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PM’s caution
Opportunity for growth |
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Metered largesse
India-China border dispute
The ‘scholarship’ child
CINEMA: NEW Releases
Half a scare!
Palatable, not pungent enough
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PM’s caution
The
first meeting of the expanded Council of Ministers on Thursday went beyond being an informal get-together. Apart from advising Cabinet ministers to give substantive work to junior ministers, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh used the occasion to emphasise the need for belt-tightening by the various ministries as high fiscal deficit was hurting both domestic and foreign investment. Finance Minister P. Chidambaram also used the opportunity to highlight the critical financial condition the country was staring at. Economic growth has slowed down and so has the tax revenue. Exports have decelerated in view of the uncertainties in the developed world. In the light of this, it may be hard to achieve the budgetary targets of fiscal deficit at 5.1 per cent of the GDP and a 19.5 per cent hike in tax revenue. While the Finance Minister has outlined a five-year fiscal consolidation plan, the RBI has sidestepped it and instead asked the government to prune its expenditure further. Chidambaram reminded his Cabinet colleagues that if the fiscal situation was not improved, it might drive rating agencies to downgrade India to junk status on creditworthiness, which, in turn, would discourage fresh foreign investment and might even lead to capital outflows. Foreign investment, he said, was “not an option, but a necessity”. The government has moved fast with decisions on FDI in retail, aviation and insurance. However, delays in land acquisition and environmental clearances continue to hold back private investment. The message from Dr Manmohan Singh and Chidambaram was meant not only for the ministers but also for the UPA leaders opposed to cuts in subsidies. While the government leaders try to put the fiscal house in order, the Congress leadership pushes programmes such as the rural job guarantee scheme, Bharat Nirmaan and the food security Bill, which are aimed at inclusive growth but require large financial commitments. As the general election draws near, standoffs between the “reformers” and the election managers could become more frequent. The UPA government’s last budget is likely to be election-oriented. But before that the government wants to conserve and mop up resources.
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Opportunity for growth
When
Deputy Chief Minister of Punjab Sukhbir Singh Badal meets his Pakistani counterpart, Shahbaz Sharif, after reaching Lahore on November 5, he can share with him the idea of creating a “region-state” for bringing about prosperity on the two sides of the border. Sukhbir Badal is scheduled to lead a delegation of industrialists and traders on a four-day visit to Pakistan. The relaxation in the visa regime and India’s decision to allow FDI from Pakistan, besides other factors, provide an excellent opportunity to transform the economic profile of the two Punjabs. The growing demand for goods and services from each other can push up bilateral trade considerably. An enhanced stake in economic growth can influence the thinking in New Delhi and Islamabad to do all they can for improving relations between the two neighbours. If the two Punjabs can reach some kind of an agreement for promoting trade and industry in the region, Amritsar and Lahore will have an opportunity to emerge as trading hubs in this part of South Asia. India’s Punjab can gain enormously in view of the fact that Pakistan’s imports account for 70 per cent of its GDP. People on the other side, who are not only interested in farm produce from this side but also in engineering goods, chemical products, pharmaceuticals, textiles, etc, will also be gainers. Sukhbir Badal should persuade Shahbaz Sharif to put pressure on the Pakistan government to increase the the number of items on their import list, which has only 137 items at present. Even in this list the number of products is fewer than the number of categories. The list needs to be drastically revised in the interest of bilateral trade between the two Punjabs. Punjab has the advantage of being nearer Afghanistan, Iran and Central Asian countries, where there are enormous opportunities for trade. If unrestricted truck movement is allowed from India’s Punjab to Pakistan’s Gwadar port and Zahedan port in Iran, Indian exports to West Asia can reach their destinations in less time with a reduced cost of transportation. But we need to create an atmosphere in which economic interests dominate everything else.
