The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Himachal in FDI row
State’s interests being sacrificed

Himachal Pradesh is needlessly involved in the unsavory controversy over the opening up of multi-brand retail to overseas investment. Commerce Minister Anand Sharma, who hails from the state, has added fuel to the raging FDI fire by claiming that the state leadership had backed the FDI idea before a standing committee and the parliamentary records support this. The BJP, which rules the hill state, has denied this. Traders in Shimla and smaller towns had even joined the December 1 Bharat bandh.

Himachal would be in no way negatively affected by the Central move. First, there is a condition that global retail giants will be allowed to open outlets only in cities with a population of 10 lakh or more. None of the towns of the state, including Shimla, has that kind of population. Therefore, there is no threat to any trader or shopkeeper, no matter how small or big. Besides, every state government has the freedom to overrule the Central decision as retailing is a state subject.

If the state had to take any logical stand on the FDI issue, overriding political considerations, it could have only been in support of it. This is because Himachal’s economy heavily depends on horticulture. Apple growers would gain substantially if large firms are allowed to buy fruit directly from them. There is a wide gap between the prices which the apple growers in Kinnaur get and those that the consumers in Delhi pay. A large quantity of apple perishes due to poor storage and delayed transportation. Large retailers can cut costs due to the economies of scale and an efficient supply chain, and pass on part of the benefit to growers, who currently are at the mercy of middlemen. Organic farming, which the state is encouraging, would get a boost if retail biggies are roped in. But the short-sighted BJP leadership is playing politics and sacrificing the state’s interests.

Pak army under pressure
Will it snap ties with US?

Pakistan Army chief Gen Ashfaque Pervez Kayani asking his commanders in the areas bordering Afghanistan to retaliate in the face of an attack from the US-led NATO forces in the region shows growing frustration in Rawalpindi vis-à-vis Islamabad’s relations with Washington DC. The Pakistan army cannot afford to keep quiet under the circumstances when there is so much revulsion among the Pakistani public against the US following the killing of 24 Pakistani soldiers in an attack by American troops. Whether the tragedy occurred because of the mistake of Americans or Pakistani forces, the development came at a time when the Pakistan army had been under tremendous pressure to snap its relations with Washington DC owing to the unending US drone attacks in Pakistan’s tribal areas. Pakistan is obviously not in a position to respond to the Americans militarily, but it immediately ordered stoppage of supplies to the NATO troops in Afghanistan through Pakistani territory. On its part, the US ordered an enquiry into the incident and suspended some of its soldiers. But all this has failed to assuage the hurt feelings of the Pakistani public. This is proved by the massive demonstrations against the US throughout Pakistan.

The US seems to have realised that the emerging scenario may nullify the gains made in the fight against Al-Qaida and the Taliban. The US and Pakistan being on a collision course suits the terrorist and extremist forces. These forces had no love lost for the Pakistan army after it launched limited operations in Waziristan following the pressure from Washington DC and other important world capitals. The US, therefore, has done well by softening its stand by declaring that Pakistan has “the right to self-defence” and that Washington DC will ensure that what happened in Mohmand agency does not occur again.

Despite all that is being done to deprive the extremist forces of the advantages that they may have today, the mistrust between the US and the Pakistan army is likely to increase. The US may no longer depend on Islamabad for protecting its interests in post-troop-withdrawal Afghanistan. Pakistan, too, will continue to play the double-game it has been playing in its western neighbourhood. This is not a happy scenario as far as the war on terrorism is concerned.

Thought for the Day

I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

ARTICLE

Challenges from China
India needs to review its security strategy
by Rakesh Datta

Describing the relationship between India and China, it is often said that the two countries should remain good neighbours in geopolitics, good friends in economic cooperation and good partners in international affairs. However, the reality is that they have been uncomfortable neighbours, estranged friends and cool partners. Though both countries boost of civilisational linkages, they have hardly anything in common. India somehow, willingly or unwillingly, is carrying the burden of a much compliant, obliging and ever-pleasing neighbour.

