IAS/IPS EXAM PREPARATION

President's Rule: Limits & checks

2011-11-10T00:36:00.000-08:00

THE Governor of Karnataka, H.R. Bhardwaj, put the Government of India in a most embarrassing position by recommending imposition of President's Rule in the State. In the process, he exposed, once again, his unfitness for the office he holds.

The rejection of his recommendation means that his prestige, none too high at any time, will suffer a terrible blow. Had the recommendation been accepted, it would have landed not only the Government of India but also the President in a most embarrassing situation in the Supreme Court. The court would be entitled to examine the material on the basis of which the Council of Ministers advised the President, and the onus of justifying the reckless action would not be on the petitioners but on the Union of India.

A nine-member Bench of the Supreme Court definitely construed the scope of Article 356 of the Constitution, which empowers the imposition of President's Rule in the States, in the famous case of S.R. Bommai and others vs Union of India and others ((1994) 3 Supreme Court Cases 1). It went beyond State of Rajasthan vs Union of India ((1977) 3 SCC 592) on the scope of judicial review. The President, who is sworn to uphold the Constitution and the law of India, can be fully trusted to follow this ruling whenever a draft proclamation imposing President's Rule in any State is presented for his/her signature by the Union Council of Ministers. The Prime Minister and the other Ministers, who have also taken the oath to abide by the Constitution, would also appreciate the stringent conditions the court's ruling in the Bommai case has imposed for the exercise of power under Article 356. The court decided the case on March 11, 1994. But the detailed implications of that ruling have yet to seep in.

The ruling was followed by a verdict by a five-member Bench in the Bihar case Rameshwar Prasad vs Union of India ((2006) 3 SCC 1). In both cases, the test of a vote by the Assembly in cases of disputed majority was approved.

It must be borne in mind that the court's ruling in the Bommai case, which remains definitive, came in the wake of deep, persistent public disquiet on the abuse of Article 356, a fact that is now universally admitted. The commission on Centre-State relations, headed by Justice R.S. Sarkaria, noted in its report, submitted in 1988, the deep resentment that the abuse of this provision caused among the States. The States were treated under the Constitution with less consideration and less respect than a municipality. The Supreme Court ruled (in New Delhi Municipal Committee vs Union of India) that a municipal body cannot be superseded, without notice ( S.L. Kapoor vs Jagmohan (1980) 4 SCC 379). The court said:

“A committee so soon as it is constituted, at once assumes a certain office and status, is endowed with certain rights and burdened with certain responsibilities, all of a nature commanding respectful regard from the public. To be stripped of the office and status, to be deprived of the rights, to be removed from the responsibilities, in an unceremonious way as to suffer in public esteem, is certainly to visit the committee with civil consequences. In our opinion the status and office and the rights and responsibilities to which we have referred and the expectation of the committee to serve its full term of office would certainly create sufficient interest in the municipal committee and their loss, if superseded, would entail civil consequences so as to justify an insistence upon the observance of the principles of natural justice before an order of supersession is passed.”

The order of supersession was held to be “vitiated by the failure to observe the principles of natural justice”. The judgment was delivered on September 18, 1980. The NDMC's term was to expire on October 3, 1980. The judgment was based on the principles of administrative law, which require strict observance of the principles of natural justice for such executive action. They apply if a State government supersedes a municipal body. Should they not apply also if the Government of India ousts an elected State government and imposes direct Central rule through a presidential proclamation under Article 356 of the Constitution?

In an authoritative exposition in the Constituent Assembly of India on August 4, 1949, the Chairman of the Drafting Committee, Dr B.R. Ambedkar, said: “If at all they are brought into operation, I hope the President, who is endowed with these powers, will take proper precautions before actually suspending the administration of the provinces. I hope the first thing he will do would be to issue a mere warning to a Province that has erred, that things were not happening in the way in which they were intended to happen in the Constitution. If that warning fails, the second thing for him to do will be to order an election allowing the people of the Province to settle matters by themselves. It is only when these two remedies fail that he would resort to this Article. It is only in those circumstances he would resort to this Article”. ( Constituent Assembly Debates: Vol. ix, pages 176-177).

Stringent conditions

The Supreme Court's ruling in the Bommai case highlighted clearly the many and stringent conditions for the valid exercise of the power under Article 356. They are:

(1) Whether conditions in fact exist objectively which render it impossible to carry on the governance of the State in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution; even so, this power must be used sparingly and so as not to disturb the federal balance of power between the Union and States since federalism is part of the unamenable basic structure of the Constitution.

(2) The State's Assembly must not be dissolved before both Houses of Parliament have approved the proclamation made by the President under Article 356.

(3) Even after such approval it will be open to the courts to consider independently whether in fact conditions so existed as to warrant exercise of the power under Article 226; judicial review, which is also part of the basic structure of the Constitution, is available in respect of Article 356. It can be exercised by the High Courts and the Supreme Court. Once a prima facie case is made out, the burden of proof will lie on the Government of India to justify the action.

(4) The court will be entitled to requisition the records from the government containing the material on the basis of which the Council of Ministers of the Government of India tendered the advice to the President.

(5) The courts have the power to order an interim stay on the exercise of power under Article 356.

(6) Lastly, the courts have the power, if the proclamation is struck down as unconstitutional, to order the revival of the dissolved State Assembly and restoration of the dismissed State government.

These six propositions emerge very clearly from the judgments pronounced by the nine judges who sat on the Special Bench that heard the case.

Article 356 is based on Section 93 of the Government of India Act, 1935. On August 14, 1947, a day before India became independent, the Governor-General, in exercise of his powers under Section 8 (2) of the Indian Independence Act, 1947, made the India (Provisional Constitution) Order, 1947, adapting the Act of 1935 with important modifications, as a provisional Constitution of India while the Constituent Assembly was at work on a new Constitution.

This Order omitted the hated Section 93 completely. Thus, from August 15, 1947, until January 25, 1950, the country was governed without any provision in its constitution for Governor's rule or Governor-General's rule. This period witnessed communal riots, refugee influx, the Telangana armed rebellion and much else. Section 93 was thus proved dispensable for two and a half years.

Article 356 was adopted by the Constituent Assembly bearing in mind the abnormal conditions the country was passing through.

The following exchange between Ambedkar and Pandit Hriday Nath Kunzru in the Constituent Assembly deserves noting. Pandit Kunzru put a specific question to Ambedkar during that debate on August 4, 1949:

“May I ask my honourable friend to make one point clear? Is the purpose of Articles 278 and 278-A to enable the Central government to intervene in provincial affairs for the sake of good government of the provinces?

The Honourable Dr B.R. Ambedkar: No. No. The Centre is not given that authority.

Pandit Hriday Nath Kunzru: Or, only when there is such mis-government in the province as to endanger the public peace?

The Honourable Dr B.R. Ambedkar: Only when the government is not carried on in consonance with the provisions laid down for the constitutional government of the provinces. Whether there is good government or not in the Province is not for the Centre to determine. I am quite clear on the point.

Pandit Hriday Nath Kunzru: What is the meaning exactly of the provision of the Constitution taken as a whole? The House is entitled to know from the honourable member what is his idea of the meaning of the phrase ‘in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution'.”

Ambedkar referred him to the Government of India Act, 1935, which used this expression in Section 93. He, however, took care to emphasise the limitations:
“In regard to the general debate which has taken place in which it has been suggested that these articles are liable to be abused, I may say that I do not altogether deny that there is a possibility of these articles being abused or employed for political purposes. But that objection applies to every part of the Constitution which gives power to the Centre to override the Provinces. In fact, I share the sentiments expressed by my honourable friend Mr Gupte yesterday that the proper thing we ought to expect is that such Articles will never be called into operation and that they would remain a dead letter.”

Objective tests for the use of the power

I. In the Bommai case, Justice P.B. Sawant said in his judgment, with which Justice Kuldip Singh concurred: “Articles 278 and 278-A of the Draft Constitution referred to above correspond to present Articles 356 and 357 of the Constitution respectively. Thus, it is clear from Article 355 that it is not an independent source of power for interference with the functioning of the State government but is in the nature of justification for the measures to be adopted under Articles 356 and 357. What is, however, necessary to remember in this connection is that while Article 355 refers to three situations, viz (i) external aggression (ii) internal disturbance, and (iii) non-carrying on of the government of the States in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution, Article 356 refers only to one situation, viz., the third one. As against this, Article 352, which provides for Proclamation of Emergency, speaks of only one situation, viz., where the security of India or any part of the territory therefore, is threatened either by war or external aggression or armed rebellion. The expression ‘internal disturbance' is certainly of larger connotations than ‘armed rebellion' and includes situations arising out of ‘armed rebellion' as well. In other words, while a Proclamation of Emergency can be made for internal disturbance only if it is created by armed rebellion, neither such Proclamation can be made for internal disturbance caused by any other situation nor a proclamation can be issued under Article 356 unless the internal disturbance gives rise to a situation in which the government of the State cannot be carried on in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution. A mere internal disturbance, short of armed rebellion, cannot justify a proclamation of Emergency under Article 352 nor such disturbance can justify issuance of proclamation under Article 356 (1), unless it disables or prevents carrying on of the government of the State in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution. Article 360 envisages the Proclamation of financial emergency by the President when he is satisfied that a situation has arisen whereby the financial stability or credit of the country or of any part of the territory thereof is threatened. It declares that such Proclamation shall be laid before each House of Parliament and shall cease to operate at the expiration of two months unless it is approved by the resolutions of both Houses of Parliament. We have thus emergency provisions contained in other Articles in the same part of the Constitution” (Para 57, page 92).

Thus, mere internal disturbance, short of armed rebellion, cannot justify a Proclamation under Article 356. No such disturbance can justify the issuance of Proclamation under Article 356 (1) unless the situation prevents the carrying on of the government of the State in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution.

Likewise, Justice B.P. Jeevan Reddy, with whom Justice S.C. Agrawal concurred, remarked in words of strong disapproval as follows: “Since the commencement of the Constitution, the President has invoked Article 356 on as many as ninety or more occasions. Quite a performance for a provision which was supposed to remain a ‘dead-letter'. Instead of remaining a ‘dead-letter', it has proved to be a ‘death-letter' of scores of State governments and Legislative Assemblies. The Sarkaria Commission, which was appointed to look into and report on Centre-State relations, considered inter alia the manner in which this power had been exercised over the years and made certain recommendations designed to prevent its misuse. Since the Commission was headed by a distinguished Judge of this court and also because it made its report after an elaborate and exhaustive study of all relevant aspects, its opinions are certainly entitled to great weight notwithstanding the fact that the report has not been accepted so far by the Government of India” [Para 295, page 228].

They proceeded to quote extensively from the recommendations made by the Sarkaria Commission, which thus received the imprimatur of the approval of the Supreme Court. (Justice Sawant had also quoted from it.) The judges added: “The aforesaid recommendations are evidently the outcome of the opinion formed by the Commission that more often than not the power under Article 356 had been invoked improperly. It is not for us to express any opinion whether this impression of the Commission is justified or not. It is not possible for us to review all the ninety cases in which the said power has been invoked and to say in which cases it was invoked properly and in which cases, not. At the same time, we are inclined to say, having regard to the constitutional scheme obtaining under our Constitution, that the recommendations do merit serious consideration (Para 300, page 231).

“It is probably because he was of the opinion that the invocation of this power was not warranted in many cases, Shri P.V. Rajamannar, former Chief Justice of Madras High Court [who was appointed as the Inquiry Committee by the Government of Tamil Nadu to report on the Centre-State relations], recommended that Articles 356 and 357 be repealed altogether. [See para (8) in Chapter IX, “Emergency Provisions” of his report, submitted in 1971]. In the alternative, he recommended, safeguards must be provided to secure the interests of the State against the arbitrary and unilateral action of the party commanding overwhelming majority at the Centre. In other respects, Shri Rajamannar's views accord broadly with the views expressed by the Sarkaria Commission and hence, need not be set out in extenso” (Para 301, page 231).

In para 434 (1), page 296, the judges concluded: “Article 356 of the Constitution confers a power upon the President to be exercised only when he is satisfied that a situation has arisen where the government of a State cannot be carried on in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution”. (italics here as in the original).

More than one judge emphasised that the power must be exercised very sparingly. Justice S. Rathnavel Pandian said: “I am of the firm opinion that the power under Article 356 should be used very sparingly and only when the President is fully satisfied that a situation has arisen where the government of the State cannot be carried on in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution. Otherwise, the frequent use of this power and its exercise are likely to disturb the constitutional balance. Further if the Proclamation is freely made, then the Chief Minister of every State who has to discharge his constitutional functions will be in perpetual fear of the axe of Proclamation falling on him because he will not be sure whether he will remain in power or not and consequently he has to stand up every time from his seat without properly discharging his constitutional obligations and achieving the desired target in the interest of the State” (Para 8, page 66).

Justices Sawant and Kuldeep Singh observed as follows: “An allied question which arises in this connection is whether, notwithstanding the fact that a situation has arisen where there is a breakdown of the constitutional machinery in the State, it is always necessary to resort to the power of issuing Proclamation under Article 356 (1). The contention is that since under Article 355, it is the duty of the Union to ensure that the government of every State is carried on in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution and since further the issuance of the proclamation under Article 356 (1) is admittedly a drastic step, there is a corresponding obligation on the President to resort to other measures before the step is taken under Article 356 (1). This is all the more necessary considering the principles of federal and democratic polity embedded in our Constitution. In this connection, we may refer again to what Dr Ambedkar himself had to say on the subject. We have quoted the relevant extract from his speech in Paragraph 77 above. He has expressed the hope there that resort to Article 356 (1) would be only as a last measure and before the Article is brought into operation, the President would take proper precaution. He hoped that the first thing the President would do would be to issue a mere warning. If the warning failed, he would order an election and it is only when the said two remedies fail that he would resort to the Article. We must admit that we are unable to appreciate the second measure to which Dr Ambedkar referred as a preliminary to the resort to Article 356 (1). We should have thought that the elections to the Legislative Assembly are a last resort and if they are held, there is nothing further to be done by exercising power under Article 356 (1). We may, therefore, ignore the said suggestion made by him. But we respectively endorse the first measure viz. of warning to which the President should resort before rushing to exercise the power under Article 356 (1). In addition to warning, the President will always have the power to issue the necessary directives. We are of the view that except in situations where urgent steps are imperative and exercise of the drastic power under the Article cannot brook delay, the President should use all other measures to restore the constitutional machinery in the State. The Sarkaria Commission has also made recommendations in that behalf in paragraphs 6-8-01 to 6-8-04 of is Report. It is not necessary to quote them here. We endorse the said recommendations” (Para 109, page 121).

Justice K. Ramaswamy said: “In particular when the Union of India seeks to dismiss a State Ministry belonging to a different political party, there is bound to exist friction. The motivating factor for action under Article 356 (1) should never be for political gain to the party in power at the Centre, rather it must be only when it is satisfied that the constitutional machinery has failed. It is to reiterate that the federal character of the government reimposes the belief that the people's faith in democratically elected majority or coalition government would run its full term, would not be belied unless the situation is otherwise unavoidable. The frequent elections would belie the people's belief and faith in parliamentary form of government, apart from enormous election expenditure to the State and the candidates. It also generates disbelief in the efficacy of the democratic process which is a death-knell for the parliamentary system itself. It is, therefore, extremely necessary that the power of proclamation under Article 356 must be used with circumspection and in a non-partisan manner. It is not meant to be invoked to serve political gain or get rid of an inconvenient State government for good or bad governance. But only in cases of failure of the constitutional machinery of the State government” (Para 223, page 191).

The judges also emphasised that Article 356 must be construed in the light of the federal character of the Constitution. Justices Sawant and Kuldeep Singh observed as follows: “The above discussion thus shows that the States have an independent constitutional existence and they have as important a role to play in the political, social, educational and cultural life of the people as the Union. They are neither satellites nor agents of the Centre. The fact that during emergency and in certain other eventualities their powers are overridden or invaded by the Centre is not destructive of the essential federal nature of our Constitution. The invasion of power in such circumstances is not a normal feature of the Constitution. They are exceptions and have to be resorted to only occasionally to meet the exigencies of the special situations. The exceptions are not a rule” (Para 99, page 115).

Justice Ramaswamy made similar observations: “Federalism envisaged in the Constitution of India is a basic feature in which the Union of India is permanent within the territorial limits set in Article 1 of the Constitution and is indestructible. The State is the creature of the Constitution and the law made by Articles 2 to 4 with no territorial integrity, but a permanent entity with its boundaries alterable by a law made by Parliament. Neither the relative importance of the legislative entries in Schedule VII, Lists I and II of the Constitution, nor the fiscal control by the Union per se are decisive to conclude that the Constitution is unitary. The respective legislative powers are traceable to Articles 245 to 254 of the Constitution. The State qua the Constitution is federal in structure and independent in its exercise of legislative and executive power. However, being the creature of the Constitution the State has no right to secede or claim sovereignty. Qua the Union, State is quasi-federal. Both are coordinating institutions and ought to exercise their respective powers with adjustment, understanding and accommodation to render socio-economic and political justice to the people, to preserve and elongate the constitutional goals, including secularism” (Para 247, page 205).

Justices Jeevan Reddy and Agrawal observed: “The fact that under the scheme of our Constitution greater power is conferred upon the Centre vis-a-vis the States does not mean that States are mere appendages of the Centre. Within the sphere allotted to them, States are supreme. The Centre cannot tamper with their powers. More particularly, the courts should not adopt an approach, an interpretation, which has the effect of or tends to have the effect of whittling down the powers reserved to the States. It is a matter of common knowledge that over the last several decades, the trend the world over is towards strengthening of Central governments be it the result of advances in technological/scientific fields or otherwise, and that even in USA the Centre has become far more powerful notwithstanding the obvious bias in that Constitution in favour of the States. All this must put the Court on guard against any conscious whittling down of the powers of the States. Let it be said that the federalism in the Indian Constitution is not a matter of administrative convenience, but one of the principle – the outcome of our own historical process and a recognition of the ground realities” (Para 276, page 216-217).

Subject to review

II. There was complete unanimity on the point that a Proclamation made under Article 356 is subject to judicial review. Justice A.M. Ahmadi recorded that both the Attorney General and counsel for the Union of India agreed that a Proclamation under Article 356 is open to judicial review. There was scope for argument on the area of justiciability. It is well settled that mala fides, for instance, will vitiate the Proclamation.

III. Article 74 of the Constitution reads thus: “(1) There shall be a Council of Ministers with the Prime Minister at the head to aid and advise the President who shall, in exercise of his functions, act in accordance with such advice. Provided that the President may require the Council of Ministers to reconsider such advice, either generally or otherwise, and the President shall act in accordance with the advice tendered after such reconsideration. (2) The question whether any, and if so what, advice was tendered by Ministers to the President shall not be inquired into in any court.”

A Government of India which advises the President to sign a Proclamation under Article 356 runs a clear risk. While no court can call upon the government to disclose its advice, it is now settled beyond all doubt that courts have the power to summon the files and ascertain the material on which that advice was based. The impact of that disclosure on the nature of the advice is obvious. If the advice is irrational, politically motivated, perverse or mala fide , it will expose the Government of India to ridicule and invite the censure of the court. That will emerge clearly from the material shown to the court. No government should put the President in such a predicament, in a court of law.

Justices Sawant and Kuldeep Singh ruled: “The validity of the Proclamation issued by the President under Article 356 (1) is judicially reviewable to the extent of examining whether it was issued on the basis of any material at all or whether the material was relevant or whether the Proclamation was issued in the mala fide exercise of the power. When a prima facie case is made out in the challenge to the Proclamation, the burden is on the Union government to prove that the relevant material did in fact exist, such material may be either the report of the Governor or other than the report. Article 74 (2) is not a bar against the scrutiny of the material on the basis of which the President had arrived at his satisfaction” (Para 153, page 148).

Justice K. Ramaswamy observed: “By operation of Article 74 (2) only the actual advice tendered by the Council of Ministers gets immunity from production and the court shall not inquire into the questions whether and if so what advice was tendered by the Minister. In other words, the records other than the advice tendered by the Minister to the President, if found necessary, may be required to be produced before the constitutional court” (Para 208, page 182).

Justice Jeevan Reddy and Agrawal held to the same effect: “Article 74 (2) merely bars an enquiry into the question whether any and if so, what advice was tendered by the Ministers to the President. It does not bar the court from calling upon the Union Council of Ministers (Union of India) to disclose to the court the material upon which the President had formed the requisite satisfaction. The material on the basis of which advice was tendered does not become part of the advice. Even if the material is looked into by or shown to the President, it does not partake the character of advice. Article 74 (2) and Section 123 of the Evidence Act cover different fields. It may happen that while defending the Proclamation, the Minister or the official concerned may claim the privilege under Section 123. If and when such privilege is claimed, it will be decided on its own merits in accordance with the provisions of Section 123” (Para 434 (6), page 297).

Justice S. Rathnavel Pandian also agreed with this conclusion: “I find myself in agreement with the opinion of P.B. Sawant, J. on his conclusions 1, 2 and 4 to 8 with which B.P. Jeevan Reddy J. concurs in his judgment (speaking for himself and on behalf of S.C. Agrawal, J.) but so far as the reasoning and other conclusions are concerned, I agree fully with the judgment of B.P. Jeevan Reddy, J. Yet I would like to give my brief opinion on the constitutional question of substantial importance in relation to the powers of the President to issue proclamation under Article 356 (1) of the Constitution” (Para 2, page 65).

Thus a clear majority of six judges in the nine-member Bench rule that the material on the basis of which advice was tendered is liable to be produced in court.

Assembly dissolution

IV. Justice Jeevan Reddy and Agrawal ruled: “Though the power of dissolving of the Legislative Assembly can be said to be implicit in clause (1) of Article 356, it must be held, having regard to the overall constitutional scheme, that the President shall exercise it only after the Proclamation is approved by both Houses of Parliament under clause (3) and not before. Until such approval, the President can only suspend the Legislative Assembly by suspending the provisions of Constitution relating to the Legislative Assembly under sub-clause (c) of clause (1). The dissolution of Legislative Assembly is not a matter of course. It should be resorted to only where it is found necessary for achieving the purposes of the Proclamation” (Para 434 (3), page 296).

To the same effect is the ruling of Justices Sawant and Kuldeep Singh: “Since the provisions contained in clause (3) of Article 356 are intended to be a check on the powers of the President under clause (1) thereof, it will not be permissible for the President to exercise powers under sub-clauses (a) (b) and (c) of the latter clause, to take irreversible actions till at least both the Houses of Parliament have approved of the Proclamation. It is for this reason that the President will not be justified in dissolving the Legislative Assembly by using the power of the Governor under Article 174 (2) (b) read with Article 356 (1) (a) till at least both the Houses of Parliament approve of the Proclamation” (Para 153 (IV), page 149). Justice S. Rathnavel Pandian concurred with this point as is clear from his observations in para 2 at page 65.

Here again, there is a clear majority ruling that the Assembly must not be dissolved until both Houses of Parliament have taken a decision on the Proclamation.

On revival of Assembly

V. The Bommai case breaks new ground on the revival of the Assembly despite its dissolution and the dismissal of the State government. Hitherto it was believed, quite mistakenly, that even if the orders in respect of them are held to be void the status quo ante cannot be restored. In principle, there is no reason why striking down a void order should not have the same consequences in these matters as in all other; namely, nullify the action and restore the situation to what it was before the unconstitutional act was committed. In the Bommai case the Supreme Court has ruled categorically that if a Proclamation under Article 356 is struck down as invalid, the court can order revival of the dissolved Assembly and restoration of the dismissed government.

Justices Sawant and Kuldeep Singh ruled: “If the Proclamation issued is held invalid, then notwithstanding the fact that it is approved by both Houses of Parliament, it will be open to the court to restore the status quo ante to the issuance of the proclamation and hence to restore the Legislative Assembly and the Ministry” (Para 153 (50), page 149). Justice Rathnavel Pandian concurred on this point.

Justices Jeevan Reddy and Agrawal held to the same effect: “Now, coming to the power of the court to restore the government to office in case it finds the Proclamation to be unconstitutional, it is, in our opinion, beyond question. Even in case the Proclamation is approved by Parliament it would be open to the court to restore the State government to its office in case it strikes down the Proclamation as unconstitutional. If this power were not conceded to the court, the very power of judicial review would be rendered nugatory and the entire exercise meaningless. If the court cannot grant the relief flowing from the invalidation of the Proclamation, it may as well decline to entertain the challenge to the proclamation altogether. For, there is no point in the court entertaining the challenge examining it, calling upon the Union government to produce the material on the basis of which the requisite satisfaction was formed and yet not give the relief. In our considered opinion, such a course is inconceivable” (Para 291, page 226-227).

In the summary of their conclusion, the judges ruled: “If the court strikes down the Proclamation, it has the power to restore the dismissed government to the office and revive and reactivate the Legislative Assembly wherever it may have been dissolved or kept under suspension. In such a case, the court has the power to declare that acts done, orders passed and laws made during the period the Proclamation was in force, shall remain unaffected and be treated as valid. Such declaration, however, shall not preclude the government/Legislative Assembly or other competent authority to review, repeal or modify such acts, orders and laws” (Para 434 (8), page 298).

Interim relief

VI. The Supreme Court also opened a new vista for challenge to unconstitutional action by holding, by a clear majority, that it has the power to grant interim relief. Justice Sawant and Kuldeep Singh observed as follows:

“The further important question that arises is whether the court will be justified in granting interim relief and what would be the nature of such relief and at what stage it may be granted. The grant of interim relief would depend upon various circumstances including the expeditiousness with which the court is moved, the prima facie case with regards to the invalidity of the Proclamation made out, the steps which are contemplated to be taken pursuant to the proclamation, etc. However, if other conditions are satisfied it will defeat the very purpose of the judicial review if the requisite interim relief is denied. The least relief that can be granted in such circumstances is an injunction restraining the holding of fresh elections for constituting the new Legislative Assembly. There is no reason why such a relief should be denied if a precaution is taken to hear the challenge as expeditiously as possible taking into consideration the public interests involved. The possibility of the delay in disposal of the challenge cannot be ground for frustrating the constitutional right and defeating the constitutional provisions. It has, however, to be made clear that the interlocutory relief that may be granted on such challenge is to prevent the frustration of the constitutional remedy. It is not to prevent the constitutional authority from exercising its powers and discharging its functions. Hence, it would be wholly impermissible either to interdict the issuance of the Proclamation or its operation till a final verdict on its validity is pronounced. Hence, the normal rules of ‘quia timet' action have no relevance in matters pertaining to the challenge to the proclamation. To conclude, the court in appropriate cases will not only be justified in preventing holding of fresh elections but would be duty-bound to do so by granting suitable interim relief to make effective the constitutional remedy of judicial review and to prevent the emasculation of the Constitution” (Para 115, page 124).

In a summary of their conclusions they ruled categorically: “In appropriate cases, the court will have power by an interim injunction, to restrain the holding of fresh elections to the Legislative Assembly pending the final disposal of the challenge to the validity of the Proclamation to avoid the fait accompli and the remedy of judicial review being rendered fruitless. However, the court will not interdict the issuance of the Proclamation or the exercise of any other power under the Proclamation” (Para 153 (6), page 149). This conclusion was also endorsed by Justice S. Rathnavel Pandian.

Justices Jeevan Reddy and Agrawal also expressed their concurrence with this conclusion: “In the light of reasons given and conclusion recorded hereinabove, we find ourselves in agreement with the conclusions 1, 2 and 4 to 7 in the judgment of our learned Brother Sawant, J., delivered on behalf of himself and Kuldip Singh, J. We are also in broad agreement with conclusion 8 in the said judgment” (Para 435, page 299).

To sum up, what the Supreme Court did is to make judicial review of the Proclamation under Article 356 far more effective by circumscribing the conditions in which the Article can be invoked; it asserted the right to call for the production of records on the basis of which Union Council of Ministers advised the President; put a restraint on the dissolution of the Assembly prior to parliamentary ratification of the Proclamation; asserted the court's power to order revival of the Assembly and the restoration of the government, even after Parliament has approved the Proclamation, if the court finds them to be unconstitutional; and, not least, it asserted the power to grant interim relief, to prevent the holding of elections to the Assembly in order to defeat a legal challenge to the Proclamation under Article 356 by which the Assembly had been dissolved.

These are all very substantial gains; very substantial guarantees against abuse of power and for the maintenance of the federal structure of the Constitution.

When Governor H.R. Bhardwaj recommended imposition of President's Rule in Karnataka, he revealed either his ignorance of the law – very understandable given his intellectual equipment – or his decision to flout the law; more likely than not the former. His retirement from any public office has been long overdue. Given the Government of India's brusque rejection of his report, with what self-respect can be continue to occupy the Raj Bhavan in Bangalore?

Global alert

2011-11-10T00:34:00.000-08:00

IN recent years, one of the predominant concerns of international organisations, especially those that have a “rights” perspective, has been the impact of the global downturn on various vulnerable sections across the world. Notwithstanding the fact that many countries have signed and ratified conventions of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and are increasingly doing so, it has become difficult for many among them, including those in the developed world, to match their commitments with the harsh realities of the downturn. Structural discrimination, argue rights bodies such as the ILO, has worsened in many cases despite an increase in institutional initiatives to address the same. Austerity measures by governments have not helped.

The ILO has been one of the few organisations that have, without ruffling too many feathers, tried to convey gently but firmly to governments the world over that the effects of the recession are far from over and that ignoring them could lead to a variety of consequences. A recent report, titled “Equality at Work: The continuing challenge”, looks at trends over the past four years and unravels many features that, perhaps, were earlier not looked at with the keenness they deserve.

The report is mainly on discrimination with regard to access to jobs. Worryingly, it has become the rule rather than the exception, exacerbated by the crisis that has had a differential impact on sectors in the economy and has also affected people differently. The report states the obvious to an extent. The risk has not been uniform – it has affected the low-skilled, the migrant, women and even young job aspirants, especially those who are not highly skilled but have had to enter the job market out of sheer necessity. The impact of the downturn on export sectors in many countries has severely affected women, who have been forced into informal forms of employment as a result. They also face acute discrimination in terms of the nature of employment, remuneration, benefits, working conditions, and so on. On an average, their wages are 70 to 80 per cent less than that of men and they “continue to be over-represented in low-income jobs”.

What is of equal concern is that women are increasingly being denied basic entitlements that were taken for granted earlier, such as maternity leave and related benefits. Several equality bodies, says the report, have observed increased discrimination against women in the matter of maternity. Dismissals from jobs on the issue of pregnancy and nursing, non-provision of time for nursing, withholding of pre- and post-natal benefits, denial of promotion, and refusal to allow workers to return to posts they occupied before going on maternity leave are just some forms of harassment faced by women at the workplace. The problem is more for those working in export processing zones.

The report highlights the growing incidence of sexual harassment at the workplace. According to surveys, women most vulnerable to such incidents were financially not independent, single, divorced or migrant women. In general, migrant workers across the globe were particularly affected by the economic crisis – they either had less work or faced deteriorating working conditions, xenophobia and even violence. Some countries, the report stated, excluded migrant workers from social insurance programmes and long-term portable benefits such as old-age pensions.

Anti-immigrant policies

The report also says that hostile political discourse in some countries, probably alluding to recent anti-immigrant pronouncements made by certain leaders of the developed world, has aggravated discriminatory tendencies. Populist policies too, it says, aggravate xenophobic attitudes towards migrants. As compared to those in more regular forms of employment, migrant workers suffered more job losses. This was partly because they were employed in sectors that had been worst affected by the downturn, such as construction.

In general, many countries lowered their quotas for economic migrants. Quoting various studies and reports, the ILO report says that countries such as Australia, Thailand, Poland and the United Kingdom restricted immigration or devised ways to increase the restrictions on the entry of work-permit holders and also their rights and entitlements once they arrived. The report found that the employment gap between immigrants and native workers increased in the years between 2007 and 2009.

Alarmingly, over the past four years, there has been a rise in discrimination against men and women on religious grounds. The report does not specify which religious denomination suffers from discrimination, but it is not difficult to guess, given the contemporary discourse regarding religious extremism.

The impact of debatable income transfer programmes, which place conditions such as child attendance in schools and parents keeping their appointments with health centres, has not helped reduce poverty as such schemes do not address the determinants of economic vulnerability, argues the report quoting a United Nations survey. And, apart from the direct causes of economic vulnerability, factors such as racial, ethnic and gender discrimination exacerbate existing conditions. The irony is that while nations and caucuses such as the Group of Twenty (G-20) have committed themselves to addressing the social dimensions of globalisation following the Global Jobs Pact, adopted by the ILO in 2009, little has been achieved on the ground.

Even the stimulus measures have been disproportionately distributed, with countries choosing to focus on sectors that are male-dominated. And the stimulus responses have had the result of indirectly excluding vulnerable groups from the stimulus measures. In Germany, the report says, two recovery packages targeted sectors with a 78 per cent male and 22 per cent female workforce. Sectors that were to receive financial support from the government included the automotive industry, medical technologies, and construction and financial intermediaries, which employed men in large numbers.

A 2010 study, says the report, showed that the neglect of female-dominated sectors, including the services sector, posed a long-term risk to women's employment. A decline in female employment in the long run can be a distinct possibility, it warns. Even in the United States, where the stimulus package has had a mixed impact on vulnerable groups, an Ohio State University report in 2009 noted that substantial funding given to infrastructure projects could disadvantage racial minorities and women. African Americans, who represent 13 per cent of the population, and women, who comprise nearly half the population, held only 6 per cent and 9.4 per cent of construction jobs respectively. The sharp increase in unemployment in the U.S. since the crisis in 2008 has not affected communities uniformly. The rate of unemployment among African Americans was almost twice as high as among the white population, and the gap widened after the crisis. Similar employment gaps were seen in Europe as well. Even in countries where race categories were self-reported, as in Brazil, studies showed that the unemployment rate among the black and brown workers was higher than among the white workers. The former, who represented 45.3 per cent of the population, accounted for 50 per cent of the unemployed.

The report cautions that a joint paper of the ILO and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) had, in 2010, warned that a premature and early push for consolidation would damage macroeconomic growth and subsequently lead to larger deficits and debts. In essence, what the report seems to be saying and reiterating is that governments should not cut down on social spending, especially when dealing with the economic crisis.

However, not all pressures are from inside. A report by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) has noted that the IMF lending agreements in the case of Latvia and Ukraine are eliminating investments in education and could leave behind a “lost generation” of young people without adequate skills for employment. Latvia, along with Greece and Ukraine, has initiated fiscal consolidation plans with severe deficits. Interestingly, while social spending and welfare measures bear the brunt, the budgets of labour administration such as inspection services and those of bodies that deal with discrimination issues get compromised. And this, says the report, could be one of the worst social consequences of the economic crisis. While some countries, in particular the Scandinavian countries, have consciously created institutions to deal with these matters, the trend towards reduced social spending appears to be the norm.

Many countries have not adopted the legal provisions to prohibit common forms of gender discrimination. The right to equal remuneration for women and men for work of equal value, as embodied in Convention Number 100, has not been incorporated in the national laws of many countries. The concept of remuneration also does not encompass all forms of compensation, including wages and other benefits. Women, the report says, are a long way from achieving gender equality in the labour market. Here again, many Scandinavian countries have made conscious efforts to increase boardroom participation for women through a system of quotas.

Then, of course, there is the issue of unpaid household work which does not reflect in statistics on gender pay gaps. According to estimates given at the 2009 session of the International Labour Conference, the value of unpaid household work could be equivalent to half the gross domestic product (GDP) of a country. While reviewing maternity legislation last year, the ILO found that maternity benefits provided by many countries were insufficient. Only 39 per cent of African countries were found to provide benefits in accordance with ILO standards, while in Asia, only two of the 23 countries reviewed matched up to the standards. Several equality commissions worldwide have found that discrimination against women on maternity matters continues to be pervasive in spite of long-standing laws, says the report. The lack of adequate paid leave too was an issue in several countries.

What the report recommends as a remedy is not enough. While there has been an ostensible increase in equality policies and harmonisation of national legislation with ILO conventions, what is lacking is a continued commitment and investment of resources. Almost all ILO declarations – such as the Global Jobs Pact and the Declaration on Social Justice for a Fair Globalisation – are lofty and well-meaning, but making them workable depends on policies that nations adopt.

The ILO would ideally like to pay particular attention, as it says, to ensuring equal remuneration for men and women, elimination of racial and ethnic discrimination, and equitable treatment of migrant workers. It would also like to see more countries ratify in spirit the core conventions on equality. But one major obstacle is the availability of adequate information on the different types of discrimination and their intersections. The available information suggests that the situation is bad and that governments should intervene. What U.N. agencies, including the ILO, have been doing, post-crisis, is to warn governments repeatedly not to resort to extreme measures of fiscal consolidation. Successive global reports on unemployment have warned of social tensions and unrest. The present report is yet another wake-up call.