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Metered largesse
Punjab
State Power Corporation Limited (PSPCL) has decided to install meters to record the amount of power being supplied to agricultural tubewells, which is free of cost. This is a much required, though as delayed, step. Necessitated by the Electricity Act, 2003, the proposal is being implemented in phases, with only 10 per cent tubewells being covered in the first round. Given the financial position of PSPCL, when the remaining tubewells get metered no one can tell. In case that does not materialise, the proposal would prove to be only lip service. A large number of tubewells draw more power than sanctioned, because they have been sunk deeper, with bigger motors installed, as water levels went down over the years. When there is such theft of power happening — which is, in any case, free — besides upsetting the subsidy calculations of the government, it also provides scope for various levels in the power distribution utility to cover up for their losses caused by inefficiency, if not active facilitation of theft of electricity by paying consumers. If something is being given free, the quantum better be known. The subsidy bill of the state government on account of power for agriculture has gone up from Rs 2,548 crore to Rs 5,784 crore over the past five years. If the government has to persist with giving free power for farming, against all counsel of economic experts, it should at least make sure it is not wasted. One way to do that is charge at least a nominal cost, that too not at a flat rate but according to units consumed. This keeps the meter reading and accounting system going, as well as ensures the farmer runs his tubewell only for the hours required and not all the time there is power, which is the norm. The current practice is a drain on power as well as water. Beneficiaries of any largesse may be selfish, but are not fools. The government should have faith in the common sense of the farmer, and set about reforms in agriculture that in the end would only benefit the sector.
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The best place to find God is in a garden. You can dig for him there. — George Bernard Shaw
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India-China border dispute
Could
Sino-Indian conflict of 1962 have been prevented? Going by the historical position of India, Indian frontiers never extended across the Karakoram to the Kuenlun range. The British official map attached to the Simon Commission Report of 1930 and the map of India submitted by the General Staff of the British Indian Army to the British Cabinet Mission in 1946 show the crest of the Karakoram mountains as the approximate alignment of the Northern and Eastern Frontiers of Kashmir. Aitchison’s Treaties (Vol. 12-1931) state that the Northern and Eastern Frontiers of Kashmir remain undefined. This had also been confirmed right from 1897 by the British Foreign Office. Until 1954, the maps issued by the Surveyor-General of India had shown the Indo-Tibetan border in the Ladakh sector as well as in the Himachal Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh segments as “undefined” while the McMahon Line in the NEFA sector was shown as “undemarcated”. It was only in 1954, following the advice of the North-East Border Committee, that the Surveyor-General published a new official map of India showing the boundary line in the Kashmir-Ladakh sector which took the crest of the Kuenlun range and, for the first time, placed within the Indian territory the whole of the disputed Aksai Chin area. In the Eastern Sector, historically, the erstwhile Kameng Frontier Division of NEFA was under the dual control of the Tawang Monastery and the Drepung Monastery of Lhasa while the Dzongpons of Tsona district, who were the secular officials of the Tibetan government, administered the area. They periodically toured the Kameng area to collect taxes and settle disputes, and they used to visit right up to Kalaktang in the south-west extreme of the present-day Arunachal Pradesh. The palatial house of the Dzongpon in Dirang Dzong, which is south of the Sela Pass in Kameng district, is still there. Aitchison’s Treaties (Vol. 12 - 1931) state that the people inhabiting the Monul region, which approximately corresponds to Tsona district, were called Mombas (Monpas as they are called presently in Arunachal) and the Mombas living north of the Sela range were under the Tibetan administration. The main objective of the British at the Simla Convention of 1914 was to confine the Chinese suzerainty to Outer Tibet and make China accept inner Tibet’s autonomy, including its demilitarisation, as this area was contiguous to British India and Nepal. The Chinese were unwilling to ratify it