mains2007

The assassination

 

The ongoing row over the manner in which Benazir was killed is pointless. The fact that an armed assailant was able to have such close access to her exposes the huge security lapse. I wonder why the Pakistan government is making statements that are going to be of no help to it.

Meenakshi Alagesan,

Karaikudi

 

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Islamabad’s claim that Benazir died not of bullet injuries but of hitting her head against the sunroof of her vehicle is ridiculous. Until a world body extramural to Pakistan is appointed to probe the real cause of the killing, the incident will in perpetuity remain a whodunit.

H. Narayanan,

New Delhi

 

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Why did the Pakistan government fail to provide Benazir an adequate security cover? President Pervez Musharraf is certainly in for hard times as international and domestic pressure increases on him and Pakistan sinks into chaos.

Anuj Surana,

Chennai

 

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Television footage and pictures in the print media are an obvious pointer to the government’s apathy towards Benazir’s security. The presence of an armed assassin and a suicide bomber within a few metres of her car exposes a huge chink in the security armour. The very tragic and shameful incident has definitely put President Musharraf, darling of George W. Bush, under the scanner.

Md. Shad Jamal,

Puducherry

 

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There is a remarkable coincidence between the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi and Benazir Bhutto. Both were assassinated before the elections (while campaigning) just as it appeared that they were on the threshold of being elected to power again. Both were former Prime Ministers, wards of former Prime Ministers who died unnatural deaths, and hailed from prominent political families.

S. Meiyappan,

Chennai

Subcontinent politics

 

The appointment of Bilawal Bhutto Zardari as PPP chairman is an emotional, distress reaction, often witnessed in the subcontinent which proves that the region is yet to mature as a democracy. Politics in South Asia still remains personality, not programme, oriented. There are a few political parties in India like the Left and the BJP which have not succumbed to family-centric politics so far. By making a teenager head the biggest political party in Pakistan, which is supposed to be the second most dangerous territory after Iraq, the PPP leaders are not doing any good to the bereaved family of Benazir Bhutto or the people of Pakistan.

Rettavayal S. Krishnaswamy,

Chennai

 

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The PPP’s decision shows that major political parties in the subcontinent prefer familial succession to a truly democratically-elected leader. Several parties in India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Pakistan squander away every opportunity to do away with the practice of dynastic succession in the event of a vacuum caused by the exit of a popular leader. This practice will not foster true democratic values in the parties. It is difficult to comprehend how they can convince the electorate of their commitment to democratic values.

P. Prasand Thampy,

Thiruvalla

 

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The appointment of a political novice as party chairman, overlooking other senior members, smacks of sycophancy. Even more ridiculous is the disclosure that Benazir wrote a political will saying her husband should succeed her as party leader. The principle of democracy stands negated when political leaders begin to treat their parties as their own property and fail to recognise the people who have toiled for years. A part of the blame is also due to the senior leaders themselves, who seek to ride the sympathy wave, generated by their leaders’ assassination, to power.

C.P. Prasanth Gopal,

Chennai

 

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Besides adding to the list of tragic end of leaders in the Nehru-Gandhi and Bhutto families, Benazir’s assassination has exposed the harsh political realities prevalent in India and Pakistan. The PPP and the Congress have both been unable to look beyond the families of its leaders. In both the cases, the individual became the face of the party to its countrymen.

Both the parties did not develop second-rung leaders who could assume leadership on merit. After losing Benazir in tragic circumstances, the PPP is forcing the leadership on her son because he has the famous Bhutto surname. The Congress and the PPP need to understand that individuals and a family name do not make a party.

Krishna Kumar,

Ahmedabad

 

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Bilawal’s appointment has sent the message that in South Asian countries such as India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan, top political posts rest heavily on family legacy. The tendency does not augur well for healthy politics.

Jetling Yellosa,

Warangal

 

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In her will, Benazir nominated her husband to succeed her as PPP leader. When alive, she assumed the title of the party’s chairperson for life. When she could not run even her party democratically, how can anyone describe her as a great democrat? Her death is certainly tragic but let us not become emotional and describe her in terms that she does not deserve, given that she ran one of the most corrupt governments in Pakistan.

Mohd. Salahuddin,

Mumbai

 

* * *

 

After all the eulogies showered on Benazir as a champion of democracy, her will came as an anti-climax. The anointment of her teenage son as PPP leader, with no role for the party’s rank and file, is a negation of democracy and a clear evidence of the grip that political dynasties have on our destinies in the subcontinent, be it in politics, movies or any other aspect of our lives.

M. Rao,

Ollur

 

* * *

 

The PPP’s decision to appoint the 19-year-old as chairman of the party is a reflection of South Asia’s political reality, marked by dynastic politics. True, Pakistan does not have a long democratic tradition. But when even democratic India is not immune to the attraction of political dynasties, Bilawal taking over the reins was along expected lines.

J.S. Acharya,

Hyderabad

 

* * *

 

Although Bilawal’s appointment as PPP leader may pass off as situational expediency, the retrograde tendency, similar to Rajiv Gandhi’s coronation in our country, is prevalent largely in South Asia. The inherent feudal attitude behind this circumscribes the creation and growth of political parties based on certain ideologies. Only parties based on a strong secular economic agenda can contribute to a dynamically evolving democracy.

Kasim Sait,

 

Most important election of our lifetime’

 

Michael Tomasky

 

 

 

 

 

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Whichever candidates the voters nominate, the choice before Americans in November 2008 will be stark indeed.

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— PHOTO: AP

Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee at a rally in Indianola, Iowa on Saturday.

 

The best news as 2008 dawns, of course, is that this most endless of presidential campaigns now finally reaches a point at which something actually happens. Finally the people will speak, starting on Thursday in Iowa. So what will they say?

The races in both parties have developed along very unexpected lines, making this probably the most fascinating presidential election in decades. Let us start with the Republicans. Here we have the most unpopular sitting President since Richard Nixon. Significant majorities of his countrymen have long since concluded that they made a mistake in electing him; that he is not up to the job; that he basically lied them into a war; that his domestic policies have been at best no great shakes; and that the conservative ideology to which he has been in thrall has not served the country well, to put it mildly.

And yet, by and large, the Republican candidates are running on exactly the same policies that George W. Bush has pursued. All the major Republican candidates want to “stay the course” in Iraq, denouncing any discussion of withdrawal as evidence of pusillanimity. All see the fight against terrorism in more or less Bushian terms. All want to make the Bush tax cuts, scheduled to sunset in 2010, permanent — even John McCain, who at the time voted against them. All have promised the leaders of the Christian Right that they will appoint Supreme Court judges “in the mould of” Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.

What this euphemistic language means is that whatever a candidate’s previous positions on abortion and gay rights — Rudy Giuliani, for instance, has supported both — the leaders of the religious conservative movement have exacted commitments from all the Grand Old Party candidates to appoint the kind of judges they want, and that matters far more than past positions.

Healthcare priority

 

 

There’s more. Healthcare is a priority in this election. But to hear these Republicans, you’d never know it. Their healthcare plans range from cynical to inadequate. Climate change? They barely acknowledge the problem and are particularly loathe to acknowledging that human activity has contributed to it. They continue to insist, as Republicans since Ronald Reagan have, that the only real domestic enemy the American people face is the federal government, which they continue to want to starve.

It is pretty astonishing, really — we’re at the tail end of a failed presidency, and the people running to succeed it are promising to continue its failed policies.

Now, many observers would say, well, they’re just pandering to their party’s right-wing base, and once one of them secures the nomination, he will tack to the centre. Undoubtedly, he will, for tactical reasons. But the real question is how the next Republican will govern should he happen to win. And the answer to that question is that there’s every reason to assume that he will be just as a conservative as Mr. Bush for one simple reason: the interest groups that run the GOP will not brook much deviation from the standard line.

Key interest groups

 

 

Those interest groups are three. The neocons run foreign policy — the Iraq disaster has not affected their influence in the GOP one whit. The theocons run social policy. And the radical anti-taxers run domestic policy. Until forces inside the GOP rise up to challenge these interests, any Republican administration will be roughly as conservative as Mr. Bush. The candidates have slightly different theories of stasis, they will tinker around this edge or that, but that’s about all you can say.

On the Democratic side, there is far more divergence. Not so much on policy — they are all for universal or nearly universal healthcare, for getting out of Iraq, for doing more for unions, for bringing some equity and progressivity to our taxation system and so on. If you’d asked me a year ago what the major Democrats’ positions on the leading issues would be, I would not have guessed that they’d be this uniformly liberal.

What they differ on is how they and the country will accomplish these things. The astute analyst and writer, Mark Schmitt, was the first to identify this phenomenon, naming the Democratic race the “theory of change” primary. John Edwards’ theory of change is that the system is corrupt, spoiled by corporate greed, and so the way to get change is to wage a kind of class war against it. Barack Obama’s theory of change is to ask independents and conservatives of good faith to work with him on encircling resistant forces and changing the system. Hillary Clinton’s theory of change is that the system is failing Americans in certain particular respects and that it is best massaged by someone with years of experience working within it.

The Democratic caucus-goers of Iowa will tell us on Thursday night which of these theories, retailed to them at close range for many months, they have embraced, although the outcome seems likely to be close, so the question won’t yet be settled. Republican caucus-goers seem more likely to tell us that they like Mike Huckabee’s version of stasis. But even that will not reveal much, because Iowa’s GOP caucus-goers are heavily weighted toward religious conservatives such as Mr. Huckabee.

Whichever theory of change Democratic voters nominate, and whichever theory of statis Republican voters select, the choice before Americans next November will be stark. In 2004, many Americans, particularly liberals fearful about a second Bush term, took to calling that election “the most important of my lifetime.” And it was, for a while. Now this one is.

(Michael Tomasky is editor of Guardian America.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

— ©Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2007 

A year of hard decisions statecraft

 

Harish Khare

 

 

 

 

 

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Beginning January 2008, the country will drift into election mode. It is up to the Congress leadership to decide whether it wants to be on top of the momentum or be swept along.

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Benazir Bhutto has already displaced Narendra Modi from the magazine covers. Concerns and calculations have changed within a few days; nonetheless, the dangerous implications of the Modi victory in Gandhinagar and equally troublesome downstream effects of the Bhutto assassination in Rawalpindi will need to be dealt with competently and confidently, that too in a manner as not to aggravate further our collective travails or to erode further our democratic institutions. That simply means that the next year will make exacting demands on those who choose to be our rulers and redeemers. And, as it were, all the decisions, hard ones, are for the ruling establishment to make.

The first and foremost decision the Manmohan Singh-Sonia Gandhi duo, along with whomsoever it deems fit to consult, will need to take is when to have the elections to the next Lok Sabha. This is the traditional prerogative of the Prime Minister in a cabinet system of government; but, more than a constitutional strategy, the timing of the general elections is the supreme political decision available to a ruling party. Not only will the Congress leadership need to decide the timing of the next Lok Sabha elections, the decision will also involve on what issues, under whose leadership, and in whose company to approach the electorate. If there is one lesson to be learnt from the Gujarat experience, it is that an effective electoral strategy hinges on manufacturing a credible narrative and an equally credible narrator.

In other words, the Congress leadership will need to tell the country unequivocally as to who its prime ministerial mascot at the time of the next Lok Sabha elections is. The principal opposition party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, has already announced its prime ministerial candidate, and the collective energies of the National Democratic Alliance would gravitate towards L.K. Advani’s prime ministerial ambitions. The Congress will not be able to ignore the public expectations over the prime ministerial leadership question; it cannot repeat its 2004 formulations that the elected Congress MPs would choose the next Prime Minister.

This takes us into the very heart of the Congress priestly code: the fiction has to be maintained that Ms Gandhi is the only leader who generates any kind of popular and electoral appeal. The sub-theme of this priestly code is that the only other person who can be permitted to make any claims of charisma is young Rahul Gandhi.

Leadership dilemma

 

 

The lack of ambiguity on the leadership hierarchy could itself become an asset to a political organisation, but for familiar reasons the Congress has managed to convert the Rahul Gandhi opportunity into a liability. Let us reframe the Congress leadership dilemma: what to do with Dr. Singh? Any hint of Dr. Singh’s presence at the top of the prime ministerial line-up is bound to bring out the worst instinct among senior Congress leaders, who have spent a lifetime of intrigue in the service of the Nehru-Gandhi family. At the same time, the party cannot possibly disown a serving Prime Minister whose personal integrity and clean image stand out as the shinning attributes in an otherwise uninspiring establishment. No major scandal has erupted around Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Admitted, yes, Dr. Singh’s is the persona that cannot be easily marketed at the election time.

But, Ms Gandhi, having made the “supreme sacrifice” in May 2004 cannot now possibly tell the country that she would be amenable to being made Prime Minister. She can be trusted to have come to terms with her own limitations as well as to have acquired a reasonably decent idea of how complex the prime ministerial job is.

Still, the Congress has the option to dump Dr. Singh and boldly opt for Rahul Gandhi as its prime ministerial candidate. On paper, a standoff between an 80-year-old Mr. Advani and a 40-year-old Rahul Gandhi could be an extremely attractive electoral proposition; the country is young and no longer seems willing to be mired in old memories of the freedom struggle or in ancient myths of the Ramayana or the Mahabharata. The Advani-Rahul contrast can be marketed creatively, except that the young man seems to be totally impervious to the demands of the democratic leadership. He has not even given an indication that he has the burning desire to want the job, leave alone providing any inspirational flashes. Leadership is not a part time assignment but a consuming affair that leaves very little room for personal indulgences.

The leadership issue apart, the Congress will need to be clear-headed about its relationship with the Left between now and the next Lok Sabha elections. As it were, even without the disagreement over the Indo-U.S. nuclear deal there has been little political warmth between the Left and the Congress. In fact, it would be foolish for the Congress leadership to ignore the simple fact that there is a convergence between the BJP and the Left: both want a weak Congress, in the short term as well as in the long term. Both have done their bit in weakening the Congress; both have reduced the UPA government into a bumbling proposition; and, both have done their very best to heap ridicule on the Prime Minister. To be fair, neither the BJP nor the Left is under any obligation to help the Congress regain its earlier political dominance. Given this unvarnished play of realities, the Congress leadership will need to factor in the future of the terms of its relationship with the Left when it takes a decision about the next Lok Sabha elections. The Congress cannot possibly hope to win the electorate’s confidence by telling the nation that the best it can offer is more of the same — divided authority and checkmated decision-making at the Centre. Even if the Congress decides to maintain diplomatic silence on its ties with the Left after the next Lok Sabha elections, the BJP-led opposition can be expected to make it into an election issue.

If anything, the continuous turmoil and uncertainty in our neighbourhood should suggest that the electorate — especially key stake-holders such as the middle classes and the corporate business houses — will want to see a reasonably coherent governing arrangement in New Delhi. People have never voted back a government that has given the impression of being internally distracted or otherwise hobbled when it comes to taking hard decisions. Even in 1999, the voters opted for the National Democratic Alliance notwithstanding its colossal failure to detect what was happening in Kargil; the voters preferred the Vajpayee-led “working” government because the Sonia Gandhi-led opposition was deemed even less capable of providing stability at the Centre.

The Gujarat outcome has understandably produced despondency as also expectedly reinforced timidity among the second-rate voices that crowd the core of the decision-making apparatus in New Delhi. Yet the Congress leadership has to make up its mind: does it want to remain content to serve out the next 16 months before being voted out of power or to reinvent itself over the next 12 months as an electorally saleable proposition. If the Congress leadership does take the hard decision that it still has the ideas and the energy to help the polity find a working governing arrangement, then it will have to address itself to the deepening sense of disquiet in the country at large. Nine per cent growth is all right. All the more reason that the middle classes need the assurance that their economic prosperity will not be jeopardised on account of governmental instability, lawlessness or failing institutions.

Simply put, the country will need to feel confident that its security is in more competent hands. This ties up with the larger requirement of assuring the country that the government of the day has some idea how to deal effectively with terrorism. The government has neither been able to make the moral case for caring for the minorities — including the Sachar Committee recommendations — nor has it convinced the country that the government is not pitifully quagmired in the “appeasement” at the expense of the simple and unambiguous requirement of enforcing the rule of law. Depending on the ability or inability of the Congress leadership to take hard decisions, the coming year could end up deciding irreversibly the future of India as an emerging power in an increasingly uncertain world. The Indian state would need to be protected against unhelpful players abroad as also against drift and indecision at home.

 

 Agricultural strategy, internal security & sovereignty

 

M.S. Swaminathan

 

 

 

 

 

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If the National Policy for Farmers 2007 is implemented in letter and spirit by the Central and State governments, we can say goodbye to the era of farmers’ suicides.

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The year 2007 ended with some significant steps in areas relating to internal security and food sovereignty. In November 2007, alarmed by the persistence of agrarian distress in several parts of the country resulting in those engaged in a life-sustaining profession taking their own lives, the Government of India placed a National Policy for Farmers in Parliament. The document is based on the draft submitted by the National Commission on Farmers in October 2006. This Policy , the first of its kind in the history of either colonial or independent India, calls for a paradigm shift from a commodity-centred to a human-centred approach in agricultural planning and programmes. The aim of the Policy is to stimulate attitudes and actions that should result in assessing agricultural progress in terms of improvement in the income of farm families not only to meet their consumption requirements, but also to enhance their capacity to invest in farm-related activities. The National Policy for Farmers has for the first time recognised the “need to focus on the economic well being of the farmers, rather than just on production.” If this Policy is implemented in letter and spirit by the Central and State governments, we can say goodbye to the era of farmers’ suicides.

Another area where some recent policy decisions were announced relates to containing the threat to internal security caused by the spread of Naxalite movements. Here, the major focus has been on strengthening police and para-military forces and providing them with better arms and equipment. While this is important, we should learn lessons from the tragic human consequences of the U.S.-led strategies to contain terrorism. History teaches us that violence breeds violence. Even as the Chief Minister’s Conference on Internal Security announced the decision to strengthen the police-centric approach to contain the Naxalite danger, there was a report that Naxalite leaders have also decided to modernise their weapon power. Where will this end?

A third development is in the area of food sovereignty. India’s decision to import wheat is facing problems related to both cost and quality. The international prices of food grains are going up, partly due to the steep increase in the price of petroleum products and the consequent desire to produce more bio-fuels, leading to the diversion of prime farm land from food to fuel production. In his book, Hand of Destiny, C. Subramaniam, who was Minister for Food and Agriculture from 1964 to 1967, has described vividly the humiliation he had to undergo while seeking urgent food shipment under the PL 480 programme of the U.S. Indira Gandhi’s decision to build substantial food reserves was related to her clear understanding of the relationship between food self-reliance and national sovereignty.

What should we do in 2008 to concurrently strengthen internal security and national sovereignty? The means to both lies in accelerated agricultural advance based on conservation farming, or what I have been referring to as the “ever-green revolution” pathway of improving productivity in perpetuity without associated ecological harm.

Let me take the example of Jharkhand, a Naxalite hotspot, and examine what needs to be done to avoid the gradual collapse of a democratic system of governance.

Of Jharkhand’s total population of 27 million, nearly 21 million, or 78 per cent live in villages. Nearly 49 per cent of the population lives below the poverty line, and India’s poverty line is probably the most austerely defined in the world. In some districts like Gumla and Simdega, where Naxalite activity is serious, more than 85 per cent of the predominantly tribal workforce depends on crop and animal husbandry and minor forest produce for its livelihood. Over 80 per cent of the farm holdings belong to the small and marginal farmer category. More than 80 per cent of the average annual rainfall of 1300 mm to 1400 mm is received between June and September, when farmers cultivate crops such as paddy, maize, pulses and oilseeds. Productivity is low and the marketable surplus is consequently modest. Systematic steps to harvest and store the rainwater during the South West monsoon period and to use the conserved water for a second October to March crop are yet to be initiated. Although the groundwater availability is satisfactory, tube-well irrigation is rare. The availability of electricity as well as rural communications are poor. As a result, most of the land remains fallow from October to May. This in turn results in seasonal unemployment, affecting nearly half the population of Jharkhand. What are the implications of nearly one crore people remaining without work for over six months in a year?

The National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme provides some relief, but this programme provides opportunities only for unskilled work. Thanks to the expansion of opportunities for education, more and more young women and men are becoming educated, but there is no corresponding growth in opportunities for skilled employment. In the two million hectares of idle land during winter and summer months and in the ten million idle hands of cultivators, we can find seeds of resentment and disillusionment with the current priorities in development, thereby creating conditions conducive for recruitment to the Naxalite cadre.

Guns will not solve the problem without coincident efforts to grow two blades of grass where only one blade grew before. Unless agricultural development and the police pathway of strengthening internal security are integrated, we will see the growth of violence and, kidnapping and the worsening of law and order in States such as Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and the other States confronted with the problem of crores of men and women who do not know where their next meal will come from. A second crop, particularly a high-value and low water-requiring one such as pulses, oilseeds, medicinal plants, vegetables or fodder crops, will make all the difference between poverty-induced under-nutrition and adequate nutrition and viable livelihoods for millions of farm families now depending upon a single crop. The single monsoon season crop also faces risks like drought and floods.