Neighbours dispute China's exclusive sovereignty over the South China Sea.

2011-11-10T00:24:00.000-08:00

THE cross-currents of two distinctive political paradoxes have caused a new surge in tensions over sovereign and maritime rights along the South China Sea.

A major paradox is that China, which has frequently pledged to eschew a hegemonic rise, is just as frequently accused of tracing a hegemonic path to superpower status. Surely, this can be partially explained by the sense of resentment among China's neighbours over its dramatically rapid rise as an economic powerhouse with an enormous military potential.

The second paradox in the region is the diplomatic ease with which Vietnam is courting the United States in a bid to keep China in check in the South China Sea region. In the process, the highly chronicled story of Vietnam being subjected to imperial pressures from the U.S. just a few decades ago looks like a non-event of recent history. The dramatic turnaround in Hanoi's equation with Washington should rank very high among the early-21st century examples of the old adage that global politics is all about the interplay of national interests and not about any permanence of friends or foes in inter-state relations.

In prime focus on the diplomatic scene in East Asia, by June 20, were the dissonant notes, independent of each other, from Vietnam and the Philippines on one side and from China on the other. Both Vietnam and the Philippines accused China of being domineering in its attitude towards the freedom of navigation and natural-resource exploration along the South China Sea. China's responses, somewhat nuanced in respect of these two neighbours, bear similarity in substantive terms.

Amid this latest flare-up of tensions, Hanoi has started referring to the South China Sea as “the East Sea”. Manila, with a deeply chequered history as a U.S. ally, now refers to the South China Sea as “the West Philippine Sea”. Unfazed, Beijing has asserted that “South China Sea is a name well recognised by the international community”.

At the same time, the international community has, in recent years, come to express routine “concerns” over the inter-state “disputes” about sovereignty in regard to the Spratly and the Paracel Islands that dot the South China Sea.

On June 7, the Chinese Foreign Ministry was emphatic in stating once again that “China has indisputable sovereignty over the South China Sea Islands and adjacent waters”. In a follow-up comment on Vietnam's assertions of “sovereign and jurisdictional rights” in the same waters, China reaffirmed its position.

While Vietnam challenges China's “sovereignty rights” over the Paracel Islands, Hanoi is not alone in disputing Beijing's claims to the Spratlys on the basis of historical and traditional realities. The Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan, a non-sovereign and non-state actor, are the other claimants.

Also well-chronicled is the shared belief of all these players, based on some scientific surveys as also speculation, that the South China Sea waters are rich in natural resources, especially oil and gas, besides being a premier maritime domain for international trade in goods and services.

The latest round of tensions began on May 26 when Hanoi alleged that a Chinese maritime-surveillance vessel “cut the exploration cables of Binh Minh 02 seismic vessel of Vietnam National Oil and Gas Group (PVN)”. Beijing was quick to respond, saying that Vietnam's oil and gas explorations had “undermined” China's interests and jurisdictional rights in the South China Sea area.

In the same breath, Beijing reaffirmed its “commitment” to safeguarding peace and stability in that maritime domain. However, Beijing was no less emphatic in saying that the relevant Chinese authorities had only acted in accordance with “normal marine law-enforcement and surveillance activities in China's jurisdictional sea areas”.

It was in this climate of tensions that Vietnam utilised the Asia Security Summit in Singapore in early June to demand that China respect the jurisdictional rights of its neighbours in the South China Sea area. The Philippines followed suit at that summit. The diplomatic row, aired publicly by the Defence Ministers of these countries, showed no sign of abating. On June 9, Hanoi said the cables of a 3-D seismic exploration vessel, charted by Vietnam's PVN, were cut by a Chinese fishing vessel. As before, the PVN vessel was operating within the maritime limits of Vietnam's continental shelf and exclusive economic zone, Hanoi asserted. Going a step further, Hanoi said the objective behind “these systematic acts by the Chinese side” was to raise a dispute over “an undisputed area”.

Hanoi also argued that Beijing's goal now, “unacceptable to Vietnam”, was to gain international recognition for “the Chinese claim to the ‘nine-dotted line' in South China Sea”. Hanoi's follow-up argument was that the line, as illustrated in a map said to have been presented by China to the United Nations Secretary-General on May 7, 2009, was “totally illegal”. Cited in support of this dim view was Hanoi's interpretation of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).

Dismissing Hanoi's June 9 version and arguments, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said: “As is known to all, China has indisputable sovereignty over the Nansha Islands and the adjacent waters. Chinese fishing boats have been operating in the waters off [the relevant] Vanguard Bank for generations. While conducting normal operations in the above waters on the morning of June 9, the Chinese fishing boats were illegally chased away by armed Vietnamese ships. Amid the chase, the fishing net of one of the Chinese fishing boats tangled with the cables of a Vietnamese oil and gas exploration vessel, which was operating illegally in the same waters. Regardless of the safety of the Chinese fishermen, the Vietnamese vessel dragged the Chinese fishing boat for more than one hour. … The Chinese fishermen were forced to take the initiative to cut off the fishing net.”

Beijing urged Hanoi to “stop all actions that violate China's sovereignty, endanger Chinese fishermen's lives and properties, and complicate and expand disputes”.

Kindred soul

In the shadow of such a new showdown, Vietnam found a kindred soul in the U.S. during their prearranged annual Political, Security and Defence Dialogue, which took place in Washington on June 17. Hanoi expressed satisfaction that the U.S. disfavoured “coercion or the use of force” – the code Vietnam uses for its perception of China's options for an “assertive” rise.

Matching the new mood in the Hanoi-Washington entente, the Philippines President Benigno Aquino expressed satisfaction over the U.S. “assurance of support” for the position of the Philippines on the South China Sea “disputes”. And, Manila began rallying support among the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) for a common stance in facing China.

Four ASEAN countries dispute the idea of Beijing's exclusive sovereignty over the South China Sea. The ASEAN now wants to engage China for converting their nearly decade-old joint declaration on South China Sea issues into a binding “code of conduct”.

It is in this situation that Manila has now floated the idea of “a rules-based system” of ensuring peace and stability across the South China Sea. And, with the U.S. having identified, about a year ago, this very same maritime domain as a vital area of America's “national interest”, Beijing and Washington may soon face a litmus test of leadership in this zone.

India and Africa: Soft Power

2011-06-08T23:44:00.000-07:00

The Prime Minister’s Africa visit is an important milestone in Indian foreign policy in the recent period. From a very hesitant beginning in the G8 and in fact a deprecating attitude by saying that it did not really matter, India has come a long way and is playing in fact a soft leadership role in the continent of the future.

Africa has a bright future and the sooner the world gets behind its talk of the Dark Continent, the better off it will be. Its great resources are attracting everybody there. There are more than sixty billion dollars of annual investment now being laid out as the OECD brings out. But Africa no longer wants to be a passive supplier of the wherewithal of global expansion and the hewer of wood and drawer of water. A new generation of professionals and business men have arrived and the governance deficits are declining. South Africa, the melting in the Maghreb and many other examples are there for all to see.After a meeting of the Define network of the OECD I was asked to attend an Africa afternoon in Paris. Senior African policy makers were highly articulate on the need of FDI in Africa to have commitments to the economies on a long term basis rather than a lets get ours and go attitude.

Colonial terms were not only unacceptable, they were to be a bad memory of the past. Africa wants its place in the contemporary debates on modern corporate governance and the social responsibilities of business. The OECD was mounting a mission and my plea was that data on this aspect now demanded by global corporate governance standards as in the discussions of the International Chambers of Commerce should be available. Indian companies by now have about ten percent of the FDI and its growing. The experience of some who have a tradition of community service at home is that African societies have a strong sense of community and with peace tend to take advantage of any community initiatives more so than elsewhere.Most land based investments in Africa tend to replace old sources of food and water for example and newer initiatives such that with replacement the communities are empowered to rebuild these resources and meet basic needs more efficiently would be highly appreciated. This would also extend to the education and health sectors. Also resource conserving strategies of doing business and a concern for the environment would go far. India has the experience in its own quests and would do well to share it.

The monies we are placing on the table should be used for building public led public private partnerships for enduring relations for the future.

Sino-American rivalry: Failure & opportunity for Indian military diplomacy

2011-06-08T23:39:00.000-07:00

As Sino-American rivalry acquires a new momentum to the east of India, New Delhi will come under pressure to modernise its armed forces and ramp up military diplomacy across Asia. But it is not clear if India's defence leadership can shed its current doctrine of masterly inactivity.

The naval muscle-flexing by Washington and Beijing in the last few weeks - in North-east and South-east Asia — reflects a rapid evolution of the strategic environment in our Asian neighbourhood.

The US and Chinese naval muscle-flexing in the waters of the Korean Peninsula and the visit of the US aircraft carrier George Washington to Vietnam last week point to a historic shift in Asia's international relations.

As old partners — China and the United States — try to stare down each other, new alliances are being forged between former adversaries — Vietnam and America. That this rearrangement has little do with ideology should draw some of our defence decision-makers out of the time warp they seem to be caught in. After all, China and Vietnam are among the few communist states left in the world.The current shift could be as consequential as that in the early 1970s. After more than two decades of war and conflict with Chinese communists and refusing to recognise the People's Republic as the legitimate representative of China, Washington reached out to Beijing in 1971. As Washington played the China card against the Soviet Union, the rest of Asia ended its hostility to Beijing and welcomed its integration into the international system.The Sino-American partnership against Moscow survived the collapse of the Soviet Union at the turn of the 1990s. As the economic interdependence between the two deepened in the last decade, some American analysts made the case for an informal Sino-American political condominium called “G-2”. Beijing's new assertiveness on a range of issues, however, shattered these hopes.

China's muscular military and foreign policies have put it at odds with its neighbours. The smaller nations of Asia are coping with the rise of China through internal and external balancing.

Internal balancing is about building one's own military capabilities. According to the authoritative Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, arms purchases by the South-east Asian nations have doubled in the period of 2005-09 in comparision to the previous five year period.External balancing involves combining one's own capabilities with those of a great power. Most of China's neighbours are turning to the United States for protection against a rising China. Japan and South Korea, who seemed to down play their traditional alliance with the United States in recent years, have in the last few months decided to re-embrace the United States. Many of them also want to expand their defence cooperation with India.

As America reaffirms its primacy in Asia, a rising China is unlikely to back down. Beijing, instead, will seek to step up its own military capabilities further vitiating the regional security environment.

Asia's new military dynamic means India can no longer afford its current laidback approach to military modernisation. Nor can New Delhi ignore the growing demands from its friends and partners to contribute to Asian security amidst the rise of China and the perceived decline of the United States.Most of Asia sees India's emergence as a valuable factor in constructing a stable Asian order. New Delhi's problem has not been a shortage of money but the lack of strategic imagination. The absence of a purposeful defence leadership has emerged as the biggest constraint on India's ability to raise its strategic profile in Asia.

Military diplomacy: Adm Nirmal Verma in Bangladesh

2011-06-08T23:38:00.000-07:00

While it sails the far seas and conducts high profile joint exercises around the world, the Indian Navy has not forgotten the importance of tending the maritime neighbourhood.

Adm Nirmal Verma, the Chief of Naval Staff is in Bangladesh on a five-day official tour that started on Sunday. During his stay Adm Verma will visit the three major ports of the nation—Chittagong, Mongla and Khulna. He will also call on Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and President Zillur Rehman.

Adm Verma’s visit is indeed a part of Delhi’s current commitment to deepen the bilateral engagement with Dhaka on all fronts. During Sheikh Hasina’s visit to India in January 2010, both sides agreed to resolve the many long-standing problems between the two countries.

Some of them relate to maritime territorial disputes and the question of resource exploitation in the Bay of Bengal and are likely to come up during Adm Verma's talks.Besides the bilateral dynamic with Bangladesh, Adm. Verma’s trip underlines India’s more focused defence diplomacy in the region.

Cribbing about our unfriendly neighbours and complaining about the warm military ties between them and China, India in the past simply neglected security diplomacy in Southern Asia.

Delhi has now consciously chosen to step up military interaction with all our neighbours. The only exception is Pakistan, where the Generals have never shown any interest in a structured interaction between the armed forces of the two countries.

Pak Army Chiefs prefer to deal with Indian political leadership when are directly in charge of running the country and don the presidential mantle. When they hold the remote, the Pak Army leadership does not want to be drawn into any service-to-service engagement with its Indian counterparts.Last year, Adm Verma visited Sri Lanka twice and hosted his Sri Lankan counterpart in India. The Army Chief Gen. V.K. Singh and the Air Chief ACM Vasant Naik traveled to Colombo in January this year.

The Indian Air Chief traveled to Dhaka in January 2010 and had received his Bangla counterpart in 2009. The three service chiefs now regularly travel in the neighbourhood and host their counterparts.

This intensive military diplomacy is driven by the recognition of the need to build solid institutional links with the armed forces of our neighbouring countries. But Delhi has much work to do before it can match China’s defence diplomacy in the Subcontinent.

Besides regular high level military exchanges, China has emerged as one of the main suppliers of arms to all our neighbours. India is yet to generate surplus weapons production and a policy for arms exports in the region.

Gilani in Beijing: China and Pak hold fire against the US

2011-06-08T23:33:00.000-07:00

The visit of Pakistan’s premier Yusuf Raza Gilani to China this week has underlined Washington’s enduring primacy on our Western frontiers and Beijing’s reluctance to present China as an alternative to the United States.

That might happen some day in the not too distant future; but not right away. That was the main message from Beijing as it serenaded Gilani.

Last month, two weeks before the killing of Osama bin Laden, Gilani had led a powerful team to Kabul that included all the top civilian ministers as well as the army chief Gen. Ashfaq Pervez Kayani and the ISI boss, Lt. Gen. Shuja Pasha.

Gilani’s delegation met the Afghan President Hamid Karzai to define a new framework for peace and reconciliation within Afghanistan and the construction of a special relationship between Islamabad and Kabul.

According to leaks in the Western media, Gilani had apparently told Karzai to dump the diminishing United States in favour of a rising China.In the wake of raid on Abbottabad on May 2, it appeared that both Islamabad and Beijing flaunted their special relationship as the location and execution of Osama bin Laden deep inside Pakistan’s territory exposed the Pak army’s double dealing on terror.

As the rest of the world questioned the role of Pakistan’s security establishment in harbouring bin Laden, China was quick to offer a strong public defence Islamabad’s policy.

As the US mounted pressure to do more against the al Qaeda and the Taliban, Pakistan’s establishment flashed its China card. The hint was that if Washington pushed it too hard it had the option to deepen its alignment with Beijing.Although his visit to China was planned much earlier, there was much expectation that it would unveil their intent to join hands against the United States. Both had reasons to hold back.

For all its anti-American bravado, the Pak establishment knows the dangers of an overt defiance of the United States. The prospects for being branded as a rogue state and sanctioned again by the West can’t be too appealing for the economic managers of Pakistan.

China, too, made it clear that while the relationship with Pakistan was one of its most valued, it was not ready to paint in anti-American colours. While Beijing brings a lot of aid and investment into Pakistan, it can’t provide the kind of international political legitimacy and financial support that Islamabad gets from its Western patrons.

After rocking the bilateral relationship with its assertiveness in 2010, Beijing is in the mode of improving ties with Washington. As Gilani arrived in China, a senior Chinese military official was in Washington to lay the foundation for a new security dialogue.Last week, China and the United States also agreed to establish a special dialogue on Afghanistan. Beijing knows that its moment in the Sun in south-west Asia and the Persian Gulf is not far away. For now it might more sense not to contest the dominance of the United States in the region.

As Gilani arrived in Beijing, the ‘China Daily’ in an editorial cautioned against the impression that China is ganging up with Pakistan against the United States. “Any over-interpretation of Gilani's ongoing visit to China will prove to be superficial and speculative”. The Daily added that “China hopes to see US-Pakistani relations improve as it is in the same boat with the two countries in fighting terrorism.”.

Pranab's budget: No new taxes, I-T exemption limit raised to 1.80 lakh

2011-02-28T01:28:00.000-08:00

Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee on Monday proposed to raise the income tax exemption limit for general tax payers to Rs 1.80 lakh per annum from Rs 1.60 lakh at present and introduced a high new tax slab for senior citizens of 80 years and above. Unveiling the Budget proposals for 2011-12 in the L
ok Sabha, he also proposed to reduce the age limit for consideration as senior citizens from 65 years to 60.

Senior citizens will get tax exemption for income up to Rs 2.5 lakh, higher from Rs 2.4 lakh now. As per the announcement, the increase in the income tax exemption limit for general tax payers (excluding women and senior citizens) to Rs 1.8 lakh per annum would translate into a benefit of Rs 2,000 for all tax payers.

At present, the general tax payers earning more than Rs 1.6 lakhs per annum are required to pay income tax.

Introducing a new tax slab for very senior citizens (80 years and above), Mukherjee said, they will not have to pay any tax for annual income up to Rs 5 lakh.

With a fair dose of reforms in the form of direct kerosene and fertiliser subsidies to users, finance minister Pranab Mukherjee also promised to check inflation and corruption and push growth.

Stating that India had bounced back after the global financial crisis with broadbased growth, he said inflation remained a matter of concern, especially in food prices, though it had dipped from over 20% to around 7% now.

The finance minister also said more allocations were being made during this fiscal for areas such as agriculture and education, in a bid to reap the demographic dividend that is already seeing India having the largest working population in the world.

This apart, he said the foreign direct investment policy was being revamped, which may result in the entry of multinational firms in the country's $300 billion retail trade industry, apart from liberalising the norms governing pension and insurance funds.

"We are reaching an end to a remarkable year with high growth and many challenges. Our growth in 2010-11 has been swift and broad-based. Economy is back to pre-crisis growth trajectory," Mukherjee said in his opening remarks.

"In the medium term, our three priorities of maintaining high growth trajectory, making development more inclusive and improving our institutions remain relevant," the minister added.

This is the sixth such exercise for the 75-year-old politician. He tabled three budgets between 1982 and 1984. The one unveiled Monday was the third successive one for the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government.

Expectations were high from both households and the corporate sector as this budget is being presented against the backdrop of high inflation, fluctuating industrial growth, erratic exports and a general perception that the reform process has retarded.

"I do not foresee resources being a major constraint, at least in the medium term," Mukherjee said, referring to the money needed to address the larger agenda of growth, social programmes and infrastructure development.

He said the farm sector had shown a rebound with 5.4% growth, industry was regaining its earlier momentum and services continued to grow at double digits. He added that fiscal consolidation too was impressive.

Following are the some highlights of his speech:

* Infrastructure critical for development; 23 percent higher allocation in 2011-12.

* Rs 30,000 crore to be raised through tax-free bonds.

* Food storage capacity to be augmented - 15 more mega food parks to be set up in 2011-12; of 30 sanctioned in previous fiscal, 15 set up.

* Cold storage facilities to be recognised as infrastructure sector.

* Comprehensive policy on further developing PPP (public-private-partnership) model.

* Farmers need access to affordable credit.

* Moving to improve nutritional security.

* Necessary to accelerate production of fodder.

* Number three (third consecutive budget) may be lucky for me.

* Women's self-help development panel to be set up.

* FIIs can invest $40 billion in corporate bonds.

* Rs.100 crore equity fund for microfinance companies.

* Mortgage risk guarantee fund to be created for economically weaker sections.

* Housing loan limit for priority sector lending raised to Rs.25 lakh.

* Agriculture growth key to development: Green Revolution waiting to happen in eastern region.

* Growth at 8.75% to 9.25% in 2011-12.

* Bills on insurance, pension funds, banking to be introduced.

* Gap between wholesale and retail prices not acceptable.

* Setting up independent debt management office; public debt management bill to be introduced in parliament.

* Seek Lord Indra's blessings for good monsoon.

* Introduction of goods and services tax will improve compliance.

* Bill on goods and services tax in current session.

* Expenditure has to be oriented towards production of goods and services.

* Government committed to retaining 51% stake in public sector enterprises.

* FDI policy being liberalised.

* Current account deficit at 2009-10 levels.

* Corruption a problem we have to fight collectively.

* Development needs to be more inclusive.

* Stronger fiscal consolidation needed.

* Setting tone for newer, vibrant economy.

* Economy has shown remarkable resilience to external and internal shocks.

* Economy back to pre-crisis trajectory.

* Set pace for double digit growth.

* Total food inflation declined to less than 9 percent in January.

* Could have performed better.

'China ready to go to war to safeguard national interests'

2011-02-12T23:47:00.000-08:00

Terming US attempts to woo India and other neighbours of China as "unbearable," an article in a Communist party magazine has said that Beijing must send a "clear signal" to these countries that it is ready to go to war to safeguard its national interests.

The article published in the Qiushi Journal, the official publication of the ruling Communist Party of China (CPC) said China must adhere to a basic strategic principle of not initiating war but being ready to counter-attack.

"We must send a clear signal to our neighbouring countries that we don't fear war, and we are prepared at any time to go to war to safeguard our national interests," the article said, suggesting an aggressive strategy to counter emerging US alliances in the region.

"Throughout the history of the new China (since 1949), peace in China has never been gained by giving in, only through war. Safeguarding national interests is never achieved by mere negotiations, but by war," it said.The piece said countries like Japan, India, Vietnam,

Australia, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Korea are trying to join the anti-China group because they either had a war or a conflict of interest with China.

"What is especially unbearable is how the US blatantly encourages China's neighbouring countries to go against China. We cannot completely blame the US, as flies do not stare at seamless eggs.

"They are attempting to gain benefits by using US," it said.

It suggested that China should use its economic clout and trade as a weapon to rein in neighbours. "China's neighbouring countries need China's international trade more than China needs them, with the vast majority of China's trade deficit caused by these countries," it said.

"Therefore, they, but not China, will suffer greater damage by antagonising China. China should make good use of these economic advantages and strategic power. This is also the most effective means to avoid a war," it said.

The article said the US has adopted a series of strategies to contain China like through an exchange rate war, through a public opinion war, besides launching military exercises and simulated warfare, and the development of an anti-China alliance.

China on its part, it said, can consider the idea of launching economic warfare through strategies to contain the US dollar and making effective use of forums like the IMF and initiating a space war by developing strong space weapons.It also suggested as a counter-strategy the idea of pursuing a strong policy against neighbours joining the US alliance, even attacking a nearby enemy and forming anti-US alliances in Latin America and Africa.

It also said the China should also launch a public opinion war by making an effective use of the free media in the US and other democracies.

Though suggesting a hard-line policy towards neighbours, the article, however, proposes to rope in countries with good foreign reserves like India to neutralise the influence of US dollar.

"Of course, to fight the US, we have to come up with key weapons. What is the most powerful weapon China has today? It is our economic power, especially our foreign exchange reserves (USD 2.8 trillion). The key is to use it well. If we use it well, it is a weapon; otherwise it may become a burden," it said.So in view of this China should "pick up courage" and go for aggressive buying of other currencies, including the Indian Rupee hence taking the lead in affecting the market for US dollars.

This approach, it said, is market-driven and it will not be able to easily blame China.

"Of course, the most important condition is still that China must have enough courage to challenge the US currency. China can act in one of two ways. One is to sell US dollar reserves, and the second is not to buy US dollars for a certain period of time," which will weaken the currency and cause deep economic crisis for Washington. Given the fact that China is the biggest buyer of US debt, its actions will have a demonstrable effect on the market.

"If China stops buying, other countries will pay close attention and are very likely to follow. Once the printed excess dollars cannot be sold, the depreciation of the dollar will accelerate and the impact on Americans wealth will be enormous.

"The US will not be able to withstand this pressure and will curtail the printing of US currency," it said.

'Islamic banking surges post-global recession'

2011-02-09T02:09:00.000-08:00

Islamic banking has been gaining momentum after the recent global meltdown and many countries, including India, are opening their doors for it, an international Islamic banking expert said here.

Islamic banking is based on the principle of profit-sharing, rather than charging interest.

"The current volume of Islamic banking is USD 1.2 trillion. It is very small and less than 1 per cent when compared to conventional banking, which is nearly USD 243 trillion. But this USD 1 trillion was achieved within 40 years. This is growing 15-20 per cent much faster than conventional banking," expert Madzlan Husain said on the sidelines of 17th Commonwealth Law Conference being held here.

According to him, as many as 75 countries all over the world have recognised the need for Islamic banking and opened doors for it.

The segment constitutes nearly 22 pc of the total banking in Malaysia, which is considered as hub of Islamic banking. It has been growing at nearly 20 pc in countries like Kuwait, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia."The number is definitely growing. Recently, India also allowed Islamic banking in Kerala. The global financial crisis contributed to the growth. They feel that there is something structurally wrong with conventional banking system. Even countries like China, Korea are also implementing Islamic banking," Husain explained.

Recently, the Kerala High Court paved the way for setting up an Islamic bank by dismissing Janata Party leader Subramaniyam Swamy's plea challenging the state government's decision to start an Islamic bank.

"Why should our country lose the benefit of foreign direct investment in this sector by saying that we will not allow Islamic banking? When our Prime Minister visited Malaysia, he said that India will send a team of RBI officials to Malaysia to study Islamic banking aspects. I am sure that there will be a necessary regulation in place," L Nageswara Rao, the counsel for the Kerala Government in the Islamic banking case, said. According to experts, no financial institution that practices Islamic banking looked for bailout packages during the global recession.

"After the recession banks like Scotland Bank were to be bailed out. But not a single Islamic bank needed help or looked for bailout. It was completely unfazed by the recession. That is the reason France is competing with Britain to become a hub for Islamic banking due to ethical banking," said M J Husain, an Independent Director at South Africa-based ASBA Bank (a subsidiary of Barclays Bank).

India has high stakes in a stable Egypt

2011-02-03T00:46:00.000-08:00

In some respects, India has the same close entanglement and investment with Egypt and Mubarak as the United States does, although it comes from a different direction, both geographically and strategically.

Washington views Egypt as a military and diplomatic partner, which it got to sue for peace with ally Israel in the teeth of Arab opposition and paved way for decades of relative concord in that part of the world.

India-Egypt ties pre-date this and are rooted in the exceptionally close relationship between Nehru and Nasser, founding members and buddies of the Non-Aligned Movement. It survived the US ingress into the region and even New Delhi's dalliance with Israel, although with noticeable less ardor.

Since the 1980s, there have been four Prime Ministerial visits from India to Egypt: Rajiv Gandhi (1985); P V Narasimha Rao (1995); I K Gujral (1997); and Manmohan Singh (2009). Mubarak visited India thrice, in 1982 (bilateral), 1983 (for NAM), and most recently in 2008, when New Delhi finally handed over the Jawaharlal Nehru Award for International
Understanding that had been conferred on him as far back as 1995.

Mubarak's 2008 visit was mainly driven by massive Indian investments in Egypt, which overcame the mushy sentimentality that hitherto characterized the ties. As with rest of the world, Indian movies are popular in Egypt.

In the past decade though, it's India Inc that has stepped up to the crease: Indian companies have made a mark in Egypt, raising India's profile that was otherwise largely cultural. Egypt is the beachhead for Indian push into North Africa and Maghreb, with Oberoi, which owns two hotels and runs cruises, leading the way in the hospitality sector.

Wipro and Satyam Computers set up global delivery centers in Cairo; Kirloskar assembled diesel engines and irrigation pumpsets in the country; Ranbaxy found an Egyptian subsidiary for manufacturing pharmaceuticals; Dabur, Marico and Asian Paints have operations here; Bajaj Auto dominated the three-wheeler market; Tata Motors, M&M, Ashok Leyland and Maruti have all motored in.

More recently, Essar, Reliance, and the Tata group are among those planning investments in Egypt worth an estimated $20 billion. Add to this, nearly 1,00,000 Indians vacation in Egypt every year.

Clearly, India has much to wish for in Egypt's stability.

Checking inflation focus of 12th plan, says Plan panel official

2011-02-03T00:19:00.000-08:00

Identifying inflation as a major challenge, the UPA government will come up with a new set of reforms to check it in the 12-five year plan starting from 2012-13. Inflation crossed 18% mark in January 2011 making the government feel that keeping it under control will not be possible without systematic reforms in the food distribution and storage sector. Since April 2009, the inflation has increased by about 25%."Unless there is not a huge difference between the price farmer gets and at what the consumer buys checking inflation would be a difficult task," said Pranob Sen, principal advisor with Planning Commission, who has been given the task to formulate approach paper for the 12th plan.While food to all through a re-structured Public Distribution System aimed at plugging leakages will be a reality in the 12th plan, the government will also target at taking agriculture infrastructure to the doorsteps for farmers. It includes cold storage chains and market access.The commission has identified sectors where "well regulated markets are non-existent" and will come up with a strategy to create or improve markets in all sectors."The key would be providing access to farmers to markets all over the country," Sen said.Another key area identified for improvement is enhancing skills and faster generation of employment."It is believed that India's economic growth is not generating jobs or livelihood opportunities," said a plan panel internal note on approach for 12th plan. "At the same time, many sectors face manpower shortages".The panel also believes that there is a need to improve skills for both job market and for self-employment."We have to come up with modules to providing training to people who want to set up their own small business enterprises such a shops," Sen said.Although attaining economic growth of more than 10% through mobilization of resources and efficient capital markets will remain a key objective, the 12th plan is expected to have serious of reforms to make the growth inclusive for poverty eradication, for providing quality health and education facilities.The commission has identified inefficient transport sector as a major bottleneck for attaining higher economic growth and insufficient access to large national markets.In the 12th plan will be a renewed focus on development of rural and urban multi-modal transport.Sen said while the 12th plan will take ahead the work of the 11th plan the emphasis will be on having bigger impact on people of the Central government schemes

Tunisian revolution and its fallout

2011-01-21T22:29:00.000-08:00

Hours after a group of stone-throwing youth braved frantic police beatings and confronted grey fumes of teargas outside the Interior Ministry building in Tunis, the unthinkable happened. As darkness thickened on January 14 and agonising uncertainty gripped the Tunisian capital, word was out that Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, well entrenched dictator for 23 years, had fled. For hours, Mr. Ben Ali's plane flew in the Mediterranean night sky, desperately seeking a place to land. France, the former colonial master, saw no benefit in obliging an ageing overused ex-dictator that it had once so assiduously feted. It refused landing permission. Finally, the harried former first family of Tunisia, known for its ostentatious ways, was rescued by the Saudis, who opened one of their numerous palaces in Jeddah to accommodate their uninvited and loveless guests.

But back in Tunisia, despite curfew and an Emergency, there was unbelievable relief and much joy on the streets. Mr. Ben Ali's seemingly unassailable tyranny, reinforced by thousands of personally loyal troops, had suddenly collapsed. Many felt that a political revolution of great significance had been accomplished. Overnight, large sections of the media pronounced that not only an era of authoritarianism in Tunisia had ended but also a new powerful contagion of democracy was fast spreading to annihilate dictators, big and small, across West Asia. That still might be the case but not necessarily so — at least not immediately.

Built on solid organisational foundations and helped by the old and new media alike, the Tunisian rebellion has indeed aroused the masses across the region. As Abdul Bari Atwan, editor of the Palestinian daily, Al Quds Al Arabi, put it: “The Arab nation is patient, but its patience is similar to that of a camel. When it is furious, a camel does not stop until it wreaks revenge on its persecutors. It seems that such a camel has now broken free from its ties.”

But before the anticipation that the long-fossilised dominos in the Arab world will, at some stage, begin to fall is realised, Tunisia needs to consolidate its own fledgling political revolution. The Tunisians are already facing their first major challenge. Within hours of Mr. Ben Ali's fall, the former Speaker Fuad Mebazza, elevated to the presidency, announced the formation of a stopgap national unity government, which was also meant to accommodate important Opposition figures. However, on the night of January 17, the new government, when it was unveiled, was found stuffed with the hated members of the old guard. The key Ministries of Defence, Foreign Affairs, Interior and Finance were once again bestowed on Mr. Ben Ali's cronies.

The regime opponents have therefore their first task cut out — ensuring that the remnants of the old guard no longer occupy high places of influence and are firmly marginalised. Some success in isolating them has already been achieved. Four Opposition figures, co-opted by members of the old guard to occupy Cabinet berths, resigned in the space of 24 hours. However new and serious challenges, which any nascent revolution is bound to encounter, remain. Having accomplished the exit of a hated dictator, how does the Tunisian revolution gather steam and fill the vacuum left by the fast fading old guard? Unlike the Iranian revolution, which had Ayatollah Khomeini as its leader as well as a blaring emblem, how does the Tunisian revolution advance in the absence of a charismatic and popular leader?

The huge challenge notwithstanding, the chances are that the Tunisian people may yet succeed. Unlike many other countries experiencing political turmoil, Tunisia consists of mostly educated people and is institutionally well organised. This is a factor that goes hugely in the favour of Tunisians. Thus the anti-regime campaign that was triggered by the December 17 self-immolation of a university graduate, who was driven to sell vegetables and then denied permission to do so, had labour unions, professional syndicates, including well-entrenched unions of students, teachers, lawyers and journalists as its pillars.

These organisations, partly helped by new communication tools of Facebook and Twitter, could take advantage of the socio-economic deprivations that the Tunisians have experienced for years. As a result, a critical social mass of protesters grew, eventually bringing down the regime.

Despite Tunisia's zooming growth rates, the growing army of the jobless fed significantly into the successful uprising. Many analysts are of the view that the official 14 per cent unemployment rate hardly reflects the true picture of desperation the youth have been experiencing. According to some estimates, nearly half the youth in the 15-24 age bracket are unemployed in some parts of the interior, the core of the Tunisian revolt. Wages are low in the job-creating euro-centric tourism and textile manufacturing hubs established in “free trade zones.” The hardships of ordinary people have become all the more acute for, under the diktat of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, government subsides have been either lowered or removed in the food and gasoline sectors.

With mass misery rising, heavy corruption centred round the President, the President's wife, Leila Trabelsi and her family emerged as an emotive symbol to ignite the rebellion. According to a WikiLeaks cable from the U.S. embassy in Tunis, the Ben Ali and Trabelsi families had cornered nearly 50 per cent of the country's wealth. It was, therefore, not surprising that when the crowds went on the rampage on January 15, they targeted business properties associated with the two nepotistic ruling clans. In the Tunis neighbourhood of Cite Habib, a villa belonging to Leila Trabelsi's nephew was set afire. Dealership showrooms, owned by Mr. Ben Ali's son-in-law Mohamed Sakher El Materi, of Kia, Fiat and Porsche vehicles were also burnt down. The next day, Imed Trabelsi — Ms. Trabelsi's nephew who had been stabbed — died in a Tunis military hospital, accounting for the first fatality in the ruling family in the aftermath of the month-long uprising.

As the Tunisian revolt gathers its second wind, the role of the military could become crucial. It is widely believed that Mr. Ben Ali's nearly 1,80,000-strong security police are at loggerheads with the regular army. In fact, unlike the police whom the protesters targeted, evident from the torching of a number of police stations, the military continues to remain a popular force. The army's neutrality and thus its clean popular image came into focus when it declined to fire at the protesters, causing Mr. Ben Ali to sack his Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Rashid Ammar.

Deep imprint

The uprising in Tunisia is leaving behind a deep imprint on the impoverished youth in the neighbouring countries. But can it spread fast and strongly enough to challenge the deeply entrenched regimes that have been built on the foundations of patronage, pillage and ruthless force, perpetrated by the grossest human rights violations?

The psychological impact of the Tunisian example in the region is palpable. In Algeria, four persons set themselves ablaze to protest their dire economic and political situation. Egypt, demographically the largest nation in the region and cultural heartbeat of the Arab world, has also witnessed a case of self-immolation.

Panic is also setting in among the regimes, though it would be erroneous to assume that its feckless dictators are considering throwing in the towel anytime soon. Nevertheless, a nervous Egyptian establishment has decided to rein in the prices of essentials like rice and sugar, and end the breadlines by not withholding wheat flour to bakeries for previous violations. The Egyptian daily, Al-Mesryoon, has reported that on the security front, instructions have been passed to prevent Opposition forces and movements from holding demonstrations or protests.

The Libyan dictator, Muammar Qadhafi, also appeared shaken by the dramatic developments on his doorstep. Soon after Mr. Ben Ali fled, he strongly disapproved of the Tunisian revolt. In a televised address, he chided the Tunisian people for being impatient. “You have suffered a great loss,” he said. “There is none better than Zine to govern Tunisia.”

A stunned Arab League — which has largely degenerated into a cabal of dictators and plutocrats — scampered to the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh to collectively absorb the shock inflicted upon it by the commoners of Tunisia.

Despite the revulsion that it has generated, it would take much more than high-octane emotion to dislodge the odious dictatorships. Nevertheless, Egypt seems to echo loudest the radical voices of fundamental change that are resonating from the Tunisian street. Unlike many of the smaller countries, Egypt's battle-hardened core of the poor and the dispossessed are also its best organised.

Besides, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood is a highly potent force, which might come into its own as part of the larger Egyptian opposition, especially as the iron-fisted regime of President Hosni Mubarak is soon likely to witness a major transition.