primarily on the ground that the boundary between the Outer and Inner Tibet, as proposed by the British, was unacceptable to them. Lord Hardinge, the Viceroy, had stated on July 23, 1914, while forwarding a copy of the official memorandum of Sir Henry McMahon on the proceedings of the Simla Conference, that the consideration of the North-Eastern Frontier of India was not a part of the functions of the Simla Conference and that the views and proposals put forward by McMahon in this respect might be regarded as only personal, having no endorsement of the Government of India. Olaf Caroe’s attempts in 1938 to put forth certain claims and his subsequent attempt in 1945 through Hugh Richardson to produce certain spurious documents were of no avail. In 1946, the KMT government in China had protested against British intrusion into the NEFA area and sent as many as four protest notes. In October 1947, the Government of Tibet asked for the return of Tibetan territories from Assam to Ladakh, including such areas as Sikkim, Darjeeling and Bhutan. In November 1949, the KMT government gave a note to the Ministry of External Affairs repudiating the Simla Convention of 1914. It was only in February 1951 that a contingent of the Assam Rifles led by Major R. Khathing, Assistant Political Officer, went to Tawang and hoisted the Indian national flag proclaiming the jurisdiction of India over the area. This led to a hostile demonstration by the Tibetans against the Indian Consul-General at Lhasa. The Tibetans were exercising a nebulous politico-religious authority in several pockets along the NEFA frontier such as Tawang, Sarli, Longju, Gelling, Kibithoo, etc. Alastair Lamb (The China-India Border — 1963), while rejecting the Chinese claim on the entire NEFA, upholds its claim to Walong and the Tawang tract of the region by virtue of its suzerainty over Tibet. The Sino-Indian Treaty and the Trade Agreement signed in 1954 resulted in India giving up all its extra-territorial rights in Tibet acquired by the British first in 1904 and then enhanced in 1914. The Panchsheel, which was supposed to guide the Sino-Indian relations, was a by-product of these agreements. However, Panchsheel meant nothing to the Chinese as subsequent events proved. Nehru’s disillusionment was reflected in his public speech at Kathmandu during his visit to Nepal in June 1959 when he commented on Panchsheel: “Where is Panchsheel? Who observes Panchseel?” The border dispute had not been taken up by India as a serious issue with the Chinese till 1957, and only the disputed maps had been referred to in some of the notes exchanged. During Premier Chou En-lai’s visit to India in the winter of 1956, only the McMahon Line was mentioned and not the Sino-Indian border in Ladakh, particularly since the Chinese road in the Aksai Chin area was first noticed by Indian patrols only in the summer of 1958. In the subsequent diplomatic notes and letters which were exchanged between the two parties, while India insisted on its claim on the basis of “tradition, custom and usage”, China steadfastly stuck to its position that the border was not defined and remained to be negotiated. India came within an ace of solving the dispute amicably in April 1960 when Chou En-lai offered “reciprocal acceptance of present actualities in both sectors and constitution of a boundary commission”, which meant China’s acceptance of the de facto position of India’s border claim in the eastern sector along the McMahon Line and India’s acceptance of the de facto position of China’s claim in the Aksai Chin plateau, north of the Karakoram mountains which formed the watershed between the Indus basin and the Tarim basin. While Jawaharlal Nehru was inclined to accept the offer, Home Minister G.B. Pant stoutly opposed the suggestion and the proposal fell through. There was one more opportunity, almost on the very brink of the catastrophic event of October 1962, when Krishna Menon met the Chinese Foreign Minister, Chen Yi, in Geneva in July 1962. Chen Yi repeated Chou En-lai’s offer of April 1960, but there was no response from India. If only Jawaharlal Nehru had asserted his primacy in political affairs and taken a bold stand in seizing the offer of Chou En-lai in 1960, the history of Sino-Indian relations would have been entirely different. A possible solution to the border dispute would be the acceptance of what Chou En-lai offered in April 1960 — “reciprocal acceptance of present actualities in both sectors and constitution of a boundary commission”, which means Chinese acceptance of India’s border claim in the eastern sector along the McMahon Line and India’s acceptance of the Chinese border claim in the Aksai Chin plateau north of the Karakoram mountains.n The writer is a former Governor of UP and West Bengal.
