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Systemic collapse
Afghan polls |
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Back to 20K
AFSPA: dangers ahead
In the line of duty
Psychology of voters explains politics in the US
China's own ‘Holocaust’
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Systemic collapse
When stadia, roads and bridges being readied for the Commonwealth Games were found to be way behind schedule and rampant corruption in their execution was exposed some months ago, there was still a faint hope that things would somehow fall in place at the last minute. But now that the last minute has arrived, there are no signs of the miracle. On the contrary, the collapse of the pedestrian bridge leading to the main venue, the Nehru Stadium, on Tuesday and the false ceiling of the weightlifting arena of the same stadium the next day have caused the ultimate embarrassment, putting a question mark on the very holding of the Games. Even if the much-awaited mega sports event does take place, it might showcase the country’s shortcomings instead of its progress. That is a shame indeed because no expenses were spared to make the Games a success. But the men who mattered goofed badly despite numerous warnings. What an ignominy it is that many of the participating countries have found the conditions in the Commonwealth Games Village “unlivable” and some of the participants have even pulled out, saying that hygiene is a bigger concern than terror. Organising Committee (OC) head Suresh Kalmadi and his colleagues had boasted that the Village would be the best ever but officials of the participating countries were greeted by dusty rooms and filthy toilets. Stray dogs were found lying on beds meant for athletes. Surprise of surprise, OC secretary-general Lalit Bhanot was still unfazed and dismissed the complaints saying that “hygiene standards are different for different people”. Somebody should tell Mr Bhanot that when you organise an international event, you have to conform to international standards. Even security is a serious concern. In spite of the attack on Taiwanese tourists near Jama Masjid, an Australian TV crew was able to walk into the main Games arena carrying a huge case for an explosives detonation kit. Not only that, they were able to obtain a detonator and explosives within a day’s drive of the Capital. The litany of complaints has forced the Prime Minister to step in. But is a turnaround possible at this late stage? Athletes are to start arriving in a few hours. Some people deserve to be hanged for this national shame.
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Afghan polls
Holding elections in Afghanistan has been a very tricky job to do because of stiff opposition from the Taliban. Saturday’s parliamentary polls provide fresh proof of this ugly reality. Over 1000 polling booths of the total 6,835 could not be used because of security reasons. The Taliban threat affected smooth conduct of the elections in many areas. It is not without reason that the Free and Fair Election Foundation of Afghanistan, which deployed 7000 observers to monitor the polls, has expressed “serious concerns” about the quality of the major democratic exercise after the controversial presidential election that led to President Hamid Karzai getting another opportunity to rule the country. Over 4000 complaints of booth capturing, ballot box stuffing, use of fake voter identity cards, etc, have been received. Yet the election managers were satisfied with their accomplishment. For them, conducting the polls itself is not a small achievement in Afghanistan. Most of those who contested the elections are warlords, tribal chieftains, puppets of the West, et al. They have nothing to do with people’s interests. The polls provided them an opportunity to capture the levers of power through fair or foul means. Once they succeed in entering the Wolesi Jirga (parliament), they will try to use it to perpetuate their questionable hold over the system. The elections are over, but the results will take a long time to be officially announced because of the probe that will have to be conducted into the large number of fraud cases. But immediately the polls have highlighted once again that the Taliban control over a large part of Afghanistan remains intact despite the US-led multinational drive against the extremists. How President Karzai handles the situation remains to be seen. His own election was mired in controversy. Now he faces the allegation of supporting a large number of tainted candidates in the party-less polls. His government remains as weak as it was when he first captured power. If he tries to overcome his weaknesses by entering into a deal with the Taliban, which is quite likely now, that will be a remedy worse than the disease. |
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Back to 20K