It was nearly five decades back that the two countries fought a war, resulting in politico-military humiliation for India. Addressed variously as India’s China war or the Sino-Indian conflict, India is much to be blamed for it since Chinese advances were too evident to be ignored.

Lately, responding to the concern expressed over China’s plan to build a dam across the Psangpo river — a source river for the Brahmaputra — Dr Manmohan Singh said China had assured India that nothing would be done against its interests in the distribution of Brahmaputra waters. Earlier, Chinese Vice-Premier had said, “The survival of the Chinese nation is threatened by the country’s shortage of water.” In fact, the planned dam on the Brahmaputra has been a cause for serious concern since the Chinese are quite capable of exploiting their advantages, given the past experience. Such assurances had also been the hallmark of the era preceding 1962, when Jawaharlal Nehru, Krishna Menon and the then senior military officers would assert that there would be no war with China. Perhaps, we do not believe in learning lessons from history. We could have built a reservoir on the river, keeping in view the likely contingencies.

It was only when China got busy with military modernisation that its potential competitors like India started showing uneasiness. The fundamental objective of such modernisation was to create a force level sufficient to counter any threat in areas of information warfare, long-range precision strikes, strategic manoeuvring and space combat, besides building comprehensive national power. This has only reinforced the Chinese imperial ambition of dismembering India.

India is a large democracy with a multi-party system as against the one-party rule in China. This, perhaps, is the one fundamental reason why China has a focussed agenda whereas India dithers on it. For the last over six decades after Independence, India has pursued a national security policy by cultivating, nurturing and executing a “please all strategy” in defence and foreign affairs-related dealings. Consequently, we have lost one-third of Kashmir to Pakistan; allowed China to become a stakeholder in the Kashmir dispute; almost surrendered Aksai Chin; made Arunachal Pradesh and the Northeast politically vulnerable to neighbouring countries, including China, besides being habitual of underplaying rather confronting any adversary. Here one is reminded of the briefing Jawaharlal Nehru got from K.M Pannikar, the first Indian Ambassador to China, that Beijing would not create any problem so long as India keeps it pleased. In fact, it became the standard policy guideline to deal with other nations as well.

Incredibly, a country enjoying global eminence in terms of its size, economic growth, industrial potential, population and armed forces is sadly losing its stature due to a leadership deficit, political indecisiveness and the security syndrome. Consequently, our core principle of national security — territorial integrity — is breached perpetually with impunity and there is a lack of apparent ability to meet the challenge.

According to Mao, “decisive engagements under unfavourable conditions be avoided.” Deng, another modern Chinese statesman, said, “secure positions; cope with affairs calmly; hide capacities and bid time; there is a need to build firm strategies to combat national security issues”. The Chinese grand strategy also rests on the belief that strengthening conventional and strategic deterrence is important because, as it is said, “intention changes, but capability stays”.

There is a continuous endeavour by India to increase bilateral trade with China. Trade is a “sinew of war”, but India has adopted it as a strategy thinking that more trade with China shall provide the much-needed succour to ward off threats from the communist giant. We certainly are not raising our military capabilities vs-a-vis China.

China has been nibbling India at the politico-military front despite certain confidence-building measures in action between the two countries. China has chosen Pakistan as a conduit in its game-plan of bleeding India continuously, besides cultivating relations with other countries in the region to encircle India. Looking at Chinese behaviour, India too needs to deal with the countries in the neighbourhood more pragmatically.

There is great need to improve our basic inventory to deal with China. The later has reorganised its ground forces into group armies. Significant to mention here is the building of the elite Rapid Response Force, composed of eight types of troops belonging to scouts, infantry, artillery, signals, engineers, anti-chemical warfare automobile corps and airborne fighters. Intended to engage in small-scale intensive regional military operations, these are highly technology-based forces and competitive in character.

India, too, has come out with its Cold Start doctrine against Pakistan. Designed as small composite units to cut down on the period of mobilisation, such rapid action troops could well be organised for the China border as well. But, sadly, buckling under US pressure, the present Army Chief has denied altogether the existence of any such doctrine.

