EDITORIAL
Over
to Congress
With the last phase of the
polling registering even a better percentage of
participation than the preceding ones had shown that
ballot had finally triumphed over the bullet. As the
results began to pour in it proved that there are no
sovereigns, no reigning ones before the people who
decide, who give the positions and power and take them
away when they feel like it. Contrary to the expectations
of even the Congress, it came in from the behind to
defeat National Conference that seemed to be entrenched
in the state for good. After a quarter century rule the
National Conference, has been shunted out in a free and
fair contest. Of course, it must be accepted that it
faced unprecedented threat before and during the
elections. A large number of workers of the party,
including a minister, were killed by the terrorists
during the elections. Countless workers were threatened
and most were curtailed in their movements. That
certainly put the party in a corner. But that was not the
reason it lost at the husting. That loss came from a
wider mix of factors.
One prime factor in this
mix was governance, rather misgovernance. When NC came to
power six years ago, terrorism was largely cornered, if
not in decline.........more
|
|
To have and
have-not By M J Akbar
One of the more startling
facts of Indian poverty is that there has been no major
agitation on economic issues since 1974, when George
Fernandes organised the nationwide railway strike that
Indira Gandhi crushed with massive force. Is this because
George Fernandes joined the Establishment in 1977?.....more
Perils of
waste
mismanagement
By O P Modi
The Talibans’ or Al
Qaedas’ Je-hadi and that of the Western world’s
permissive cultures are the extremes of two mutually
inimical ethos. They are polls apart both in design and
practice. Not only that they are a threat to each......more
Dhaka and
Islamabad:
The
new axis ?
By N.B. Menon
Dhaka-Islamabad axis which
emerged after the visit of Paki-stan President to
Bangladesh in August point to a remarkable transformation
in Pakistan-Bangladesh ........more
|
EDITORIAL
Over
to Congress
With the last
phase of the polling registering even a better
percentage of participation than the preceding
ones had shown that ballot had finally triumphed
over the bullet. As the results began to pour in
it proved that there are no sovereigns, no
reigning ones before the people who decide, who
give the positions and power and take them away
when they feel like it. Contrary to the
expectations of even the Congress, it came in
from the behind to defeat National Conference
that seemed to be entrenched in the state for
good. After a quarter century rule the National
Conference, has been shunted out in a free and
fair contest. Of course, it must be accepted that
it faced unprecedented threat before and during
the elections. A large number of workers of the
party, including a minister, were killed by the
terrorists during the elections. Countless
workers were threatened and most were curtailed
in their movements. That certainly put the party
in a corner. But that was not the reason it lost
at the husting. That loss came from a wider mix
of factors.
One prime factor
in this mix was governance, rather misgovernance.
When NC came to power six years ago, terrorism
was largely cornered, if not in decline. As it
lays down power, terrorism is a much more robust
thing, threatening life and limb all over the
state. The people then had voted for peace and
prosperity. But that mandate was interpreted in
an altogether different manner. And the result of
that is the total defeat of National Conference.
Today, the people have again voted for peace and
prosperity. Peace, meaning an unambiguous effort
to rid the state of bloodshed and prosperity
meaning an able government that would take the
state to growth and development. All over the
state the people voted for these promises. Thus
Congress, which came in to articulate the various
issues close to peoples’ heart in the Jammu
region, and People’s Democratic Party that
did the same in the Kashmir valley have carried
the day. Agendas and interpretations, politicking
and planks all fell aside, before the wish of the
people to see their prime concerns reflected in
the election results. In village after village
town after town the people coming in to vote
clearly stated that their priority is to have
representatives who would care for them, look to
their needs and fend for them. The results show
that they have voted for those cares and
concerns.
That concern for
the day-to-day problems of the people, their
focus on economy and development, and their wish
to install candidates who would be responsive to
their needs decided the election all over the
state. It also shows a basic unity of purpose
between the voters in both the major regions of
the state. For, deep down it is the development.
and prosperity that matters to the people.