Effective rainwater harvesting, sustainable use of groundwater and good irrigation water management will help raise at least two good crops, as shown by the residents of Hiware Bazar in Ahmednagar district, who received the 2007 National Water Prize and where no one remains below the poverty line. If groundwater can also be tapped with diesel or solar pumps (in the absence of electricity), even 3 crops can be raised.

What we urgently need in Naxalite affected areas, is an Irrigation for Internal Security Programme. This can be undertaken with funds from Bharat Nirman, the National Food Security and Horticulture Missions and the Rs. 25,000 crore Rashtiya Krishi Vikas Yojana.

The Irrigation for Internal Security Programme should have three dimensions. First, the productivity of current kharif crops like paddy should be doubled with a proper mix of technology, services and pricing and marketing policies. Secondly, one more additional crop, which can fetch the maximum income per unit of water, should be grown using harvested or groundwater. Finally, non-farm employment and income-earning opportunities like sericulture, the production of vegetables, flowers and mushrooms, agro-processing and other market-driven enterprises should be enlarged. Youth will be attracted to agriculture only if brain (that is, technology) and brawn can be combined in farm work.

Under conditions of small farms and fragmented holdings, Jal Swaraj or water security can be achieved only through group endeavour in rain water harvesting and sustainable and equitable use. Lift irrigation using hand-operated treadle pumps can provide crop life-saving irrigation. Community tube wells and community nurseries of location-specific varieties of crop plants will help to improve both crop productivity and profitability. Education, social mobilisation and regulation will all be necessary to promote scientific watershed development and water management. Along the watershed, market driven microenterprises supported by micro-credit can be promoted, leading to the emergence of bioindustrial watersheds. For this purpose, Gram Sabhas should organise Pani Panchayats that can help to ensure effective community cooperation in water saving and sharing.

It will be wrong to ignore the multi-dimensional nature of the Naxalite problem. However, as a single step, creating opportunities for employment from October to May through community managed minor irrigation programmes, leading to year-round work and income security, will make the largest contribution to peace and security. Just as the Government of India has introduced special programmes in 33 districts affected by severe agrarian crisis, it will be prudent to introduce immediately an Irrigation for Internal Security programme, so that there will be work for millions of tribal and rural families from October to May 2008-09. Such a programme will also lead to the production of additional food grains and thereby strengthen food sovereignty.

As stressed in the National Policy for Farmers, there is need for a change in the mindset of those living in shining India towards those producing their food in suffering India. A beginning can be made in 2008 to achieve an attitudinal revolution by recognising the contributions of outstanding farm women and men through “National Sovereignty Saviour Awards.” This will help to underline the pivotal role of farm families in safeguarding internal security and external respect.

The major constraint encountered in implementing the special packages for farmers’ suicide prone districts is the near impossibility of bringing convergence and synergy among the numerous programmes operated by different government departments. The Irrigation for Internal Security Programme may meet with the same fate, unless government, private and academic sectors and civil society organisations work together as Members of a Peace and Security symphony orchestra. This will also be in the enlightened self-interest of politicians, industrialists, public servants, the police and the general public. Grain is a better catalyst of peace and goodwill than gun.

(Professor M.S. Swaminathan is Member of Parliament (Rajya Sabha) and former Chairman, National Commission on Farmers.)

 An end to the stalemate

 

Belgium’s new interim dispensation, headed by the outgoing liberal Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt and drawn from rival parties representing the two main linguistic regions, ends a six-month political stalemate. The deadlock in the formation of government by the victors in the June 2007 elections — constituents of the so-called “orange-blue” umbrella coalition — reflects the strains experienced by the Belgians in the country’s evolution f rom a unitary to a federal system. Talks on a common programme broke down on at least four occasions and the Flemish Christian Democrat leader and potential prime minister had to step down twice as the official negotiator. His party’s cohabitation with the far-right secessionist and anti-immigrant ally on an agenda of self-rule for the Dutch-speaking Flanders in the north is at the root of the current crisis.

Another sticking point in the conservative-led coalition has been the demand for the bifurcation of the electoral district of the Brussels Capital Region, where French is the language of the majority and where the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation has its headquarters. After gaining independence from the Netherlands in 1830, Belgium’s predominantly French and Dutch populations co-existed in the cosy political comfort of the uniquely Belgian consociational model of democracy, characterised by mutual accommodation among political elites. This phase of innocence eventually gave way to the assertion of competing demands for linguistic and cultural autonomy from the mid-20th century, culminating in a series of constitutional reforms from 1970 that led towards a federation of power-sharing arrangements. Extreme nationalist forces have sought to exploit the economic backwardness of the French-dominated areas for articulating separatist claims of the prosperous Flanders. To suggest a break-up of the country, as commentators have tended to do, is perhaps premature, if not downright naïve, and it exaggerates the importance of the far-right that is a fringe element. Belgium’s formidable centrist and left forces may well rise to contain this misapprehension

Political dynasts and martyrdom

 

Dynastic politics is South Asia’s common currency. Whether it is Sri Lanka or India or Bangladesh or Pakistan, the dynastic principle seems effortlessly to defy the republicanism of constitutions, political systems, and democratic processes. It mocks the spirit of freedom struggles and movements against dictatorial rule. It seems peculiarly at home in parties that claim to be pro-poor, have ‘roti, kapda, makan’ (bread, clothing, shelter) as their mobilisi ng slogan, and tirelessly chant the mantra of popular democracy. The principle of dynastic privileging in the democratic arena naturally breeds a sense of entitlement to the republican throne — even among the most improbable of presumptive heirs. The tragic irony of 19-year-old Oxford student, Bilawal Zardari — catapulted by a brutal killing and the sacred principle of dynastic succession to the ‘chairmanship’ of the Pakistan People’s Party — extolling democracy as the best ‘revenge’ on those who assassinated his mother and urging that the party be run “democratically … for the poor and downtrodden people” of his country will be an enduring memory of 2007. Equally striking was what the young man said at the press conference about the sacrificial principle in dynastic politics: his father, Asif Ali Zardari, would not be succeeding to the top post (as his mother had willed) and he was taking up the job because “the chairmanship of the party is a position occupied by martyrs, and we do not know for how long my father will be able to keep his position.” It is a terrible thought but it can be substantiated with facts: in more than one South Asian case, dynastic successors have fallen victim to assassins’ bullets or bombs.

The tragic sacrifices, in turn, inspire millions of people, generate groundswells of sympathy, bring about sharp swings in the public mood, and power political parties to win elections. The political situation in Pakistan, caught in a maelstrom, has been transformed overnight by the martyrdom of Benazir Bhutto, a courageous but deeply flawed political leader whose record in opposition was far more creditable than her performance in office. Towards the end of her life, her popularity in Pakistan clearly suffered from the impression that she had struck a less than honourable deal with the discredited dictator, Pervez Musharraf, and that, unlike her chief political rival, Nawaz Sharif, she was willing to contest elections under dubious conditions in order to have a third term as Prime Minister. Post-Benazir, a PPP dominated by Asif Zardari is poised to make a clean sweep of the parliamentary election, which is scheduled for January 8 and cannot, in any case, be put off by more than a few weeks. Even though they are likely to be the losers, the Pakistan Muslim League (N) and its chief, Mr. Sharif, have done the right thing in agreeing to reverse their decision to boycott the polls. Paradoxically, as Bilawal Bhutto Zardari might have implied, the martyrdom of his mother promises to provide a democratic and perhaps even bloodless way out of the deep crisis in which Pakistan finds itself.

 

‘If in combating terrorism we undermine values, we are giving up too much’

 

Anita Joshua

 

 

 

Stephen Toope, president of the University of British Columbia (UBC), on education and his primary calling — human rights. Excerpts from an interview:

 

 

 

 

 

 

— Photo: R.V. Moorthy

Stephen Toope: “Governments and NGOs should try and find ways where around certain issues they can build confidence by working together.”

 

Your university stresses a lot on global citizenship. Is it possible post-9/11 when people are getting xenophobic?

 

 

It’s hard but that’s precisely why we have to do it. Post-9/11, there has been a tendency — because of fear — to focus on security concerns that actually generate repression and a lack of engagement across cultures. As universities, we have an even more important role to resist that.

Post-9/11, nations seem to be working overtime to acquire a ‘hard state’ identity.

 

 

We can’t as a set of societies around the world allow ourselves to be governed by fear. It’s hard to come up with rules that will eliminate all possibility of threat. Frankly, it’s not possible. We have to acknowledge that we cannot prevent all threat, all risk in any society. And when we try to do it, we create such regressive and intrusive rules that we actually undermine the very democratic principles that our societies say they want to uphold. It’s not that I want people to be hurt. Terrorism is not the right response to political challenges. But, if one tries to go so far in combating terrorism that we undermine the values we claim to uphold, we are giving up too much. Western societies are doing that, particularly the United States. The United Kingdom, too, has become a very intrusive, monitoring society. I’m surprised the English have allowed themselves to get so drawn into that.

There is a clamour in India currently for hanging a ‘terrorist’...

 

 

There’s very little research to show that capital punishment is effective. So, even if you don’t want to talk about the moral considerations of how it is that states should behave to their own populations, there are a fair set of questions about whether it actually accomplishes any rational policy goal. And, if it doesn’t, then the government should ask itself why it should have capital punishment.

You have headed a number of human rights NGOs. Why is there seldom any meeting ground between governments and NGOs?

 

 

I’m always struck by the lack of confidence on the part of governments when they deal with the NGO community. In Canada, we’ve historically had a pretty collaborative relationship between NGOs and the government. Still, there are moments when you have to criticise. As soon as that happens, the government gets nervous and they don’t like it. All around the world governments don’t like being criticised. There’s nothing unusual about that. What is sad is when governments can’t find the places where there can be cooperation. In India, there should be places of cooperation on gender issues and issues related to minorities and indigenous groups. There are going to be areas of conflict; inevitably on security issues. I’ve seen it in Kashmir when I was with the U.N. Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances. We had cases of disappearances in Indian Occupied or Indian Controlled Kashmir.

The government, although it cooperated, was very uncomfortable about those discussions. That will always be the case. But, governments and NGOs should try and find ways where around certain issues they can build confidence by working together.

Has the U.N. lost its relevance; not just on bigger political issues but on developmental matters where its writ doesn’t go far?

 

 

I strongly believe in multilateralism. If the U.N. didn’t exist, you would have to invent some kind of organisation that provides a forum for all societies to talk to one another. At the same time, I’ve had enough dealing with the U.N. to know that it can be very frustrating; it’s a big bureaucracy. We have to understand that the U.N. is not an independent political actor. The U.N. can’t do anything unless it’s allowed to act by member states. We’ve seen not just big picture questions like Iraq but even in smaller areas that a lot of member states have been increasingly reluctant to give leeway to the U.N. to act. Even India, in areas of human rights, for example, has been very, very controlling. It’s not necessarily healthy because the U.N. is potentially a forum for dialogue and can be a forum for action in specific areas. Look at the immunisation programme. Without the U.N, we wouldn’t have made the progress we have on this front. So, if we give it up, we do so at great risk.

Coming back to UBC, would you like to set up an offshore campus in India?

 

 

No. They are very expensive and the model requires high degrees of subsidisation. Countries that may get into this may find more and more expectations for subsidisation. I wonder whether that’s a good way to spend national resources. Besides, there are always promises that the best scientists and the leading professors would spend a part of the year on these campuses. It doesn’t usually work that way. Scientists are very dependent on the success of their labs. It’s expensive to set up labs. So, they’re not going to have two completely separate processes operating in different countries usually. It’s not easy for anyone to spend a part of their life every year in a different country. Often what happens is that people who get hired in these secondary campuses are not the leading people.

I prefer strong partnerships between universities so that we can develop really serious intellectual relationships crossing barriers of culture and barriers of political difference.

 

 Social threat

 

I was surprised on reading the article “The social threat” (Open Page, Dec. 30) which was biased. The author laments the absence of gender consciousness and cites the portrayal of women in television serials among other things to make her point. Why does she miss the point that men too are portrayed badly? They too are portrayed as stupid, violent, irresponsible and promiscuous.

The issue is the wrong portrayal of the entire society. While violence against men is justified, society comes down heavily on violence against women. The reason — the respect society has for them.

Suraj Yadav,

Pune

 

* * *

 

I completely disagree with the portion of the article that refers to gender consciousness. Bad portrayal is not unique to women; men too are depicted by television serial and movie makers as rapists and murderers. I wish the author had been sensitive to that aspect as well instead of making it appear that women alone are victims of increased television viewing. I, for one, have been hurt many times on seeing men portrayed as brainless, idiots, morons and criminals.

 

Rohan Dharesh,

Bangalore

Communal mischief

 

The unbiased editorial “Tackling communal mischief in Orissa” (Dec. 31) is an excellent analysis, with facts and figures, of the origin and spread of communal violence in Orissa particularly during the Christmas season. Christianity does not believe in forced conversions. As rightly pointed out, the communal outfits are targeting the religious freedom guaranteed under the Constitution. The VHP is intolerant of the peaceful work being done by the minorities in Orissa.

J. Eden Alexander,

Thanjavur

 

* * *

 

The attack on churches, prayer houses and Christian schools in Orissa is most barbaric and deserves condemnation in strongest terms. The attacks are a clear manifestation of the growing tendency to keep the minority community insecure. The State government should lose no time in identifying the culprits, and should take immediate steps to bring them to book.

 

S.R. Krishnamurthy,

Thanjavur

 

* * *

 

The editorial says Bajrang Dal activists burnt to death Australian missionary Graham Staines. The Justice D.P. Wadhwa Commission which probed the killing ruled out in its report the involvement of any organisation. Not a single person convicted for the murder was a member of the Bajrang Dal.

 

Manmath Deshpande,

Nagpur

 

Corruption has blighted Kenyan voters’ hopes

 

Meera Selva

 

 

 

 

 

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There is a sense that the post-election bloodshed could have been averted if the politicians had stepped down when their time had passed.

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These were meant to be Kenya’s golden days. A booming economy, a mobile phone for every man, woman and child, a robust and lively press. It is a tragedy for the country and the whole of Africa that a few days after Kenya’s elections, curfews are being imposed, gangs of young men are fighting on the streets, security police are storming through slums looking for agitators, and disfigured corpses are being discovered around the country. As ever, there is a sense that this bloodshed could have been averted if politicians had stepped down when their time has passed.

Kenya had high hopes when Mwai Kibaki moved into the presidential office in December 2002. Kenyan politics is still defined by tribe, and although Mr. Kibaki belonged to the dominant Kikuyu tribe, he had formed an alliance with Raila Odinga, who delivered the votes of the rival Luo and promised a new era of post-tribal politics in Kenya.

But corruption, the disease that has blighted Kenyan politics, crept back in as Ministers began siphoning off public funds and awarding contracts to suspect companies, confident that their President was too weak or ineffectual to stop them. And with corruption came the desire to stay in power.

 

Referendum

 

 

In 2005, the government held a referendum to strengthen the role of President. Enraged, Mr. Odinga left the Cabinet and set up a rival coalition to campaign for a no vote, and won. In the euphoria of the victory, he set up a rival party, the Orange Democratic Movement, to compete in last week’s elections.

He is now right to be furious about the way the election has been run. The irresponsibility and cynicism of Kenya’s leaders over the last year is a betrayal of the people who voted them in five years ago with glad hearts. — ©Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2008

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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 South Africa headed for leadership change?

 

M.S. Prabhakara

 

 

 

The election of Jacob Zuma as the African National Congress president is certainly a setback to Thabo Mbeki and may mark the beginning of the decline of his political authority.

 

 

 

 

 

Despite the acrimony of the bruising electoral battles at the 52nd national conference of the African National Congress (December 16-19) at Polokwane, it would be wrong to see the outcome as the beginning of the ANC’s end as a movement and political party. However, it was certainly a setback to the incumbent ANC president, Thabo Mbeki, and may even mark the beginning of the decline of his political authority even though he will remain President of South Africa till A pril 2009. This position invests him with executive power that, according to his rival, Jacob Zuma’s supporters, is already being misused to hobble Mr. Zuma and curb his political ambitions, if not destroy him politically.

The scale and near-totality of the rejection of Mr. Mbeki and his supporters by the national conference are truly immense. Not merely did he lose the contest for ANC president to Mr. Zuma, the ANC deputy president whom he sacked as the country’s Deputy President in June 2005; all the other candidates for the remaining five top party executive positions (deputy president, national chairperson, secretary general, treasurer general and deputy secretary general), openly identified with Mr. Mbeki, lost to known Zuma supporters. Further, the outcome of the election to the powerful 80-member National Executive Committee (NEC), ‘the highest organ of the ANC between Conferences [with] the authority to lead the organisation,’ a day later, emphatically reconfirmed the overwhelming support Mr. Zuma enjoys in the organisation. Again, almost all known Mbeki supporters were defeated, including three of the five who had formed the Mbeki ‘ticket’ — a rather inaccurate American importation — for the six top positions.

Among the notable and vocal Mbeki supporters who failed to retain their seats in the powerful NEC were Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, who was appointed Deputy President of the country after Mr. Zuma was sacked; ANC national chairperson Mosiuoa ‘Terror’ Lekota, who earlier lost the contest for secretary general; Smuts Ngoynyama, head of the ANC president’s office; Frank Chikane, director general in the presidency; Essop Pahad, Cabinet Minister in the presidency; Ronnie Kasrils, Minister for Intelligence; Charles Nqkula, Safety and Security Minister, who was earlier replaced as chairperson of the South African Communist Party (SACP) by Gwede Mantshse and was now the new ANC secretary general. However, Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, the Foreign Minister who Mr. Mbeki favoured for deputy president but lost the contest, and Joel Netshithenze, a close Mbeki advisor who had lost the contest for national chairperson, managed to retain their NEC seats.

Significantly, while most ministers dealing with the economy failed to retain their seats, Trevor Manuel, Finance Minister and main driver of the macroeconomic policy, which was firmly opposed by both the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) and the SACP who backed Mr. Zuma, retained his seat, albeit at a lowly 57th position, in contrast to the first position he secured at the 2002 national conference in Stellenbosch.

This growth strategy, encapsulated in the June 1996 document, Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR), under President Nelson Mandela has, from its inception, been contested by Cosatu and the SACP, partners of the ANC at the political level even if not formally in the government as Cosatu and SACP members. Even sections of the ANC are known to be opposed to GEAR. However, the ANC-SACP-Cosatu tripartite alliance, forged during the struggle against apartheid, continues to be operative, though in the years since liberation it has been fraught with tension, mainly because of differences over the macroeconomic policy. The alliance has not broken down, despite the open differences over the Zuma issue, and the wish-fulfilling prognoses of the dominant sections of the media.

Considering the outcome, which was evident in the very composition of the nearly 4,000 delegates elected from the branches, most of them Zuma supporters, one wonders why Mr. Mbeki, with two terms as ANC president, decided to enter the fray at all. The reason could well be his genuine conviction that Mr. Zuma, whose personality flaws are more apparent than those of his peers in the ANC, was not fit to be his successor as head of the party and the state. The ‘irretrievable breakdown’ between the two which, according to analysts, goes back to the days following the unbanning of the ANC and other people’s organisations and the return of the ‘exiles’, prominent among whom was Mr. Mbeki, was prefigured in developments in the party and government well before the prosecution and conviction of Mr. Zuma’s financial adviser, Schabir Sheikh, in June 2005 on charges of bribery and corruption, the proximate factor that led to Mr. Zuma’s dismissal as South Africa’s Deputy President. (See Signs of Decay, Frontline, 13 January 2006.)

Part of the case against Sheikh was that he brokered a bribe of rand 5,00,000 from the local subsidiary of a French company involved in the 1998-99 multibillion-rand arms deal on behalf of Mr. Zuma, in expectation of special favours in the defence deal. Sheikh was also charged with paying bribes to Mr. Zuma to advance his business interests.

However, while Sheikh was convicted, the prosecution of Mr. Zuma, initiated following Sheikh’s conviction, collapsed on procedural grounds. Undaunted, the National Prosecuting Authority, a constitutional structure which Zuma supporters maintain has been consistently misused by the state (meaning President Mbeki himself) to persecute Mr. Zuma, renewed its efforts to build an unassailable case. Mr. Zuma, with backing from two of his strong allies in the tripartite alliance, Cosatu and the SACP, as well as the ANC Youth League and indeed from within the ANC itself — proven in the Polokwane outcome — vigorously defended himself against these accusations.

The ANC’s national conference was held in the backdrop of these developments over the past two years. However, his very triumph in Polokwane has, to no one’s surprise, exacerbated Mr. Zuma’s legal problems. Within days of the conclusion of the conference, the Directorate of Special Operations (Scorpions), the striking arm of the NPA, indicted (technically, arrested), Mr. Zuma on charges of corruption, fraud, money-laundering, racketeering and several other charges. According to one report, the indictment included 354 corrupt and illegal payments made by way of bribes received by Mr. Zuma accounting to over rand four million. Both Cosatu and the ANC Youth League have strongly condemned this indictment, in particular its ‘peculiar timing’ so soon after Mr. Zuma’s triumph at Polokwane. Reiterating its well-known stand on the seemingly ceaseless attempts by the NPA to secure Mr. Zuma’s conviction, Cosatu said the renewed allegations meant that his human rights, including the right to a speedy and fair trial, were being “systematically and grossly violated.” Using even stronger language, ANC Youth League president Fikile Mbalula said the decision to reinstate the charges and indeed the very case against Mr. Zuma were being “led by Mbeki.”

