|
|
|
|
|
The fall of Sensex
Arabian nightmare |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Law on child sex
Arabs cry for
democracy
“To be or not to
be”
AIDING
ART: A National Perspective The art-horse just
about trots
|
|
Arabian nightmare
As
the Arab world is getting engulfed in turmoil with most regimes feeling the heat of the unending protests in Egypt, one country outside that region that is
particularly unnerved is the US. Most Arab rulers have been surviving because of American financial and military support they get in return for protecting US interests in the area. Paradoxically, the people in the region are mostly anti-US, but those controlling the levers of power are either American stooges or supporters of the US scheme of things for the Middle East. They are the least bothered about the sentiments and aspirations of the public. So far they had no threat to their crown because the sole surviving super power was on their side. President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt would not have been in saddle for three long decades, despite his government’s failures on all fronts, to experience the outbursts of his people today had there been no US backing for him. But Mr Mubarak must be realising now that no administration in Washington DC can afford to protect pro-US regimes beyond a limit, when its own interests are threatened. The Obama administration has virtually dumped him and is working hard to find a suitable replacement for Mr Mubarak. It is doing all it can to ensure that the anti-American sentiment in Egypt and elsewhere in the Arab world does not get stronger. The US is also worried about the interests of Israel, its closest ally in the region. The new government that may come up in Egypt will have elements who may try to add to the difficulties of Israel. It will be interesting to watch how the regimes like those in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the UAE behave in the wake of the happenings in Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen and Syria. They should learn from the protests in their neighbourhood, where people have strongly expressed their desire for a democratically elected government. In the larger interest of their respective countries, the Arab rulers should begin to think about launching a political reform process to avoid the kind of turmoil being seen in Egypt.
|
|
|
Law on child sex As
though the young didn’t have enough laws to entangle their private lives with, here comes one more! A Draft Bill on Sexual Offences Against Children fixes 16 years as the age for consent. The bill is aimed at bringing under the legal purview a growing variety of sexual offences against children, like child pornography, trafficking, abuse by paedophiles, sexual exploitation by persons in authority, and checking communicable virus like AIDS being transferred through sex without consent. The intension seems to be good in principle. However, the bill apparently makes confusion more confounded. The age of consent is the minimum age at which a person is considered legally competent for consenting to sexual acts. Though often it does not appear in statutes, it varies in societies, cultures and time. In many countries of West Asia it does not apply because any sexual activity outside marriage is banned under the law. The father of our nation got married at 13. It had social sanction for conjugal relationship then. In modern India, all cases of sexual abuse against children have been tried under Sections 375 and 377 of the IPC. While Section 375 has also fixed 16 years as the minimum age of consent, there is no specific mention of offences against children. Section 377 fixes a separate age of consent for other kinds of sex — homosexuality, etc. Then there is conflict for the age of consent in foreign territories; even within the country, Manipur has fixed the age of consent at 14. In this confusing, contrasting and confounding scenario, it only adds to the puzzle! The bill, which is expected to be tabled during the upcoming budget session, needs to answer a few queries. India is among those societies where the age of marriage is higher (18) than the age of consent (16). According to UNICEF’s “State of the World’s Children-2009” report, 40 per cent of the world’s child marriages (outlawed in India in 1860) occur in India. Most of these marriages take place in rural areas and the age of the married couple is less than 16. Like Brunei, where a married couple’s consent is an accepted matter, irrespective of age, the same is applied to a large population of India. In the case of a marital dispute in such cases, which age will define violation of rights? And, will the young mature at different age for different kinds of sex? It just leaves one more bewildered!
