The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

‘Ratans’ of Bharat
Welcome opening up of the top national honour

The government has done well by opening the top national honour to people outside the fields of art, literature, science and public services. This allows for the recognition of performance of highest order in any field of human endeavour. The Bharat Ratna has, indeed, been the top honour ever since it was instituted in 1954 but because of its somewhat restrictive eligibility criteria, some people who were “ratans” of Bharat in popular perception were not considered for the honour. Now this will not be so.

India has honoured 41 people so far with its top honour, and though largely free from controversies, there have been issues regarding who the honour went to from time to time. As a class, political leaders have received wide recognition, and two of them, Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi, signed the orders which gave them their Bharat Ratnas. Of course, no one disputes the merit of the first three recipients of the honour — physicist and Nobel Laureate Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman, Chakravarti Rajagopalachari and Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan. Many others who received it, including Mother Teresa, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan and Nelson Mandela, also richly deserved it, but some of the “misses” have been inexplicable. The award conferred upon Netaji Subash Chandra Bose could not stand since, technically, his death had not been confirmed, and thus was withdrawn.

While widening the eligibility of candidates throws up many new possibilities of recipients, care would have to be taken to ensure that utmost diligence and discretion is maintained in the selection process, so that the Bharat Ratna maintains the pre-eminent position it has retained ever since it was instituted. Now that the field is wider, much more care would have to be taken to ensure that the selection is impeccable.

RBI takes a pause
Time to shift focus to revival of growth

During its monetary policy review on Friday, the RBI ended its rate-raising spree but disappointed those waiting for a cut in the cash reserve ratio (CRR), especially after similar cuts announced in China and Brazil. The RBI’s 13 rate hikes had failed to control inflation, which has remained at an average of 9.5 per cent in the last two years. While food inflation at 4.32 per cent has touched its lowest level in four years, providing relief to the UPA government ahead of elections in some states, the headline inflation too is expected to ease in the coming months.

The RBI is also trying to control depreciation of the rupee. On Thursday, it announced measures to end speculation in currency trading. This had the desired impact. The rupee bounced back sharply, providing relief to the government whose oil import bill had risen significantly and unsettled its already fragile financial condition. A weaker rupee has benefited exporters, particularly the IT industry, but it has hiked the cost of imported food items like pulses and edible oils, made foreign travel and education costlier and raised the prices of appliances using imported components.

While there is some comfort on the rupee front, it may prove to be short-lived since foreign institutional investors are selling their equity holdings due to weakening growth in India and trouble in Europe and the US. Dollar outflows are higher than inflows. The retreat on retail has sent a wrong signal to foreign investors. The RBI and the government have to take steps to ease interest rates and stabilise the rupee. There is need to lift the blanket ban on mining, settle land acquisition disputes, further open up retail, aviation and insurance to foreign investment and boost the over-all business sentiment. A poor business environment here is driving even Indian private investment abroad. The series of corruption scandals, the UPA-Opposition standoff on reforms and frequent agitations and road/rail blockades have vitiated the economic environment. The number of believers in India’s growth story is on the decline.

Thought for the Day

If you want peace, work for justice. — Pope Paul VI

ARTICLE

Will Israel attack Iran?
It cannot be ruled out
by K. P. Fabian

Nobody, not even Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu, knows the answer to the question whether Israel will attack Iran. It is easier to answer another: Will it be wise and prudent on Israel’s part to attack Israel? The answer is “no”.

It is pertinent to recall Winston Churchill: “Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realise that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events.”

The sad truth is that an Israeli attack on Iran cannot be ruled out. One comes to this conclusion going by Israel’s track record, the recent pronouncements made by its leaders, and the encouragement it is receiving from the US, not necessarily from the White House. The White House can be compelled to come to Israel’s rescue through a fait accompli.