Normatively, the NPA is a structure functioning independently of the executive, though only the most innocent will believe that such high-profile prosecutions as that of the ANC president are launched without political clearance.

Article 179 (5) (a) of South Africa’s Constitution explicitly lays down that in determining the ‘prosecution policy,’ “the National Director of Public Prosecutions [now NPA] must determine, with the concurrence of the Cabinet member responsible for the administration of justice, and after consulting the Directors of Public Prosecutions, prosecution policy, which must be observed in the prosecution process” (emphasis added). In other words, the determination of the prosecution policy requiring the concurrence of the executive is an executive decision, and not simply a notionally independent legal initiative.

Expectedly, the acting head of the NPA has strongly refuted suggestions that the decision was influenced by President Mbeki. In an interview soon after the national conference, Mr. Mbeki too said: “If they [the National Prosecuting Authority] think they have a case, they should proceed [against Zuma] … they haven’t said anything to me.”

However, even if the prosecution were to proceed and Mr. Zuma’s trial, as announced by the NPA, were to begin on August 14, it would not be able to stop him in his tracks. For, Mr. Zuma has repeatedly said he does not consider an indictment that amounts to little more than allegations a conviction; that he will step down as ANC president only if he is convicted. Given South Africa’s legal system — even the NPA, presumably anxious to secure a conviction, has set the date for the beginning of the trial seven-and-a-half months from now — and the avenues for appeals and revisions at the level of the Supreme Court of Appeal and the Constitutional Court, the legal process one way or the other is unlikely to conclude before Mr. Mbeki’s term ends. The whole political dynamics will have then changed. It has already changed, as is evident in calls by the Zuma supporters that the ANC must assert its authority, even to the extent, if necessary, of ‘redeploying’ persons in the executive.

This raises complex constitutional questions for, the President is elected by members of the National Assembly who have attained their positions by virtue of nomination by their political parties. While the ANC can tinker with the list of its MPs, deploying if considered necessary a member of the National Assembly to a Provincial Assembly, such freedom is not available in respect of the members of the executive. The president is elected by the National Assembly, and the rest of the executive (ministers and deputy ministers) are appointed by the president.

Constitutionally speaking, the next few months will be a dance on eggshells in South Africa.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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 Signs of stability and maturity

 

For the Indian stock markets, 2007 was an exceptional year, not merely because of the phenomenal rise of the benchmark stock indices, the Sensex and the Nifty. The Sensex climbed from 12,500 in early January — itself seen to be reflecting healthy valuations — to close at 20,257 at the end of the year. The Nifty too set up new records and ended the year at 6,138. The strong performance of the domestic stock markets is part of the recent trend of Asian and other emerging markets coming into their own. The slowing down of the U.S. economy along with the persistent weakness of the American dollar has caused fund managers to seek more lucrative but safe avenues elsewhere. India and a few other markets filled the bill ideally. While foreign institutional investors (FIIs) have always been the dominant force behind the rise in market valuations, their motivations are now more varied. Besides, the successful economic growth story, with an average annual GDP growth rate of 9 per cent and above, remains intact. The onset of the sub-prime crisis in the United States in September, with strong negative connotations for the financial systems of the developed world, was the time when India along with a few other markets emerged as sanctuaries attracting large investments from across the globe. The Sensex went up from 16,000 to 20,000 in a matter of three months.

However, the important messages of the year 2007 go beyond the role of the foreign institutional investors. When the final tally is made it will be seen that, although the FIIs will be the single largest group of investors in the Indian markets, they are less dominant than in the recent past. Domestic financial institutions, led by the public sector LIC and the mutual funds, have invested substantial amounts and, on many occasions, taken positions that neutralised the FII actions, as they did remarkably in November and December when the FIIs pulled some $5 billion out of Indian stocks. Indian financial institutions were able to check what would have been a precipitous fall. The domestic retail investor base remains weak but volatility, which has been a worrisome feature, is showing signs of moderating. Insurance companies have overtaken mutual funds as the second largest category of investors. With a variety of investors having divergent objectives and different time horizons operating in the field and with no single category driving the prices, the Indian stock markets seem to be moving towards a greater degree of stability and maturity. For the new year, there cannot be a more salutary message.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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 Evergreen revolution

 

This refers to the article “Agricultural strategy, internal security and sovereignty” (Jan. 1). The numerous employment programmes will not make any difference to unemployment in the skilled and unskilled sectors. An evergreen revolution with knowledge-based agriculture and the necessary market support should be launched at the earliest. A proper market mechanism for agricultural produce alone can bring naxalites into the mainstream.

Will our policymakers heed the advice that grain is a better catalyst of peace than gun?

S. Kasimayan,

Madurai

 

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The article suggests ways to mitigate the suffering of farmers and marginalised sections. The valuable suggestions made by M.S. Swaminathan should be implemented in letter and spirit by the government, if farmers’ woes are to be redressed.

 

S.V.K. Chandran,

Thiruvananthapuram

 

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Professor Swaminathan has brilliantly advocated the inherent link between rural prosperity and internal security of the nation.

 

Another aspect that needs attention is distribution of irrigated water among farmers, given the widespread disparities that exist among them in terms of income, assets and social status.

Manish Manglani,

New Delhi

The idea of a U.S.-free Korean peninsula

 

P.S. Suryanarayana

 

 

 

The DPRK tends to view the current strategic dynamics in the divided region in U.S.-centred terms.

 

 

 

 

 

The de-nuclearisation of the long-divided Korean peninsula is not a one-way exercise in diplomacy. If proof of this simple but profound reality is needed, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), as the northern part of the peninsula is known, has brought this aspect into sharp focus on New Year’s Day.

First, the Republic of Korea (RoK), or the southern part, regretted that the DPRK authorities missed the end-of-2007 deadline to declare their nuclear-arms programme, and stockpiles of fissile materials and related weapons. Pyongyang had committed itself to making a full declaration about these definitive aspects under an agreement that six relevant parties reached in Beijing on October 3 last year. The six parties are the DPRK, the RoK, the United States, China as the proactive Chair for the Korean de-nuclearisation talks, Japan, and Russia.

The U.S., a long-time military ally of both the RoK and Japan, had predicted that the DPRK might miss the deadline. However, as the prophecy became a fact, Washington sounded a pragmatic note against any knee-jerk reaction of discontinuing the six-party talks that have been in progress since 2003.

It was in this context that the DPRK, in a New Year comment channelled through the ruling party organs, reaffirmed its demand that the U.S. end its long-entrenched military presence across the RoK. In renewing this call, also indirectly linked to the American nuclear umbrella for the RoK, the DPRK remained silent about missing its deadline for a promised nuclear arms-related declaration. There was a political message behind the act of shining the spotlight on Washington’s role in regard to the RoK when the issue in prime focus was actually the DPRK’s promised declaration.

In simple terms, the DPRK’s message was that the Korean peninsula de-nuclearisation would require military-related actions by the U.S. as well.

For long, the DPRK has insisted that the U.S. should not deploy any of its nuclear weapons or the related delivery systems on the territories, including maritime zones, under the RoK’s sovereign jurisdiction. Equally consistently in recent years, Washington, for its part, has maintained that the RoK is free of American nuclear weapons and the collateral delivery systems. However, the DPRK tends to view the current strategic dynamics on the Korean peninsula in U.S.-centred terms. While continuing to deploy its slightly-depleted military forces on the RoK territory, the U.S., in Pyongyang’s perspective, remains committed to providing Seoul with a nuclear umbrella for the foreseeable future.

Not so far addressed seriously is the question whether the U.S., even if it withdraws its military forces and machinery from the RoK, will continue to protect it under the existing system of an “extended nuclear deterrence.” Under this formulation, the U.S. is said to have unfurled its nuclear umbrella over the RoK without actually using its territory, for a number of years now, for deploying atomic arms and the related delivery systems.

Pyongyang’s concerns

 

 

Evident from the latest comment by the DPRK are its serious worries about being asked to de-nuclearise itself, without so much as the U.S. indicating any willingness to withdraw from the RoK at any time. This aspect, more than the DPRK’s perceived reluctance to “come clean,” should account for the current stalemate over the declaration issue. The U.S. and its allies, however, point out that the DPRK does not want to disclose its suspected uranium enrichment programme.

Under the six-party deal, now being implemented, the DPRK had agreed to take steps towards nuclear disarmament and secure, as compensation, energy aid and humanitarian supplies from the other five countries. In doing so, Pyongyang did not insist that its own total de-nuclearisation would be conditional upon the disbanding of the RoK-based U.S. military forces.

The strategic options open to DPRK leader Kim Jong-il cannot be missed, though, in the U.S.-led euphoria over his cooperation in shutting down the nuclear facilities at Yongbyon and “disabling” them in a process now on. A total disclosure of all of Mr. Kim’s nuclear programmes is integral to the existing deal. However, the eventual “dismantlement” of the DPRK’s nuclear-weapons capabilities, in terms of fissile materials, technical infrastructure as also arms stockpiles and methods of production, is yet to be negotiated.

This has offered Mr. Kim a window of opportunity to press, from now onwards, for a U.S.-free Korean peninsula as the final price for an eventual nuclear-weapons-free domain.

Two new political realities define this emerging situation. U.S. President George W. Bush wrote a rare personal letter to Mr. Kim about a month ago, urging him to recognise the importance of making a correct declaration. The real significance of that letter, though, was the sign that Mr. Bush was finally willing to abandon his ill-advised theory of an “axis of evil” that portrayed the Kim “regime” as a coordinate that needed to be removed or reformed.

Mr. Kim also has to reckon with the victory of Lee Myung-bak, an acknowledged “hawk” on matters relating to the DPRK, in the RoK presidential poll on December 19 last year. Mr. Lee will assume office on February 25, but the DPRK has already begun to look at its sums afresh in the strategic domain.

In 2001, Kongdan Oh and Ralph C. Hassig, experts on the DPRK nuclear issue, assessed the issue of “guessing right and guessing wrong about engagement” with Mr. Kim. The U.S. and its allies now find that he is keeping them guessing at a crucial stage in the actual engagement itself.

 

The race for influence in West Asia

 

Atul Aneja

 

 

 

The National Intelligence Estimate’s findings on Iran may mark the beginning of Washington’s post-Cold War decline in West Asia.

 

 

 

 

 

The full impact of the observations in the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) report — produced collectively by Washington’s numerous intelligence agencies — on the Iranian nuclear programme is still unfolding. However, it is evident that after the release of the report, according to which Iran has not had a nuclear weapons programme since 2003, power equations in the world’s oil heartland are shifting dramatically.

Iran, fourth largest producer of oil, and Saudi Arabia, global leader, are rapidly consolidating their political influence in the region. The other countries that are also enhancing their geostrategic profile in West Asia’s energy bastion include Russia and China. After voting twice against Iran in the International Atomic Energy Agency — apparently at Washington’s behest — India also appears to be making a belated attempt at mending fences with Tehran. For the first time after World War II, the United States is struggling to retain its substantial politico-military influence in the region.

Iran and Saudi Arabia, along with Iraq and the rest of the Persian Gulf states — Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman — hold the largest reserves of oil in the world. Any change in the international pecking order in this region, therefore, is bound to have a profound impact on the world’s economy and politics.

The NIE’s findings have already unhinged the case for war against Tehran. Its conclusion that Iran ceased its weapons programme in 2003 implies that Tehran does not pose a nuclear threat to anyone in the near future. The findings have also weakened the case for tightening sanctions.

The NIE’s clean chit appears to have raised by several notches the relatively low-key interaction between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Both countries exercise enormous influence in their constituencies in the region. Saudi Arabia is now widely recognised as the de facto leader of the Arab world. It has taken the lead in trying to resolve the Arab-Israeli dispute. The 22-nation Arab League has already adopted the plan of the Saudi monarch, Abdullah bin Abdulaziz, to resolve the Israel-Palestine dispute. Riyadh also exercises considerable clout because of the key role it can play in the global oil markets. Besides, Saudi Arabia is the birthplace of Islam and two of the holiest shrines revered by Muslims the world over are in the Kingdom. The footprint of Saudi influence is, therefore, seen far and wide.

There have been significant changes in the foreign policy of Saudi Arabia, known for long as a faithful U.S. ally, after King Abdullah’s accession in 2005. The new monarch adopted a “look east” policy, which became evident when he chose India, Malaysia and China for his first overseas visit. Stepping out of line from the Washington-led peace process on Palestine, King Abdullah engaged both the Fatah and rival Hamas on its home turf in order to persuade them to form a national unity government. He met with some success when the factions agreed in Makkah to accept a political compromise despite Washington’s strong opposition to the deal.

Despite the setback the initiative suffered when bitter street battles broke out in Gaza and led to the virtual partition of Palestinian territories between the Fatah and Hamas, the Saudi monarch has not given up. Hamas leader Khalid Meshaal recently revisited Saudi Arabia and met King Abdullah. Efforts are being made to revive talks between Hamas and the Fatah, in order to advance the Saudi Arbia-initiated Makkah peace process.

Iran, on the other hand, exercises unique influence, especially among the region’s Shia population. Its substantial influence in Bahrain, a country with a majority Shia population and Sunni leadership, is well known. Iran is also a player in oil-rich Kuwait. Besides, ties between Iran and the Hizbollah in Lebanon are extremely close. The Hizbollah’s profile in Beirut as well as the region rose dramatically after it blunted the Israeli attack on Lebanon in August 2006.

Saudi Arabia and Iran began to work closely together after sectarian violence in Iraq inflamed the region. Lebanon became the first nation in which both countries decided to coordinate their activities in order to heal its growing sectarian and religious divide. While the Iranians were well positioned to influence the Shias under the Amal and Hizbollah movements, the Saudis could exercise clout over the wealthy Sunni community, which had made considerable investments in Saudi Arabia and vice versa. The interaction proved fruitful and now helped internal factions narrow down their differences over a consensus candidate for the vacant Lebanese Presidency.

Tehran and Riyadh also worked with some success in Iraq, where the Saudi intelligence could exercise its influence over some of the Al Qaeda tribal groups. Iranian influence among Iraqis, especially the Shias and Kurds, is well recognised.

Resilience evident

 

 

The resilience of the Saudi-Iranian relationship became evident soon after the Annapolis conference held on November 27, 2007. Despite the stated American efforts to build an Arab front against Iran at the conference, the events on the following days showed that forces negating Washington’s exhortations gained the upper hand. Just after the conference, the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council took the dramatic step of inviting Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to its annual summit in Doha. King Abdullah led him by the hand to the conference — a rare gesture of solidarity between the two regional heavyweights.

The conference began the very day the NIE report was released. The Saudis wasted no time in taking advantage of its findings. At the conference, Mr. Ahmadinejad spoke of evolving a collective security arrangement with Iran’s neighbours. The implication was obvious. On an Arab platform, Iran was saying it wanted to step inside the region with its neighbours, and, implicitly, marginalise the presence of American military forces, which have played a preponderant role in the oil rich region for the past few decades.

Besides, the Iranian leader invited Gulf businessmen to invest in his country, in areas that included real estate. Iranian businessmen have made substantial investments in Dubai and reside in the Emirate in large numbers. A nucleus which can carry out investments in Iran, therefore, already has a significant presence in the Gulf, especially Dubai.

Keeping up the high momentum in their relationship, King Abdullah and President Ahmadinejad met again in Makkah during the Haj. Commenting on the visit, Iran’s ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Mohammad Hosseini, insightfully said: “Iran and Saudi Arabia, as two leading countries in the region and in the Islamic world, shoulder a heavy responsibility. The two countries have reached a mutual understanding not to limit their ties exclusively to bilateral issues.”

Apart from the growing regional assertion by Saudi Arabia and Iran, Russia has moved in swiftly after the release of the NIE report. Less than 24 hours of its publication, Moscow announced that it was dispatching the first consignment of nuclear fuel for Iran’s Bushehr atomic power plant. Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, rejected calls for tougher economic sanctions on Iran in the light of fresh U.S. intelligence data. Besides, the Russians began military exercises in the Mediterranean, deploying 11 ships including an aircraft carrier with 47 planes on board. The Russian navy is reportedly using the Syrian port of Tartus as a supply base for its ships operating in the Mediterranean.

China has also made further inroads into Iran after the release of the NIE report. Despite the U.S. insistence on sanctions, the China Petrochemical Corporation on December 10 signed a $2-billion deal with Iran to develop its Yadavaran oilfield. Encouraged by the NIE findings, the Iranians are now seeking Japanese investments to develop their oil sector.

India, too, has sought to reengage Iran. Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon visited Tehran in mid-December. He was quoted as saying there that India “is interested in establishing a strategic partnership with Iran in the areas of energy, transport, and security.”

However, India’s non-participation in the recent meetings on the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline project and the perception of its growing proximity to the U.S. have not gone down well with Iran. At his meeting with Mr. Menon, Iran Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, in fact, noted that the “low level” of ties between the two great regional countries over the past two years was “lamentable.” He added: “We should not let any foreign powers to harm the existing ties between the two countries.”

Given the growing assertion of Saudi Arabia and Iran, as well as the intention of Russia and China to enhance their profile in the region, the release of the NIE report may well mark the beginning of Washington’s post-Cold War decline in West Asia.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Out of bounds for SEZs

 

A coastal State with an area of 3,700 square kilometres and a population of about 1.4 million, Goa has always been extremely sensitive to the impact of unrestrained economic development. The upsurge of public activism against the setting up of Special Economic Zones, which eventually forced the State government to announce the scrapping of all 15 such projects, is an impressive case in point. Early last year, a similar agitation coerced the government into calling for a re vision of the Goa Regional Plan 2011, a controversial document that opened up large swathes of land, including green belts and coastal stretches, for construction. The broad-based agitation against SEZs has demonstrated the power of popular protest in the State. Those opposed to the projects had questioned the propriety of the government acquiring large tracts of land and then selling them to promoters at low prices. There were also suspicions that some of the SEZs were real estate speculative plays, fronts for the entry of big construction companies.

Ironically, the government’s defence of the projects on the ground that they would result in a sharp surge in employment boomeranged on it. It led to the SEZ issue getting tied up with that of Goan identity, with worries that the projects would attract large numbers of ‘outsiders’ and alter the State’s demographic profile. The very nature of Goa demands that issues of land use, environmental management, industrial development, and resource conservation need to be looked at independently — in a way that takes into account the State’s unique economic and socio-cultural character. The tiny State, which attracts more than 12 per cent of foreign tourists visiting India and about 75 per cent of the direct charter traffic, is one of the country’s most popular tourist destinations. Ecological well-being — a high priority for the people of Goa and also the basis of its appeal as a tourism hot spot — must not be diminished by short-sighted developmental projects. The scrapping of the SEZ projects, which has been well received by all major political parties in the State, should put a definitive end to the long-drawn out controversy. The Digambar Kamath government must be commended for respecting the wishes of the people and taking a decision to keep Goa totally SEZ-free. In turn, the Central government must respect this democratic outcome and help the State government speedily resolve all remaining issues, especially the question of how land already allotted to private parties in the three notified SEZs will be recovered.

 New Year revelries

 

The molestation of two women outside a five-star hotel by a mob of about 70 men in Mumbai is shocking and despicable. The incident raises serious questions on New Year’s Eve celebrations on the streets. But for the initiative taken by a couple of media photographers, the situation could have taken an ugly turn. The police have ample evidence on hand to nab the culprits as they have their photographs. What is needed is stringent action against the guilty.

J. Anantha Padmanabhan,

Srirangam

 

* * *

 

The police must take drastic action. The reluctance of the victims to register a case should be no reason for the culprits to walk free.

 

V. Ramaprasad,

Tiruchi

 

* * *

 

The incident is undoubtedly a shame. But it is also time to reflect on the factors that are increasingly leading to such incidents.

 

V.T. Joshi,

Bhopal

The incident was indeed tragic. There is no doubt that the perpetrators of the act should be punished. But it is wrong to blame the police. The women should not have risked going out on New Year’s Eve when many people on the streets are drunk and not in control of themselves.

It is better not to run a risk rather than expecting the police to offer protection everywhere. We too are responsible for our safety and security.

Safiya Sameena,

Vijayawada

 

* * *

 

The menace of New Year revelry has spread alarmingly across the country. Two women were molested outside a hotel and five persons killed in a road accident in Mumbai, and a software engineer died in Chennai.

The law will, of course, take its course and the cases will be closed with the passage of time. Another day dawns on the horizon but the morning sun glooms over those running helter-skelter in hospitals and police stations.

R. Gopalan,

Chennai

 

* * *

 

The revelry in Chennai which ended in a tragedy was avoidable. Aren’t there better ways of ushering in the New Year than dancing and drinking in posh hotels? Such celebrations are borrowed from the West and were unknown to earlier generations. Any culture which, instead of making life more pleasant, imperils people is best avoided.

 

G. Ramalingam,

Chennai

 Dynastic rule

 

This refers to the editorial “Political dynasts and martyrdom” (Jan. 1). Dynasty has yet again raised its ugly head in political succession, this time in Pakistan. Democracy seems too conservative to shift its allegiance from a leader of standing to another. The followers too are shocked to lose their slain leader and rush to choose his or her relatives as a measure of gratitude and, worse, to gain political mileage from people’s sympathy.