|
|
|
Be self-reliant and your success is assured. — Anonymous
|
Arabs cry for democracy
The
central message of the people’s non-violent uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan and Yemen is that the Arab world, from the Mahreb to the Arabian Peninsula, is embarking on a new course of democracy and liberal political values sweeping aside authoritarian rulers. The protests are not likely to remain confined to the four countries mentioned above: tremors of the convulsion in Egypt will be felt in all parts of the Arab world and beyond. It is not surprising that Tunisia led the people’s revolt against homegrown dictators. In my dual appointment as India’s Ambassador to Morocco and (concurrently) Tunisia in 1967-1969 I had the opportunity to observe two different Arab societies of North Africa. Though Egypt and Tunisia shared the same religion – Islam – the textures, aspirations and orientation of their two societies differed widely. The Tunisians, inheritors of the values and civilization of ancient Carthage, Rome’s challenger, were modern and liberal in outlook and republican in spirit. There was already a small but growing and vibrant middle class with rising aspirations which, I thought, would make for stability and keep the country on its chosen path of democratic governance. Tunisia’s leader, President Habib Bourguiba, was a man with a philosophic bent of mind, moderate and conciliatory in his views with a penchant for peaceful approaches to political issues of the time. In my first meeting with him to present my credentials, he received me in his large but simply appointed office without the usual protocol and fanfare and with endearing grace and simplicity. During our half-hour meeting he spoke warmly of his profound respect and admiration for Gandhiji and Nehru. His own main concerns, he said, were for the strengthening of democracy and the well- being of his people. Tunisians generally were a happy and talented lot. It was sheer delight to talk with young Tunisians: their eagerness of spirit, enthusiasm, ambitions and hopes for their small country were infectious. Bourguiba, with his liberator’s halo, was not entirely free from the vanity and foibles of the great, but he had a pleasing personality and was a benign and popular leader. But, unlike Nehru, he did not create stable institutions of democracy, and his successor, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, turned out to be a tyrant wanting to reduce a republic into a hereditary dictatorship. Under his long rule, a dynamic country and its economy became stagnant, opposition leaders went into exile, and a frustrated middle class was driven to revolt. It should be said to his credit though that, when the crunch came he fled the country, facilitating, unlike Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, a quick and peaceful transition. Morocco, in contrast, was an absolute monarchy with the young and personable Mohammad V as the ruling monarch. The country, a tourist’s paradise, is rich in resources and there were no signs of oppressive deprivation. Moroccans are a traditional society, generally respectful of authority in a distant sort of way. Though the institution of monarchy seemed well accepted in the country, Mohammad V, nevertheless, faced a revolt led by General Oufkir, his home minister. There were other attempts to highjack or assassinate the King which he miraculously escaped. His successor has gradually softened the Palace’s grip on power. Therefore, the wave of protests sweeping the region may well pass Morocco by. On the whole, though, the Kings, Sheikhs (and other autocrats) of the Arab world are a creation, mostly, of retreating British imperialism. They have flourished because of the insulation provided by oil and great power protection. Rather sooner than later they will have to face the rising tide of people’s power. Arabs no longer consider themselves doomed to autocracy. Trouble had been simmering in the ancient land of Egypt for at least a decade because of a combination of factors —- a rapidly growing population and a rising youth bulge, increasing unemployment and deepening poverty; an explosive mix which under a corrupt and oppressive autocratic regime, with no safety valve of freedom or reform to accommodate people’s aspirations in a globalised world, became a deadly cocktail of catalytic eruption. A wiser Mubarak would have seen the writing on the wall and chosen either to reform the system or hand over the task to some one else and quit. He chose instead to unleash his brutal police, in plain clothes, mounted on camels, to assault the un-armed protesters in Cairo’s Liberation Square. His army has gently threatened the protesters to vacate the square and the streets. All this is not like to douse the fire of a popular revolt: it can only delay and make more difficult and, possibly, bloody the inevitable transition to democracy. Egypt and Time have moved beyond Mubarak and his Generals. A new, interim government, whenever it comes, is bound to be a blend of opposition groups, including the Muslim Brotherhood. There is no reason to fear the Brotherhood; it knows that extremism of any kind will not serve Egypt’s national interest and has been wary of Al-Quaida. It disavowed violence a decade ago. The tasks of organising a free and fair election, establishing the supremacy of Parliament and overseeing the framing of a new constitution will require an internationally recognizable figure to head the interim government. Nobel Laureate El-Baradei seems to be emerging a generally acceptable transition manager. A well-known Egyptian statesman, Amre Mousa, the Arab League’s Secretary-General