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Jaipur
shames India UP’s
scam-related deaths |
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War
clouds over Gulf
All over
the Strait of Hormuz
To my
doctors with love
US
‘weakened’ by outsourcing
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UP’s scam-related deaths
There
is evidently more to the unnatural death of four officials one after another in the Rs 5,700 crore National Rural Health Mission scam than meets the eye. These are no ordinary times in Uttar Pradesh with elections to the state assembly being round the corner. While Vinod Arya and B.P. Singh, both chief medical officers, were believed to have been murdered, Y. S. Sachan, deputy chief medical officer, was found dead and the latest, project manager Sunil Verma, reportedly committed suicide at his residence and was “brought dead” to the hospital in Lucknow. Some questions arise. Was there a deliberate and concerted attempt to silence these senior officials from spilling the beans and pointing the finger at bigger fish in the scam? Was the CBI being too intimidatory in its quest to pin these people down to get some breakthrough to satisfy its political masters? Is there a hidden hand that does not want the truth to come out on the NRHM scam at any cost? Were the murders a conscious attempt to defame the Mayawati government’s handling of law and order on election-eve as she is claiming? On the scam itself, the Mayawati government has much to answer for. Between 2005 and 2011, U.P. received Rs 8,660 crore under the NRHM from the Centre, the highest among states, since its rural health indicators reflected a shocking state. Going by a recent report of the Comptroller and Auditor-General of India, as much as two-thirds of this expenditure or Rs 5,754 crore was not accounted for in official records. How much of this would have lined the pockets of politicians and bureaucrats is anybody’s guess but there can be little doubt that this must have been a substantial chunk. On top of that another Rs1,365 crore of the Central allocation remained unutilised until March 2010. That Chief Minister Mayawati has sacked half her ministers over a period of time to make it seem that she is uncompromising on corruption is evidently an election gimmick, but she has done little to improve governance, plug leakages in funds utilisation and track down the killers of the officials who have been bumped off by some vested interests.
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War clouds over Gulf
After
the sanctions imposed on Iran by the UN and the US, the European Union (EU) has also come out with a similar measure to force Tehran to abandon its controversial nuclear programme. Now Iran will have no buyers for its oil in the West. This is likely to not only reduce Iran’s oil revenues but also raise the international price of this precious resource. Iran, however, remains as defiant as ever. The Iranian Oil Ministry, pooh-poohing the sanctions regime, has asserted that it can find new buyers for Iranian oil elsewhere in the world — which means China and Russia. Iran may also offer to supply more oil to India. But it is not as easy as it appears. There are payments problems which will be difficult to sort out. The US and the EU obviously will not keep quiet and may try to put pressure on any country showing interest in Iranian oil to ignore Tehran’s offer. Saudi Arabia has announced that it will increase its oil production when the unavailability of Iranian oil leads to its shortage. The crisis brewing in the Persian Gulf region is not limited to Iranian oil supplies. As a retaliatory measure, Iran appears determined to choke the Strait of Hormuz, used by most oil tankers of the world to reach their destination. And with the US, Britain and France ready with their warships in the Persian Gulf to prevent Iran from undertaking this dangerous course, a fresh war in that region cannot be ruled out. This may aggravate the global economic crisis, but the course of events seems unalterable. Israel is also ready to add fuel to the fire. It is reportedly ready with a plan to strike at the Iranian nuclear plants without giving a hint to even the US, its sustainer for all seasons. No one knows better than the Israelis that the US, being in the grip of election fever, cannot dare to prevent Tel Aviv from carrying out its nuclear-cleansing operation in Iran. This is not a happy scenario with most countries in West Asia already being in turmoil.
