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EDITORIAL Both Governor G.C. Saxena and Chief Minister Dr Farooq Abdullah have visited the carnage site and shared the grief agony of the sleepy village of Kot Chadwal. Earlier to this top brass of the State remained busy in similar rituals in the wake of Mehjoor Nagar massacres of the Sikhs and unceremonious end of 8 police men besides severe injuries to score of others Transmission tower near Banihal has been blasted, Law Minister P L Handoo's house in Anantnag district is attacked. Lashkar-e-Toiba has enlarged its earlier threat of attacking PMO to say bluntly that Prime Minister A B Vajpayee and Home Minister L KAdvani besides other sensitive targets are ...more It is time to ponder over recurring bandhs being ordered by one and all at the drop of a hat. Bandh is the last resort to express acute grief or under very rare circumstances. Unfortunately, it has become the first tool to vie with one another asto who gives the 'clarion call' first ....more |
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By Dipankar Choudhury By Javed Akhtar South Asia By K.N. Pandita By Bharat Jhunjhunwala |
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EDITORIAL Both Governor G.C. Saxena and Chief Minister Dr Farooq Abdullah have visited the carnage site and shared the grief agony of the sleepy village of Kot Chadwal. Earlier to this top brass of the State remained busy in similar rituals in the wake of Mehjoor Nagar massacres of the Sikhs and unceremonious end of 8 police men besides severe injuries to score of others Transmission tower near Banihal has been blasted, Law Minister P L Handoo's house in Anantnag district is attacked. Lashkar-e-Toiba has enlarged its earlier threat of attacking PMO to say bluntly that Prime Minister A B Vajpayee and Home Minister L KAdvani besides other sensitive targets are on their hit list. At this rate top brass of the State Government shall be spending major part of their time in mourning exercises for sharing the grief of the victims of tyranny personally. With five lakh compensation for each of the victim's family the already dried coffers would be exposed to further strain. Above all these contract killers engaged by Pakistan vow to kill and destroy all that comes their way. To hell with humanity or the human rights. To hell with the values. To hell with the religion. They do it in the name of Islam but in reality they are contract killers. Mercenaries by nomenclature itself means paid killers. More the heinous acts, the more money is paid for each gory episode. The entire scenario thus has to be viewed from various angles. First, targets are the State police personnel. They have been asked to resign enmass or face their wrath. Attack on PCR and indiscriminate killings of the cops in random shoot out amply proves that this act is meant to demoralise the rejuvenated police force. Earlier, their targets were headquarters of the central security forces. Now it is the State police personnel. Their other targets are those which come in the way of their evil machinations like the VDCs. This target is chosen in the remote village of Kot Chadwal in Budhal Tehsil. VDCs have done a good job in preventing many heinous acts and ensuring safety and security of the village and its surrounding areas. By burning families of the three VDCs, the message is sought to be conveyed to other VDCs and villagers to obey their demands including supplying their women folks for satisfying their sex lust. Instead of becoming defenders and informers, they expect VDCs to be part of them in carrying out subversive acts. Another fallout of such reckless massacres is that it casts a shadow on the efficacy of our security apparatus. It is an open challenge to our security managers. It is quite another thing how our bosses take it. Second, it is certain that none is safe. Neither the Hindus nor the Sikhs. Neither the Central security forces nor the State police. Neither the open busy roads nor the confines of the homes. And the same applies to the burning of 15 Muslims. That means members of their own fraternity enjoy no immunity from the dastardly acts. This is not the first time that Muslims have been so brutally massacred. To be precise even the cops in PCR belonged to their fraternity. So once it comes to blood-spillage, these contract killers do not discriminate one religion from the other. It is so because they have no religion of their own. If only they had some fear of Allah and slightest faith in Islam, they would have avoided such reckless and mindless killings at the behest of ISI of Pakistan (ISI controls all these mercenary outfits which are on killing spree in J&K like LeT, Jaish-e-Mohd, Al Badr, Harkat-ul-Mujahideen and other offshoots of the Muttihida Jehad Council based in Pakistan). As pointed out by Governor Saxena Islam teaches peace, harmony, brotherhood and love. These contract killers and their pay masters across the border obey none of these Islamic tenets. They continue to tarnish the great religion with gay abandon. They are paid to launch jehad; instead they target the very same people whom they pretend to 'liberate'. Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah wants international community to see these charred bodies of the most innocent in the name of religion where children and women have been made the wanton targets of their inhuman fury and questions if this is Islam. They have totally distorted the great religion. Third, another aspect that is making the rounds in the corridors of opinion-makers is that Pakistan is hell bent upon bringing India on the negotiating table by launching all out attacks. But India is a great country of over a billion and cannot be browbitten in this sordid manner. Nothing can be forced on this great nation. If India wants peace, it is only to address to the major problems faced by the people in either country. Talks, yes. Talks with terrorism on, a big no. Another pertinent aspect emanating from opinion makers is that Pak somehow wants to provoke India to annul unilateral ceasefire so that it can tell the world of India's 'malafides'. Perhaps true-perhaps not. The fact remains you can't allow the enemy to perpetrate such heinous acts by the day. Governor Saxena in fact assured the people of sleepy village that security would be beefed up and 'loopholes' in the security grid would have to be plugged to foil enemy's machinations. Sikhs in the Valley have also promised such beefing up. Tomorrow another gory massacre takes place somewhere. They too would be given same promise. This is not acceptable. State and Central Governments. Unified Headquarters and the so-called think-tanks must come out of the narrow cocoons and inhibitive approach. They must go all out to neutralise these contract killers, ceasefire notwithstanding. It is time to ponder over recurring bandhs being ordered by one and all at the drop of a hat. Bandh is the last resort to express acute grief or under very rare circumstances. Unfortunately, it has become the first tool to vie with one another asto who gives the 'clarion call' first and who follows them. It is conveniently forgotten that bandh hurts the Government least. Just mention any single bandh in Jammu which made the Government bend or correct itself. It simply has no effect on the power-wielders. It matters little to them whether City of Temples hums with activity and fast life or it comes to a grinding halt. Bandhs invariably hit the common man most whose interests are sought to be sub-served by ordering bandh. There is something like spontaneous response to any given situation. This type of bandh is voluntary and good expression when trade downs its shutter without any call. But when it is edicted by this or that party or organisation, it has an element of compulsion. It is not voluntary. They down their shutters out of fear that their premises may not be damaged. And they start opening up as the bandh gets diluted by afternoon. What use is such bandh until and unless it is spontaneous voluntary and total. Common man is made to suffer indignities, personal inconveniences and humiliations. Office goers have to tread their path on foot to reach the destination. Nobody's going to pay them for absenteeism. School children suffer days studies. Some children whose parents may not be that well informed reach the school to find the gates locked. Above all, wrong message goes to the Mata Vaishno Devi pilgrims who are made to suffer through such frequent bandhs. Twenty thousand pilgrims visit Jammu daily. It is horrible if they are made to compulsorily halt in the absence of conveyance to reach Katra. 14 trains reach Jammu station and as many leave daily. Bandhs upset their travel schedule howsoever urgent. It will be nice if bandh calls are given in the rarest of rare circumstances and not as a competitive race. Such forced bandhs lose sheen and fail to have any impact on the recalcitrant power apparatus but it does makes the life of common man odd, particularly when he is already made to face curfews, power curtailments, water interruptions, accumulation of garbage and choked drains. |
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By Dipankar Choudhury Over just 15 months India has experienced the Orissa cyclone, water scarcity in Gujarat and Rajasthan, floods in Bihar and West Bengal and now the massive Gujarat earthquake. And shortly after the rubble is cleared, we will have to deal with a severe drought in Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. Any country would find it difficult to cope with natural disasters occurring in such rapid succession. But India is not unique in this respect. Other countries of subcontinental dimensions such as Brazil, China, and the U.S. are also forced to confront such a range and frequency of disasters. Where India is unique though is in the Government's initial leaden-footed response to a crisis. Far from being hardened after handling disasters for years, the Government machinery at all levels is always found wanting in its first response. It is hard to believe that though more than 50 million Indians are affected by natural disasters every year, in which some 5,000 people die, our action plans become inactionable whenever a natural calamity strikes. Hundreds