In June 1981, Israel carried out a successful surgical strike at Iraq’s nuclear facility called Osirak, close to Baghdad. The idea of such a strike originated in the mid- 1970s. A full-scale model was built up for practice bombing. The Israeli jets over-flew the airspace of Jordan and Saudi Arabia. While over-flying Saudi Arabia, the crew pretended to be Jordanians and vice versa. Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was in no position to retaliate. Ten Iraqis and a French national were killed. It was only a research reactor supplied and closely monitored and controlled by the French. Israel was over-reacting. The reactor was designed to make it “unsuitable” to make bombs.

The UN Security Council by a resolution condemned Israel, demanded it to pay compensation to Iraq and urged that its nuclear facilities be put under International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards. More pertinently, the Security Council called upon Israel to “refrain in the future from any such acts or threats thereof”. Obviously, by threatening Iran in the present case, Israel has violated UN Security Council Resolution 487 of June 19, 1981.

There are two or three other matters to be noted about the 1981 strike. Before the attack, Israel arranged for the murder of Yehya El Mashad, an Egyptian scientist working on Osirak. It also arranged for the destruction of the core structure of the reactor about to be shipped from France. After the attack, 100 members of the 120-strong Knesset wrote a letter to Prime Minister Begin to show their admiration. Simon Peres, the current President, then leader of the Opposition, criticised the attack and lost heavily in the general election held three weeks after the development.

What was the impact of the surgical strike on Iraq’s future behaviour? Was it intimidated into abandoning all plans for making bombs in the future? The answer is a clear “no”. As a knowledgeable Iraqi scientist put it, before the attack 400 scientists were working and the investment was $400 million. Post-Osirak, Saddam Hussein started a secret project with 7,000 scientists and $10 billion. Israel’s action illustrates “folly” as defined by Barbara Tuchman in her well-known book “The March of Folly”. Its action was recognised by the strategic community as a case of “pre-emptive strike”, often with misplaced admiration.

However, Israel was not the first power to bomb Osirak. In September 1980, Iran bombed it, without causing much serious damage. Iran was publicly urged to do that by a senior Israeli intelligence official, Yehoshua Saguy. In the case of the Israeli attack of 1981, Iran offered emergency landing facility in Tabriz for the Israeli aircraft. Iran’s attack in 1980 was the first such attack on a nuclear reactor. Is there some irony that Iran should be the potential victim now of a pre-emptive strike?

As regards Israeli statements indicating plans to strike, there have been many. We need to look at only one. On November 16, 2011, a statement was read out in the Knesset: "Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu informed the full Knesset plenum that all options are on the table when it comes to Iran's nuclear programme. The Prime Minister and the authorised bodies are acting to stop the nuclear armament of Iran. The efforts are ongoing and we will do everything possible to enlist states in the international community, because the Iranian threat is a danger not only to the State of Israel but to world peace."

As a matter of fact, the war against Iran has already started. Iran’s centrifuges were incapacitated by a computer virus. A few Iranian nuclear scientists have been killed in explosions. The economic sanctions imposed by the US and the European Union are tightening.

The US has been sending inconsistent signals. President Obama does not want to encourage Israel to strike. He knows the implications. Iran in 2011-12 is much stronger than Iraq was in 1981. Iran is stronger thanks to the US war on Iraq facilitating the emergence of an Iran-friendly regime in Iraq. Iran can retaliate in many ways. If it attempts to block the passage of oil tankers through the Straits of Hormuz, oil prices will shoot up; global economic recovery will be imperiled; candidate Obama will pay a heavy political price for the higher price at the pump. The Hezbollah and the Hamas can send rockets into Israel. Obama also knows that if Israel is under attack, the US will have to rush to its rescue. The US embassies in West Asia can come under attack. It is the Republican-dominated Congress that has been tightening sanctions again Iran and deliberately encouraging Israel.

The IAEA’s latest report does not add to its credibility. There is no serious evidence to show that Iran is after the bomb. In any case, if there is reason to suspect that Iran is after the bomb, the smart thing to do is to flood Iran with IAEA inspectors. Conceding Iran’s right to enrich uranium up to the industrial grade is a small price to pay for that purpose.