Betimes the people get swayed by the emotionalism
and agendas. They also may be lead along the
sweet path of promises. For long this state has
seen that deviation. But now development has come
tops. And, the Congress and PDP who voiced this
wish in the two regions respectively have reaped
the electoral gains. For once the politics of
this state seems to be on tract for it is for the
first time the people have voted for themselves,
for their interests and well-being. And, the
people were emphatic in it. The people talked of
roads and bridges. schools and hospitals,
employment and development. They also talked of
accessibility and reach, responsiveness and
feeling for their problems.
And they voted for
those concerns. Naturally these are the
challenges for the future rulers of this state.
The voters have shown that they are not to be
taken for granted. And, must not be taken for
granted. The vote has given for a certain promise
and that promise must not be politicized. The
voter has dismissed the agendas and those agendas
must not be loaded on their heads again. The
voter has clearly and pointedly voted for peace
and prosperity and that point must always be kept
in mind. For the voters have now clearly shown
that they cannot be taken for a ride. Not always
in any case. In ousting National Conference they
have demonstrated that they have the capacity to
throw out their darlings and can summon up a
common will to do it. Thus the state that was
interpreted as being a divided basti has stood up
as one mass of people rooting for their welfare.
If one single factor were to be identified in the
results from Ganderbal to Bani it would be that
concern of the people for bettennent of their
lives. And, it must remain uppermost in the
minds. As Ghulam Nabi Azad asserted, Mehbooba
Mufti reiterated and Farooq Abdullah pointed out,
in their post-results comments, there is not much
of a difference between the Congress and the PDP.
In fact, there are
few faces in the Kashmir's PDP who would not be
familiar to the Congress members of Jammu; most
of them have been colleagues of long years. That
should make inter se adjustments between the two
parties easy. That is also an assurance that the
new government can last the term of its election.
Would that also make the new rulers sensitive to
the feelings of their people. keep them focused
on the development and prosperity and make them
work for peace? The indications and analyses say
it should. So do their assertions. Their
compatibility, unlike say the factitious
relationship between the NC and BJP, also assures
that. The people of this state who are united
today in, in a rare uniformity of focus on common
cares and concems, also want them to work for
this end and make the promises true. So there is
a fund of good will for the new government and
also a mound of hope looking up to it to rid this
state of its many problems and attend to the
myriad concerns of its people. But then that good
will and hope expected the last government to do
exactly the same. Let not those hopes be betrayed
again. For the people who appoint can also oust.
|
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To
have and have-not
By M J Akbar
One of the
more startling facts of Indian poverty is
that there has been no major agitation on
economic issues since 1974, when George
Fernandes organised the nationwide
railway strike that Indira Gandhi crushed
with massive force. Is this because
George Fernandes joined the Establishment
in 1977?
The
question is neither rhetorical, nor
dramatically personalised. One man's
fortunes cannot change the course of
class equations, even if that man is
Fernandes. But a fundamental shift took
place in Indian politics in 1977. With
the absorption of the socialists into the
ruling Janata Party in the north, and the
covnersion of the Marxists into the
permanent establishment of Bengal,
opposition as a political fact
disappeared from the matrix of Indian
politics. The only voices that were ever
raised on behalf of the poor were coopted
into power. After the opposition became
part of the seesaw on which two sides of
the ruling class sat. The laws of fortune
and democracy decreed that when the
Congress was high, the others were low;
and vice versa. (The Communists were a
law unto themselves; they have not
descended from their Calcutta perch.)