Although the BSE Sensex has crossed the 20,000 mark, the old euphoria is missing. Domestic institutional investors feel uncomfortable with the present valuations, while retail investors watch the spectacular show from the sidelines. Foreign money is driving the rally. Brazil, China and India have replaced the US as the most preferred destinations of global investment, according to a Bloomberg global poll. Thanks to the near zero interest rates in the developed world, a huge amount of surplus cash is chasing gold and equities in the emerging markets. The Sensex touched an all-time high of 21,206 in January 2008 before the US sub-prime crisis and resultant global financial turmoil caused the biggest market crash since 1929. With memories of the crash still fresh, Indian investors have exited the market and now wait for a reasonable price correction. Foreign institutional investors (FIIs) believe in the Indian growth story and prefer India to even China and Brazil to park their funds. No wonder, the Sensex has outperformed the similar benchmarks in China, Russia and Brazil. The foreigners’ faith in the Indian market is justified by macroeconomic fundamentals. A good monsoon has eased inflation worries and will lift agricultural growth. The economy is set to grow at a healthy 8.5 per cent this year. On the downside, there is a fear that the US and Europe may relapse into recession. This as well as the rupee’s rise against the dollar may hurt exports. Foreign investment in equities and commodities is hot money that can flee as fast as it comes should there be any sign of trouble or if the US and Europe turn the corner. The present rally is not broad-based. It is confined to the sectors thriving on rising Indian consumption like consumer goods and automobiles. That is why India’s richest – the Ambanis, K.P. Singh, Sunil Bharti Mittal and Uday Kotak — have not gained as much this time as they did when the Sensex had crossed the 20,000 level last time. |
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A professional is a man who can do his job when he doesn’t feel like it. An amateur is a man who can’t do his job when he does feel like it. — James Agate
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AFSPA: dangers ahead
THE Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) has been questioned from day one. Not only civil liberty groups but many others have also thought that the powers given to the armed forces, when posted in a disturbed area, were too sweeping and too authoritarian. The Act, among other things, gives the armed forces authority to kill anyone in a disturbed area on mere suspicion. No questions will be asked and it will be presumed that the killing was because of exigencies of the situation. The controversy has got revived because of the government’s proposal to dilute these powers. If it does so, it has the authority in the polity we have. It is an elected government which is answerable to Parliament. In a democratic set-up, the military is under the government and does not have to question the order given. I am shocked when I find Chief of Army Staff Gen V.N. Singh saying that the Army cannot do without the AFSPA and retired Army Chief V.P. Malik telling the government that if it wanted the Army it has to have the AFSPA. Whether the government withdraws the AFSPA or amends it, it is its business. But when it listens to the Army commanders and does not act as the situation demands, the government makes amply clear that it is not its own master. That the people are supreme does not mean that the rulers they elect will be hemmed in by the Army or such other forces. Similar compromises have led to the rule or domination of the military in many countries which do not know how to swim back to the free waters of democracy. How can New Delhi behave in a manner which casts shadow over the pre-eminence of the people-returned government? I believe that the Cabinet was divided over the withdrawal of the AFSPA from certain areas of Jammu and Kashmir. Some said that by doing so it would spoil the situation in the areas where the AFSPA would continue to operate. Ultimately, a Cabinet committee was appointed to look into the matter more closely and, subsequently, there was a meeting of main political parties. What surprises me is that there was no one participating in different exercises who even questioned the efficacy of continuing the Act which has been in force for about 52 years in the Northeast and 10 years in Jammu and Kashmir. It seems the government does not want to go against the wishes of the military which is keen to retain the powers that the Act gives. The question to find out is the areas where the AFSPA should apply and for how long is for the government to decide, taking into account the situation prevailing there. But the government’s decision has to be dependent on the conditions on the ground, not on the protest voiced by the military. Yet, the more important aspect is whether the Act should be there at all. The government appointed the Justice Jewan Reddy Committee to find out whether the Act had outlived its utility. The committee unanimously recommended five years ago that the Act should be abolished. The defence forces did not agree to curtail their draconian power and the Act continues. The government went by the advice of the military, not what the committee, having some leading NGOs in the area, had said. Two questions, therefore, come to the fore. One, is there any utility in having the Act on the statute book at all? Two, is it necessary to give such sweeping powers to the armed forces in a disturbed area? The ideal thing is not to call the Army to attend to the law and order situation. The force is trained to defend the country’s borders, and it should be confined to the task it knows the best. Yet, if insurgency within the country demands deployment of the Army, it