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It augurs well for the nation and its teeming millions that responsible power-wielders, erstwhile and the present ones alike, have started talking about .....more There is the news that State administration has filed a regular FIR against Yahsin Malik who is officiating as Hurriyat chief in the absence of ailing Geelani. One really does not know why so much latitude has been given to...more |
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EDITORIAL It augurs well for the nation and its teeming millions that responsible power-wielders, erstwhile and the present ones alike, have started talking about getting Pak aggression vacated from PoK. If only this stance had been pursued to its logical culmination right from 1947-48, there would not have been any Kashmir problem. The fact remains Congress Governments right from Nehru onwards soft-pedalled the issue which has brought the situation to present sorry pass. They persisted in condoning Pak aggression rather than taking any measure or prepare the nation for getting the same vacated. It is this soft stand that emboldened Pakistan to not only hold unto PoK which is roughly one-third of composite J&K State but also resorted to regular and proxy wars to annex the remaining two-third this side of LoC. Even as per UN Resolutions of 1948-49 and the Karachi agreement which resulted in ceasefire line and vacation of aggression to be followed up by plebiscite stands totally altered to what is now termed as Line of Control. This alteration is the result of 1971 and 1965 wars wherein the defeated nation got more territory namely Hajipeer and Chhamb area besides the return of nearly one lakh Pak prisoners of War without any return from Pakistan. So it is well recorded in history that many opportunities that came our way were deliberately missed by the then ruling clan. Incidentally, Pakistan interpreted it as lack of political will on the part of India and persisted in their bellicosity towards this country. Kargil aggression is also the result of this interpretation that after each war with India. Pakistan not only gains territory but also massive propaganda leverage. It is quite another thing that this time round Pakistan had to eat the humble pie and vacate aggression. In the process Pakistan also lost the traditional support of its mentors and allies besides facing massive flak from all parties in Pakistan. From the statements made by Prime Minister Vajpayee it is evident that India means business and does not take Pak goodwill postures seriously anymore. It stands manifested when Vajpayee minces no words in telling that India shall have to find ways and means to recover Pakistan occupied Kashmir. What are those ways and means are not defined. As per unanimous Resolution of Parliament there is mention of recovering PoK through dialogue. The present mood is discernible in that now there is mention of finding other means and pursuing it more logically than hithertofore. Obviously this stance is bound to put Pakistan on the defensive and India won't be any more apologetic as has been the case till recently. True, this country is right now in election-mode and tall speeches are made to outsmart the rivals. But the fact remains Prime Minister of India is emphatic in asserting that India will not tolerate or live with any aggression. Kargil aggression has been got vacated and plans are afoot to see how the territory i.e. PoK still under Pak occupation could be got retrieved. Vajpayee's latest stance gets quite aggressive and definite support from its political rivals when Rajesh Pilot goes a step further in telling the nation that if voted to power Congress Government would take all possible measures to get Pak aggression vacated from PoK. Call these as election rhetorics. But such things coming from Congress stalwart who was Minister for Internal Security as also a member of the Congress Working Committee do not commit Congress to support any move of the successor Government to be formed in another 15 days time. Such commitment is welcome. This tantamounts to similar stand as between Congress and BJP to lend full and unflinching support to any action that facilitates recovery of the annexed territory. It also implies that such moves essentially entail preparations which in simple terminology means massive augmentation in our military might. It is welcome from yet another angle. From mutual rhetorics on Kargil, both Congress and NDA are now talking about recovering PoK. This is a good trend to put Pak on the defensive. In fact, the theme now being propound by Vajpayee and Rajesh Pilot is truely Churchilean in character. Churchil had propounded the theory and followed it religiously which says emphatically, ''Best Defence is Offence''. It does not mean either Congress are BJP have become hawkish. It is only a commitment not to allow Pakistan reap any harvest in terms of territorial gains and blunders of the past by successive rulers are sought to be corrected. In the above context, one can as well discuss why Pakistan has refused to stop JKLF march from PoK to this side of LoC. It may be mentioned that last time Pak forces stopped them on the LoC by resorting to firing in which many marchers were killed. This time round the mischief is much more serious than meets the eye. One expects that wiser counsels would prevail on the Pak rulers and they will stop them like Pak army did last time. Or else what Vajpayee or Pilot say shall gain momentum. There is the news that State administration has filed a regular FIR against Yahsin Malik who is officiating as Hurriyat chief in the absence of ailing Geelani. One really does not know why so much latitude has been given to the violators of our laws. If only normal laws of the land had been enforced, Hurriyat amalgam and its various leaders would not have been able to strike terror amongst the valleyites as manifested by very low poll turn-out. The mood of the people despite threats from militants and boycott calls for elections during 11th, 12th Lok Sabha polls and the assembly elections of Sept/Oct 1996 was all for democratic set up and full participation in elections. So soon after this trend, one is really sorry to find the very same people remaining indoors. This clearly shows that softness shown to criminal acts of the Hurriyat amalgam is solely responsible for