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It is also true that one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one's own personality. Good prose is like a windowpane. — George Orwell
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All over the Strait of Hormuz The
danger in the United States, and now Europe, raising the stakes on Iran is that, without intending to, it could escalate into a new regional war even as President Barack Obama is winding down the Afghanistan war after declaring the American military misadventure in Iraq officially over. With the European Union having come on board in ending oil imports from Japan by July, the Western intention is to box Iran in until it cries uncle. As it is, the payment ban for Iranian oil under pain of attracting sanctions is making the lives of Asian countries, including India, difficult. And as the US and Western Europe increase the pressure on Iran to its next level, it resembles more a game of Russian roulette rather than a well-thought-out rational policy. Tehran, for its part, shows no sign of backing off on its nuclear programme and has threatened to close the vital international oil export route of the Strait of Hormuz, which would harm Iran more than the rest of the world. What has led the US to reach this impasse because the last thing America and the rest of the world need is another war in the region? Many factors are involved but the weightiest reason is a simple one — Israel. Israel is tied to the US by an umbilical cord. Washington’s continuing efforts are to coax Tel Aviv and its right-wing government into refraining from bombing Iranian nuclear facilities. Overwhelmingly dependent as Israel is on the United States for its survival and prosperity, it has proved that it can act on its own against American advice and still bank on US bounty and support. And Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made it plain that irrespective of the preference of his mentor, he is quite prepared to try to take Iranian nuclear facilities out because Tel Aviv believes that Tehran is closer to making the bomb than the US or the rest of the world. Recent feverish discussions between the highest American military official with Israel’s military and civilian establishment are an indication of the seriousness with which Washington is taking Israeli moves. Obviously, the US and most countries believe that Iran going nuclear would vastly complicate the region’s strategic picture. Iran, of course, declares that its nuclear exertions are only for peaceful purposes. For one thing, other Middle-East states will want nuclear status as well. Psychologically, there is a sense of grievance in the region that while Israel can have nuclear weapons (with American and French assistance), the Arab world is barred. Pakistan, for one, won kudos for calling its nuclear arsenal the Muslim bomb. Apparently, attempts at hacking into Iranian nuclear computers or assassinating a string of Iranian nuclear scientists have failed to stop Tehran’s endeavours. The tragedy is that while American efforts are directed at appeasing Israel by tightening the noose around Iran, Washington is leaving itself less and less room for manoeuvre. What happens if increasingly onerous sanctions choke off Iran’s ability to survive economically? Will its reaction be to take the path of surrender or will it strike out by closing Hormuz, irrespective of the harm it will cause itself? America has already warned that it will take counter-measures to keep the choke point open. Merely to pose these questions is to highlight the incredible dangers surrounding the present play. While most Asian importers of Iranian oil – Japan, China, South Korea and India – will seek to reduce the quantity of Iranian oil they import, the spike in oil prices, given the new tensions in the region, will be particularly unwelcome. As a permanent member of the UN Security Council, China has been exerting its bit, together with Russia, to stall the matter coming to the United Nations, but Washington has demonstrated that it has other means to exert pressure on many countries to side with it. This growing crisis comes at a time of great regional tension and upheaval. The Arab League has been trying to grapple with events in Syria, which is lurching towards a civil war while its proposal to ask President Bashar al-Assad to resign in favour of his vice-president and talk to the opposition on an interim unity government has been dismissed by Damascus with contempt. No outside party seems to have a solution to the Syrian imbroglio, with more Syrian lives being lost each day. The crisis in Iraq after the departure of US troops is getting worse, with the Shia Prime Minister, Mr Nuri al-Maliki, ostracising the Sunnis, the country’s traditional rulers, though a minority. Indeed, the Shia-Sunni divide has come to the fore surprisingly quickly. The only quiet part of Iraq is the autonomous Kurdish region which is counting its blessing. Egypt, on the other hand, is at the beginning of its new experiment with the Islamist-dominated new Parliament in place, charged with writing a new constitution. The Islamists – the Muslim Brotherhood and the more extremist Salafis – control over 70 per cent of the seats. But the essential power play is taking place between the Brotherhood and the Military Council, the post-Mubarak rulers. Reliable reports suggest that the two might make a deal for their mutual benefit. The key question will be the measure of supervision a future civilian government will have over the military’s affairs. The armed forces have many lucrative economic enterprises and had no civilian supervision of its budget, vastly stiffened with US assistance of some $ 1.3 billion a year. Against this backdrop, the looming Iranian crisis is something the world could have done without. To compound the problem for President Obama, America has already slipped into the presidential election mode. In other words, Israel’s wishes and inclinations become even more important to the incumbent and his Republican challengers because Jews exercise much influence not only in funding election campaigns but also in the support they have of the evangelical Right. With the developed world suffering from severer economic problems, the Iranian crisis can only add to the general gloom. Will the US find a way out of the crisis? That remains the
$ 64,000 question.