Northern Alliance- Taliban's fiercest opponent

2011-01-19T01:27:00.001-08:00

The United Islamic Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan (UIF), or Northern Alliance, is a military-political umbrella organization formed shortly after the Taliban captured Kabul in 1996.

The anti-Taliban alliance comprised of ousted ethnic Tajik president, Burhanuddin Rabbani, Defense Minister Ahmad Shah Massoud and their Jamiat-i-Islami forces, and General Abdul Rashid Dostum and the ethnic Uzbek Junbish-i-Milli party. Many of the alliance followers were part of the Mujahideen guerillas fighting the Soviets in 1979-1989.

Massoud was one of Northern Alliance's most powerful and visible leader, and had personally trained most of its troops. Massoud was killed in September 2001 by Al Qaeda militants reportedly posing as Saudi journalists.

Post 9/11 attacks, it garnered support from the US in the latter's War against Terror. After weeks of persistent bombing of Taliban hideouts by US missiles, the Alliance was finally able to recapture Kabul in November 2001.

The current troop strength of the Alliance is estimated to be anywhere between 10,000 to 12,000 and is believed to be receiving technical aid from Russia, Iran and most recently, the United States. The Alliance is recognized by the United Nations and the governments of other nations.

Mullah Mohammed Omar

2011-01-19T01:26:00.001-08:00

Profile: Mullah Mohammed Omar, Founder leader of Taliban

Mullah Mohammed Omar, or Mullah Omar is the founder leader of Taliban of Afghanistan and was the de facto head of state from 1996-2001. He held the official title of the Head of the Supreme Council and that of Commander of the Faithful from the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. He is wanted by the US authorities for providing shelter to Osama bin Laden and his outfit, Al Qaeda.

Mullah Omar rose to power during the 1980s, when he led anti-Soviet Mujahideeen fighters to topple the Soviet regime in Afghanistan, losing his right eye in the ensuing battle.

He founded the Taliban movement in 1994, comprising of students from Islamic religious schools and Afghan refugees in Pakistan with the aim of restoring order to the lawless, post-Soviet Afghanistan.

He captured Kabul two years later without a fight, which many Afghans welcomed, believing it would mark an end to the civil war. Under Mullah Omar's rule, the Taliban enforced a strict interpretation of Islamic law, including banning women from going to educational institutions and work, persecuting homosexuals, and amputating the hands of thieves.

Following the 9/11 terror attack on the World Trade Centre in US, Washington led a campaign to oust the Taliban regime for sheltering Osama bin Laden, chief of Al Qaeda, and has since announced a $10m bounty on Mullah Omar's head.

The US-led invasion drove the Taliban out of power in Afghanistan and consequently, forced Mullah Omar to go into hiding. Omar, who is in his late 40s, remains a reclusive figure, and is believed to be hiding in the mountainous areas along the Afghan-Pakistan border.

Afghanistan in brief

2011-01-19T01:25:00.001-08:00

Afghans vote in landmark presidential and provincial council elections on Thursday, but rampant insecurity and Taliban threats could affect the credibility of the polls.

These are some key facts about the country:

GEOGRAPHY: In the heart of central Asia, Afghanistan is bordered by the Islamic republics of Iran, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, and by China. It is an arid, landlocked country of 652,225 square kilometres (251,825 square miles), about 85 percent of which is mountainous.

POPULATION: Between 26 and 32 million inhabitants.

CAPITAL: Kabul.

HUMAN DEVELOPMENT INDICATORS: Afghanistan is the fifth poorest country in the world, with 42 percent of the population living on less than 14 dollars a month.

More than one out of four children dies before the age of five, the third highest rate in the world after Sierra Leone and Angola, according to the UN.

About 1,600 of every 100,000 mothers die in childbirth or because of related complications, second only to Sierra Leone (UN).

Afghans have a life expectancy of 43 (UN).

Only 23 per cent of the adult population can read or write.

LANGUAGES: Pashtu and Dari -- both Persian dialects. At least 30 other languages and dialects are spoken.

RELIGION: Overwhelmingly Muslim with about 80 percent Sunni and 20 percent Shiite.

RECENT HISTORY: In 1973, King Mohammed Zahir Shah was ousted in a bloodless coup after 40 years of rule.

In April 1978, a pro-Soviet coup brought communists to power. The following year the Soviets invaded Afghanistan and spent the next decade fighting mujahedeen guerrillas backed by Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United States.

In February 1989, the Soviets withdrew and civil war ensued.

On September 27, 1996 a group known as the Taliban (students of religion), which formed partly in Pakistan with the tacit approval of Washington, took power in Kabul and enforced Sharia law.

The Taliban executed former communist president Mohammad Najibullah and allowed Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network to operate from the country.

On September 9, 2001 Ahmad Shah Masood, commander of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance force, was assassinated by two men posing as journalists and presumed to be members of Al-Qaeda.

On October 7, 2001 following the September 11 attacks on the United States, a US-led coalition launched a war to topple the Taliban for failing to surrender bin Laden. After six weeks, the Northern Alliance took Kabul and most of the country.

Under peace accords agreed in Bonn in December 2001, an interim administration was established under the leadership of Hamid Karzai.

On October 9, 2004 an estimated eight million Afghans voted for the first time to elect a president. Karzai was the winner.
There are currently around 95,000 Afghan soldiers fighting Taliban militants alongside more than 100,000 international soldiers, nearly two-thirds of them in the US military, in the volatile south.

ECONOMY: The destitute country is being rebuilt with international assistance.

Afghanistan produces about 93 percent of the world's opium, according to the UN, bringing in four billion dollars a year (2.82 billion euros), part of which goes to finance the Taliban.

Afghanistan has four percent of the world's reserves of coal, along with iron, copper and precious stones. Deposits of lead, zinc, tin, tungsten and caesium have yet to be tapped.

Understanding the Taliban menace

2011-01-19T01:24:00.001-08:00

The recent Afghan elections were held under the shadow terror assaults from one of the world's most dreaded outfits, Taliban. They were hell bent to stop their nation's tentative attempt to uphold democracy. The outfit's grip has extended far beyond its land of birth. Though major western powers have deployed their best minds and resources, they have not been able to contain let alone overpower the top echelons of Taliban.

Who are these people who have the only super power in the world a bloody nose and have pushed their own nation in the vortex of violence? Why do they take refuge in religion to kill innocent men and women?

Who are Taliban?

'Taliban' is plural of Talib, a Pashto word meaning "student". It is a group of students that believes in a fundamentalist narrative of their religious teaching. They wrested control of Afghanistan's government in 1996 and were driven out of power in 2001 by the US led coalition army. Despite its ouster, it continues to wield considerable clout in Afghanistan's rural regions especially the Pakhtun dominated south and east provinces including Kandahar.

Known for ultra-orthodox views and rigid interpretations of Islamic law, the Taliban bars women from going to schools or from doing jobs. Public executions of homosexuals and petty offenders too are not very uncommon.

The Taliban was initially a group of mujahideens who fought against the Soviet invasion in the 1980s. The battleground proved a steppingstone for those who later rose in the ranks of Taliban. One such leader was Mullah Omar, the Commander-in Chief, of the anti-Soviet army.

After successfully defeating the Soviet army, Omar formed the Taliban, comprising of a group of Islamic students, to bring order to the lawless, post-war Afghan society. Initially, they gained wide support of the Afghans who had grown weary of the constant fighting between the warlords.

With the help of government defections, the Taliban emerged as a force in Afghan politics in 1994 in the midst of a civil war between forces in northern and southern Afghanistan. They captured the southern city of Kandahar without force and over the next two years, steadily expanded their influence over the rest of the country. In 1996, they captured Kabul, the Afghan capital, and took control of the national government.

Currently, the Taliban strength is estimated at around 45,000. In addition to this, the Taliban has been reportedly recruiting a lot of children and elderly men in order to fight its opponents, particularly the Northern Alliance.

SC/STs missing in pvt sector jobs: India Inc’s first caste census

2011-01-19T00:56:00.000-08:00

The first-ever caste census of India Inc’s human resources has revealed that the proportion of Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe employees in the private sector in some of the most industrialised states of the country hardly reflects their strength in the general population of those states.

The only exception is Tamil Nadu, which ranks number one in industrialisation and employment (by number of factories and persons, according to the Annual Survey of Industries 2008-09). SCs/STs account for almost 18 per cent of the industrial workforce and 20 per cent of the state’s population.

In sharp contrast are some of the other most industrialised states such as Maharashtra, Gujarat, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and West Bengal, which show a sharp mismatch between SCs/STs as a percentage of the total workforce in the private sector and as a percentage of the states’ total population.Living under the constant threat that the government may reserve jobs in the private sector as part of its inclusive growth agenda, the Confederation of Indian Industry, the country’s largest industry chamber, undertook a caste census of its members spread across 22 states and Union territories.

Covering 8,250 members of the CII, together employing 35 lakh people, it gives a flavour of the manpower mix in India Inc.

SCs/STs, for instance, make up 19.1 per cent of Maharashtra’s population but their share in the private sector human resources is only 5 per cent. In Gujarat and Karnataka, SCs/STs are just about 9 per cent of the staff strength, but account for 22 per cent and 23 per cent respectively of the state population. The survey, in a nutshell, reveals that companies in the least industrialised eastern region, where jobs are far and few, have the highest percentage of SC/ST employees. So, in Bihar — which ranks a distant 17 as per the Annual Survey of Industries 2008-09 — they together constitute a fourth of the total workforce, whereas they form just 16.6 per cent of the state’s total population. Chhattisgarh is a shade better, with more number of factories, but here too, half of the total workforce comprises SCs/STs, compared to them making up 43.4 per cent of the population.

The private sector in the western region comes as a surprise. Maharashtra, the hub of India Inc, is second only to Tamil Nadu in terms of industrialisation and employment. CII members in the state employ 20.72 lakh people in the state, almost 57 per cent of the total employee base considered in the survey by the chamber. But SC/ST proportion in the workforce is one-fourth of their percentage in the total population. In Madhya Pradesh that ranks 11 in industrialisation and workforce, SCs/STs account for 11 per cent of the private sector’s total staff strength, less than a third of their strength in the state’s population.States in south are an exception. The private sector in Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala has on its rolls a remarkably high percentage of SCs/STs. Tamil Nadu — where the politically driven Dravidian movement significantly empowered the backward castes — is distinct because it also ranks number one in terms of the number of employees and factories. SCs/STs here account for 18 per cent of the workforce in CII’s member companies, and 20 per cent of the state’s population.In Kerala, for entirely different reasons such as 100 per cent literacy, the percentage of SCs/STs in the private sector is higher than their share in the population.

In the north, Delhi and Haryana buck the general trend, where the gap between SCs/STs at work and their representation in the population is significantly higher. The CII survey of the private sector’s manpower mix in Chandigarh, Punjab and Rajasthan shows that SC/ST proportion there is 25-50 per cent lower than their strength in the total population.

Sino-American rivalry: Failure & opportunity for Indian military diplomacy

2011-01-16T22:33:00.001-08:00

As Sino-American rivalry acquires a new momentum to the east of India, New Delhi will come under pressure to modernise its armed forces and ramp up military diplomacy across Asia. But it is not clear if India's defence leadership can shed its current doctrine of masterly inactivity.

The naval muscle-flexing by Washington and Beijing in the last few weeks - in North-east and South-east Asia — reflects a rapid evolution of the strategic environment in our Asian neighbourhood.

The US and Chinese naval muscle-flexing in the waters of the Korean Peninsula and the visit of the US aircraft carrier George Washington to Vietnam last week point to a historic shift in Asia's international relations.

As old partners — China and the United States — try to stare down each other, new alliances are being forged between former adversaries — Vietnam and America. That this rearrangement has little do with ideology should draw some of our defence decision-makers out of the time warp they seem to be caught in. After all, China and Vietnam are among the few communist states left in the world.The current shift could be as consequential as that in the early 1970s. After more than two decades of war and conflict with Chinese communists and refusing to recognise the People's Republic as the legitimate representative of China, Washington reached out to Beijing in 1971. As Washington played the China card against the Soviet Union, the rest of Asia ended its hostility to Beijing and welcomed its integration into the international system.

The Sino-American partnership against Moscow survived the collapse of the Soviet Union at the turn of the 1990s. As the economic interdependence between the two deepened in the last decade, some American analysts made the case for an informal Sino-American political condominium called “G-2”. Beijing's new assertiveness on a range of issues, however, shattered these hopes.

China's muscular military and foreign policies have put it at odds with its neighbours. The smaller nations of Asia are coping with the rise of China through internal and external balancing.

Internal balancing is about building one's own military capabilities. According to the authoritative Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, arms purchases by the South-east Asian nations have doubled in the period of 2005-09 in comparision to the previous five year period.

External balancing involves combining one's own capabilities with those of a great power. Most of China's neighbours are turning to the United States for protection against a rising China. Japan and South Korea, who seemed to down play their traditional alliance with the United States in recent years, have in the last few months decided to re-embrace the United States. Many of them also want to expand their defence cooperation with India.

As America reaffirms its primacy in Asia, a rising China is unlikely to back down. Beijing, instead, will seek to step up its own military capabilities further vitiating the regional security environment.

Asia's new military dynamic means India can no longer afford its current laidback approach to military modernisation. Nor can New Delhi ignore the growing demands from its friends and partners to contribute to Asian security amidst the rise of China and the perceived decline of the United States.

Most of Asia sees India's emergence as a valuable factor in constructing a stable Asian order. New Delhi's problem has not been a shortage of money but the lack of strategic imagination. The absence of a purposeful defence leadership has emerged as the biggest constraint on India's ability to raise its strategic profile in Asia.

In Kashmir, time to move forward

2011-01-16T21:53:00.000-08:00

It is a good sign that the government is thinking of force reduction in Jammu and Kashmir. Speaking at a university seminar in New Delhi on Friday, Union home secretary G.K. Pillai indicated that the presence of the security forces in the state could be pruned by as much as 25 per cent in the course of the year. It will be erroneous to pit this against the observation of the Chief of Army Staff, Gen. V.K. Singh, on the same day that the Army’s strength in the state was not being reduced. For some years the Army has functioned primarily on the Line of Control, although it is also engaged in counter-terrorism operations away from urban centres and has occasionally been used for a show of strength when the situation threatened to get out of hand in the cities, such as during the prolonged agitation last year when stone-pelters had a field day on account of mishandling of the situation by the state police and paramilitary units. (In the latter role, the Army is deployed elsewhere in the country as well.) Clearly then, the government’s thinking is to cut paramilitary deployment in Kashmir in the main. They are the ones who are in the cities along with the state police. They were inserted in the first place as the local police lacked the numbers, training and equipment to deal with the special situation that foreign-fuelled militancy in Kashmir presents. In many instances it was also seen to lack the leadership. Evidently, some of these deficits have been overcome to an extent, permitting the draw-down of the CRPF that Mr Pillai hinted at. Indeed, during the onslaught of the stone-pelters masterminded by some jihadist elements last year, the state police gave a reasonable account of itself. Its performance might have been even better had the state’s political leadership shown greater astuteness.
In spite of what we saw last year, Kashmir’s populace seeks peace and normality, although from time to time it is bullied into acquiescence by jihadist elements, particularly when the authorities are sloppy or sometimes exceed their limits. Reducing force numbers so that cities don’t always wake up to bunkers of armed men in their midst is always a good idea, and is most often practicable. It is now up to the security forces and intelligence agencies to ensure that the Islamists don’t get the upper hand politically. Force reduction is inevitably a goodwill gesture toward our own people, no matter which part of the country we are talking about. It helps lift the siege mentality. Mirwaiz Umar Farooq has reportedly welcomed the government’s thinking. This will bring him closer to the mainstream in the Valley. Recent statements by former Hurriyat chairman Abdul Ghani Bhatt and by Sajjad Lone, who showed the maturity to chance his arm in the last Lok Sabha elections, that the jihadists have killed more people in Kashmir than the security forces is also in accord with the broad thinking in the Valley. But their public articulation of this sentiment is a forward step and is to be appreciated. Given these developments, reducing the deployment of the paramilitary forces is likely to bolster India’s confidence in any serious talks with Pakistan, whenever these are opened. The announcement of a unilateral six-month multiple-entry visa regime for PoK residents to visit Jammu and Kashmir also appears well-timed to go with the overall thrust of the government’s thinking. The Centre has made a positive appreciation of the work done by the three-person team of interlocutors since October. It may now be time to move up a notch and find ways to resume public contact with political elements in the Valley outside of the parties that contest elections.
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'BrahMos paves way for future Indo-Russian defence JVs'

2011-01-05T20:12:00.000-08:00

The success of Indo-Russian JV BrahMos for the development and production of lethal cruise missiles has set a "Golden Standard" for future joint defence projects with greater Indian participation, according to a respected defence publication. "BrahMos has been an unqualified success. The numerous
benefits it has already yielded include: commercial profit for both partners; a tangible improvement in the fighting ability of the Indian Army, Navy and Air Force; development of new technologies, which has been especially important to the Indians; a chance for Russia's NPO Mashinostroyeniya corporation to put its potential for innovation to good use," Moscow Defense Brief (MDB) quarterly writes in its latest issues.

"The BrahMos Aerospace Ltd joint venture has become a vehicle for future implementation of other Russian-Indian projects, on an even large scale and with greater Indian participation," the journal notes in an article contributed by top defence expert Dr Ruslan Pukhov the journal notes.

It underscored that the valuable experience of BrahMos, a fifty-fifty JV between Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and Russia's NPO Mashinostroyeniya, in overcoming various legal, organisational and financial hurdles, will be invaluable during the implementation of other bilateral programmes, including the future joint projects of Multi-role Transport Aircraft (MTA) and fifth generation FGFA fighter.

The company is known to be already working on new hypersonic missile. But the unique experience accumulated as part of the BrahMos programme since 1998 has paved the way for even more ambitious goals, including new strategic ballistic and cruise missiles.

"For India, BrahMos has become one of the first standardised weapons systems which can be deployed by all three armed services - the Army, the Navy and the Air Force," MDB underscores.

It noted that the Indian Navy was the initial customer for the new missile, which can be carried by a variety of naval platforms.

These include the majority of the existing and future surface ships. The first ships to be equipped with BrahMos were Project 61ME (Kashin-Mod class) destroyers.

Two of them, the Ranvir and the Ranvijay, will also be fitted with 8-missile vertical launch systems.

Other ships that will carry BrahMos include three Project 15A (Kolkata class) destroyers now being built in India, the future Project 15B destroyers, future Project 17A frigates and three Project 11356M (Talwar class Batch 2) frigates now being built for India at the Yantar Shipyards in Kaliningrad.

The future Talwar class Batch 3 frigates will also be equipped with the new missile, regardless of where they will be built. In addition to surface ships, the Indian Navy plans to deploy BrahMos on submarines and possibly on land-based patrol aircraft.

The suitable airborne carriers include the Russian Il-38SD ASW aircraft and, in a few years' time, the Boeing P-8I Poseidon ASW aircraft which India has already ordered in the United States.

The Indian Army has bought hundreds BrahMos missiles in the mobile land-based configuration.

They will be used not only against ships but also as a high-precision weapon against land targets such as command posts and key infrastructure facilities (the Block II LACM version).

The Indian Army has ordered 134 mobile anti-ships land-based BrahMos Block I missiles in 2006-2009 and another 240 land-attack BrahMos Block II in 2010, for a total of about 3bn dollars.

Meanwhile, the Indian Air Force is awaiting the completion of the development of an air-launched version of BrahMos, to be deployed primarily with the Su-30MKI fighters.

The Su-30MKI-BrahMos weapons system will be a truly lethal combination. First deliveries are expected in 2012.

At some point the Indian Air Force will also receive the BrahMos Block II version, which is designed to engage land targets.

MDB does not rule out that the 126 medium multirole fighters (MMRCA) for which India has announced a contract will also be fitted with BrahMos missiles.

"Not only the MiG-35 fielded by Russia in the MMRCA tender, but its Western rivals -the F/A-18, Rafale and Typhoon fighters can all serve as carriers of BrahMos Block II missiles," Moscow Defense Brief writes.

The missile's ability to be launched from a wide range of platforms and engage a variety of targets has generated very large sales.

At present the demand of the Indian armed forces is estimated at 1,000 such missiles at the very least.

In fact, the need to fulfil the Indian orders is holding back exports to other countries.

The most conservative estimate for the size of the market for BrahMos throughout the life of the project is 2,000 missiles, worth over USD 10 billion.

"For Russia, the success of BrahMos has improved the chances of winning Indian contracts for aviation and naval platforms.

It is usually the exports of platforms that normally drive the sales of weapons to be fitted onto those platforms.

But in the case of BrahMos, it is the other way around: the missile is driving the sales of aircraft and submarines that can carry it," Dr Pukhov writes in Moscow Defense Brief quarterly.

Educational Reform

2011-01-03T23:56:00.000-08:00

The announcement by the HRD Ministry on the possibility of educational institutions incorporating as Corporates under Sec. 25 of the Companies Act , fine as far as it goes sidesteps the issue of financial autonomy and reform for the sector.

To begin with there is nothing which stops any body from setting up a Section 25 company for research and or education. In fact there are instances of profit making research companies. Presumably HRD Ministry announcements will influence the accredition bodies and other regulators.

To what extent they will lower their guards is an open question. In the unlikely event of this announcement succeeding in a big way the existing education bodies will actually be placed under greater handicaps, not having the freedom of operating under the Companies Act.

The reason why educational institutes incorporated under the Societies Registration Act or the as Trusts under the Charities Commissioner, are not allowed to approach financial institutions like banks and term lending institutions for loans is not very clear.
It would make sense for example to stop them from using land given to them by the State as collateral or such other restrictions may be imposed. Also they may be restricted or borrowing from the public sector financial institutions and banks to ensure that the due diligence is carried out. But otherwise there are no obvious reasons for restricting borrowing for viable projects initiated by them.

It is interesting that MHRD has a one size fits all approach for example for deemed universities.It sis true that some institutions of this kind were not good, but many were. In fact in economics the Indira Gandhi Instititute of Development Research or in social work the Tata Institute of Social Sciences are both deemed universities, have a global standing and yet were subjected to the same inspection specially carried out by the UGC at the behest of the Ministry as all other deemed universities.
When a thousand institutions are inspected the quality of inspectors and reports tends to vary. A more selective approach was possible since the Ministry would have their annual reports and audited accounts but was not preferred. This led to adverse court rulings and much confusion amongst students and others.

The least that can be done is to let well managed institutions have greater financial autonomy including for borrowing for viable innovative schemes. It maybe noted that institutions engaged in foreign investment in education in India are not subject to such restrictions in their countries. Also they work in countries with a strong long term lending institutional structure in the private sector. Private sector companies investing in education will also have that freedom.

They will account for less than five percent of the student population. The dead hand of control will stifle the others and make them relatively worse off.

It’s jobs, not GDP, that concern America

2011-01-03T23:51:00.000-08:00

If there’s one piece of economic wisdom I hope people will grasp this year, it’s this: Even though we may finally have stopped digging, we’re still near the bottom of a very deep hole.

Why do I need to point this out? Because I’ve noticed many people overreacting to recent good economic news. What particularly concerns me is the risk of self-denying optimism — that is, I worry that policymakers will look at a few favourable economic indicators, decide that they no longer need to promote recovery, and take steps that send us sliding right back to the bottom.

So, about that good news: various economic indicators, ranging from relatively good holiday sales to new claims for unemployment insurance (which have finally fallen below 4,00,000 a week), suggest that the great post-bubble retrenchment may finally be ending.

We’re not talking Morning in America here. Construction shows no sign of returning to bubble-era levels, nor are there any indications that debt-burdened families are going back to their old habits of spending all they earned. But all we needed for a modest economic rebound was for construction to stop falling and saving to stop rising — and that seems to be happening. Forecasters have been marking up their predictions; growth as high as four per cent this year now looks possible.

Hooray! But then again, not so much. Jobs, not Gross Domestic Product (GDP) numbers, are what matter to American families. And when you start from an unemployment rate of almost 10 per cent, the arithmetic of job creation — the amount of growth you need to get back to a tolerable jobs picture — is daunting.

First of all, we have to grow around 2.5 per cent a year just to keep up with rising productivity and population, and hence keep unemployment from rising. That’s why the past year-and-a-half was technically a recovery but felt like a recession: GDP was growing, but not fast enough to bring unemployment down.

Growth at a rate above 2.5 per cent will bring unemployment down over time. But the gains aren’t one for one: for a variety of reasons, it has historically taken about two extra points of growth over the course of a year to shave one point off the unemployment rate.

Now do the maths. Suppose that the US economy were to grow at four per cent a year, starting now and continuing for the next several years. Most people would regard this as excellent performance, even as an economic boom; it’s certainly higher than almost all the forecasts I’ve seen.

Yet the maths says that even with that kind of growth the unemployment rate would be close to nine per cent at the end of this year, and still above eight per cent at the end of 2012. We wouldn’t get to anything resembling full employment until late in Sarah Palin’s first presidential term.

Seriously, what we’re looking at over the next few years, even with pretty good growth, are unemployment rates that not long ago would have been considered catastrophic — because they are. Behind those dry statistics lies a vast landscape of suffering and broken dreams. And the arithmetic says that the suffering will continue as far as the eye can see.

So what can be done to accelerate this all-too-slow process of healing? A rational political system would long since have created a 21st-century version of the Works Progress Administration — we’d be putting the unemployed to work doing what needs to be done, repairing and improving our fraying infrastructure. In the political system we have, however, Senator-elect Kelly Ayotte, delivering the Republican weekly address on New Year’s day, declared that “Job one is to stop wasteful Washington spending”.

Realistically, the best we can hope for from fiscal policy is that Washington doesn’t actively undermine the recovery. Beware, in particular, the Ides of March: by then, the federal government will probably have hit its debt limit and the Grand Old Party (GOP) will try to force US President Barack Obama into economically harmful spending cuts.

I’m also worried about monetary policy. Two months ago, the Federal Reserve announced a new plan to promote job growth by buying long-term bonds; at the time, many observers believed that the initial $600 billion purchase was only the beginning of the story. But now it looks like the end, partly because Republicans are trying to bully the Fed into pulling back, but also because a run of slightly better economic news provides an excuse to do nothing.

There’s even a significant chance that the Fed will raise interest rates later this year — or at least that’s what the futures market seems to think. Doing so in the face of high unemployment and minimal inflation would be crazy, but that doesn’t mean it won’t happen.

So back to my original point: whatever the recent economic news, we’re still near the bottom of a very deep hole. We can only hope that enough policymakers understand that point.

Mali tackles ills — Al-Qaeda and drug trafficking

2011-01-03T23:50:00.000-08:00

The tourism minister of Mali, N'Diaye Bah, visibly bristled when asked about the possibility that Al-Qaeda's North African offshoot might kidnap foreigners in fabled Timbuktu or anywhere across Mali's northern desert.

France spread such rumours, he insisted. “They want to create this security issue that does not exist,” he said, wagging his finger. “When you come to Mali, there is no aggression against tourists. How can you say there is insecurity in this country?”

Yet the United States and French Embassies, among other foreign missions, explicitly warn against travelling to Timbuktu and indeed the entire desert that sweeps across roughly two-thirds of this landlocked West African nation. A French Embassy map colours the entire north red, a no-go area.

This uneasy, public standoff has existed for some time, reflective of Mali's insistence that it is not a font of violence like some of its neighbours, notably Algeria. But in a sign that Mali both acknowledges the issue and seeks to address it, the country is rolling out a new development plan, hoping to tackle the problem at its roots.

The problems

The dearth of jobs and prospects in the north helps drive the region's twin ills — narcotics trafficking and Islamic radicalism. By setting up military barracks, infirmaries, schools, shopping areas and animal markets in 11 northern towns, the Malian government hopes to establish a more visible government presence, foster economic activity and form a bulwark against lawlessness.

“The ultimate goal of the project is to eradicate” Al-Qaeda's affiliates in Mali, said Adam Tchiam, a leading Malian columnist.

Mali does not deny that an estimated 200 to 300 fighters from Al-Qaeda of the Islamic Maghreb (Maghreb being the Arabic term for west) have found a perch in their desert, although most are believed to be Mauritanians and Algerians. But Mali often depicts the terrorists as a problem generated elsewhere.

“We are hostages to a situation that does not concern us,” news reports quoted President Amadou Toumani Touré as saying.

Behind the scenes, however, the President has been more forthcoming. In a meeting with the American Ambassador, Gillian A. Milovanovic, and senior American military officers last year, he said the extremists “have had difficulty getting their message across to a generally reluctant population,” according to an embassy cable obtained by WikiLeaks and made available to several news organisations. Still, Mr. Touré acknowledged, “they have had some success in enlisting disaffected youth to their ranks.”

Trail of violence

In recent years, the Qaeda affiliate has left a trail of violence across Mauritania, Niger, Algeria and Mali, taking aim at tourists, expatriate workers, local residents and security forces. Hostages taken in the porous border regions have been executed or ransomed. Five French and two African workers kidnapped in Niger last September are believed to be held in northern Mali.

The Algerians and some Western diplomats accuse the Malians of being too soft on terrorism, an opinion reflected in the cables obtained by WikiLeaks. But Mali's defenders argue that the regional problem is far larger than any one poor country can address.

To that end, Mauritania recently moved uninvited troops permanently across the border in Mali to eradicate a Qaeda encampment, diplomats said, and Mali did not object.

For his part, President Touré has been trying to forge a regional consensus on the issue, but the leaked cables and diplomats suggest that Algeria has been reluctant to take part. Algerian officials regularly criticise the presence of French and American training forces, saying they constitute another threat.

Mali's own plan faces two main problems, one domestic and one foreign. Tuareg rebels fought the government in the desert for decades, with the 1992 peace treaty specifying that the government forces completely withdraw from the north. Deploying them there risks reigniting a conflict that still simmers.

Even so, some northerners endorse almost any government action in the harsh environment, where battling sand alone constitutes a daily struggle.

“There are villages that have never seen an administrator, never seen a nurse, never seen a teacher,” said Amboudi Side Ahmed, a businessman in the capital, Bamako, who was raised in the north. “You could stay in a village up there for 10 years and never see a government official.”

Then there is the question of whether these northern hubs are even feasible, given the reluctance of foreign aid workers to venture north and finance projects there. “The President says the poor protect Al-Qaeda because they do not have any means,” said Mr. Tchiam, the columnist. “Where are the means?”

While foreign governments recognise that the north needs development, the lack of security hampers it. American Embassy personnel, for example, can travel north only with express permission of the ambassador, which she said she rarely granted.

‘Development is criticial'

“Development is critical in dealing with the north,” Ambassador Milovanovic said, but “so long as security is unstable, it is hard to get those projects going.”

“We cannot just throw money up there.”

After her own visits, she has tried to meet local requests by offering training for midwives or supplying four-wheel-drive ambulances. As part of its broader efforts to counter extremism in northern Mali, the United States also underwrote a series of radio soap operas whose plot twists emphasised the dangers of extremism.

Beyond that, Washington provides basic military training, sometimes even more basic than envisioned. An exercise on what to do when the driver of a vehicle is shot dead revealed a startling truth — most Malian soldiers did not know how to drive. Lessons were instituted. But Malian officials want more.

Terror operations

“How many people in the north listen to the radio? That is never going to be strong enough to change their views on A.Q.M.I. or religious fundamentalism,” said Mohamed Baby, a presidential adviser working on fixing the northern problem, using the initials of the French name for Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. “We need to deal with development, with the lack of resources.”

Qaeda fighters have sometimes ingratiated themselves by paying inflated prices for food, fuel and other goods. Diplomats believe that the extremists have also informed local smugglers that they will pay a premium for kidnapped Westerners.

Aside from collecting ransoms for hostages, Al-Qaeda is believed to be financing its operations by exacting tolls from drug smugglers and traffickers in arms, humans and illicit goods. Since at least the 10th century, Timbuktu has been a crossroads for trade routes across the Sahara, and the modern age is no different.

A series of drug-laden planes make the loop from South America to the Sahel, but numbers are elusive, said Alexandre Schmidt of the United Nations drug office. In one notorious 2009 episode, a Boeing 727 believed to have ferried cocaine from Latin America was set on fire after it got stuck in the sand.

Both the drug smugglers and Al-Qaeda offer young men a quick route to money and symbols of prestige like a pickup truck. The government plan has no easy, short-term ways to compete, officials concede.

“They can recruit young people and undermine both the economy and the religion,” Mr. Baby said of the militants. “We have to build up some kind of resistance.”

What we need is a 365-day government

2011-01-03T23:48:00.000-08:00

Indians love holidays. Secularism may be under threat, but not in respect of religious holidays. I have never heard people complain about holidays for the festivals of their co-religionists. In addition, an occasional bonanza comes in the shape of holidays to mourn the deaths of VIPs, local religious festivals, forced closures during hartals, etc. In Kerala, liquor sales shoot up on the eve of holidays. Since the government is the monopoly vendor of liquor, it is the biggest beneficiary of holidays as its coffers get filled up.

We love official policies — tomes of verbose and jargonistic government literature. But we have no holiday policy. Many commissions and committees have suggested reforms to prevent long shutdowns of the government machinery. But certain things never seem to change. It appears nobody has the guts to take on unionised bureaucracy. Status quo is the preferred option. For the politician, giving offence to anybody would mean less number of votes during elections.

So government offices are shut down continuously for four days for Onam in Kerala, for Pongal in Tamil Nadu, for Puja in West Bengal. Is it not time to rethink on this wasteful closure of the governmental system that denies basic services to the citizens, especially to the poor? Why should courts have holidays when crores of cases are pending disposal?

I am not advocating that people should be denied holidays to celebrate festivals. I don't want to enter into a statistical debate about the number of holidays. But when we envisage a greater role for the government in social and economic development of the nation, the services of the government should be available in an uninterrupted manner.

The government is already doing it in respect of essential services such as hospitals, electricity, water, railways, road, shipping and air transport. Are not the administrative wings of the government also essential in the sense that they deliver vital services?

Is it so complicated that a suitable mechanism cannot be evolved to provide at least skeleton services on holidays? What is lacking is the willingness to change and adapt to the growing expectations of the people for speedier services.

There will be practical difficulties in the beginning as is the case with any kind of reform. But these problems can be surmounted over a period of time. I am sure many employees will be willing to work on holidays provided they are compensated either monetarily or by other incentives. I know many government employees are committed to helping the public in letter and in spirit.

A governmental system that works on all days will help to improve the work culture of the employees and transform governance into a people friendly exercise. People's trust in their government will be enhanced and the politicians will be the ultimate beneficiaries during elections. But, our leaders should lead the way by setting an example of hard work. Frequent disruptions of Parliament and legislatures send a wrong signal to the people.

Sudan on the brink

2011-01-03T23:47:00.000-08:00

Sudan, Africa's largest country, the world's tenth largest and one of its poorest, faces partition in a referendum scheduled for January 9. The country is already effectively divided. Seventy per cent of the 43-million population are Sunnis and largely occupy the north; in the south, most are animists and about five per cent belong to various Christian sects. The two regions have maintained an uneasy truce since a 2005 agreement ended a savage 22-year civil war in which an estimated two million were killed and four million displaced. The six-year conflict in Darfur still causes echoes: President Omar al-Bashir is the only serving head of state indicted for genocide. Furthermore, fearing post-referendum violence, about 75,000 of the 1.5 million southerners who fled the civil war have returned south by road and in barge-convoys along the White Nile. Increasingly confrontational statements have come from the national capital Khartoum and the southern regional capital Juba. The U.N.-backed Satellite Sentinel Project, which is intended to reduce the risk of genocide by providing independent surveillance and rapid reportage, says both sides are massing troops on the north-south border.

There are other reasons why the referendum could be a tragedy in the making. The al-Bashir government insists on a 60 per cent turnout, an excessive requirement in an enormous country with a wretched transport infrastructure and an inefficient administration. Even the electoral register is a bone of contention; in the oil-rich border province of Abyei, Khartoum wants the nomadic Misseriya tribe registered, though they spend only the dry season there. Juba wants the resident population registered. Abyei is also to have a separate and simultaneous referendum on whether to retain its special administrative status in the north or join southern Sudan. Secondly, neighbouring states have an interest in the outcome of the national referendum. Kenya, Ethiopia, and Uganda will want deals with Juba over Nile water. Other foreign powers have their own stake, particularly in southern oil reserves and farmland. WikiLeaks cables confirm U.S. acceptance of Kenyan participation in supplying Ukrainian tanks to southern forces. Almost farcically, that matter came to light when Somali pirates hijacked a ship carrying the tanks to Kenya; the cables also show that the U.S. tried to deny all knowledge of the shipment. As so often, Sudan's tragedies are exacerbated by the colonial legacy — Sudan itself is a 19th-century British creation — and continuing great-power interference. After all that they have suffered, the people of Sudan deserve better from their own leaders and the rest of the world.

