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Libya
after Gaddafi Crossing
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Right to
turban
Blockades
of many kinds
Watching
the night sky
The
West may be celebrating his death, but that’s just an accident of
timing Success in Libya must
not justify new adventurism
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Crossing the limit
Complaints
of banks engaging agents or musclemen to recover pending dues through the seizure, sale or auction of mortgaged movable or immovable property have become frequent and courts have often deplored the high-handedness resulting from forcible recovery. The Punjab and Haryana High Court has come to the rescue of victims of excesses committed by banks and these include the State Bank of India, the country’s premier government-owned bank. A recent law has empowered banks to engage agents or enforcement agencies to take forcible possession of a mortgaged property in case of a loan default. This came after banks had got saddled with unmanageable bad loans or “NPAs (non-performing assets in banking jargon) which crippled their functioning as defaulters engaged them in protracted legal wrangles. The securitisation law is meant to strengthen the banks, some of which have, however, started misusing the power. The RBI has laid down clear guidelines for the appointment and training of agents and a process to be followed for auctioning the pledged property if the loanee violates the contract. The high court has held that a bank cannot claim legal charges or amounts paid to an enforcing agency from borrowers as it is a “reward” for services rendered. It is surprising that banks still do not strictly follow the RBI norms even though the apex bank has warned them of a temporary or permanent ban in case of persistent abusive practices. The loss of reputation — for the bank as well as the customer — is not insignificant as such cases are widely publicised in the media. In today’s world when the customer is the king, banks have to be fair in their dealings and act according to the prescribed rules. On the other hand, courts should see to it that wilful defaulters do not find shelter in dilatory judicial procedures to avoid or delay loan repayments or push for one-time settlement of loans.
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Right to turban
The
issue of Sikhs being allowed to wear turbans in France crops up again and again, largely because of the lack of progress on the part of the French in allowing the Sikhs to wear turbans in government institutions. Ever since 2004, when a law was passed in France that forbids the wearing of any ostensible religious symbol or attire, which shows a religious affiliation, in public schools and on photograph identification, life has changed, for many Sikhs living in France, including those French Sikh schoolboys who have been expelled from their schools as a consequence of their refusal to remove turbans from their heads. The logic of the law, which also bans schoolchildren from wearing Christian crosses, Jewish yarmulke and the Islamic hijab, is not difficult to understand, given the history of clashes between the church and the state in France, and thus, the aggressive stance on secularism, which manifests as strict official neutrality in religious affairs and not allowing any proselytising in public buildings. With people of many ethnic origins and religious denominations now settling in France, it might, however, be argued that a degree of flexibility is necessary to deal with emerging situations. A modern democratic nation, that France is, must be able to re-examine its position so that it can cater to the needs of the minorities, while upholding its basic tenets. External Affairs Minister SM Krishna rightly took up the matter with his French counterpart, Foreign Minister Alain Juppe, but it seems that political leaders in the two countries will have to work harder to resolve what has become a contentious issue between the two nations. India and France share a deep relationship which should surely enable the two nations to find a way by which fundamental rights to education and dignity of some French citizens and Indian residents there are not impinged, especially those of the future generations who face hurdles in their schooling because of the enforcement of such rules.
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Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it stands than to anything on which it is poured. — Anonymous
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Blockades of many kinds The
Manipur blockade has gone far beyond a demonstrative measure and must be ended. The ordinary people have suffered enough. The Kuki-Naga quarrel at the root of the agitation is esoteric for most and politically whipped up by ethnic chauvinists on both sides. The state government is caught in a bind while the Centre appears to have been passive for far too long, hoping that the problem will go away by itself. A prolonged stalemate could erupt in anger. The Kukis claim that they have been neglected by the administration and oppressed by the Nagas. They demand the partitioning of Kangpoki sub-division of the Naga-majority Senapati district to form a Kuki-dominated Sadr Hills district in which their development and cultural prospects will be brighter. The United Naga Council that straddles Manipur and Nagaland sees in this a dark plot further to divide the Naga homeland and frustrate the goal of a united Nagalim. In order to force the issue in their favour, the Kukis have blockaded both the Dimapur-Kohima-Imphal and Silchar-Jiribam-Imphal national highways, only to find themselves trumped by the Nagas, who control the upper sectors of both roads connecting Manipur with Assam and the Indian heartland. Trucks