There are instances of the derring-do where the successor, mostly inept to fit into the leader’s shoe, rushes to adorn the vacant throne, sidelining the inherent threat of hasty succession. Time alone will show what is in store once the mood of bereavement passes. One hopes the greenhorn teenager, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, on whom the mantle donned by his mother and grandfather was cast, will maintain the PPP’s ideology.

Radhanath Behera,

Koraput

 

* * *

 

The editorial is a forceful piece, well written. Some readers have compared dynastic politics in the subcontinent — in the context of Bilawal Bhutto Zardari’s appointment as PPP chairperson — to politics in the United States. George W. Bush did not win the presidency because of his father, Bush Sr. Nor will Hillary Clinton become President (if she does) because she is the wife of a former President. Every candidate has to compete through several caucuses within the party and then with the other party to win.

 

Jay Ravi,

Toronto

 

* * *

 

It is difficult to agree with readers who have justified dynastic succession in politics (Jan. 3). True, Nehru was a leader of the masses but that does not give Rahul Gandhi the right to lead the country. Nehru did not encourage dynastic politics, evident from the fact that Indira Gandhi did not become Prime Minister after his death. Families of many leaders have made supreme sacrifices. But do they enjoy the same privilege?

 

Politicians have greater responsibility than actors and doctors. The decisions they take affect the whole nation. Children of politicians can afford to make mistakes and survive in the field. Children of doctors who wish to become doctors have to slog it out.

S. Sudhir Kumar

 Lax security

 

The terrorist attack on a CRPF camp in Rampur, Uttar Pradesh, which claimed eight lives, proved how lax security is even in armed camps. The attack has exposed the soft underbelly of the security forces which are expected to be vigilant all the time. It is important to evolve a foolproof identification system to prevent terrorists dressed as security forces from sneaking into the camps brazenly.

D.B.N. Murthy,

Bangalore

 

* * *

 

The cowardly attack on the CRPF centre deserves to be condemned. It proves all claims of decline in terrorism false. Equally disturbing was the report of yet another intelligence warning being ignored. A foolproof coordinating mechanism needs to be put in place. State-level security agencies should be trained to maintain heightened vigil.

 

Siddharth K. Raj,

Madurai

Scrapping of SEZs

 

The editorial “Out of bounds for SEZs” (Jan. 3) was a balanced analysis of how a tiny State like Goa can suffer with the advent of Special Economic Zones. The State government’s action scrapping 15 SEZs, in view of the public opinion, is welcome. The Centre’s decision not to impose SEZs on the State (contrary to the Commerce Secretary’s stand that notified SEZs cannot be de-notified or scrapped by State governments) is welcome.

It is the State that has to examine the implications of setting up a SEZ. What Goa, a rich coastal belt in the Konkan region, requires are special agriculture zones with abundant plantations and fisheries.

V. Rajagopal,

Tirupati

 

* * *

 

The editorial deserves praise for shedding light on the level of socio-economic stress the States, particularly small ones, will undergo by indiscriminate creation of SEZs. The Goa government’s announcement to scrap the SEZs, bowing to the vox populi, is welcome. Isn’t democracy, after all, a government of the people, by the people and for the people?

 

P.K. Parameswaran,

Chennai

 

* * *

 

There is a strong case for a sound public hearing mechanism. It will provide the much-needed avenue to the people to air their grievances against big economic projects, precluding the possibility of opposition at a later date. Governments should remember that SEZ is only one way of providing employment opportunities to the people. Goa, with its pristine natural environment, is well placed to provide more employment avenues to the people in the field of tourism. So a concept of special eco-tourism zone is more relevant to the State.

 

Manish Manglani,

New Delhi

 

* * *

 

The Goan mining sector is causing immeasurable damage to the environment, the result of which will be felt in the years to come. And the predominantly tourist economy of the State has caused severe inflation. SEZs would have been the ideal solution for opening up non-polluting, knowledge-based sectors and reducing dependency on the fast depleting resources and tourism.

 

Prasanna Natarajan,

 

Britain too flawed to lecture world about democracy

 

Simon Jenkins

 

 

 

Hectoring phone calls from a post-imperial nanny won’t help Kenya or Pakistan create stable and prosperous societies

 

 

 

 

 

This week, the “better” democracies are wagging fingers at bad ones, like 17th-century popes reprimanding missionaries in the distant jungle. They tut-tut over a stuffed ballot box in Nairobi, a banned radio station in Islamabad or a murdered journalist in Moscow. They condemn a riot here, a bombed polling booth there, and an imprisoned politician somewhere else.

The British government is peculiarly unable to resist such finger-wagging. While Tories long to rule a better Britain, the Blair/Brown Labour party longs to rule a better world. Some time ago, British Foreign Secretary David Miliband told Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz “what actions we expect his government to take.” Last weekend, Gordon Brown telephoned President Pervez Musharraf to explain to him “the need to push ahead with the democratic process and to avoid any significant delay in the electoral timetable.” He added that Britain expected Pakistan’s elections to be “free, fair and secure.”

On the other phone line, Mr. Brown had the benighted rulers of Kenya, another of Kipling’s “lesser breeds without the law” needing instruction in the democratic catechism. He professed himself “appalled” at events there and “would be talking to the various parties ... to see talks between them,” apparently unaware that Kenya is no longer part of the British empire. The British commanded Kenyans to “behave responsibly.”

If I had been President Musharraf in receipt of such patronising remarks, I would have drawn deep from the well of irony. I would have referred Mr. Brown to his poor poll rating and said Islamabad was “dismayed” he had funked a democratic mandate last October. I would have expressed Pakistan’s disappointment at Mr. Brown’s record on habeas corpus, ID cards, and the exploitation of Pakistani doctors by the NHS.

Democracy has never been perfect. From the moment self-government lost touch with “self,” it adapted itself to nations and peoples. Its institutions depend more on local history, culture and geography than on Madison, Mill, and De Tocqueville. This week the rituals of heredity, not democracy, decided the leadership of the Pakistan People’s Party. Most Asian and African democracies are ballots qualified by assassination, corruption and inheritance. Yet we still grace them with the term.

Students of politics are taught to tick off the qualities that award the status of democracy to a polity. Are there free and fair elections? Can the franchise turn a regime out of office? Are there supporting institutions such as an open parliament, security of public assembly, elected local government, a free media, the rule of law? No one of these is either sufficient or necessary for democracy, which is rather a sliding scale of liberties, to which constitutions and regimes ascribe varying degrees of priority.

Presumptuous demand

 

 

It is thus presumptuous for the post-imperial West to demand that the world take the same route to self-government that it spent bloodthirsty centuries pursuing. We Brits are not so clean that we can lecture others on how they should govern themselves, especially those whom the West has polluted with aid, debt, trade curbs, and wars along their borders. Democracy in Pakistan and Kenya may be looking violently unwell at present, but Western democracy too is qualified by the corruption of party lists, eccentric primaries, and electoral colleges. The British and American constitutions are both currently battered by criticism from their subjects for falling short of democratic ideals, notably in handling accountability and checks on executive power. The outcome of America’s 2000 election was decided not by the ballot but by an appointed oligarchy. Americans would hardly have welcomed election monitors from Ukraine, India or Thailand encamped in the Miami Hilton.

Democracy is best propagated by example, not by conquest or official admonition. There are too many blots on Britain’s escutcheon for its leaders to go lecturing the world in terms redolent of the new interventionism.

Pakistan is the sixth most populous country in the world. Its fragile half-democracy is conditioned by the insecurities of its recent past and by desperate poverty. There are a hundred ways of helping it along the rocky path between democracy and dictatorship. But ultimately Pakistan, like Kenya, will be the stronger for taking this path alone. The last thing it needs is hectoring phone calls from a post-imperial nanny. — ©Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2008

 

“The utilitarian view of universities takes away from their role of creativity”

 

Alison Richard, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, is on a two-week visit to India to “strengthen Cambridge’s partnerships with Indian universities.”Mark Tullyinterviews her forThe Hinduat the start of her visit:

 

 

 

 

 

 

— Photo: V. V. Krishnan

Alison Richard, the 344th Vice-Chancellor at Cambridge, says: “There is so much opportunity here and there is a great fit between Cambridge and India.”

 

Cambridge’s first full-time woman Vice-Chancellor had some misgivings about accepting what must surely be one of the most prestigious jobs in academia. She told me: “When Cambridge asked me to throw my hat into the ring, I was extremely reluctant to do so. I had already been working as an academic administrator for eight and a half years at Yale and I am a committed anthropologist with a great passion for teaching and research.” But four and a half years into her term as Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge she has what can only be called infectious enthusiasm for her job. Certainly her enthusiasm infected me.

“I miss my research,” she tells me, “but I have the extraordinary interesting opportunity of sitting in the midst of one of the world’s great universities surrounded by outstanding people of enormous talent thinking about all manner of fascinating things.” But each year she does drop the role of Vice-Chancellor and returns to Madagascar for two weeks where she has done some of her most exciting research into the behaviour of primates. She is more than willing to share this enthusiasm for them with me, explaining that more than two-thirds of mammals live solitary lives, which raises two questions — what are the advantages of sociality and how do societies configure themselves. Those questions have led Alison Richard to the study of our nearest relations, the primates, and there is a wide variety of them in Madagascar. Her husband is an archaeologist but neither of their daughters has chosen to be an academic.

For all her enthusiasm, Alison Richard did not have a burning ambition to be an academic and even more strangely doesn’t seem certain whether she has chosen the right career. The daughter of a businessman who married at the late age of sixty, she was the first member of her family to go to university. She tells me: “I’d love to say I had a concrete ambition but it’s not true. I am still deciding what I want to do when I grow up, I think. One thing just led to another. ” But she goes on to say: “At every step I have been totally consumed and interested by what I have been doing.’

As Vice-Chancellor, she is Cambridge’s principal academic and administrative officer but Alison Richard prefers to be called an academic leader rather than an administrator. She is leading Cambridge towards the celebration of the eight hundredth anniversary of its foundation next year, having launched a campaign to raise one billion pounds by then. One of her ambitions is to ensure that the university increases its endowment sufficiently to insure that all students who have the ability to come to Cambridge can do so regardless of their family background.

What about the criticism often made that Cambridge and Oxford do take family background into account by taking a disproportionate number of students from private fee-paying schools? The Vice-Chancellor maintains that is a misunderstanding of the problem. She blames the inadequacy of many of the state schools for not producing students who can come up to the Cambridge entrance level. At the same time, she feels there are very good state school students who fear they might not be able to cope with Cambridge’s academic standards. She believes the University needs to “get those students to raise their own self-confidence and aspirations.”

Alison Richard wants Cambridge’s student body to be diverse and cosmopolitan, and this is one reason for what is only her second visit to India, and her first as Vice-Chancellor. “We live in a world which is increasingly interconnected,” she explains. “Most of our students are going to live and work across cultures. So we must take increasingly seriously the educational responsibility for producing citizens who can live and work like that. That means having a cosmopolitan and diverse student body so we are interested in attracting some of the most talented students from around the world, including of course India where there is so much talent.”

I tell the Vice-Chancellor that only last week I met students from IITs all over India at a festival in Mumbai and everyone I talked to hoped to study as postgraduates in America. The most common reason they gave was that it was cheaper. But Alison Richard thinks this is often a misapprehension. She points out that the Cambridge Trust has assisted a thousand Indian students over the last twenty-five years and one hundred and thirty are currently studying with bursaries. But she admits that Cambridge doesn’t provide as much financial assistance as the major American Universities and one of the aims of the fund-raising campaign is to match America. Nevertheless she feels the comparison between American universities and Cambridge is often exaggerated and that more needs to be done to get the word out about the scholarships which are available. She says: “I keep coming on circumstances where American universities have done a much better job of communicating a positive and upbeat message. We haven’t communicated as well as we should and the message has not been as positive and upbeat as it should be.”

It has always seemed to me that there is a danger that foreign universities attempting to attract Indian students will appear patronising, or even condescending — giving the impression that they offer a superior education to anything available in India. The Vice-Chancellor vigorously denies that. “I have come to India to strengthen Cambridge’s partnerships with Indian universities,” she tells me firmly and goes on to point out: “more and more major challenges are not amenable to solutions or study by individual academics or even academics in a single community working in isolation. They require international collaboration. Energy sustainability, religious and cultural conflicts, work on these and other subjects has to cross cultural and national boundaries. So I am coming to India to celebrate the partnerships we have and to continue to build them. There is so much opportunity here and I think there is a great fit between Cambridge and India.”

The Vice-Chancellor has also come here to announce a major new link with India. In order to celebrate the centenary of Jawaharlal Nehru’s arrival at Trinity College Cambridge to study natural sciences, the university is launching the “Jawaharlal Nehru Professorship of Indian Business and Enterprise.” This chair has been endowed by the Government of India and there is also to be a Cambridge Centre for Indian Business, established as a result of a contribution by the BP group.

So how does Alison Richard see the future of Cambridge and indeed of universities around the world? Well, first of all, she believes “the role of universities has never been more important than it is today.” But she is worried about what she calls the utilitarian view of universities — the view that they have to be useful for the creation of economic wealth. “My own deep, deep, belief is that the creation of cultural wealth and cultural insights is every bit as important as contributions to economic wealth that we make. That utilitarian view of universities takes away from their deep role of creativity in society.”

When I suggest that many students nowadays seem to have a utilitarian view of universities, opting for subjects that will bring them the fattest pay packets rather than the richest cultural reward, the Vice-Chancellor is less worried. She points out that in 1974 half the students at Cambridge were studying arts, humanities, or social sciences and the percentage is the same today. And that she insists is not because Cambridge imposes a quota system to insure the balance of subjects or lowers its standards to admit students in those subjects. “We get extraordinarily strong applicants,” she says.

But Alison Richard does believe there could be something of a utilitarian problem with academic staff. “I am not suggesting that anyone should be encouraged to come into academia to become rich. They won’t anyhow. But we should be able to make a decent living and if we don’t ensure that, students will vote with their feet.” She is particularly concerned about the remuneration of young academics who are at that stage in life when they are buying a house and bringing up a family. It’s the post-graduates and the lecturers that Britain is losing to America but at the senior level Cambridge at least is gaining as many academics from America as it is losing.

When I left Cambridge at the end of the fifties, colleges made little effort to encourage us to remain in touch with them or to ask us to offer any financial support. Alison Richards thinks that was because I went to Cambridge in the days of the welfare state when it was believed that everything, including higher education, would be provided by the state. She tells me: “It was a loss to the University not to have taken advantage of the extraordinary community of students and I would like to think a loss to all of you not to have been more engaged with your university.”

I assure the Vice-Chancellor all that has changed now and my college certainly keeps in touch with me. She believes that relations with alumni are far more important for the university than just getting them to contribute to the fund-raising campaign, which she says is “just one thing alumni can do for us and probably not the most important. You are our best advocates, you connect us to the real world.”

I wonder whether to ask the almost inevitable question — whether being the first woman Vice-Chancellor has caused any difficulties for her — but I decide against it. For someone so assured and at home in her job, that is clearly an irrelevance, and I don’t want to end the interview with a crushing reply, so I ask instead whether she has any regrets about coming back to the University where she took her first degree after so many years in the lusher pastures of American academia. I get a gentle rebuke: “I wouldn’t have come back from America if I didn’t have a passionate and profound belief in the greatness of this university and its capacity to be able to continue to play a vital and important role in the world. Nothing in the last four and a half years since I’ve been back has changed my mind.”

The Vice-Chancellor hopes her visit will strengthen the ties with India and build a partnership that will enlarge the role both Cambridge and its Indian partners play in the world. 

 Rights-free zones: illegal and unjust

 

Mukul Sharma

 

 

 

The Guantanamo model signifies the abandoning of basic principles of human rights. It de-legitimises us.

 

 

 

 

 

“O Father, this is a prison of injustice.

Its iniquity makes the mountains weep.

I have committed no crime and am guilty of no offence.

Curved claws have I,

But I have been sold like a fattened sheep.”

— Abdulla Thani Faris al Anazi, a Guantanamo detainee since 2002, arrested in Afghanistan, and turned over to the United States forces by bounty hunters.

January 11, 2008, will mark six years since the first detainees were transferred to Guantanamo Bay. The U.S. naval base there is a rights-free zone for the detention, treatment and trial of certain people in connection with the “war on terror.” Here, the Pentagon is authorised to hold non-U.S. citizens in indefinite custody without charge; the detainees are barred from seeking any remedy in proceedings in any U.S., foreign or international court; if any det ainee were tried, the trial would be by a military commission — an executive body — and not an independent or impartial court. A Justice Department memorandum to the Pentagon advises that because Guantanamo Bay is not a sovereign U.S. territory, the federal courts should not be able to consider habeas corpus petitions from ‘enemy aliens’ detained at the base.

Most detainees there are housed in conditions amounting to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. Most spend 22 hours a day in total isolation, and suffer other forms of sensory deprivation. A majority of them have been held for nearly six years with no prospect of a fair trial, no direct access to their families, and no access to a lawyer. These conditions have had a shattering impact on their psychological and physical health. At least four men are stated to have committed suicide, and many suicide attempts have been reported (For details see, “Guantanamo Bay – a legal black hole,” The Hindu, January 6, 2007).

International campaigns have raised many issues regarding this: closing down the detention centre at Guantanamo Bay and ending the U.S. secret detention programme, wherever it is based; releasing all detainees held in the “war on terror,” including those held at Guantanamo, unless they are to be charged and given a fair trial; stopping secret detentions, unlawful transfer of detainees between countries (rendition) or enforced disappearance in counter-terrorism operations; repeal of the Military Commissions Act 2006; and providing prompt and adequate reparation.

The fifth anniversary of the first transfers to Guantanamo was marked by activists around the world staging demonstrations and other activities. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, the U.N. Committee against Torture, former U.S. Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, heads of states from Europe and elsewhere, human rights and legal organisations, and many more have supported various calls for the centre to be closed. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled against the government in two Guantanamo cases, decided in 2004 and 2006, and it is now considering whether the detainees should have access to courts — right to habeas corpus — to contest their detention.

Yet, the Guantanamo camp has not been closed, and it has thrown up a huge challenge to the international community. A model like Guantanamo signifies the abandoning of basic principles of human rights. It delegitimises us.

As Archbishop Desmond Tutu said on February 17, 2006, “It is disgraceful. I never imagined I would live to see the day when the United States and its satellites would use precisely the same arguments that the apartheid government used for detention without trial.”

It would have been virtually impossible for Guantanamo to continue without a global war paradigm, constructed under the rubric of “war on terror.” Using this, parts of international humanitarian laws, selectively interpreted, are deemed to apply, and human rights laws are generally disregarded. The administration repeatedly claims that they do not hold ground in armed conflicts. There are thus new rights-free zones, like Guantanamo, in different parts of the world, where a detainee can be subjected to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment, including prolonged solitary or cellular confinement in conditions of reduced sensory stimulation.

Secret, unacknowledged arrests

 

 

Here we have secret, incommunicado and unacknowledged arrests and tortures, and all those who have been subjected to enforced disappearances and encounters are not provided access to effective remedy and justice, including compensation. Here we have anti-terror, so-called security laws, which suggest humane treatment as a matter of choice rather than law, and which exclude the security officials even from that choice. These occurrences should also be seen in the context of a dominant development paradigm, where Exclusive Economic Zones, Special Economic Zones and industrial projects in the tribal heartlands can be implemented, without free, informed and prior consent of the people.

Human rights activists in the rights-free zones are subjected to death threats, persecuted through the judicial system and silenced with the introduction of security laws. Going through unfounded investigations and prosecutions, many even disappear or are murdered.

Europe often presents itself as a beacon of human rights. However, the uncomfortable truth is that without Europe’s help, some men would not now be nursing torture wounds in prison cells in the rights-free zones, including Guantanamo. The revealing report of Dick Marty, Rapporteur of the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, concludes: “The body of information gathered makes it unlikely that European states were completely unaware of what was happening, in the context of the fight against international terrorism, in some of their airports, in their airspace or at American bases located on their territory. Insofar as they did not know, they did not want to know. It is inconceivable that certain operations conducted by American services could have taken place without the active participation, or at least the collusion, of national intelligence services.” (Alleged secret detentions and unlawful inter-state transfers involving Council of Europe member States, June 7, 2006, Draft Report - Part II (Explanatory memorandum), Para 230). In Asia and Africa, a large number of people in Pakistan, Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia became victims of rendition transferred in secret from one country to another, and to Guantanamo, through their governments.

Facts and figures on Guantanamo, released at the end of 2007, by Amnesty International are an eye-opener: nearly 800 detainees are being held there. Approximately, 300 detainees of around 30 nationalities were being held without charge or trial in November. Only one Guantanamo detainee, David Hicks, was convicted by the military commission in March 2007. He pleaded guilty to “providing material support to terrorism” under a pre-trial agreement that ensured his release from the U.S. custody after five years, and return to his native Australia to serve a nine-month prison term. Only three detainees were charged for trial by the military commission.