Mexico at war, the US is to blame

2010-12-27T03:04:00.000-08:00

Mexico resembles a ‘failed state’, caught in a deadly trap, beset by every type of armed thug.

November 20 was the 100th anniversary of the Mexican revolution, the first major social revolution of the 20th century: a heroic deed carried out by two legendary popular figures, Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa, whose victory was a victory for workers and peasant farmers: rights, agrarian reform, free, non-religious public education, and social security.

One hundred years later, paradoxically, the situation of Mexico “is analogous in many respects to that at the and of 1910: an obscene concentration of wealth accompanied by widespread social backwardness; distortion of the popular will; infringement of workers rights; the negation of basic guarantees by the authorities; ceding of sovereignty to international capital, and a oligarchic, patrimonialist, technocratic political class out of touch with the people.”

Add to this depressing catalogue of problems a war — or, to be more precise, three wars: one waged among the drug traffickers for the control of territory; one of the Zeta groups (criminal groups comprised of ex-military and ex-police) that rob and kidnap the civil population; and one of the military and special forces against their own citizens.

Violence

Starting Dec 1, 2006, under pressure from Washington, Mexican president Felipe Calderon launched his ‘offensive against drug trafficking’. The wave of violence that followed left about 30,000 dead.

Mexico increasingly resembles a ‘failed state’, caught in a deadly trap, beset by every type of armed thug: paramilitary and parapolice; bands of ‘legal’ and ‘liberated’ assassins; US agents from the CIA and DEA; and finally the Zetas, who target particularly central and south American migrants on their way to the United States. They are without a doubt responsible for the atrocious murder of 72 migrants discovered last August 24 in the state of Tamaulipas.

Every year some 5,00,000 Latin Americans cross through Mexico on their way north. During the passage they undergo a wide range of abuses, from arbitrary arrest, robbery, and plundering to rape. Eight of 10 women experience sexual abuse; many are impressed as servants to criminal gangs or forced into prostitution. Hundreds of children are put to work. Thousands of migrants are kidnapped. The Zetas make the families of their victims pay ransom.

For organised crime it is easier to kidnap 50 or so unknown people for a few days and receive payments of between $300 and $1,500 than kidnap an important businessman. If the kidnapped person has no way to pay the ransom, he is killed. Each Zeta cell has its own ‘butcher’ to decapitate and dismember the victims, and burn the remains in a steel barrel. In the last decade, some 60,000 undocumented people whose families were unable to pay their ransom were ‘disappeared’.

Such barbaric violence concentrated in certain cities, like Ciudad Juarez, and in certain states, has spread to the rest of the country. Washington has designated Mexico a ‘dangerous country’ and ordered its consulate workers in various cities to send their children back to the US.

President Calderon regularly announces successes in the war on drug trafficking and the arrest of important narco leaders. He is content to have mobilised the army. The majority of Mexicans do not agree, because the military, who have no experience in this sort of intervention, increase the ‘collateral damage’, killing hundreds of civilians by mistake.

By mistake? Abel Barrera Hernandez, who just won the Robert F Kennedy Human Rights Prize, awarded in the US, doesn’t believe it. On the contrary he believes that the drug war is being used to criminalise civil protest.

The Obama administration believes that the bloodbath Mexico has become is a threat to the security of the US. In reality, the US bears a major share of the responsibility for this war. It is the main opponent of the legalisation of drugs. It is the supplier of (up to 90 per cent of) the weapons used in the violence, whether by the cartels or the Zetas or the army or the police. Moreover, the US is the main drug power: it is a major producer of marijuana and the largest producer of chemical drugs like amphetamines, ecstasy, etc.

The US is, above all, the largest drug market in the world, with 7 million cocaine addicts. And the mafias that operate in its territory make the largest profits off of the sale of drugs: 90 per cent, or $45 billion per year. In contrast, the total made by all of the Latin American cartels come to a mere 10 per cent.

Yet again, rather than give its neighbours (bad) advice, which has precipitated Mexico into a hellish war, Washington should clean its own house.

Shortcomings in functioning of Panchayati Raj Institutions:CAG

2010-12-27T03:00:00.000-08:00

The Comptroller and Auditor General has expressed displeasure over tardy functioning of Panchayati Raj Institutions in Uttar Pradesh, citing allocation of funds ''without any need-based assessment'' and inability to utilise money in a time-bound manner.

In its report on the working of Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs) in UP for the year 2007-08, the CAG has said "as per recommendation of the 11th Finance Commission, the Centre had released Rs 933.71 crore to the state government during 2001-05 for development work like road, water supply and sanitation.

Out of this amount, the state government released Rs 921.88 crore to PRIs and retained Rs 11.84 crore at their level.

Further, Rs 43.21 crore lapsed at the Directorate (state Panchayati Raj department), due to non-utilisation of funds, the CAG said.

The report pointed out that out of the total amount of non-utilised funds, Rs 42.07 crore was meant for creating database on finances.

"The 11th Finance Commission had recommended that a database on the finances of the PRIs should be developed at district, state and central levels and the same should be made easily accessible by means of computerisation," the report said.

"The data were to be collected and compiled in standard formats prescribed by the CAG. This would have facilitated comparison of performances of the PRIs among the states.
The database was, however, not developed as of May, 2008."

In August 2005, the Centre rejected the state government’s request for the extension of time and thus, the purpose of high priority to the expenditure on creation of database and maintenance of accounts for providing accurate information on the finances of PRIs was defeated," the CAG said.

The CAG also pointed towards the non-functionality of District Planning Committees (DPCs), before which Zila Panchayats were supposed to submit their development programmes, which were to include development plans of the Kshetra Panchayats and the Gram Panchayats involved.

However, since these DPCs "remained non-functional as of June 2008", despite the state government having passed an order for the constitution of these in February 2007, there was no effective monitoring of the development programmes, the CAG report said.

Underscoring these shortcomings in the functioning of PRIs in the state, the CAG has emphasised on the need for ensuring creation of a database on finances "as per recommendations of the 11th Finance Commission and the 12th Finance Commission".

The CAG has further said that the grants should be utilised in a time-bound manner to derive the intended benefit and the state government should ensure that District Planning Committees are effective and functional.

GLSV failure: Future space missions under cloud

2010-12-27T00:48:00.000-08:00

The second failure of the Geo-Synchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) in a span of six months is expected to have a serious impact on Isro's three important space programmes, according to space scientists here. On April 15 this year, a GSLV, powered for the first time with an indigenous cryogenic engine, failed. On Saturday, the mission flopped following a technical snag in the first stage of the rocket.

Speaking to STOI, TIFR space scientist M N Vahia, who has had a long association with Isro, specifically mentioned three projects which could suffer a temporary setback — the Rs 425-crore second Indian moon mission, Chandrayaan-2, which will be flown by the GSLV. "Well, Saturday's failure will certainly produce delays in the second lunar programme. If my payload was being flown on this mission using a GSLV, I would certainly want this rocket to be tested and evaluated more thoroughly," he said. As of now, the mission is slated for lift off in 2013.

Also to be affected could be the nearly Rs 13,000 crore human space flight mission, for which a formal green signal is still awaited from the government, Vahia said. Isro chairman K Radhakrishnan has been quoted as saying that this flight will take off around 2015.

According to Vahia, there could be delays in launching India's communication satellites from Sriharikota because Isro is running out of cryogenic engines. With just one Russian cryogenic engine left, Isro is in a position to schedule just a single flight of the GSLV firmly in future. The Indian cryogenic engine is not operational. The question arises whether the space agency will have to depend on foreign launchers like Ariane for some more time to carry its communication satellites.

"What happened on Saturday afternoon at Sriharikota was an unnerving situation because India's reputation as a reliable space launching country has taken a serious dent," said Vahia.

Secretary of India chapter of Moon Society, Pradeep Mohandas, said: "If I were the vehicle director, I would subject all the stages of the GSLV to more exhaustive tests again before launching a flight."

Nehru Planetarium director Piyush Pandey expressed confidence that the GSLV will be used for Chandrayaan-2 though he felt "there could be a marginal delay if not a major one."

The most affected by these two GSLV failures are the scientists of Isro's Ahmedabad-based Space Application Centre whose payloads flown by this rocket have headed for the sea rather than the sky. The GSat-4, with important payloads which was carried by the GSLV, went into the Bay of Bengal on April 15 followed by GSat-5P on Saturday.

It is in this context that Pandey's remark assumes significance when he said that the next flight of the GSLV should have a dud satellite rather than an operational one which will allow the rocket to be tested.

According to other space scientists the weight of the GSat-5P, which was 2,310kg, resulted in Indian and Russian engineers having to modify the parts of the rocket to lift the satellite which is the heaviest payload ever to be flown by an Indian rocket.

Eminent astrophysicist S M Chitre however sounded a note of optimism when he said: "We will succeed and we should not give up the capabilities of the GSLV."

Read more: GLSV failure: Future space missions under cloud - The Times of India http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/GLSV-failure-Future-space-missions-under-cloud/articleshow/7164778.cms#ixzz19IgDPyTl

Isro checks rocket failure data

2010-12-27T00:47:00.000-08:00

India’s top space scientists are analysing data to find out what caused the satellite launch to fail yesterday and an expert committee is likely to be formed soon.

“Teams are looking at the data to find out the reason,” said Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) spokesperson S. Satish.

“A failure analysis committee is likely to be formed in the next one or two days,” he added.

Yesterday, a launcher rocket carrying India’s heaviest communication satellite exploded within a minute after lift-off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh.

Initial data indicated that the control command signals from the rocket’s onboard computer failed to reach the first-stage circuits, causing the vehicle to lose altitude, veer off its flight path and crack up under the heavy load on its structure, Isro chairman K. Radhakrishnan said yesterday.

Top scientists today said they suspected that a connector chord, which takes the signal down, had snapped.

The committee to be formed is expected to be similar to the one set up after the failure of another satellite, the GSLV-D3, on April 15.

The officials, among them multi-disciplinary experts, concluded that the primary cause for the failure was the sudden loss of thrust in one of the four liquid propellant strap-on stages just 0.2 seconds after lift-off.

With only three strap-on stages working, there was significant reduction in the control capability. The vehicle altitude could be controlled till about 50 seconds.

U.R. Rao, a veteran space scientist, has strongly vouched for the robustness of the indigenously-built GSLV, saying it was a well-proved rocket and that “quality problem” led to its failure. He said unlike the GSLV failure on April 15 when the fault was at the cryogenic stage, the problem yesterday was at the first stage itself.

Rao said the first stage is “well-proven” and “we must be able to get back to the rails very quickly”.

“Once in a while, these things (failures) do happen. It has happened with Ariane (European space consortium) and Shuttle (of Nasa),” he pointed out.

Rao said he did not foresee any impact of yesterday’s launch failure on India’s space programme, but acknowledged that it would take time to “sort out enormous data” and find out the ”problem” that led to the unsuccessful mission.

He also said he believes that the failure would not lead to a delay in the 2013-scheduled Chandrayaan-2 mission.

China's dams in Xinjiang region trigger concerns in Kazakhstan

2010-12-27T00:43:00.000-08:00

China's dam-building spree in its far-west Xinjiang region has triggered concerns in the neighbouring Kazakhstan, where officials say two main rivers have begun to see water-levels recede at an alarming rate.

Officials from the Central Asian nation are expected to raise the issue with Beijing early next year and press for more information on hydro-projects in Xinjiang, officials in the Kazakh government told The Hindu.

The Irtysh and Ili rivers, crucial to Kazakhstan's water security, have their source in Xinjiang. Since 2000, China has accelerated development in the region, which has seen intermittent ethnic unrest.

Kazakh officials say China's development push in Xinjiang, which includes a number of dams and irrigation projects, is the main reason behind the falling water-levels in both the rivers. The rivers drain into the Balkhash lake, which sustains the livelihood of more than two million Kazakhs.

“The water flow from China is much less now than it was before,” Gabit Koishibayev, a senior counsellor at the Kazakh Embassy here who is involved in negotiations with the Chinese government, told The Hindu.

Negotiations have made little headway so far, say officials. The dispute, which stretches to over a decade, could hold crucial lessons for India in managing water-sharing issues with China over the Brahmaputra river. China's plans to build dams in the difficult terrain of Tibet are still at a nascent stage compared with its projects in Xinjiang.

Kazakhstan has, however, been reluctant to publicly voice its concerns. China is a major destination for Kazakhstan's energy exports. In both cases, China, as the upper-riparian or upstream-lying state, holds the cards, having not committed to any bilateral water-sharing treaties and being entitled to, under international laws, use the rivers' waters for hydropower generation and other projects.

As with the Brahmaputra, there are also persisting concerns that China has plans to divert the Irtysh, though in both cases Chinese officials have stressed there are no such plans.

“We are very concerned about Chinese plans concerning the Irtysh,” said Mr. Koishibayev. “We also know that they are building channels and other infrastructure in Xinjiang.”

The Balkhash lake, he said, was “losing water.” “The water level is now lower by more than two metres to what it was three decades ago. Pollution is also rising, which has affected the banks and surrounding areas. Agriculture, the health of the ecosystem and the communities around it are at risk.”

Kazakh officials fear that the Balkhash will face a similar fate to the Aral Sea, which is on the verge of disappearing because of heavy pollution. Its mismanagement is regarded as one of the world's worst environmental disasters. Chinese officials stressed that China was “paying high attention to international communication on trans-border water issues”.

China was “carrying out related works according to principles of sustainable development,” the Foreign Ministry told The Hindu in a statement. “This is also in accordance with international laws and international principles.

At the same time, we are paying high attention to international communication on trans-border water issues.”

For China, managing water resources with its neighbours is emerging as an important diplomatic challenge, as it looks to balance the demands of its own spreading water shortages, especially in the arid north and north-west, with its foreign policy priority of maintaining a “harmonious” periphery.

China, which is increasingly reluctant to be seen as ignoring the concerns of its neighbours, has over the past year appeared to co-operate more in sharing information, Kazakh officials noted, both with Kazakhstan and southern neighbours who have voiced concerns about plans for the Mekong river.

In April, Chinese officials attended a meeting of the Mekong River Commission, which China has not formally joined, and promised to cooperate on flood prevention.

“We are providing information on floods and hydrological information related to the security of people's lives and wealth both upstream and downstream,” the Foreign Ministry told The Hindu.

China and Kazakhstan are now close to signing an agreement on quality protection, which will ensure that Xinjiang's industrial development will not continue to adversely reduce water quality in the two rivers, said Mr. Koishibayev.

Russia's U-turn on arms sale

2010-10-25T21:20:00.000-07:00

Russia has thrown its defence ties with Iran on the altar of its “reset” with the United States. President Dmitry Medvedev last week imposed a sweeping ban on defence sales that goes beyond even the international sanctions on Iran and is likely to have a long-term negative impact on Moscow-Tehran relations.

The decree “On Measures to Implement the U.N. Security Council Resolution 1929 of June 9, 2010” Mr. Medvedev signed bans supplies of Russian tanks, fighter jets, helicopters, ships, heavy artillery systems and missiles, including the S-300 air defence systems, to Iran. Russia will also stop supplying spares and components for the weapons sold earlier, and ban the transit of arms bound for Iran through its territory. The decree contains a list of Iranian officials involved in the country's nuclear programme, who will henceforth be prohibited from entering Russia.

By and large, the Russian sanctions are in line with the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1929, which Moscow backed, except for one crucial point: the S-300 missiles do not fall under the category of offensive weapons banned by the U.N. resolution. The move added another puzzling zigzag to Moscow's back-and-forth policy on Iran.

Resolution 1929 states: “All states shall prevent the direct or indirect supply, sale or transfer to Iran […] of any […] missiles or missile systems as defined for the purpose of the United Nations Register of Conventional Arms.” Meanwhile, the Register clearly states that its definition of missiles or missile systems “ does not include ground-to-air missiles” (emphasis added.)

In justifying Mr. Medvedev's cancellation of the S-300 deal, Russian officials refer to the U.N. resolution's call on all states “to exercise vigilance and restraint over the supply, sale, transfer, provision, manufacture and use of all other arms and related materiel.”

That said, Resolution 1929 contained no explicit ban on air defence systems and Mr. Medvedev's decree went a step too far. Ironically, defending Moscow's ban on S-300, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, in the same breath, lambasted unilateral U.S. sanctions on Iran as being “ethically and morally wrong” and a “violation” of the U.N. resolution.

The $800-million contract for supply of five batteries of S-300 air-defence complexes to Iran was signed in 2007. (A typical S-300 battery contains 48 missiles on 12 mobile launchers.) If delivered to Iran, the S-300 would change the rules of the game in the region. In combination with Tor-M1 short-range air-defence missiles Russia supplied to Iran in 2008, the long-range S-300s would have deterred any aerial attack on Iran.

In December 2008, the Russian government news agency, RIA-Novosti, quoting defence sources, reported that Moscow had begun “implementing” the S-300 contract. The report was later denied but Moscow continued to affirm its commitment to supply S-300 missile systems to Iran. “We have a contract to deliver these systems and we will honour it. Delays have been caused by technical problems in tuning up the systems,” Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov stated as recently as February. Even after Resolution 1929 was approved, Russian lawmakers and arms exporters maintained that the new sanctions would not affect the delivery of S-300.

“The S-300 systems are not covered by the sanctions and work on the contract is going forward,” Mikhail Dmitriyev, Director, Federal Service for Military-Technical Cooperation, said in June. U.S. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley also conceded at the time that Washington had failed to secure a clear-cut ban on the supply of S-300.

However, Russian diplomats' valiant efforts to save the S-300 deal from being axed under the U.N. resolution were in vain. The Kremlin used it as a bargaining chip with the White House. The fate of the S-300 contract was apparently sealed when Mr. Medvedev paid an official visit to the U.S. in June and secured President Obama's promise to help Russia modernise its economy. On his return, Mr. Medvedev called for allying Russia with the West. “We need to build modernisation alliances with our main foreign partners … above all with Germany, Italy, the European Union and the United States of America,” he said in a keynote speech to Russian diplomats in July.

The formal ban on Russian arms exports to Iran came three months later, timed for the U.S. Congress debate on the New START, a Russian-American nuclear arms pact Mr. Medvedev and Mr. Obama signed in April.

Moscow attaches paramount importance to START ratification, seeing it as a turning point in its relations with Washington that would pave the way for other deals — U.S. endorsement of a long-pending civil nuclear cooperation agreement between the two countries and Washington's support for Moscow's bid to join the World Trade Organisation.

The S-300 ban was designed to facilitate the START's passage through the U.S. Senate. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee in mid-September approved the U.S.-Russian treaty and sent it to the Senate floor, but its ratification is still hanging in the balance. The administration would like the Senate to vote on the treaty before it breaks for the November elections on October 8 because the Democrats may see their majority reduced in the new Senate. Mr. Medvedev clearly sought to impress the American public opinion and sway hesitant U.S. Senators in favour of backing the START.

The White House “strongly” welcomed the “faithful and robust implementation” by Moscow of the U.N. sanctions resolution. “We believe President Medvedev has demonstrated leadership on holding Iran accountable to its international obligations from start to finish,” said National Security Council spokesman Mike Hammer.

Mr. Medvedev's Iran arms ban is a big gift to the embattled Obama, who can now argue that his policy of “reset” with Russia is bringing tangible dividends. Moscow hopes a grateful Obama will lift the ban on high technology transfers to Russia. Time will tell whether these hopes are justified.

Sceptics point out that Russia halted its defence ties with Iran once in the past also, in the vain hope of getting U.S. aid and investments. Under a secret agreement brokered in 1995 by the then Prime Minister, Viktor Chernomyrdin, and U.S. Vice-President Albert Gore, Russia agreed to stop selling weapons to Iran. The deal dealt a hard blow to Russia's struggling defence industry, depriving it of what was emerging as the third largest market for Russian arms after India and China. The U.S. “thanked” Russia by pushing NATO to its doorstep and bombing out its traditional ally, Yugoslavia. In 2000, Russia pulled out of the Gore-Chernomyrdin deal and resumed arms supplies to Iran.

The new ban on weapon sales to Iran will have dire consequences for Russia, critics say. Direct financial losses from the scrapping of the S-300 contract could exceed $1 billion. According to the Russian Centre for Analysis of World Arms Trade, Russia will lose at least $11 billion in weapon supplies to Iran through 2025. “Iran will never forgive Russia for this second sell-out in the past 15 years,” says defence expert Konstantin Makienko of the Moscow-based Centre for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies (CAST). “Russia may lose forever the Iranian market of not only defence but also civilian technologies.”

Aviation industry sources said Iran had already stopped negotiations to acquire Russia's Tu-204SM passenger aircraft. Russia's refusal to supply S-300 systems has put a big question mark on a wide-ranging energy cooperation road map Moscow signed with Tehran just a couple of months ago.

Geopolitical costs for Russia could be even higher. “The cancellation of the S-300 contract undermines its reputation as a reliable defence partner among its current and potential customers,” Mr. Makienko said. “China will only be too happy to fill the vacuum left by Russia.”

Tehran's recent announcement that it had begun work on its own missile system, analogue of the Russian S-300, Russian experts said, was an indication that the Chinese came to Iranians' help, offering expertise gained in cloning the S-300 Russia had earlier sold to China.

As for rewards from Washington, U.S. officials warn Moscow not to expect too many. “The objective is not actually to develop a good relationship with Russia. The goal here is to advance our national security and economic interests and to promote universal values,” a senior White House official said commenting on the Russian arms ban to Iran. In fact, the Russian concession has encouraged U.S. strategists to put higher demands on Moscow. “Some Russia sceptics aren't so sure that Moscow has yet made the strategic decision to turn away from Iran and towards the United States,” Josh Rogin wrote in his blog on The Foreign Policy website.

To convince these sceptics, Russia should stop cooperation with Iran on the Bushehr nuclear reactor, tear up energy deals and support tougher economic sanctions on Tehran. To quote a relevant Russian saying: “Put a finger in his mouth and he will bite your arm off.”

New economic idiom in Look East policy

2010-10-25T21:15:00.001-07:00

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's civil nuclear diplomacy towards the United States, and now ‘pacifist' Japan, is viewed in East Asia as a new message to the region about India's posture as a “rising power.”

Politically more visible, though, is a bunch of economic pacts that is beginning to fill India's pocket. Dr. Singh's economic diplomacy was, therefore, in prime focus, as he held talks in Tokyo on October 25, beginning a visit to Japan, Malaysia, and Vietnam.

East Asian leaders have often traced India's Look East policy to the diplomatic realism of former Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao at a time of national crisis in the 1990s. Against this background, a dominant view in East Asia today is that Dr. Singh is setting the terms for India's long-term engagement with key regional powers. Inevitably, such diplomacy will extend beyond the economic realm. India's strategic calculations are easily discernible too.

Some officials in the region privately comment on how India has, in recent months, stayed the course of difficult trade negotiations with remarkable resoluteness. Obviously, it is not for the East Asian officials to worry about the economic fall-out these agreements might produce for the people in India, especially as seen by its various political parties.

In Japan, the political mood towards India is remarkably friendly on the economic front. A Japan-India Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA/EPA) was finalised by the negotiators on both sides in time for celebration during this visit.

It took them nearly four years to firm up Tokyo's first-ever pact with a big economy. India is behind only Japan and China in Asia in terms of their macro-level gross domestic products and related indices. No less significantly, Tokyo does not have an economic pact with either its long-standing ally, the U.S., or with an immediate neighbour like the ascendant China.

In this big picture, there is considerable macro-level asymmetry between India as a developing economy and Japan as a developed country. But Tokyo has viewed its negotiations with India as a unique exercise, without worrying about striking a model agreement between a developed country and a developing economy. The secret of success, despite delays during the Japan-India talks, is said to be economic realism driven by political will. The automotive industry in the two countries and their respective services sectors required sensitive attention during the talks.

According to a Japanese negotiator, Takeshi Matsunaga, the EPA provides for “a high level of liberalisation” of tariff by both sides and places them on “an equal footing.” Also built into the agreement is India's preferred principle of free “movement of natural persons.” Not amounting to migration, this will mean a free flow of professional talent in the services sector. This will benefit both countries, with India gaining an acceptance of this principle in the first place. Investment and several other aspects of a full-fledged economic pact are also covered.

The CEPA/EPA does reflect the new-found “importance of India to Japan” in the emerging world of several rising powers and a stagnant superpower. This formula about India's “importance” was first cited by a top Japanese official in June this year, when he informed The Hindu of Tokyo's decision to begin civil nuclear talks with New Delhi. Two rounds of talks have been held so far.

The negotiators face the challenging task of harmonising a pacifist principle with a pragmatic policy. New Delhi holds its voluntary moratorium on nuclear-weapon tests as inviolable pragmatic policy.

At the other end, Japan, as an “internationalist” and a “pacifist,” might have to “suspend” or even “stop” its civil nuclear cooperation with India, if New Delhi were to test an atomic bomb once again. America's nuclear umbrellas for its allies, including Japan, are in a different category altogether. In all, however, a Japanese official, Hidenobu Sobashima, told this correspondent in Singapore a few days ago that the Japan-India civil nuclear talks “will continue.” It is, therefore, possible that Japan will not risk writing off the new “importance” of India in a hurry, especially as long as the current fluidity in global affairs persists.

In Malaysia

If the Japan-India engagement is now dictated by high stakes, New Delhi's ties with Malaysia, too, are entering a qualitatively significant phase. India and Malaysia have firmed up a Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement (CECA). According to a top Malaysian official, Rebecca Fatima Sta Maria, the two countries would, during Dr. Singh's visit to Kuala Lumpur at this time, announce that the legally-binding text of CECA would be signed by the end of January next year. The CECA might then come into force from July next year.

As a measure of economic pragmatism, India and Malaysia negotiated the CECA in less than one year, truly a feat of fast-track parleys. The two sides are also keen to have a genuine strategic partnership. However, the world-view of Malaysia, which belongs to the Organisation of Islamic Conference, may not always be in sync with India's on all issues. At another level, the Hindu Rights Action Force (HINDRAF)-Makkal Sakthi, which seeks to espouse the cause of Malaysian-Indian minority, wants Dr. Singh to raise issues relating to its welfare in his talks with his counterpart, Najib Tun Razak.

As a banned organisation, HINDRAF has added the Tamil label of “Makkal Sakthi,” meaning “people power” which is in vogue in this region, in a bid to stay within the ambit of law. On a related front, Mr. Najib has signalled goodwill towards Malaysian-Indians by promising, most recently, government's contribution to the education foundation set up by the Telugu Association of Malaysia.

In Vietnam

In Hanoi, Dr. Singh will have to switch from the nuances of bilateral diplomacy to the compulsions of multilateralism during India's annual summit with the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). India's Free Trade Agreement with ASEAN is already in force, providing a relative new framework for the summit.

At the annual East Asia Summit (EAS), Dr. Singh will be sitting with, among others, the leaders of South Korea and Singapore, with which India already has comprehensive economic pacts. But the EAS, which includes China, is a strategic forum, and this aspect will get heightened with the likely admission of the U.S. and Russia into this organisation. Issues of acute sensitivity to all major powers will then arise, especially in the ASEAN Defence Ministers' Meeting-Plus (ADMM+) forum, which might be co-opted by an expanding EAS as its security wing.

There are already indications that the issues might range from the long-term U.S. role in the region to the perceived flashpoints in the South China Sea or East China Sea or even Kashmir.

What to expect from Obama's visit

2010-10-25T21:09:00.000-07:00

The visit of the head of state of the sole, though somewhat depleted, superpower provides us a timely opportunity to apprise our guest of our assessment of the strategic environment surrounding us and to engage him in an in-depth discussion on how to deal with the common threat to our countries and peoples, nearly all of which emanates from the Af-Pak region. The success of Barack Obama's visit should be judged, not so much by whether the U.S. lifts the sanctions on ‘the entities' or whether or not he softens his rhetoric on outsourcing, important as these issues are. There are far more serious subjects which should occupy the limited time the leaders spare for a tête-à-tête or talks at the delegation level. A candid discussion of the strategic implications of the crisis in Afghanistan and Pakistan must be carried out.

The war in Afghanistan, it seems, is not a major issue in the forthcoming mid-term congressional and gubernatorial elections in America. Mr. Obama would no doubt wish to make it an equally not-a-critical issue when it is time for him to start campaigning for a second term. Indeed, it is this factor which has dominated his approach to the Afghan war, as Bob Woodward has brought out so conclusively in Obama's Wars. Henry Kissinger could not resist the temptation of being clever when he said the ‘exit strategy' was all about exit and not about strategy; in fact, however, Mr. Obama has been discussing strategy almost since his first week in office.

Obama's Wars also brings out the President's preoccupation with Pakistan, persuading its leaders to cooperate with America in degrading and defeating the Taliban in Afghanistan. As one of Mr. Obama's advisors said during the endless hours spent on discussing the ‘options' the President could consider, all the persuasion took the form of carrot and no stick. Nearly $20 billion has been sunk into Pakistan since 2001 and more is being pledged almost every week. It must be the highest investment, with very little to show for it, per sq km in the world. The Americans have also felt obliged to assure Pakistan that their President will visit Islamabad next year, as well as not to make too much of a fuss over the Sino-Pak civil nuclear deal. It is not only India that has to be pragmatic in its foreign policy.

One reads in the Woodward book that the Americans have identified 150 targets which they would bomb in case of another 9/11-type attack on the American homeland that was traced to Pakistan's badlands. Perhaps the Pakistan military takes the American threat more seriously than India's when it says another ‘Mumbai' would engender a robust response from us. Happily for India-U.S. relations, Mr. Obama's initial inclination to include India, or more specifically Kashmir, in Richard Holbrooke's mandate was quickly discarded, thanks to New Delhi's timely and effective intervention. Nonetheless, the President, and more so his advisors, have convinced themselves that the key to obtaining Pakistan's full cooperation lies in prevailing upon New Delhi to ‘cooperate' with Islamabad in tackling the root causes of the crisis between ‘the two nuclear-armed arch enemies', as India and Pakistan are invariably described in the American media.

The extent to which the Americans and others in the western world have bought the Pakistani line should be a matter of concern to us. It also shows that Pakistan's propaganda machine is working ceaselessly in all those capitals. One explanation for this bias is that Pakistan is considered an underdog and the world always has sympathy for underdogs. Pakistan's very weakness is its strength. But there is no getting away from the fact that we have to intensify our PR efforts; the lobbying firms we have hired in Washington should be made to produce better results. It is here that Mr. Obama's visit provides us with an excellent opportunity to disabuse him of the falsehoods Pakistan has been spreading about us.

For example, many in the West, and perhaps elsewhere as well, believe that India does present a threat to Pakistan and that the threat would become the most acute if there was a pro-India government in Kabul. The concept of ‘strategic depth' is not dismissed summarily by others, least of all by the Pentagon. Pakistan's argument that India and an India-friendly Afghanistan could join forces and attack it, however laughable, is not scoffed at by all think tanks abroad. In this writer's interaction with several think tanks recently in America, he was told that India must not take advantage of Pakistan's precarious position at this stage, that India must “give comfort” to Pakistan, that India must engage Pakistan in a composite dialogue, including specifically on the question of Kashmir, etc. One influential think tank even suggested that in order to bring Pakistan fully on board in the war against the al-Qaeda and the Taliban, it must be offered a ‘quid' in the shape of a sphere of influence in the Afghan provinces adjoining Pakistan.

When pointed out that this would in effect mean conceding a sphere of influence to China, they were least concerned. All this, despite the Indian government's persistence with dialogue notwithstanding Pakistan's stalling of proceedings against the perpetrators of 26/11 and the undisputable links between the Inter-Services Intelligence and the Lashkar-e-Taiba.

The pressure on us would have been severer had we refused all contact with Pakistan after 26/11. However, the government's knee-jerk reaction every time Pakistan utters the ‘K' word is un-understandable. We have a perfectly good case on Kashmir and in fact we should be the ones to want to discuss Kashmir, since it is Pakistan which aggressed against us and is still occupying our territory. We should not be afraid of the ‘K' word. We should ask those who want us to discuss Kashmir with Pakistan: “What is it that you want us to discuss regarding the Kashmir issue? Are you even sure that Pakistan wants to ‘solve' the issue, except by the only way that we will never agree to, namely to hand over the whole of Kashmir, or at least the entire Valley to them?” Manmohan Singh and Pervez Musharraf came close to concluding an agreement on Kashmir, but that has been disowned by Ashfaq Parvez Kayani.

President Obama might not necessarily ‘buy' these arguments from the think-tankwallahs, although the think tanks in America are as aggressive in pushing their ideas on decision-makers as their businesses are in pushing their products in overseas markets. But he is looking for a way out of the Afghan quagmire and is most anxious that the process of ‘reconciliation' with the Taliban should succeed. He does seem to be persuaded that Pakistan's help in this process is indispensable, even though President Hamid Karzai may have his doubts about conceding anything more than a consultative role to Pakistan. Reports that Pakistan arrests any Taliban commander believed to be talking to the representatives of the Kabul government indicate Gen. Kayani's determination to keep the process firmly in Pakistan's control. The U.S. is anxious not to risk alienating the General described by Mr. Holbrooke as the most important political factor in Pakistan. (Woodward's book has the following gem. Secretary Hillary Clinton asked Mr. Karzai during his visit to Washington in May 2010: “Do you really think the ISI could pick up Mullah Omar if they wanted?” Karzai reached over and plucked a chocolate chip cookie from his plate. “They could deliver Mullah Omar like I can pick up this cookie,” he said.)

Every such visit does not have to be “highly successful” or “historic.” The success or otherwise of the visit must not be judged by our getting concessions on some bilateral issues. Nor should Mr. Obama expect to clinch the deal for sale of 126 American fighter aircraft at this juncture. The President might say something about India's ambition for a permanent seat in the United Nations Security Council. His advisors presumably have explained to him that the Indian public opinion will not be satisfied with some vague formula of the U.S. being sympathetic to India wanting to play a bigger role on international forums including the U.N., etc. If he does not bring himself to expressing unambiguous support, he would be well advised not to say anything on the subject.

The real criterion for measuring success would lie in assessing whether or not the two leaders have reached consensus on defining the dangers that their, and other, countries face from the Af-Pak area and how they intend to tackle it. They must agree on a mechanism for arriving at such assessment and there is only one way of doing it. What is needed is a trilateral forum of consultations consisting of the U.S., India and Afghanistan.

At climate meet, India will not bend

2010-10-21T23:32:00.000-07:00

As the week-long UN climate summit begins in New York on Tuesday, India has said it would like to be a part of a deal maker and not the deal breaker.

Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh pointed out that while India would not budge from its position on legally binding carbon emission cuts, it would like to be part of a solution and not be a deal breaker (Watch full interview below).

The summit will be key to advancing negotiations that are currently at an impasse over emission targets for developing nations, ahead of an agreement during the UN conference in Copenhagen this December.

The Copenhagen agreement would then replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, requiring mandatory cuts in atmosphere-warming gases. The Kyoto Protocol expires at the end of 2012. As far as India is concerned, the main sticking point is America's demand that it accept legally binding emission cuts.

India is clear that it will not accept any legally binding cuts on carbon emission. It also insists that its per capita emission of carbon is lower than that of America or other developed countries.

India also feels it should be given credit for its large-scale afforestation programme.

Asked about India being called uncooperative and stubborn, Jairam said: "Not at all. I think the world is completely wrong on this. We have got an image that is contrary to what we have been doing. The message that I am trying to convey is that we have not caused the problem of global warming but we want to be part of the solution at Copenhagen. We want to be a deal maker not the deal breaker.

"We are taking very aggressive adaptation measures. We are also being very aggressive unilaterally, voluntarily on mitigation. We are thinking of domestic legislation to enhance the measure of credibility on our mitigation actions and all our measures have been widely appreciated."

On America emitting 22 per cent of emissions and asked whether an international agreement on climate change was possible without the US on board, Jairam said: "Without the US there is no agreement. The US has to come up with a substantial cut on its emissions by 2020. There is no doubt about it but the politics of it seems to be difficult.

"There is the health care debate, the economic slowdown. So many other issues, the war in Iraq, Afghanistan. I don't see what the appetite is for a successful deal in Copenhagen. We are hopeful. India is trying to do its best to work with the United States and to create conditions that will facilitate the US to make meaningful cuts because without the US there is not going to be any meaningful deal and we know that. Chianti knows it, India knows it and so does Europe."

Climate action: Will India go China's way?

2010-10-21T23:29:00.000-07:00

India is poised to follow China's example and likely to propose a target to slow down growth in its greenhouse gas emissions, but not cap these altogether.

China last week said it would cut carbon emissions per unit of economic output by up to 45 per cent by 2020.

India says it could cut such carbon intensity by 24 per cent by 2020 compared with 2005 levels.

India, the world's fourth highest emitter, is under pressure to announce details of how it will control its growing carbon emissions, and issuing targets will probably strengthen New Delhi's position at the Copenhagen negotiations.