have been burnt and movements forcibly stopped, victimising people on both sides but especially those living in the Imphal valley and further south. Prices of fuel, daily necessities and medicines have sky-rocketed. The blockade has been on for nearly 90 days, leading to distress, helplessness and despair. Whatever the state government and the Centre have done has been of little avail. Some essential supplies have been airlifted, but this has been no more than a minor palliative. The issue, obviously tricky, is clearly political. It is time for the Centre to demand opening of both roads for the movement of essential supplies within 48 hours, with talks to follow to resolve the issues in contention, failing which it must be prepared to use the military to open up both routes. Some will argue that such a move may spark violence. The answer is that violence is being and has been used for three months to strangle an entire people. The status quo is unacceptable. A whiff of firmness after a display of extraordinary patience (or inaction), coupled with mediatory and practical efforts to restore harmony, will pay dividends. If governance fails, everything fails and things could spiral out of hand. A parallel initiative would be to negotiate emergency supplies for Manipur from and through Myanmar and Bangladesh, via Chittagong. The current crisis underlines the urgency of improving connectivity to and from Manipur (and in and to the Northeast generally), especially by improving the Silchar-Jiribam-Imphal highway. This route will, in any case, have to be realigned to overcome submergence should the Tipaimukh hydroelectric project move forward as it should. The long-term answer would seem to lie in pushing forward with the Naga peace talks and commencing a similar dialogue with the Kukis and other groups in a bid to understand and allay their fears and misgivings as ethnic entities. In the interim, the Sadar Hills Kukis could be granted a non-territorial council with appropriate institutional arrangements to ensure their development and cultural advancement even as the Naga majority areas within Manipur are granted similar autonomy within a non-territorial Nagalim. This would safeguard their interests without dismembering Manipur, Arunachal Pradesh or Assam on each of which the Naga underground has territorial claims that can only be made good by consent, which has thus far proven to be totally elusive, or by the kind of pragmatic settlement suggested here or any other better idea. The Church exercises a powerful and positive influence and should be brought into the dialogue more directly to arrive at a just and honourable settlement. Delicate negotiations such as are in progress between the NSCN-IM leadership and the Centre cannot be forced. Yet, dilatoriness could also bring in train its own problems as the current situation is clearly far from ideal. The Naga underground virtually runs a parallel administration through parallel taxation (or extortion), though everybody winks at the ground realities. Talks with the Metei underground would also be in order as Meitei nationalists have their own historical grievances going back to the alleged manner in which Manipur’s merger was effected and the status accorded to this ancient kingdom and its cultural symbols. An agreed form of words to express regret for any inadvertent hurt or misunderstanding caused in the past is surely worth exploring as a path to reconciliation. Talks with ULFA are on and there are many other ethnic groups that nurse real or imagined grievances. These should all be addressed, and the message should go out that none will go unheard and no legitimate and reasonable accommodation will be denied. The past is behind us and its perceived wrongs can only be redeemed by building a better future together, within an Indian commonwealth of equal peoples. Telengana has been on the boil too and here again the Centre must act swiftly to avert a dangerous breach in national cohesion. The problem is that the Congress has blown hot and cold on any further state formation and has once again addressed the problem only on calculations of short-term electoral and political gains. Half a dozen demands for new states are on the anvil and more will be broached. On what criteria of economic viability, administrative convenience, natural resource optimisation, security and cultural factors should a solution be found? There is a case for many more, smaller states. How many may be too many? And if something is conceded would it open a veritable Pandora’s Box as some fear? These questions are best answered by a blue-riband commission of men and women of wisdom and experience who have no axe to grind. Let them take stock and see what countervailing institutions or arrangements might be put in place like the old Zonal Councils (that have been all but wound up), river basin authorities, natural resource regions, transport corridors and geo-strategic or common security regions, special urban government mechanisms and more empowered panchayati raj bodies. The commission should be set up in consultation with all major parties and the states, and its report submitted after the next general election. Mamata Bannerjee’s offer of talks with West Bengal’s Maoists and the Home Minister’s repeated clarification that the latter need not surrender their arms but only not use them or resort to other forms of violence, intimidation and regrouping while the dialogue is on should not be allowed to wither on the vine. Extension of the Fifth Schedule to the states currently not covered by it and its honest implementation alongside the Supreme Court’s Samata judgement regarding development and corporate social responsibility point to the direction in which the country must travel to promote growth with equity and local
participation.