Between 2002 and November 2007, around 470 detainees were released into other countries. At least four of those still held were 18 years old when taken into custody. Detainees had been taken into custody in more than 10 countries before being transferred to Guantanamo, without any judicial process. An analysis of around 500 of the detainees concluded that only five per cent had been captured by the U.S. forces; and 86 per cent arrested by Pakistan or Afghanistan-based Northern Alliance forces and turned over to the U.S., often for a reward of thousands of dollars.

All rights-free zones are in violation of international and national human rights laws. Detention of each person there or every act of appropriation of natural resources in these zones is illegal and unjust. Treating all people deprived of their liberty with humanity, and with respect for their dignity, is a fundamental and universally applicable rule. It must be applied without distinction. Rights-free zones, like Guantanamo, should be closed not tomorrow, but this morning.

In general, most countries and their people have simply not taken a stand. They seem to believe that this is not their problem. They think they did not contribute to Guantanamo, and therefore they do not have to be part of the solution. We, the people, and the governments around the world can play a positive role in ending illegal U.S. detentions in the name of “war on terror.”

Among other things, we and our governments can protest to U.S. authorities against illegal detentions, provide lasting protection for detainees released from Guantanamo and elsewhere, and oppose all unlawful transfers of detainees between countries.

(Mukul Sharma is Director of Amnesty International in India

 Kenya’s stolen election

 

The presidential election in Kenya has triggered major violence. Tribal rivalries have been ignited, taking upwards of 300 lives so far. The incumbent President, Mwai Kibaki, has claimed victory over Raila Odinga. Strangely, the parliamentary and presidential contests, which were held simultaneously, produced impossible-to-reconcile outcomes. The Orange Democratic Movement led by Mr. Odinga, which led in every opinion poll except one, unseated most members of the incumbent Cabinet and took 100 out of 210 parliamentary seats while Mr. Kibaki’s Party of National Unity won just 35 seats. In the presidential election, the early counting trends heavily favoured Mr. Odinga and media computations also had him ahead. But the three-day counting process lacked transparency and suffered unexplained delays in vote tallying. In some constituencies the votes polled exceeded the number of registered voters. All this naturally fuelled allegations of rigging. The head of the Electoral Commission himself has publicly doubted whether Mr. Kibaki actually won, and the Attorney General has called for an independent investigation. The European Union’s Electoral Observation Mission has issued a damning report on the election process, saying it fell short of “key international and regional standards for democratic elections” and calling for a swift, independent investigation of the results. The United States initially welcomed the election result but has now joined Britain, the former colonial ruler, in questioning its credibility and accuracy.

Sadly, hopes of a true democratic revival in Kenya, which has East Africa’s largest economy, have been shattered. Mr. Odinga, a former political prisoner under the dictatorship of Daniel Arap Moi and son of nationalist hero Oginga Odinga, has been projected as an agent of progressive change. The voter turnout was huge and the polling broadly transparent and peaceful. What is clear is that the presidential election was stolen in the counting and tallying process. Mr. Odinga’s demand that the President must admit the brazen fraud is wholly just and seems to imply one of two things: Mr. Kibaki must step down or the presidential election process should be gone through all over again. In either case, an independent review and scrutiny, under credible supervision, of what went wrong would be a requirement. At this vital moment for democracy in Africa, the African Union, the European Union, and the Commonwealth need to do all they can to help Kenya come out of this crisis with its head held high. The only way to overcome this huge setback to democracy in Africa and for “national healing,” which Mr. Kibaki has called for, to have a chance is for him to go.

Cement import to contain prices

 

The Tamil Nadu government’s decision to import one lakh tonnes of cement and distribute it through the Civil Supplies Corporation must be seen as another signal to the Centre that it must intervene and rein in galloping cement prices. On paper, cement imports are allowed and taxes have been lowered. But the procedural obstacles, bureaucratically contrived delays on account of Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) certification, have thwarted many an attempt to procure cem ent from abroad and contain domestic prices. Six months ago, the Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister wrote to the Prime Minister complaining about the delays built into BIS certification and suggesting alternative quality checks by competent agencies, including public sector undertakings designated by State governments. The reasoning behind this demand was sound but unfortunately New Delhi was unmoved. Through this financial year, cement prices have been climbing steadily, first breaching the Rs.200 per bag level and now ruling at anywhere between Rs.200 and Rs.270, depending on the place. Cement plants in the country are working at 95 per cent capacity (the total capacity is around 160 million tonnes) and expect to build an additional capacity of 13 million tonnes this fiscal year — the highest ever increase since 2001, when they added 16.2 million tonnes. In sum, demand is outstripping supply, cement manufacturers are profiteering from high prices, and imports are deterred by a certification procedure that is, in effect, a non-tariff barrier.

The responses by Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh indicate the frustration of State governments in the face of rising construction costs that hurt ordinary people as well as major government projects and have an inflationary impact. Many mega projects of governments and their agencies, private sector projects, and the housing sector have been subject to a severe cost escalation. Infrastructure projects absorb 40 per cent of the cement produced while the housing sector takes the remaining 60 per cent. Imports are a well-recognised means of containing prices. Countries like Thailand and Pakistan may be ready to export cement but the trade finds the certification procedure a serious deterrent to import. It will be unconscionable and also politically damaging for the Centre to continue to turn a Nelson’s eye to the problems faced by State governments and ordinary consumers as all building costs escalate sharply. The economist Prime Minister needs to intervene urgently to see that the practical restrictions on the import of cement are lifted in the public interest.

 Appalling

 

That a group of about 60 men felt bold enough to molest two women who came out of a five-star hotel in Mumbai on New Year’s Eve, without fear of action, is appalling. Mumbai Police Commissioner D.N. Jadhav’s statement — that the media were making a mountain out of a molehill — is irresponsibility at its worst. Organisers of New Year celebrations must provide adequate security and protection to women. And women, on their part, should beware of the lurking dangers.

N. Nageswaran,

Chennai

 

* * *

 

While the sight of the mob pouncing on the two helpless women was shocking, worse was the fact that the outrage took place in Mumbai, considered one of the most developed and safe cities. It only shows that whatever the level of our progress, the mindset of some people is yet to change. Mr. Jadhav’s comment is most unfortunate. If this is the thinking of a police officer, what can one expect from a common man?

Imran Wadood,

New Delhi

 

* * *

 

Indian streets, it seems, are not safe for women. It is very unfortunate that a beastly incident, which should have been condemned as a crime deserving stringent action, was dismissed by a senior police officer as a minor issue. Stern punitive measures against such savagery are the need of the hour.

 

Beorn Kiruba,

Bangalore

 

* * *

 

When will men learn to respect women and stop treating them as objects of pleasure? Equal rights exist only on paper. The fact is women in India have a very long way to go before they can call themselves equal to men. I only hope those who outraged the modesty of the two women get the punishment they deserve.

 

Bhuvaneswari VamciKrishna,

Chennai

 

* * *

 

A few minutes past midnight brought shame to a country celebrating New Year’s Eve, forcing it to face the harsh reality that characterises the condition of women in India. The horrifying outrage at Juhu only reaffirms the need for strict action on the part of society and the police against such incidents so that women can exercise their right to live with dignity. While some or (most) men like Mumbai’s Police Commissioner may dismiss such incidents as a minor issue, thankfully there are a few who think differently. The Mumbai outrage is one among many other crimes against women, action on which is conspicuous by its absence.

Shambhavi Srivastava,

New Delhi

 

* * *

 

News of molestation from Mumbai and Kochi during the New Year’s Eve has brought shame and disgrace to the country. India, it seems, is becoming more unsafe and dangerous for women by the day. The Mumbai incident shows how fearless unruly mobs have become. It is obvious that the men who indulged in the heinous act were not afraid of the law. Crimes against women should be dealt with seriously and severe punishment given to the culprits.

 

Radhika Ramaswamy,

Chennai

 

* * *

 

Easy money, moral degeneration, and disrespect for the advice of elders are perhaps some of the reasons for undesirable happenings across the country in the name of New Year celebrations. It is just one more day in the lives of the poor while for some it is an opportunity to display their wealth. It is another instance of aping the West blindly, ignoring our noble traditions.

 

V. Vijayendra Rao,

Neyveli

Shocking incident

 

The news that a standard VIII student was shot dead allegedly by his schoolmate in Satna in Madhya Pradesh comes as a terrible shock, with the Gurgaon incident yet to fade from our memory. As a society, we are morally responsible for our children’s mindset. We allow them to grow in a culture where we celebrate fighting and knocking down one another as games, and treat violence and fanaticism as acts of heroism. As elders, we should serve as role models for them. Unfortunately, even among our so-called leaders, there are but a few who can be emulated.

As a first step, the government should ban programmes in small and big screens that glorify violence in the name of sport.

R. Ponnarassi,

Vellore

 

* * *

 

The shooting, coming close on the heels of a similar incident in the elitist environs of Gurgaon, confirms that adolescent rage is not confined to a strata of society. The electronic media glorify violence and the young and impressionable minds are led to believe that instant justice is the answer to all their grievances. We need to ponder over and counter this trend, through an empathetic and effective communication process that will ensure that young minds do not go astray. Parents and teachers have a crucial role to play in this process.

 

Sekhar Rayaprolu,

San Jose, California

 

* * *

 

The Satna outrage is more disconcerting than the Gurgaon incident because it took place in a village school. The gun culture seems to be spreading to all sections of society. That personal animosity can compel students to resort to such an extreme step should open our eyes to the real danger that is staring us in the face.

 

Blaming the media for the waywardness of the youth is only partly correct. Parents and teachers should create the feeling that the students are cared for and loved. They should make the young aware of the judicial retribution that awaits the delinquents and the social rejection likely to befall them. They should be taught to be tolerant and kind.

N.K. Vijayan,

Kizhakkambalam

 

* * *

 

A schoolboy being gunned down by one of his classmates will cease to be news in future. We are not only getting accustomed to violence but are also letting it dominate our lives. How do our boys get access to guns? Any legal process dealing with the errant children should also involve parents without whose complicity most juvenile crimes would be impossible.

 

T.S. Pattabhi Raman,

Coimbatore

 

* * *

 

The ugly turn of events is reminiscent of innumerable similar instances in the U.S. and elsewhere that have caused a fear psychosis among parents. Schools must tell students and parents that carrying any weapon or similar instrument is illegal and punishable with expulsion. They must conduct random checks and encourage students to report abusive language and violence on the premises. Students with aggressive tendencies, and those prone to bullying and hailing from dysfunctional families should be observed constantly. These steps, along with awareness programmes, will go a long way in ensuring safety.

 

Ganga Prasad G. Rao,

Chennai

 

* * *

 

The freedom children enjoy and the culture of violence are the cause of such incidents. We quickly point an accusing finger at the media. But we too are to blame. Children spend most of their time not with their parents but in Internet cafes playing wild computer games and seeing horror movies. They love to shoot down their ‘enemies.’ Parents should make it a point to spend some of their time with their children, teaching them good values.

 

S. Nallasivan,

Tirunelveli

 

* * *

 

A student killing another is not just an instance of murder. It signals the deterioration in our education and family values. Our education provides the ‘know-how’ but not knowledge. Families encourage competition and envy in their urge to put their children ahead of others. It is time we realised that technology and modernity are not substitutes for wisdom and values.

 

Nisha Gopalan,

Chennai

 

* * *

 

If a heated argument between teenaged boys can lead to killing, one wonders what is in store for us. It is apparent that teenage gun culture is taking deep root in India. The fact that parents do not even know that their sons carry a gun exposes the widening gap between them. With growing competition, parents seem to care only about their children’s performance, not values.

 

Thangkhochon Haokip,

New Delhi

 

A united plea to ‘save Kenya’

 

Xan Rice

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There was only one headline on the front page of all of Kenya’s big newspapers on Thursday: “Save Our Beloved Country.” The show of unity among media groups of differing political views indicates just how grave the situation has become. Independent television stations joined in, running “Save Our Country” banners across the bottom of the screen.

Radio stations read out the newspaper editorials. The Daily Nation, Kenya’s biggest selling newspaper, began its page one story with, “Our beloved country, the Republic of Kenya, is a burnt-out, smouldering ruin,” and blamed the political leaders who were “issuing half-hearted calls for peace.” — ©Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2008

 

 Benazir murder may isolate Islamists

 

Shashi Tharoor

 

 

 

The former Pakistan Prime Minister’s greatest legacy may be that the Islamists suspected of her killing will be further isolated from the army and power.

 

 

 

 

 

Benazir Bhutto has never looked so good. This week has seen the international press apotheosising the telegenic Pakistani politician. But the widely expressed view that Benazir epitomised Pakistan’s hopes for democracy, which have now perished with her, seriously overstates what she represented and the implications of her demise.

The principal consequence of Benazir’s death is the setback it has dealt to the United States-inspired plan to anoint her, after not-quite free-and-fair elections, as the acceptable civilian face of the continuing rule of Pervez Musharraf. The calculations were clear: President Musharraf was a valuable ally of the West against the Islamist threat in the region, but his continuing indefinitely to rule Pakistan as a military dictator was becoming an embarrassment. The former Chief Martial Law Administrator had to doff his uniform — long overdue, since he was three years past the retirement age for any general — and find a credible civilian partner to help make a plausible case for democratisation.

The chosen one

 

 

Benazir, after years of exile in Dubai and London, was the chosen one. She was well-spoken, well-networked in Washington and London, and passionate in her avowals of secular moderation. The other exiled civilian former Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif, was none of these things, and having been the victim of General Musharraf’s coup, was considerably less inclined to cooperate with his defenestrator.

Benazir’s first two stints had, however, been inglorious. From 1988-90, she had been overawed by the military establishment, whose appointed President duly dismissed her from office on plausible charges of corruption, mainly involving her husband, who had acquired the nickname “Mr 10 per cent.” Her second innings (1993-96) was, if anything, worse: charges of rampant peculation — and administrative ad-hockery — mounted, even as her avowedly moderate government orchestrated the creation of the Taliban in neighbouring Afghanistan. This time it was a President of Pakistan from her own party, one whose election she herself had engineered, who felt obliged to dismiss her. To assume that the third time would have been any different requires a leap of faith explicable only by the mounting international anxiety over President Musharraf’s fraying rule.

But Benazir’s true merit lay in the absence of plausible alternatives. She was no great democrat — as her will, naming her 19-year-old son to inherit her party, has confirmed. The Bhuttoist ethos is a uniquely Pakistani combination of aristocratic feudalism and secular populism. To her, democracy was a means to power, not a philosophy of politics. But the same was true of the other contenders in Pakistan’s political space — the conservative Punjabi bourgeoisie represented by Mr. Sharif, the moderate pro-militarists grouped around President Musharraf, the deeply intolerant Islamists, and the assorted regionalist and particularist parties whose appeal is limited to specific provinces.

All-powerful military

 

 

Democrats around the world may well believe the Pakistani people deserve better, but it is difficult to imagine a viable alternative to such a scenario. The central fact of Pakistani politics has always been the power of the military, which has ruled the country for 32 of its 60 years of existence. In other countries, the state has an army; in Pakistan, the army has a state. The military can be found not only in all the key offices of government but also running real estate and import-export ventures and petrol pumps and factories.

Retired generals head most of the country’s universities and think-tanks. The proportion of national resources devoted to the military is perhaps the highest in the world. Every once in a while, a great surge of disillusionment with the Generals pours out into the streets and a “democratic” leader is voted into office, but the civilian experiment always ends badly and the military returns to power — to widespread relief.

The elections that Benazir might have won have now been postponed, but they will take place eventually, because they represent the only safety valve in the pressure cooker that Pakistan is today. Her party will benefit from a sympathy vote, but in the absence of a charismatic leader it will be obliged to come to an accommodation with the Generals. Despite widespread anger at President Musharraf’s failure to protect Benazir, this may actually be the best outcome for Pakistan.

The great danger in Pakistan has always been in the risk of a mullah-military coalition. The prospect of the uniformed rulers of this nuclear-armed state being infused with the zealotry of the Islamic fanatics among their compatriots has always sent shudders down the spines of the world’s chancelleries. The death of Benazir, and the backlash it has engendered, has made that less likely for now, and that may remain her most significant legacy. — ©Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2008

(Shashi Tharoor is the author of The Elephant, the Tiger and the Cellphone [Arcade Publishing] and a former U.N. Under-Secretary General.)

 Gujarat elections: some reflections

 

Ramaswamy R. Iyer

 

 

 

What should worry the country is the change in the Gujarati psyche. What has happened to Gujarat? Is it still redeemable?

 

 

 

 

 

 

— Photo: Sandeep Saxena

Narendra Modi after meeting the former Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, in New Delhi on December 29.

 

Narendra Modi’s success in the recent Gujarat elections has been described as a great victory for him; as a shot in the arm for the Bharatiya Janata Party; as a vindication of Mr. Modi against unfair vilification; as a serious setback for the Congress, with possible consequences for the nuclear deal; and so on.

The primary concern of this article is not with the electoral prospects of the BJP or the Congress. Whether the victory was Mr. Modi’s personal triumph or a major success for the party, and if the former be the case, what its implications are for internal party politics and for party leadership, will not be gone into here. Equally, what its implications are for the Congress party leadership, whether the possibility of a mid-term poll has receded, and whether the Indo-U.S. nuclear deal will be shelved, will not be discussed.

Charge of code violation

 

 

Let us also consider and put aside another (secondary) issue, namely, the Election Commission’s pronouncements on the charge of violation of the electoral code of conduct by Mr. Modi and Sonia Gandhi. Two points need to be made here. First, the Commission’s censure of Mr. Modi may have been overshadowed by the electoral victory, but it would be quite wrong to treat that pronouncement as no longer relevant merely because Mr. Modi has won. Secondly, the charge that the Commission has not been “even-handed” as between the two parties, made by Mr. Modi and by the BJP, is strange. Why is the Commission required to be even-handed if it finds that the offence is greater in one case than in the other? It is indeed possible to argue with some justification that the Commission was excessively concerned about appearing to be even-handed, and that the issue of a notice to and the passing of an order on Ms Gandhi was not really called for. If, in fact, she believed that the events of 2002 were a disgrace to Gujarat and to India, and that the state was complicit in that horror, (and that view is held by many), it was not only right to say so to the electorate but a duty. The expression “merchants of death” that she used was not personal vilification but a criticism of a grave failure of rajya dharma (recall Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s exhortation to Mr. Modi at an early stage). If this understanding is correct, the Commission’s judgment that she had violated the code of conduct was questionable. But leaving that aside, the more important question is whether a censure by the Commission has any meaning. The Commission can disqualify candidates, countermand elections and adjudicate election disputes. All these are practical measures. What practical consequence does a censure have?

We are also asked by some: why talk only about Gujarat 2002 and not about Delhi 1984? Here again the plea is for “even-handedness.” Undoubtedly, both Gujarat 2002 and Delhi 1984 were deeply horrifying events and profoundly disturbing in their implications. In both cases, what might have started as mob frenzy became an organised pogrom targeting a particular community. In both, the police and the state machinery in general either failed to perform their duties or were actively complicit in the violence. In both, the guilty remain at large. In scale, duration, and the number of people killed, Delhi 1984 was possibly worse than Gujarat 2002. However, in comparing the two events and trying to be “fair” and “even-handed,” we fail to note two points. First, it is meaningless to compare the two horrors; abhorrence, grief, and shame are the appropriate responses in both cases. One horror does not mitigate the other. Secondly, while some politicians and groups might have been actively involved in Delhi 1984, the Hindus of Delhi as a whole were not complicit in the anti-Sikh violence, nor did they condone it. Of course, the state was complicit, and ipso facto the citizens could be said to be indirectly complicit too, but we cannot say that the madness of those few days had social sanction. In Gujarat, one fears that the horrors of 2002 had, apart from direct participation by some, widespread social acquiescence among Hindus. In Germany, the people renounced the Nazi madness, undertook severe self-criticism and experienced remorse. One is not aware of any similar development in Gujarat; perhaps it will happen in due course. On the other hand, there is anger at “Gujarat bashing.”

In the light of the foregoing, what does the recent Gujarat election mean? Three observations are warranted.

(1) There is no doubt that Mr. Modi has won a remarkable victory. In the absence of complaints to the contrary, the elections must be presumed to have been free and fair. This is a demonstration of Indian democracy and must be accepted as such. We may not rejoice at the result. Democracy does not guarantee that only the sanest and noblest will be elected. In this case, a person about whom many thinkers in the country have profound misgivings has been elected. Our celebration of Indian democracy has to be tempered by the realisation that this can happen.

(2) Has the election vindicated him? Was he being unduly demonised? Were we all wrong about Gujarat 2002? Must we change our thinking? The answer is a clear ‘no.’ Our judgment about Mr. Modi is indeed a matter for examination, but the election results have no bearing on that examination. Either Mr. Modi was the demon that he was said to be, or he was not. If he was, it was right to describe him so; there is then no question of demon-ising, much less “unduly.” If he was not, it was simply wrong to have so described him. What is the truth? We can draw our inferences from a study of what happened in 2002, the manner in which the Gujarat Government responded to the outbreak of violence, the Chief Minister’s role in that context, the inferences that can be drawn from the Tehelka tapes (if they are authentic), his impugned election speeches, and the Election Commission’s finding on them. Plenty of material is available: reports by persons such as Harsh Mander, Swami Agnivesh, the National Human Rights Commission, and so on, and now the Tehelka tapes. What is needed is a proper investigation. Investigations and consequential action must not be put off merely because he is back as Chief Minister with a strong popular mandate. Those who boasted on camera about criminal actions must be brought to book. State failure and possible complicity must be looked into, and the officials concerned proceeded against. If the trail leads to the Chief Minister, that too must be followed up and action taken. The election changes none of this. One has to state this obvious position because media reports seem to take it for granted that the elections have indeed changed everything; they have begun to portray Mr. Modi (earlier excoriated as a villain) in admiring, flattering terms as a hero.