and a highly distinguished former Foreign Minister, who joined the protests on February 3, would be another effective leader in these troubled times: Mousa was a popular Egyptian Ambassador to India in the 1980s. There are bound to be changes in the region’s international relations, but Egypt is unlikely to take to an extremist path. It will remain wary, as hitherto, of Al-Quaida and Shia Iran, despite the latter’s vociferous support for the protests in Egypt. Iran’s rising influence in Iraq has already deepened the Shia-Sunni fissures in the Arab world. Not surprisingly, Beijing’s rather odd response to the events in Egypt was typical of an autocracy: it admonished the protesters and urged the restoration of law and order! In contrast, the US has forthrightly supported the protester’s demand for Mubarak’s ouster. Washington will have to look at the Middle-East picture and new Egypt’s role in the region afresh and suitably reshape its policies. India is a natural supporter of democracy and Egyptians know this. It is neither necessary nor good policy for India to try to appear as a crusader for democracy in the Arab world. Nevertheless, our government’s anodyne statement falls way short of the prevailing public sentiment in support of the protests. The main political formations of the country, especially the Congress, should redress this shortcoming in public declarations in the coming days. The upheaval in Egypt is bound to have far-reaching repercussions in the Arab region. A strong impact on Israel and its relations with Palestine and Jordan is un-avoidable. Israel’s peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan will come under stress, especially if it takes recourse to fresh aggression in Gaza or Lebanon. Washington’s role in the region will remain important because of the unavoidable dependence on America of both Egypt and Israel. Prolonged turmoil in the region could result in rising oil prices and interruption in India’s trade with the region valued at $120 billion a year. Remittances from some three million Indian workers in the region could also fall and affect our economy. The Government of India should have contingency plans in place to deal with unforeseeable consequences of a spreading
conflagration.
The writer, a former Foreign Secretary, is President, Observer Research
Foundation, New Delhi.
|
||||||
“To be or not to be” THE lady of the house watched her lawyer husband pacing up and down the room wringing his hands, a dismal picture of a perplexed man submerged in problems bereft of any visible solutions. “To be or not to be,” he muttered. “I don’t understand what is that you should be and what is that you should not be,” quizzed the wife “You see, I am being considered for elevation as a Judge and ….” His wife exploded with joy, and jumped, before he could complete his words. “Yes, it is good, I know that, but you see if it comes through, I don’t become a judge, I become an ‘uncle judge’, with transfer ensuing”, he replied. “Uncle judge? But you don’t have any relations practising here?” asked the wife. “You forget”, he said. “You mean your brother? But he has not spoken to you for the last 30 years, ever since you had a row with him over the ancestral watch, and your nephew also swore by his blood to get it back and your sister, she burnt all her boats when she got married and I remember her saying to you at the time her ‘doli’ departed, that she was cursed having an inconsiderate brother like you ; and you do not have a son who is a lawyer and if these are the relations you have as lawyers, why should you be branded as an “uncle judge”. “You may be right, but you see the perception is that blood is thicker than water,” he answered. “Oh yes! And that is why it is called a bloody mess,” she said and added rather wistfully: “In any case in today’s times, water is more precious than blood, and if mixed with the right ‘liquefied’ ingredients it can lay the foundations of a much cozier and enduring relationship than a relative. “But this requires serious thought,” replied the lawyer and there has to be a solution to this issue. “Eureka,” cried the wife, “I have an idea”. “What is it?” asked the lawyer, resisting his urge to go down on his knees, to implore her to let go of the divine revelation. “You see, they have a problem with children who practise in the very court where the father is a judge. So why not make judges from lawyers who are fresh out of the law college; and retire them at forty? Most of them would be unmarried, hence no children and the ones born subsequently would be just in late teens and yet studying, when the judge retires and the question of the son being a lawyer during his tenure would not arise. Hey presto! The problem of ‘uncle judges’ is solved.” The lawyer looked at his wife endearingly. His admiration for her increased manifold and even as a smile caressed his troubled brow, the frown returned. “Yes, but your solution is futuristic and we are concerned with the present, I mean my elevation”. “Oh!” said the wife despondently and whispered to herself slowly: “To be or not to be”. It is a dilemma which tormented the wise bard of the yore, as it torments us today and she joined her husband in his ponderous
thoughts.
|
||||||
AIDING ART: A National Perspective
The two- dimensional frames and their rules of viewership are being dismantled. Matters of human inspiration are rebelling against the confines of canvas. Technological interventions in life are now spilling over to art, stretching scale and scope of art to an extent that demands rewriting the rules of the game. Do we have adequate infrastructure to address this fast changing scenario in the art world?
