The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Haryana grows
Politicians, however, lag behind

AT 44 Haryana as a state has gained economically, managed political stability but remains socially backward with frequent, Khap panchayats dictating social life, honour killings remaining unchecked, gender ratio getting skewed, caste tensions deepening and Jat protests threatening peace and harmony. There is not much the successive Congress and INLD governments can take credit for. Of the two parties the Congress has the edge. For the first time in three decades people have re-elected a Congress government under Mr Bhupinder Singh Hooda. The fast-growing Haryana is still ruled by small-time politicians divided on caste lines and dubbed leaders of districts rather than of the state.

Political thinking has not matured in keeping with rapid economic development in the state. If Haryana’s growth rate (9.70 per cent) is far ahead of Punjab (4.5 per cent), it is in spite of politicians, not because of them. The biggest contributory factor to the accelerated growth is the state’s proximity to the national capital of Delhi. Industries have set up shop in Haryana not because of any major state initiatives but because of the convenience of location. Otherwise, the state still suffers from power shortage, red tape and corruption. The state debt has climbed 55 per cent to Rs 44,516 crore in the past three years because of poll-related giveaways and populist policies of the Hooda government. Once being revenue surplus, the state is now witnessing a ballooning fiscal deficit.

Fruits of growth are not evenly distributed in the state, which has large backward pockets. Many villages have no clean drinking water and access to healthcare. Ruling politicians think and act in terms of their constituencies and castes and development work is carried on accordingly. The Mirchpur violence and the Jat protests for reservations tested governance. However, the government’s incompetence and caste alignment stood amply exposed. There is no credible alternative to the Congress as people still recall with horror the days of INLD misrule. The BJP and the BSP stand marginalised. One wishes the state could produce as strong and tall politicians as it has produced sportspersons.

Yemen a new terror hub
Al-Qaida is exploiting poverty

Nowadays most attempts to strike terror in the West either originate in Pakistan or Yemen. But it seems the poverty-stricken Arab country will soon leave Pakistan behind in this destructive activity if serious efforts are not made to eliminate the Arab branch of Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network, Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula. Last week’s seizure of two cargo packages having PETN-based explosive devices, one at Dubai airport and the other at Midlands airport in England in US-bound flights, were addressed to synagogues in Chicago and came from Sanaa, the Yemeni capital. The Yemeni authorities have taken in custody a woman suspected to have links with Al-Qaida. Her interrogation may help in fighting the problem effectively if the government is serious about it. The past record of the government shows that it is not as sincere as it ought to have been in eliminating terrorism root and branch. There is need to closely study the success of Al-Qaida in finding a new sanctuary in the Arab land.

The US is alarmed at the emergence of Yemen as the new terrorist hub, but it is not doing enough to meet the threat. It has renewed the counter-terrorism agreement it had earlier signed with Yemen. As a result, the authorities in Yemen have launched a major drive to wipe out the terrorist menace. But many terrorism experts believe that the Yemeni government is incapable of fighting Al-Qaida successfully. Al-Qaida, well entrenched in Yemen, is growing stronger day by day, exploiting the poverty of the people there. Therefore, any anti-terrorism drive that ignores the poverty factor is bound to end in a fiasco.

Al-Qaida and some other terrorist networks in Yemen are prospering because they can easily find recruits to attack their targets in the West. They are engaged in destabilising activities in Saudi Arabia, too, the richest country that borders Yemen. But the Yemenis reportedly believe that the world will pay greater attention to their poverty once the peace in the West is threatened. A strange scenario, indeed! Terrorism acquiring the poverty dimension is a serious development and must be addressed with a more imaginative strategy.

Thought for the Day

You must build your House of Parliament upon the river ... the populace cannot exact their demands by sitting down round you.

— Duke of Wellington

ARTICLE

US-Pak troubled alliance
Implications for NATO’s Afghan drive
by Anita Inder Singh

Pakistan is a frontline state against global terrorism. That is why the US will give it $2 billion in military aid. To that extent Washington believes that Islamabad is ‘with us’. But the aid will be given with the caveat that it should be used to fight extremists, not India. That seems to be a tall order, given the fact that Washington knows that most military aid has been handy to Pakistan’s Army against India. The problem is that its military dependence on Pakistan against extremists leads it to take the chance that can put pressure on Islamabad to do more against the Afghan Taliban on its turf.

At the same time, the US does wonder whether Pakistan is really “with us”. Or is it “against us”? Questions about Pakistan’s ambivalent attitude to extremists will persist, although it has reopened the main supply route — the Torkham gate — through which 80 per cent of supplies are transported to NATO in Afghanistan. Its relationship with the US is also likely to remain prickly.