of lives, perhaps even a couple of thousands, were probably lost in Gujarat because the State Government was too paralysed to react in the first few days. And the Central Government consumed valuable time coming to terms with its usual paranoia about teams from abroad who immediately offered all the expertise and equipment they had. A Russian team which had honed its rescue skills in the earthquakes of Armenia (1988), Taiwan and Turkey (1999) was ready on the very first day but it could leave for India only after 4 hours because it took that long for the Government of India to decide that it needed help. (When every minute's delay means lives are lost in a disaster, one wonders if the political establishment and senior officials in the Capital who had assembled on Rajpath on the morning of the quake were informed that disaster had struck Gujarat and if they were what they did during the three hours that they spent watching the march of pageants and missiles.) True, nothing of the scale of the Republic Day earthquake has happened in the past 50 years and that could explain the initial paralysis in the state administration. But neither the Central nor the State Governments appear to have bothered to draw any lessons from the abysmal failure to cope with the Orissa cyclone. The Government of Gujarat seems to have learnt nothing from its lethargy during the Kandla cyclone of 1998 when a few thousand people perished on the port construction site. (That no one really knows how many died in Kandla in 1998 is a story in itself. The dead all came from armies of migrant labourers who had no permanent homes and whose contractor-employers could not be bothered to record the migrants' personal details.) In spite of our obvious inadequacies there is a callousness about official attitudes to disaster management that is frightening. Jyotsna Behn was rescued after being trapped for 100 hours in the Ahmedabad rubble with the body of her son decomposing next to her. Her legs and one arm have been amputated, but she has survived. But her spirit would have been extinguished if she had known about the smugness with which the Government has been responding to questions in Parliament about our ability to handle natural calamities. Here are just two of innumerable examples. There was no proposal to prepare any new scheme for disaster preparedness after the Orissa cyclone, the Lok Sabha was told (on May 17, 2000), as "There already exists a well laid down institutional arrangement for disaster preparedness and mitigation both at the Central and State level..." And who would have known that there actually is an emergency plan. "A National Contingency Action Plan has been prepared which identifies the actions to be taken by various Central Ministries and State Governments in the event of natural disasters." (Rajya Sabha, December 14, 2000). After refusing to acknowledge for months that we may need to institute a national disaster management authority to assess our vulnerability to these events, it finally took the recommendations of the Eleventh Finance Commission - of all bodies - to force the Centre to consider setting up a national centre for crisis management. The Central Government has suddenly woken up on the need to look anew at our disaster management capabilities - of course only after the quake. An empowered Group of Ministers on Natural Disaster Management has been constituted. And wonder of wonders, one of its members, Mr. L.K. Advani, said after its first meeting that we may even have to consider drawing up a policy on natural disaster management. We have had empowered groups of Ministers on so many subjects but it has taken the Kutch quake to wake up to the priority of building new institutions and policies for disaster management. Obviously, more committees, more organisations and more policies are not recipes that will automatically correct the glaring failure in administration. But when the steel frame of the civil administration at all levels has rusted through so much that it has more failures than successes to its credit in disaster management, when the crisis management groups that are supposed to function at the Central, State and district levels are present only with their silence and when the relief manuals that the State administrations swear by are proving to be of little help, there is surely a need for a completely new approach to coping with natural calamities. The civil administration at all levels failed spectacularly in Orissa in November 1999 and it has failed yet again in Gujarat. Time and again, about the only Government institution that has measured up to the task of disaster management is one that is not supposed to deal with these challenges - the defence forces. A good part of the destruction caused by natural disasters is "human-contributed" if not actually human-made. A theory that is becoming fashionable after the building collapses in Gujarat is that "earthquakes do not kill, buildings do". Yes, but that is only a half-truth, for, even if building codes had been strictly adhered to in the construction of high-rises and low-cost earthquake-resistant technology had