cannot be left to the military to give the government a list of do’s and don’ts. What it boils down to is that the power which the military has come to enjoy for a long time because of the AFSPA should be continued perpetually. The proposition itself is dangerous. The observation by the military that it cannot fight in a disturbed area without the AFSPA is not understandable. This amounts to dictating terms to an elected government. The problem is that the BJP which, because of staying in the wilderness for more than six years, has become irresponsible in its behaviour. Even before the meeting of all political parties, L.K. Advani says that the dilution of the AFSPA will weaken the country’s defence. And he praises the sacrifices of the defence forces in the same breath. Playing to the gallery at a time when India is beleaguered with many problems is like foreclosing the options which the ruling party has every right to consider. The country is proud of the defence forces, which have withstood many odd situations and have risked their lives. But the BJP does not have any exclusive right on the armed forces. Dragging them into controversies neither helps the country nor even the BJP. The party must understand that sensitive issues, if politicised, can take an unwanted turn. Coming to power is important for a political party. But it has to see that while attempting to do so it does not weaken the democratic structure or even remotely support methods which may recoil on the nation one day. Not long ago, a special force of the armed forces by the name of the Rashtriya Rifles was constituted to deal with civil commotion. It was imparted a different type of training. If the experiment has failed, something else should have been tried. But the perpetuation of the AFSPA is not a solution. What is happening in Kashmir or in the Northeast may come to brutalise our society. Democracy will lose its savour. Rulers will rue the day when, probably in panic, special powers were given to the men in khaki. Laws are for fair and orderly governance. Those laws which authorise maiming or killing on suspicion have no place in a democratic polity, even for a short
period.
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In the line of duty
No story is worth your life’. This was the first lesson taught to me
by the then head of the department of journalism in Kashmir
University, Prof Nasir Mirza, when I entered the department a few
years ago as a young student aiming to make it big in the field of
journalism one day. Academics never remained my priority. So I
always skipped the classes to walk along with journalists to see them
do stories. But whenever I attended Professor Mirza’s class I always
got to learn a new lesson for life and profession. A visiting foreign journalist rightly said that the new generation in Kashmir was politically very sensitive. That, indeed, was the case as we grew up in the environment where we were surrounded by the politics of not only India, but also Pakistan, and yes, China. Working as a journalist was never an easy task; I saw many being killed, many being attacked and many being beaten to pulp, but the desire to be a journalist grew stronger with every such incident. Now
for the past three months, we the journalists in Kashmir have been
facing the worst type of mental agony and despite knowing the fact
that ‘No story is worth your life’ we risk our lives to get
stories. Owing to the curfew and strict restrictions on our movements our curfew passes are not honoured, we are humiliated but still we discharge our duties. Despite an undeclared gag we keep on sending the stories because that is what we do and what we are made and trained to do and what we get paid for. A common man looks at us with much expectation as he feels that we would magnify his voice and we try to do so. We face the wrath of stone pelters, security forces and whenever our story displeases any of the party we get threatening calls, but we ignore all this. When the all-party parliamentary delegation arrived in Srinagar in the hope to diffuse the tension, we the journalists defied all the curfew restrictions. Only one person from one newspaper was allowed to enter the venue. So my boss went in and dictated some of the stories to me which I typed and filed from a safe distance under the watchful eyes of many security personnel. Covering the curfew and restrictions for the past three months and the visit of the delegation was always the first priority in my mind and I forgot that it was the marriage of one of my best friends and I was the best man. But I could not attend the marriage due to the stories. All this has again taught me a lesson. A story has become worth a life-long friendship, as I know that I lost this childhood friendship forever for a
story.
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Psychology of voters explains politics in the US Making sense of US primariesBy Rupert Cornwell WHAT on earth is going on ? These days, a grounding in clinical psychology is probably of more use than a PhD in political science in determining whether or not the country is experiencing a collective nervous breakdown. Last week's batch of primary results in the United States have established one thing beyond doubt - that America's electorate has never in modern times been angrier, more volatile and less predictable than now.