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The ‘scholarship’ child He had got an all-time high of 98 per cent in the admission test but he had not joined school. It turned out that the little money that his father had got from selling a small plot of land and which had led him to aspire for better education for his son was nowhere near enough. The child definitely deserved better than the government school he was attending, and I was foolhardy enough to suggest that he should pay me what he could and I would take care of the difference. For the first year some of my colleagues pitched in and the fee was paid. In the second year, based on his excellent performance in school, the board waived his fees. He was to tell me years later that he was acutely conscious of the fact that he had been given the opportunity of a lifetime and he was determined to make the most of it. And make the most of it he did. He took part in every school activity and excelled in whatever he put his hand to: academics, sports, co-curricular activities — he excelled in them all. I taught him in his two final years in school. With his tremendous sense of humour, his ability to laugh at himself, he could lighten the darkest of moments. He was selected for an exchange. His ticket was paid for and to meet the other expenses, I took advantage of the offer that a police officer, in a moment of weakness, had made, to call on him if ever there was anything I needed. The money was dropped onto my table out of a satchel and came in all denominations. I knew how it had been raised. But I am no Gandhian and was just grateful for what it enabled us to do. He finally went into banking and found placement with a multinational bank and postings at exotic places like Singapore and Tokyo. I still have the tie which he sent me when he got his first salary — Mauve Teddy Bears against a mustard background! We wrote to each other regularly, but over the years our correspondence was reduced to the annual greeting card. Eventually that too ceased. He, like so many others, had been sifted out of my life through the sieve of time. Then, last year, I had a phone call from him from New York. We exchanged news and he told me that he now had a 12-year-old son. “What’s his name?” I asked. “That is one question that I was sure you would not need to ask.” The tears that had frozen to ice, with the years, now suddenly thawed and flowed unheeded down my cheeks. I was humbled beyond words. “Take care, sir. And I’ll call you regularly, I promise.” I smiled to myself. As often as this promise had been made so often had it been broken. I knew it would be broken again. But for once this did not
matter.
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CINEMA: NEW Releases Ervell E. Menezes In
keeping with the golden jubilee of British secret agent 007, the latest Bond Skyfall is an absolute rollercoaster ride with action, suspense and humour and though it is all of 143 minutes there’s never a dull moment. This is because of an excellent screenplay by John Logan and others liberally strewn with choicest one-liners well spaced and succinctly handled by Sam Mendes who is in full control of the narrative with doses of action dotted with human interest and of course glamorous damsels for Bond (Daniel Craig) to relax with. In keeping with the tradition of something new in each film here we have motorcycle chases on roof-tops and the blast of an epilogue sets the tempo of the ensuing drama, we have the villain Raoul Silva (Xavier Bardem) make his entry halfway through the film and with Bond being a blonde they’ve decided to make Bardem one too. With the action going places, from London to Shanghai (it has a Chrsyeller-type skyscraper) to Macao lensman Roger Deakins has enough scope to make a meal of it but refrains from doing so as not to arrest the narrative flow. It is a case of less-being-more in all streams, including music by Thomas Newman. As for the acting Craig seems to be growing in his third film and is somewhat overshadowed by Xavier Bardem as the villain in a Ravana-Rama situation. Bernice Marhole underplays her part and Naomi Harris makes the most of her mini role. Veteran Albert Finney makes a surprise entry toward the end as Kinkade, Bond’s grandpa’s gamekeeper in Scotland for the climax but it isn’t for single malts but gunfire. As for the title I shall not explain it so that it may make you go and see the film. It is easily one of the best Bonds and that’s no exaggeration.
Half a scare! However, anyone who has spent a sizeable part of their dough watching horror films by the Bhatt camp can detect each twist and turn. Only, you hope the movie gets spookier, which it does not. At least not on time! Tia Bajpai has acted well as the possessed woman and scares you, just a wee bit. It is good to watch the nice, sweet and caring Vidya Malvade. Did we forget to talk about her acting skills? 1920 Evil Returns has a signature Bhatt style - all exotic locations and good music. In fact this is one of the reasons why you can watch the film, but only choose a day when you are in the mood to get scared…whatever comes your way.