been used in low-income housing the intensity of the Kutch quake was such that destruction would still have taken place. So, large-scale and rapidly organised rescue operations would still have been required. In contrast to the disorganised operations of the civil administration, the speed and scale with which civil society in the rest of the country has come forward to assist in the reconstruction of Gujarat has been truly extraordinary. The NGOs as always have been doing what they always do best. But it is the spontaneous mobilisation of money, clothes and medicines that has begun which is amazing and has arguably never before been witnessed during a war or after a natural disaster in independent India. Young and old, rich and poor, pensioners and the salaried, school children and the retired all over the country have lost no time in coming forward to contribute what they are able to (at times more than they can afford to) and do what they can - without any prodding from the Government. In Gujarat itself, religious barriers have broken down and people in villages unaffected by the quake have travelled to the affected areas to help in rescue and relief. The spontaneity of this people's mobilisation stands in stark contrast to the war hysteria that the Central Government cynically manipulated during the Kargil conflict. The solidarity that millions of Indians are wanting to demonstrate with the people of Gujarat also shows up the seemingly sophisticated but actually superficial arguments by the "expert" economists against the new surcharge on direct taxes. Tax assessees and non-tax assessees will probably be voluntarily donating more in cash and kind to the reconstruction effort than what will be collected from the surcharge. The Central and State Governments have not acquitted themselves creditably in the first week after the quake. One can only hope that they can harness the initiative of civil society and properly use the contributions of individuals in the more difficult and longer-term task of rehabilitation and reconstruction. INAV |
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South Asia By K.N. Pandita Will the change of guard in Washington have any significant bearing on US policy for South Asia? Major South Asian capitals are closely watching the moves and statements emerging from various quarters of the Bush administration. Normally policies and programmes do not admit much variance with the change of guard because these are not person-related. Institutions frame the policy, both short and long term. Approaches do bear individual mark at times but these do not move out of the basic frame unless necessitated by extraordinary strategic compulsions as in the case of post- Soviet implosion. But this does not mean that priorities cannot be reconstructed. During their presidential campaign the two contestants spelt out these priorities for South Asia. The Democrats focussed on non-proliferation, human rights and the environment. The sanctions regime in the case of South Asia also rose high on Democrats' South Asian priorities after the nuclear experiment at Pokhran II and Chaghai Hills. Republicans rescheduled their priorities with emphasis on economic opportunities and conflict area, Kashmir, Afghanistan, Burma, Indonesia etc. cluded. This would mean Washington's more objective involvement in contributing to the management of crisis short of an imposed prescription. In regard to economic perception, India, no doubt, attains significance with Bush administration. But that cannot be a strong reason for it to adopt anti-Pakistan stance. Bush administration has retained some key players of Reagan administration who had dealt rather frugally with Pakistanis during Afghan crisis. They have not thrown off the impressions of those cordialities. But at the same time, the younger political breed at the foreign office has grown up in a healthy pro-India constituency. India's position as potential rival of China in the South Asian region carries weight with them. Moreover, vast Indian market and brisk trade and economic relations with her could be called strong determinants of broad policy frame. Strong Indian community in the United States has gradually emerged a factor influencing her domestic policy. And if we accept the desk book axiom that foreign policy is the extension of domestic policy, then the importance of the role of Indian community in the US becomes self-explanatory. The coalition government led by the BJP in New Delhi has been accused of caving in to the tantrums of the White House and the foreign office. It is difficult to substantiate these kinds of remarks by precise examples. A view taken in totality of bilateral relationship vis-a-vis global developments could, at best, be a cue to the understanding of compulsions on either side. Any permanent inference and generalization drawn thereof may not hold too long. As such, observers are disposed to know whether New Delhi would impose on Washington the condition to look at Pakistan as a failed state because of its "rogue" character and its connivance at international terrorism? India's insistence on the US adopting