There is need to create such specalised units in the Indian Army and the Navy to meet contingencies such as sea-borne threats. Efforts should also be made to reduce the period of acclimatisation for troop deployment on the Himalayan frontiers.

India started its military modernisation in 1963 after the 1962 war. China, instead, began much later in 1978. However, unlike the Chinese defence industry, which has produced some of the relatively modern weapon systems besides the development of missiles, India has manufactured very few major weapon systems so far. China, in contrast, possesses a whole range of missiles, including ICBMs and SLBMs, whereas, but for Agni and Prithvi missiles, all other Indian missiles remain technological demonstrators..

India’s offensive capability in high altitude areas is hardly dependable. Our perspective planning for building a force structure must be based on a central agenda directed towards projected capabilities. China is adopting a new military strategy based on unrestricted warfare where there are no rules with nothing forbidden. In this context, apart from designing some innovative response strategies vis-à-vis China, India must look for and cultivate certain dissident Chinese political leaders settled abroad and use them to its advantage. India needs to exploit Chinese vulnerabilities in socio-economic, technological and geo-strategic areas, besides concentrating on ways of waging asymmetrical warfare against more powerful hegemonistic presence in our neighborhood.

Though India cannot stop China from developing infrastructure in its own territory across the border, we must give up our irrational idea that developing border infrastructure is detrimental to national security. There has been some change in thinking with regard to our borders with China in Arunachal Pradesh, but nothing substantial is seen on the ground. Taking into account China’s achievements in militarising space and in the Indian Ocean region, India needs to adopt a focussed and fast-track approach to harness measures most effectively as it has reasons to be wary of China. Above all, it is in India’s political direction and will where lies the country’s actual potential in formulating and executing counter-threat strategies keeping in view the designs of China.n

Professor Datta, Chairman of the Department of Defence and National Security Studies, Panjab University, Chandigarh, was a member of the National Security Advisory Board.

MIDDLE

Warm from the oven
by Shelley Walia

A loaf of bread, the walrus said,/ Is what we chiefly need:/ Pepper and vinegar besides/Are good indeed,” writes Lewis Carroll in “Through the Looking Glass”. Surely, breads of all types are blessed with the indescribable ability to satisfy much more than mere physical hunger. And especially the delectably warm and rich variety directly from the oven that is meant, above all, for appetites jaded with ordinary everyday commercial bread. As Omar Khayyam writes, “A Book of verses underneath the Bough/ A jug of wine, a loaf of bread - and Thou/ Besides me singing in the Wilderness--/ Oh, Wilderness were Paradise now!”

Good breads have been available in India for the last few years, but in the nineties when I returned after a long stay in England I tried to persuade bakers to make whole-wheat bread. None agreed with me that a whole-wheat bread would ever rise. The mindset could not be weaned away from maida and baking powder. This is so particularly because the market caters to a public that prefers the humdrum flaccid white stuff and the “brown” bread you get is, more often than not, an illusion produced by colouring.

And so for the authentic whole-meal hot cross buns flavoured with nutmeg or the whole-wheat Sourdough French bread or cornmeal wheat germ bread, our Russell Hobbs home-baking bread machine allows us to experiment. Though a little demanding, especially because one has to ask friends to supply the yeast from abroad, the effort is heartwarming, especially when the container is turned on to a plate, for every time one bakes bread, it is different and the suspense undiminished.

Over the years, bread making has turned into an adventure for us. On some days there is disappointment as the bread has not risen or has sunk. We end up blaming it on the temperature of the water or the quantity of yeast added since precision and proportions are of utmost importance, generating an equation, making the home baker an alchemist of sorts. On other days one could leap with a sense of triumph at the sight of the robustly risen bread unmatched by any in the market.

Fresh herb bread, cornbreads, gingerbreads to be tasted for breakfast or served with crisp fruit or vegetable salads or a sandwich with a variety of spreads or meats, sliced and served hot for a snack. A staggering variety of batter or dough bring a diversity into our daily eating, a sensual adventure of sorts. Whether we are making a Russian black bread with rye and dark molasses or a richly evocative and assertive Georgian prune bread, it all boils down to the amazing sumptuousness of an activity that surprises us and our friends with the novelty of the flavour as well as the recipe.