Previous to 1977, opposition was on
issues: economic policy, corruption,
democratic functioning, the rule of law,
social justice. After 1977 opposition
became an exercise in unseating the
Government, either through a numbers game
in Parliament, or by creating conditions
within the country that would make
governance untenable. This is why the
socialists, George Fernandes included,
never went back to the people when they
lost power in 1979. They waited in Delhi
for the Congress to either exhaust itself
or became a victim of its own
misdemeanours. No economic issues was
raised to any substantive extent in the
Eighties, or indeed the nineties, a
decade dominated by the ultimate
Establishment Man, P.V. Narashima Rao,
and wasted by the mavericks that
succeeded him. This was also partly
because the leopard had changed its
spots.
The nature
of Indian poverty has never been quite in
sync with the nature of Indian economic
struggles. The poor can be easily
recognised in India. They live below or
at the subsistence level. They used to
inhabit the fringe of rural society, but
now have migrated also to the homeless
streets of principal cities. Broadly, but
not wholly, they belong to the
traditionally subjugated castes and
classes, including the Dalits and a
growing section of the minorities. But
those who led the struggle for the
redistribution of India's wealth never
really fought the battles of those at or
below the poverty line. Trade unions were
the principal armoured tanks on one side
of the war, but the trade unions
themselves represented a class of Indians
that was significantly better off than
the genuinely poor. It was axiomatic.
Anyone with a job immediately became part
of the haves.
The haves
became, quickly, an exploiting class.
Milovan Djilas discovered a festering New
Class among the apparatchiks of
post-world war European communism. He
would have been exhausted searching for a
definition of the "jobbery"
class that emerged out of the
Government-guaranteed employment in
India. By the eighties, the credibility
of the working class was in tatters from
its own excesses; by the nineties, it was
dead. In the villages too, he economic
issues were in the grip of the small and
medium farmers, rather than the landless.
While leaders like Charan Singh maximised
the political mileage of this power;
lesser mortals like Mahendra Singh Tikait
lit up the sky briefly before they ended
up on earth like damp squibs. No one ever
saw a national struggle across India
demanding higher wages for landless
labourers, or even an end to the rape and
humiliation to which their women were
routinely subjected.
The
have-nots had neither the strength to
organise, nor the inspirational
leadership that could have overcome this
weakness. The Marxists in Bengal did
expand their base into the rural poor,
but stopped at the point where land
reform expanded their support base to a
level where, in the arithmetic of a
democratic ballot, they became virtually
unbeatable. The further enrichement, if
that is the correct word to use in an
environment shorn of riches, was left to
the individuals trickle-down theory. Some
of the surplus from agricultural growth
and services would find its way to the
marginalised.
The
guardians of economic upheaval,
therefore, had no vested interest in the
poor. And the trade union in which they
had invested withered. Leaders like
George Fernandes had nowhere to go but
into the intellectual wasteland of caste
politics, thinly justified by theories of
social justice. Inevitably this was a
railway platform on their journey to
another destination.
Once
opposition became a single-point
exercise, after 1980, in achieving power
for individuals and parties rather than a
desire towards economic and social
uplift, the BJP proved that it had not
equal in the new dynamics. It was the
only political formation that understood
that it was not sufficient to defeat
Rajiv Gandhi. To unseat an individual was
comparatively easy, particularly if that
individual was being cooperative in any
case. The BJP sought to defeat the idea
of the Congress. That was the singular
purpose of the ram Janmabhoomi movement.
But here too the BJP received totally
unexpected cooperation from Rajiv Gandhi
and the Congress when the leader and the
party succumbed to pressure from Muslim
fundamentalists on the Shah Bano issue.
The ground was furrowed by Shah Bano. It
was seeded by Ayodhya. It was fertilised
by Bofors. It was harvested by the BJP.
As a
political party, the BJP was
distinguished by the absence of any
economic philosophy. In its early days it
simply mirrored the economic liberalism
of the Swatantra Party, and had a phrase
rather than a programme as its platform:
get rid of the "licence-permit
raj", a code-phrase for Nehruvian
restrictions on the private sector that
later reached counter-productive
proportions under Indira Gandhi. In
Opposition it did not feel any particular
need to outline a coherent and credible
economic programme; cliches were
sufficient. Economics was not its raison
d'etre.