Since September 30, when two Pakistani soldiers were killed in NATO air strikes, public anger at the West has been strong in Pakistan. Islamabad retaliated by closing the Torkham border crossing to Afghanistan, while Pakistani militants torched more than 100 NATO convoys in retaliation for NATO attacks on extremist strongholds in northwestern Pakistan. The diplomatic and military headaches these events created will continue to have implications for America’s military dependence on Pakistan, and for NATO’s troubled Afghan campaign.

NATO claimed that its operations were unaffected, but Pakistan’s shutting of the Torkham turned the screw on the alliance. Another Pakistani border — crossing — Chaman in the south-western province of Balochistan — remained open, but NATO tankers came under Taliban fire there as well. NATO will continue to explore alternative routes through Uzbekistan and Tajikistan into northern Afghanistan.

Sadly, Pakistani goodwill towards the US, in evidence as Washington recently provided $362 million in flood relief and sent helicopters and crews to rescue flood victims, seems to have dissipated.

Pakistani anti-Americanism — never absent — has increased since the US started launching drone attacks on extremist strongholds in north-western Pakistan two years ago. Those attacks are made with the consent of Islamabad .

But Pakistani officials seem to do little to explain that to the public who are furious at America’s violation of their country’s sovereignty, while the military resents NATO cross-border attacks which have resulted in the deaths of several Taliban militants. For those NATO raids imply that Western troops could cross the Durand Line into Pakistan every day if they deemed that necessary.

Assaults on NATO trucks have often been revenge for American drone strikes on Taliban bases in northern Waziristan, and the Pakistani Taliban has admitted responsibility for the attacks on NATO convoys and vowed to carry out more.

The important questions are whether the Pakistani military intelligence (ISI) is behind the attacks on NATO tankers (some Americans believe they are) and whether the Pakistani military is able or ready to protect the supply routes across the Durand Line.

For now, both Pakistan and the US have drawn back from the brink. The US has apologised for the deaths of the Pakistani soldiers. And Pakistan, close to economic collapse, can hardly afford to lose the $2 billion largesse it gets from the US annually in return for the logistical support it gives NATO in Afghanistan. So, President Zardari’s unpopular government, trying to make the reopening of the Torkham palatable to their compatriots by giving them the impression that Islamabad has the upper hand, has told them that American apologies reflect a diplomatic victory for Pakistan.

Washington may remain dissatisfied. Pakistan’s military has yet to agree to America’s demand to quash the Afghan Taliban, whose activists enjoy safe havens on Pakistani turf. Even before the unprecedented summer floods triggered economic and humanitarian crisis and exposed the incompetence of the Zardari administration and its lack of popular support, the army had repeatedly rebuffed American demands to crack down on the Afghan Taliban. With the army now giving priority to flood relief work, the humanitarian exigency has raised awkward questions — not for the first time — about Pakistan’s reliability and uses as an ally against extremists.

After all, Pakistan’s interest in having a say in any reconciliation talks on Afghanistan and in its future political arrangements is at odds with its apparent inability either to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table, to stamp them out, or to protect NATO convoys from being attacked by Pakistani extremists.

Meanwhile, there is the danger that the Afghan war could spill over into Pakistan, escalating the theatre of conflict.

None of these problems is likely to be sorted out before US troops start a planned withdrawal in July 2011 and, in Washington, President Osama is drawing flak for announcing a troop surge as well as a pullout date. Withdrawal dates by great powers have always been construed by political parties as an announcement of the intention to retreat. Indeed, in India, the British statement of February 20, 1947, — that the Raj would be wound up by June 1948 — immediately comes to mind. It inspired the Muslim League to instigate communal carnage in Punjab, to force the British into partitioning the Raj before they left India. Confronted with an administrative breakdown beyond their control, they brought forward the departure date to August 15, 1947, so that they could divide and quit with the least possible damage to themselves.

Pakistan’s military and the Taliban have both interpreted Obama’s withdrawal date of June 2011 to mean that the West is defeatist, and that all they have to do is to wait until American troops retreat from Afghanistan, leaving them with a clear playing field.

That is why, back in Washington, some American analysts think that Obama wants to be seen as trying to win in Afghanistan, but is actually preparing the ground for failure.

The nagging question: Is Pakistan “with us or against us”?

Regardless of the answer, what the recent row between Pakistan and the US — as well as the announcement of more military aid — boils down to is that Washington DC and its European allies still lack a strategy which would enable their troops to beat an honourable retreat from Afghanistan — let alone to win there. Is it time for the US to review its dependence on Pakistan instead of showering it with more weapons?

The writer is Visiting Professor, Centre of Peace and Conflict Resolution, New Delhi.