(3) Finally, what matters is not the future of Mr. Modi but that of Gujarat. It would be comforting to think that the people of Gujarat have voted for good governance and for personal efficiency and integrity, but that would be a delusion. Good governance — or perceptions of good governance — may have played a part, but the people were also responding to Mr. Modi’s roaring Hindutva rhetoric, and to his appeal to Gujarati pride.

There may be some — perhaps not a small number — who think otherwise, but their voices are not heard.

What should worry us, then, is not whether Mr. Modi is a demon, but the change in the Gujarati psyche. What has happened to Gujarat? Is it still redeemable?

 A preventable tragedy

 

With precise intelligence available on their timing and target, the terrorists who attacked the Central Reserve Police Force camp at Rampur on Tuesday ought to have walked into a trap. Instead, eight men are dead, and the lives of their families scarred forever, in a tragedy brought about by sheer incompetence. Despite warnings that an attack was imminent — intelligence that was the fruit of investments made in enhancing the technical espionage capabilities of the Re search and Analysis Wing — the CRPF did nothing to beef up its perimeter security arrangements. Incredibly, officers at the threatened facility did not even bother to cancel or postpone their New Year festivities. A thoroughfare that runs through the camp — the existence of which is itself a gross violation of security protocol — was closed but then reopened to placate irate local residents. In the event, the Lashkar-e-Taiba assault team that carried out the terrorist attack used the thoroughfare to drive into the camp and drive out again, its mission accomplished.

India’s security apparatus responds well when beset by crisis. However, successful security depends not on crisis-time creativity but on the disciplined and effective implementation of mundane, everyday protocols. Potential targets must be secured as if terror strikes were imminent. Here the Indian system’s record is appalling. Despite years of painful experience, sensitive government installations in New Delhi, including the headquarters of some of India’s key military organisations and covert services, are defended in a manner that would be considered unconscionably negligent in many parts of the world. Most airports, railway stations, and bus terminals have no protection against car bombings or suicide squad attacks. Successive governments have failed to push the nuts-and-bolts institutional upgrades needed to enhance India’s security. Across the world, experience shows, terrorist strikes are prevented more often by the rigorous implementation of modern security measures than by pinpoint intelligence. Several countries have put in place systems to monitor purchases of chemicals that can be used to manufacture explosives. They have created online databases to facilitate real-time verification of fingerprints, identity documents, and criminal records by local police. They have invested seriously in police training and forensic investigation capabilities. They have routinely rehearsed and tested procedures for securing public facilities and government offices. On every one of these counts, India’s record is poor. Sadly, few politicians in or out of power seem interested in even understanding the problem, let alone addressing it.

 Gujarat elections

 

Ramaswamy R. Iyer’s reflections on the Gujarat elections (Jan. 5) deserve serious attention. Winning elections through sheer rhetoric that appeals to parochialism and vanity is a dangerous trend, set by Narendra Modi. Unless we realise its potential danger, it will spread to other States too. Then the questions that Mr. Iyer asks about Gujarat will have to be reworded: “What has happened to India? Is it still redeemable?”

Tomichan Matheikal,

New Delhi

The question raised in the article is also relevant in the context of the recent violence in Orissa. Gujarat is still redeemable if the Congress takes a stern stand on secularism as taken by the CPI(M) on Orissa. The Congress leadership should categorically reject Hindutva.

K.C. Cherian,

Kottayam The article argues that while Gujarat 2002 and Delhi 1984 were both deeply horrifying and profoundly disturbing, they cannot be compared. The victims of the 1984 riots have not been rehabilitated even after 23 years and the perpetrators have got away. If the Congress and the Delhi populace could move ahead and put the riots behind them, why doubt the Gujaratis’ ability to do the same? It is not proper to question the Gujarati psyche on the basis of the electoral results. I would like to remind the author that there were riots in Gujarat even before 2002, during the Congress regime. The 1969 riots were worse.

P. Venaktasubramanian,

Chennai

Concerns such as those expressed in the article have existed over Gujarat and other places — Delhi, Meerut, Moradabad, Bhiwandi — at different times throughout the six decades following independence. To fault the Gujarati psyche for the recent election result risks alienation of the community. What the Gujarat electorate seems to have done is to put 2002 where it deserves to be — five years backwards — and look to the future. The reasons the Congress lost were it could not think beyond 2002 and conceive a vision better than Mr. Modi’s. Election results should be accepted gracefully and the electorate’s sentiment acknowledged.

Devraj Sambasivan,

Alappuzha

The Gujarat election was fought on only one agenda — that Mr. Modi was responsible for the 2002 riots and he should not be re-elected. This was aided and abetted by many agencies in India. The electorate thought otherwise and elected Mr. Modi as its leader again. His opponents should accept that the common man knows what is best for him.

V.R. Janardhanam,

Chennai

 Dynastic politics

 

When the son or daughter of a lawyer, actor, or film director entering the same profession does not attract so much criticism, one wonders why politicians as a class are blamed when a son, daughter or any other relative of a politician succeeds him or her after death. Bilawal Bhutto Zardari may be young, a student, but that alone should not disqualify him from stepping into his mother’s shoes. Let democracy give a chance to the successor before condemning the choice and procedure.

M. Ramankutty,

Tripunithura

Democracy and dynastic politics do not vibe. Wives, sons, grandsons, daughters, nephews and nieces are nominated to political posts, whether or not they deserve it. In South Asian nations, particularly India, the practice is becoming rampant. The victim is democracy. People alone can rescue democracy from being bequeathed by wills, written or unwritten.

A.V. Ramana Rao,

Chennai

I wonder whether any other country would have seen a father, daughter and her son becoming Prime Minister and their other family members becoming party presidents. Can the Congress ever question dynastic succession in other parties when it has led by example? From Punjab to Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala, it is well rooted. The communists and the BJP have so far remained exceptions to this culture but temptations leave none. The BJP seems to be falling a prey to dynastic succession.

V. Kameswaran,

Chennai

 Whose fault?

 

Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf’s statement that Benazir Bhutto was partly to blame for her assassination as she threw security precautions to the winds (Jan. 4) seems reasonable. He is right in pointing out that it was because Benazir ignored his warnings despite an earlier attempt on her life that she was killed. She should not have emerged from the sunroof of her vehicle. That made the assailants’ task easy. She made the same mistake as Rajiv Gandhi.

T.T.V. Raman,

Tirupati

General (retd.) Musharraf, who has weathered all political storms since he came to power, will, in all likelihood, come out of this controversy too. For the PPP leader, the election was not worth risking her life. A boycott of elections by all political parties and people would have brought the desired result slowly but surely. How long could Washington have supported a discredited regime?

Benazir’s ambition to become Prime Minister for the third time consolidated dictatorship in civvies. Pakistan lost a golden opportunity to usher in democracy. From the beginning, it is Pakistan’s political leaders who have helped the army consolidate its grip over governance. Military generals, retired or serving, will continue to rule Pakistan.

Capt. T. Raju (retd.),

Secunderabad

True, Benazir was partly responsible for her death as she emerged from her car. But it does not absolve the Pakistan government of the lapses and loopholes in her security. How did the assassin manage to get so close to her vehicle by jumping the security ring? Why was she not provided with greater security as an attempt had already been made on her life? Why did the government not insist on a post mortem? Why was the road at the blast site washed down?

Aalok Patel,

New Delhi

The authorities have committed too many blunders in handling Benazir’s assassination. To begin with, her body does not seem to have been examined properly by an independent panel of doctors. Any medical professional can differentiate between a bullet injury and a fracture. So the official confusion over the cause of her death seems strange.

Secondly, the site of the assassination was immediately washed. So there is little chance of getting any forensic clue. Can the Scotland Yard carry out a just and proper inquest?

S. Singh,

Rajpura

 At times like this, nations are forged

 

Binyavanga Wainaina

 

 

 

 

 

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The Kenyan state has run out of steam. Only a new constitution can

bring together its minorities.

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I was in Lamu 10 days ago, a slow gentle place, cut off from most of the muscular and modern tempers of the rest of Kenya. I was telling off Patrick, a young Giriama man, for vanishing with my money for a whole day while I remained without mobile phone credit. He was partying somewhere. He finds it very difficult to understand why such a thing would make me so upset. There is a rhythm to things in Lamu and why do you upcountry people and white people, who to us are really the same people, move so aggressively against the tide of things?

While we were talking, a young Kenyan woman doctor joined us and we started talking politics. When she left, he asked me if the woman was a Gikuyu (often spelled Kikuyu). I said no. He said, “Yeye ni mjanja sana.” I told him she was a Luo. He was confused for a second. Then he nodded, and said again, “Ni mjanja kama mzungu.”

What he was saying was, “She is very ‘cunning’ or ‘clever’, like a white person.” And his association with this “cunning” is that this is a very Gikuyu thing, and a very upcountry thing. He did not say, or mean, “wise,” or “educated” or even “intelligent.”

In the 1960s, when the coastal strip was parcelled out to Kenyatta’s cronies, the Giriama — Patrick’s people — found themselves squatters in their own land, as Swahili families took over their traditional lands. As the coast stagnated, the flood of upcountry people began: educated, aggressive, and entrepreneurial, they have come to dominate the economy of the region. Now things are rumbling, as the Orange Democratic Movement proposes a more devolved government — and people in the area interpret this as upcountry people being sent back home, so they can occupy the economy. When Mwai Kibaki rigged himself into power last Sunday as we watched on television, the violence began, against Gikuyu and other upcountry tribes, as people took their political aspirations into their own hands.

A few days later I try to buy some more credit for my phone. I stop at a Gikuyu woman’s shop, and she does not have enough mobile phone credit. Her assistant laughs at me when I ask for a cold coke. “Have you any idea how we got supplies today? People were landing here shell-shocked with bicycles stacked up with bread and sodas ... don’t even ask how they got them.” He turns to chat with the small group of customers around him, talking about the day, sharing really, in a very warm way, a thing we are all involved with. There was nothing partisan in his talk.

He turned to his boss, a woman in her fifties, conservative with an angular face and a no-nonsense expression, and says to her: “He! Mama, kesho nitakimbia town mzima nitafute Celtel yaa ndugu yangu hapa. (Mama, tomorrow I will run around all over town to find Celtel credit for our brother here.)”

There is something jarring. I don’t know what for a moment, then I realise he is speaking to his boss, a fellow Gikuyu, in Kiswahili. She replies to him in Kiswahili. This is unusual. They both laugh at something, nervously. She turns to me and says something she has never said before. She tells me, in Kiswahili, to go to our neighbour, he has some Celtel credit. She says this, as we all know Gikuyus are being killed in the Rift Valley and Kisumu. ODM and Mr. Kibaki’s PNU — the protagonists who have split the country in half after a close and badly counted election — have removed all goodwill, and we find we are tentative with each other.

I try to examine some of these interactions. Different languages represent different aspects of the national character. Every Kenyan is a split personality: authority, trajectory, international citizen in English; national brother, in Kiswahili; and content villager or nostalgic urbanite in our mother tongues. Our mother tongues live in an imagined past and occupy an incoherent present, and when a threat seems to come, and the state seems to be part of the threat, we are able only to activate other nationhoods as acts of war — the Gikuyu, my ethnic group, do not meet as a nation to examine their economy; they start to agitate, often provoked by the political elite to get the “nation” ready to encounter “the other” out there.

In this part of town, all kinds of Kenyans live — city English people making their way home, villagers and their produce on the streets, and the crowds of people being gentle to each other in Kiswahili. So many times you hear about somebody who was living another life in another language, and when he died, whole families came crawling out of the woodwork. Widows fighting next to the lowering coffin.

Season of hell

 

 

In the future, when we look back to this short season of hell, we will ask ourselves if the shutdown of all media was the right thing. For more even than the symbolic beheading of the state by Mr. Kibaki on live television, the ceasing of live broadcasts on all our media was an announcement that Kenya was closed. And the text messages that followed were announcing that we are on our own, and that in the dark, your neighbour is coming to get you.

What we are seeing is simple. The state as we know it has run out of steam. The winner-takes-all Westminster system we have cannot carry our aspirations. Even as blood is shed in Eldoret and Mombasa, Kenya’s various ethnicities are now stranded in their own paranoia for lack of a viable national structure and process. We have known it for years. This is why a new constitution has been on the top of the list of political priorities for most Kenyans for 10 years and more.

We are 45 years old this year. Like many nations, this is our moment of truth. There is a way out of this — if both leaders act like statesmen, sit together and do what is necessary legally to have an interim power-sharing arrangement whose sole task is to create a structure that can carry us along into a new election, with a new or amended constitution that ensures that, whoever wins or loses, the whole country and all its minorities and interests are carried.

A strong economy

 

 

We are a strong economy in Africa. We have a well-trained army, and police force and civil service. We have some of the most competent technocrats in any developing country. We even have a lot of goodwill across ethnic and class lines, and if we act now, things will improve. All the foreign correspondent stuff about “atavistic hatreds” and such is not true. For every place where there are things burning, there is a recent historical problem that has got to do with big political games, by big political leaders.

We all want peace, and all civil leaders should speak loudly to their own constituencies. Baying from across the bridge does not do much. Nations are forged through situations like this. Leaders are made. We have maybe been play-acting nationhood. Do we want a common state? Do we really want this? The time has come to decide. — ©Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2008

(Binyavanga Wainaina is editor of Kwani magazine; his memoir, Discovering Home, is to be published by Granta in 2009.)

 Russia-Iran ties on the upswing

 

Vladimir Radyuhin

 

 

 

Vladimir Putin has seized the opportunity offered by the changing landscape around Iran to upgrade bilateral relations across the board.

 

 

 

 

 

Consolidation of strategic ties between Russia and Iran was one of the most significant events in 2007. A breakthrough came when Vadimir Putin visited Tehran in October to become the first Russian leader since Joseph Stalin to set foot on Iranian soil. Mr. Putin is reported to have told Iranian Supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei that Russia was ready to “expand ties without limitations” with Iran. This offer closely resonated with a proposal to form a strategi c alliance against common enemies that the Ayatollah made to the then Russian Security Council Secretary, Igor Ivanov, when he visited Tehran in February 2007.

It took Moscow eight months to respond because it insisted on synchronising the all-round expansion and deepening of Russian-Iranian ties with Iran’s steps to answer the outstanding questions on its nuclear programme. Mr. Putin did not avail himself of a long-standing invitation to visit Tehran till after Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) agreed in August on a “work plan” to clarify Tehran’s past centrifuge development work.

A few weeks after Mr. Putin’s historic visit, Iran handed over to the IAEA details on its P-2 centrifuge work, prompting IAEA Director Mohamed El Baradei to say Iran was making “good progress” towards resolving the outstanding questions. On December 3, the U.S. released a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) report that cleared Iran of the charge of pursuing a nuclear weapons programme. Significantly, the report which signalled Washington’s retreat from the military option, had been kept under wraps for over a year.

On the same day, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad became the first Iranian leader to attend the Gulf Cooperation Council summit in Doha. The next day, Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council Saeed Jalili was in Moscow to meet Mr. Putin. Mr. Jalili told the Russian President that the Iranian leadership was committed to building “long-term, strategic and future-oriented” relations with Russia. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said after the meeting that the Iranian envoy had pledged to answer all outstanding questions of the IAEA “in the nearest time possible.”

On December 13, Russia and Iran reached an agreement on a timetable for the completion of the Bushehr nuclear plant, which had been dogged by repeated delays and a row over payment. On December 16, Russia shipped the first consignment of uranium fuel to Bushehr. On December 17, the Al Qaeda leader — number two — Ayman Al Zawahiri denounced Iran in a video for backing off from its support to Iraqi Shia attacks on U.S. troops. In the last days of 2007, a second batch of fuel rods was delivered to the Iranian plant. By the end of February, the reactor will be fully stocked with fuel needed to start it up. Russian officials said this could happen before the end of 2008.

The sequence of events shows that Mr. Putin seized the opportunity offered by the changing landscape around Iran and worked towards consolidating the changes. Russia moved to upgrade bilateral relations with Iran across the board.

Iranian reports said the two countries were discussing 130 economic projects worth over $100 billion and aimed at boosting bilateral trade from the current $2 billion to $200 billion in the next 10 years. Energy will account for much of the planned growth in ties. Russia and Iran hold between them about 20 per cent of the global oil reserves and 42 per cent of natural gas. Russian oil and gas companies are already involved in Iranian hydrocarbon projects, and the Russian-Iranian trade commission at its meeting in Moscow on December 13 discussed plans to set up a joint gas venture to explore deposits in the Persian Gulf and Central Asia. The JV could undertake, according to Russian energy officials, the construction of the Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline.

Energy axis

 

 

An energy axis between Russia and Iran could eventually lead to the establishment of a gas OPEC lobbied by Tehran and favourably viewed by Moscow. This will have a profound impact on strategic equations in the region. Russia is keen on directing Iran’s gas exports to Asia and keeping the European market for itself. Energy underpins an emerging strategic triangle comprising Russia, Iran and China. The latter has signed multibillion-dollar energy deals to buy Iranian oil and liquefied natural gas and may also be at the receiving end of proposed gas pipelines from Iran. If the IPI project comes through, it can be extended to China; otherwise a Turkmenistan-China gas pipeline scheduled to be built before the end of 2008 can be connected to Iran (this will merely require reversing current gas flows from Turkmenistan to Iran via an existing pipeline between the two countries).

Russia has agreed to strengthen Iran’s military muscle. Following his talks in Tehran last month, head of the Russian Federal Service for Military and Technical Cooperation (FSMTC) Mikhail Dmitriyev said defence ties between the two countries “reinforce stability in the region.”

Russia has also encouraged Iran’s deeper involvement in multilateral arrangements in the region. Moscow and Tehran see eye to eye on many regional issues. Both are opposed to U.S. plans to build oil and gas pipelines on the Caspian Sea bed bypassing Russia and Iran, and both want the sustainable energy security in Central Asia and the Caspian to be the prerogative of the region’s nations. The Caspian Summit in Tehran on October 15-16, which provided a convenient pretext for Mr. Putin’s visit to Iran, supported Iran’s initiative to set up an economic cooperation organisation of the Caspian nations. The new body will hold its first meeting in the Russian city of Astrakhan on the Caspian Sea later this year. In a major boost for Tehran, the Caspian states ruled out the use of their territories for attack against Iran.

Russia has strongly supported Iran’s membership in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. Addressing a New Year press conference in Moscow, Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Losyukov revealed that the SCO will “soon” end its moratorium on expansion and consider admission of new members. He made it clear that Iran, which has an observer status in the SCO, would be a prime candidate for full membership. He said Iran’s involvement in the SCO was essential for “effective solution of problems.”

Mr. Putin’s offer of strategic partnership with Iran has a rider: it must renounce the nuclear weapons option. Following a new round of infighting in the Iranian leadership, Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani, a moderate close to Ayatollah Khamenei, was replaced by a former member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Saeed Jalili, a hard-line ally of President Ahmadinejad. However, Tehran’s continued cooperation with IAEA indicated that moderates have gained the upper hand, at least for now.

Strategic tie-up with Russia is too tempting an option for Iran to turn down. With Russia’s help, it can advance its cherished goal of achieving regional supremacy and extending its strategic reach to Central Asia and beyond. At the same time, Iran wants to keep the nuclear option open. Moscow has firmly linked further defence and nuclear energy cooperation with Iran to progress in its interaction with IAEA.

On December 23, Iranian Defence Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar announced that Russia would supply Iran deadly S-300 anti-missile systems, which will dramatically increase its ability to repulse air or missile attacks by the U.S. or Israel. Russian defence sources confirmed the report but the country’s top weapons export authority, FSMTC, issued a denial. However, it did not deny the deal as such but said: “The delivery of S-300 air defence missiles … is not on the agenda and is not being discussed with the Iranian side at this moment.” Once again, Moscow is dangling the carrot. It remains to be seen if Mr. Putin’s preferred successor, Dmitry Medvedev, will display the same diplomatic skills as Mr. Putin has done in dealing with Iran.

Russia’s strategic rapprochement with Iran stands out in stark contrast with New Delhi’s stagnant relations with Tehran. This may be a further indication that New Delhi is drifting away from Moscow. India has developed cold feet on the IPI project and the State Bank of India has banned letters of credit for Iranian firms in support of U.S.’ unilateral sanctions on Iran. Iran figured prominently in Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s discussions with Mr. Putin during their summit in Moscow last November, according to Indian officials.