In power
the BJP adopted pragmatism. As an option
it was both inevitable and useful, a
combination that should normally be
considered lucky in public life. The BJP
was not burdened with any past leader who
had spouted Marx or even Adam Smith with
any particular fervour. Economic reform
also sent all the right signals. It was a
departure from the Nehruvian past that
the BJP was committed to changing; it was
just the message that the United States
(the BJP's preferred superpower) wanted
to hear; and it went down well with the
emerging middle class that provided an
important crucible of support to the
party. It also gave the party a modern
sheen. The Government was confident about
negotiating a detour against any
roadblock put up by the Congress, and
time has proved that its confidence was
justified. It was not quite prepared to
hit a wall constructed by the RSS and
George Fernandes.
The George
Fernandes dilemma is easy to appreciate.
The man of the year 1974 has travelled a
long way in 28 years, but the direction
of the journey is becoming evident. He is
travelling in a circle. He is not going
to end his career with a second railway
strike, but the doctrinaire work, long
buried by necessity, just might be
beginning to turn. The surprise is the
ally that his doctrine has discovered.
The RSS
set out in search of an economic policy
in the early nineties, when the first
signs were becoming evident that a
non-Congress coalition, with the BJP as
its core presence, might be in a position
to win a general election. Economists set
out in search of theories on the premise
that they must work for the good for the
people. This is why so much economic
theory is non-national in the sense that
while it may not be applicable to every
national situation, it is certainly
applicable to more than one nation. The
RSS, which is India-centric, set out to
define a national interest rather than an
economic philosophy. The simplest subset
of such a mind is property. Hence, all
that is produced in India should be owned
by India. This means, in turn, that it
should be owned by Indians, since the
foreigner cannot be trusted. It is easy
enough to link this with the history of
colonialism and economic exploitation by
foreigners; but it also echoes a distrust
of the rest of the world and its
dismissal as unclean. (Less than a
hundred years ago Motilal Nehru had to do
penance to regain his caste after a trip
from the west.) Mahatma Ghandhi had
colonialism in mind, just as George
Washington had before him, when he gave a
call for Swadeshi. But a nation's
economic strategy must evolve with its
development. The Indian economy is not
stuck in 1920. Its problem has been that
it was stuck for a long while in 1950,
and efforts to move out of 1970 are still
continuing.
Disinvestment
was bound to be the touchstone of this
internal battle within the ruling
coalition extending from the RSS on the
one side to the socialists on the other,
with the BJP and the regional parties at
various points in between. At the heart
is the rather limited view that
"our" property will go to
"them"; the outsider will get
wheat should be indubitably with an
Indian.
What is
both disconcerting and fascinating is
that such economic nationalism sits os
comfortably beside economic theft. There
is no outrage whatsoever when Indians
indulge in open loot of the Indian
economy and the nation's financial
resources. The Ruias actually brag that
they have taken only some six thousand
crores rather than higher sums alleged;
tell anyone who listens that they have no
intention of paying anything back, and
find a friendly reception economy may
have moved from crooked British
exploitation to straight Indian theft,
but how many patriots find that
offensive?
All this
debate, conflict and tension is about the
economy of the haves. The have-nots do
not form a part of the debate. This is
understandable. It is because they do not
form of part of the Indian economy.
(21 Century Media)
|
Perils
of waste mismanagement
By O P Modi
The
Talibans’ or Al Qaedas’ Je-hadi
and that of the Western world’s
permissive cultures are the extremes of
two mutually inimical ethos. They are
polls apart both in design and practice.
Not only that they are a threat to each
other they are also proving disastrous to
the struggle for establishing a truly
civilised society in the world.
