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‘Victory’ in Karnataka
Royals, Kings XI out
Shimla must be saved |
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Decoding the Dragon
Net-friendship
Humans
must resist tyranny
CHEMISTRY
MEDICINE
PHYSICS Corrections and clarifications
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‘Victory’ in Karnataka
Karnataka
Governor Hans Raj Bhardwaj’s recommendation to the President to impose President’s rule in the state under Article 356 of the Constitution and put the State Assembly under suspended animation is not entirely unexpected. Chief Minister B.S. Yeddyurappa may have won the confidence vote on the floor of the House on Monday, but the manner in which he proved his majority support was questionable. The House also witnessed chaotic and unruly scenes. Speaker K.G. Bopaiah’s role in disqualifying 11 BJP rebels and five Independents has sparked off a major controversy. He cannot escape blame for abusing his powers under the Tenth Schedule of the Constitution. He changed the configuration of the House, despite the Governor’s advice not to disqualify the rebels before the trust vote. Mr Bopaiah is thus charged with bailing out the tottering BJP government in a blatantly partisan manner. Of course, there are some grey areas in regard to the Speaker’s role under the Anti-Defection Act. Was he justified in rushing through the confidence motion by voice vote and not without a division in the House? Was it not incumbent upon him to give the BJP rebels and Independents adequate time to present themselves before him and defend their stand? Was he within his rights to disqualify Independents on the ground that those supporting the ruling party for over six months had ceased to be Independents? While constitutional experts need to dwell upon these issues — the Karnataka High Court’s ruling on the constitutional validity of the Speaker’s action is also awaited — there is need for clarity on the Speaker’s powers vis-a-vis the Tenth Schedule because Goa, too, has become a victim of partisan Speakers bailing out the ruling party during the trust vote. The Centre, on its part, will have to tread cautiously on imposition of President’s rule. The UPA has majority in the Lok Sabha but not in the Rajya Sabha. Consequently, getting President’s Rule ratified by the Upper House, as required under the Constitution, would be a tough task for the Congress. Moreover, the Janata Dal (Secular) — which has been in the forefront of the campaign for dislodging the Yeddyurappa government — would be an unreliable ally for the Congress in any future government formation in Karnataka. The Congress cannot forget how Mr H.D. Deve Gowda’s sons treated both the Congress and the BJP.
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Royals, Kings XI out
THE reverberations caused by the banishing of Kings XI Punjab and Rajasthan Royals from the Indian Premier League on Sunday are likely to be heard for long. The move is unprecedented, and so are the circumstances in which it has come. Ostensibly, the BCCI has made this drastic announcement after the IPL Governing Council meeting because the teams had violated shareholding and ownership patterns. But obviously, there is much more to it than what meets the eye. One reason why the Kings XI and Rajasthan Royals got the sack order was their “perceived proximity” to ousted IPL chairman Lalit Modi, whose hands are not exactly clean in the whole affair. There are numerous question marks over the allocation of TV rights, mobile rights and many other mega deals. In fact, there are also murmurs that Modi had stakes in these two teams through some front persons. There are serious money-laundering charges too. The Enforcement Directorate’s investigations have reportedly revealed that the exchequer suffered losses running into hundreds of crores of rupees because the IPL indulged in Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA) violations and money laundering. The government had reportedly told the BCCI in no uncertain terms that if it did not step in, government agencies would. The stiff action is a warning to the Kochi team which has been told to clean up its act in 10 days or face the music. It is almost certain that the aggrieved teams would go to court. That may lead to some more dirty linen being washed in public. In a way, that would be good because the rumours of dubious happenings behind closed doors have already cast a dark shadow on IPL affairs. It is necessary that there is a thorough clean-up at the earliest. Fans of the two teams are bound to feel disappointed. However, even they would want that no questionable happenings take place in the gentlemen’s game. |