Considering the fact that Russia has a vital stake in getting India on board on Iran, Mr. Putin must have offered Dr. Singh his frank reading of the situation: the U.S. overreach in Iraq offers a unique chance for making strategic gains in the region by forging closer ties with Iran. Has India chosen to play up to the U.S. and miss the chance?

 Abolish the death penalty

 

In a ground-breaking move, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) has voted to place a moratorium on executions, with 104 member states favouring the resolution and 54 opposing it. As a result, the death penalty could be abolished de facto even in countries that retain it on their statute books. A UNGA resolution of this kind has no binding legal force but this one is a significant advance over the earlier initiatives that merely proclaimed universal abolition to be a desirable objective. The heated debate that preceded the adoption of the resolution reminds us that a huge amount of work needs to be done before this cruel, inhuman, and degrading punishment becomes history. Some countries harped on the fact that the death penalty was sanctioned in international law and sought to depict the attempt at establishing a universal moratorium as interference in the judicial systems of member states. The appeal to national sovereignty is an all-too-familiar response from some developing countries. Other opponents of the UNGA resolution invoked cultural and religious practices in justification of retaining capital punishment.

Data available for 2006 show that 133 countries have done away with the death penalty in law or in practice. Over that year, 25 countries carried out executions and 91 per cent of the known executions were the work of six countries — China, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the United States (in that order). Confirmed legal executions declined by more than 25 per cent between 2005 and 2006. The New Jersey Assembly recently replaced the death penalty with a sentence for life without parole — the first such law adopted since the 1976 reinstatement of the death penalty in the U.S. In India, the death penalty is supposed to be handed down only in the rarest of rare cases. But these are modest mercies. The time has certainly come for humankind to do away with the barbaric penalty and India needs to join the ranks of those who have seen the light.

 Desperate measures

 

The assassination of Benazir Bhutto drove discredited Pakistan’s discredited dictator, Pervez Musharraf, and his puppet Cabinet into a seemingly precarious position. Under domestic and international pressure, he has sought to create an impression of being reasonable. First, he had the Election Commission ‘consult’ all the political parties before announcing its decision to put off parliamentary and provincial assembly elections by a modest 40 days. Then h e inducted Scotland Yard into the investigation of the assassination, to neutralise the demand of the Pakistan People’s Party that a wider probe should be conducted by an international commission under the auspices of the United Nations Security Council. This is the third time in Pakistan’s history that Scotland Yard detectives have been brought in to assist investigations into high-profile assassinations; and, unfortunately, their efforts produced nothing of consequence on the previous occasions, in 1951 and 1996. As shown by the frustrating pace of the investigation into the assassination of Lebanon’s former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, external agencies work against the odds in complicated situations on alien soil. With conspiracy theories flying around, a large number of Pakistanis seem to believe that their intelligence services were involved in the assassination. Suspicions on this score have only been strengthened by the way the Musharraf regime kept changing its narrative on how Benazir died. At first it came up with an ‘intercept’ pointing to an Al Qaeda plot featuring the Taliban warlord in Waziristan, Baitullah Mehsud, who denied any involvement. Then it trotted out the story of death by sun-roof fracture, with neither bullet nor explosive hitting the target. This yarn collapsed after DawnNews aired footage that established that a gun was fired by an apparent sharpshooter from about two metres away and that Benazir collapsed through the sun-roof into the car before the suicide bomber exploded. Scotland Yard certainly has its work cut out considering that much of the evidence at the assassination site was washed away through ‘inefficiency’ (as President Musharraf has claimed) or worse (as the PPP has alleged), and that the legal requirement of a post mortem was waived (at the request of Benazir’s husband, Asif Ali Zardari).

The postponement of the poll also smacks of an attempt to make the best of a bad situation. From all accounts, the PPP appeared poised to sweep to power on a sympathy wave much as the Congress did after the Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi assassinations. Such an outcome would hardly have been welcomed by a Musharraf regime that was clearly uneasy about the United States-brokered deal it had made with Benazir. All opposition forces in Pakistan expressed the apprehension that the government would use the assassination as an excuse to postpone the election well beyond the scheduled date of January 8. The electoral prospects of the ‘King’s Party,’ the Pakistan Muslim League (Qaid-e-Azam), which seemed hopeless in the wake of the assassination, could only improve if sympathy for the PPP abated, dissent cropped up within that party, and the opposition’s show of unity weakened during a prolonged hiatus. The Musharraf regime’s footing appears to be weak since it could put off the election only to February 18.

Newspapers’ response to the digital challenge

 

Roy Greenslade

 

 

 

Different platforms and round-the-clock reporting are the main challenges.

 

 

 

 

 

Newspapers are playing a game of digital leapfrog. One paper does not merely catch up when another jumps ahead. It usually overtakes by taking advantage of technological developments its rival was unable to embrace. There is no possibility of standing still.

In a sense, the online revolution is like a train journey without a destination. As soon as one paper arrives at a station that had once appeared to be a terminus, another title has built a new line and sped onwards.

For the moment, given the need to keep on printing while simultaneously uploading, it means driving as fast as possible towards a brave new world while keeping the engines running at full power in the old — but still lucrative and popular — world of newsprint.

In Britain, regional newspapers, as so often, have been in the forefront of this cultural change. Their reporters and subeditors have been embracing multi-platform journalism for several years. The national press in Britain has been slower off the mark, but they are forging ahead now. Editors, naturally enough, tend to justify the merging of print and digital staffs by talking of the journalistic imperative. But they are aware that there has been a commercial impulse too. With falling revenues from both circulation and advertising, it does not make financial sense to employ two sets of overlapping staff.

Controversial logic

 

 

A similar, if somewhat controversial, financial logic has also dictated a reconsideration of the staffing requirements across seven days.

One of digital transmission’s greatest benefits is that it allows for the merging of staff on daily and Sunday titles in a way that proved unachievable 20 years ago. Some call it another wonder of the web; others call it job cuts under a digital cloak. But integration is about much more than internal office structures. It is really about the creation of a new journalistic culture, a method of working that reflects both the technological possibilities and the demands of a wised up, increasingly media-savvy public.

Indeed, it is also about the response to a new public because newspapers are no longer serving a geographically distinct area.

The challenge is to provide 24/7 news, to offer a minute-by-minute, round-the-clock news service. This can only be achieved through integration, by journalists responding to the demand of filing for website and the paper, by them bringing into play audio and video material whenever relevant.

In my visits to the offices of The Financial Times, The Times, and The Telegraph (all in London) — where there are different forms of integration — I was struck by the way in which their journalists have grasped, or are beginning to grasp, the benefits of integration, not only at a practical level but as a philosophy. Every executive I met was at pains to point out how the mindset of their editorial staffs has changed. They are no longer troubled by that old argument about whether a story should be web-first or print-first. With their news editors they are developing an instinct about the appropriate way to publish.

One persistent criticism by sceptics is that journalists are being asked to do too much. Again, that’s not what I discovered. As far as I could ascertain, journalists are grasping the opportunities offered by online publishing to write more freely. There is much more fulfilment involved in writing a developing story when you discover that there is no longer any need to cut it to ribbons to fit a space.

Updating for newsprint editions tended to be dispiriting because some material would inevitably be lost. Now it can be accommodated without any loss of detail. Now journalists are realising that integration is not only proving much less painless than expected, it is releasing them from the straitjacket of the single 24-hour deadline. — ©Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2008  

 Opponents must talk, Kenya’s future is at stake

 

Wangari Maathai

 

 

 

Killing, destroying property, and displacing individuals create a legacy that will haunt Kenyans down the generations.

 

 

 

 

 

 

— PHOTO: AP

Some members of the Luo tribe, displaced by the post-election violence, take refuge at a police station in Limuru, near Nairobi, Kenya on Monday.

 

The situation in my country, Kenya, is shocking and dangerous. We must act to end the violence and senseless killings, which erupted after the announcement by the Electoral Commission of Kenya (ECK) that President Mwai Kibaki had won the presidential elections. It is important to understand that there has been longstanding underlying discontent and mistrust among some ethnic communities, which has been fed by generations of politicians.

The current political situation had its genesis when President Moi stepped down in 2002 and anointed Uhuru Kenyatta as his successor. Senior politicians who hoped to succeed Mr. Moi left his party and joined Mr. Kibaki, creating the National Rainbow Coalition (NARC). In December 2002, Mr. Uhuru Kenyatta was defeated and the NARC came to power with Mr. Kibaki as President.

In opposition, the NARC’s two constituent groups had signed an agreement to share power when victory was secured. This was not honoured, and deep disappointment and discontent led to divisions. In 2005, these caused the defeat of a government-backed draft constitution. In the 2007 election, the Kibaki-led camp campaigned as the Party of National Unity, while the other camp, led by Raila Odinga, became the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM). Both were strongly backed by their ethnic communities, with deep mistrust on either side.

Claims of rigging

 

 

Before the results were announced, claims of rigging and irregularities were widespread among ODM supporters; at least one electoral commissioner also raised this charge. After Mr. Kibaki was declared the winner, the ODM claimed it had been robbed of victory, and election observers (local and international) also admitted irregularities. When Mr. Kibaki rejected ODM demands to step down, members of communities that mainly supported the party turned on those communities perceived to have voted for Mr. Kibaki. These have included the Kikuyus, Kisiis, and Luhyas. Hundreds of people have been killed and thousands displaced, and properties have been burned and looted.

There is frustration among ODM supporters because they believe victory was denied them. We now have a great divide in the country that can only be resolved through truth and reconciliation. Given the admission from the ECK chairman that the election tallying process was irregular, we should have the votes recounted by an independent body, or we should rerun the elections. To expect Kenyans to accept the flawed results would be unfair and undemocratic.

An equally important step is for the two leaders to engage in dialogue. It is challenging for some to exercise restraint, but greatness is demonstrated at times like this.

The country’s future depends on how the ODM leadership shapes its reactions and how the government responds. We need political maturity and respect for our laws.

Part of the way forward could also be a power-sharing arrangement, which should be constitutional and put in place by parliament. It would allow the political and economic affairs of the country to return to normality within the shortest possible time.

Even as political leaders play their role, citizens should refrain from violence. All 42 communities in Kenya are bound by geography and history to live as neighbours. Killing, destroying property and displacing our brothers and sisters creates a legacy that will haunt our children and their children. Let us stand up for each other, irrespective of our ethnic backgrounds and political persuasions. Injustice to one is injustice to all of us. If we, individually and collectively, are not the conscience of our country, then who is? — ©Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2008

(Wangari Maathai, the 2004 Nobel peace laureate, was MP for Kenya’s Tetu constituency from 2002-07.)

A high profile visit and some realities

 

Pallavi Aiyar

 

 

 

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s coming visit to Beijing can be seen as one more step in the long road towards strengthening bilateral ties.

 

 

 

 

 

The geopolitical spotlight at the start of the New Year is firmly trained on Chindia, with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh gearing up for his much anticipated visit to the Chinese capital. In the 21st century, India and China have emerged as two of the world’s fastest growing economies. With a combined population equal to a third of the world’s total, the appetites and interests of the two countries are of increasing influence in shaping the new and as yet unset tled, post-Cold War order.

It is in this context that the significance of their evolving bilateral ties must be analysed. Formidable as both potential collaborators and equally fearsome as competitors, the two neighbours find themselves facing similar challenges and opportunities. Scouring the world for the oil and other natural resources needed to feed their burgeoning economies, both countries are concerned with developing new foreign policies that match their changing aspirations and status. To this end, they are seeking to modernise their militaries, increase their regional influence by integrating areas on their periphery, and develop their soft power.

The relationship between two nations on the rise is never a simple one, but Sino-Indian ties are subject to added layers of complexity. India and China not only share a disputed border that is thousands of kilometres long but are also attempting to spread their wings in essentially overlapping areas of influence.

Dr. Singh’s visit to China will be the first by an Indian Prime Minister in almost five years. Given the significance of the bilateral engagement this might seem like a long gap, but it is nonetheless an improvement over previous occasions. The last Indian Prime Minister to travel to Beijing, Atal Bihari Vajpayee in June 2003, made the trip after a space of 10 years. At the time, cross-Himalayan relations were notable mainly for their prickliness, with the single issue of the boundary predominating. When India tested a nuclear device in 1998, it pointed to the ostensible strategic threat posed by China, as justification. Until March 2002, the two countries lacked a direct flight connection. Bilateral trade that same year stood at a paltry $5 billion.

Since then, however, ties have substantially improved. Trade has been galloping forward, investments are on the up, and steps towards cooperation on a broad spectrum from energy to the military have been undertaken. During Mr. Vajpayee’s 2003 China trip, special representatives from both sides were appointed to seek a political solution to the border dispute. Two years later, in 2005, Premier Wen Jiabao visited New Delhi and a series of political parameters and guiding principles for the devising of a framework to settle the dispute were announced. Simultaneously, the decision to upgrade ties to a strategic and cooperative partnership was also taken.

In the last year itself several milestones in bilateral relations were reached. From January to November, bilateral trade rocketed to $34.2 billion.

In December, the armies of the two countries conducted their first-ever series of joint exercises, taking a long stride away from the bitterness and suspicion that followed in the wake of the 1962 war.

Earlier in the last year, a special hotline between the two Foreign Ministries was set up even as new consulates opened up in Guangzhou and Kolkata. Fresh flight routes were added connecting eastern India with southern China, taking the total number of weekly direct flights between the countries to 22.

Congress president Sonia Gandhi made a high profile visit to Beijing in October 2007. Two months later, the third India-China strategic dialogue was held in the Chinese capital. Moreover, the two countries found several opportunities to make common cause on a variety of global issues including climate change and the World Trade Organisation negotiations.

However, despite the visible upswing in bilateral ties, unresolved tensions continue to simmer under the surface, even as new areas of potential contention have emerged.

Widening trade deficit

 

 

On the economic front, a widening trade deficit for India is threatening to mar the positive of the business engagement. In the January-November period for 2007, the Indian trade deficit with China widened to $9.02 billion, compared to the $843 million trade surplus New Delhi enjoyed as recently as 2005. India is also yet to grant China market economy status and is reluctant to enter into the Free Trade Agreement that Beijing is pushing for.

Developments of a geo-strategic nature have also caused discomfiture on both sides of the border. For example, Beijing’s official reaction to the Indo-U.S. deal on civilian nuclear energy cooperation has been lukewarm, with the Chinese media accusing the accord of hurting the global nuclear non-proliferation regime.

In the meantime, China has continued to extend military and nuclear cooperation, including major arms sales and energy assistance to Pakistan, its “all weather” ally. Beijing’s “string of pearls” strategy involving the building of naval bases all along the Indian Ocean has the Indian military establishment nervous, as does the country’s new push towards developing high quality infrastructure along the southern border of Tibet.

Suspicions have in turn been aroused in China by India’s growing closeness to the United States and Japan. The quadrilateral initiative involving India, Japan, the U.S., and Australia, has raised the spectre in Beijing of an attempt to squeeze and isolate China within an “arc of democracy.”

Moreover, rather than any positive breakthroughs in the border dispute, the boundary in recent months has emerged as the centre of considerable controversy, with the Chinese Ambassador making a public statement reasserting China’s claim to the whole of Arunachal Pradesh only days before President Hu Jintao’s India visit in November 2006. Although this was in fact a reiteration of China’s traditional claim to the State, government officials have refrained from restating historical positions in recent years, referring instead to the need to make “mutually acceptable adjustments.”

While the Chinese government sought to play down the significance of the ambassador’s comment, the matter was back in the limelight a few months ago when Beijing refused a visa to an IAS officer from Arunachal Pradesh. Reports of incursions across the Line of Control have also made regular appearances, demonstrating how far the neighbours in fact are from the strategic and cooperative partnership that is their stated goal.

The reality of Sino-Indian relations thus remains complex; a complexity that will be unaltered by Dr. Singh’s brief visit to Beijing later in the month. In addition to meeting with China’s top leadership, Dr. Singh will address scholars at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and attend a meeting of business leaders. He will also join Premier Wen Jiabao for a ceremony at the Great Hall of the People to commemorate the work of Dr. Dwarkanath Kotnis, a member of an Indian medical mission sent to China in 1938 to provide assistance in the face of the Japanese invasion.

In sum, the visit is likely to be high on symbolism but low on substance, a condition that has characterised most recent developments in bilateral ties.

For example, while the recently concluded joint army exercises were in many ways a public relations coup, military analysts say little information of actual defence value was exchanged. The focus of the exercises was on counter terrorist operations, but the cold fact remains that India’s major terrorist threat emerges from China’s old ally, Pakistan.

Again, while 2007 was celebrated by both sides as the Year of Friendship through Tourism, India was only able to attract some 67,600 visitors from China in the year, out of a total of over 35 million outbound Chinese travellers.

Experts in China say the thrust of the joint communiqué signed during Dr. Singh’s visit is likely to be on common stances on global issues pertaining to the environment and international trade negotiations. The reason they say is that bilateral issues like the border have entered a substantive phase and there is thus less scope for dramatic declarations there.

The next stage of Sino-Indian relations will in many ways be the most crucial. While ties have undoubtedly improved since the start of the new century, they have since hit a plateau. Deft diplomacy, patience and skill will be required to transition from the current emphasis on “managing” bilateral ties, to substantially strengthening the relationship. This will entail not only the balancing of competing interests but also the changing of ossified mindsets. Dr. Singh’s visit is thus best seen as one more step forward on this long and twisting road 

 Yes America, I will show the way

 

Ramesh Thakur

 

 

 

Barack Obama could make a great President, embodying in his person the narrative of the civil war struggles to overcome barriers of race and discrimination, yet eschewing in his persona the anger of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.

 

 

 

 

 

If one year from now the world expectantly awaits the inauguration of Barack Obama as President of the United States of America, we will look back not on the Iowa results but on his stirring victory speech as the moment the impossible became the inevitable. It is hard for anyone watching that speech even after the event, anyone who cares about the world and cares about our common future, not to be moved. Rather than savour and linger on it, Mr. Obama took his victory and built on it for the morning after in New Hampshire and beyond.

There are cadences of oratorical passion and soaring rhetoric reminiscent of Martin Luther King and metaphorical flourishes and peaks that recall the uplifting brilliance of John F. Kennedy. As if that isn’t enough, Mr. Obama has a Ronald Reagan-like capacity to make Americans feel good again about themselves and their country. Even his smile is incandescent yet authentic and therefore infectious. Win or lose hereafter, Mr. Obama has dispersed some of the suffocating smoke of cynicism and put a bit of fun and fizz back into politics.

Lest we forget, however, and no matter what the sequel to Iowa, let us pay homage to America and the American dream more generally. Later this year, the Democratic Party will have either a black or a woman as its presidential standard bearer. The party’s field of candidates is already America at its most glorious best: Barack Obama, son of a white Christian woman from Kansas and a black Muslim father from Kenya who grew up in Hawaii and Indonesia, victorious in 96 per cent white Iowa; Hillary Clinton, a woman; and Bill Richardson, a Hispanic-American, among others. On the evidence to date, any one of them would make a good President. Mr. Obama could make a great President, embodying in his person the narrative of the civil war struggles to overcome barriers of race and discrimination, yet eschewing in his persona the anger of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton who captured the rage of the disempowered but failed to turn that into a positive programme of action for all Americans.

America matters, what America does and does not do matters, and so the choice of who leads America matters to the rest of us. It is impossible for the world to move forward if America decides to stand still and refuses to budge, as on climate change. It is impossible for the world to avoid a tsunami of misfortunes when America takes a misstep, as in Iraq. By the same token, it is impossible for outsiders not to celebrate when America presents its most attractive face to the world which no other country, still, can match.

This is why I was up late the night of the Iowa caucuses, listening and reading as the early results and trends, and the confirmation of the final tally, came in to the accompaniment of pundits’ instant analyses. A political news junkie, I had difficulty going to sleep after the excitement of the results. The night alone was proof that America is becoming a better and more inclusive nation. Who better to put it into words than the man of the hour himself in his victory speech. “This defining moment in history”, he said, was an affirmation of “the most American of ideas — that in the face of impossible odds, people who love this country can change it.” In identifying with and investing in Mr. Obama, the people of Iowa have put paid to the soft bigotry of low expectations that condemns millions of people everywhere to a life of unfulfilled expectations and self-fulfilling despair.

The night was historic, yet history provides no guide to interpreting the results. For we have seen nothing like it before. Mr. Obama’s message of hope, healing and change was a powerful beacon that resonated with and drew thousands to the crowded caucuses in an emotionally charged exercise to reclaim the nation’s political soul. It truly is difficult not to start basking in the glow of the lamp lit in the cold Iowa night of January 3. As the New York Times’ Bob Herbert put it (Jan. 5), “Shake hands with tomorrow. It’s here.”

I am in a crowded field of analysts, American as well as international, who have believed that the damage wrought by the Bush administration will take years and decades to undo. Not with Mr. Obama. Where Hillary offers the choice of good policy in the hands of a competent manager, Mr. Obama seduces with the vision of a great leader: Yes, America, there is a promised land, and I will show you the way. Hillary offers retribution for all the sins of the George W. Bush years with a promise to relive the glory years of husband Bill Clinton; Mr. Obama offers redemption that will transcend the bitterness of the Bush-Clinton culture wars with a dynastic tinge to it. To her connections and calculation, he offers conviction and aspirations. She may believe she is entitled to rule; many more believed on the night that he is born to lead. From this point on, the race is his to lose more than hers to win.