On
February 1, 2011, using its Street View technology, Google launched a virtual tool for art appreciation from a new perspective by capturing paintings in super-high resolution of 7 billion to 14 billion pixels. The internet giant lets users on its new Google Art Project website to see and experience the texture and intensity of a single brush stroke. With estimated viewership of 16 million it allows users to view art from museums around the world, including the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and Tate Britain in London, among others. This one web- stroke has created a stir within the art industry. While a young Indian engineer, Amit Sood, led this incredible project in the United States, the passion, adequate training, cohesive policy and infrastructure for art and aesthetics is woefully behind times in this country that lives and breathes art, at many levels. Artistic expression is the collective soul of civil societies that has the capacity to transform our perceptions, shape our identities and affect our lifestyles. Even as museums and art galleries are seeking new definitions, new approaches, new meanings and new opportunities to enhance learning, they have the capacity to offer visual education beyond the blackboard to bring about sustainable change. The world over art industry is increasingly being influenced by forces unleashed by the internet and social networks serving as hubs of exchanges that know no conventional boundaries...a far cry from what was traditionally within the domain of curatorial academe now on the cusp of a generational shift. Incredible India! that is an unparalleled treasure trove of classical, folk and contemporary art, needs to awaken, recognize and harness this soft-power for transformative growth, by taking some concrete steps in the coming years. There is an obvious problem of inadequate resource allocation to build infrastructure to support, sustain, aid, encourage patrons and expose practitioners to the multi-billion dollar business spawned by artists, dealers, collectors, brokers, auctioneers, conservators, suppliers, insurers, galleries, publishers, museums, libraries, retailers, students, the academic world and the cross-over nexus with the allied world of fashion, media, crafts and design. But more than the financial woes, the problem is with the lack of proper training of art administrators and professionals stemming from a systemic vacuum in informed leadership and creative vision. India needs a comprehensive Art Policy and an
implementation strategy aimed at a rural and urban cultural renaissance of sorts, for expressing, appreciating, celebrating, promoting and sustaining the arts industry that could in-turn be an economic driver for regional and national growth. The policy has to be tied to tourism, culture, commerce and education policies for it to be really effective. It will need active planning and resource projections, moveable and immoveable assets, accessions, collections management, cultural repatriation, export, tax mechanisms, regulatory framework, human resource development, gallery infrastructure training and assessment programmes, public-private partnerships, and other areas that need strengthening between Central and State agencies. Such an initiative, coupled with a rapid implementation strategy, accountability and enforceable performance metrics of a 2020 Master Plan, could significantly change the dynamics of pursuit for Art Education and Art Administration. It will also change perception of art and its place in our understanding of our identity as an ancient united diverse nation which is envisioning its future beyond the material. Given the embedded inertia in our systems, it may however, only be prudent to initiate short-term programmes to train bureaucrats and administrators who are already in charge of infrastructure and regulatory bodies to bring them up to speed on the best practices internationally, in conjunction with a more rigorous and long-term training for a new generation of cultural resource professionals and autonomous organizations to drive the resurgence and revival of our cultural institutions. Creative inspiration and artistic expression often gravitates to a socio-cultural milieu that spawns talent, as can be seen in cities like Montreal, Vienna, Florence, Paris, New York, Santa Fe, London and Bilbao, to name a few. Perhaps its time for our urban planners, including from here in Chandigarh to across the country to think seriously about creating cultural ambiences that attracts the arts community beyond the craft-based kalagrams, with a time bound sense of urgency and an eye for aesthetic detail. Vital to this process is to embed and endorse a method enabling minimal bureaucratic red-tape that plagues creative initiatives and its rapid realization. India has what it takes and the time has come to unleash its un-tapped potential. India born George Jacob, museologist, has been the founding director of three institutions including the NASA funded astronomy and cultural center in United States. His work spans 11 countries.