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Shimla must be saved
A
boom in real estate has led to a haphazard expansion of cities. As prices and profits zoom, builders, bureaucrats and politicians join hands to subvert regulatory norms. Nowhere is this ominous nexus as much evident as in Shimla. The once-admired hill capital of Himachal Pradesh has witnessed a wild growth of a concrete jungle, strikingly captured in a photograph in The Tribune on Monday. Citizens, environmentalists and NGOs keep making feeble protests at the fast-depleting green cover but no one cares. Shimla has to be saved from its politicians, especially those in power. Two recent decisions of the BJP government in Himachal confirm the suspicion of it being in league with operators in the realty sector. One, the government plans to withdraw the ban on construction in Shimla’s 17 green pockets. The “Queen of Hills” has already over-stretched itself to accommodate a growing population. The pressure on the civic amenities is visible. Drinking water shortage and lack of parking space are driving tourists away to less-crowded destinations. Construction work on widening the roads, the dumping of debris on roadside and frequent landslides during the monsoon cause accidents and traffic jams, giving nightmares to daily commuters. Two, the power of clearing building plans is being vested in the Shimla Municipal Corporation, which has been a mute witness to numerous violations of its rules by the well-connected, including MLAs and bureaucrats. Rule enforcement is lacking almost in every town. Otherwise, how could 14,000 unauthorised structures come up in the state? Every town needs planned growth in keeping with its natural beauty and resources. The fact that the Shimla development plan has remained shelved for four years now does not inspire confidence in the state leadership’s ability to carry forward the save-environment drive. It has clearly no idea where the state is heading. Perhaps, judicial activism may save the state from its mission of self-destruction. |
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Forsake not words; forsake only words of envy and greed. — The Upanishads
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Decoding the Dragon
THERE can be no greater proof of failure of India’s foreign policy than the reality of our unsatisfactory relations with all our immediate neighbours. From Pakistan in the West to Nepal and China in the North, Burma and Bangladesh in the East and Sri Lanka in the South, our relations with these countries vary from hostility to indifference. China’s influence in countries on our periphery has been on the increase. In addition, China has this ‘String of pearls policy’. Though it is a nightmarish situation, India’s security establishment seems to sleep well. The Maoists’ problem and the one in Kashmir are security challenges being addressed in a cavalier fashion. Even if one is to discount the problems in the North-East, the overall security scene is disquieting. We have been decidedly and overwhelmingly complacent on the issue of national security. Not only has our foreign policy failed to create friendly environment on our periphery but grossly neglected the emerging threats. This policy suffered further setback when distant Japan, Australia and some South East Asian countries acquiesced to China’s claim that Arunachal Pradesh is a disputed territory. China has been calling it South Tibet and not a part of India. Moreover, China has declared Jammu and Kashmir a disputed territory and started stapling visas of visitors from that state. More recently, it has reaffirmed its stand on this issue by denying visa to a senior army officer posted in Jammu and Kashmir and who was leader of a military delegation to China. This stance of China and reportedly inducting large body of troops into Gilgit region of the Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (POK) is to give a fillip to the ongoing turmoil in the Kashmir valley, besides controlling any unrest in this part of POK. While China occupied large tracts of territory in Ladakh, Pakistan illegally acceded the Shaksam valley in PoK to it. China is also reported to be improving the Karakoram highway and setting out to build a high-speed railway line to Gwadar port on the Gulf of Oman, for transporting oil to Tibet and Xinjiang province from where it can be ferried to mainland China. There are suggestions flying thick and fast in the media that India must strongly protest against this Chinese move into PoK. But, protest to whom? China will summarily dismiss such protests and going to the United Nations will merely resurrect the old ghosts of Jammu and Kashmir. At best