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Democracy at work Sunshine
energy |
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The dignity and
self-possession of the Sikhs
What Modi did not say on Oct 2
Girls in
Haryana need more than khaps
How internet is helping the ‘Islamic State’ The West
needs to balance tactics and strategy
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Sunshine energy A
4 MW solar power plant was inaugurated in Mansa on Wednesday. It may seem like a small contribution, but is part of a targeted 250 MW solar power generation by 2015 in Punjab. What's more important is the fact that solar power is now being considered at a commercial level even by states, and not just as a social or environmental commitment. The reason for that lies in the advancement of the technology, which is rapidly becoming more efficient, i.e., power generated per unit area of photovoltaic (solar) panels is increasing, and the cost is decreasing. So much so, several solar targets are being revised. NTPC Limited has announced plans to set up a 750 MW solar project in Madhya Pradesh at an investment of Rs 5,000 crore. Till last year, solar energy cost more than the grid (conventional sources). That changed when earlier this year Madhya Pradesh accepted a private company's bid to supply solar power at Rs 6.5 a unit. This is tantalisingly close to achieving what is called grid parity. Conventional sources today cost Rs 5-6. Punjab has signed up to buy solar power at a little over Rs 7 per unit. At this rate, the investors are likely to recover the investment in less than 10 years. Thereafter it is virtually pure profit. In the long run even Rs 7 is not too much to pay, when you bring into account the uninterrupted supply, no coal hassles, no pollution, and the larger good to environment in cutting down on carbon emissions. Punjab should also pursue carbon credits available under the Kyoto Protocol. The year 2014 could go down in history as the turning point for the energy challenge, with solar beginning to take over from all fossil-fuel-fired energy production. The Centre as well as state governments should now give priority to solar over thermal, as it is clean, reliable in most parts of the country, quick to install, and sidesteps the feuds over coal mining. May the sun shine over India!
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To buy books would be a good thing if we also could buy the time to read them.
— Arthur Schopenhauer
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Adulteration of food and drugs The dignity and
self-possession of the Sikhs
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What Modi did not say on Oct 2
The
Modi government has, by a not-so-clever sleight of hand, converted the most important day in India, October 2, Gandhi's birthday, into a cleanliness day. Of course this was buttressed by a repeat of Gandhi's exhortation of “cleanliness is next to godliness”. No one can be against spreading awareness about cleanliness. But when an attempt, and not so subtle one, is made by the RSS-dominated Modi government to sidetrack the real message of Gandhi, one cannot ignore this mischievous move. Days before Modi was to do the cleaning act at the Valmiki quarters in New Delhi, the whole area was checked for security (right, no objection to the security angle). But what was hypocritical was the fact that the whole area was cleaned by the sanitation staff regularly for days earlier. Have we not seen in newspapers how ministers, in order to show their extra loyalty, had empty bottles thrown by the sanitary staff without any embarrassment and then made a mockery of the cleanliness drive by removing them while getting themselves photographed? My objection is not to the observance of the cleanliness day - do it by all means provided it is on another day. But I do have a serious objection to converting Gandhi's birthday as the cleanliness day, as if that is the most important message of Mahatma Gandhi. If one watched TV channels, it was Modi and his cohorts waving the broom. Gandhi's real message of communal harmony was totally missing. Gandhi's stature of being the tallest Indian was reduced to a small mention and the whole focus was on Modi holding a broom. If the Modi government denies this, will it explain why it never mentioned the real message of Gandhi which he consistently emphasized? Let me reproduce the pledge which Mahatma Gandhi wanted Indians to take in 1919: “With God as a witness we Hindus and Mohamedans declare that we shall behave towards one another as children of the same parents, that we shall have no differences, that the sorrows of each will be the sorrows of the other and that each shall help the other in removing them. We shall respect each other’s religion and religious feelings, and shall not stand in the way of our respective religious practices. We shall always refrain from violence to each other in the name of religion.” That communal harmony was his foremost concern was emphasised again in 1921 and repeated on March 24, 1947, at a prayer meeting in Rajghat thus: "I would say that Hindus and Muslims are the two eyes of mother India - just as the trouble in one eye affects the other too, similarly the whole of India suffers when either a Hindu or a Muslim suffers." Gandhi's emphasis against communalism was again shown in the letter he wrote in Harijan in January 1948 in Gujarati (emphasis mine) where he specifically said: "I think it is proper to address a few words to the people of Gujarat. (Modi as a Gujarati should have in all propriety and claiming to be spreading the message of Gandhi reminded the nation of what Gandhi wrote in 1948) Delhi has always been the Capital. It would be the limit of foolishness to regard it as belonging only to the Hindus or the Sikhs. All Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Parsis, Christians and Jews who people this country from Kanyakumari to Kashmir and from Karachi to Dibrugarh in Assam and who have lovingly and in a spirit of service adopted it as their dear motherland, have an equal right to it. No one can say that it has a place only for the majority and the minority should be