The most spectacular proof came in the normally inconsequential state of Delaware, where Christine O'Donnell - spectacularly unqualified but blessed by the Tea Party and Saint Sarah and making all the right ultra-conservative noises - defeated Mike Castle, the state's highly popular former governor, in the Republican primary for the Senate seat long held by Vice-President Joe Biden. A month or two ago, such a result would have been unthinkable. But then came a Palin tweet on behalf of Ms O'Donnell, and the rest is history. She is the seventh outsider, no less, backed by the insurgent Tea Party movement to topple a Senate candidate endorsed by the Republican establishment in this tumultuous primary season. Ms O'Donnell has had run-ins with the tax man, failed to meet her mortgage payments and equates masturbation with adultery, and may be a bridge too far for the good citizens of Delaware in November's general election. But some of the Tea Party crowd will certainly win, in an election year shaping up as a rout for the Democrats.
Up to a point, such an outcome should come as no surprise. At mid-terms, the President's party is invariably punished, especially when that party controls not only the White House but Congress as well - and after thumping wins in 2006 and 2008, Democrats are now overdue for a hammering. Republicans need to make a net gain of 39 seats to retake the House of Representatives. The consensus is they will, and probably with something to spare; some analysts are even predicting a repeat of the 52-seat swing in 1994, when a pugnacious minority leader named Newt Gingrich led Republicans back to command of the House for the first time in 40 years. In the Senate, the outlook is cloudier. The Democrats currently have a 59-41 seat edge. At the time of writing, they seem set to lose seven at least, although thanks to the victory of the "unelectable" Ms O'Donnell, they are likely to hang on to a seat that was previously considered lost. Even so, if Republicans run the table, as they say in billiards, they can still secure an outright majority. The Democrats, after all, did so in not dissimilar circumstances in 2006, propelled by the unpopularity of George Bush; so why not the Republicans now ? But numbers tell only part of the story. For this is 2010, when even stronger emotions are loose in the land. Americans, as the whole world knows, are mad. They're mad about the economy, about high unemployment and a recession that feels like it will never end. They're mad at Wall Street, which got the country into the mess. They're mad at government, which, for all the colossal deficits it has run up, can't get them out of the mess. They're mad at big business for exporting jobs to China, at China which cheats so blatantly on its exchange rate, at unions that can't deliver for the workers, at the media who tell everything like it isn't. And they're mad at that cool-mannered guy in the White House who appears to feel nobody's pain. Heck, isn't he a Muslim, and probably not even a native-born American at all ? Finally, and most relevant to the upcoming election, they're mad at Congress and all those who sit and squabble there. And since there are more Democrats than Republicans on Capitol Hill, the Democrats stand to suffer the most. But at this point, if you believe a poll by The New York Times just 24 hours after Ms O'Donnell swept all before her, you must abandon politics-as-usual and reach for the psychiatric manual. According to this poll, voters are fed up with Democrats. But they are even more scornful of Congressional Republicans, whose strategy for the last 18 months has consisted of the single word, "no", to everything President Obama has proposed. The survey found that voters believe that Democrats are more likely to help the middle class, have better ideas for solving problems, are more likely to create jobs, and are more likely to help small businesses. Democrats, it is further believed, have the right ideas about immigration. Yet by every measure, Democrats face a thrashing. Go figure. This is indeed a strange moment in the US, and our psychiatric manual might argue that deeper, secular forces and anxieties are at work. An American might very well conclude right now that a system that has effortlessly delivered prosperity and top-dog status for generations isn't working any more. You have to be 80 at least to have a clear memory of the Great Depression, the last time America was on its knees. From the moment of their birth, its citizens are told they live in the greatest country on earth, like no other in history. But now fear gnaws that the nation is in decline, that other countries have caught up, and even overtaken it. A spate of recent surveys leave little doubt that this is the case. Last week's Census Bureau figures - showing that there are record numbers living in poverty and without health coverage, and that average incomes have stayed flat at best over the past decade, despite the fortunes made by a few - have underscored how this recession is the deepest since the Depression. You sense a flailing around for the vanished certainties once encapsulated in the notion of "the American Dream", and a venomous search for scapegoats in the establishment that has failed them. That is the mantra of the right-wing talk-show hosts who ceaselessly stoke the indignation, egging on the Tea Party, blaming defeatist Democrats, ungrateful foreigners, and Rinos - despised "Republicans in Name Only", like Delaware's Mike Castle - for the country's every ill. This, in turn, illustrates another facet of the paradox. The Democrats