India can deny visa facility to Chinese, but what of the massive trade we have with that country? China’s policy keeps time on its side while complacency is our forte. Even keeping time on its side, China has been assiduously and with single-mindedness creating overall military capabilities and military infrastructure in Tibet and spreading its influence in countries on our periphery. It has with equal zeal and purpose followed the policy of using Pakistan as a proxy and a cheap option to tie down India locally. Then, there is the ‘String of pearls policy’ to squeeze India from all sides. China is building its naval strength at a furious pace and making forays into the Indian Ocean. We have slept through more than half a century, ignoring the emerging security scene and the gathering storms all around and within India. Not only have we been complacent but decidedly negligent of the emerging security threats, both internal and external. At 2 per cent of GDP for defence as against 7 per cent of China out of GDP, twice the size of ours, India’s lack of concern for its security ought to appear alarming, even to one with impaired vision and the dimwitted. In the real world, economic strength in the absence of military power is unsustainable. The gunboat diplomacy and wars of nineteen century were to capture markets and enhance influence and commerce for economic gains. The power play of the 21st century is going to be no different except that the form, formulations and contours of policy and coercive techniques will undergo a change. For long we have been indulging in a puerile debate on the issue of ‘development versus defence,’ as if the two are mutually exclusive and in no way reinforce each other. The mandarins in Delhi have been smug in a world of make believe. To quote Arun Shourie, “Corresponding factors that keep us from growing as fast as our potential are precisely the ones that weaken our defence. The same holds for constituents of defence: the choice is not, ‘valour or high technology,’ cyber warfare or conventional warfare or nuclear capability but capabilities across the broad spectrum.” China has developed the Gwadar port and it will have a strong naval presence there. This port is at the mouth of straight of Hurmoz through which oil supplies from the Middle East flow to India. The strategic importance of this move by China does not seem to have fully dawned on the Indian security establishment. The Chinese Navy will also have berthing facilities at the Sri Lankan and Burmese ports. Radars at Coco Island keep watch over the naval ship movement from mainland to Andaman and Nicobar Islands and India’s missile launches from the Balasore missile range in Orissa. India has helplessly watched developments in Nepal. It is with China’s help that the Sri Lankan government was able to decimate the Tamil Tigers. China, even with a late start, has galloped ahead, leaving us far behind in the fields of economy, science and technology and military capabilities. It is not our case that the developments on the Tibet border and in POK are the harbinger of an early conflict, but these do not bode well for India. These developments need to be taken as a wake-up call and shake ourselves out of our complacency and stupor. Activating a few airfields and adding some roads or two mountain divisions and deploying two squadrons of fighter aircraft or lodging a protest will not do. These are knee-jerk reactions and reminiscent of our actions leading to the 1962 war with China. India as a nuclear and emerging economic power, in the midst of potentially unstable regimes and with ambitions to exercise influence for the stability and security of the region and to safeguard vital national interests, cannot have military capabilities which in no way match those of the potential adversaries. Equally, an antiquated and potentially dysfunctional decision-making and operational system in the defence apparatus is anathema to the successful conduct of defence and foreign policy. India’s ability to meet future security challenges is highly suspect and this state of affairs cannot prevail any longer without seriously jeopardising national security. There is, therefore, the requirement of evolving a comprehensive and long term national security policy taking into account the current and future security concerns and synergising these with foreign policy. Thereafter, we must work assiduously to develop military capabilities backed by diplomatic thrusts to meet the security challenges of the future and be in a position to exercise influence in our immediate neighbourhood. We need to double our efforts to enhance our economic strength and create compatible defence
capabilities.