dishonoured" (emphasis mine). Modi went to pay homage at Rajghat on the 2nd October 2014 morning. Surprisingly, no one told him about this solemn pledge taken by Gandhi. But then Modi could not have taken this pledge with a clear conscience, considering the B.J.P. is shame-facedly busy in congratulating and felicitating party workers accused of violent crimes against Muslims in Muzaffarnagar (U.P.) even when they are being prosecuted in a court of law. Such open demonstration in favour of the accused is a clear case of contempt of the court. Also, how can Modi spread the message of Hindu-Muslim harmony when his mentor, RSS chief Bhagwat, was provided the services of Doordarshan to spread communal poison against the Muslims by falsely bringing up the question of Bangladeshi immigrants in Assam and West Bengal, Bihar and creating panic by a canard that it had the potential to endanger the life of Hindu society there - very mischievously ignoring the fact that hundreds of Muslims were killed in the recent flare-ups in Assam, Bodoland? Modi's claim to be secular is unacceptable in the context of his silence at the crude thinking of some of the BJP diehards who are planning to celebrate the birthday of Hemu, employed as a General in the army of Afghan ruler Sher Shah - he vainly chose to describe himself as King Vikramaditya and challenged the King. Akbar’s army was defeated. The diehard in the RSS are so perverse that they are claiming it as a very big battle of a Hindu king against the great Akbar who has been praised in the U.N. Human Development Report 2004 for his pronouncements on religious tolerance such as “no one should be interfered with on account of religion, and any one is allowed to go over to a religion that pleases him”. Modi in his radio speech has rightly referred reverentially to Swami Vivekanand as one of the greatest Indians. But will Modi tell his RSS followers to remember and follow Swami Vivekanand, who believed in total Hindu-Muslim unity and profusely praised Islam? In a letter to his friend Mohammed Sarfraz Hussain (June 10, 1898 ) Vivekanand wrote without any hesitation: “Therefore I am firmly persuaded that without the help of practical Islam, theories of Vedantism, however fine and wonderful they maybe, are entirely valueless to the vast mass of mankind. For our own motherland a junction of the two great systems Hinduism and Islam — Vedanta brain and Islam body — is the only hope……” There thus can be no real progress in India which does not include the minorities such as Muslims and Christians as equal stakeholders. This is the real message which Modi should have spoken of on Gandhi's birthday if he meant to pay a genuine respectful tribute to Mahatma Gandhi.
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Girls in Haryana need more than khaps My dear Modi ji, “Sahi hai”. So be it. “Priya Modi ji, Mein aapko naman karti hoon”. I bow to you. Politics is the art of the possible. You show how it is. You blow hot, you blow cold. And you demonstrate how in politics, everything is possible. At the Red Fort on August 15, you observed the stark truth: “As girls turn 10-12, parents start asking them, where are you going? With whom are you going? What time will you return home?” And then you challenged the parents: “Have you ever asked your sons where they are going? With whom are they going? What time will they return home?” We are Indians. We know the answers. But your raising the questions lent weight to them. Not anymore. Because you blow hot and blow cold. In Jatland, seeking votes, you bow to the khaps. Then you are one with these jaundiced bodies whose earnest endeavour is to perpetuate our patriarchal mindsets. You pander to the khaps to bring your party to power here. May the force be with you. Because the girls in Haryana need more than khaps. No khap has decried the suicide of two bright teenage girls who wanted to reach for the stars, but are dust today. The regressive control of the khaps is so pervasive that young men are seen as heroes, pumped with testosterone. Stalking girls is acceptable. Harassing them is part of manhood. Girls understand the rulebook well. Catcalls are to be ducked. Intrusive comments are to be avoided. If you complain against any of this, you break the rule. Neighbourhood elders then share stories of how the girls themselves invited the abuse. The girls pursue excellence in education at their own risk. Foremost, they must remain invisible. As Anju Hooda, a 16-year-old from Garnauthi village observed of life in Haryana: “The boys follow us. Some even try to click our pictures when we are travelling in an auto or walking in the street. They shout out their telephone numbers or write these on chits and throw them into our bags. It is not easy to raise your voice, since we know that people would blame us. The only way is to study hard and make a life in a better place,” said Anju. She wants to be a doctor and escape khapland. Why am I recalling this, Modi ji? Because the girls had hope in you. In your vision of a new Bharat. Your much-loved khaps are known to target women if they show any sign of independence. When you bow to the khaps, you break a million hearts. Then you are no different from other politicians who applaud women achievers from the rural heartland, but hail khaps to rope in a million votes. By bowing to the khaps, Modi ji, you give them power. The stamp of approval of India's progressive Pradhan Mantri with the 56-inch chest. Academic excellence and sports have become the two ways in which girls want to escape this wonderful land ruled by khaps. Wrester Geeta Phogat says being a sportsperson has helped her get away from “bhed bhav” of Haryana. Sports has given her confidence and self-respect, and enabled her to speak her mind. “Young girls in Haryana should speak their mind and not be afraid to challenge the system. 'Unhe awaz uthani chahiye’ (they must raise their voice),” Geeta said in a recent interview.