India was wrong to have voted against Iran at the IAEA. There seems to be a recognition of that error. India will suffer in a big way if Israel attacks Iran. To say that it is not in India’s interest to have a nuclear-armed Iran is different from not perceiving the dangerous course that Israel has embarked on.

The war against Iran has already begun as seen from the explosions that killed scientists. But a strike in 2011 appears unlikely. Meanwhile, Iran is re-engineering the sophisticated US drone in its custody, possibly, with the technical assistance of Russia and China. Israel is going in the wrong direction. It should be stopped.n

Ambassador K. P. Fabian, a retired IFS officer, is the author of “Commonsense on War on Iraq”.

MIDDLE

An exclusive club
by Harwant Singh

There are some clubs so exclusive that it is nearly impossible to get their membership. Some have very special criteria, which few can meet. One such example is the Palm Beach Club in America where only multi-millionaires can seek entry.

Reputed clubs have long waiting lists. Candidates are invited to an “at home” in accordance with the seniority on the waiting list and the club managing committee members assess suitability for granting membership. Most clubs have a provision where a committee member can “black ball” a candidate, but like all Indian systems, “pull” does come into play and sometimes money passed under the table works. For the membership of golf clubs, the skill at the game too is evaluated.

The criteria for the membership of the exclusive club under discussion was unique and no “pull” or “jack” could possibly work! Memories of this club were revived when the Press reported an encounter with terrorists in the area of the Shamshabari mountain range in the Tangdhar sector of Jammu and Kashmir.

The Shamshabari mountain range is towards the northwestern edge of the Kashmir valley, across the Nastachun Pass. The highest peak of the range in the area of Tangdhar is over 18000 feet and the climb is steep, arduous and risky. This club was founded on the very top of the peak, and to qualify for its membership, one had to merely climb this peak and no less or more. The Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the club used to be held at the peak. Members of this club were mostly officers who had served in the Tangdhar brigade. I was perhaps the only outsider to take up its membership. It was called The Shamshabari Club.

At the AGMs, new members who had scaled the peak were enrolled. Issues of general interest such as weather, snowfall dates, any new pictures of the area and the sighting of wildlife, etc, were discussed and the date for the next AGM was decided. The area was peaceful except for odd incidents of exchange of fire along the Line of Control, which was some distance away. So, the club activities and attempts at gaining membership went unhindered. At one such AGM, it was proposed that members should suggest an insignia for the club which should depict the club’s exclusivity and adventurous spirit. The insignia could be used on a blazer coat and other appropriate places, and the members were required to bring the proposed designs for the final selection at the next AGM.

Now the DQ of the brigade, though a paratrooper, was not particularly of an adventurous disposition but, all the same, had taken the membership of this club. He, too, worked on the design. At the AGM, those who had drawn designs of the insignia were asked to display these before the house for approval. Quite a few innovative designs were presented. The last to present his design was the DQ. His was a simple and straightforward design! It showed the back of a man and underneath was scribbled the word “Punga”.

The AGM was abruptly terminated and, perhaps, the club dissolved!

OPED SOCIETY

For most people it is hard to fathom the ‘heritage status’ accorded to a modern, planned city like Chandigarh. Should it be preserved as a museum piece, or, should we allow unplanned growth to take over its uniqueness?
Beyond the Urban Juggernaut
Rajnish Wattas

Is Chandigarh, the centrally administered joint capital of Punjab and Haryana, any more a stand-alone city? Or has its identity crossed beyond the boundary lines drawn in 1966, at the time of trifurcation of the erstwhile state of Punjab? Clearly the politico-geographical reorganisation was a big game-changer in the destiny of Chandigarh; leaving the ‘dream city’ of the country in an unwieldy, landlocked utopian urban habitat of 114 sq km.