Jairam Ramesh, minister of state, Environment and Forest said, "We now have taken on performance targets in energy, building, forestry and various sectors of the economy. We are not going to be taking any legally binding emission cuts. That is simply out of the question, but we can look at various alternatives. Incidentally, our carbon intensity is very low. The Chinese have just announced a carbon intensity decline by 2020 and according to that, they will be in the year 2020 where India was in 2005 as far as carbon intensity is concerned."

India is under considerable pressure to set emission targets ahead of Copenhagen. India has taken a tough stand saying as a developing nation it has its own agenda.

India has said there is no question of legally binding emission cuts while the developed western countries are continuously pressurising India to quantify cuts.

As per the latest position, India is considering carbon intensity reduction targets ahead of Copenhagen climate summit as the west wants.

A national plan has also been launched to cut the carbon use and also for mitigation of climate change effects. The west wants India to stretch further and announce a trajectory that India's emissions will take.

Eco Facts

2010-10-21T23:26:00.000-07:00

Pollution: Each kind of pollution- air, noise, water- has significant impacts to our everyday lives, affecting all living and non-living factors in the biosphere and the atmosphere and also involve socio-economic factors. These impacts have caused significant changes to the environment we are living in.
Deforestation: They are the earth’s largest depository of natural resources and house half of the planet’s dryland species. But man’s greed is putting a saw through the fragile ecosystem and over the years half of the world’s forests have been transformed into a concrete jungle. Indiscriminate felling of trees for fuel and timber or for housing and agriculture purposes has gone on unabated despite the clichés mouthed by environmentalists and a line of successive governments.
Soil Erosion: Floods and soil erosion are two of India's greatest problems. Neither is new, but there can be no doubt that in recent years floods are taking an increasing toll on crops and the rapid progress of soil erosion in different parts of the country has caused grave concern. India is thought to be losing 4.7 billion tons of topsoil a year, mostly through water erosion. Its monsoonal climate, with the concentration of rainfall during a few months of the year, leaves its exposed soils vulnerable to erosion. About 60 percent of soil that is washed away ends up in rivers, streams and lakes, making waterways more prone to flooding and to contamination from soil's fertilizers and pesticides. Soil erosion also reduces the ability of soil to store water and support plant growth, thereby reducing its ability to support biodiversity.
Land Degradation: Decline in land quality caused by human activities has been a major global issue during the 20th century and will remain high on the international agenda in the 21st century. The importance of land degradation among global issues is enhanced because of its impact on world food security and quality of the environment. High population density is not necessarily related to land degradation; it is what a population does to the land that determines the extent of degradation. People can be a major asset in reversing a trend towards degradation. However, they need to be healthy and politically and economically motivated to care for the land, as subsistence agriculture, poverty, and illiteracy can be important causes of land and environmental degradation.
Waste Management: Urban India is likely to face a massive waste disposal problem in the coming years. Until now, the problem of waste has been seen as one of cleaning and disposing as rubbish. But a closer look at the current and future scenario reveals that waste needs to be treated holistically, recognising its natural resource roots as well as health impacts. Waste can be wealth, which has tremendous potential not only for generating livelihoods for the urban poor but can also enrich the earth through composting and recycling rather than spreading pollution as has been the case. Increasing urban migration and a high density of population will make waste management a difficult issue to handle in the near future, if a new paradigm for approaching it is not created.
Increasing Energy Consumption: India faces a huge energy deficit: till 2001, only 44 per cent of Indian households had access to electricity. But consumption’s galloping: between 1947 and 2001, India’s per capita power consumption rose from 15 to 592 units. If India has to move ahead economically, it must find ways to bridge the deficit.
High Carbon Emissions: Carbon dioxide emissions are causing the Earth’s climate to change and warm, which will have catastrophic results if we do not act to reduce them. Carbon dioxide emissions in our atmosphere are at their highest levels in recorded history, spanning over 650,000 years. The effects of climate change can be seen now. Temperatures are increasing, glaciers are receding at unprecedented speeds and storms are becoming more frequent and severe.

Global warming could leave cities flattened

2010-10-21T01:36:00.000-07:00

With climate change taking its toll on Earth, rock avalanches and landslides have become more common in high mountain ranges over the last decade.

The collapses are caused by melting glaciers and permafrost, which remove the glue that binds steep mountain slopes together.

However, the worse part may be to come. Thinning glaciers on volcanoes could destabilize vast chunks of their summit cones, triggering mega-landslides capable of flattening cities such as Seattle and devastating local infrastructure.

To assess the risk, Daniel Tormey of ENTRIX, an environmental consultancy based in Los Angeles, studied a huge landslide that occurred 11,000 years ago on Planchón-Peteroa.

He focused on this glaciated volcano in Chile because its altitude and latitude make it likely to feel the effects of climate change before others.

Delhi delivers, the Games are on

2010-10-06T23:50:00.000-07:00

Over the last few weeks, as the events leading up to the Commonwealth Games (CWG) in New Delhi unfolded like scenes from a B-grade Bollywood disaster movie — featuring a collapsed foot overbridge, flooded building basements, stained bedcovers, and dirty, stinking toilets in the Games Village — sports fans might have forgotten that what was scheduled to take place in the nation's capital was actually a sports event. But now that CWG 2010's rocky ride towards the starting grid has culminated in an extravagant Opening Ceremony that showcased India's rich and pluralistic culture, sport can at last take centre-stage. The central government and the Delhi administration, as well as the reconstituted Organising Committee, did well to respond to what was pretty much an emergency. The Games Village was cleaned up on a war footing and the Army did commendable work in putting up a Bailey foot overbridge in under six days. The eleventh hour damage-control exercise has apparently pleased all the visitors, going by the feedback from the teams. Disastrous consequences were averted by a late response, but a lot remains to be done over the next 10 days if the host is to turn the Games into a widely acclaimed success. This alone can advance India's cause if the world's second most populous nation hopes to bid for the Olympic Games in the conceivable future.

But now that ‘play' has been called in New Delhi, attention must turn to the athletes who have gathered in the nation's capital in quest of glory. The Delhi Games feature a record number of 6,700 athletes and officials (it was 5,766 in the last edition in Melbourne). India itself is fielding a 619-member contingent and, following rigorous preparation in several disciplines, expects to double its 2006 tally of 50 medals. While CWG standards are not comparable to world standards in sports such as tennis, wrestling, archery, weightlifting, and boxing, shooting may be an exception. India may be confident of reaping a good harvest in most of these sports. But despite the withdrawal of a few superstars such as Usain Bolt, the world and Olympic record holder in 100 and 200 metres, and the multiple Olympic gold medalist swimmer Stephanie Rice of Australia, the focus will not necessarily be on Indian athletes. There are several world-class performers in athletics and swimming: world and Olympic pole vault champion Steven Hooker of Australia, Nancy Jebet Langat, the women's 1500m Olympic champion from Kenya, and Liesel Jones, the Olympic breaststroke champion from Australia, are just the best-known among several visiting athletes who have it in them to provoke clucks of awe from the fans in the stadia and those watching on television.

Turkey: the country of contrasts

2010-10-06T23:49:00.001-07:00

On September 12, 58 per cent of the electorate that went to the polls in Turkey voted in favour of a constitutional reform package put forth by the governing Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi, AKP). The symbolism was lost to none: the referendum took place on the 30th anniversary of Turkey's last direct military intervention. Its interpretations, though, varied wildly. The government, along with the United States and the European Union, hailed the result as a step towards greater democracy and a blow to the country's junta-made 1982 Constitution. The Opposition, which had framed the amendments as a sugar-coated attempt by the Islamist-rooted AKP to wrest control of the country's fiercely secular judiciary, bemoaned that the outcome would take Turkey closer to a one-party dictatorship.

Domestic developments in Turkey have been attracting a great deal of attention from the outside world in recent years — testament to the country's growing international stature. Turks are not used to being under the spotlight so much, at least not for the right reasons: as recently as a decade ago, the country mostly made the news for its political and economic crises, military interventions, tensions with its neighbours and gross human rights abuses.

Today's headlines tell a different story. A member of the G20, Turkey's economy grew fastest next to China's in the first half of 2010; a stark contrast to the gloomy picture across the European Union, which has long been keeping Turkey at the door. Ankara is also strengthening its ties with most of its neighbours, while mediating conflicts further afield. There is an increasing talk of a Turkish ‘soft power', defined by a flurry of cultural, economic and diplomatic hyperactivity in all directions.

Yet despite the positive press, those who look at Turkey from the outside often see a country divided along ideological, political and ethnic fault lines: secularists vs. Islamists, liberals vs. nationalists, Turks vs. Kurds, etc. For many observers, the referendum process was a further confirmation of Turkey's divisions. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan brazenly labelled all those who opposed the reform package as “coup supporters,” while many in the secular Opposition blamed the outcome on the “ignorant masses” that were easily manipulated.

Contrasting narratives are increasingly being adopted by outside observers as well. There is a heated debate, particularly within western foreign policy circles, as to what to make of a changing Turkey: is Ankara's increasingly assertive and independent foreign policy merely a reflection of its growing economic and political clout in the wider region; or is it a sign that Turkey is abandoning the West for a coalition of eastern or Islamic allies, such as Iran and Syria, under the AKP government?

Turkey's curse

The problem with most analyses of Turkey, both domestic and foreign, is that they attempt to explain a complex socio-political transformation on the basis of caricaturised dichotomies. Perhaps it is the inevitable curse of being labelled “the bridge between the East and the West”: its challenges are invariably reduced to an existential rift between two neatly separated civilisational camps. In the end, “the bridge” rarely holds and the country is presented with a stark choice: it can either be eastern or western; Muslim or democratic; backward or modern.

The reality, however, is that many diverse and seemingly contradictory processes are taking place simultaneously in today's Turkey. The chief concern of the Kemalist old guard — that is, the military-bureaucratic establishment — and the secular urban middle class has long been that Prime Minister Erdogan and his party are working to replace Kemal Ataturk's secular regime with an overtly Islamic one. But the AKP is as much a product of Turkey's transformation as it is the cause. There is no denying that after decades of exclusion from public life, Islam is resurgent in Turkey. A visitor who last passed through the provinces of Anatolia 20 years ago will probably find fewer shops selling alcohol and more women wearing the Islamic headscarf.

Yet the same visitor may also notice that there are more people, including women, on the streets and the ghost towns of yester-decade have become vibrant business and investment hubs in their own right. In fact, it is partly on the back of a rising Anatolian middle class, which is at once pious and entrepreneurial, that Turkey's recent economic (and the AKP's political) achievements have come about. This is not an easy transition: the collision of secular and pious lifestyles that were once socially and geographically separated often creates tensions. A recent assault by a local mob on several newly established art galleries in Tophane, a poor immigrant neighbourhood of Istanbul that is being rapidly gentrified, is a case in point.

For many secular Turks, these are dreadful signs of Turkey's creeping ‘Iranisation.' But tales of mutual suspicion and intolerance represent only part of the picture. The other part is about a country where a long disenfranchised majority is being gradually integrated into the socio-political system largely through democratic means and economic growth and, in the process, having to reconcile its traditional values with its newfound affluent tastes and liberal practices. Had the Shah achieved a similar feat, Iran may have never needed a revolution.

The many faces of Erdogan's Turkey

Turkey is a country of striking contrasts. It has more Facebook users than most western countries, yet YouTube remains banned by a court decision for broadcasting videos that insult Ataturk. Istanbul, the European capital of culture for 2010, has the highest number of mosques of any city, a vibrant art scene, a bustling nightlife, as well as sprawling shantytowns that are lately being replaced by government-funded housing blocks. It has a growing civil society that bravely confronts national taboos, as well as nationalist movements that fight to keep them intact.

Mr. Erdogan's AKP has managed to dominate Turkey's political life for the past eight years, because it embodies most of its contrasts. It is the only party that has significant electoral presence in the country's industrial west, conservative heartlands, and conflict-torn Kurdish southeast, as well as across most social and political divides. In 2007, when the party won nearly one of every two votes in a general election, its supporters included liberals, social democrats, and businesspeople, Islamists, nationalists as well as a significant number of Kurds.

Its democratising reforms have significantly trimmed the military's political tentacles, and won Turkey the EU candidate status in 2005. Its economic and fiscal policies attracted record levels of foreign investment, and helped avert the worst effects of the latest financial crisis. Its leaders, on the other hand, have become increasingly intolerant of dissent, taking cartoonists to court and putting pressure on critical journalists and newspapers. They have also been criticised for handing out lucrative business contracts to firms close to the party, and making appointments to local government positions, universities and the police on the basis of personal connections or association with various religious fraternities.

In 2009, the AKP government launched bold initiatives to normalise ties with Armenia, with which Turkey has no diplomatic ties, and find a democratic end to the bloody, three-decade-old Kurdish insurgency. Faced with a nationalist backlash, however, it soon reverted to populist rhetoric on both fronts. Finally, the AKP has gone further than any civilian authority to expose and cleanse the Turkish state of its ultra-nationalist, putschist and criminal elements; that is, the so-called “deep state”. It now risks squandering that possibility by turning the court case, known as ‘Ergenekon,' into a vendetta against political opponents.

It is no surprise, then, that the newly approved constitutional reform package also represents a mixed bag. The amendments remove legal obstacles preventing the trial of the junta that carried out the 1980 coup, which is responsible for the death and torture of thousands of people, particularly in the Kurdish provinces, but not the anti-democratic institutions it put in place. They break the monopoly of the Kemalist elite over the judiciary, which has been deeply ideological and shut down numerous political parties, but allow the executive to pack the courts with its own candidates.
<>Perhaps most importantly, the referendum process revealed a widespread demand for a brand new democratic Constitution. Political actors should respond to that demand without delay. The government should also catch what could be the last train towards a peaceful settlement of the Kurdish issue within the framework of a unified Turkey, by maintaining dialogue, both in public and in private, with the Kurdish nationalists.

Turkey's multi-faceted transformation is yet to be complete: the country is facing a historic moment to create its own brand of modernity — one that is vibrant, democratic and multicultural. This is by no means a foregone conclusion, however, and the pitfalls ahead are as daunting as the opportunities are enticing.

Ayodhya: is a solution possible?

2010-09-29T05:21:00.001-07:00

The Supreme Court of India on September 23 gave a pause to the vexed Mandir-Masjid controversy and the contending title claims to the site made by the Muslim Waqf Board and the Hindu Dharam Sansad, by directing the Allahabad High Court to defer the pronouncement of the long-awaited judgment. Now, a three-judge bench headed by Chief Justice of India S.H. Kapadia is set to decide on the matter on September 28.

The learned judges of the Supreme Court, whatever their publicly stated positions, are not so naïve as to believe that within less than a week a solution could be found for the contentious case. It should be clear to everyone, most of all to the judges, that if the issue has defied a solution for more than a hundred years, no miracle is likely to happen within less than a week. All the water that has flowed down the Sarayu river through all these years has not helped Ayodhya to recover the meaning of its name — a place without war. On the contrary, the claims and counter-claims by the parties involved in the dispute have only helped to harden the respective positions, which have spread the hatred and distrust thus generated to the whole country.

Given these facts and the situation, what prompted the judges last week to grant a stay could not be the possibility of an imminent solution. They were probably trying to convey a message to the nation, particularly to those who are party to the dispute, as well as to the government. The case has dragged on for such a long time under the assumption that it could be resolved by the intervention of the judiciary. The court now seems to suggest that it is not the case; a real solution lies in the political domain, with the active participation of civil society.

The salience of the civil suit lies in the fact that it is implicated in the larger issue of the dispute pertaining to the Mandir and the Masjid on which the court cannot really pronounce a judgment, even if it gathered evidence from historians. The government was using the judiciary as an escape route. And the judiciary, instead of dismissing the case, attempted to overreach itself. As far as the civil suit for the title of the land is concerned, it was in fact decided in 1885-86. It was in the post-1857 period when political conditions were fluid that the mahant of Ayodhya constructed a chabutara on the land leading to the masjid and started worship, claiming it to be the janmasthan of Sri Ram. The mahant filed a case in 1885 claiming title to the land, but it was dismissed. So were his appeals to the superior courts. The British officials favoured the status quo, for religious and political reasons.

Record of aggression

The history of the Mandir-Masjid dispute during the post-Independence period is but a record of aggression by Hindu communal forces, and a series of compromises and reconciliation bids by the Central government led by the Indian National Congress, particularly under Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao.

In 1949, Hindu communal forces conducted a seven-day continuous recitation of Ramcharitamanas, which proved to be the precursor to the installation of an idol of Ram Lalla in the mosque. The fact that they got away with the defiance of the state not only emboldened them to indulge in further aggression, leading ultimately to the demolition of the Masjid. During this period, the Sangh Parivar not only organised a series of agitations to mobilise Hindus in the name of Ram but also made preparations for the construction of the temple. It assiduously built up a tempo of aggression, with Uma Bharti and Rithambara leading the charge. The finale of this carefully constructed aggression was the Rath Yatra led by Lal Krishna Advani 20 years ago, which finally led to the demolition of the Masjid in 1992. The demolition was a criminal act according to the laws of the country, as the mosque was a 400-year-old historical monument that the state was committed to protect.

While the Hindu communal forces were engaged in a progressive assault, the state was unable to solve its own political dilemma. The Congress which led the government during this period was committed to secularism in principle, but the party realised that it was not possible to survive without the electoral support of Hindus. As a consequence, the party indulged in secular rhetoric, but followed communal politics in practice. It pursued what has now come to be termed ‘soft Hindutva'. Through this means it hoped to outsmart the Hindu communal forces.

The leader who initiated this disastrous policy was Rajiv Gandhi. He ordered the opening of the locks of the Masjid, thereby permitting Hindus to perform puja inside. He did this in order to steal the thunder from the Hindu communal forces. His successor-Prime Minister pursued the policy of compromise much more vigorously, and ‘officially arranged' the shilanyas of the temple. The Congress thus became an appendage of communal forces; that is what emboldened a mob to demolish the Masjid, thus inflicting a major blow on democracy and secularism.

Decisive factor

The failure of the Indian state was a most decisive factor behind the act of demolition. As is evident from the account given later by Narasimha Rao, it is clear that the state failed to discharge its duty of protecting the monument. It failed to prevent Mr. Advani's Rath Yatra, which led to the loss of several lives: everybody knew it would have disastrous consequences. Even after the demolition, the construction of a temporary temple was not stopped. At least now the state can rectify its mistakes by charting out a bold and innovative step in line with the principles of secularism.

The parties to the dispute and those who indulged in violence in the name of Ram are not representatives of India's Hindus and Muslims. They have no authority to speak on behalf of Hindus and Muslims. They are actually seeking to coerce the members of these communities by claiming to speak on their behalf.

The meaning of Turkey's referendum

2010-09-29T05:18:00.000-07:00

Turkey's political system rooted in the tradition of its founder President Kemal Ataturk and underwritten by its armed forces has suffered a mortal blow. A referendum held under the watch of the government led by the Justice and Developed Party (AKP) has effectively ended the military's commanding position within the Turkish establishment.

Fifty eight per cent of the voters who participated in the referendum approved amendments to 26 Articles, which included provisions to lift the immunity enjoyed by officers who plotted the 1980 coup. The present Constitution was formulated in the aftermath of this coup, the third in Turkey's turbulent history. It was arguably also its bloodiest, as an estimated 5,000 people were killed in its wake. In the reign of terror that followed, around 600,000 were detained, while hundreds of thousands were tortured or simply disappeared.

The September 12 vote brought about key changes in the Constitutional Court, Turkey's top judicial body, which has so far played a leading role in anchoring the Kemalist legacy. The Court reviews the laws to determine whether they conform to the Constitution. It is also empowered to sit in judgment of criminal cases involving the President, the Cabinet members and judges.

Following the referendum, the President will no longer have the sole prerogative of appointing judges to this body — a measure which critics say has allowed the influential military apparatus to play a decisive role when dealing with contentious issues. The vote also limits the Constitutional Court's influence over political parties which, in the past, have been frequently banned, apparently to enforce Turkey's iron-clad secularism.

The referendum marks a firm rejection of the military's hegemony over the Turkish establishment. By undermining the pervasive powers of the armed forces, what do the Turks and their current crop of leaders hope to achieve? Is Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the architect of the referendum and leader of the AKP — a party with Islamic roots — engaged in a process of turning secular Turkey into a theocracy? Is he an Ottoman-era revivalist or a leader who, in tune with the supposed aspirations of Turks, wants to fast-track Turkey's entry into the European Union by expediting democratisation?

Since it came to power in 2002, the AKP leadership has repeatedly reinforced its political commitment to a democratic and secular state, which does not suppress the emergence of a modern Muslim cultural identity. It has also expressed its aspiration of carving out a distinct Turkish national identity, which is neither European nor a 21st century clone of the Ottoman Empire. It appears that the Turks now see themselves as the focal point of an emotionally integrated West Asian commonwealth, which has a thriving economic relationship with the West, especially Europe.

As Turkey reinvents itself, it appears that its political transformation is being influenced by three distinct social trends.

First, its obsession with Europe is losing some of its gloss. A majority of Turks no longer see Europe as a continent that symbolises modernity and progress. A recent Transatlantic Trends survey conducted by the German Marshall Fund shows that only 38 per cent of Turks are now looking for an EU membership for their country. This is a precipitous drop from 2004, when a vociferous three-fourths of the Turkish respondents sought the EU membership.

Conversely, West Asia's appeal as a region that requires greater engagement is rising rapidly within Turkey. In 2009, only 10 per cent of the Turks wanted closer foreign policy ties with their neighbours to the southeast. But that number has doubled in one year. Third, and perhaps the most significant, Turks are showing a deeper respect for their own national identity. Nearly 34 per cent of the respondents, an all-time high, want Turkey to act alone, and plan its own agenda on the international stage.

As its leaders listen and Turkey introspects, it is finding comfort in retaining, if not reinforcing, its democratic and secular credentials. President Erdogan went to great lengths to talk about Turkey's deepening commitment to democracy soon after the positive outcome of the referendum. “Our faith and trust in democracy has again been seen. We understood once again that the place to solve all kinds of problems is democratic politics and that we can find a solution within democracy for all issues. The power of democracy, the power of politics, and the power of the nation all grew greatly today.” The referendum, he stressed, had delivered the message that Turkey supported “advanced democracy and freedoms”.

However, unlike in the past, the political context in which Mr. Erdogan expressed his support for democratic values has fundamentally changed. During the Kemalist era, the push for democracy and secularism was accompanied by a rejection of Islam. But Mr. Erdogan does not see a fundamental contradiction between democracy and Islam. In his view, it is not only necessary to promote democracy but also deepen Turkey's Muslim cultural roots and identity, in tune with the demands of a modern and advanced society. In an article that appeared on the website opendemocracy.net, Turkish columnist Mustafa Akyol wrote: “A group of theologians at Ankara University is examining early Islamic sources in order to distinguish core elements from the accretions of later history.” He pointed out that this group is supported by the Diyanet Isleri Baskanligi, the Turkish Republic's official religious body, to re-examine the Hadith. The Hadith are narrations of the words and deeds of Prophet Mohammad. Mr. Akyol says that “in comparison with the Koran, the Hadith are collectively of huge length, and full of minute details about how a Muslim should live.” Much of the Sharia or Islamic Law is based on the Hadith. This scholastic project, once completed and debated threadbare, could have wide-ranging implications within Turkey and the region beyond.

Turkey's novel recourse to evolutionary Islam and democracy has caught the imagination of people in West Asia. The Turkish model in which Republican values are seen cohabiting peacefully with religious thought has benefited Ankara's foreign policy as well. Turkey's support for the Palestinians and its bold confrontation with Israel in the wake of the Gaza-bound Mavi Marmara relief boat incident appear to have touched an emotional chord with the people in the region. Turkey's outreach to Iran to defuse the crisis surrounding its nuclear programme and its refusal to vote for fresh sanctions against Tehran have also made a difference to its regional standing. Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has often used the word “family” while describing neighbouring West Asian countries. However, the same nomenclature does not apply to Ankara's European neighbourhood, which is better recognised as an avenue for Turkey's economic accomplishments in the future.

The referendum is part of a much bigger endeavour that Turkey has visualised for itself. Riding on the popularity of the vote, the AKP is now expecting spectacular electoral success in next year's parliamentary polls. Mr. Erdogan has already stated that once elected, he will draw up a brand new Constitution that will remove all legal vestiges of authoritarian rule, and begin a new era of progress.

However, major obstacles are yet to be overcome — before Mr. Erdogan achieves his maximalist objectives. For instance, the Turkish government has to show great sensitivity towards healing the psychological wounds inflicted by the 1980 coup. A display of vendetta against the coup leaders and their junior affiliates is not an option, as it is bound to be divisive. On the contrary, excessive restraint will hardly be sufficient to deter the military to stay out of politics or ease the prolonged agony of the victims. In order to strike the right balance, serious consideration is being given to the establishment of Truth and Reconciliation Committees. These committees could decide on re-opening cases, awarding amnesty wherever appropriate, and go into great depths to rule on the nature and content of compensation for the families of the victims. Despite the popularity of the vote, there are many sections, including Turkey's Muslim and non-Muslim minorities, which the AKP needs to reassure as it reinforces its political consolidation.

The integration of the Kurds in the national mainstream continues to pose a major challenge. Among the non-Muslim minorities, the problems of Armenians, who hold legitimate historical grievances traceable to the First World War-era, also need to be addressed. As its model of a secular and democratic Muslim majority state at a cross-roads of Europe and Asia takes root, Turkey is bound to be targeted by the al-Qaeda and its affiliates, who will see the Turkish experience as the biggest ideological threat to global jihad. The challenges are enormous, but Turkey is moving ahead with a rare clarity and sense of purpose to emerge as a nation that is at peace with itself, and its trouble-torn neighbourhood.

A deepening relationship

2010-09-06T00:11:00.000-07:00

Writing on his blog before his 2006 visit to India while he was Leader of the Opposition in the British Parliament, David Cameron said he was going for “a simple reason: India matters so much in the modern world …Our relationship with India goes deep. But I think it can and should go deeper … I think it's time for Britain and India to forge a new special relationship for the twenty-first century.” Visiting India again this week, this time as Prime Minister, Mr. Cameron went all out to prove his determination to make those words come true. It is no secret that the recession-hit United Kingdom is eyeing India primarily through an economic lens. On his two-city tour, Mr. Cameron made a strong pitch for improving bilateral trade and investment, particularly for India to relax rules on foreign direct investment in legal services, banking and insurance, and in defence manufacturing. Although the joint statement was short on specific economic commitments, both countries agreed to “substantially increase trade and significantly increase investment,” and find ways to double it in the next five years. But the British delegation had at least one substantial achievement to celebrate — the clinching of the Rs.5,100 crore deal to supply Hawk trainer jets to the Indian Air Force and Navy. The document notes the “opportunities for wide-ranging cooperation” in the nuclear field after the signing earlier this year of the U.K.-India Civil Nuclear Cooperation Declaration. The Indian interest in attracting foreign investment in infrastructure development was reflected in the joint statement, with both countries agreeing to explore how best to go about this.

With Mr. Cameron determined to woo India, both sides seemed to have deliberately avoided speaking on difficult bilateral issues publicly. If New Delhi reiterated its reservation on the British cap on immigration, it did so quietly. While there has been no change in substantive positions, the atmospherics this time were far better than during the final years of the Labour government under Gordon Brown when David Miliband's tone and comments, particularly on Kashmir, had not been received well. Prime Minister Cameron was careful not to mention the Kashmir issue at all. Unsurprisingly, his candid statements on terrorism emanating from Pakistan against India, Afghanistan, and the other parts of the world, have endeared him to Indians. That the same statements have caused outrage in Pakistan — casting a shadow over President Asif Ali Zardari's visit to the U.K. next week — and come under criticism in Britain, where Mr. Cameron has been attacked for antagonising Islamabad, only goes to show that in diplomacy, you cannot please all the people all the time.

Signalling a shift to universal PDS

2010-09-06T00:10:00.000-07:00

Three major elements of the United Progressive Alliance government's commitment to provide food security to the people are reforming the public distribution system (PDS), raising foodgrain productivity and production, and creating a decentralised, modern warehousing system.

Ideally, the reforms in the PDS should have come first for the availability and delivery of subsidised foodgrains to become meaningful and comprehensive. Be that as it may, the recommendation of the National Advisory Council (NAC) to launch universal PDS in one-fourth of all districts or blocks for a start should be seen as a paradigm shift towards universalisation. This move reveals that the all-powerful NAC headed by UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi has realised that the ability to deliver cheap foodgrains will be contingent on availability — availability that is home-grown, not based on imports.

In order to make a serious effort to meet the provisions of the proposed food security Bill, it is essential to enhance the production of wheat, rice, pulses, oilseeds and millets. This, in turn, needs a policy review in favour of land reforms, securing fertile agricultural land for foodgrain production rather than allowing the indiscriminate setting up of special economic zones (SEZs), mega-food parks and builders' colonies on farmers' fields.

By all indications, the 150 districts from where universal PDS would commence will be in the rural poverty-belt in Jharkhand, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Assam, eastern Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. Recent events have shown that there is a certain urgency about reaching out to the poor and the marginalised people in this belt.

The rough calculation is that universalisation will begin in some 1,500 blocks (an average of 10 in each of the 150 districts) where more than 95 per cent of the population is poor. The criterion that is being worked out will exclude those who are in salaried or government jobs, are income tax payees, have a four-wheeler or own a plot or a house with a plinth area of over 500 square feet. Using these criteria, it is estimated that about five per cent of the population would be out of the scheme in these districts. This will be crucial because the identification of beneficiaries and implementation of the scheme will be done by the State governments.

It has also been decided to subsume the “poorest of the poor” — the Antyodaya Anna Yojna beneficiary families now numbering 2.5 crore of the 6.5 crore Below Poverty Line (BPL) families. The AAY beneficiaries buy PDS foodgrains at Rs.2 a kg. They will have to pay Re.1 more for grain under the universal PDS, which will provide 35 kg wheat or rice at Rs.3 a kg per family to all the identified beneficiaries, including those in the Above Poverty Line (APL) category, in the identified districts.

For the rest of the 490-odd districts where targeted PDS will continue for now, the Tendulkar Committee's poverty estimate of 8.07 core families will hold. Hence, for the APL population that is brought in or kept out of the PDS depending on grain availability, it will be status quo for the time being. The APL families will gradually (possibly over five years) be assured of a minimum of 25 kg per family at prices that will be worked out by the government. The subsidy burden will depend on the estimated offtake and the cost will be worked out by the Union Ministry of Food and Public Distribution.

Welfare measures including mid-day meal programmes, the integrated child development scheme and calamity relief programmes will continue. The inclusion of the destitute, migrants, the old, the infirm and the urban poor will be worked out after the Hashim Committee report on urban poverty is received. For now, pulses and edible oils will not be included in the food basket under the proposed National Food Security Act as the acute shortfall in the production of these commodities is met by large-scale imports.

Broadly, there will be an enhanced outgo of about 20 million tonnes on account of providing 35 kg (up from the present 12 kg) to the APL population at Rs.3 a kg in the 150 districts in addition to the BPL outgo. In a bad year, this may come from cutting APL or Open Market Sale Scheme allocations.

It is clear by now that the key to universalisation is the availability of foodgrains. For this reason, even the activists working under the banner of the Right to Food Campaign have accepted “phased” universalisation. The Food Ministry's cautious estimate is that the average annual availability for the PDS is about 43 million tonnes. The NAC seems to have gone by the Planning Commission estimate of availability of about 50 to 55 million tonnes to ensure the supply of cheap foodgrains in 150 districts besides fulfilling regular commitments of buffer and welfare schemes.

It is obvious that the UPA's seeming benevolence on the food security front is not going to be entirely without strings. The underlying principle is that the subsidy accruing from providing foodgrains at cheap rates will come from withdrawal of subsidies on petrol, diesel and, gradually, kerosene, and other unforeseen measures.

Besides ensuring minimum foodgrain entitlements at a discount, the draft of the National Food Security Act will indicate enabling clauses with regard to enhancing foodgrain production, public distribution reforms and improvement in drinking water, sanitation, health and hygiene for better intake and absorption of food by the poor.

In other words, the proposed Bill will provide for food security but call for nutrition security.

Back to founding principles

2010-09-06T00:08:00.000-07:00

The Bangladesh Supreme Court has made a progressive and far-reaching contribution to the project of national renewal that Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed has undertaken since her return to power in December 2008. For much of its nearly four decade-long existence, Bangadesh has had the misfortune of having its national destiny determined not by the secular founding principles of its 1971 liberation struggle, but by military adventurers and — as in Pakistan — their hand-maidens, the religious parties. Under Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, the daughter of Bangladesh's founding father Sheikh Mujibur Rehman, and herself a participant in the liberation movement, there is a determined mood to reclaim those principles. With a two-thirds majority in Parliament, the ruling Awami League can easily make the required constitutional changes. But it now has a solid legal foundation in the Supreme Court's judgment upholding the annulment of General ZiaurRehman's Fifth Constitution Amendment. The amendment, introduced in 1979, legitimised the regimes that followed Sheikh Mujib's assassination. The Supreme Court has boldly struck down the Zia-era phrase “absolute trust and faith in the Almighty Allah” in the preamble to the Constitution, and ordered the restoration of the original sentence containing the words “secularism, nationalism, democracy and socialism.” The judgment does not cover the 1988 Eighth Amendment introduced by General H.M. Ershad, making Islam the state religion. But by explicitly ordering the restoration of “secularism” in the preamble, the Supreme Court has left the door open for legal challenges to it. The judgment also makes clear its abhorrence of military rule.

The reinstatement of Article 12 — omitted in Zia's rewriting of the Constitution — prohibiting religion-based political mobilisation could have immediate implications for Bangladesh's rightwing Islamic groups, some of which are known to have foreign patrons and links with extremist and militant organisations. The Awami League government must take into account the possible political fallout before seeking to ban religious parties on the basis of the judgment, considering that these parties, including the Jamaat-e-Islami, are aligned with Khaleda Zia's Bangladesh National Party. The atmosphere in Bangladesh is already charged on account of the ongoing trial by an “international war crimes tribunal” of Jamaat leaders accused of collaborating with Pakistan in 1971. The Sheikh Hasina government must be careful not to permit the country's political polarisation to negate the recent positive achievements towards nation-building.

Pakistan handing over control of PoK to China?

2010-08-30T04:45:00.000-07:00

While the world focuses on the flood-ravaged Indus River valley, a quiet geopolitical crisis is unfolding in the Himalayan borderlands of northern Pakistan, where Islamabad is handing over de facto control of the strategic Gilgit-Baltistan region in the northwest corner of disputed Kashmir to China.

The entire Pakistan-occupied western portion of Kashmir stretching from Gilgit in the north to the Indian side in the south is closed to the world, in contrast to the media access that India permits in the eastern part, where it is combating a Pakistan-backed insurgency. But reports from a variety of foreign intelligence sources, Pakistani journalists and Pakistani human rights workers reveal two important new developments in Gilgit-Baltistan: A simmering rebellion against Pakistani rule and the influx of an estimated 7,000 to 11,000 soldiers of the People's Liberation Army (PLA).

China wants a grip on the region to assure unfettered road and rail access to the Gulf through Pakistan. It takes 16 to 25 days for Chinese oil tankers to reach the Gulf. When high-speed rail and road links through Gilgit and Baltistan are completed, China will be able to transport cargo from Eastern China to the new Chinese-built Pakistani naval bases at Gwadar, Pasni and Ormara, just east of the Gulf, within 48 hours.

Many of the PLA soldiers entering Gilgit-Baltistan are expected to work on the railroad. Some are extending the Karakoram Highway, built to link China's Sinkiang Province with Pakistan. Others are working on dams, expressways and other projects.

Mystery surrounds the construction of 22 tunnels in secret locations where Pakistanis are barred. Tunnels would be necessary for a projected gas pipeline from Iran to China that would cross the Himalayas through Gilgit. But they could also be used for missile storage sites.

Until recently, the PLA construction crews lived in temporary encampments and went home after completing their assignments. Now they are building big residential enclaves clearly designed for a long-term presence.

What is happening in the region matters to Washington for two reasons. Coupled with its support for the Taliban, Islamabad's collusion in facilitating China's access to the Gulf makes clear that Pakistan is not a US "ally". Equally important, the nascent revolt in the Gilgit-Baltistan region is a reminder that Kashmiri demands for autonomy on both sides of the cease-fire line would have to be addressed in a settlement.

Media attention has exposed the repression of the insurgency in the Indian-ruled Kashmir Valley. But if reporters could get into the Gilgit-Baltistan region and Azad Kashmir, they would find widespread, brutally-suppressed local movements for democratic rights and regional autonomy.

When the British partitioned South Asia in 1947, the maharajah who ruled Kashmir, including Gilgit and Baltistan, acceded to India. This set off intermittent conflict that ended with Indian control of the Kashmir valley, the establishment of Pakistan-sponsored Kashmir in its western part, and Pakistan's occupation of Gilgit and Baltistan, where Sunni jihadi groups allied with the Pakistan Army have systematically terrorized the local Shiite Muslims.