— Rajni Shaleen Chopra
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How internet is helping the ‘Islamic State’ The Isis has turned the internet into the most effective propaganda tool ever. Propaganda war of Islamic extremists is being waged on Facebook and internet message boards, not mosques
Ever
since the Pentagon started talking about Isis as apocalyptic, I've suspected that websites and blogs and YouTube are taking over from reality. I'm even wondering whether "Isis" - or Islamic State or Isil, here we go again - isn't more real on the internet than it is on the ground. Not, of course, for the Kurds of Kobani or the Yazidis or the beheaded victims of this weird caliphate. But isn't it time we woke up to the fact that internet addiction in politics and war is even more dangerous than hard drugs? Over and over, we have the evidence that it is not Isis that "radicalises" Muslims before they head off to Syria - and how I wish David Cameron would stop using that word - but the internet. The belief, the absolute conviction that the screen contains truth - that the "message" really is the ultimate verity - has still not been fully recognised for what it is; an extraordinary lapse in our critical consciousness that exposes us to the rawest of emotions - both total love and total hatred - without the means to correct this imbalance. The "virtual" has dropped out of "virtual reality".
Dangerous forum At its most basic, you have only to read the viciousness of internet chatrooms. Major newspapers - hopelessly late - have only now started to realise that chatrooms are not a new technical version of "Letters to the Editor" but a dangerous forum for people to let loose their most-disturbing characteristics. Thus a major political shift in the Middle East, transferred to the internet, takes on cataclysmic proportions. Our leaders not only can be transfixed themselves - the chairman of the US House Committee on Homeland Security, for example, last week brandishing a printed version of Dabiq, the Isis online magazine - but can use the same means to terrify us.
Laptop and jihad Stripped of any critical faultline, we are cowed into silence by the "barbarity" of Isis, the "evil" of Isis which has - in the truly infantile words of the Australian Prime Minister - "declared war on the world". The television news strip across the bottom of the screen now supplies a ripple of these expressions, leaving out grammar and, all too often, verbs. We have grown so used to the narrative whereby a Muslim is "radicalised" by a preacher at a mosque, and then sets off on jihad, that we do not realise that the laptop is playing this role. In Lebanon, for example, there is some evidence that pictures on YouTube have just as much influence upon Muslims who suddenly decide to travel to Syria and Iraq as do Sunni preachers. Photographs of Sunni Muslim victims - or of the "execution" of their supposedly apostate enemies - have a powerful impact out of all proportion to words on their own. Martin Pradel, a French lawyer for returning and now-imprisoned jihadists, last week described how his clients spent hours on the internet with a preference for YouTube and other social networks, looking at images and messages marketed by Isis. They did not - please note - go to mosques, and they drew apart from family and friends. A remarkable AFP report tells of a 15-year-old girl from Avignon who left for the Syrian war last January without telling her parents. Her brother discovered she led parallel lives, with two Facebook accounts, one where she talked about her normal teenage life, another where she wrote about her desire to go "to Aleppo to help our Syrian brothers and sisters". Mr Pradel said the "radicalisation" was very quick, in one case within a month. It reminds me horribly of the accounts of American teenagers who lock themselves on to the internet for hours before storming off to shoot their school colleagues and teachers.
Publicity for a caliphate Online, Dabiq - named after a Syrian town captured by the jihadis which will supposedly be the site of a future and apocalyptic (yes, that word again) battle against the Western crusaders - is a slick venture. But print it up and bind it - I have such a copy beside me as I write - and it appears very crude. There are photographs of mass executions which look more like pictures of atrocities on the Eastern Front in World War II than publicity for a new Muslim caliphate. There is the full text of poor James Foley's last message before his beheading which - on paper - is deeply saddening. "The Dabiq team (sic) would like to hear back from its readers," the editors say at the end, providing email addresses and advice to be "brief" because - they add, with perhaps unintentional humour - "your brothers are busy with many responsibilities and therefore will not have the time to read long messages." But that's the point, isn't it? Be brief. Keep the length down. No aimless arguments or the letter may be "modified" (that's the word the editors actually use in English).