If on the
one hand the world is under threat from
the fundamentalist Jehadis it is under no
less a threat from the promiscuous and
lax life style of very large sections of
the Western society. To day a growing
number of people in the West,
particularly in the United States of
America, is getting addicted to a lewd
way of life. The younger generation,
there, does not have any respect for the
traditional family system. In these
countries the institution of marriage is
speedily loosing its sanctity and
importance.
The
extremists of the Western culture abhor
the coming of babies in this world. They
do not want babies because babies
encroach upon their personnel freedom; a
freedom that gives them excess to free
sex, uninterrupted alcoholism and other
immoral enjoyments. In the name of
individual’s freedom there is no
check on the spread of a lascivious and
sensual growth of the social system in
USA and other countries of the West. In
many countries, there, the birth rate is
going down as compared to the death rate.
In Sweden, for example, the number of the
old people is greater than that of the
youngsters and the new born.
USA being
the only super power in the world its way
of life has become a role model for the
young people everywhere. Enamoured by the
glamorous and sensual life style of the
Americans the youth world over is blindly
imitating it. Provoked by the
Hollywood’s vulgar and randy films
young men and women are adopting similar
habits and life style in most of the
countries.
The
fashion parades and the beauty contests
begun in USA and Europe are becoming
popular even in smaller towns of many
countries. These shows are in effect
voluptuous and erotic. Many of these
invite revulsion due to their nudity and
obscenity. The orthodox societies
consider all this as an invasion on their
culture and traditions. The medium of the
cultural aggression is the television
through which every home is being
bombarded with vulgar and obscene shows.
This assault does not require armed
forces and weaponry to succeed. The
allurement of a licentious and easy going
life is so overpowering that the
traditional wisdom is still groping in
the dark to counter it. "Because
they (the Americans) do it, it must be
right", is the refrain of the youth
world over!
It is not
that all the Americans approve of the
dirty shows on their TVs and other Show
Biz. On the opening of "Museum of
Sex", a few days back, in New York
many New Yorkers felt that the city is
becoming licentious again. They believe
that as Rudolph Giuliani is no longer the
city’s mayor ‘Peep Shows and
porn shops have started creeping back
into business and new sex clubs are being
left alone by the police’.
There is a
growing awareness in the American society
that the TV is responsible for the
children’s indiscipline and
disrespect for the elders. An anti TV
movement is spreading in USA so as to
divert the young children to traditional
entertainments such as books, sport and
conversation. The barbaric shows such as
WWF and the violence exhibited in the
Hollywood films are thought to be
responsible for the violent behaviour of
the young.
Opposed to
the West’s permissive life style
there are the Islamist
fundamentalists’ inhuman curbs on
the freedom of men and women. The world
recently witnessed as to how the
Talibans, when they ruled Afghanistan,
trampled upon the basic human rights of
men and women. Men who did not support
beards were punished with lashes and
women who did not wear Burqa were
subjected to severe beatings. In some
cases their hands were cut off and acid
thrown on their faces. Women were ordered
not to go out of their homes without
being accompanied by some male member
from her family. They were denied all
kind of employment. The girl child had no
right to education. There were summary
trials and capital punishments for men
and women who were accused of indulging
adultery. All type of music was banned in
Talibans’ Afghanistan. Mercifully
all what the Talibans did in Afghanistan
was declared un-Islamic by the Muslim
scholars the world over.
However,
there are hundreds of thousands of
fundamentalists who would like the
Taliban culture thrust upon the people of
the free world. The Al-Qaeda and other
Islamist fundamentalist’s outfits
believe that they are fighting a jihad
(holy war). Their aim is to enforce a
Taliban type of social order in the world
at gun point. At the one end is the
Taliban’s sub human culture and at
the other end is the extremely lax life
style of the Western world that is
corrupting the mind of the youth all over
the world.