Chandigarh, as a planned city, has the best possibilities of implementing global ideals and thus inspire other new cities to follow suit

The original agenda of Chandigarh, to be merely an administrative city, a symbol of the newly Independent India, has now blurred into other complex challenges. The success story of Chandigarh is well known. In fact, its phenomenal success has now quite ironically become its biggest challenge too. The ‘brand Chandigarh’ paradigm is finding its growth shackled by finite boundaries; naturally spilled across the borders — in blatant violations of the Periphery Control Act — to form the adjoining towns of Panchkula, Mohali, Zirakpur and now Mullanpur, grid-locked in a bear-hug to the main city.

The huge growth that Chandigarh has experienced in the last 10-15 years, fuelled by the recent economic surge witnessed in the country, coupled with other factors, has resulted in a real estate boom. Today, Chandigarh has the highest per capita GDP, car ownership in the country, excellent parameters in environment, forest cover, low pollution levels and other robust urban benchmarks.

Initially Panchkula and Mohali were somewhat like poor country-cousins of Chandigarh — that lacked any original focus or vision as well as the resources to provide services at par, or, better than the ‘mother city’. They quite conveniently stretched out the existing grid of roads into Chandigarh and embroidered them to their own sectors. This blending was seamless in the case of Mohali, but with Panchkula fairly tenuous, thus creating a ‘chicken’s neck’ of clogged arteries for traffic movement between the two cities.

No doubt, these satellite towns and their extensions are creating their own individual attractions too, but Chandigarh remains the raison d’etre of their existence and the growth boom.

The urban juggernaut

According to the recently released McKinsey report on India’s urbanisation, 590 million people (twice the population of USA) generating 70 percent of India’s employment will live in cities by 2030. And beyond this, 69 cities in India will have populations above 1 million plus, up from 32 today, requiring 700 to 900 million square metres of additional space, or, a new Chicago every year for commercial and residential purposes.

Can’t we just create enough employment in the villages of the country one may well ask?

No, says Manish Sabharwal in ‘Our Geography of Work’ while comparing urbanisation between India and China. “China has 200 cities with more than a million people while India has 35. India has 6.3 lakh villages, of which 3.9 lakh have less than 1,000 people and 1 lakh have less than 200 people. Non-farm job creation tends to cluster and requires soft and hard infrastructure that many of our villages are too small for. In the next decade, India can’t take jobs to people but needs to take people to jobs.”

Similarly in the highly acclaimed book ‘Truimph of the City’ by Edward Glaessar, a Harvard Professor, states that, “Job creation clusters as cities become hubs of innovation, energy and entrepreneurship.” Two thirds of Americans live on 3 per cent of its land mass — that is cities.

Of course cities have their dark side too; squalor, disease, crime, social disparities. But the urban poor are better off than the rural poor, and should not be compared to the urban rich. Nowhere agriculture can sustain economies of large populations, say the experts. The case for efficient, planned urbanisation in the country is very strong.

Where does Chandigarh stand in the context of this national need and global trend?

To stay in a time-warp or grow?

While some fanatic ‘preservationists’ and heritage champions might like to keep the ‘City Beautiful’ Chandigarh as a museum showpiece for eternity, cities are living organisms which will grow or decline or mutate in accordance with multi-factorial pulls and pressures, and political, geographical, economic changes.

Though, Chandigarh is special because of its heritage value and as a benchmark for quality urbanisation it will have to balance between what it cherishes and what it can allow to change/modify; and to what extent. And what do we cherish most in Chandigarh today? Its openness, vast green spaces, parks, trees, well planned system of roads and Le Corbusier’s grand monuments. We adore its backdrop of the Shivalik hills, its architecture of simple, yet beautiful modernity made in the locally available brick, concrete and stone. We pride in its status of being a tour de force of modernism as a movement of 20th century architecture in the world.

But we must preserve the quintessential spirit of Chandigarh and not its externalities of form.

Not many years ago, it was joked that Chandigarh was a city of ‘grey beards and green hedges’! Later, it was called a small town pretending to be a big city with no soul! But the Cassandras of Chandigarh were wrong — and yet again those writing of its decay with both implosion and explosion, will be proved wrong because of the resilience of cities like human beings to readjust, reinvent and make course corrections.