Gilgit and Baltistan are in effect under military rule. Democratic activists there want a legislature and other institutions without restrictions, where the elected legislature controls only 4 out of 56 subjects covered in the state Constitution. The rest are under the jurisdiction of a "Kashmir Council" appointed by the president of Pakistan.

India gives more power to the state government in Srinagar; elections there are widely regarded as fair, and open discussion of demands for autonomy is permitted. But the Pakistan-abetted insurgency in the Kashmir valley has added to tensions between the forces and an assertive population seeking greater of local autonomy.

The United States is uniquely situated to play a moderating role in Kashmir, given its growing economic and military ties with India and Pakistan's aid dependence on Washington. Such a role should be limited to quiet diplomacy. Washington should press New Delhi to resume autonomy negotiations with Kashmiri separatists. Success would put pressure on Islamabad for comparable concessions in Gilgit-Baltistan. In Pakistan, Washington should focus on getting Islamabad to stop aiding the insurgency in the Kashmir Valley and to give New Delhi a formal commitment that it will not annex Gilgit and Baltistan.

Precisely because the Gilgit-Baltistan region is so important to China, the United States, India and Pakistan should work together to make sure that it is not overwhelmed, like Tibet, by the Chinese behemoth.

A conference on caste-based enumeration comes up with valid arguments in support of the exercise.

2010-08-25T03:14:00.000-07:00

THE inclusion of caste in Census 2011 has been a vexed question for the polity. The uncertainty over the issue has now come to an end with the Group of Ministers (GoM) on Caste Census giving its consent for the exercise. Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, who led the GoM, announced in the Lok Sabha on August 12 that only the modalities remained to be sorted out.

In the past few months, caste-based enumeration has been the subject of opinion columns of newspapers, talk shows on television and discussions on the Internet. A conference on “Caste Census: Towards an Inclusive India”, held on July 23 at the Centre for the Study of Social Exclusion and Inclusive Policy (CSSEIP) of the National Law School of India University (NLSIU), Bangalore, provided another forum to discuss the issue at length. The participants consisted of a multidisciplinary academic group involved in research on caste and public policy.

Justice M.N. Rao, Chairperson of the National Commission for Backward Classes; Dr M. Vijayanunni, former Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India; Prof. Sukhdeo Thorat, Chairperson of the University Grants Commission; and Prof. S. Japhet, Director, CSSEIP, NLSIU, were among the distinguished personalities who participated in the conference. The group generally was of the opinion that caste-based enumeration was unavoidable in the Indian context.

However, in a letter to the GoM (published in the Opinion Column of The Hindu dated August 14), the participants of the conference objected to its recommendation to conduct caste enumeration at the biometric data capture stage. Saying that outside agencies are likely to be involved at this stage, they argued strongly that The Census of India (or the Office of the Registrar General of India) “is the only competent agency in the country with the necessary expertise and experience to undertake this gigantic task”.

History of caste census

The last time an Indian census included caste data was in 1931. According to Vijayanunni, caste data were collected in 1941 as well, but their tabulation was dropped as a money-saving measure during the Second World War. Several historians have argued that the inclusion of caste in the Indian census by the British was an anthropological exercise to learn about the colonised. In his well-known book Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, Benedict Anderson has said that the ‘census', the ‘map' and the ‘museum' were ways in which the colonialists learnt about the colonised. Some historians say that the manner in which caste and religious data were collected rigidified the otherwise nebulous caste and religious identities in South Asia.

The 1871 census (the first census exercise in British India) shows how the colonial census operations categorised certain castes as superior, intermediate, trading, pastoral, and so on (Memorandum on the Census of British India 1871-72, page 21, available on the website of La Trobe University). This clearly legitimised certain caste notions of superiority and inferiority by the state itself.

Census 1901 reveals an interesting feature: a fall in the number of ‘lower castes' compared with past censuses. This was because of a severe famine in the 1890s. The census report states: “The diminution in the lower groups is doubtless due to the excessive mortality of 1897 when the administration had to face, and admittedly failed to solve, the difficult problem of forcing relief upon people who were reluctant to accept it until they had been reduced to a state of debility which could end only in death.” This is an example of how caste enumeration can be useful; the 1901 census helped identify which castes were affected most severely by the famine.

Idea of a casteless society

When India became a republic and adopted its Constitution in 1950, it was recognised that the nation needed to move towards a casteless society. But the very fact of ‘untouchability' being accepted as a reality in the Constitution implied that caste was pervasive in society. The issue came up for a vociferous debate in the Constituent Assembly. Several members argued that untouchability could be abolished only if the caste system was done away with.

Promatha Ranjan Thakur, a member of the Constituent Assembly from Bengal, said on April 29, 1947: “I do not understand how you can abolish untouchability without abolishing the very caste system. Untouchability is nothing but the symptom of the disease, namely, the caste system. It exists as a matter of caste system. I do not understand how this, in its present form, can be allowed to stand in the list of fundamental rights. I think the House should consider this point seriously. Unless we can do away with the caste system altogether there is no use tinkering with the problem of untouchability superficially. I have nothing more to say. I hope the House will consider my suggestion seriously” (Constituent Assembly debates at http://parliamentofindia.nic.in).

Caste continues to be a pervasive marker of identity in Indian society today, and there have been mixed opinions in the recent debate on conducting a caste-based census. For instance, in a scathing piece in India Today, the sociologist Dipankar Gupta wrote thus about the demand for conducting a caste-based census: “Our democracy is determined to show the world that whatever others can do, we can do worse. If in this process, individual initiatives are killed, standards lowered, and professional ethics compromised, there is no cause for worry. We can still sink a lot lower.”
Caste and polity

There is a visible link between caste identity and political affiliations in almost all parts of the country. The discipline of psephology in India is dominated by the analysis of the ‘caste' factor, and its open usage in the media and public forums defeats the noble idea enshrined in the Constitution. It may be argued that direct elections and the growth of political parties have helped the growth of caste consciousness. Over several decades it has also led to what Christophe Jaffrelot calls, in his work India's Silent Revolution: The Rise of the Lower Castes in North India, “a genuine democratisation of India”. He says “the social and economic effects of this ‘silent revolution' are bound to multiply in the years to come”.

The participants of the conference made this point while arguing that counting caste will help the nation move towards caste equality and a caste-free society. They questioned the so-called ‘nobility' of not ascertaining castes leading to the utopian idea of a casteless society. Said Satish Deshpande, a sociologist at Delhi University: “Not counting caste has defeated the desire to transcend caste, and the noble idea of ‘caste blindness' should be rejected in favour of a fresh beginning [of counting caste].” The participants also argued that “enumerating all castes will allow us to examine whether – and how – caste continues to affect the distribution of privilege and disprivilege in our society. It is as important to track how caste benefits some groups as it is to monitor how it disadvantages other groups.”

The strongest point in favour of conducting caste-based census was that it would help devise an evidence-based social policy. As such, there is a wide disparity in caste figures, particularly in the number of Other Backward Classes (it varies from 40 to 52 per cent). The implementation of several social policies benefiting particular castes depends on knowing their exact numbers.

It is also true that policy discussions on caste-related issues are handicapped by a lack of data. Caste-based census, its proponents say, will generate a reliable and comprehensive database on “issues such as interrelations between caste and socio-economic condition”. This will also help the judiciary on adjudicating on important measures such as reservation of government and public sector jobs in States where reservation has crossed the constitutionally mandated 50 per cent (as in Tamil Nadu where reservation is 69 per cent). Caste-based census will also give details on the differences in the socio-economic conditions of various castes.
Procedural difficulties

Responding to the procedural difficulties that might entail the incorporation of caste in the census, Vijayanunni said the Census Commission of India was equipped to handle all the procedural and methodological requirements. He said the issue of including new castes in the Scheduled Castes list had come up for consideration in the 1990s, but the census establishment did not want to take up the responsibility because of several factors, including the fact that the Social Justice Ministry is the nodal ministry to deal with the subject of caste.

On the stand taken by some people to involve other organisations in identifying castes, he said the Census Commission of India was “the only competent agency that can be expected to undertake the all-India data collection and tabulation exercise required for caste data. The Social Justice and the Tribal Affairs Ministries, though dealing with the subject of castes and tribes, do not have the infrastructure, experience or organisational base to undertake this task, and that is why collection, tabulation and dissemination of Schedule Caste-Schedule Tribe [S.C./S.T.] data has been undertaken by the census all these years.”

He also said that the proper time for the collection of caste data was the population enumeration phase of the census, from February 9 to 28, 2011, and not during the biometric data capture for the National Population Register. Dismissing doubts about the methodological hurdles in collecting caste information one by one, Vijayanunni said the census could be used to collect data for all castes without confining the data collection exercise to OBCs alone.

Competent authority

The competence of the enumerator to decide whether a person belongs to the S.C., the S.T., the OBC, or any other category was a contentious point in the debate.

In fact, a few castes are categorised differently in different States. The delegates concurred that the enumerator was not the competent authority to make this distinction and that he or she should enter the given caste name in the designated column on caste without raising any objections or argument. The process of verification/classification was to be done later by census officials, they said.

The participants also agreed that a National Task Force or advisory group can assist with the identification and consolidation of caste data (as was done with religion and caste returns for S.C./S.T. groups in past censuses).

Sceptics say that in a caste-based census, there is the possibility of upper castes misreporting their caste and claiming to belong to backward castes or of backward castes inflating their numbers for political and material benefits. However, the delegates said that caste being a public identity, it would be difficult for a person to make spurious claims about one's caste. What they chose to ignore, however, is that while caste may be a public identity, the process of collecting census data is a private activity and not one conducted in public.

Minorities and caste identities

The question of minorities and their caste identities also came up for discussion. The sociologist Imtiaz Ahmed, whose pioneering work demonstrated the pervasive consciousness of caste among Muslims, feared that religious minorities would not be enumerated as having a caste, thus immediately denying them entry into any category on the basis of caste. His fears may be valid, but in several States communities of Muslims (some even in their entirety) are included in the lists of OBCs or S.Cs.

The conference did not address how caste enumeration will lead to a casteless society when the proposed caste-based census is already being pejoratively referred to as Mandal-II. The political upheaval that such a clear delineation of caste figures would lead to was also not addressed.

The participants dismissed the criticism that caste-based census would lead to an increase in caste consciousness or that it will further caste divisions. Except for a tiny minority, they said, everyone was aware of his or her caste identity.

The proceedings of the conference were released as a book in New Delhi on August 5 by Digvijay Singh, general secretary of the All India Congress Committee, and M. Veerappa Moily, Union Minister for Law and Justice. The book serves as a useful primer on the issue of incorporating caste as a category in the census.

A whole lifetime washed away in floods

2010-08-21T04:16:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, I stood atop a 30-foot-high levee in Pakistan’s south Punjab, looking out as the waters from the greatest Indus river flood in memory flowed past, through orchards, swirling around a village on higher ground half-a-mile out. Twenty miles wide, the flood was almost dreamlike, the speeding water, as it streamed through the upper branches of trees, carrying along bits of brightly-coloured plastic and clumps of grass.

Many of the displaced people had left the area in the past few days, driving whatever was left of their herds, carrying whatever they were able to rescue. In Pakistan, your primary loyalty is to your biraderi, an untranslatable word, something like clan, but more visceral and entailing greater responsibility and connection. You marry among your biraderi, you must travel and be present when a member of your biraderi is married or buried and, in times of trouble, you stand by your biraderi.

The hundreds of people camped on the levee were those who had no biraderi outside the flooded area, or who couldn’t afford to make the journey to them. Each family had claimed a little spot, made it home, rigged up some sort of shelter like a blanket on a frame of branches. Many had rescued a bag or two of grain, and they sat combing this out in the dirt, trying to dry it. As I walked past, I could smell that much of the grain had spoiled, a bitter loamy odour. These families’ poverty and loss shone in the little piles of their belongings: two or three cheap tin plates, a kettle. In one family’s encampment, discordantly, sat a dresser with a mirrored door.

I found most pitiful a family gathered around a prostrate brown-and-white brindled cow. The father told me that the cow had been lost in the water for four days, and the previous night it had clambered up on another section of the levee, a mile away. The people of this area recognise their cattle as easily as you or I recognise a cousin or neighbour. Someone passing by told the family that their cow had been found, and the father went and got it and led it to their little encampment.

In the early morning the cow had collapsed, and I could see it would soon be dead. Its eyes were beginning to dull, as the owner squatted next to it, sprinkling water into its mouth. The rest of the family sat nearby on a string bed, resigned, waiting for the end.

Driving back to my farm, which has (so far) been spared from the flood, an image of the cow’s ordeal kept coming to me: splashing through the flood for hours and hours, at dusk or in the blank overcast night, with nothing around it but a vast expanse of water stretching away, an image of perfect loneliness. It must have found high ground, waited there as the water rose, then set off again, driven by hunger. In the immensity of the unfolding tragedy, this littler one, this moment of its death, seemed comprehensible to me, significant.

It is difficult to convey the scope of what was lost by those who had laboured with axe and shovel to bring this land under cultivation. Fifty years ago, the area was all savanna, waving fields of reeds and elephant grass running for a thousand miles on both sides of the river. As a boy, I hunted there for partridge, walking among a line of beaters, the tall grasses so dense that I was invisible to the next man only 10 feet away. This was wild country.

But in the years since, these people tamed the land, levelling it by hand, expanding their plots acre by acre, until they had conquered it all. Last year, from where I stood on the levee, one would have seen orderly fields proceeding all the way to the river on the horizon. These lands had not been flooded in living memory, and so people built solid houses and granaries, planted trees, raised mosques. This was their life’s work.

Now all that has been swept away. In this area, the best-paying crop by far is sugarcane, which was to be cut in November but now stands submerged, except for the tips of the fronds, dead and rusty gray on the surface. When the water recedes, the people will, if they are lucky enough to have any, sell their cattle and their wives’ ornaments, to rebuild the watercourses and to level the fields. Some will plant winter wheat, but it will be sown late and will not pay, not enough to cover the costs of reclaiming the land.

Others may plant another crop of cane, which will be sown in February and harvested the following October, 14 months away. Before that, they will have no income whatsoever. The generosity of these people’s relatives, their biraderi, cannot possibly carry them through. They are ruined, and there are millions of them.

This disaster is not like an earthquake or a tsunami. In the 2005 earthquake in northern Pakistan, 80,000 people died more or less at one blow; whereas the immediate death toll from this flood is likely to be in the low thousands. The loss of property, however, is catastrophic. It is as if a neutron bomb exploded overhead, but instead of killing the people and leaving their houses intact, it piled trees upon the houses and swept away the villages and crops and animals, leaving the people alive.

For months and even years, the people of the Indus Valley will not have sufficient income for food or clothing. They will rebuild, if they can afford it, by inches. The corrupt and impoverished Pakistani government cannot possibly make these people’s lives whole again. It’s not hard to imagine the potential for radicalisation in a country already rapidly turning to extremist political views, to envision the anarchy that may be unleashed if wealthier nations do not find a way to provide sufficient relief. This is not a problem that will go away, and it is the entire world’s problem. It is said, the most violent revolutions are the revolutions of the stomach.

Signalling a transition

2010-08-19T05:11:00.000-07:00

China is now the world's second largest economy, having overtaken Japan in terms of the size of its GDP. It is true that this is partly due to Japan's poor performance. The change in rankings coincided with news that Japan's GDP grew at just 0.4 per cent in the three months to the end of June, well below an expected 2 per cent plus. It is also true that in per capita terms China's GDP is less than a tenth of that in Japan. Yet the fact that the change in China's ranking is the result of a scorching pace of growth sustained over a period of three decades, which shows no signs of relenting, suggests that this is by no means the end of a journey. Hence, despite the many statistical issues relating to estimation procedures used in different countries and the exchange rates at which local currency figures are converted to a common currency, the new GDP numbers are seen as signalling a transition to a new era in terms of the global balance of power.

China has responded with much maturity and not displayed any triumphalism after the release of these numbers. This is partly because, measured in purchasing power parity exchange rates, its GDP has been ahead of Japan's for quite some time now. It has also had a more important role and greater influence in the global system. But Chinese caution may also be because of concern regarding the quality of its growth process. For example, there is a call within China for measures to dampen growth and redress the problem of “overheating,” the most important sign of which is a speculative boom in the property market. But of greater concern for the country is the dependence of its growth on global markets in general and that of the United States in particular. This makes growth vulnerable, as governments respond either with protectionist measures or with demands for adjustments on China's part that could be expensive. It also increases international hostility towards the rapidly rising power. An influential view outside China is that its growth contributes to global imbalance and economic fragility. That argument is buttressed with data on the size of its trade surplus. Often these arguments are a cover for the ideological and political hostility generated by fear of a country which till recently was substantially centrally planned and even now has an economic and political system with unique characteristics. China must respond well; and it has clearly done so in recent times. It is making an effort at reorienting growth to the domestic market. It is making careful and calibrated adjustments of the value of the renminbi. It is seeking to rebalance growth in ways that make it more equitable and more environmentally friendly. It must now also take on a global role indicative of its status that favours justice and equality and helps make the current period of transition orderly and peaceful.

Obama and Indian industry: navigating tough waters

2010-08-18T02:41:00.000-07:00

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times …,” wrote Charles Dickens. Today those could well be the words of the captains of Indian industry and the government that represents them. For even as the drum rolls have begun early this summer in anticipation of Barack Obama's visit to India in November, the record of the United States' 44th President on deepening economic ties with India does not inspire confidence.

Look at the facts. The economic dimension of the bilateral relationship has grown significantly in size and complexity since the pre-1991 era. Even more so since India decisively emerged from the fog of post-Pokhran nuclear isolation and sanctions were lifted by former President George W. Bush in 2001. Indeed it was the very same man who then went on to give the burgeoning relationship its biggest breakthrough in the form of the civilian nuclear deal.

Yet some in India's private sector, and perhaps in the Industry and External Affairs Ministries as well, would argue that that was where it ended. To be sure, the current U.S. administration has not spoiled the party entirely; if anything it has been at pains to sustain the image of not rocking the boat. Thus there have been veritable cascades of bonhomie during such encounters as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's much-touted “first state visit” of the Obama Presidency last November, and the India-U.S. Strategic Dialogue of May 2010.

The concerns

While these events and the behind-the-scenes Track I and Track II dialogues have certainly kept the boat from rocking, there is little doubt that the two countries are charting a course through troubled waters and that storm clouds loom on the horizon. To those following the comments of visiting Indian leaders in Washington, one thing is clear: sections of Indian industry, from the high-tech and space sectors to IT giants, are deeply unhappy with the U.S. intransigence on a range of issues at the very heart of their operations.

Some of the most serious concerns are the following.

First, export control restrictions, particularly on dual-use, high-tech items, have been brought up time and again by senior officials such as Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao and Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma. In March, as Ms. Rao co-chaired a meeting of the India-U.S. High Technology Cooperation Group, she described the restrictions and related constraints as “anachronistic.”

Second, the U.S. Bureau of Industry and Security has inexplicably retained government organisations such as the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on the Entities List, thereby banning U.S. corporations from trading with them. Although Robert Blake, Assistant Secretary for South and Central Asian Affairs and other U.S. officials promised several months ago that the list was being revised, ISRO has not officially been taken off it yet.

Third, the “totalisation” conundrum has led to Indian professionals paying “huge amounts” as social security contributions in the U.S. and yet they are unable to draw any benefits on the basis of such contributions. Senior Indian Ministers such as Labour and Employment Minister Mallikarjun Kharge and Minister of State for Communications and Information Technology Sachin Pilot spelled out the nature of the problem to their U.S. counterparts in Washington in March and April. Yet in an interview with The Hindu, Mr. Blake said that the U.S. social security administration had “really grappled with this but thus far not found a way to be responsive.”

Visa fee hike

The most recent salvo came last week when Democratic Senators Charles Schumer and Clair McCaskill sponsored — and got passed — a border security bill entailing an H1-B- and L-visa application fee hike of $2,000 for firms with a higher proportion of non-American employees.

No prizes for guessing which firms would be most adversely hit by this bill. The National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom) sharply criticised the bill, and its president Som Mittal warned it was an “indirect form of protectionism and runs contrary to the Obama administration's oft-repeated goal of opening markets and doubling U.S. exports.”

To some, these worrisome barriers to an open economic relationship are symptomatic of the old stereotype of Democratic administrations — that they are less concerned about economic proximity to India than Republican administrations are.

Others worry specifically about the Obama government's penchant for protectionist policies, a trend that is certainly validated by the emerging rhetoric in Washington.

So far as Mr. Obama himself is concerned, it began long before he became President. As a Democratic Senator and rising star on the domestic political scene, he gained notoriety in India for backing several “killer amendments” to the India-U.S. civilian nuclear agreement. Although pro-deal lobbies dodged that bullet and the Feingold Amendments were defeated in the Senate, Mr. Obama has done little in his Presidential avatar to shake off the reputation that his actions created.

And the future looks even bleaker. The President and his Democratic colleagues are increasingly adopting a tunnel-vision approach, focussing on the one challenge that could make or break the next few years for them — the November Congressional elections. Thus India should expect that this administration will, for the next few months at least, be driven only by the adage: “It's the economy stupid!”

With the unemployment rate stabilising at 9.5 per cent and over 130,000 jobs being shed each month, even a juggernaut of a political issue such as the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico may trail behind job creation.

So might immigration reform. So might even the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which are in any case set to slowly wind down. Imagine, then, how low on the priority list the woes of Indian industry must be. Nay, consider in fact the possibility that the battle of cry of “Stop jobs getting Bangalored!” may actually serve as a handy rallying point in the barren wasteland that is the American job market.

Given the compelling power of protectionist politics on the eve of a major round of elections, there will be little point in arguing that Indian industry is actually helping to create jobs for American citizens — though in fact it is.

Over time the only hope for those within Indian industry seeking to do business with the U.S. may be the U.S. private sector itself. History would corroborate this theory. It was in many ways the bonds between the Indian government, on the one hand, and the Indian-American community and the U.S. nuclear lobbies, on the other, that helped shepherd the civilian nuclear deal through Congress.

Indian companies with global ambitions may find that this is the only way to stop the spring of hope from giving way to the winter of despair.

Kashmir's missing government

2010-08-17T00:03:00.001-07:00

“Hurling a shoe,” remarked Omar Abdullah wryly, “is better than hurling stones.” In his August 15 address to the people of Jammu and Kashmir, Chief Minister Abdullah finally found the words many have been waiting months to hear. But it remains unclear how he intends to deliver on his calls for dialogue and peace. Ever since the anti-India protests, which have dogged Mr. Abdullah's time in office, started to escalate this June, his administration has displayed few signs of having a coherent vision for action. The arrests of secessionist leaders followed by efforts to buy peace with them; the arrests of stone-throwing youth and simultaneous promises of jobs for them; appeals for dialogue matched by murderous police action: all these have been deployed in bewildering, aimless succession. The reality is that the Islamist extremists spearheading the anti-India protests that have led to the loss of almost 60 lives this summer have no interest in peace. The protests have allowed a new generation of radical Islamist leaders, like Massrat Alam Bhat and Asiya Andrabi, to seize leadership of the anti-India movement in Kashmir. But the protests aren't, as some polemicists have claimed, a Kashmir-wide mass uprising. The violence remains concentrated, as it has been since the summer of 2009, in urban parts of the districts of Srinagar, Baramulla, Pulwama, and Anantnag — the historic heartlands of the anti-India movement in J&K. The current protests are nowhere near as large as those that tore the State apart in 2008: and that makes the failure to address them inexplicable.

Fine words and promises cannot stem the rising tide of blood on Kashmir streets. It will need governance — a task the ruling National Conference-Congress alliance in the State has shown little interest in. Ever since he took power in 2009, the Chief Minister has relied on administrators of breathtaking incompetence. The rot has been most marked in the State police. Much of the killing on Kashmir's streets came about not because the protests threatened to overwhelm authorities, but because lethal force was indiscriminately used by panicked, wretchedly led police. J&K's civil bureaucracy has done just as badly. High officials have proved unable to secure a semblance of governance in the face of secessionist fiat — or to build bridges with communities devastated by the violence. As though this were not enough, politicians from the National Conference and the Congress have been missing in inaction. Only a few have been visible on the streets of their constituencies, reaching out to those who need them. Mr. Abdullah needs all the help he can get from the central government but he must first act to demonstrate on the ground that Jammu & Kashmir has a government.

India to become world's fastest growing economy by 2013-15: Morgan Stanley

2010-08-17T00:01:00.000-07:00

The two hands to produce count for more than that one mouth to feed, after all. Driven by a sterling demographic dividend, continuing structural reform and globalisation, India is poised to accelerate its growth rate to 9-9.5% over 2013-15, even as China will cool down to a more sedate 9% by 2012 and to 8% by 2015. So finds a new report by Morgan Stanley, authored by Chetan Ahya (managing director for Asia and India economist, who writes a monthly column for ET) and Tanvee Gupta.

India has one of the lowest median ages among the major economies. When an economy prospers, first its death rate and then, its birth rate falls. As this trend proceeds, there is a big bulge in the working age population while the non-working population (the young and the old) shrink as a share of the population. The lowering of the dependent (non-working) population to working age population ratio has twin effects.

One, it allows people to save a large proportion of their income, raising the country’s rate of savings; two, it boosts the number of people who work and contribute to growth. Thanks to structural reform, the additional hands available for work find work. Even with stagnant per capita output, the sheer increase in the number of workers would raise GDP growth. With reform pushing up productivity per worker, GDP would rise even faster.

Globalisation gives additional job opportunities, additional capital to augment rising domestic savings and additional know-how. With this happy combination, the report expects India to become the world’s fastest-growing economy. The government’s chief economic advisor Kaushik Basu has been forecasting such a development as well.

“Real GDP growth in China has averaged 10% annually over the past 30 years, compared with 6.2% in India. During this period, China’s GDP grew 16 times to $5 trillion whereas India’s rose seven times to $1.2 trillion. China’s exports (including services) surged 65 times over this period to $1,330 billion while India’s exports increased 22 times to $250 billion” says the report.

China has overtaken Japan to become the world’s second-largest economy. China’s demographic transition pushed up its savings rate above 30% in 1985, while India’s savings rate crossed that level only in 2005. India’s consumption level will now come down, even as China’s will rise.

Underlying the Morgan Stanley forecast is the assumption that India will significantly jack up its expenditure on infrastructure and in plant and machinery. Infrastructure expenditure has gone up from 5.4% of GDP in 2005 to 7.5% in 2009 and is poised to go up to 8% of GDP in 2010. Over 2012-17, the forecast is that India’s infrastructure spend would be $1 trillion as compared with $530 million over the previous five-year period.

Another assumption is on the quantity and quality of the young people coming into the workforce. While India will be the largest contributor to the world’s workforce — all of 136 million people — over the next 10 years (fully a quarter of the entire world’s additional workforce), China will add just 23 million.

Nod for National Innovation Council

2010-08-16T23:56:00.000-07:00

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Monday gave the green signal for the setting up of a National Innovation Council headed by Sam Pitroda, Adviser to the Prime Minister on Public Information Infrastructure and Innovations, to give shape to the Government's decision to observe the current decade (2010-2020) as the Decade of Innovation.

The Council will have a mandate to evolve an Indian model of innovation that focuses on inclusive growth and creating an appropriate eco-system conducive to fostering inclusive innovation.

The 17-member panel would include Planning Commission members K. Kasturirangan and Arun Maira, former Director General of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) R.A. Mashelkar, former President of the National Association of Software and Services Companies Kiran Karnik, Executive Director of Tata Sons R. Gopalakrishnan, and Biocon Chairman Kiran Mazumdar Shaw.

The present CSIR Director General Samir Brahmachari, Director General of the Confederation of Indian Industry Chandrajit Banerjee, Secretary General of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry Amit Mitra, IIT Kanpur Director Sanjay Dhande, would also be members.

Further, the Council would have Devi Prasad Shetty of Narayana Hrudalaya, film director Shekhar Kapur, Chairman of C.A. Technologies Saurabh Srivastava, Anil K. Gupta of IIM Ahmedabad, and Sujatha Ramadorai of The Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, as members. R. Gopalakrishnan, Additional Secretary in the Prime Minister's Office, would be the Member Secretary.

A draft prepared by AIDWA for the proposed Bill to deal with honour crimes includes a comprehensive definition of honour killing.

2010-08-13T03:18:00.000-07:00

SHILPA and Ravinder, Manoj and Babli, Ved Pal Maun and Sonia. These are not random names, but young couples who were hounded, and some of them even done to death, by the self-styled guardians of honour for daring to break community norms of love and marriage. A seminar on “Killings and crimes in the name of honour”, held in New Delhi on July 20, heard some of those who were lucky enough to have escaped the clutches of death speak out. Most of the participants, who included lawyers and academics as well, said the existing legal provisions did not offer protection to the victims of such crimes. Organised by the All India Democratic Women's Association (AIDWA), the seminar demanded that a new and comprehensive law be enacted to deal with all aspects of honour crimes. Rajya Sabha member Brinda Karat of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) had raised this demand in Parliament last year.

Justice K.G. Balakrishnan, Chairperson of the National Human Rights Commission and former Chief Justice of India, condemned honour crimes but did not advocate a separate law. This was in contrast to the overall sentiment at the seminar and the views espoused by National Commission for Women (NCW) Chairperson Girija Vyas.

Kirti Singh, former member of the Law Commission of India and Supreme Court lawyer, presented a draft of the proposed legislation at the seminar. It was later submitted to Union Minister of Law M. Veerappa Moily.

The case for a stringent law found support in the monsoon session of the Rajya Sabha as well, for the second time in the past one year. The response of the government so far has been that the primary responsibility for prevention, detection, registration, investigation and prosecution of crimes was with the State governments. Predictably, the reply of Ajay Maken, Minister of State for Home, on the floor of the House to questions raised by Brinda Karat, Shobhana Bhartia and others was at best evasive.

Among other things, they asked him what specific steps the government was taking to rein in caste councils. At least a couple of honour crimes were committed at the behest of such councils, called khap panchayats. He replied that apart from issuing a detailed advisory to all States and Union Territories to take a comprehensive view of the effectiveness of the government machinery in tackling violence against women and to take appropriate measures to curb the violation of women's rights by means of “honour killings” and prevent forced marriages in some States, the government was thinking of amending the existing law or otherwise enacting a separate law to tackle honour killings.

Another poser was about the number of people arrested in connection with honour killings. The Minister replied that as honour killings were not classified as a separate crime, and as they were treated as murders, data were not collected separately by the National Crime Records Bureau and, therefore, no separate figures of arrests were available. Significantly, there was also no time frame given for the enactment of a separate law or the amendment of the existing law.

AIDWA's draft law

AIDWA's draft of the proposed law has some remarkable features. Apart from containing a comprehensive definition of what constitutes honour killing, it describes the right to choose one's own partner as a fundamental right. “The idea of defining it as a fundamental right is that the act of anyone opposing it would be construed as an offence,” said Kirti Singh.

The draft law defines various kinds of acts that either precede or follow honour killing. These include all kinds of harassment: public endorsement of violence, threats, and social and economic sanctions against families of the victims by either individuals or collective bodies such as panchayats. It has provisions specifying certain duties of the district administration as well. It says, for instance, that prohibitory orders need to be issued as soon as the district administration gets information about meetings that have to do with the violation of the fundamental right defined by the law.

“It cannot be dealt with by invoking Section 302 [in the Indian Penal Code, punishment for murder] alone. We have, for the first time, classified different types of harassment and broadened the ambit of intimidation that can include physical, psychological, verbal [harassment],” said Kirti Singh.

The range of punishment, too, extends from one to 10 years depending on the nature of the offence. For instance, the draft law provides for imprisonment up to two years for anyone glorifying or supporting the crime publicly. The burden of proof has been placed on the accused and credence given to the oral statements of the couple, especially if they have consented to marry or stay with each other.

“The police should not register a case of kidnapping in such a situation,” she said.

Describing the situation in Haryana, one of the States most affected by honour crimes, Jagmati Sangwan, president of the AIDWA State unit, said it was ironical that there was no public shame in “purchasing women” from outside for marriage, on the one hand, and in harassing, or even killing, young people when they asserted their constitutional rights, on the other.

“It is not about honour at all; it is the hegemony of some groups,” she said. Same- gotra marriages, which the caste councils want banned, were being used as an issue for political and caste consolidation, she said.

The most disappointing response, she said, came from mainstream political parties. In particular, she referred to Congress Member of Parliament Naveen Jindal's support to the demand by caste councils to amend the Hindu Marriage Act and to ban same- gotra marriages. Jagmati Sangwan, who heads the Women's Studies Centre in Maharshi Dayanand University, Rohtak, said that from her interactions with schoolteachers she had learnt that it was common to see a high degree of absenteeism among girl students. Some of them never returned and their whereabouts were unknown.

“Conspiracy of silence”

“Girls are eliminated for even talking to their male colleagues. Our girl students just go missing and there is a conspiracy of silence. Such is the repression of young people in Haryana society. It is extremely painful for us to come to terms with such incidents,” she said. The common expression for the mysterious death of young girls, said Inderjit Singh, State secretary of the CPI(M), was “Mar gi ji”, meaning “she died”. “The standard response would be that the girl had stomach pain which resulted in her death,” he said. Cremations would be hurriedly conducted, mostly at the homes of the victims' maternal uncles. There was also no question of a post-mortem. He said the hitherto unaddressed problem of missing adolescent girls, probably killed in the name of honour, was as important a matter of concern as that of the murder of eloping couples.

“There should be a system of reporting deaths, all deaths from villages, just as births are registered. In the case of an unnatural death, a post-mortem before cremation should be made legally mandatory,” said Inderjit Singh, who has rescued many girls from such dangerous situations.

The draft of the Bill proposed by the Ministry of Law and Justice (Indian Penal Code and Certain Other Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2010) envisages changes in the IPC (Section 300, which specifies various conditions that constitute the crime of murder); the Indian Evidence Act, 1872; and the Special Marriage Act, 1954.

The draft, which is being looked into by a Group of Ministers (GoM), has incorporated a new definition of honour killing, though it does not say it in so many words: a murder done by any person or persons acting in concert with, or, at the behest of, a member of the family or a member of a body or group of the caste or clan or community or caste panchayat (by whatever name called) in the belief that the victim has brought dishonour or perceived to have brought dishonour upon the family or caste or clan or community or caste panchayat. Here the definition of dishonour is also very limited, and the definition does not cover all perceptible forms of violence, including cases in which young people, not necessarily in a sexual relationship, are humiliated and even killed for talking to a member of the opposite sex.

The draft law purports to make entire communities culpable by virtue of mere association with a caste panchayat or body or group of the caste or clan or community. It is commonly known that in all such cases involving harassment or murder, there were self-styled leaders who enjoyed political, social and economic clout and whose decisions compelled others to toe their line. In such a situation, booking entire communities by virtue of mere association, without making a distinction between the perpetrators, abettors and vocal supporters, has been seen as a ploy to frustrate the exercise of a good law to deal with such crimes. One of the positive aspects of the draft Bill, however, involves placing the burden of proof on those accused of such murder. Another is doing away with the 30-day waiting period in the Special Marriage Act, 1954.

The draft, predictably, has invoked the wrath of the sections concerned. The government seems to have rendered its own draft ineffective by making culpable entire communities rather than pinpointing the main agents provocateurs after investigation and making them accountable.

Lal Bahadur Gopal, the lawyer who took up the murder case of Manoj and Babli, said that any law in connection with honour crimes should also provide for quick disposal of the cases. He recalled how the moral support of AIDWA had helped him overcome his reluctance to take up the case. “There was a lot of pressure on us and many material witnesses had turned hostile. We were even afraid of going to the hearings as we received lots of threats,” he said.

Gopal narrated how at the end of a hearing, despite heavy security, Babli's brother, Suresh, one of those convicted for her murder, slapped Seema, Manoj's sister, in full public view. “This was their way of intimidating us,” he said, adding that it was very important to give police protection to the witnesses.

According to him, the state needed to give a minimum compensation to the victims and entrust special cells with trained officers, not the standard station house officers, with the investigation of such cases.

But the question is whether a law in itself is enough to ensure that justice will be done. The couples present at the seminar explained how they still felt threatened, especially with honour crimes continuing unabated. Present at the seminar were two couples, from Kapurthala in Punjab and Hansi in Haryana, who had eloped fearing violent reprisals from their families. Interestingly, in both cases, the girls were from upper-caste and upper-class backgrounds.

Shilpa Kadyan and her husband, Ravinder, who were banished from their Dharana village in Jhajjar district, said they lived in constant fear. “It is a big struggle for those who are forced to leave their village and made to sever ties with family members,” said Shilpa, referring to the lack of social support in cities. To this day, the couple have not been able to enter their village and meet Ravinder's parents without police protection.