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To my doctors with love WHILE reading a contemporary biographer who claimed that John Keats suffered an agonising death after his doctor had wrongly diagnosed life-threatening tuberculosis as routine stress, I felt miserable for the Romantic poet. He succumbed to the diagnostic insolvency of his physician, when he was barely 29. It impelled me to gratefully applaud my family doctors, who never made such a faux pas and remained accessible, even at odd hours, to lessen our miseries with least medication. It was somewhere in the early-90s when it was revealed by the obstetrician, for the first time, that my wife was carrying twins and she would require caesarean intervention for a safe passage. Her subsequent revelation that she would not be there to reveal them further to the world because of her proceeding on pre-retirement leave left us dry. We left murmuring but returned soon to convey that the twins would egress only if she herself scooped them out. A legendary surgeon that she was, Sushila Rathi eventually consented to cut the umbilical cord. While the D-day was still being computed, she was generous to give us the option to plan, from the astrological perspective, if we so wished. We grabbed it and settled for June 26 for the mega arrival of the little ones. Amazing but true; behold, she joined as the Director, PGI, Rohtak, shovelled them out on a stormy Sunday morning and went back on leave, to never resume her duty thereafter. Not only this, she tossed another option to us to select a paediatrician for the operating team. On our reluctance to name any, she inducted Sanjeev Nanda who drove us through the hurly-burly of twins-rearing till we remained there. When we moved to Karnal the following year, we met Shailja’s classmate, who was in the process of settling there as a budding paediatrician, after having migrated from Iran. Throwing Benjamin’s advice to “beware of the young doctor and the old barber” to the winds, we decided to accept her as our family consultant. She had an amazing knack of befriending young patients, who would instantly stop crying and start smiling at her asking. She steered us through the valley of our shadow and was only a call away. She would not hesitate sitting on the children’s vomit-soaked beds like Dr Benjamin Rush who invented cures for yellow fever. She would lift their eyelids, peer down their throat and thump their back before announcing, “Nothing to worry; they are fine”. She had apparently imbibed the expertise of the Shakespearean doctor, who could handle even psychiatric emergency, like that of Cordelia’s father in “King Lear”, with equal ease. It was this art combined with paediatric science which endeared Sarita Chatley in the area. But, alas, Sushila Rathi and Sarita Chatley are no more there. An epitome of great medicos and compassionate human beings as they were, many continue to miss them. They have certainly left a void behind. No tributes can be paid better than what Amy Darnbrook weaved into a poetic obituary: “Though I’m not a great poet,
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US ‘weakened’ by outsourcing
On
the day I took office, our auto industry was on the verge of collapse. Some even said we should let it die. With a million jobs at stake, I refused to let that happen. In exchange for help, we demanded responsibility. We got workers and automakers to settle their differences. We got the industry to retool and restructure. Today, General Motors is back on top as the world's number one automaker. Chrysler has grown faster in the U.S. than any major car company. Ford is investing billions in U.S. plants and factories. And together, the entire industry added nearly 160,000 jobs. Tonight, my message to business leaders is simple: Ask yourselves what you can do to bring jobs back to your country, and your country will do everything we can to help you succeed. We should start with our tax code. Right now, companies get tax breaks for moving jobs and profits overseas. Meanwhile, companies that choose to stay in America get hit with one of the highest tax rates in the world. It makes no sense, and everyone knows it. So let's change it. First, if you're a business that wants to outsource jobs, you shouldn't get a tax deduction for doing it. Second, no American company should be able to avoid paying its fair share of taxes by moving jobs and profits overseas. From now on, every multinational company should have to pay a basic minimum tax. And every penny should go towards lowering taxes for companies that choose to stay here and hire here. Third, if you're an American manufacturer, you should get a bigger tax cut. If you're a high-tech manufacturer, we should double the tax deduction you get for making products here. And if you want to relocate in a community that was hit hard when a factory left town, you should get help financing a new plant, equipment, or training for new workers. My message is simple. It's time to stop rewarding businesses that ship jobs overseas, and start rewarding companies that create jobs right here in America. Send me these tax reforms, and I'll sign them right away. We're also making it easier for American businesses to sell products all over the world. Tonight, I'm announcing the creation of a Trade Enforcement Unit that will be charged with investigating unfair trade practices in countries like China. There will be more inspections to prevent counterfeit or unsafe goods from crossing our borders. And this Congress should make sure that no foreign company has an advantage over American manufacturing when it comes to accessing finance or new markets like Russia. TEACHERS MATTER Tight budgets have forced States to lay off thousands of teachers. We know a good teacher can increase the lifetime income of a classroom by over $250,000. A great teacher can offer an escape from poverty to the child who dreams beyond his circumstance. Every person in this chamber can point to a teacher who changed the trajectory of their lives. Most teachers work tirelessly, with modest pay, sometimes digging into their own pocket for school supplies - just to make a difference. Teachers matter. So instead of bashing them, or defending the status quo, let's offer schools a deal. Give them the resources to keep good teachers on the job, and reward the best ones. In return, grant schools flexibility: To teach with creativity and passion; to stop teaching to the test; and to replace teachers who just aren't helping kids learn. Of course, it's not enough for us to increase student aid. We can't just keep subsidising skyrocketing tuition; we'll run out of money. States also need to do their part, by making higher education a higher priority in their budgets. And colleges and universities have to do their part by working to keep costs down. Recently, I spoke with a group of college presidents who've done just that. Some schools re-design courses to help students finish more quickly. Some use better