The writer is a former Deputy Chief of Army Staff
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Net-friendship
I am fortunate to belong to a generation having as many love choices as one has while purchasing soap at a grocery. Being uninitiated to the internet, I had asked my Net-savvy friend about its benefits. He named forging friendship as one of them. I admired his nobility of having such a lofty notion of human relationship. I recollected the adage of one of my teachers of yore, who had once told a stupefied generation that friendship is ‘all giving and asking for nothing in return’. Oblivious of my teacher, I was now under the tutelage of my friend of the present, who was keen on delivering a lecture on “The art of modern friendship”. The first part of his lecture was delivered on “Net and the art of friendship”. His elocution enlightened me on how the world and its deliverance lay in embracing Facebook. Brimming with wisdom, I decided to upload a handsome looking picture of mine on Facebook. In a few days, I received the first declaration of love. “I am Anita and I wish to see you,” the message was candid. I was reminiscent of one by the same name with whom I had studied once. So, I wrote back: “Are you the same Anita whom I met before?” The message was reciprocated, “Yes, I am the same, your Anita. Why do you not send me a scrap?” But I was puzzled as her photograph gave the impression of a woman much older than I had anticipated. So, I wrote, “How could you change so fast? You look like my aunt!” I had unwittingly enraged her as she wrote back, “You rat! Have you no manners to talk to a lady? Come hither and I will show you your aunt. Idiot!” Undaunted, I tried another hand at Net-friendship. I browsed on till I paused at one photograph. She was the one, I decided and wrote to the lady in nervous undertone, “Hi, M’m! I watched your snap and it was divine. Would you mind to have platonic relationship with me?” Bewildered, she wrote: “What is that you wrote, Plato? I know only Alto. Do you have one?” I was jolted. So, I went for the new gizmo, the cell phone. My friend, a ‘graduate’ at love-management unleashed a message, “Hi, babe! Wanna be my friend?” In no time came the reply, “Yea, dude! Dun!” I was amazed at the rate at which he succeeded in forging a relationship. I ventured to ask him the principles of Love management. “3Ms,” he said, elaborating, “Muscle, Money and Media.”
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Humans must resist tyranny
Mario Vargas Llosa Finally, Llosa has won the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature, being the second South American after Garcia Marquez, whom he has never seen eye to eye and, on one occasion, is known to have punched him at a public gathering. Announcing the award, the Swedish Academy praised Llosa “for his cartography of the structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual’s resistance, revolt and defeat.” Undoutedly, he has always asserted that the novel is inherently an interrogatory and an oppositional genre and should develop and enlarge life: “I don’t think there is a great fiction that is not an essential contradiction of the world as it is. The Inquisition forbade the novel for 300 years in Latin America. I think they understood very well the seditious consequence that fiction can have on the human spirit.” Though his writings are infused with (a representation of) power and corruption within the Peruvian society, he has often expressed his delight at not joining politics. In A Fish in the Water, the memoir that Vargas Llosa published in 1993, he recollected the advice with which Octavio Paz tried to discourage him from entering politics: “incompatibility with intellectual work, loss of independence, being manipulated by professional politicians, and, in the long run, frustration and the feeling of years of one’s life wasted.” Nevertheless, the decadence, the impoverishment, the terrorism, and the multiple crises of Peruvian society drew him to the challenge of seeking “the most dangerous job in the world.” Llosa’s bid for the presidential election many years ago made anonymity impossible. He is of the view that his life as a novelist and a playwright would have been ruined as both politics and writing “are activities that demand total dedication and have a very different attitude towards many things. As a politician, you don’t really have the independence, the isolation that is indispensable for a writer; I knew that would mean at least a temporary sacrifice.” It is apparent, therefore, that his defeat in the elections was a blessing, enabling him to focus on writing. Accentuating the close link between writing and politics, especially in Latin America, Llosa elaborates: “The basic problems are not solved yet in our countries. They are not like advanced Western societies where the basic model is more or less agreed upon by everybody, and writers don’t feel pushed to intervene. But in countries where nothing is settled, where basic decisions are still uncertain, I think that pushes writers to be much more engaged in political matters — as they were in Europe in the 19th Century.” Llosa has played a fundamental role in an attempt to fashion a Latin American literary tradition and revitalize the Latin American novel. The inspired output and the theoretical and critical fervor has always had close links with the ongoing cultural growth, an innate critical self-awareness of its history and local reality being the source of the efforts towards political, economic and cultural revolution. Llosa is loved by millions around the world, especially in his country, Peru. He has written more than 30 novels, plays and essays which are powerful satires on Latin American backwardness and machismo, with an ingenious exploration