Joginder Maun spoke of his brother Ved Pal, who was killed in the presence of a warrant officer on April 22, 2009, when he went to bring his wife from her village in Jind district. “They target the poor. In our case, even the gotras were different, the couple belonged to two different villages located in two different districts,” he said.

Seven-point charter

On August 1, at a meeting held at the Meham Chaubisi Chabootra (famous for public and panchayat meetings in Meham town), a seven-point charter was released demanding the amendment of the Hindu Marriage Act banning same- gotra marriages, gay marriages and surrogate motherhood, giving lok adalat status to khaps, and according legal status to customs and traditional practices. Though there was a large congregation, with some women too present, observers felt that not all khaps had supported the move. The main organiser of the event was a businessman from Gurgaon who lost the Meham Assembly seat last time and was hoping to rejuvenate his political fortunes with such measures.

It is becoming increasingly clear that dealing with honour crimes has to be comprehensive so that every aspect relating to them is covered under the law. And it is all the more necessary as the demands of caste councils are becoming more strident. Accused of being patriarchal and undemocratic in their constitution, they are now trying to remove the tag by taking in women and a few members from other caste groups.

The African Union summit sets aside other issues and focusses on the challenges posed by the conflict in Somalia.

2010-08-13T03:17:00.000-07:00

THE conflict in Somalia dominated the 15th African Union (A.U.) summit held in Kampala in late July, only weeks after suicide bomb attacks had shocked the Ugandan capital. The attacks were the handiwork of Al Shabab militants who are battling a peace-keeping force of the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), the bulk of which consists of soldiers from Uganda and Burundi. The attacks were among the most serious terror incidents in Africa since the bombing of the American embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam in 1998. The Somali insurgents had been threatening revenge attacks against countries that are propping up the “transitional national government” (TNG), set up two years ago.

The A.U. summit was originally supposed to discuss mainly the pressing issues of maternal and infant mortality in Africa. Instead, most of the leaders in their speeches focussed on the terror threat emanating from Somalia. Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni urged African states “to sweep the terrorist leaders out of Africa. Let them go back to Asia and the Middle East [West Asia],” he said.

Museveni wants to be America's point man in the region once again. The job was given to the Ethiopian Prime Minister, Meles Zenawi, by the George W. Bush administration. Ugandans say that they are paying with blood to protect American geostrategic interests in the region.

Museveni's stance was bolstered by the United States Attorney General, Eric Holder, who was in Kampala to attend the summit as an observer. Holder urged the A.U. leaders to remain united in their stand against terrorism in the Horn of Africa. The Barack Obama administration has pledged more aid and logistical support to A.U. peace-keeping forces in Somalia. All the leaders agreed that the challenges posed by Somalia to the continent were extremely serious and had to be tackled urgently. The consensus was that the peace-keeping mission should be converted into a “peace-enforcing mission”. The mandate of AMISOM is only to protect the interim government.

Currently, there are around 6,000 A.U. troops, most of them from Uganda. The U.S., after its military debacle in Somalia in the mid-1990s, is loath to commit its own troops. Instead, it prefers to fight its enemies through proxies in the Horn of Africa region. The desire of A.U. member-countries like Uganda to take the fight directly to the insurgents has, however, not got the green signal from the United Nations.

Jean Ping, the Chairman of the A.U. Commission, has accused the U.N. Security Council of not giving the crisis in Somalia the attention it deserves. “The question of Somalia has been forgotten by the Security Council. We have been requesting the Security Council, but all they recommend is peace-keeping troops, which are attacked by the insurgents but are not allowed to hit back,” he complained.

Since the beginning of the year, shelling on civilian targets by AMISOM peace-keepers has resulted in thousands of casualties. The shelling has been in retaliation for Al Shabab attacks on their positions. Al Shabab has said that the attack on civilian targets in Kampala was an act of revenge. The attacks at two different places killed 76 civilians watching World Cup football.

Anyway, only a few leaders at the A.U. summit volunteered to send troops to bolster AMISOM. Leading A.U. members such as South Africa, Nigeria and Egypt are reluctant to commit their troops. Only smaller countries such as Guinea, Djibouti and Senegal have pledged to send troops to Somalia. Their ability to commit large number of troops is limited. Uganda, which seems bent upon substituting the key role played earlier by Ethiopia, has pledged to deploy an additional 20,000 soldiers. But the offer does not have too many takers in the A.U. The A.U. does not have the resources to fund such a large peace-keeping force. Besides, Article 53 of the U.N. Charter prohibits regional organisations from acting unilaterally.

The A.U. summit for that matter has not come out with a new blueprint to solve Somalia's problems. The Djibouti peace process, which started in 2008 with the backing of Washington, resulted in the formation of a new transitional government led by Sheikh Sharif Ahmed. It was hoped that Ahmed, a former leader of the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), would motivate the Islamist insurgent groups to opt for peace.

Unfortunately, the situation in the country has only deteriorated since his appointment. Ahmed and his Ministers are today holed up in a small enclave in Mogadishu, which houses the Presidential Palace and a few government Ministries. Only the AMISOM troops are preventing the takeover of the capital by the insurgent Islamist groups led by Al Shabab.

For the last year and a half, the Obama administration had funded the training and arming of 10,000 Somalis to support the transitional government that it had propped up. But the majority of them have deserted with their arms and joined groups such as Al Shabab. Some estimates say that most of the arms worth $40 million provided to Somalia by the U.S. have ended up in the hands of these groups.

Furthermore, the inability of the Ethiopian army to quell the insurgency despite occupying the country for more than two years is a reminder to the African leaders that outside intervention could only further complicate the precarious security situation in the volatile Horn of Africa. Ethiopia, according to reports in the African media, has given an assurance to the A.U. that it will not invade neighbouring Somalia again.

FEISAL OMAR/REUTERS

An Al Shabab fighter and a burnt-out tank of the African Union peace-keeping force, in Mogadishu on July 2.

The entry into Somalia by Ethiopian forces in December 2006 had the backing of the Bush administration. That intervention shattered the tenuous peace, which the country had enjoyed for a brief six months under the ICU. For the first time since the civil war in the early 1990s, the warlords were forced to retreat. Law and order, albeit of the Sharia variety, had briefly prevailed over most of Somalia. But the Bush administration, obsessed by the “war on terror”, was in no mood to tolerate even a mildly Islamist state in the strategic Horn.

The overthrow of the ICU government by the Ethiopians resulted in a political and military vacuum. This was soon filled by Al Shabab, which until a few years ago was only one of the many insurgent groups fighting the warlords and the Ethiopian occupation forces.

Al Shabab (“the Youth” in Arabic) had refused to participate in the U.S.-brokered peace process started early last year. Instead, it intensified its fight against the new government, headed by Sharif Ahmed, a former leader of the ICU. Adan Hashi Ayro, the group's original leader, was assassinated in a U.S. missile attack in April 2008. The current head of the group is Muktar Ali Robow, who once served under Ahmed as Deputy Defence Secretary. Al Shabab started out as a vigilante group acting against extortionists and criminal gangs in Mogadishu. This brought it into conflict with the warlords, who patronised many of the criminal groups.

The U.S. government alleges that many of the Shabab fighters have trained in Afghanistan when the Taliban was in power there. The group is high up on the official U.S. terror list. The U.S. Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, has alleged that Al Shabab wants Somalia to be “a future haven for global terrorism” and that it wants to use Somalia as a base to influence and also infiltrate surrounding countries. Al Shabab has indeed emulated the Taliban in religious matters. Like the Taliban, it is for a strict interpretation of the Koran and the implementation of the Sharia.

According to Afyari Abdi Elmi, an academic who specialises on Somalia, Al Shabab is basically an international jehadi movement. “This group believes that historically Muslims have been humiliated by their enemies whenever they have abandoned jehad and, therefore, that if Muslims have to be respected, jehad must be ongoing,” Elmi wrote in a recent article.

With the group gaining in strength and confidence, senior functionaries of Al Shabab such as Muktar Ali Robow, have said that they have the same objectives as Al Qaeda. Both sides have acknowledged helping each other. Elmi, however, states that Al Shabab is not a monolithic movement.

The majority, he opines, only has a domestic agenda, “but a small minority in the upper echelons of the group, and a significant number of foreign fighters, advocate global jehad as a guiding principle”.

With the U.S. and most of its immediate neighbours like Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda dead set against an Islamist-dominated government in Somalia, the country seems condemned to be in a state of perpetual chaos and anarchy. As many as 20,000 Somalis lost their lives battling the Ethiopian occupation. Thousands more have been killed after AMISOM entered the scene.

Before that inter-clan fighting and the civil war had resulted in the displacement of more than two million Somalis.

The number of civilians killed as a result of internecine strife and foreign intervention since the early 1990s could be more than a million.

In the past, Somalis used to blame their local warlords for the spilling of innocent blood. Now most Somalis blame outside powers, especially the U.S., for the continuing bloodshed.

'Brazil, India & China fared well during the financial crisis'

2010-08-13T03:14:00.000-07:00

At least three countries Brazil, India and China fared well during the current economic crisis that has engulfed the world in the past two years, mainly because of inherent strengthen of their economies, a Congressional oversight panel has said.

"Because the financial crisis originated in domestic housing bubbles, and was transmitted by highly leveraged multinational financial firms, countries that were shielded from those forces fared comparatively well," said the panel in its report for the month of August.

"Brazil, India, China, Australia and Canada, for example, generally avoided the banking crises that plagued US and much of Europe; nonetheless their economies felt many of the after effects of the global financial crisis," it said.

Brazil, the 162-page report said is one of the countries that has fared best during the global financial crisis.

"India also fared comparatively well," it said.

"Its highly regulated banking sector had limited operations outside India, and therefore very little exposure to subprime lending in the US," the report said, adding that although India did feel the follow-on effects of the crisis, though.

Its export-driven economy suffered when global demand dropped; its financial sector suffered from the global liquidity squeeze, which led to a fall in lending; and its stock market lost roughly 50 per cent of its value between June and December 2008.

"Although the Indian government did not provide capital to Indian banks, it did respond to the crisis with fiscal stimulus equal to about 2 per cent of GDP, and it shifted from a tightening monetary policy to an expansionary one," the report said.

The Congressional Oversight Panel said China's financial system also fared relatively well during the crisis, though it should be noted that China's state-owned banks have benefited from repeated government rescues in the recent past.

China maintains capital controls that limit foreign investment by individuals and businesses; these controls had beneficial effects during the crisis, since Chinese investors had little exposure to troubled parts of the US and European financial systems, it said.

Banks in China had invested heavily in US securities, but those investments were generally not in subprime securities, but rather in safer Treasury bonds and securities issued by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which the US government stepped in to backstop during the crisis, it said.

"Therefore, China's financial system, like Brazil's and India's, did not sustain major damage from the crisis.

China's export-driven economy did suffer, though, from the sharp downturn in global demand and the slowdown in foreign investment," the report said.

China's explosive growth slowed during the crisis, but the government countered the effects of the slowdown by increasing bank lending, lowering interest rates, and introducing fiscal stimulus spending that was among the largest in the world as a percentage of GDP.

"Australia also suffered relatively little from the crisis. Its only decline in GDP occurred in the fourth quarter of 2009, meaning that Australia did not enter into a recession," the report said.

India, U.S. review defence cooperation

2010-08-11T07:33:00.000-07:00

Ahead of Defence Minister A.K. Antony's visit to the United States next month, New Delhi and Washington exchanged notes on fostering defence cooperation through more equipment sales, greater joint exercises, frequent high-level exchanges and the possibility of inking three military agreements.

Led by Under Secretary of Defence on Policy Michèle Flournoy, a team from the Pentagon interacted with its Indian counterparts to prepare for a meeting of the Defence Policy Group, the joint committee headed by top civilian bureaucrats in the two Defence Ministries, that charts bilateral defence cooperation.

“We also want to get some progress ahead of [U.S. President] Barack Obama's visit [in November],” Ms. Flournoy told journalists here after meeting Mr. Antony, National Security Adviser Shivshankar Menon and Defence Secretary Pradeep Kumar.

“Natural partner”

Maintaining that the U.S. viewed India as a “natural partner,” the Pentagon official indicated Washington's wish list. It includes purchasing more American-origin defence equipment, “realistic” joint exercises and stepped up visits by Indian armed forces officers.

Ms. Flournoy described the three military agreements, which the U.S. has been pursuing with India, as “foundational” in nature. This is the same terminology she used while interacting with journalists in the U.S. last month. But during this interaction, she provided more details of why the U.S. wants India to ink the agreements despite its having been cold-shouldered on this count for nearly two years.

The three “foundational agreements” being offered have been inked with many close partners, and this has enabled the Pentagon to offer cutting-edge defence technology. They also allow the U.S. to “share” the next higher level of technology. “It is not a requirement [for closer cooperation]. It is a choice of the government of India,” she clarified.

“Of course, economics is involved,” Ms. Flournoy said, while pointing out that the agreements and weapon purchases from the U.S. would fulfil its strategic aim of ensuring inter-operability in future and investing in a long term relationship.

The U.S. feels there has been “tremendous progress” in the number of joint exercises, but the need is to make them “meaningful” so that they are “reflective of the real world situation.” Asked to explain what that meant, Ms. Flournoy said the exercises must prepare both sides to jointly undertake counter-piracy operations, humanitarian assistance and disaster relief.

“We also have to respond to maritime security and freedom of navigation and against those contesting the accepted rules of the world. We will have to work to prevent that. We have to be prepared in terms of capability.”

In the area of visits, the Pentagon says although “several hundred” Indian military officers have visited the U.S. for courses or interaction, it would like to “broaden the range.”

Asked whether the U.S. was monitoring weapon sales to Pakistan in order not to upset the military balance with India, Ms. Flournoy pointed out that since terrorism came home to Pakistan, there had been a shift in political will, which was reflected in the military operations in South Waziristan. U.S. weapon sales to Pakistan, she said, were focussed on equipment efficiency to support the current counter-insurgency operations.

China denies “exporting” convict labour for overseas projects

2010-08-11T07:27:00.000-07:00

The Chinese Ministry of Commerce on Tuesday denied reports that Chinese firms were employing prison labour on overseas projects, describing the reports as “nonsense with no facts or evidence.”

The government was responding to recent articles by New Delhi-based scholar Brahma Chellaney, a professor at the Centre for Policy Research, which described the use of forced convict labour on infrastructure projects in Sri Lanka and in building 4,000 houses in the Maldives.

Mr. Chellaney told on Tuesday that he had learnt of the use of prison labour last year, but only wrote the articles after receiving “unimpeachable confirmation from two different countries where China has brought in convict labourers to work on projects.” Tuesday's statement from the government “had not denied the specific cases” in Sri Lanka and the Maldives, he said.

Several diplomats spoke to on Tuesday from countries where Chinese firms were working on big projects dismissed the likelihood that prison labour was being widely used, citing security concerns as well as an already sensitive situation involving Chinese firms overseas.

“Chinese workers overseas is already a sensitive issue, just by their being there and working on projects in large numbers,” said a diplomat from an African country. “Why on earth will China make matters worse by shipping out criminals? It is very hard to believe.”

However, the possible use of convict labour by Chinese firms in Sri Lanka has already stirred debate. Opposition politicians claimed in June that 25,000 Chinese convict labourers were working on the island. The debate even spread to Tamil Nadu, where AIADMK general secretary Jayalalithaa called on New Delhi to look into the matter, suggesting there was a possible security threat to India.

Mr. Chellaney said Opposition parties in several countries in Africa and in Papua New Guinea had voiced concerns at the presence of Chinese workers with criminal records.

The Ministry of Commerce dismissed the suggestion in Tuesday's statement, saying that under its codes on overseas contracted projects, “enterprises could only send staff [members] who were eligible and had no criminal records.”

China does, however, have a system of forced prison labour within its borders, with convicts sent to “reform through labour” camps. According to Mr. Chellaney, the forced prison labour system had in the past year “started following Chinese investments overseas” to select projects.

The Ministry of Commerce said in the statement that convicted criminals and people sent to re-education through labour camps “are prohibited from travelling abroad under the Chinese law.” Convicted criminals in China are also generally denied passports.

In India, visa restrictions do not allow the employment of large numbers of Chinese workers, limiting the number to one per cent of the total number of locals employed on power projects.

Hugo Chavez rejects US ambassador-designate to venezuela

2010-08-09T05:34:00.000-07:00

President Hugo Chavez on Sunday rejected Larry Palmer as the US ambassador-designate to Venezuela, and urged US President Barack Obama to "look for another candidate."

"How can you think I'd accept this gentleman coming here? You'd best withdraw him, Obama. Don't insist, I'm asking you," said Chavez in his weekly "Alo Presidente" radio and television show.

Palmer recently voiced concern about Cuba's growing influence in the Venezuelan military, which, he said was "considerably low" in morale and professionalism.

In written answers to a US lawmaker's questions -- his nomination as ambassador must be confirmed by the Senate -- Palmer also said there were "clear ties" between leftist Colombian guerrillas and Chavez's government.

Venezuela's foreign ministry on Thursday protested Palmer's statements as "interference and interventionism" and asked the United States for an explanation before he was confirmed in his post.

Palmer "can't come here as ambassador," said Chavez. "He disqualified himself by breaking all the rules of diplomacy. He messed with all of us. He can't come here."

"The best thing the United States government can do is to look for another candidate," for ambassador to Venezuela, he added.

The US government has said it shares Palmer's concerns about Venezuela, but denied it was interfering in Venezuela's internal affairs.

In its annual report on terrorism, the US State Department on Thursday said anti-terrorist cooperation with Venezuela had dropped to a minimum and that Venezuela's alleged support to Colombia's leftist FARC guerrillas was still uncertain.

Palmer, in his written response, offered the most detailed explanation yet of Washington's view of the presence of Colombian guerrillas in Venezuela, an issue that Bogota and Caracas have been quarreling over.

He said the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) "maintain camps in Venezuela, and members of the FARC high command have occasionally appeared in public in Caracas."

"The Venezuelan government has been unwilling to prevent Colombian guerrillas from entering and establishing camps in Venezuelan territory," Palmer added.

Chavez on July 22 broke off diplomatic relations with Colombia and reinforced its military presence at the border.

Since the inauguration of Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos on Saturday, however, both countries have made overtures and said they are prepared to talk to resume normal relations.

“Transit facility to India will benefit Bangladesh”

2010-08-09T05:26:00.000-07:00

India will get access to its landlocked seven north-eastern States through Bangladesh, Bangladesh Foreign Minister Dipu Moni has said.

“Unfettered movement of people and goods will be taking place,” she said at a press conference here on Sunday, a day after the visit of Indian Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee.

Dhaka was thinking about transforming Bangladesh into a regional hub. “When the entire region will be brought under connectivity, India will surely have access to its north-eastern States.”

Rejecting the Opposition's criticism, Ms. Moni said the transit facility given to India would bring economic benefits to Bangladesh too. “We cannot remain isolated for long.”

Asked whether the projects lined up for implementation with the $1-billion credit from India would only serve Indian interests, she said: “We need to come out of the anti-India mindset.” “If connectivity is in place, all will get the benefit. It will be a win-win situation.”

She also urged the Opposition to shed the “negative thinking” that road and port development would only benefit India. Improved rail links would benefit both Bangladesh and India's eastern region.

Ms. Moni said that not only trucks from Nepal would have access to the Banglabandha land port in Bangladesh; Bangladeshi trucks would also have access to Nepal through India. This would be done through an exchange of letters, instead of any protocol.

Cross-boundary tracks

Dhaka had given its consent for laying the cross-boundary rail tracks. “Yes, people from West Bengal will be able to reach the northeast. We will also be able to go to the northeast directly,” she said in answer to a question whether the proposed railway projects would enable the Indian nationals to reach the north-east through Bangladesh.

“We are working to ensure free flow of people and products in the whole region, including Bhutan and Nepal.”

Medvedev pledges all-round assistance to Abkhazia

2010-08-09T05:22:00.001-07:00

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev reasserted Moscow's strong hold on Georgia's breakaway territories, visiting Abkhazia on the second anniversary of the Russia-Georgia war and pledging all-round assistance to strengthen the region's independence from Georgia.

“We will develop good-neighbourly relations with Abkhazia in the political, economic and security spheres,” Mr. Medvedev said on Sunday during his first visit to Abkhazia since Russia recognised the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia after foiling Georgia's August 8, 2008 armed attempt to win back control of the separatist regions. Mr. Medvedev said Russia's decision to recognise the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia was “painful” but proved to be the “right decision over time” that averted “a protracted bloody conflict”.

The Russian leader's trip to Abkhazia was a high-profile demonstration of Moscow's defiance of Western demands for undoing the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. During her visit to Georgia last month U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton accused Russia of “invasion” and “occupation” of Georgian territories two years ago and demanded Russian withdrawal from the region.

Mr. Medvedev made it clear that Russia had come to stay. Visiting a newly built Russian military base in Abkhazia he said that Russian military presence helped “prevent certain extremist forces… from sowing enmity and hatred and committing bloodshed”.

In a statement on the anniversary of the 2008 war, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, who two years ago ordered his army to attack South Ossetia, vowed to continue the fight against “Russian aggression”.

“We will carry on our struggle to the end and will free Georgia,” said Mr. Saakashvili.

$1 billion loan from India suicidal: Khaleda Zia

2010-08-09T05:20:00.001-07:00

Bangladesh's opposition leader Khaleda Zia has termed as "suicidal" the $1 billion deal the government signed with India's Exim Bank last Saturday.

The Sheikh Hasina government has rejected the charge.

"There was no need to borrow the amount from India now. People will have to shoulder the burden," Zia was quoted as saying by New Age newspaper on Monday.

Zia, who is the Bangladesh Nationalist Party's chairperson, called the deal suicidal.

BNP has alleged that the interest on the loan Bangladesh would have to pay would be "seven times higher than the international rates".

The interest rate is 1.75% for a 20 year loan that carries a five-year grace period for repayment.

Rejecting the charge, foreign minister Dipu Moni said: "When they (BNP) are in power they follow a policy of pleasing India, and when they are in opposition they are vocal against India."

"The opposition is not finding any issue for politicking now, so they are launching pointless campaigns."

In an editorial on Monday, The Daily Star said that "the interest rate in the commercial category is considered to be rather moderate".

Responding to the BNP's demand that multilateral financing agencies could be approached, the editorial said that soft-term loans with only a service charge are usually difficult to obtain, particularly in the present global financial climate.

"It is not the amount of loan that is so important as the definitive stimulus being provided to a massive undertaking that both sides are obliged to fulfil so that the dividend that Bangladesh is looking for in terms of infrastructure development, removal of trade gaps, service charge revenues and wider regional connectivity are attained by it," the newspaper said.

The loan put "Indo-Bangladesh relations on a new, but potentially stronger footing".

China hits out at U.S. “double standards”

2010-08-09T05:18:00.001-07:00

Chinese strategic analysts have hit out at the United States' move to discuss a nuclear deal with Vietnam, which would reportedly involve sharing of nuclear fuel and technology and backing Vietnam's right to enrich its own fuel.

A leading Chinese strategic expert on nuclear policy and disarmament told The Hindu on Sunday that any move to allow Vietnam, which neighbours China, to enrich its own uranium would be “double standards” on the part of the U.S. and undermine U.S. efforts to strengthen the non-proliferation regime.

“If the U.S.-Vietnam nuclear deal is a copy of the U.S. deal with the United Arab Emirates, there is no fuss. But if it [involves] enrichment of spent fuel, that is the matter we worry about,” Zhai Dequan, the deputy secretary general of the China Arms Control and Disarmament Association, told The Hindu in an interview.

“In theory, there is no abnormality for an NPT [Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty] member-country to make peaceful use of nuclear energy; what matters is the enrichment of the spent fuel,” he said. “Yet, if another ASEAN country, Myanmar, does the same, there would be accusations and pressure. This is called double standards.”

The U.S. is reportedly in “advanced discussions” with Vietnam on a deal that would facilitate the sharing of nuclear fuel and technologies, as well as preserve Hanoi's right to enrich its own fuel, the Wall Street Journal reported last week. The report has triggered concerns in China, coming against the backdrop of heightened tensions in relations between China and its Southeast Asian neighbours, including Vietnam, over long-pending territorial disputes over the South China Sea. At the ASEAN Regional Forum in Hanoi last month, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton angered Beijing by calling for a resolution of the dispute “without coercion”, and saying it was in the “national interest” of the U.S.

U.S.' regional ambition

The Foreign Ministry here described her remarks as “an attack on China.”

Mr. Zhai said the deal would likely be seen in China in the context of Ms. Clinton's remarks, which suggested a move by the U.S. to “internationalise” the South China Sea issue as well as expand its footprint in the region.

Like the U.S.-India civilian nuclear deal, this deal, too, has been perceived in China as part of a greater American “containment” strategy. “[The deal] means the U.S. is strengthening cooperation with Vietnam to contain China,” said Fan Jishe, a researcher of the Institute of American Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, in an interview with the official China Daily. “To Washington, the geo-strategic consideration has surpassed nuclear non-proliferation.”

The deal follows renewed debate over nuclear non-proliferation in recent months following China's announcement that it would set up two additional nuclear reactors in Chashma in Pakistan. The deal, analysts said, went against the mandated, but non-enforceable, guidelines of the Nuclear Suppliers Group, which bans the transfer of nuclear technology to non-NPT countries. Chinese analysts have, however, defended the deal, and denied that it would weaken the non-proliferation regime, arguing that the reactors would be placed under International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards.

Sri Lankan panel to start work

2010-08-09T05:16:00.000-07:00

The Commission on “Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation” constituted by Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa is scheduled to hold its first public sitting on August 11 here.

Besides six sittings here, it would have two sittings in Vavuniya district in the north this month.

The Commission has been appointed under Section 2 of the Commission of Inquiry Act to probe the incidents leading to the war between the LTTE and the security forces.

The Commission has been given the mandate to attend to the concerns and recommend measures to ensure that there will be no recurrence of such a situation in the interest of national unity and reconciliation among all communities.

According to an official statement issued here the eight-member Commission has had a few meetings earlier to discuss modalities of work and it was decided to hold sittings in the affected areas in the North and East to enable the public to have easy access to the Commission and enhance awareness of its work.

The Commission will inquire and report on facts and circumstances which led to the failure of the cease-fire agreement operationalised in February, 2002 and the sequence of events that followed thereafter up to the May, 2009 and whether any person, group or institution directly or indirectly bear responsibility in this regard.

It has been asked to report on the institutional, administrative and legislative measures which need to be taken in order to prevent any recurrence of such concerns in the future, and to promote further national unity and reconciliation among all communities in the island nation.

Nepal parliament to look into Indian Embassy 'threat'

2010-08-09T05:11:00.000-07:00

Nepal's Parliamentary Committee on Foreign Relations and Human Rights will look into the complaint by a Maoist MP that he was threatened by the Indian ambassador to Nepal and a senior consular official Tuesday when it has summoned Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal and Foreign Minister Sujata Koirala to discuss the issue.

The move came after Maoist lawmaker Ram Kumar Sharma lodged an official complaint at the parliament secretariat, urging the government to provide him with security. In his complaint, Shah has also urged action against a senior official of the Indian Embassy, Subrata Das, saying Das threatened him, which was tantamount to an attack on Nepal's sovereignty.

Sharma says he was pressured by the official as well as the Indian ambassador, Rakesh Sood, for supporting Maoist chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda during the prime ministerial elections. In 2008, Sharma had won the election from the Terai Madhes Loktantrik party, and claimed to have had good relations with the embassy. However, he told TNN the ties soured after he joined the Maoists about 13 months ago.

"Das warned me my daughter would be made to leave Kendriya Vidyalaya and that I would be abducted," Sharma told TNN.

"He also abused me after accusing me of helping the Maoists buy MPs during last Friday's election. When the ambassador called me, I had the feeling that he knew about the threats made about expelling my daughter."

While the Indian ambassador is currently in Myanmar, the embassy has declined to comment on Sharma's accusations, calling them "baseless".

"The response smacks of arrogance," Sharma said. "If the embassy had said it regretted the furore and would investigate the allegations and take action accordingly, it would have been more diplomatic and acceptable. Things like this are bound to affect Nepal-India relations."

கல்லெறிதலுக்கு முற்றுப்புள்ளி எப்போது?

2010-08-08T00:16:00.000-07:00

காஸ்யப முனிவரின் பெயரால் காஷ்மீர் என பெயர் பெற்று, ஆதிசங்கரர் விஜயம் செய்த சாரதா பீடத்தின் அதிதேவதையாக உள்ள சரஸ்வதி தேவியின் இருப்பிடமாகத் திகழும் ஜம்மு - காஷ்மீர் இன்று இந்தியாவுக்கு பெருத்த சவாலாக எழுந்துள்ளது.

1947-ல் இந்தியா சுதந்திரம் பெற்றபோதே, காஷ்மீரை தன்னுடன் இணைத்துக் கொண்டுவிட வேண்டும் என நினைத்த பாகிஸ்தான், பழங்குடியினரைத் தூண்டிவிட்டு உள்ளே நுழையவைத்தது.

ஆனால், அந்த முயற்சியை இந்தியா முறியடித்தபோதும், அதன் பின்னர் 1965-லும், 1999-லும் மீண்டும் இந்தியாவுடன் போர் தொடுத்தது.

நமது வரைபடத்தில் நாம் பார்க்கும் காஷ்மீரில் 1,01,338 சதுர கி.மீ. பரப்பளவு மட்டுமே நம் வசம் உள்ளது. 85,846 சதுர கி.மீ. பாகிஸ்தான் ஆக்கிரமிப்பு காஷ்மீராகவும், 37,555 சதுர கி.மீ. பரப்பளவு சீனா வசமும் உள்ளது.

இப்போது நம் வசம் உள்ள காஷ்மீரிலும் கடும் சவால் எழுந்துள்ளது.

"சிரித்துக் கொண்டே பாகிஸ்தானைப் பெற்றோம்; போராடி ஹிந்துஸ்தானத்தைக் கைப்பற்றுவோம்' என தேசத்தைப் பிரித்தபோது பாகிஸ்தான் தலைவர்கள் கூறினார்கள். அந்தத் தலைவர்களின் கனவை மெய்ப்பிக்கும் வகையில் அவர்களது வழித்தோன்றல்கள் இந்தியாவில் கலவரத்தைத் தூண்டி வருகின்றனர்.

நேரடிப் போரில் வெல்ல முடியாது என்பதைப் புரிந்து கொண்ட பாகிஸ்தான், தனது உளவு அமைப்பான ஐ.எஸ்.ஐ.யின் மூலம் கடந்த பல ஆண்டுகளாக காஷ்மீரில் பிரிவினைவாத சக்திகளுக்குத் தேவையான உதவிகளைச் செய்துவருகிறது.

தொடர்ந்து மாநிலத்தில் நிலவி வரும் பிரச்னை காரணமாக லட்சக்கணக்கான பண்டிட்டுகள் மாநிலத்தில் இருந்து அகதிகளாக நாட்டின் பல்வேறு பகுதிகளுக்குச் சென்றுவிட்டனர்.

இப்போது, புதிய உத்தியாக மக்களைத் தூண்டிவிட்டு பாதுகாப்புப் படையினர் மீது கல்லெறிய வைக்கின்றனர். முதலில் இளைஞர்கள் மட்டும்தான் கல்லெறிதலில் ஈடுபட்டனர். அடுத்து பெண்களும், முதியவர்களும் கூட இந்த கல்லெறிதலில் ஈடுபடத் தொடங்கியுள்ளனர்.

மக்களுக்கு இடையே பயங்கரவாதிகள் சிலர் புகுந்து கொண்டு பாதுகாப்புப் படையினரை நோக்கிச் சுடுகின்றனர். தற்காப்புக்காக பாதுகாப்புப் படையினர் சுடுவதில் சிலர் உயிரிழக்கும்போது நிலைமை இன்னும் உணர்ச்சிகரமானதாக ஆகிவிடுகிறது.

இதுபோதாதென்று பாதுகாப்புப் படையினரின் முகாம்களைத் தாக்கி தீவைத்துக் கொளுத்துவதிலும் இவர்கள் ஈடுபடுகின்றனர்.

நிலைமை எந்த அளவுக்கு விபரீதமாகி இருக்கிறது என்றால் சையத் அலி ஷா ஜீலானி தலைமையிலான ஹுரியத் அமைப்பு, ஞாயிற்றுக்கிழமையை வேலைநாளாகவும், வெள்ளிக்கிழமையை விடுமுறை நாளாகவும் அறிவித்துள்ளது.

அத்துடன், இந்திய அரசாங்கத்துக்கு ஒத்துழைக்காதவண்ணம் ஜூலை 28 முதல் பொதுமக்கள் யாரும் மின் கட்டணம், விற்பனை வரி, தண்ணீர் வரி ஆகியவற்றை கட்ட மறுக்க வேண்டும் என ஹுரியத் அமைப்பு கேட்டுக் கொண்டுள்ளது.

காஷ்மீர் பல்கலைக்கழகமும், பாரத ஸ்டேட் வங்கியும் ஜூன் 25-ம் தேதி செயல்பட்டுள்ளன என்பதைப் பார்க்கும்போது அங்கு அரசாங்கம் என்று ஒன்று உள்ளதா என்பதே கேள்விக்குறியாகி உள்ளது.

ஏன் இந்த நிலை? எந்தவொரு போராட்டமுமே திடீரென ஒரே நாளில் உருவாவதில்லை. அதுவும் காஷ்மீர் பிரச்னை கடந்த 60 ஆண்டுகளுக்கும் மேலாக நீடித்து வருகிறது.

ஆனால், மக்கள் இந்த அளவுக்கு இந்திய எதிர்ப்புணர்வை வெளிப்படுத்துவார்கள் என்பதைக் கணிக்க உளவு அமைப்பு தவறிவிட்டது என்றே சொல்ல வேண்டும்.

ஏழ்மையின் காரணமாகவும், வேலையில்லாத் திண்டாட்டத்தின் காரணமாகவும்தான் மக்கள் இதுபோன்ற வன்முறையில் இறங்கியுள்ளனர் என்றும் அதனால் அதற்குரிய சில திட்டங்களை அறிவிக்க வேண்டும் என்றும் மத்திய அரசு முடிவு செய்துள்ளதாக பத்திரிகைச் செய்திகள் கூறுகின்றன.

இப் பிரச்னைக்கு வேலையில்லாத் திண்டாட்டம் என்ற காரணத்தில் முழு உண்மையில்லை. அதுதான் உண்மையென்றால் நமது நாட்டில் வறுமைக் கோட்டுக்குக் கீழ் வாழும் சுமார் 50 கோடி பேர் தினசரி கல்லெறிதலிலோ, துப்பாக்கியைத் தூக்குவதிலோ ஈடுபட்டிருக்க வேண்டும்.

அது காஷ்மீராக இருந்தாலும் சரி, மாவோயிஸ்டுகளாக இருந்தாலும் சரி, மக்களை சிலர் தூண்டி விடுகிறார்கள். எல்லாப் பகுதிகளிலும் சீரான வளர்ச்சிப் பணிக்கு திட்டமிடும் அதே நேரத்தில் தூண்டிவிடுபவர்களை அடையாளம் கண்டு தனிமைப்படுத்துவது அவசியம்.

பிரிவினையின்போது பாகிஸ்தான் சென்றவர்கள் படும் துன்பங்களையும், இந்தியாவுடன் இருப்பதே நன்மை பயக்கும் என்பதையும், இந்தியப் பற்று உள்ள உள்ளூர் தலைவர்கள் மூலம் மக்களுக்குப் புரியவைக்கும் வகையில் மத்திய அரசின் நடவடிக்கைகள் அமைய வேண்டும்.

எந்த விலை கொடுத்தும் காஷ்மீரை நாம் தக்கவைத்துக் கொள்வோம் என்பதை பிரிவினைவாதத் தலைவர்களுக்கு அரசு உணர்த்த வேண்டும்.

பாகிஸ்தானைப் பிரித்துக் கொடுத்ததால் பிரச்னை தீரும் என நினைத்தே தேசம் பிரிக்கப்பட்டது. அதனால், கடந்த 63 ஆண்டுகளாக காஷ்மீரில் கலவரம், மும்பைத் தாக்குதல், நாட்டின் பல இடங்களில் வெடிகுண்டு தாக்குதல் என தொடர் பிரச்னைகளை சந்தித்து வருகிறோம்.

காஷ்மீர் நம் கையை விட்டுப் போனால், அடுத்து மேற்கு வங்கத்துக்கும், அசாமுக்கும் குறிவைக்கப்படும். அதற்கான பணிகளை ஏற்கெனவே பாகிஸ்தானும், வங்கதேசமும் தொடங்கிவிட்டன.