As the New York Times columnist Gail Collins argued (Jan. 5), even Hillary Rodham the fresh graduate would have been an Obama girl not a Hillary Clinton fan today. For Mr. Obama bested her in just about every demographic cohort that will decide the election: women, independents and the young. Her underlying negatives and the weight of baggage inherited from the 1990s — the decade of the Clintons — proved too burdensome against the strength of positives that the Obama campaign has steadily been communicating over many months. Angry Democrats who want to get even with Mr. Bush will vote for Hillary; those impatient to move on — eager to see the back of Mr. Bush but equally to turn their back on the wearying partisan culture wars of the last several decades going back to Vietnam — will embrace Mr. Obama.

Hillary could not square the circle of offering change by insisting on not doing things differently in Washington. While Mr. Obama promises to motivate large numbers of first time and independent voters and rally them around the Democratic flag, she has a significant hate following that would mobilise the strident Republican base to the anyone-but-Hillary rallying call. Iowa may thus potentially cement worries about her unelectability while easing anxieties about his.

Leadership lies in articulating a bold vision and persuading others to buy into it, emotionally as well as intellectually, in ways that transcend their immediate self-interest. It means setting standards of national and international behaviour, explaining why they are important, and coaxing others to adopt them as personal benchmarks. Mr. Obama captured elements of this brilliantly in his victory speech.

Bill Clinton had warned that a vote for Mr. Obama would be a roll of the dice and that the issues confronting America were much too grave for such a gamble. Iowans have rolled the dice in favour of hope over experience. A triumph indeed that even the rest of us can savour no matter the final outcome, sharing in the pride and amazement of white as well as all hyphenated-Americans that they might be on the cusp of something big. To paraphrase Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru’s great independence speech, a moment comes, which comes but rarely in history. Of such cathartic moments are great democracies made, sustained and renewed.

The Bush administration has presented an angry and intense American face to the world playing to and heightening the nation’s fears and insecurity. The result? The United States has sometimes been ugly, as in Iraq; sometimes AWOL (absent without official leave), as in Guantanamo Bay; and at other times absent in action, as on climate change.

Mr. Obama has not always shown himself to be the master of the 20-second soundbite. Yet the detailed interviews he has given on foreign policy issues show him to be a thoughtful and reflective candidate. Probing the depth of his knowledge confirms he is book smart; Iowa proves he is street smart. We foreigners can but pray that the new President, whoever he or she may be, will return America to its strengths, values and the tradition of exporting hope and optimism. And so help to lift America and the world up, not tear one another down.

(Ramesh Thakur is Distinguished Fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation and Professor of Political Science at the University of Waterloo.)

 Changing contours

 

It may not look like an irreversible long term trend, yet the steady loss of the dominant market share held by State Bank of India and other government-owned banks merits attention. No doubt the financial sector liberalisation since the 1990s was meant to usher in greater competition and give a wider choice to customers. One significant reform measure was the licensing of a few “new generation” private banks. These banks, with adequate capital and access to the latest technology, were expected to carve out a significant space for themselves. Unlike insurance, banking in India was never wholly a government monopoly. Even after the two-stage nationalisation process that began in 1969, there were a number of private banks and foreign banks competing among themselves and with the public sector banks, which retained their individual identities. Even as recently as 2002, the government-owned banks had a 78 per cent share. However, as the new private banks went through a process of consolidation, a few of them led by the ICICI Bank gained at the expense of both the public sector banks and the older private banks. While a drop in the market share of government banks as a class was expected, that the country’s oldest bank, SBI, would suffer the most came as a surprise.

According to a recent RBI report, the share of SBI and its associates fell from 28 to 24 per cent over a five-year period beginning 2001-02. The new private banks added 7 percentage points to garner a market share of 16 per cent last year. Independent studies however point out that it is the SBI that has seen the maximum erosion. For instance, its share of total banking deposits has fallen from 22 to 16 per cent over a seven-year period beginning 2000. The other government-owned banks — including even SBI’s associates — have more or less managed to stay where they were. Apparently the significant advantages that SBI traditionally enjoyed in terms of capital, branch network, and human resources have not helped, at least so far. SBI is still the largest bank and how it moves to face its latest challenge will determine the contours of the financial sector in India.

 The death penalty

 

This refers to the editorial “Abolish the death penalty” (Jan. 7). By voting for a moratorium on executions, the United Nations General Assembly has expressed serious concern over the inhuman practice. Capital punishment imposes a definitive penalty on a man whose culpability is often relative. It denies the condemned man his natural right to live and a chance to make amends. Moreover, the death penalty is anti-poor. Most of those on the death row are those who could not afford to hire a lawyer. Since our criminal justice system is not foolproof, there is a danger of an innocent person being wrongfully punished.

A civilised state like India should not have the authority to award capital punishment even in the rarest of rare cases.

T. Marx,

Karaikal

 Gujarat elections

 

The scholarly article “Gujarat elections: some reflections” (Jan. 5) clearly warns us of the folly of brushing aside the horrendous events of 2002 on the basis of Narendra Modi’s landslide in the recently held election to the State Assembly.

What is disturbing is a large section seems to have endorsed or chosen to forget the riots. One is reminded of the frenzy that gripped most of Germany when the Nazis came to power.

John P. Anthony,

Hyderabad

The suggestion by some readers that it is time we moved forward and forgot the 2002 riots is disturbing. The victims of the genocide are still living in fear and deplorable conditions, while the perpetrators are free. Isn’t it the government’s responsibility to rehabilitate the victims and punish the perpetrators? Since when did the demand for justice become retrograde? Why should we have courts and a justice system?

Seyed Ibrahim,

Chennai

A comparison between Gujaratis and Germans under the Nazi regime is atrocious. We haven’t read about concentration camps or killing of Muslims every day since 2002, have we? The Gujarati Hindus and Muslims have put the horrors of 2002 behind them and moved on.

Sudhamshu Hebbar,

Chennai

The Nazis planned their murders and committed them en masse — persecuting the Jews systematically. What happened in Gujarat was spontaneous and the government controlled the riots after initial hiccups. A majority of 5 crore Gujaratis voted for Mr. Modi. Their collective wisdom, I am sure, cannot be faulted.

Raghu Seshadri,

Chennai

True, Gujarat 2002 should not have happened, true the government failed to curb the riots in time. But it is also true that Gujarat has made tremendous progress in recent years, for which Mr. Modi deserves credit.

Is the Gujarat electorate so insensitive as to vote a demon to power? Let us not overlook Gujarat’s achievement. And let us praise Mr. Modi for what he has done for Gujarat after the riots.

Nikhil Srivastava,

Bokaro

 Rule of law, at and after Sydney

 

Harish Khare

 

 

 

Once we get over all the hysteria and breast-beating about umpire Steve Bucknor’s infractions, those who love the game have to work together to preserve and deepen the rules-regime in international cricket.

 

 

 

 

 

In 1986, A. Bartlett Giamatti, a renowned scholar of classical English literature, an enlightened administrator, and a passionate historian and writer of baseball, decided to leave the world’s most prestigious academic position — president of Yale University — to take up the job of president of the National League of Baseball in the United States. Many of Professor Giamatti’s academic friends thought he had opted for a lesser world of professional sports. But Professor Giamatti thought otherwise because his central intellectual contention was that professional baseball, like any other organised sport, was essentially a device to tame man’s wild and violent impulses and to initiate and indoctrinate the spectators (and, by extension, the citizenry) into the complex web of obligations that lies at the heart of the rule of law.

Within a year of becoming a top sports administrator, Professor Giamatti was called upon to adjudicate the appeal against suspension (for 10 days) of a player who was accused of cheating. After a lengthy, elaborate and transparent hearing, Professor Giamatti put out a detailed judgment (reaffirming the suspension) but also eloquently underlining the principles of fair play. The Giamatti judgment reiterated “the basic foundation of any contest declaring the winner — that all participants play under identical rules and conditions.” It talked of the need to preserve “faith in the games’ integrity and fairness; if participants and spectators alike cannot assume integrity and fairness, and proceed from there, the contest cannot in its essence exist.”

These Giamatti propositions are being recalled in the context of the controversies that have come to surround the just concluded cricket Test at Sydney between India and Australia. And, at the very outset, it must be acknowledged that in India (as also in the rest of the South Asian region) there is a cultivated tendency to quarrel with the law-enforcer, particularly when the law-enforcer has given an unfavourable ruling.

Matter of national honour?

 

 

Predictably, the Sydney standoff was effortlessly converted by us in India into a matter of national honour. Television anchors and newspapers screamed: desh ki izzat. At best, izzat is a feudal concept, instigating over the decades mindless and bloody vendettas among families, clans, tribes, and nations in this part of the world.

And when on Tuesday morning the International Cricket Council chose to see merit in Indian protestations, a Board of Control for Cricket in India official permitted himself to say that the “ICC has respected the sentiments of the people of India.” That is missing entirely what was at stake in Sydney: just as it is incumbent upon a player or a citizen to obey the law, there is an equally vital obligation on the part of the law-enforcers to perform their responsibilities in a competent, transparent, and fair manner.

It would be most unproductive for the game of cricket if we were to make a habit of whipping up national emotions every time there is an imperfect umpiring decision. Like any other sport, cricket is also a test of players’ skills, physique, temperaments, character, and intellect. At times, hysteria among zealous fans can and does spur players to reach within themselves to raise their game; but, adulation cannot be a substitute for performance against a talented opponent.

And though international cricket is played according to a highly elaborate rule-book, what the Sydney standoff has shown is the need to ensure that fair rules are fairly and uniformly enforced. Also this enforcement of rules will need to be done more transparently than has been the case so far. For instance, so little is known of the procedural and testimonial protocols adopted by the match referee, Mike Proctor when he upheld the “racism” charge against Harbhajan Singh.

Australian cricketer Mike Hussey was reported to have said: “there have been a lot of contentious decisions, but you have got to accept the umpire’s decision. It takes discipline to do that without showing any dissent.” Hussey is not wrong, except that it needs to be understood by everyone who loves and enjoys the game of cricket that referees and umpires will be not be respected, on and off the field, if their decisions are seen to be arbitrary.

Any suggestion of arbitrariness goes against the very principles of rule of law and fair play.

Worthy decision

 

 

The ICC’s belated decision to replace Steve Bucknor, a real culprit on performance count, is a worthy acknowledgement that it was time to revisit bad and imperfect enforcement of rules, otherwise there would be disrespect and defiance of the whole structure of law. From Pakistan to Kenya, the lesson is obvious: Presidents, generals and administrators can keep on asking the citizen to fall in line and obey the law but there will be no obedience to lawful authority if the rules of the game are unfairly enforced.

Just as functional judiciaries all over the world take care to enforce some kind of behavioural and performance codes on judges and adjudicators, it had become incumbent upon the ICC to send out a message to all stake-holders — cricketers, administrators, umpires and referees, sponsors and fans — that it was alive to the possibility of imperfections and incapacities on the part of law-enforcers. To that extent, the standoff at Sydney will not go waste.

 Speculation over oil prices

 

Andrew Clark

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Think oil at $100 a barrel seems expensive? Speculators are already betting that the price will double to $200 a barrel by year-end. On the floor of the New York Mercantile Exchange (Nymex), the number of options to buy oil at $200 has leapt 10-fold in the past two months to 5,533 contracts.

The increase in demand is a record for any similar period.

The price for the contracts has jumped 36 per cent since early December.

Options contracts are a simple way for investors to speculate on rising prices. Buyers do not have to keep them until the price hits $200 — they can simply sell them on as their value rises.

The number of $200 contracts is still extremely small in the context of the overall options market — and Kevin Norrish, director of commodity research at Barclays Capital, suggested that it would take a “massive supply shock,” such as another war in the Middle East, for the price to double this year.

“It’s not outside the bounds of possibility — but it’s a very extreme possibility,” Mr. Norrish said. “You would have to see a very large proportion of supply taken out of the market for that to happen.”

Barclays Capital predicts an average oil price of $87.40 for 2008. It expects the market to remain tight, with demand strong in America and Asia and weak supplies from non-OPEC countries. — ©Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2008

 Persisting diaspora concerns in Myanmar

 

V. Suryanarayan

 

 

 

The Indian community in Myanmar should get a better deal. Some thoughts on the occasion of Pravasi Bharatiya Divas.

 

 

 

 

 

On March 18, 1946, addressing a predominantly Indian gathering in Singapore, Jawaharlal Nehru said: “India cannot forget her sons and daughters overseas. Although India cannot defend her children overseas today, the time is soon coming when her arm will be long enough to protect them.”

This declaration held forth the promise of an enlightened policy approach towards Indians overseas once India became independent. The words of cheer and hope were a natural culmination of the Indian national movement under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi, who had started his political career defending the rights of indentured Indian labourers in South Africa. The cause of Indians overseas was also dear to other great leaders, such as Gopal Krishna Gokhale, V.S. Srinivasa Shastri, C.F. Andrews, Jawaharlal Nehru, H.N. Kunzru, Acharya Kripalani and Ram Manohar Lohia. They repeatedly stressed the need to safeguard the interests of the unfortunate people, who had to leave the shores of India to cater to the economic interests of imperialist Britain.

But the hope that independent India would pursue an enlightened policy towards Indians overseas was not fulfilled. The Government of India’s perception and policy towards them underwent many twists and turns. The deep concern for migrant workers that was felt during the nationalist phase gave way to a disavowal of any responsibility for those who were viewed as the subjects of a separate country. Later, the migration of skilled personnel from India was characterised as part of a “brain drain.” Once the economic liberalisation process began, New Delhi’s policy turned full circle. Indians overseas were characterised as unofficial ambassadors of India who could contribute to the country’s economic transformation and act as a bridge between India and the outside world.

Following the recommendations of the Singhvi Committee Report on the Indian Diaspora (December 2001), January 9 came to be celebrated as Pravasi Bharatiya Divas (Overseas Indians Day).

The date has a symbolic significance. For it was on January 9, 1915, that Gandhiji, often called the first Pravasi Bharatiya, returned to India after two decades in South Africa where he led a struggle for Indian freedom. On January 9, representatives of Indians overseas, both people of Indian origin and non-resident Indians, assemble, the Government of India confers decorations on the high profile ones among them and policy pronouncements are made.

The estimated number of the Indian diaspora population is more than 20 million. They are scattered in different parts of the world, and therefore it can be said that the sun never sets on the diaspora. It will be simplistic and naïve to assume that the problems that they face and what the future holds for them are identical in all cases. Their problems are intertwined with the nature of their migration, their social and economic status, the size of a given community, educational attainments, and the majority-minority syndrome in the countries where they have settled.

In countries such as South Africa, they were until recently subjected to varying forms of discrimination. In Mauritius, Guyana, Malaysia, Singapore and Trinidad, they share political power. In Fiji, though they constitute the majority community, they have been effectively deprived of political power. In the United States, they are one of the most affluent minority groups and an object of envy and admiration. Nearer home in Sri Lanka, people of Indian origin were converted into merchandise to be divided between the two countries in the name of “good neighbourly relations.” The media in India devote considerable attention to happenings among Indians overseas. Academics have started researching on their problems. Politicians are keeping abreast with developments relating to them and the Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs regularly comes out with policy decisions.

Tragic status

 

 

However, not much attention is being devoted to the tragic status of the Indian community in the neighbouring state of Mynamar. According to the Singhvi Committee Report, the total Indian population in Myanmar is estimated to be 2.9 million. Of this, 2,500,00 are people of Indian origin, 2,000 are Indian citizens and 400,000 are stateless. All of them were born in Myanmar and belong to the third or fourth generation in the country. But since they “do not have any documents to prove their citizenship under the Burmese citizenship law of 1982,” they are deemed to be stateless. The only document they had was the foreigner’s registration certificate, which they had to renew every year on payment.

T.P. Sreenivasan, a former Indian Ambassador to Burma, has pointed out: “They had no rights either in their land of origin or in their land of adoption, and neither of the governments seemed concerned.” In fact, Myanmar has the largest number of stateless people among those of the Indian diaspora.

The Singhvi Committee Report was an eye-opener. It said Indians are “fairly impoverished in Myanmar.” The more prosperous among them have left following waves of nationalisation and other measures which hurt their means of livelihood. The educational scene is pathetic. At one time the faculty and alumni of the University of Rangoon comprised mainly Indians. Today “there are hardly any Indian students in the universities.” This has resulted in a virtual extinction of a professional class. The main reason was that “between 1964 and 1988, Indians were denied admission to the universities and professional courses.”

The marginalisation of the Indian community is directly related to the policies pursued by successive Burmese governments. The introduction of radical land reforms in the days following independence hit the members of the Chettiar community, who complained about not receiving compensation. Even in cases where compensation was paid, it was inadequate.

When the Burmese government introduced the Socialist Programme in the 1960s and nationalised even the retail trade, that sounded the death knell of the poorer sections of the Indian population. Many of them lost their savings, returned to India and had to start their lives afresh. The Burmese repatriates complained that they lost their savings, their properties were confiscated. Their women were not even permitted to bring their mangalya sutra. Even after the lapse of 43 years, the issue of compensation to the affected Indians has not been settled.

C.N. Annadurai, who became Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu in 1967, was concerned about the developments in Burma and was keen to resolve the compensation issue. In a conversation, Thomas Abraham, who was then Minister Counselor in the Indian Embassy in Rangoon, recalled a meeting he had with Annadurai in the Chief Minister’s residence, arranged through some common friends.

After discussing the pros and cons of the matter, Annadurai wrote to the Central government suggesting that India enter into a long-term agreement with Burma for the import of rice. He suggested that the compensation due to be paid to Burmese repatriates be adjusted as part of the proposed deal. In 1967 India was facing an acute shortage of foodgrains. On his return to Rangoon, Mr. Abraham made a similar proposal to the Ministry of External Affairs. Unfortunately, these concrete proposals did not elicit a favourable response from New Delhi.

‘Hands-off policy’

 

 

In his recently published memoirs, Words, Words, Words: Adventures in Indian Diplomacy, Mr. T.P. Sreenivasan has described the consequences of New Delhi’s “hands-off policy” with regard to the Indian community in Myanmar. Though the Ne Win government expelled the Indian petty traders, the authorities wanted the Indian farmers to stay back to provide continuity in rice cultivation. When Mr. Sreenivasan visited them, he found that the “farmers had become totally impoverished.” Their quality of life “was extremely poor.” Ironically, they “did not have even rice to eat” as the procurement authorities “lifted their produce wholly.” They had to consume low-quality rice, which the state did not want to purchase for export.

This year also Pravasi Bharatiya Divas is being celebrated. The Ministers of the Central government, the government officials concerned and delegates from developed countries will harp on the necessity to speed up the administrative procedures relating to dual citizenship.

But will they find time to discuss the abject living conditions of the Indian community in Myanmar? Unlikely, because today New Delhi is more keen to provide legitimacy to the authoritarian government in Myanmar. Naturally, it will not like to focus on embarrassing issues that impinge on bilateral relations — like the plight of the unfortunate children of Mother India.

(Dr. V. Suryanarayan is a retired Senior Professor of the Centre for South and Southeast Asian Studies, University of Madras.)

 Awash with foreign funds

 

The Reserve Bank of India’s preliminary balance of payments (BOP) data for the first six months of the year do not reveal any significant departure from certain well documented trends in the external sector. The impact of the strengthening rupee is once again seen in the decelerating merchandise exports. Compared with a more than 25 per cent growth during April-September 2006, their growth has been 19.9 per cent in the corresponding period this year. There is a growing clamour for expanding the range of export sops. The larger debate over policy measures to moderate the rupee’s rise, however, remains inconclusive. Merchandise imports, on the other hand, have grown by 21.9 per cent, compared to 24.7 per cent during the same period last year. Oil imports have grown at a sharply lower rate, almost certainly due to the fact that global oil prices were at that time well below today’s unprecedented levels. However there has been a spurt in the import mainly of export-related items and gold and silver. The trade deficit has widened to $42.4 billion, a jump of $8.7 billion. Invisible receipts have increased at a much slower pace mainly on account of a deceleration in the exports of both software and business services. This ominous development is once again partly attributable to the strong rupee and its impact on the margins of leading software exporters. However, remittances from Indians working abroad, which form part of private transfers, were higher at $19 billion, up from $12.7 billion. That has been the main factor behind the higher invisible surplus, which at $31.8 billion is $8.3 billion more than last year’s corresponding figure.

As a result of the growth in invisibles, the current account deficit was only marginally higher, at $10.7 billion. As in earlier years, it is the aggregate of net capital flows that has propped up the balance of payments, and this time the increase is very substantial — over $31 billion — and it covered almost all categories. Net foreign direct investment has been higher by $2.6 billion. Portfolio investment has jumped more than 11 times to $18 billion, a development clearly corroborated by the rising stock markets. Only in one category, NRI deposits, there has been a net outflow, reflecting lower deposit rates. Curiously, other government disincentives to check unbridled external commercial borrowings have not borne fruit. Capital flows in this category have almost doubled. The BOP data reinforce the point that rupee appreciation and checking the unprecedented levels of capital flows will remain the key concerns of monetary and fiscal policies.