a posture like that has also to be interpreted in terms of dispute over Kashmir. Looking in retrospect, we can say that in regard to Kashmir issue, Clinton administration had made two shifts during its two-term tenure. It called Kashmir a disputed territory between India and Pakistan and invoked Shimla Agreement for its resolution. In the second shift that emerged after Lahore Declaration, it veered round LoC theory in very discreet terms. Even the Track II diplomacy for which the think-tank in Clinton administration committed full support, never underestimated the fecundity of LoC option. Bush administration is likely to take a positive view of India's unilateral cease fire offer in Kashmir and resumption of talks with Islamabad. It does not need to be convinced that religious extremist groups in Pakistan with close links with Taliban and their supporters have the potential of defying the authority of their military ruler if and when they so desire. The blasphemy case can be cited in this context. During the closing days of Clinton administration, an impression with the State Department was of a new thinking in political as well as the ruling circles in New Delhi premising the disentangling the Kashmir riddle. Evidently this premise stays on with the Bush administration at least for the time being. But Washington made a drastic re-thinking of its Kashmir-specific South Asian policy after the Kargil episode. It was reflected in Pakistan's lament against getting isolated. Pre-occupied with a scenario of which she had least thought of in the past, Pakistan began trying to re-construct its image more as a supplicating rather than an aggressive contestant. She agreed, albeit hesitatingly, to support the UN Security Council's resolution of imposing fresh sanctions on Taliban. She talked of withdrawing some of her forces from the forward positions in PoK. Interestingly, the latter action may have arisen out of a compulsion to repair the extensively unattended military roads in PoK. But these antics are meant only to reconstruct fully or partially, Pakistan's international image. If Pakistan really wants to come to grips with the Kashmir issue at this point of time, then she will have to move away from fossilized mindset and begin thinking of Pakistan as a constructive partner in regional peace. India's unilateral offer of cease fire in the hope of moving towards regional peace is a move that is resounding in most of the world capitals. Pakistan can come up to size only when she takes steps commensurate with India's initiative. Withdrawal of some troops from the LoC in Kashmir is what a military commander could feel was safe within his powers as the army chief. A political move has to come as counterbalance to the political decision of New Delhi. Here distinctly lies the strength or weakness of a military government. It should be clear that a move by New Delhi in the direction of peace has virtually shaken the APHC out of its dream. |
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By Bharat Jhunjhunwala In his Republic Day eve address to the nation President K R Narayanan has rightly pointed out that the governance of this vast country was not to be left in the hands of an 'elite class'. But the Honourable President fails to appreciate that his suggestions lead to empowerment of the same State bureaucracy, not the people. The correct solution is empowerment of the society not that of a supposedly benign State. Tagore had pointed out the center of Indian civilization lay in the society while that of the West lay in the State. Unfortunately, recognition of this fact does not find place in the President's scheme of things. The President has opposed the need to review the Constitution which gives equal civil rights to all the people, including government servants. The latter are supposed to be the protector of the civil rights of the people. The question is this: if the government servant were to, instead, exploit the people, should he be entitled to the protection of its own civil rights? If there were to arise a conflict between the rights of the government servant himself and those of the people, the government servant would protect its own rights and sacrifice those of the people. The equality of the government servants and the people has led to the disempowerment of the people. The Honourable President does not want to review this tyranny of the government servants. The President has correctly pointed out that the public sector in India has made it possible for private enterprise to expand and flourish. The question is this: should the public sector continue to occupy this position in perpetuity? He should ponder over what Visvesvaraya said in this regard. He had said that the role of the State was not to run industries. That was the private sector's job. However, this does not mean leaving the task to them alone. The State had an active role in supporting the private sector. The government must itself start new frontier industries on a pilot basis and hand them over to private hands when successful. The Honourable President does not realize that the Public Sector companies are