மேற்கு வங்கத்திலும், அசாமிலும் லட்சக்கணக்கானோர் இரு தேசங்களிலும் இருந்து ஊடுருவியுள்ளனர். அவர்களை வெளியேற்ற வேண்டும் என உச்ச நீதிமன்றம் அறிவுறுத்தியும் கூட அவர்களை வெளியேற்ற முடியவில்லை. காரணம் இரு மாநிலங்களிலும் ஊடுருவியவர்களை ஓட்டு வங்கியாகக் கருதி, அவர்களுக்கு ரேஷன் அட்டை உள்பட சகல வசதிகளையும் இரு மாநில அரசுகளும் செய்து கொடுத்துவிட்டன. 1947-ல் ஆந்திர மாநிலம், ஹைதராபாதில் ரசாக்கர்கள் எனப்படுவோர் பாகிஸ்தானுடன் சேரப் போவதாக முரண்டு பிடித்தபோது, ராணுவத்தை அனுப்பி தனது உறுதியான நடவடிக்கை மூலம் அவர்களை அப்போதைய உள்துறை அமைச்சர் சர்தார் வல்லபபாய் படேல் பணியவைத்தார்.

அதுபோன்ற துணிவான, சாதுர்யமான நடவடிக்கையால் காஷ்மீரைக் காப்பாற்றுவதன் மூலம்தான் பாகிஸ்தானுக்கு உரிய பதிலை நாம் தர முடியும். செய்யுமா மத்திய அரசு?

இலங்கையில் மனித உரிமை மீறல்: சர்வதேச மூத்த குடிமக்கள் குழு கவலை

2010-08-08T00:11:00.001-07:00

இலங்கையில் உள்நாட்டுப் போர் என்ற போர்வையில் தமிழர்களை சிறுபான்மை சமுதாயமாக சுருக்கிவிட்டது இலங்கை அரசு என்று சர்வதேச மூத்த குடிமக்கள் குற்றம் சாட்டியுள்ளனர். ஆனால் இந்த பிரச்னை இதுவரை கண்டு கொள்ளப்படவேயில்லை என்று அவர்கள் குறிப்பிட்டனர்.

சர்வதேச மூத்த குடிமக்கள் குழுவில் தென்னாப்பிரிக்க முன்னாள் அதிபர் நெல்சன் மண்டேலா, அமெரிக்க முன்னாள் அதிபர் ஜிம்மி கார்ட்டர், ஐக்கிய நாடுகள் சபையின் முன்னாள் பொதுச் செயலர் கோபி அன்னான், நோபல் பரிசு பெற்ற தென்னாப்பிரிக்க பாதிரியார் டெஸ்மான்ட் டுட்டூ ஆகியோர் இடம்பெற்றுள்ளனர். இக்குழு 2007-ம் ஆண்டில் உருவாக்கப்பட்டது.

இலங்கையில் நடந்துள்ள இனப் படுகொலையை சர்வதேச சமூகம் குறிப்பாக சீனா, இந்தியா ஆகிய நாடுகள் கண்டுகொள்ளாமல் விட்டுவிட்டன என்றும் அவர்கள் குறிப்பிட்டனர்.

இலங்கையின் இந்த செயல்பாடு குறித்து சர்வதேச சமூகம் எவ்வித கருத்தும் தெரிவிக்காமல் உள்ளது. இதற்காகவே இலங்கை அரசு தனக்கு சாதகமான நாடுகள் மூலம் கருத்து தெரிவிக்காமல் தடுத்துவிட்டது என்றும் அவர்கள் சுட்டிக் காட்டியுள்ளனர்.

மனித உரிமை மீறல் விஷயத்தில் சர்வதேச சமூகம் தனது அணுகுமுறையில் பாரபட்சமாக இருக்கக் கூடாது. இலங்கை அரசின் செயல்பாடு சர்வதேச அளவில் அமைதி மற்றும் பாதுகாப்புக்கு மிகப்பெரும் அச்சுறுத்தலாகும்.

கடந்த ஆண்டு இலங்கை அரசு, தனி நாடு கோரி போராடி வந்த விடுதலைப் புலிகள் அமைப்பை முற்றிலுமாக அழித்தது. அப்போது போர் காலத்தில் கடைப்பிடிக்கப்படும் நெருக்கடி நிலை விதிகளை ஓராண்டுக்குப் பிறகும் இலங்கை அரசு பின்பற்றுகிறது. 30 ஆண்டுகளாக நடைபெற்று வந்த உள்நாட்டுப் போருக்கு முற்றுப்புள்ளி வைக்கும் விதமாக தமிழர்களை சிறுபான்மை சமூகமாக ஒடுக்கும் முயற்சியில் இலங்கை ஈடுபட்டுள்ளது என்றும் குற்றம் சாட்டியுள்ளனர்.

போரினால் பாதிக்கப்பட்டவர்களுக்கு உரிய நிவாரணம் அளிக்க வேண்டும் என்பதில் இலங்கை அரசு முனைப்புடன் செயல்பட வேண்டும். இப்போதும் அங்கு மனித உரிமை மீறல், பத்திரிகையாளர்களுக்கு தடை உள்ளிட்ட நடவடிக்கைகள் மிகவும் அபாயகரமானவை என்று டுட்டூ குறிப்பிட்டுள்ளார்.

இதற்கு முன்னர் இலங்கையில் நடைபெற்ற மனித உரிமை மீறல் குறித்து சர்வதேச குழு ஓரளவு தகவல்களை வெளியிட்டிருந்தது. ஐக்கிய நாடுகள் சபை பொதுச் செயலர் அமைத்துள்ள குழுவுக்கு இலங்கை அரசு ஒத்துழைப்பு அளிக்க வேண்டும் என்று மூத்த குடிமக்கள் குழு வலியுறுத்தியுள்ளது. அதேபோல உள்ளூர் மற்றும் சர்வதேச தன்னார்வ தொண்டு நிறுவனங்களுக்கு அனுமதி அளிக்க வேண்டும். இதற்காக எவ்வித கட்டுப்பாடும் விதிக்கக் கூடாது என்று கேட்டுக் கொண்டுள்ளனர்.

காலனி ஆதிக்கத்துக்கு எதிராக போராடிய மூன்றாம் உலக நாடுகளில் இலங்கையும் ஒன்று. இங்கு மனித உரிமை மீறல் நடைபெறுவதை ஏற்க இயலாது.

இதை இலங்கையின் நட்பு நாடுகள் உணர்ந்து அங்கு அமைதி நிலவ முயற்சி எடுப்பதோடு மீண்டும் ஒரு உள்நாட்டு போர் ஏற்பட வழிவகுத்துவிடாமல் தடுக்க வேண்டும் என்று அல்ஜீரியாவின் முன்னாள் வெளியுறவு அமைச்சர் லக்தார் பிராமி கூறினார்.

Inflation a major worry for policy makers

2010-08-05T01:52:00.000-07:00

In its recent review of monetary policy, the Reserve Bank of India has listed high inflation as its foremost concern. Even as food price inflation and, more generally, consumer price inflation are showing some moderation, they are still in double digits. Non-food inflation is on the rise and demand side pressures are clearly evident.

Economic growth, however, is getting consolidated fast in India and is becoming broad-based. In fact there are increasing concerns over capacity constraints emerging in a wide range of sectors. The RBI puts it succinctly: “With growth taking firm hold, the balance of policy stance has to shift decisively to containing inflation and anchoring inflationary expectations.'' Amplifying that policy stance, the RBI makes the following points.

WPI inflation has been in double digits since February. Headline inflation was 10.6 per cent in June 2010. This was higher than the 10.2 per cent recorded in May. Inflation figures for March and April were revised upwards. There is a strong possibility that the revised data for May and June will reveal higher inflation than earlier estimates showed.

Second, price rise in primary food articles continues to be in double digits. Non-food manufactured products inflation (which has a substantial 52.2 per cent weight) has risen from (-) 0.4 per cent to 7.3 per cent. Non-food items inflation (WPI excluding food products and food articles), which was near zero in November 2009, rose sharply to 10.6 per cent in June. Significantly non-food items contributed over 70 per cent to WPI inflation. This suggests that inflation has become much more generalised.

Baseline projection

Three, despite some moderation, consumer price inflation remains in double digits. The central bank's baseline projection for WPI inflation for March 2011 has been raised to 6 per cent from the 5.5 per cent indicated in the April policy statement. A number of developments since April have influenced the RBI. There has been an increase in prices of many administered/regulated items. Petroleum products, for long subject to administered prices, have been partially deregulated. The immediate impact will be about one percentage point rise in WPI inflation, assuming global oil prices remain stable.

The near term outlook for inflation will be conditioned by a number of factors. The spatial and temporal distribution of rainfall in the remaining period of the south-west monsoon is one critical factor. A good kharif harvest will dampen inflation over the short-term. Other important factors that have a bearing on inflation are the levels of oil and other commodity prices globally. Idle global capacity in a number of sectors can facilitate imports at competitive prices. However, strong growth in India has pushed up demand side pressures.

Growth revised to 8.5 %

The RBI has revised its growth projection for the current year to 8.5 per cent, up from the 8 per cent with an upward bias indicated in the April policy statement. This is in line with all recent official forecasts. The Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council had just a few days earlier forecast an identical growth rate. According to the RBI, the main risks to growth will emanate from abroad. With weak recovery in the industrialised countries, the performance of countries such as India will be affected. A more significant risk is from a potential slowdown in capital inflows. India's current account deficit has widened. Robust domestic growth drivers have pushed up imports widening the trade deficit.

Capital inflows have played a crucial role in the balance of payments. If due to increased risk aversion capital inflows decline the comfortable buffer between inflows and current account deficit will be narrowed. Lower inflows may also constrain domestic investment, which is critical to achieving and sustaining high growth rates.

On the other hand, given that central banks in the advanced economies are likely to continue with accommodative monetary policies, flows to emerging markets in search of higher return may increase. Large capital inflows beyond the absorptive capacity of the domestic economy will however pose a challenge for monetary and exchange rate management.

As China greys, India set to become world's growth engine

2010-07-29T02:04:00.000-07:00

If it was India's $35 computer that was splashed in Canadian news last week, now it is the country's relentless growth story that's making headlines here.

Writing under the headline "Meet the world's next growth engine", the National Post daily Wednesday said that while the rest of the world grapples with the consequences of declining birth rates and mass retirements from workforces, India is set to reap benefits of demographic bulge.

Though India's planners have a tough job on their hands of creating infrastructure and jobs and providing education to keep the momentum of growth, the rest of the world needs to ready itself for an era of relentless Indian expansion, the newspaper said.

"The potential is huge and it will happen... these things will happen, and they will transform us," the paper quoted Joseph Caron, former Canadian high commissioner in India, as saying.

While China is set to grey even before getting rich because of its one-child policy, India, on the other hand, has youth on its side, the paper said.

"By 2020, it will add an additional 110 million people to its working ranks, the single largest increase in the global labour force," the paper said, quoting a Goldman Sachs report released Wednesday.

Though its demographic dividend is arriving 20 years after its peers in East Asia because of more gradual declines in its death and birth rates, India is now prepared to cash in on that dividend, the paper said.

According to the Goldman Sachs report, demographics alone would contribute four percent of annual growth in India for the next 20 years.

Based the country's last year's GDP of $1.2 trillion, this projection amounts to almost $50 billion in the first year alone, compounding thereafter.

But India's planners have a lot of work to do to make that potential a reality, the paper said, adding that creating jobs required to absorb its new workers is their major challenge.

"Typically, countries go from an agricultural base, then into manufacturing and then services. India, to some extent, has skipped the bit in the middle," said Kevin Grice, senior international economist at Capital Economics in London.

Compared to 57 percent workforce employed in agriculture, only 19 percent is employed in India's manufacturing/industry sector. Industry has to ramp up its share to sustain growth, the paper said.

"The demographic dividend is one side of the coin; it can be a great disaster if people aren't educated to meet the needs of the growing economy," the newspaper quoted former high commissioner Caron as warning Indian planners.

Water wars: India, China & the Great Thirst

2010-07-29T01:40:00.000-07:00

Countries might wage wars over oil but the most valuable resource in the world is water. It’s the new oil, the colourless gold that’s at a premium because it is becoming scarce.

Today’s nightmare is that tomorrow the glass will be empty because water supplies are fast evaporating on account of population pressures, urbanization and now, climate change. No country is likely to be left untouched, but the great thirst will be felt the most in the region that has the world’s two most populous countries — India and China.

A new study says the situation will be the bleakest in the basins of major Himalayan rivers, ie our own backyards. The study by the Strategic Foresight Group (SFG), Mumbai is titled ‘The Himalayan Challenge’ and frighteningly predicts that “in the next 20 years, the four countries in the Himalayan sub-region (India, Nepal, China, Bangladesh) will face the depletion of almost 275 billion cubic metres of annual renewable water. For comparison, this is more than the total amount of water available in...Nepal at present.”

But why must this region run dry? It is fed by major rivers such as the Yangtze, Indus, Ganges and the Brahmaputra. But the problem is all of them originate in the Tibetan Plateau and will be badly affected by melting glaciers. The report says it may all end very badly because a water deficit will have a cumulative, destructive effect on agricultural production, power generation, food availability and livelihood, forcing all four countries in the sub-region to try and secure water resources. They may even look beyond their borders, leading to geo-political tension.

The point here is interesting. There are global forums that deliberate on oil prices and availability, but disputes over water are generally handled regionally or bilaterally. Sundeep Waslekar, executive director of the SFG laments the basic truth that “there are no global treaties on water. Only 17 nations (which don’t include the four aforementioned) have signed the UN convention on non-navigational uses of international water courses, 1997 (which provides a mechanism to deal with trans-border waters).”

India has bilateral agreements on water. Treaties with Nepal and Bangladesh cover development of the Mahakali river and sharing the waters of the Ganga. But New Delhi has nothing like that with Beijing. If today’s legal and policy architecture were used to deal with any future water dispute, India and China would have nothing more to look to than a couple of MoUs on sharing flood-season hydrological data on the Yarlong Tsangpo/Brahmaputra and the Sutlej/Langquin Zangbu rivers. Former water secretary Ramaswamy Iyer agrees that there is a chasm where there should be formal agreement. Until some years ago, water did not even figure in talks between India and China, he points out.

Retired Colonel P K Gautam, research fellow at the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, adds that “if China builds a dam on the Brahmaputra now, and we complain about lesser water flows later, it could say that India doesn’t have any projects in the northeast.”

Add to this the current problem of massive water shortages in both countries. This could force both India and China to “securitize” water sources and lead to tension. India is already worried about China’s reported plans to construct a massive 40,000 MW dam at the point where the Brahmaputra takes a U-bend to enter India. Delhi is also concerned about Beijing planning to divert Brahmaputra waters towards China’s arid north.

But B G Verghese, visiting professor at the Centre for Policy Research, says fears about the diversion of water are “highly exaggerated” because the difficult terrain makes it all but impossible to do this.

Waslekar agrees, but says that’s a reprieve that will only last 15 years at the most. He says it could be a window of opportunity, especially as “China’s attitude has changed a little bit, especially towards the Mekong river basin on which it had earlier refused to share data with other affected nations. ... it is showing some kind of openness.” So should India try and make joint plans with China for hydropower development and setting up stations in glacial areas to monitor their melting?

Yes, says Gautam. “India should negotiate with China. We need data on the quantum of water flow in the Brahmaputra, on the melting of glaciers.”

The SFG report suggests creating a new regional forum, say a Himalayan rivers commission, to better manage the looming water problem. But like much else, that’s difficult in a region dominated by the trust deficit between countries. The key lies in doing something before the rivers run dry and the taps as well.

India-UK ink deal on 57 Hawk aircrafts

2010-07-29T01:32:00.000-07:00

Giving a boost to Indo-British defence ties, India today inked a 700 million pound (Rs 9,500 crore)-deal for purchase of an additional 57 Hawk Advanced Jet Trainer Aircraft from British Aerospace Systems (BAE).
This is the second tranche of the purchase by India since 2004 when it had finalised a deal to buy 66 HAWKs.
The signing ceremony was witnessed by visting British Prime Minister Mr David Cameron, Hindustan Aeronautics Limited chairman and managing director Mr Ashok Nayak and Karnataka minister for home Mr VS Acharya.
Of the 57 Hawks to be manufactured at HAL's facility, 40 would be inducted into IAF and 17 into the Navy, BAE System Managing Director & Chief Executive (India) Mr Andrew Gallagher told reporters.
This is the first time that the Indian Navy is getting HAWKs, he said.
The deal was signed by HAL Dierector, Corporate Planning P Sounder Rajan, BAE's Group Managing Director Guy Griffths and Rolls-Royce Sales and Commercial Director Mr Chris Awade.
Mr Awade said Rolls-Royce, which supplies engines to BAE sytems, would supply components to HAL which would produce engines for Hawks.
The terms of the contract were also inked today, he said.
Under the first deal which involved purchase of 66 Hawks, 24 are to be flown from BAE and the remaining 42 manufactured by HAL which has so far built 15 of them.
Indo-Britain commonality
India and Britain share a lot culturally including watching Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan and admiring master batsman Sachin Tendulkar, British Prime Minister Mr David Cameron said

நன்றாகத் தேர்வு எழுதுவது எப்படி?

2010-07-28T06:04:00.000-07:00

மாணவர்களுக்குத் தேர்வுபயம் போனால்தான் அவர்கள் ஓரளவு நன்றாகத் தேர்வு எழுத முடியும். தேர்வை எப்படி எழுதினால் நல்ல மதிப்பெண் கிடைக்கும் என்பதற்கான வழிமுறைகள் கீழே தரப்பட்டுள்ளன.

தேர்வுக்கு முதல்நாள் இரவு புதியதாக எதையும் படிப்பதோ, இரவு நீண்ட நேரம் படிப்பதோ கூடாது.

எடுத்த குறிப்புகளை அன்று காலையில் மீண்டும் நினைவுப்படுத்திப் பார்ப்பதுதான் சரியான முறை.

இரவில் நன்கு தூங்கி எழுந்து தேர்வுக்கு அமைதியான மனநிலையில் செல்வதுதான் அதிக மதிப்பெண் பெற உதவும்.

தேர்வுக்கு சிறிது நேரத்துக்கு முன் உங்கள் நண்பர்கள், அதைப் படித்தாயா? இதைப் படித்தாயா? என்று உங்கள் பயத்தை அதிகப்படுத்த முயற்சிக்கலாம். அதையெல்லாம் கண்டு கொள்ளாதீர்கள். அத்தகைய நண்பர்கள் பக்கமே போகாதீர்கள்.

தேர்வு அறையில் வினாத்தாள் வாங்குவதற்கு முன் 3 நிமிஷங்கள் "ரிலாக்ஸ்' செய்யுங்கள். இரண்டு அல்லது மூன்று முறை நன்றாக மூச்சை இழுத்துச் சிறிது சிறிதாக வெளியே விடுங்கள். மனத்தை உங்கள் மகிழ்ச்சியான அனுபவத்துக்கு இட்டுச் செல்லுங்கள்.

"என்னால் மிக நன்றாகத் தேர்வு எழுத முடியும். முழு நம்பிக்கை இருக்கிறது' என்று குறைந்தபட்சம் 5 முறையாவது உங்களுக்குள் சொல்லிக்கொள்ளுங்கள். இதற்காக 2 நிமிஷங்கள் செலவழிக்கலாம். கேள்வித்தாளை வாங்கிய உடன் 2 அல்லது 3 நிமிஷங்கள் ஒவ்வொரு பகுதிக்கும் எவ்வளவு நிமிஷங்கள் ஒதுக்குவது எனத் திட்டமிடுங்கள்.

குறைவாக எழுத வேண்டிய கேள்விகளுக்கு அதிகமாக எழுதியும் அதிகமாக எழுத வேண்டியவற்றுக்கு நேரம் இன்மையால் குறைவாகவும் எழுத வேண்டாம்.

அனைத்துக் கேள்விகளுக்கும் விடையளிப்பது முக்கியம்.

முழுவதும் எழுதிய பிறகு குறைந்தது 5 நிமிடங்களாவது எழுதியதைப் படித்துப் பார்க்க நேரம் வைத்துக்கொள்ள வேண்டும்.

விடைகளைப் பக்கம் பக்கமாக எழுதாமல் பாயிண்ட் பாயிண்ட்டாக சுருக்கமாக எழுத வேண்டும்.

எத்தனை வார்த்தைகளில் பதில் என்பதில் கட்டுப்பாடு அவசியம்.

கையெழுத்தைப் பிறர் புரியும்படி எழுத வேண்டும்.

கேள்வி எண், அதன் பகுதி எண் ஆகியவற்றைச் சரியாக எழுதுங்கள்.

ஓரிரு வார்த்தைகளில் பதில் கூற வேண்டியது, ஒரு செயலைச் சரியான பதிலாகத் தேர்ந்தெடுப்பது ஆகியவற்றில் வேகம் அவசியம். நன்கு தெரிந்த விடையை டக் டக் என்று தேர்வு செய்து எழுதுங்கள். தெளிவில்லாததைப் பிறகு பார்த்துக் கொள்ளலாம்.

ஒவ்வொரு தேர்வு முடிந்ததும் உங்கள் விடைத்தாளை ஆசிரியரிடம் காட்டி ஆலோசனை பெறுங்கள். விடைகளில் அவசியமில்லாத வார்த்தைகள் உள்ளனவா? எங்கு கவனக்குறைவால் தவறு ஏற்பட்டுள்ளது? ஒவ்வொரு பாயிண்ட்டுக்கும் அடிக்கோடு இட்டுள்ளீர்களா? குறைந்த நேரத்தில் எவ்வளவு சுருக்கமாக விடையளிக்கலாம்? என்பது குறித்து ஆசிரியரிடம் அறிவுரை கேளுங்கள்.

கேள்விகளுக்கு விடைகளை எழுதிப்பார்ப்பது அதிக மதிப்பெண் பெற உதவும். எந்த ஒரு காரியத்தையும் செய்து முடித்த பிறகு அதில் என்ன சிறப்பு, குறை என்ன என்று ஆராய்வது அக்காரியத்தை மீண்டும் சிறப்பாகச் செய்ய உதவும். இது ஓர் உளவியல் உத்தி.

நேர்முகத் தேர்வை எதிர்கொள்வது எப்படி?

2010-07-28T06:02:00.000-07:00

நீங்கள் வேலைக்கு எல்லா விதத்திலும் பொருத்தமானவர் என்று இண்டர்வியூ செய்பவர் தீர்மானிக்கும் விதத்தில் நீங்கள் உங்களைத் தயார் செய்து கொள்ள வேண்டும். அந்த அலுவலகத்தைப் பற்றிய விவரங்கள், சேவைகள், தொழிலாளர்களின் திறமை, நிதி நிலைமை, உற்பத்திப் பொருள்கள், ஆண்டு வருமானம், லாப நஷ்டங்கள், எதிர்கால விரிவுத் திட்டம், அவர்களுடைய போட்டியாளர்கள், அவர்களது செயல்முறைகள் போன்ற விஷயங்களை பற்றி முடிந்த அளவு விவரங்களைச் சேகரித்துக் கொள்ளவும்.

நேர்முகத் தேர்வு நடக்க உள்ள இடம், நேரம் பற்றி உறுதியாகத் தெரிந்து வைப்பதுடன், எப்படி சரியான நேரத்துக்குள் அங்கு போய்ச் சேர வேண்டும் என்பதையும் முன்னதாகத் தீர்மானம் செய்து வைத்துக் கொள்ளவும். நீங்கள் எடுத்துச் செல்ல வேண்டிய ஆவணங்களை (Certificates) முன்கூட்டியே தயாராக எடுத்து வைத்துக் கொள்ளவும்.

அவர்கள் கேட்கக்கூடியதாக உங்களுக்குத் தோன்றும் கேள்விகளையும், நீங்கள் அவர்களை கேட்க நினைப்பவை பற்றியும் ஒரு குறிப்பை முன்னதாகவே தயாரித்து வைத்துக் கொள்ளவும்.

நீங்கள்தான் தகுதியானவர் என்று நினைக்கும் வகையில் பதில் அளிக்கவும். உங்கள் கெüரவமான உடை (Dress) அமைப்பும், ஒழுங்குமுறையும் (Manners) உங்களைப் பற்றி சாதகமாக அவர்களுக்குத் தெரிவிக்கும்.

பளிச்சென்று சுத்தமான ஸ்மார்ட்டாகத் தோற்றமளிக்கும் உடையை அணிந்து செல்ல வேண்டும். ஒரு தேர்ச்சி பெற்ற நேர்முகத் தேர்வாளர், உங்கள் டிரஸ், பாடி லாங்குவேஜ், முகபாவனைகள் இவற்றை வைத்தே உங்கள் மனதையும், உங்களையும் நன்கு எடை போட்டு விடுவார்.

அதனால், நன்றாகக் கட்டுப்படுத்தப்பட்ட உடலசைவு, முக பாவனைகள் மூலம் எளிதில் உங்களை அவர் விரும்பக்கூடும். நீங்கள் அவரை வெற்றி கொள்ளலாம். நேர்மையாகவும், திறந்த மனதுடனும் இருங்கள். உள்ளே நுழையும்போதே சிநேக பாவத்துடனும் (Warm and Friendly) நம்பிக்கையுடனும் இருங்கள். கை குலுக்குவது, உங்களுடைய சிநேக பாவம், உற்சாகம், கவர்ச்சி போன்றவற்றைத் தெரிவிக்கும் என்பதை நினைவில் வையுங்கள். நேராக, உறுதியுடன், வலிமையாக கொடுக்கப்படும் கை குலுக்கல் உங்களைப் பற்றிய பாஸிடிவ் விவரங்களை அவர்களுக்குத் தெரிவிக்கும்.

நீங்கள் ஆசனத்தில் உட்காரும் விதத்திலிருந்து உங்களிடம் மறைந்து கிடக்கும் விவரங்களை அவர்கள் அறியக்கூடும். அதனால், உங்களுக்கு அளிக்கப்பட்ட ஆசனத்தில் நேராக நிமிர்ந்து அமரவும். உங்கள் கைகள் மடிமீது அல்லது ஆசனத்தின் கைகள் மீது இருக்கும்படி அமரவும். அமைதியாக, வசதியாக உட்காரவும். ரிலாக்ஸ் என்றால், வீட்டில் சோபாவில் அமருவது போல கால்கள் நீட்டி அமர்வது இல்லை. உங்கள் முழங்கால் இண்டர்வியூ செய்பவரை நோக்கி இருக்கட்டும். அது, நீங்கள் அவர்கள் மீது கவனமாக இருப்பதைக் காட்டும்.

அப்படி அமருவது கஷ்டமாக இருந்தால், உங்கள் கைகள் நீங்கள் சொல்வதைத் தொடர்வது போல இருக்கலாம். குறிப்பிட்ட பாயிண்டில் உங்களுடைய உறுதியான நம்பிக்கையை அது காட்டும். ஆனால், மார்புக்கு குறுக்காகக் கைகளைக் கட்டி அமர்ந்தால் உங்களுடைய பயம் மற்றும் எதிர்மறை எண்ணங்களை (Negative) பிரதிபலிக்கும்.

மூக்கைத் தொடுதல், கன்னத்தைத் தேய்த்தல், வேறு எங்கோ நோக்குதல் போன்றவை உங்களிடம் ஒருவித சந்தேகத்தை அவர்களுக்கு ஏற்படுத்தும். அவருடைய மேஜையில் உங்கள் கைகள், காகிதம், பைல்கள் மூலம் அதிகப்படி இடம் எடுத்துக் கொள்வதைத் தவிர்க்க வேண்டும்.

வார்த்தைகளைவிடக் கண்கள் அதிகம் பேசக் கூடியவை. தேர்வாளரை உங்கள் நிலையான, உண்மையான பார்வையால் சந்தியுங்கள். இடையே கண் இமைகளை மூட மறவாதீர்கள். அதற்காக, கண்களையே சிறிது நேரம் மூடுவது தவறு. வழக்கத்துக்கு அதிகமாகக் கண் சிமிட்டுதலும், அடிக்கடி இங்கும் அங்கும் நோக்குவதும், மிகக் குறைவாக அவருடைய கண்களைச் சந்திப்பதும் உங்களுடைய பலவீனம் (Weakness) மற்றும் குறைபாடுகளைக் குறிக்கும். அவரை நோக்குவதும் கண்கள் லெவலுக்கு கீழே செல்லக்கூடாது. பொதுவாக, பிடித்தமற்ற செய்கைகள், குறிப்புகளைத் தவிர்க்க வேண்டும்.

இண்டர்வியூ நேரம் முழுவதும் தைரியமாகவும், பாஸிடிவ் ஆகவும் இருங்கள். கேட்கப்படும் கேள்விகளுக்கு பொய் பேசாதீர்கள். குடும்ப விவரம் பற்றி சுருக்கமாகத் தெரிவியுங்கள். கடைசியாகத் தேர்வு செய்தவருக்கும், அந்த அலுவலகத்துக்கும் நன்றி கூறி விடை பெறவும். நிச்சயம் வெற்றி பெறுவீர்கள்.

Philippines to Sierra Leone is arc of Indian prosperity

2010-07-26T22:33:00.000-07:00

It isn't too much of a stretch to say that India is made up of many nations. A comparison of state-level and country-level data from the newly released multi-dimensional poverty index shows that while Kerala and Goa are at a similar level of development as 'middle-income countries' like Indonesia, Jharkhand and Bihar are similar to 'least-developed countries' like the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Earlier this month, the new MPI measure of poverty was released by the UK-based Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). The new measure attempts to go beyond income poverty to give a broader understanding of the many types of deprivation the poor may face. It is composed of ten weighted indicators that measure education, health and standard of living.

Researchers at the OPHI further analysed the MPI for Indian states and for sub-groups including scheduled castes and scheduled tribes among Hindus. A comparison of the MPIs for various Indian states with the MPIs of the 103 other developing countries in the report shows that the width of regional differences means that experiences within India may range from that of a reasonably well off Indonesian to that of a desperately poor Somalian.

The MPI for Kerala (0.065), the best-performing Indian state, is close to that of Paraguay and the Philippines, while that of Goa, the next best (0.094) is similar to that of Indonesia. Punjab's MPI is similar to that of the central American nation of Guatemala while Himachal Pradesh's is close to that of north African Morocco. Tamil Nadu, with an MPI of 0.141, ranks close to Ghana, the poster child for good governance among sub-Saharan countries. While the rest are designated as 'middle-income countries', Ghana ranks as a 'low income country'.

The north-eastern states, grouped together in the report, are at the same level of development as Haiti, already the poorest country in the Americas before the earthquake struck. West Bengal shares its MPI with the sub-Saharan Ivory Coast, Orissa with Chad and Rajasthan with Tanzania and Mauritania. The DRC and Rwanda, names synonymous with bloody conflict, have development indicators slightly worse than Madhya Pradesh, but better than Jharkhand and Bihar, the states at the bottom of the Indian report card.

Somalia, where 300,000 people died in a famine in the early 1990s, performs slightly worse than Bihar while Sierra Leone, the world's third worst performer on the Human Development Index, is at roughly the same level.

Interceptor missile hits the bull's eye

2010-07-26T22:32:00.000-07:00

India's plans to put in place the initial phase of a robust Ballistic Missile Defence (BMD) shield by 2012 received a big thrust on Monday, with a supersonic interceptor missile, Advanced Air Defence (AAD), bringing down an incoming “enemy” ballistic missile (a modified Prithvi) of 2,000 km range, at an altitude of 15 km over the Bay of Bengal.

The proposed twin-layered BMD system envisages interception and destruction of incoming enemy missiles in exo-atmosphere (altitude of 50-80 km) and endo-atmosphere (altitude up to 30 km).

While the first phase seeks to protect vital assets against enemy ballistic missiles of up to 2,000 km range, the second phase is intended to engage missiles of up to 5,000 km range.

Conducted by scientists of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), the Monday's test validated endo-atmospheric layer of interception, when the AAD achieved a kill of the Prithvi during the latter's terminal phase.

Five minutes after the lift-off of the target missile (Prithvi) from Chandipur, the interceptor blasted off from the Wheeler Island, 70 km away from Chandipur. The Long Range Tracking Radars located at Konark and the Multi-Functional Fire Control Radar at Paradip tracked the target missile and passed on the information to the Mission Control Centre, which classified the target, predicted the impact point and assigned the AAD battery to launch the interceptor.

As the target missile reached a height of 100 km and began its descent, the AAD missile, carrying a P-charge directional warhead (used for the first time in an Indian missile), travelled at a speed of 4.5 Mach and manoeuvred towards the target missile. Within a few metres of the modified Prithvi, the warhead exploded, releasing multiple bullet-like particles that destroyed the target missile, 26 seconds after its launch. The debris that fell into the sea was tracked by radars located along the coast.

The interception was witnessed by V.K. Saraswat, Scientific Advisor to the Defence Minister, Vice-Chief of the Air Staff P.K. Barbora, top Army officers and scientists from the DRDO laboratories.

Talking to TheHindu soon after the event, Dr. Saraswat congratulated the scientists. He said the BMD technologies were fast reaching maturity levels in terms of reliability and robustness. Many new technologies, including P-charge warhead, electro-mechanical actuators and ring-based gyro navigation system, were used to make the AAD more accurate and robust.

The first phase of the BMD shield would be operational in 2012 and the second phase in 2016, he added.

Equipping AAD with a directional warhead would enable the interceptor to engage and destroy an enemy missile from any direction, according to V.L. Narasimha Rao, programme director, Air Defence.

He said another interceptor missile test would be conducted in endo-atmosphere in three months.

Air Marshal Barbora, said the mission proved that the nation was at the doorstep of having a BMD umbrella, “which is required considering the environment.” He was extremely proud that the system would be operational in a short duration.

India to chart its own course on Myanmar ties

2010-07-26T22:31:00.001-07:00

India will not toe the Western line on Myanmar when it interacts with the head of the regime, Senior General Than Shwe, on Tuesday.

Opposed to sanctions that the West has imposed, India will take stock of the moves towards democracy and gently urge the Myanmar regime to move towards a more inclusive society although it is reconciled to the non-participation of jailed National League for Democracy (NLD) leader Aung San Suu Kyi in the coming general elections.

Having gained the Myanmar regime's confidence after engaging with it consistently for a decade, India is in no mood to sacrifice its national interests by adopting a stand identical to that taken by the West which neither shares an unruly border for thousands of kilometres nor the shared past of colonialism when the Burmese social structure was dismantled.

India will listen to the steps being taken by Myanmar to move towards a more inclusive society. Senior General Than Shwe, in his interaction with the Indian leadership, has always acquainted it with steps being taken by his government to ensure more broad-based participation in national governance. The Myanmar leader is expected to once again inform New Delhi of the steps being taken to introduce a more democratic society. India rues that the West lost an opportunity to gain Myanmar's confidence immediately after the deadly tropical cyclone Nargis hit the country in mid-2008. China was busy grappling with an equally devastating earthquake in its south-western parts during the same time. And Myanmar sensed this was a good opportunity to reach out to the world.

However, the U.S. packed its first relief convoy with Marines which immediately made the Myanmar regime suspicious of its intentions and prompted it to turn down the offer. In contrast, India received a different reception thanks to its “realistic attitude” which it wishes the West would adopt. Even though its medical teams were drawn from the military, they were allowed to venture deep into the country. And when supplies began running out and the teams began preparing to return home, the Myanmar government requested India to extend their stay.

In its recent confabulations with the U.S. and other countries, India has consistently told them that sanctions offered no solution. And the motive behind the sanctions — regime change — only made the Myanmar ruling regime more suspicious of the West's intentions.

It is not widely known but when Myanmar refused entry to the then U.N. Under-Secretary General for Political Affairs, Ibrahim Gambari, it was not the West's indignation but India's persuasion that allowed him to visit the country.

Moreover, Myanmar never had an inimical attitude towards India in terms of supporting insurgent groups despite Chin, Mizo and Kachin ethnic groups being spread on both sides of the border.

ISI still supports Taliban in Afghanistan, say leaked papers

2010-07-26T22:30:00.001-07:00

Pakistan's powerful ISI continues to support Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan, even as the United States pumped in billions as aid to its key ally in the war against terror, according to leaked intelligence documents.

The damning documents, titled ‘The War Logs,' suggest that ISI representatives meet directly with the Taliban to support militant groups that fight against American soldiers in Afghanistan and scheme to assassinate Afghan leaders, the New York Times reported.

It also revealed that there were hundreds of unreported civilian killings by coalition forces in the war-torn country. These are part of a massive 92,000 documents leaked by web whistle-blower site WikiLeaks.

Some of the reports among the leaked documents also described Pakistani intelligence working alongside the Al-Qaeda to plan attacks, but experts warned that directly linking the ISI with the Al-Qaeda was tenuous.

“American intelligence learned that the Haqqani network sent bombers at the ISI's behest to strike Indian officials, development workers and engineers in Afghanistan,” it said. The leaked documents also indicated that ISI officers had made efforts to run the networks of suicide bombers starting from 2006 — the threat, however, does not appear to have materialised.