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Watching the night sky Few
of us spend much time wondering why the nature is the way it is”, observes Carl Sagan, the famous astro-physicist. Going back into my childhood days I recollect that watching the night-sky and counting the stars from their ‘charpoys’ on the roof-tops was an obsessive pass-time of all the villagers. The pole star, the Ursa Major, the Akash Ganga, Mars and the Saturn were the objects around which countless mythological stories were woven. ‘Akash Ganga’, the Milky Way though hazy in view, was clearly discernable because of massive cluster of stars that stretch across the sky. The elders said it was the pathway to heaven for those who followed a righteous path on earth. Just as the pole star helped the navigators on the vast oceans find their direction, some stars were of great help to the farmers. Their position in the sky made them guess when to get up to yolk their bullocks for going to the fields. These were their dependable watch clocks for they knew nothing of wristwatches or time clocks then. None could satisfy the curiosity of the children how young Dhruv could become a pole star and that his mother Suniti stays with him close by. Equally mystifying was the belief that the celestial canopy was the abode of the dead who become stars after their death. Inquisitiveness about the stars and the planets evoked the only answer: “Us ki maya woh hi jaane” (God alone understands the mystery of his creation). Weary of the day’s toil and used to starting their day early, all discussions about the mysteries of the stellar space ceased as ‘gentle sleep’, ‘nature’s soft nurse’, descended from the heavenly splendour with opiate effect. I sometimes used to remain awake for long hours trying to figure out what the sky and stars really were. There was no answer how far they were and why they were there. Nothing was more awe-inspiring than the shooting star. Its bright trail illuminated the entire sky. The elders used to spit on the roof to ward off its evil effect as they believed that someone big had passed away. Nothing enthralled me more than the complete dominance of the sky by the moon making even the bright stars look dim and the earth cool with its sheen of moonlight. Stories about the moon were fascinating. That it travels on a chariot like the sun was a common belief. The shadow on the moon’s surface was commonly believed to be silhouette of an old lady — perhaps moon’s mother — spinning at her wheel. Some thought it was just a rabbit enjoying the moonlight. Man’s landing on the moon, space explorations and what Aryabhatt, Copernicus and Galileo have said about the Sun and the earth have made no difference to the wondrously beautiful that the night sky remains. It continues to cast its spell and till either astronomy or mythology can fully fathom the world of universe, it will remain baffling to the inquisitive and the
ignorant.
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The West may be celebrating his death, Robert Fisk
We
loved him. We hated him. Then we loved him again. Blair slobbered over him. Then we hated him again. Then La Clinton slobbered over her BlackBerry and we really hated him even more again. Let us all pray that he wasn’t murdered. “Died of wounds suffered during capture.” What did that mean? He was a crazy combination of Don Corleone and Donald Duck — Tom Friedman’s only moment of truth about Saddam Hussein — and we who had to watch his ridiculous march-pasts and his speeches bit our lips and wrote about Libyan tanks and marines and missiles that were supposed to take this nonsense seriously. His frogmen flipped and flapped through Green Square in the heat and we had to take this rubbish at face value and pretend that it was a real threat to Israel; just as Blair tried to persuade us (not unsuccessfully) that Gaddafi’s pathetic attempts to create “weapons of mass destruction” had been skewered. This, in a country that couldn’t repair a public lavatory. So he is gone, the colonel who was once beloved of the Foreign Office (after the coup against King Idris), then guarded as a “safe pair of hands”, then loathed because he sent weapons to the IRA, then loved, etc, etc. Can you blame the man for thinking he was a good guy? And did he perish so? Shot down while trying to resist? We lived with Ceausescu’s death (and that of his wife), so why not Gaddafi’s? And Gaddafi’s wife is safe. Why shouldn’t the dictator die thus? Interesting question. Did our friends in the National Transitional Council decree his demise? Or was this “natural”, a death at the hands of his enemies, an honourable end to a bad man? I wonder. How the West must have been relieved that there would be no trials, no endless speeches from the Great Leader, no defence of his regime. No trials mean no accounts of rendition and torture and no cutting of sexual parts. So let us not recall any grovelling to Gaddafi. More than 30 year ago, I went to Tripoli, and met the IRA man who sent the Semtex to Ireland and protected the Irish citizens in Libya, and the Libyans were quite happy that I should meet them. And why not? For this was a period in which Gaddafi was the leader of the Third World. We got used to the ways of his regime. We got used to his cruelty. We connived at it, once it became “normal”. Thus it was important to finish the documentation of his viciousness on our behalf. Indeed, the end of any juridical evidence of torture by Gaddafi’s regime care of (of course) and on behalf of the UK government would be a good thing, wouldn’t it? The UK woman who knew all about this torture — unnamed but I know her name, so make sure she does not misbehave again — will she be safe from prosecution (which she should not be)? And will we all make cosy with Muammar Gaddafi’s mates in the aftermath of his demise? Maybe. But let us not forget the past. Gaddafi remembered the Italian colonial rule in Libya, the repulsive Italian rule during which every Libyan had to walk in the gutter when confronted by an Italian, when Libya’s heroes were hanged in public, when Libyan freedom was regarded as “terrorism”. The oil men and the lads and lassies from the IMF are going to be treated no better with the same servitude. The Libyans are smart people. Gaddafi knew that; although, fatally, he thought himself smarter. The idea that these tribal people will suddenly “globalise” and become different is ridiculous. Gaddafi was one of those Arab potentates for whom the moniker “crazy” was fitting, yet who spoke a kind of sanity. He did not believe in “Palestine” because he thought the Israelis had already stolen too much Arab land (correct) and he did not really believe in the Arab world — hence his tribal beliefs. He was, indeed, a very odd person. We shall wait to find out how Gaddafi died. Was he murdered? Was he “resisting” (a good tribal thing to do)? Don’t worry — La Clinton will be happy he was “killed”. — The Independent
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Success in Libya must not justify new adventurism As
the news filtered through from Libya yesterday afternoon, first contradictory, then confirmed, it was hard not to feel that the demise of Muammar Gaddafi, a warrior chieftain who had led his dwindling forces into their last stand, constituted the perfect denouement to the uprising that had begun fitfully eight months before. The colonel who had seized power and ruled Libya for 42 years had died as he lived, by the gun. The rapturous faces of weary fighters, the exultant V-signs, the automatics fired into the air, the spontaneous dances and embraces were the classic accoutrements of military victory. And that victory, for all the claims that preceded it, was never going to be complete until Gaddafi’s fate was sealed. There will be those who regret that the ousted Libyan leader was not taken alive, to be tried — either at the International Criminal Court as a war criminal or in his home country in a necessary act of national catharsis. There will be questions, too, about precisely what part, if any, Nato air strikes played in his killing; the full truth of his death probably remains to be told. But the immediate response in Libya was bound to be one of joy — not least at a bloody conflict that has reached its end — and in Western capitals, particularly Paris and London, relief and satisfaction at a job well done.