today taxing the hapless people to fill the bellies of the State machinery. The President has correctly pointed out that the present path of economic development was widening the inequalities among the people. He wants the state to prevent such increase of inequalities. The question is this: what prevents the State from itself not becoming a part of this iniquitous structure? We see today that the government employees build new houses everyday while the toiling masses lanquish in poverty amidst their hard work. It would be clear to any honest observer of Indian society that the State has become an instrument of inequality. The pitfall of all socialist thinking is that they do not explain who will ensure that the State works in the interests of the common man. The Indian solution was to limit the powers and functions of the State. If, as Tagore had suggested, the society were to run its own schools then the ability of the government teachers to extort monies from the government as well as the students would get limited. The 'society' which is supposed to make the State reduce the inequalities could just as well do the same itself. Our solution was to inculcate the importance of charity among our elite. Sermons of responsibility of the State have done no good to the people of the country. The so-called 'social commitments' enshrine in our Constitution which the President speaks of have become a smokescreen for exploitation by the State machinery. Instead of encouraging the society to itself self-regulate the inequalities ; the President wants to empower the government servants to do so and in the process enable it to loot the people. The President has correctly pointed out that large river valley projects were uprooting tribals and causing them untold misery. But these projects are necessary for economic development of India. There is a global lobby which is supported by 'soft neocolonialists'. These gentlemen do not want India to develop economically and challenge the economic might of the West. This lobby pays multistoried NGOs in India to derail India's efforts to irrigate its land and establish its industries. It is true that projects like Sardar Sarovar will benefit the industries in South Gujrat more that the farmers in Saurashtra. But we need these industries, don't we Mr President? How else will we challenge the neocolonialism of the West? If we have to pay a price for this development, we must. The tribals want the markets to sell their produce, they want the jobs in the industries, and they want the heafty compensation. Their 'misery' is not of displacement but that of not getting enough money from it. The Western-funded NGOs raise the bogey of rights of tribals. It does not seem to hit them that if the rights of tribals were to be declared sacrosanct then the rights of the rich would draw the same protection. If the State cannot displace the tribals in Greater Common Good, then it also cannot also tax the rich. The question is this: do we push the State to create an economically strong India and pay the cost of the same equitably: or we want environmentally sustainable but weak India whose resources are ever exploited by the West? The Honourable President does not want to ask this question. The President has correctly voiced concern regarding the destruction of forests and sources of water due to large scale mining. His underlying argument, however, is that forests are more important than food. The President would do well to visit the villages of Alwar. The people in the grip of famine are living off their incomes from mining. Forests are good playthings for the Western- and urban elite which needs trees to clean the pollution created by their Mercedes cars. But the poor man wants land to grow food and mining to earn a days wages when agriculture goes bust. The question is this: do we fulfill the Western agenda of protecting the forests or we fulfill the people agenda of food and a day's wages? The Honourable President does not want to ask this question. The President believes that the empowerment of women in politics might purify and save the politics of India from deterioration of values. The question is this: what if the same empowerment of women in politics might lead to deterioration of the family values of India instead? We have had our share of Jayalalithas. There is no ground whatsoever to believe that women are less corrupt than men. The Western culture sees all human beings- men as well as women-- only as economic inputs. Our culture, on the other hand, thinks in terms of many planes of existence- economic, social, emotional, spiritual, etc. The complimentarity of men and women arises at an inter-plane level. The man earns and gives money while the woman sustains emotionally. The Honourable President does not want to understand these different levels of existence. In the process he wants to denigrate the emotional role of women and reduce them into economic inputs. Sad as it may be, the Honourable President is more a votary of cultural viewpoint of the West and economic interests of the government servants. |
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