It is now estimated that with the present trends of growth, the projected population of Chandigarh could be anything between 16 to 20 lakh by 2030 and that of the entire tricity region shooting up to 45 lakh! Today Chandigarh is already more than a million people city, though it was planned for no more than half a million! Then, there are the issues of slums, traffic congestion and impending squalor. Moreover, for how long will Chandigarh sustain with central government funding? What is its economic viability?

The larger vision

In a nutshell the way forward for Chandigarh, Mohali, Panchkula and their sprawls beyond is to accept, and not bemoan the ground realities of the tremendous urbanisation that has happened in the last few decades. The nucleus of all this is Chandigarh, and will remain the fulcrum of future for the region. There is still much to preserve and save — yet not stifle growth and human enterprise.

Chandigarh should be seen in the larger context, somewhat like the historic, low height Lutyen’s New Delhi, all around which one can witness the past and later developments of Delhi. Chandigarh, too, within itself should zealously preserve and implement its heritage plan (a detailed report exists) preserving the greens, the road system and the layout of the Corbusean plan in its entirety — for that is the essence and core of what Chandigarh stands for internationally.

Regarding the architectural imagery and scale of built forms of the city, areas and locations within the visual impact zone of the Capitol Complex or other Corbusean monuments like the Museum Complex of Sector 10 and others will need very sensitive and cautious handling. The other significant area is the Sukhna Lake and its surrounding eco-sensitive zone, which too must be preserved.

But what about the rest, should it liberalise its FSI (Floor Space Index) and allow for greater densities, allow more verticality? The key to all these questions will be a balance between the heritage value versus growth, and the crucial sustainability of the city services — especially the traffic movement. From a car dependent, pampered city, its entire planning emphasis will have to shift to innovative public transport systems including slow moving electric buses, trolley cars and even some congested areas being declared as ‘no vehicle zones’ allowing movement of only public operated electric carts, walking and cycling, rickshaws etc. These ideas can be first tried as an experiment in areas like Sector 17, sub-city centres and some choked V4 (within the sectors) shopping markets. In a small city like Chandigarh, Metro will only help in moving people of the tricity and the urban conglomerate across the distant destinations, and be of very little use within the short distances of the city itself.

Some of these steps would be resisted initially, but the impending choking of the city arteries will teach us to change our car-obsessed lifestyles.

As such, while Chandigarh would carry on with its limited and carefully orchestrated growth agenda, it should remain the inspirational leader of quality urbanisation by adopting model, innovative practices and state-of-the-art technologies for traffic and mobility systems, energy conservation, green policies and architectural and environmental protection. Chandigarh, as a planned city, has the best possibilities of implementing these global ideals and thus inspire other new cities to follow suit.

While this happens, the adjoining cities of Mohali, Mullanpur and Panchkula should grow within themselves — as independent entities without piggybacking on Chandigarh’s facilities. They should develop not only in terms of infrastructure, retail, city services, employment centres and entertainment, but also develop some independent focus and a new vision. This would give them their own distinct identity and status; instead of just being considered as appendages or hyphenated-Chandigarhs. Since they are not landlocked like Chandigarh, and do not have its heritage constraints, they enjoy greater possibilities and creative freedom in many ways.

Rather than a bureaucratic approach of maintaining a status quo, it would be pragmatic for all concerned in Punjab, Haryana and the Union Territory of Chandigarh — that an integrated growth is allowed. It can be a win-win situation for all concerned, in such a symbiotic relationship of connectivity, access and safeguarding of environmental and ecological concerns. Such a vision will be a new era of India’s urbanisation.

And this will be the best tribute to the spirit of Chandigarh and its founding fathers. For, cities are the matrix of a civilization.

(The views expressed by the writer are personal and not of any organisation/task force he may be associated with.)

The writer is former principal of the Chandigarh College of Architecture, and presently Distinguished Professor at the Surya School of Architecture.