are set for a beating; but it is the Republicans who are split. Something of the same happened in 1964, when the Arizona outsider Barry Goldwater defeated Nelson Rockefeller, incarnation of traditional East Coast noblesse oblige Republicanism, for the party's presidential nomination and then went down to a landslide defeat. But this Tea Party moment goes further. It combines the grassroots fervour that Goldwater unleashed (and whose lasting effects make him one of the most important figures in 20th-century Republicanism) with a populism and nativism that are equally recurrent strands in US history. Where all this will lead, nobody knows. Maybe Ms Palin, the linking element between the Tea Party and the Republican party proper, will do a Goldwater, leading an insurgency to capture the party's nomination in 2012, only to go down in flames at the general election. Maybe she won't run; maybe both she and the movement will fizzle out. Or perhaps the Tea Party will take over the Republican Party: or again, it may be gently co-opted into it. Whatever happens, however, the current state of affairs spells trouble for everyone in the short term: for President Obama who must cope with divided government, with Republicans less inclined than ever to compromise; and for the mainstream Republican White House aspirants in 2012 - Mitt Romney et al - who must somehow harness the Tea Party's energy while preserving an appeal to centrists and independents who ultimately decide presidential elections. Above all, it will be bad news for ordinary Americans, who having voted out one bickering Congress, are seemingly about to vote in a replacement that is likely to be even more partisan and paralysed, one in which the centrists who forge the legislative compromises that actually get things done will be in ever shorter supply. Americans hate government - but they also know they need it. Go figure. Or, rather, go see a psychologist.—The Independent |
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China's own ‘Holocaust’ Mr Dikötter, who has been studying Chinese rural history from 1958 to 1962, when the nation was facing a famine, compared the systematic torture, brutality, starvation and killing of Chinese peasants to the Second World War in its magnitude. At least 45 million people were worked, starved or beaten to death in China over these four years; the worldwide death toll of the Second World War was 55 million. Mr Dikötter is the only author to have delved into the Chinese archives since they were reopened four years ago. He argued that this devastating period of history - which has until now remained hidden - has international resonance. "It ranks alongside the gulags and the Holocaust as one of the three greatest events of the 20th century .... It was like [the Cambodian communist dictator] Pol Pot's genocide multiplied 20 times over," he said. Between 1958 and 1962, a war raged between the peasants and the state; it was a period when a third of all homes in China were destroyed to produce fertiliser when the nation descended into famine and starvation, Mr Dikötter said. His book, Mao's Great Famine: The Story of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, reveals that while this is a part of history that has been "quite forgotten" in the official memory of the People's Republic of China, there was a "staggering degree of violence" that was, remarkably, carefully catalogued in Public Security Bureau reports, which featured among the provincial archives he studied. In them, he found that the members of the rural farming communities were seen by the Party merely as "digits", or a faceless workforce. For those who committed any act of disobedience, however minor, the punishments were huge. State retribution for tiny thefts, such as stealing a potato, even by a child, would include being tied up and thrown into a pond; parents were forced to bury their children alive or were doused in excrement and urine, others were set alight, or had a nose or ear cut off. One record shows how a man was branded with hot metal. People were forced to work naked in the middle of winter; 80 per cent of all the villagers in one region of a quarter of a million Chinese were banned from the official canteen because they were too old or ill to be effective workers, so they were deliberately starved to death. He said the archives were already illuminating the extent of the atrocities of the period; one piece of evidence revealed that 13,000 opponents of the new regime were killed in one region alone, in just three weeks. "We know the outline of what went on but I will be looking into precisely what happened in this period, how it happened, and the human experiences behind the history," he said. Mr Dikötter, who teaches at the University of Hong Kong, said while it was difficult for any historian in China to write books that are critical of Mao, he felt he could not collude with the "conspiracy of silence" in what the Chinese rural community had suffered in recent history.
—The Independent
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MAO ZEDONG, founder of the People's Republic of China, qualifies as the greatest mass murderer in world history, asserts an expert who had unprecedented access to Chinese archival material. Speaking at the Woodstock Literary Festival, Frank Dikötter, a Hong Kong-based historian, said he found that during the time Mao was enforcing the 'Great Leap Forward' in 1958, in an effort to catch up with the economy of the Western world, he was responsible for overseeing "one of the worst catastrophes the world has ever known".