of the myth and legend of Peru, setting him somewhat apart form his other fellow writers. “They’re not only fantastic novels that read beautifully”, Ruben Gallo, a professor of Spanish-American literature remarked on hearing the news about the award. “He’s one of the authors who in the 20th century has written the most eloquently and the most poignantly about the meeting point between culture and politics in Latin America.” The Time of the Heroes, a savage burlesque on life at a Peruvian military academy, remains his finest book. The Green House is more experimental. And Conversation in the Cathedral remains one of the most horrifying and outstanding portraits of political evil, a monumentally gripping novel. His doctoral dissertation on Garcia Márquez was followed by several books on literary criticism, among them La Orgía Perpetua. The Bad Girl is irresistible. The ascending bourgeoisie and the constant struggle between the civilised and the barbaric marks the overall character of his writings showing his profound conscientiousness in the development of national literature. With Julio Cortázar, Carlos Fuentes, and García Márquez, Vargas Llosa is among the most distinguished writers, whose endeavour has been to buttress the literary foundations of their land. Although Vargas Llosa has followed the tradition of social protest of Peruvian fiction, exposing political sleaze, racial prejudices and violent behavior, he has underscored that a writer should never negotiate artistic aims for ideological half truths. He has written widely on how other Latin American nations have adopted the free market economy, except Peru, which continues to live in miserable poverty. For Llosa, the need of the hour is concern for his country, and this is something which refuses to disappear in his fiction. The milieu of his novels resounds with disappointed dreams for a more flourishing Peru within the murky Peruvian history. He has always believed that “humans must resist (tyranny), especially at the beginning. Later it is harder to resist once the system is in place. But it is always possible.”
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CHEMISTRY Richard Heck, who retired from the University of Delaware and now lives in the Philippines, Ei-ichi Negishi at Purdue University in Indiana and Akira Suzuki of Hokkaido University in Japan all work in a field called organic chemistry, not the “organic” like in organic foods, but a reference to carbon, the basis of life as we know it. “Carbon-carbon bonds are the lifeblood of organic synthesis,” said Dr. Jeremy Berg, director of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences at the U.S. National Institutes of Health. “If you think about building a house, the carbon-carbon bonds are the framing,” added Berg, whose agency has helped fund Negishi’s work for 20 years. Often when a trio of scientists wins a Nobel prize, they have either worked together or built upon and improved one another’s work, but in this case the three worked in parallel and each has a chemical reaction named after him. The prize was awarded for their various catalyzation techniques using palladium, a rare metal in the same general family of elements as platinum. The palladium is the catalyst, meaning it helps make a chemical reaction occur more quickly or efficiently. In this case it works almost like a matchmaker, pulling together carbon molecules and then butting out. “You only need a small amount,” Berg said. “It helps make the carbon-carbon bond, gets released and then you can use it over and over again,” he added. “It’s part of the green chemistry trend.” Being able to speed up the building process can help scientists synthesise compounds that otherwise would be hard to make. It revolutionizes the kinds of techniques that chemists have available to make new medicines and new plastics and new materials.
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MEDICINE A
MAVERICK British scientist, who became known as the “father of IVF” despite once being considered an outsider to
Robert Edward
The Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden said that Professor Edwards’ contributions represented a milestone in medicine. His work led to widely used IVF techniques which have allowed an estimated 4.5 million “test tube” babies to be born worldwide over the past 32 years. Tributes to Professor Edwards flowed in from colleagues, scientific leaders, politicians and the research council that once denied him funding — a private donation in the end allowed him to continue the work that led to the world’s first successful IVF pregnancy. “The MRC is delighted by the award which recognises Professor Edwards’ dedication to ensuring his early research translated into clinical practice,” said Declan Mulkeen, director of research at the research council. “The MRC didn’t fund Edwards’ work in the 1970s for a range of reasons, including safety and ethical reservations present at the time. In the 1970s, infertility research was given a lower prominence in research funding priorities and in clinical practice,” Dr Mulkeen said. Professor Edwards, a blunt-speaking Mancunian, started studying IVF using the egg cells of rabbits. He achieved his first successful fertilisation of human eggs in a test tube in 1969 and had the insight to realise that human fertilised eggs would not develop beyond the first cell division unless he allowed them to mature within the ovaries before removal. The Nobel committee said that he clarified how human eggs mature, how different hormones regulate the maturation process and at which point the eggs are most susceptible to being fertilised by sperm. With Dr Steptoe, he also found ways of obtaining eggs from patients in a safe way, using the then relatively controversial technique of
laparoscopy.