Creativity and nostalgia combine every time one ventures into bread making. I cannot forget the experience of driving through the Black Forest in Germany and stopping for a home-baked loaf of bread, wonderfully fresh for a summer meal accompanied with scalding hot coffee and country music. Or a dinner of roast chicken on cold winter evenings up in Invermoriston in Scotland, eating a dark and emphatically gingery loaf of bread, almost a poem of oats, rye, flaxseed and almonds. Or when our host in Wales, a retired Colonel, especially baked a Moroccan bread of walnut oatmeal of ineffable texture and taste that reminded me of Virginia Woolf saying, “One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.”

OPED EDUCATION

Educational institutions in many parts of the world are facing an economic crunch, but they need to be careful in their quest for funds
Universities need cash, but not just anyone’s
Philip Hensher

Oxford University rightly refused to admit Saif Gaddafi as a student

These are hard times for universities, and the Woolf Report into the conduct of the LSE over Saif Gaddafi’s admission is not going to make things any easier. Funding is drying up from public sources, and they are going to have to get used to doing without the generous grants from taxpayers which have kept them coasting along. They are going to have to rely on the £9,000 a year payments from students from next year.

With that individually funded largesse comes a shift in attitudes. No one can seriously suppose that the numbers applying to university will remain the same, under the prospect of paying back £27,000 and upwards. This is already evident with a 15 per cent drop in applications for next year, although this figure may be distorted by this year’s rush to apply before the rise in fees to £9,000. Universities will be competing in a market as never before. They will have to answer to their students as if they were customers, as well as to their real customers, the employers in the job market.

Fairly soon, I would say, some universities are going to go out of business because of the evident quality of their product compared with the shocking cost of their service. If a sandwich shop consistently serves you stale bread and poisoned prawns, then you don’t accept it as an inferior lunch over a period of time. You throw it in the bin and go next door. If a university promises to land you with £27,000 worth of debt, fails to provide you with an education, and leaves you at an actual disadvantage to someone who had the nous – in many employers’ eyes – to get a job straight from school, then they probably deserve to go out of business.

In this incredibly crowded market, there are a number of ways for a university to make itself known to customers. What they will tell you is that their primary aim is to maintain standards, and that is all they need to sustain their place in the market. That may be true of Oxford and Cambridge, but it is hard to see how it could apply to universities near the bottom of the feeding chain.

They make their mark in whatever way they can. The absurd racket of trying to get your institution’s name in the paper by giving a random passing celebrity an honorary degree long since became a joke. The University of East London gave Graham Gooch and the woman who plays Dot Cotton honorary doctorates. Someone who plays Denzil in Only Fools and Horses got an honorary degree from Liverpool John Moores University.

But that obvious compromise with intellectual standards will only get you so far. Clearly, what universities need is money. If they can’t be sure about public funding any longer, and the behaviour of the student market is unpredictable, then it is only natural for them to try to diversify the sources of income. And if the cost of such diversification is a lowering of ethical standards? Well, you can imagine universities saying quietly to themselves in the future that ethical standards are a luxury we can’t afford any more.

In 2002, as the Woolf Report shows, Oxford had an interesting phone call from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. The Blair government wanted to mount a diplomatic détente with the Gaddafi regime in Libya. As a minor contribution to that campaign, which would lead to a notorious meeting in a tent in the desert two years later, would Oxford care to be helpful? Would it care, for instance, to admit the dictator’s son Saif as a student?

These events have been made public in an addendum to the Woolf Report written by Professor Valpy FitzGerald of the University. Now, anyone could see that the answer to this question ought to have been “No”, and, from Professor FitzGerald, that it always would have been: his mother was that bracingly moral novelist Penelope Fitzgerald, and a great-uncle was Ronald Knox. There could be no lack of moral clarity from this source over whether it was right or not to admit Saif in exchange for favours, and the dictator’s son went elsewhere.