technology. The point is, it's possible. So let me put colleges and universities on notice: If you can't stop tuition from going up, the funding you get from taxpayers will go down. Higher education can't be a luxury - it's an economic imperative that every family in America should be able to afford. ENERGY SECURITY Over the last three years, we've opened millions of new acres for oil and gas exploration, and tonight, I'm directing my Administration to open more than 75 per cent of our potential offshore oil and gas resources. Right now, American oil production is the highest that it's been in eight years. That's right - eight years. Not only that - last year, we relied less on foreign oil than in any of the past sixteen years. But with only 2 per cent of the world's oil reserves, oil isn't enough. This country needs an all-out, all-of-the-above strategy that develops every available source of American energy - a strategy that's cleaner, cheaper, and full of new jobs. We have a supply of natural gas that can last America nearly one hundred years, and my Administration will take every possible action to safely develop this energy. Experts believe this will support more than 600,000 jobs by the end of the decade. And I'm requiring all companies that drill for gas on public lands to disclose the chemicals they use. America will develop this resource without putting the health and safety of our citizens at risk. The development of natural gas will create jobs and power trucks and factories that are cleaner and cheaper, proving that we don't have to choose between our environment and our economy. And by the way, it was public research dollars, over the course of thirty years,that helped develop the technologies to extract all this natural gas out of shale rock - reminding us that Government support is critical in helping businesses get new energy ideas off the ground. We have subsidised oil companies for a century. That's long enough. It's time to end the taxpayer giveaways to an industry that's rarely been more profitable, and double-down on a clean energy industry that's never been more promising. Pass clean energy tax credits and create these jobs. TIME TO BUILD During the Great Depression, America built the Hoover Dam and the Golden Gate Bridge. After World War II, we connected our States with a system of highways. Democratic and Republican administrations invested in great projects that benefited everybody, from the workers who built them to the businesses that still use them today. In the next few weeks, I will sign an Executive Order clearing away the red tape that slows down too many construction projects. But you need to fund these projects. Take the money we're no longer spending at war, use half of it to pay down our debt, and use the rest to do some nation-building right here at home. There's never been a better time to build, especially since the construction industry was one of the hardest-hit when the housing bubble burst. Of course, construction workers weren't the only ones hurt. So were millions of innocent Americans who've seen their home values decline. And while Government can't fix the problem on its own, responsible homeowners shouldn't have to sit and wait for the housing market to hit bottom to get some relief. TAX REFORMS Right now, our most immediate priority is stopping a tax hike on 160 million working Americans while the recovery is still fragile. People cannot afford losing $40 out of each paycheck this year. There are plenty of ways to get this done. So let's agree right here, right now: No side issues. No drama. Pass the payroll tax cut without delay. Right now, because of loopholes and shelters in the tax code, a quarter of all millionaires pay lower tax rates than millions of middle-class households. Right now, Warren Buffett pays a lower tax rate than his secretary. I recognise that people watching tonight have differing views about taxes and debt; energy and health care. But no matter what party they belong to, I bet most Americans are thinking the same thing right now: Nothing will get done this year, or next year, or maybe even the year after that, because Washington is broken. Can you blame them for feeling a little cynical? I've talked tonight about the deficit of trust between Main Street and Wall Street. But the divide between this city and the rest of the country is at least as bad - and it seems to get worse every year. Some of this has to do with the corrosive influence of money in politics. So together, let's take some steps to fix that. Send me a bill that bans insider trading by Members of Congress, and I will sign it tomorrow. Let's limit any elected official from owning stocks in industries they impact. Let's make sure people who bundle campaign contributions for Congress can't lobby Congress, and vice versa - an idea that has bipartisan support, at least outside of Washington. The executive branch also needs to change. Too often, it's inefficient, outdated and remote. That's why I've asked this Congress to grant me the authority to consolidate the federal bureaucracy so that our Government is leaner, quicker, and more responsive to the needs of the American people. Finally, none of these reforms can happen unless we also lower the temperature in this town. We need to end the notion that the two parties must be locked in a perpetual campaign of mutual destruction; that politics is about clinging to rigid ideologies instead of building consensus around common sense ideas. I'm a Democrat. But I believe what Republican Abraham Lincoln believed: That Government should do for people only what they cannot do better by themselves, and no more. That's why my education reform offers more competition, and more control for schools and States. That's why we're getting rid of regulations that don't work. MISSION THAT MATTERS One of my proudest possessions is the flag that the SEAL Team took with them on the mission to get bin Laden. On it are each of their names. Some may be Democrats. Some may be Republicans. But that doesn't matter. Just like it didn't matter that day in the Situation Room, when I sat next to Bob Gates - a man who was George Bush's defence secretary; and Hillary Clinton, a woman who ran against me for president. All that mattered that day was the mission. No one thought about politics. No one thought about themselves. No one built this country on their own. This Nation is great because we built it together. This Nation is great because we worked as a team. This Nation is great because we watch each other's backs. And if we hold fast to that truth, in this moment of trial, there is no challenge too great; no mission too hard. As long as we're joined in common purpose, as long as we maintain our common resolve, our journey moves forward, our future is hopeful, and the state of our Union will always be strong. Excerpted from the State of the Union address delivered on Tuesday night by the US President
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