Neo-colonial
self-justification And so — regrettably, inexorably — the pernicious cycle of neo-colonial self-justification will go on. In congratulating themselves and each other, and their own and each other’s armed forces, David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy will fuel the perception that such Western operations are not only feasible, but desirable. The ghosts of Iraq, it will be said, have been laid; the doctrine of liberal humanitarian intervention lives to fight another day. The “right thing” was done. That outside intervention assisted the Libyan rebels’ cause is beyond doubt. How far it actually facilitated — as opposed to merely accelerating — the opposition victory will be debated by political analysts and historians in the months and years to come. But the fact that an operation such as that mounted primarily by the British and French in Libya proved (in the end) to be possible and helped produce the intended result does not make it wise, reflective of the longer-term British, French or US national interest, or even morally right.
Lessons learnt The intervention itself supplied proof of more Iraq lessons learnt. There was no attempt at even a lean and nimble presence on the ground. The infiltration of special forces was spare — and deniable. All other operations were conducted from the air. So far as is known, no British, French or American servicemen or women were lost. So far as is known, too, there were few targeting mistakes that resulted in civilian deaths. And as cities fell to the rebels, contingencies were in place for the re-establishment of order and the restoration of services. A provisional government was ready to take over even before the brief battle for Tripoli was over. The power vacuum that doomed Iraq was not allowed to develop. Above all, the impression was created, for both domestic and foreign audiences, that the civil war, such as it was, was being fought and won by the Libyan opposition forces themselves. Whatever outside support was provided beyond air strikes — training, weapons, finance have all been mentioned — was kept quiet. From early on, the National Transitional Council was treated by Western ministers not as a client administration, but as a government in waiting. The victory, when it came, was to be one the Libyans could claim as their own.
Other people’s
revolutions To extrapolate from this, however, that intervention in other people’s revolutions or civil wars has a noble future, or even that the “international community” has a moral obligation to assist in the overthrow of authoritarian or dictatorial leaders everywhere, would be not just mistaken, but downright dangerous. The specific justification for international intervention in Libya — to protect civilians — was interpreted ever more loosely as the conflict wore on, to the point where it risked losing most of its meaning. Nato was thus exposed to the charge that it was bending the rules to suit itself, which could make it harder for anyone to advance the same argument in support of a similar UN resolution in future. This, however, is by no means the only, or even the main, danger in hailing the Libyan operation as a blueprint for new interventions. The first is the question of dependency. Although great care has been taken to present the overthrow of Gaddafi as all the Libyans’ own work, Western intervention at very least speeded events up. To succeed, any change of regime has to be able to sustain itself. The coherence of the NTC has not been entirely convincing to date. Intervention can hinder as much as help. Second, while no British or French lives were lost, this does not mean the Libyan operation incurred no expense. It has cost the exchequers of both countries billions, at a time when both are imposing austerity at home. Privileged access to Libyan oil, even if this is partly what the intervention was about, is unlikely to be recompense enough. Third, rightly or wrongly, the intervention in Libya inevitably sends a message to oppositions elsewhere — notably in Syria — that they are not worth helping. The fall-out is unlikely to be positive, if — when — the regime also changes there. Fourth, and most dangerous of all, accomplishment of this limited — but at times fraught — Libyan mission could allow two medium-sized former colonial powers to believe that their military reach extends further than it really does, or should. The very worst consequence of Libya would be if the perception of success persuaded 21st century governments that a small amount of air power could replace the gunboat diplomacy of old. — The Independent
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