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PHYSICS TWO Russian-born scientists shared the 2010 Nobel Prize for physics for showing how carbon just one atom thick behaved, a discovery with profound implications from quantum physics to consumer electronics. Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov of the University of Manchester in England conducted experiments with graphene. One hundred times stronger than steel, it is a new form of carbon that is both the thinnest and toughest material known. “Since it is practically transparent and a good conductor, graphene is suitable for producing transparent touch screens,
Andre Geim (left) and Konstantin Novoselov “My plan for today is to go to work and finish up a paper that I didn’t finish this week,” he said. “I just try to muddle on as before.” Novoselov said he was keen to move on. “I’ve had a bit too much graphene in my life-I’ve been working on it for seven years now-so we want to explore a little bit away from this area,” he said.
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Corrections and clarifications
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In the headline “Curtain down on Diwali mela in Sec 17, 22,” (Chandigarh Tribune, Page 1, October 11), should have been “Curtains down…”
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The headline “Crushing wins for Akhil and Amandeep,” (Page 22, October 8), is incorrect. It can be a crushing defeat but not win. The word ‘wins’ is incorrect usage.
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The box “Taliban destroy over 50 NATO vehicles in Pak,” (Page 17, October 8), had been published on October 7 on the world page.
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In the headline “Spoil sports at the CWG” (Lifestyle, Page 4, October 8), ‘spoilsports’ should have been one word.
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The headline “Kannad dance drama treat to art lovers,” (Chandigarh Tribune, Page 2, October 11), should have been “Kannada dance drama treat for art lovers”. Despite our earnest endeavour to keep The Tribune error-free, some errors do creep in at times. We are always eager to correct them. This column appears twice a week — every Tuesday and Friday. We request our readers to write or e-mail to us whenever they find any error. Readers in such cases can write to Mr Kamlendra Kanwar, Senior Associate Editor, The Tribune, Chandigarh, with the word “Corrections” on the envelope. His e-mail ID is kanwar@tribunemail.com. Raj Chengappa,
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IN
an earnest search for realism through the artistic portrayal of Latin
American nature, myth and society, the Peruvian writer Mario Vargas
Llosa stands as one of the most important contemporary novelists.
European and nativist tendencies elbow each other in the multi-ethnic
climate that he is located in. A Peruvian social activist, novelist,
playwright, essayist, journalist, literary critic, he emerges in his
novels as a writer of romance and seduction, which though a far cry
from the Latin American political novel, still involves the reader in
Peruvian history.
THE three winners of this year’s Nobel Prize for Chemistry all developed new ways to make carbon atoms stick to one another-a mundane-sounding process that in fact underlies the very basis of life. The processes can be used to make new drugs-notably cancer drugs based on the toxins produced by a Caribbean sea sponge-but also to create electronics and a variety of other compounds.
the medical establishment, has Professor Robert Edwards, 85, won the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine for his pioneering work on the in vitro fertilisation of human eggs that led to the birth of the world’s first IVF baby, Louise Brown, in 1978. Professor Edwards, whose funding request for IVF research was turned down by the Medical Research Council (MRC) in the 1970s, is the sole recipient of this year’s prize, which cannot be awarded posthumously. His co-worker, the gynaecologist Patrick Steptoe, died in 1988.
light panels and maybe even solar cells,” the committee said. Novoselov, 36, is a dual British-Russian citizen while Geim, 51, is a Dutch citizen. A committee official said Novoselov was the youngest physics laureate since 1973. Geim, speaking at a Nobel news conference via telephone, said he had not expected the prize and would try not to let the news change his routine.