MIDDLE

Octopus that broke many a heart
by Tejinder Singh Sodhi

WHEN Paul the Octopus, which died the other day, had predicted the defeat of Germany in the football World Cup, many people wanted to see it served to them on a plate. So did one of my friends, not because he loved the game and was dejected by the loss of Germany, but for an entirely personal reason.

He was friends with a girl whom he had met on Facebook. Soon, the friendship turned into love and they decided to marry. Their families, too, had no objection to this alliance.

After the attention the eight-legged creature gained, many websites started cashing in on it, and Facebook, too, introduced a page called “What did Octopus Paul predict for you”. This was where the entire trouble started in the life of my friend.

One fine day while he was chatting with his girl, she clicked on the link and, unaware of the consequences, she posted the ‘prediction’ on her wall that read: “You will be back with your old lover! This time it will work out!”

Soon a quarrel broke out between the two. My friend wanted to know who her ‘old lover’ was. First she thought that he was kidding but then she realised the intensity of the issue. He thundered: “I am asking you for the last time. Tell me who your old lover was and why you did not tell me about him before”.

She pleaded that there was none, but as the prediction was made by Paul the octopus, he did not listen to her pleas.

Before the matter could take an ugly turn, I intervened and asked my friend: “Did you see anyone putting three boxes with yours, your girlfriend’s and her old lover’s names in Paul’s tank and did you see Paul entering the box with the name of the other boy?”

It was only then that my friend was convinced that an eight-legged creature cannot predict the future of a creature with the largest brain. In the end now all is well between the two, but his desire to see Paul the octopus served to him on a platter remained till the octopus died a natural death.

OPED — YOUTH

Books are not for banning
Aditya Thackeray nudging the VC of Mumbai University to ban Rohinton Mistry's book Such a Long Journey for perceived aspersions against Maharashtrians more than a decade after it was written in (1991) is comic if not ludicrous.
Brian Mendonça

IF the dabbawalla of Mumbai knew such a furore was being created over him - that too via a writer sitting in Canada - he perhaps could be justifiably proud about himself in these times. But my guess is he doesn't know. Or more correctly, doesn't care. He goes about his business bringing food to the hungry office-goers at lunch time, satisfied he has served his fellow human beings and earned his just wage.

Aditya Thackeray nudging the VC of Mumbai University to ban Rohinton Mistry's book Such a Long Journey for perceived aspersions against Maharashtrians more than a decade after it was written in (1991) is comic if not ludicrous. I am sure his culture department could have found worthier and more contemporary books to fit the bill. He would be the darling of the said publisher of the book - because at least then people would read the book.

When OUP published James Laine's book on Shivaji it raised the hackles of the SS of Mumbai. They dutifully set about doing what they do best, viz. burning copies of the aforesaid book. The situation, I overheard, was redeemed by the wryness of a marketing director who is believed to have opined, “Ask them how many they want to burn, we will supply directly.”

But seriously, books have been banned for the flimsiest of reasons. Reasons which have been turned on their heads as time went by. In fact, the authors of reproach look downright silly today. Lady Chatterly's Lover, Doctor Zhivago and Alice in Wonderland are a few examples. Chatterly was too hot for prudish England, Zhivago too cool for Bolshevik Russia and Alice really should not be talking to animals who are equally (if not more) intelligent than her.

In Kerala, extremists cut off professor TJ Joseph's hand at the wrist this year for including some passages which purportedly made a reference to Muhammad.

Globalisation changed the rules when blanket bans sought to keep the faithful in place. The interdict on The Da Vinci Code by the Vatican seemed ineffective when one saw it flying off the shelves. In a more subtle way, the present Pope had also scuttled the work of Jesuit priest Anthony De Mello for his Zen-like persuasions in charming (but deadly to one's faith, it seems) books like Prayer of the Frog.

Reading Lolita in Teheran addresses this issue, where a group of female university students at a University in Teheran meet surreptiously to read books banned by the regime. I am not sure how the book ended but I do know, that despite the secrecy, they had a jolly good time.

Books and all art for that matter are expressions of personal taste. They have every right to flourish in a society and be spoken about. Art is one of the things that keeps us alive. It expresses a yearning for the absolute, a striving to becoming who we could be.

As Nobel Prize winner Llosa puts it:

“What happens with the press, TV and radio happens too, most of the time, with the universities. The government persistently interferes with them; teachers and students considered subversive or hostile to the official system are expelled and the whole curriculum reorganised according to political considerations . . .” So, something curious and paradoxical occurred. The realm of imagination became in Latin America the kingdom of objective reality; fiction became a substitute for social science; our best teachers about reality were the dreamers, the literary artists.

Will India become another Latin America, where fiction has to masquerade for history?

The BJPs meddling in NCERT textbooks to carry the party line between1998-2004 and the UPA government's attempt to do the same after 2004 show how vulnerable to attack are versions of reality (read history).