|
|
The art-horse just about trots The
art that is bought and sold in a growing art- market needs to be treated differently from the art for art's sake. For the buyers and collectors, art is an investment and is expected to grow on the parameters of a profitable industry which requires updating of infrastructure. The much hyped projection of five- fold growth in India's art- market, by the end of this decade rests on many assumptions. Compare a few facts; India's share in global art market is currently just about 0.5 percent, our neighbour China gets a whopping 17.80 percent share of the huge pie. In a single evening, when it has a major auction, Christie's does a sale of $ 500 million. India's entire year's sale of art does not exceed $300 million. There is a lot of hullabaloo over Indian art going global, but before the art- horse takes a gallop, it has to learn to trot. To channelise creative energies of over a billion people, we have just about a dozen reputed art schools. Most art schools have a colonial past, they were founded either during the colonial times by the Indians themselves, who were reformers or by the British rulers, with an eye primarily on commercial portrait making. Sheer laziness has resulted in teaching of old curricula, and the faculty refusing to adapt to new demands of technological interventions in the art world. Miniature art, which produced internationally acclaimed artists from Pakistan, thanks to a very innovative faculty at National College of Arts, Lahore, has not been introduced in the curricula in India, with the exception of Punjabi University, Patiala, where it was introduced six years back. A few institutions like Ravindra Bharati University, Shanti Niektan, Faculty of Fine Arts, MS University, Baroda, Sir JJ School of Art, Mumbai, Apeejay College of Fine Arts, Jalandhar, College of Art, New Delhi and a few more apart, the much touted BFA and MFA courses taught at the art colleges are aimed at churning out degrees rather than facilitating artistic pursuit of freedom and innovation. Whereas thousands of engineering and medical colleges were introduced in the last sixty years of independence, only one university was dedicated to promote creative arts at Khairagarh. None of our art schools come close to the reputation of the likes of Ecoles d'art, Paris, Rhode Island School of Design, or The Yale School of Art. Most successful artists feel, they could find their idiom despite a bad college, not because of it. In countries like China where 1500 new museums are projected to be completed by the end of this decade, emphasis is laid on filtering the human resource. State- run Central Academy of Fine Arts at Beijing, which trains 4000 artists in different genres, turns away 90 percent of the applicants. On a sprawling 33 acre campus, globally renowned artists like Liu Wei, Fang Lijum and Zhang Huan, whose works sell for over a million dollars are hired as faculty. Our home reality is rather different. An artist like Subodh Gupta, recognised globally for giving a new identity to Indian art has been pining to share his creative quest with young students of art. He has never been invited by any of the art colleges or a university to deliver a talk so far. Almost all the young celebrity artists (unfortunately, celebrity status is decided by the prize tag crossing the Rs one crore mark) like Subodh Gupta, Bharti Kher, Atul Dodiya, Jitish Kallat, Sudarshan Shetty and others are supported and promoted by foreign galleries and art promoters, who re- define the agenda of art. Subodh's works were bought by Francois Pinault, who established Palazzo Grassi Museum in Venice, Saatchi has promoted Indian art with several collections, including an entire collection of contemporary Indian artists, The Empire Strikes Back, which was bought by Charles Saatchi for his London gallery. A show of contemporary Indian art, partly curated by Bose Krishnamachari, still touring Europe is bought by Dimitris Daskalopoulos, a Greek businessman. Indian curators are almost absent from the art scene, often artists turn to curate their own works and that of others. Also, while there has been an extraordinary boom in the art market, this has not been reflected in government support- Indian government policy on contemporary art remains largely ineffective and it's funding inadequate. Instead of bringing in systems to promote art, the government imposed new capital gains tax on art sales. This was done to curb the so called gold- rush, the Wild- West setting in the art funds, which, despite all the wrong interventions still remain based on speculation. The fiasco of Neville Tuli's Osian's Art Fund ( which started with a corpus of Rs 102 crore ) is a classic example with controversies over art fakes and over rating of works marring its credibility within two years of its celebrated inception. Today, the fund is a dead horse that everyone loves to flog, but enough wisdom has not prevailed to set new guideline to make art investment transparent and reliable. Bangaluru has come up as a city that exemplifies the best that can happen when innovation is promoted, in IT sector. Our planners have failed to conceive of a town exclusively dedicated to art activity where festivals, symposiums, galleries and auction houses can open shop to create a thriving centre for art.
|
|
|
| HOME PAGE | |
Punjab | Haryana | Jammu & Kashmir |
Himachal Pradesh | Regional Briefs |
Nation | Opinions | | Business | Sports | World | Letters | Chandigarh | Ludhiana | Delhi | | Calendar | Weather | Archive | Subscribe | Suggestion | E-mail | |