It is
neither a religious war nor a war of one
civilisation against the other. The clash
is between two extreme ways of life. US
President George W. Bush while declaring
"war on terror", after the
terrorists attack on World Trade Centre
and the Pentagon, said that the attack
was on the American way of life. He was
right. The Islamists extremists dread the
day when the America’s permissive
life style would engulf the entire world.
On the other hand the fear is that the
Al-Qaeda could one day get hold of
weapons of mass destruction and strive to
conquer the world in order to subject the
humanity to the Talibans way of life.
The
hijackers of the planes for attacking
America on 9th September last year were
hard core fanatics who had no value for
their own as well as that of their
victims’ lives. Human life for them
had no meaning at all. They had been
indoctrinated not with a religious
philosophy but with a teaching of hate
and violence. Several thousands of brain
washed such hard core young men are being
trained for carrying out acts of terror
in Jammu and Kashmir and elsewhere in
India, and rest of the world, by the
Al-Qaeda and other extremist outfits in
Pakistan even today.
India in
particular is under attack from two
formidable enemies. While from the skies
it is invaded by the West’s
permissive culture, on the ground it is
facing Pakistan’s determined
strategy of fatally bleeding this country
by inflicting ‘a thousand
cuts’. Pakistan is emboldened by
undue pampering by the United States of
America as a result of which Jammu &
Kashmir is no longer the only target of
Pakistani terrorists. Pakistan’s ISI
is busy establishing its cells all over
the country. India has to gear up to face
a prolonged struggle against the twin
enemies. However, the day is not far off
when the United States will realise that
it had committed a great blunder in
encouraging Pakistan by praising General
Musharraf for his dubious role in the war
against terror.
|
Dhaka
and Islamabad: The new axis ?
By N.B. Menon
Dhaka-Islamabad
axis which emerged after the visit of
Paki-stan President to Bangladesh in
August point to a remarkable
transformation in Pakistan-Bangladesh
relations which had until then been
haunted by the memory of the slaughter of
three million Bangladeshis and the rape
of 200,000 Bangaldeshi women by Pakistani
troops and their local collaborators
during the liberation struggle that led
to Bangladesh’s emergence as an
independent nation in 1971.
Ties
between Bangladesh’s intelligence
agencies and Pakistan’s
Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI)
Directorate had started warming after the
murder of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and his
entire family barring his two daughters,
Sheikh Hasina and Sheikh Rehman, on
August 15, 1975, and the establishment of
a military government under Maj-Gen
Zia-ur-Rahman who, after a brief period
of turmoil, captured power through a coup
and became President. The tenure of Lt.
Gen. H. M. Ershad, who seized power in a
similar manner after a short interregnum
that followed President
Zia-ur-Rahman’s murder on May 30,
1981, witnessed the reinforcement of the
same trend and growing cooperation
between Bangladesh’s intelligence
agencies and the ISI. The process reached
its height after Begum Khaleda Zia of the
Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and
widow of President Zia-ur-Rahman, became
Prime Minister following the general
elections of 1991, which in turn had
followed President Ershad’s ouster
from power in 1990.
Many in
Bangladesh have questioned, from almost
the day Begum Zia entered politics, her
commitment to the secular and democratic
ethos of the liberation struggle. They
maintain that she remained in Kurmitola
cantonment in Dhaka while the struggle
raged and her husband, then Maj.
Zia-ur-Rahman, escaped to India to
participate in it. Her supporters claim
that she remained there against her will
as a prisoner; her opponents allege that
she herself did not wish to escape though
her husband had wanted her to and had
made arrangements for that. Whatever the
truth, it is widely said in Bangladesh
that her husband, who had fought with
distinction during the liberation war,
was initially unwilling to take her back
after it as his wife and, ironically,
finally did so at Sheikh Mujibur
Rahman’s insistence.
