and live in giant factory-cities that they almost never leave. In each room sleeps 10 workers, and each dorm houses 5,000. There are no showers; they are given a sponge to clean themselves with.

A typical shift begins at 7.45am and ends at 10.55pm. Workers must report to their stations 15 minutes ahead of schedule for a military-style drill: “Everybody, attention! Face left! Face right!" Once they begin, they are strictly forbidden from talking, listening to music, or going to the lavatory. Anybody who breaks this rule is screamed at and made to clean the lavatories as punishment. Then it's back to the dorm.

One worker said: “My job is to put rubber pads on the base of each computer mouse ... This is a mind-numbing job. I am basically repeating the same motion over and over for over 12 hours a day.” At a nearby Meitai factory, which made keyboards for Microsoft, a worker said: "We're really livestock and shouldn't be called workers." They are even banned from making their own food, or having sex. They live off the gruel and slop they are required to buy from the canteen, except on Fridays, when they are given a small chicken leg and foot “to symbolise their improving life”.

Even as their work has propelled China towards being a super-power, these workers got less and less. Wages as a proportion of GDP fell in China every single year from 1983 to 2005.

They can be treated this way because of a very specific kind of politics that has prevailed in China for two decades now. Very rich people are allowed to form into organisations - corporations - to ruthlessly advance their interests, but the rest of the population is forbidden by the secret police from banding together to create organisations to protect theirs. The political practices of Maoism were neatly transferred from communism to corporations: both regard human beings as dispensable instruments, only there to serve economic ends.

We'll never know the names of all the people who paid with their limbs, their lungs, or their lives for the goodies in my home and yours. Here's just one: think of him as the Unknown Worker, standing for them all. Liu Pan was a 17-year-old operating a machine that made cards and cardboard that were sold on to big-name Western corporations. When he tried to clear its jammed machinery, he got pulled into it. His sister said: “When we got his body, his whole head was crushed. We couldn't even see his eyes.”

So you might be thinking - was it a cruel joke to bill this as a good news story? Not at all. An epic rebellion has now begun in China against this abuse - and it is beginning to succeed. Across 126,000 Chinese factories, workers have refused to live like this any more. Wildcat unions have sprung up, organised by text messages, demanding higher wages, a humane work environment and the right to organise freely. Millions of young workers across the country are blockading their factories and chanting, “There are no human rights here!” and, “We want freedom!” The suicides were a rebellion of despair; this is a rebellion of hope.

Last year, the Chinese dictatorship was so perturbed by the widespread uprisings that it prepared an extraordinary step forward. It drafted a new labour law that would allow workers to form and elect their own trade unions. It would plant seeds of democracy across China's workplaces.

Western corporations lobbied very hard against it, saying it would create a "negative investment environment" - by which they mean smaller profits.

Western governments obediently backed the corporations and opposed freedom and democracy for Chinese workers. So the law was whittled down and democracy stripped out.

It wasn't enough. This year Chinese workers have risen even harder to demand a fair share of the prosperity they create. Now company after company is making massive concessions: pay rises of over 60 per cent are being conceded. Even more crucially, officials in Guandong province, the manufacturing heartland of the country, have announced that they are seriously considering allowing workers to elect their own representatives to carry out collective bargaining after all.

Just like last time, Western corporations and governments are lobbying frantically against this - and to keep the millions of Yan Lis stuck at their assembly lines into the 35th hour.

Yes, if this struggle succeeds, it will mean that we will have to pay a little more for some products, in exchange for the freedom and the lives of people like Yan Li and Liu Pan. But previous generations have made that choice. After slavery was abolished in 1833, Britain's GDP fell by 10 percent - but they knew that cheap goods and fat profits made from flogging people until they broke were not worth having.

The Independent

Cameron called a spade a spade
Amar Chandel

British Prime Minister David Cameron fielding questions.

It is quite common for visiting heads of state and government to make statements which are music to Indian ears while they are here. But the categorical statement of British Prime Minister David Cameron that Pakistan was behind terror activities went way beyond the usual homilies.