To LSE, in fact, where the institution was perfectly happy to accept Saif, knowing that £1.5m was going to be donated from Saif’s personal charity. Saif was given a doctorate for work which seems unlikely to be his own. A £2.2m contract was awarded to LSE Enterprises to work in Libya. The Director of the LSE, Sir Howard Davies, was appointed Blair’s personal envoy to Libya.

No one, until Gaddafi started to look likely to fall, seems to have thought this nexus between dictator, donations, governments and the standards of learning the least bit questionable. The frightening thing is that all this has come out because Gaddafi was a dictator. How many compromises with commercial, political, financial interests have been quietly made at the top of the chain of learning?

Probably we will never know, exactly. But when a gleaming new wing is opened in a public intellectual institution, and given the name of an individual, not hitherto known for his interests in knowledge, everyone should ask this question: what humiliations, what abasements, what dinners, what obligations, have been incurred here? What payment has been made, and what payback has been required? If we can’t expect our universities to uphold ethical and intellectual standards, quite separate from money, then we are finished as a society.
— The Independent

This is not a place where you come to read books
Jonathan Brown

Anyone in doubt as to where Salford University’s vision of the future lies should pay a visit to the library at its new digital facility at MediaCity. Up on the second floor, set among the gleaming glass and break-out pods that echo the BBC’s hi-tech headquarters just across the quayside, a handful of shelves house a few lonely tomes.

Yet while it is a sight to make old bibliophiles weep, the token presence of these remnants of old-world knowledge imprinted on the pulp of dead trees is not something to fear, according to Jon Corner, the director of this £50m development on the banks of the Manchester Ship Canal.

In October, the first of 1,500 students and staff took up their places at Salford’s new digital campus. Those nurturing a classical vision of dreaming spires will be disappointed here, admits Corner, who has described the current education system as “150 years out of date”. He explains: “This is a digital futures campus. It is not a place you come to read books. It is a place to do real work on real-time digital platforms. You are not messing around – you are in the real world,” says Corner, founder of Liverpool-based digital production company, River Media.

For Salford University it is not a cheap jaunt, especially at a time when higher education is facing an unprecedented squeeze in funding. It cost the university more than £22m to fit and kit the impressive building, which marks its presence in the venture. Rental costs up to 2020 – the length of the current lease with MediaCity owners Peel Holdings – will be about £19m. But for that money, students will be surrounded with cutting-edge equipment and an industry-focused attitude from its director and staff. The centre of student life will be The Egg, a double-height meeting and research space situated in the entrance foyer and lying in the giant shadow of 120 MicroTiles screens, a wall of self-configuring, colour-saturated, high-definition hardware connected to the rest of the facilities. It is a campus bristling with HD TV studios, digital media labs and post-production facilities that would put the state broadcasters of some small European nations to shame.

Corner, who stepped into the role after it was vacated last year by the former BBC boss John Holland, hopes that soon The Egg will be buzzing with students demonstrating new products and mingling with researchers from the real digital world. It is his ambition to bring the “geek and the luvvie together in one place”. To achieve this he wants to turn the traditional relationship between industry and universities around, so that leading companies come to his students looking for answers to their problems.

“Even if you are not the next Spielberg you will still be damned useful and have relevant skills at you fingertips,” adds Corner.

He promises that, unlike a young Bill Gates or Steve Jobs, who quit college to revolutionise the world of personal computing in the 1970s, there will be opportunities for young entrepreneurs to “monetise” their innovations, with cheap rents and tie-ups for the North West’s budding digitocracy.

Salford is naturally keen to emphasise the physical proximity with its illustrious neighbours in MediaCity. Vice-chancellor Martin Hall, sitting in the plush management suite opposite the university’s 1960s core a mile and half across town, likes to tell visitors that if they look closely, Salford students working at MediaCity will be able to look out of the windows of their classrooms and read what is on the screens of developers working next door at the BBC’s Future Media department.

Alison Kimberley, an MA student on induction, is unfazed by the prospect of getting a foothold in such a notoriously picky industry. She says: “I am not sure exactly what direction I want to pursue, but I am sure that children’s is the right way forward. I know that learning is important and the MA will give me the right contacts and this is the right place to be.”
—The Independent