The fact
that stand out in the midst of all such
allegations and counter-allegations is
that Begum Zia’s experience during
at Kurmitola cantonment did not make her
bitterly anti-Pakistan. Rather, she
remained quite well-disposed towards it
and, particularly, some of the Pakistani
Army officers who were then stationed
there, presumably because they had
ensured that neither she nor her family
came to any harm. All this assumes
significance when one considers that the
ISI’s activities in Bangladesh began
causing serious concern to India during
her first tenure as Prime Minister from
1991 to 1996.
In this
period, Bangladesh’s intelligence
agencies, which had been helping
secessionist insurgents active in
north-eastern India, since the late
1970s, began a number of training camps
for them, particularly the United
Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA), in their
country in close cooperation with the
ISI. Hiteswar Saikia, then Chief Minister
of Assam, had produced evidence to show
that top ULFA leaders not only moved
about freely in Bangladesh but also
operated bank accounts in Dhaka. The
Bangladesh Government denied all such
allegations.
Sheikh
Hasina curbed anti-India activities of
the Bangladesh’s intelligence
agencies as well as the ISI and had some
of the camps for training rebels from
north-east India closed down after
becoming Prime Minister in 1996.
Gradually, however, things became almost
as bad as they were during Begum
Zia’s regime. Bangladesh, along with
Nepal, became a base for helping rebels
in north-east India, and the infiltration
of terrorists belonging to
Pakistani-sponsored organisations like
the Harkat-ul Mujahideen and
Lashkar-e-Toiba, and their Bangladeshi
affiliates, into this country, and for
taking terrorist recruits from India for
training in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The
strong links that had come to be
established between the ISI and
Bangladeshi intelligence agencies before
she came to power made this possible, as
did the support their anti-India
activities received from the pro-Pakistan
section of Bangladesh’s population
which had violently opposed the freedom
struggle in 1971, and the country’s
extremely well-funded and armed
fundamentalist Islamic organisations.
Sheikh
Hasina at least made an effort. The scene
underwent a sea change after her defeat
in the 2001 general elections and Begum
Zia’s return as Prime Minister. This
was expected. As Leader of the Opposition
between 1991 and 1996, she had openly
described the secessionist rebels from
north-east India as freedom fighters and
stated that Bangladesh should be helping
them – and not India to fight them.
Also, she and the BNP had resolutely
opposed New Delhi’s plea for the
grant of transit facilities for goods to
north-eastern India through Bangladesh,
the purchase of electricity from India by
her country which was then facing an
acute power shortage, and the sale of a
part of Bangladesh’ huge reserves of
natural gas to this country. Not
surprisingly, soon after she became Prime
Minister, Bangladesh stopped importing
cotton yarn from India, causing this
country a revenue loss of $250 million
annually.
Now there
is very close consultations between the
foreign ministries of the two countries
and common approaches to international
issues. If these suggest an attempt to
put Pakistan and Bangladesh on a
irreversibly course of friendship.
Kahleda Zia Government’s savage
persecution of all elements –
particularly in the intelligentsia and
the media – steeped in the spirit of
the liberation struggle and hostility to
Pakistan, suggest that she would not
tolerate any opposition to it. Given her
and President Musharraf’s intense
hatred for India, this in turn suggests
that Pakistan and Bangladesh are moving
towards forming a close axis.
This has
ominous implications for India. Pakistan
is under increasing pressure to act
firmly against Al-Qaeda and Taliban
terrorists who have crossed over to it. A
recent statement by the US Defence
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld suggests that
it is trying to shift them to its
neighbouring countries. A logical
destination for a large number of them
will be Bangladesh where they will be
welcomed by the intelligence agencies and
powerful fundamentalist Islamic
organisations and militia – which
have been growing ever since the
launching of President
Zia-ur-Rahman’s Islamisation drive
in 1978.
Their
presence in Bangladesh is bound to mean a
serious escalation of terrorist
activities in eastern and north-eastern
India. India must not only intensify
vigilance against infiltration across the
border but firmly tell Bangladesh that
encouraging terrorism in this country may
recoil very hard on it. INAV
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