Palatable, not pungent enough But before you can declare it delectable fare…the narration is let down by its limpid pace. In the first half, despite the setting quickly moving from UK to Punjab and the flashbacks that provide the necessary twists, the film seems to be going nowhere. In the second half, the tempo builds up and the latter part becomes gripping; yet the package lacks the requisite punch. Its not Omi alone who is in search of the elusive ingredient that his grandfather used to make his special chicken with, the director too appears to be in quest of the right concoction. He gets the flavour right but not the core. In fact, the film’s biggest strength - it’s no frills and fancy tenor - also becomes its failing at several junctures. Of course, it has more than its share of delightful moments and comic interludes, most of which are provided by the mamaji.The anti-climax, even though on expected lines, is moving as well. Wish the movie had moved out of its inertia too and stirred something deep within, but clearly this one is only for the taste buds. So if you like your chicken sweet and simple, go for it.
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Movies on TV
It’s a film about an intrepid reporter Tintin and Captain Haddock who set off on a treasure hunt for a sunken ship commanded by Haddock's ancestor. The Adventures of Tintin is a 2011 American 3D adventure film based on The Adventures of Tintin, a series of comic books created by Belgian artist Hergé . It is the first-ever animated film for both Spielberg and his longtime collaborator, composer John Williams. ZEE CINEMA SONY PIX HBO FILMY MOVIES NOW Shiva (Akshay Kumar) is a small time conman in love with Priya (Sonakshi Sinha), a pretty girl whom he met at a wedding. Into this picture perfect world enters six year old Neha who believes Shiva to be her dad. While trying desperately to save his life and love, Shiva stumbles upon a deadly secret. This secret will take him to a small town in Bihar. There he comes across an altogether different world. ZEE CINEMA ZEE STUDIO FILMY HBO |
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M (Judy Dench) as Bond’s commander-in-chief looks a tad tired but is compensated with the best lines, including lines from Tennyson’s “that which we are we are” and one wouldn’t have expected poetry in a Bond film. Garreth Mallory (Ralph Fiennes) is her prospective replacement and the suave Fiennes does full justice to the role. Eve Moneypenny (Naomi Harris) and his Girl Friday Severine (Bernice Marlobe) provide the romantic relief in typical Bond tradition.
How
A sequel to 1920, the movie showcases dead-pan expression actor-poet Jaidev Verma (Aftab Shivdasani), the sole loner on the planet, a concerned sister Karuna (Vidya Malvade) and the supposed ‘scare factor’ Smruti (Tia Bajpai). As for Aftab, you will be asking for too much if you want to see him act! Leaving him to his cheesy-poetic dialogues, the director concentrates on the ‘bhoot’ - Tia Bajpai. 
If
Clearly, both the writer and the director seem to understand the Punjabi milieu. So you have characters, who are real and credible. Meet the hero Omi Khurana (Kunal Kapoor), who in search of his El Dorado finds himself caught in a predicament not unknown to many Punjabi youths bitten by the foreign bug. Then there is the good-for-nothing Titu Mamaji (Rajesh Sharma) whose only mission in life seems to be food (not making it silly, but eating it). Add to it the other members of the loving and forgiving Khurana family…right from the old man (Vinod Nagpal), who has kept his secret recipe close to his heart, to the gruffy chacha (Rajendra Sethi) to his son (Rahul Bagga)...here are people that an average Punjabi can easily relate with. The credit of making these flesh and blood people come alive also goes to actors who are understated yet convincing. Kunal Kapoor as the wayward grandson Omi, who finds his way back home and into the hearts of his family, puts up a decent performance. Huma Quershi the hot babe of Gangs of Wasseypur turns a new leaf and is as refreshingly lovely and consummate in the role of a doctor. Of course, it’s Rajesh Sharma as the quintessential Titu mamaji who steals the show. 
Saturday
November 3
Sunday
November 4