It is heartening to note that the right to freedom of speech has been championed in the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo. Xiaobo, a former literature professor, was arrested for circulating Charter 08, which calls for greater freedom in China.

Catherine Belsey's essay 'Literature, History, Politics' alerts us to the fact that these three disciplines, though seemingly distinct, are intertwined. As time unravels itself, we need to be increasingly more alert to the annexation of the first by the last and its implications on civil society.

The fact that Aditya (20) has called for a ban is met with impregnable savoire faire by Mistry. The last word to him, “He could lead, instead of following the old regime. He could say something radical - that burning and banning books will not feed one hungry soul . . . not in Mumbai, not in Maharashtra, not anywhere, not ever . . . he can think independently and he can choose.”

But somehow that line seems to me to be tilting at windmills. If human beings behaved with the basic norms of decency, this situation would have never arisen in the first place. The writer hopes for an ideal world, a world of tolerance. Has India already lost this capacity? In Mumbai, the Sena's writ runs large. It inspires fear. Like a parallel state government it dictates the future of this nerve centre of India. So far, attempts to curb its dynastic influence have been tokenistic. It is the political will that is lacking. How long do we have to wait for it?

The writer is Senior Editor, Encyclopaedia Britannica

When reason is a casualty
Today’s generation has been fed on a generous dose of liberalism and liberty is one of its most cherished ideals
Mohit Sharma

Recently, Mumbai University scrapped a book written by a Canada-based Indian Rohinton Mistry from its undergraduate curriculum. Mistry had been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize not so long ago. The book was scrapped in response to protests by a student group called Yuva Sena. They alleged that the book attacked certain popular individuals and slandered certain political groups, apart from attacking the ethos of Mumbaikars in general and was unfit to be included in the university’s curriculum for English undergraduates.

Yuva Sena is headed by Aditya Thackeray, who happens to be the son of Uddhav Thackeray, who in turn is the progeny of Bal Thackeray. The book in question is about a certain Parsi called Gustad Noble set in the year 1971 in the city of Bombay. The individual in question is Mr Bal Thackeray and the political group is Shiv Sena. The book talks about this man’s life unravels.

When tracing out a character, I would believe that good authors tend to cobble up a character which would be as close to their imagined reality as possible. Mistry’s imagined reality happens to be the same as our everyday one. It’s just that Mistry made the mistak of writing about his character’s political views in a place where political overlords tend to smash people to bits before negotiating with them.

The Mumbai University Vice-Chancellor was competing with Dominos’ 30-minutes-or-free offer in promptness of service when he delivered the scrapping order within a day of the protest. The Sena defends the action by talking about how moral censorship is necessary to pass on the right baton to the next generation. Sanjay Raut, Executive Editor, Saamna,the political mouthpiece of the Shiv Sena, writes in his column in a newspaper that the nature of censorship is such that the censor decides what is acceptable or not based on his/her own morality.

This becomes a problem when the demographic group you seek to protect from such influences is neither in need of protection nor “thinks” it needs protection when you live in a liberal democracy where such a view matters. Our generation today has been fed on a generous dose of liberalism. Liberty is one of our most cherished ideals and we fiercely protect our right to freedom of speech.

The Sena’s action is in direct conflict with this principle, as is evidenced by the huge hue and cry raised by students of the college on various social fora. The English undergraduates whom the Sena wishes to protect from such influences have a worldview far wider than most people would give them credit for, given that they’ve grown up reading a lot. They can discern, far more wisely than most of us, the difference between good fiction and plain bigotry.

In fact, this book was a part of one of those critical appreciation courses where they dissect an author’s work precisely to isolate and understand his intentions and leanings. The BJP, had initiated a similar exercise in the past. My CBSE Class X batch of 2004 had had such a politically motivated change of textbooks in the middle of its 9th-10th cycle because of which the entire Class of 2004 across the country now knows nothing of the World Wars, the rise and fall of Communism, the Russian Revolution, the atom bombs, the Nazis and countless other huge moments of the last 100 years which define our contemporary reality. Instead, the four chapters in our history text read more like insipid tourist brochures for various Indian monuments. This is just one example of how the myopic vision of a political party can render it incapable to prescribe textbooks for students in a balanced manner.

The constituents of this civil society are indifferent people who vent their fury on blogs and Facebook, talk about high principles and reason and feel contented. Clearly, we are no threat to the lumpen elements who want publicity and have the need to display their power. They had their way. We blogged on our blogs and talked at parties to impress upon our peers that we are well read. We chose to put up Sena-bashing status messages for a day and that was that. A book has been scrapped, but hey, no lives lost. Those who want to get offended, will. And as long as there are people who have the means to twist the system into submission, reason will always be a casualty.

— The writer is a final-year civil engineering student of IIT Bombay