Failure of mainstream press I will not dwell here on the failure of the West's "mainstream" press - another word I loathe - in defining Isis; Dabiq's publishers have cleverly mimicked many of its faults. But those who are gripped by the messages of the internet - pictures of the chemical gas victims in Damascus last year have clearly had a tremendous influence - are not going to be swayed by us journos any more. In this new world, we can lose our heads, literally. But remember the internet. Clearly, Isis has.
— The Independent
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The West needs to balance tactics and strategy It is not in Turkey's interest for the Kurdish cantons in Syria to survive, President Erdogan says he is prepared to accept the unrest which has swept through the Turkish Kurdish community
“Strategy
without tactics is the slowest route to victory: tactics without strategy is just the noise before defeat." General Lord Richards, the former head of Britain's armed forces, was quoting Sun Tzu while talking about the war against Isis at his book launch in London last week as an array of commanders, of the past and present, nodded agreement. A day later, Barack Obama's deputy national security advisor, Tony Blinken, was at pains to stress while in London that the military planners of the current campaign were as aware of getting the strategy right as the ancient and venerated Chinese military tactician. Just under five weeks ago, the US President was subjected to considerable criticism for admitting: "We don't have a strategy yet" as the bombing got under way, but one was formulated; no deployment of ground forces, the forming of a coalition, the arming and training of Syrian "moderate" opposition fighters and the Kurdish Peshmerga militia, retraining of the Iraqi forces and air strikes.
Buffer zone We have also learned about the bits which are not part of the strategy. Turkey's demands for a buffer zone and a no-fly zone in Syria as the price for it joining the campaign were not even "on the front burner", Mr Blinken said during a visit to London. Similarly, Ankara's demands for military action to be extended was dismissed; the removal of Basher al-Assad without a replacement administration would lead to "as much bad as good". Kobani was unlikely to be saved without ground forces. The inference on this was quite clear; the Turks have tanks across the border, they could step in whenever they wanted to do so. The Turkish government, of course, did not intervene and is unlikely to do so. There are credible reports that the Kurds in Kobani were told by Ankara that they could have military help, but only in return for dismantling the autonomous administration which had sprung up amid the turmoil of Syria's civil war, accept a buffer zone and renounce any future claim of self-determination especially in association with compatriots across the border where the PKK had been engaged in a long and attritional conflict with the state.
Turkey's strategic interest President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has made it tacitly clear that it is not in Turkey's strategic interest for the Kurdish cantons in Syria to survive and he is prepared to accept the unrest which has swept through the Turkish Kurdish community sparked by this stance, leaving dozens dead in clashes with security forces and nationalists. Conversely, it is not in the interest of the Kurds to have a buffer zone that will mean the end to their autonomy and the presence of Turkish forces on the territory they had carved out for themselves for the foreseeable future. But the Turks are close to agreeing to two things that would play important roles in the West's campaign. The use of one of their biggest airbases and the setting up of training facilities for Syrian rebels. Incirlik has vast facilities, will be tactically useful in the air campaign and is the ideal launch point if troops were to be sent to northern Iraq: the Turkish government refused its use during the 2003 Iraq invasion. The training of the fighters lies at the centre of the strategy Mr Obama outlined. But immediate questions arise: training centres for the "moderate" fighters have been existence for well over a year, with little evidence that their graduates have not turned the tide of battle either against regime forces or Isis and Jabhat al-Nusra. The numbers instructed in Turkey, around 4,000, would not be enough to have much impact; General Martin Dempsey, the head of the US military, had stated that a force of around 15,000 Syrian rebels would be needed to fight Isis. Exactly who gets trained will also be an issue. One of the key problems with the opposition fighters is that Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states have been backing opposing groups, each pursuing its broader strategic interest.
In for a long haul One evening in September last year we came across a roomful of foreigners at a run-down hotel in the Turkish border town of Antakya. "Those two are Yemenis, those three are Libyans and the ones in the corner are Chechens," an opposition activist from Aleppo pointed out. They crossed the border later that week, the Turkish border guards turning a blind eye; that jihadist contingent was not on its way to join the "moderates". The training, when it eventually gets under way, would take time: the US-led alliance is in for the long haul. Sun Tzu held "there is no instance of a nation benefiting from prolonged warfare. Speed is the essence of war". However, the public in the US and Western Europe will not be too questioning of an air campaign where there are minimal chances of body bags coming back. They are unlikely to compare the cost of firing each Brimstone missile, around £105,000, to education or health cuts. But what happens in the future? General Dempsey had stated that US boots on the ground may be needed to beat Isis - a view at odds with President Obama's strategy - with the likelihood of casualties. There are tactics and strategy on offer for the other side in such a conflict from Sun Tzu. "If the enemy is in superior strength evade him... If his forces are united, separate them... Put division between sovereign and subject... Appear where you are not expected." We don't know, of course, if the supposed sophistication of Isis includes studying the Art of War.
— The Independent
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