“We cannot tolerate in any sense the idea that this country (Pakistan) is allowed to look both ways and is able, in any way, to promote the export of terror, whether to India or whether to Afghanistan or anywhere else in the world,” he said while speaking at his first public event in India at the Infosys Technologies’ campus in Bangalore on July 28.

What was even more remarkable was that when his statement caused uproar in Pakistan, he did not retract it using the usual excuses that what he had stated had been “misunderstood” or had been “quoted out of context”. He stood by what he said and even asserted while appearing on Radio 4 after his speech that “I choose my words very carefully. It is unacceptable for anything to happen within Pakistan that is about supporting terrorism elsewhere. It is well-documented that that has been the case in the past, and we have to make sure that the Pakistan authorities are not looking two ways. They must only look one way, and that is to a democratic and stable Pakistan”.

This was unusual candour rarely seen in international diplomacy. Some British newspapers even attributed it to his lack of experience but at the same time it was also an indicator of the growing exasperation of the international community over the cussedness of Pakistan. Its dubious role was common knowledge in India already. Now the whole world knows about it, thanks to the Headley investigation and the Internet leak of documents. Classified US military reports published on the whistleblower website WikiLeaks exposed in graphic details how the ISI had aided Taliban militants while the Pakistani government was taking billions of dollars in American aid.

Cameron did not make such a categorical statement on his own. It is now coming to light that he did so in consultation with the US which is also at its wit’s end over the double game played by Pakistan. The problem with the US is that it has convinced itself that it cannot function suitably in Afghanistan without Pakistani backing, but the latter has been proving to be a highly unreliable partner in this war against terror. Hence the need to ask Mr Cameron to call a spade a spade.

Mr Cameron himself revealed that he had discussed the issue with US President Barack Obama and the Pentagon. The clear message from the US and the UK was that countries cannot have relations with groups promoting terror.

As expected, the comment was received with self-righteous indignation in Pakistan, which took the rare step of issuing an official rebuttal. ISI chief Lieut-Gen Ahmed Shuja Pasha cancelled his visit to the UK in protest against the Cameron remarks. Pasha was scheduled to accompany Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari on a five-day visit from August 3. However, Mr Zardari undertook the trip as scheduled.

Islamabad is used to seeing the world community turn a blind eye towards its terror export business. It will take it some time to come to terms with the new reality, which is that the world is getting sick and tired of humouring it. It will have to decide once for all whether it intends to run with the hare or hunt with the hounds.

In fact, had such plain-talking been done in the past, a chastened Pakistan might have lowered the terrorism heat somewhat. But western countries find a terrorist attack unacceptable only when the victims happen to be their own citizens.

Ironically, even India has been less than forthright in calling Pakistan’s bluff. In the name of diplomatic niceties, it has been stomaching a lot of nonsense. The latest instance of being lily livered is the feeble response to the outlandish Pakistani broadside comparing Indian Home Secretary G.K. Pillai with a terrorist like Hafiz Saeed. Even if the remarks were ill-timed, Foreign Minister S.M. Krishna should have upbraided him in private, instead of doing so publicly. That unintentionally served Pakistani cause.

While Pakistan harps on Kashmir endlessly, the Indian stand that the whole of Jammu and Kashmir, including PoK, belongs to India is not put forth forcefully.

In 2006, when our Prime Minister met the then Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf in Havana, Dr Manmohan Singh turned India’s traditional stance on its head and held that terrorist groups operating from Pakistani soil could be acting autonomously, rather than on instructions from Islamabad. Not only that, he did the unthinkable: described Pakistan as a “victim of terror” – in one fall blow putting it on the same footing as India. Two years later 26/11 outrage happened and we went back to our old position, but the damage had been done.

Such pusillanimity strengthens Pakistani belief that India is a soft state. We all agree that “talk talk” is better than “fight fight”. But just for the privilege of getting to talk to our western neighbour, do we have to issue it certificates of good conduct undeservedly to it and give up our right to even protest? If we do, then we give an open invitation to every Shah Mahmood Qureshi to equate our Home Secretary with Jamaat-ud Dawa chief and Mumbai attacks mastermind Hafiz Saeed.