rapid deterioration in both political and security environs. There have been hundreds of violations of our laws that would have ensured enough of punishment by the law of the land to dwarf these people into insignificance. The killers have been let off. The Forex violators have remained scot free. Those spreading venom and preaching secession are not proceeded against. Those exhorting and provoking others to communalise the situation and undermine the administration continue to enjoy more rights than the law abiding and peaceful citizens. And why detentions under PSA when they can be booked under definite laws which they have been violating with reckless abandon. Mere registering of an FIR won't suffice unless it is followed up to its logical culmination not only against Yahsin but against all those who have played havoc with the life and property of citizens and continue to cause massive corrosion to lawfully elected State Government. Inner corrections within the ruling clan coupled with enforcement of laws against the violators are the essential pre-requisites to return of normalcy and removing fear psychosis amongst the people. |
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Editions "Not one paisa has been taken from the Trust," declared the Congress spokesman with a show of righteous indignation. He was declaiming on the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts. But the charge had been altogether different — that the Trust had been a Government-trust, that it had received Rs. 134 crores of Government money and 23 acres of invaluable land, that it had been converted into a private Trust by fraud, that the conversion had been sanctified by collusion between a trustee and the President of the Trust, Sonia Gandhi. Not one of these facts had been disputed by the Congress. Within days, the Delhi High Court itself came down in the strongest possible words on the fraud. It went so far as to say that the pendency of the writ before it must not come in the way of the Government undoing the usurpation. But the Congress was following the rule: when cornered, deny — with great passion — what has not been alleged! That "denial" was typical. The entire campaign of the Congress has been crafted around the all-too obvious rules of advertising companies, and the all-too obvious propagandists! "The bigger the lie, the more likely it is to be believed" — Hitler, not Goebbels; the latter counseled against outright lies! As Congress has become a synonym for corruption, allege corruption in everything the present Government has done — even when, as in the case of the Telecom policy it has been done at your urging; as Kargil was a striking victory, assert that in fact it was a defeat; as Sonia Gandhi’s foreign-ness is an issue, portray Vajpayee as a traitor. "Confine yourself to little, and repeat this eternally," "A thousandfold repetition of the most simple ideas" — both Hitler and Goebbels. That rule in turn rests on what is a fundamental proposition with such cynics: that the people have an extremely limited understanding. One must have the "courage", they said, to go on repeating those few points endlessly. "The nature of propaganda lies in its simplicity and repetition," Goebbels wrote in his diary, "Only the man who is able to reduce the problems to the simplest terms and has the courage to repeat them indefinitely in this simplified form despite the objections of the intellectuals will in the long run achieve fundamental successes in influencing public opinion. If other methods are pursued he may influence a circle of unstable intellectuals here and there but will not even scratch the surface of the people." Sugar scandal, sugar scandal, sugar scandal.... Even after the lie has been nailed, in fact specially after the lie has been nailed you must go on repeating it. When, in the face of facts, you keep repeating the lie, the people — of limited understanding as they are on this theory — are liable to infer, "There must be something to it, the fellow would not go on sticking to the allegation." Hence, (i) hurl a few simple allegations; (ii) specially those of which the propagandists themselves are guilty; (iii) repeat these endlessly; (iv) specially in the face of facts. The impression you want to convey about the adversary should be simple. To drill it in, you must have not one lie, but a barrage of them. In fact, you must not stick to one lie for long: the adversary will prove the truth with evidence. So, keep running. A fabrication every other day. True, soon enough that they were all falsehoods will be established, but by then the campaign will be over, the people will have been overwhelmed by other problems. Hence, Bhagwat. Then Mohan Guruswamy. Then Telecom Policy. Then telephone exchanges. Then sugar. Then wheat. Then planes. Then a Category-III flat! Back to sugar.... That Category-III flat was a quantum leap! The Congress spokesman had told all and sundry in Delhi with much flair that he was going to Lucknow to reveal a sensational, explosive scandal. The UP Congress scheduled a special press conference at noon for the explosion. A number of newspapermen turned up. Vajpayee applied for a flat and got an out-of-turn allotment in Delhi, announced the spokesman — that was the explosion. Pressmen were incensed. Is this what we were called for?, they remarked. At least Vajpayee paid for the flat. What about the persons sitting to your left and right? These leaders of your party in the state have not purchased a flat or two, they have just taken over government bungalows — what are you going to do about that?.... Vajpayee has spent fifty years in public life. The "sensational, explosive" revelation of the Congress spokesman reminded people that he hasn’t even a house to his name. That all he has is a Category-III flat. That too something he paid for. And who was the Prime Minister when this allotment was made?, the pressmen asked. Narasimha Rao, it turned out! Soon it was established that some notable Congressmen too had been allotted flats from the same quota. The government had made the allotments for the distinguished services they had rendered to the country. Not just that, the Supreme Court had instituted a detailed inquiry into out-of-turn allotments. Every irregular allotment had been scrutinized. The allotment to Vajpayee had never been called in question as being even faintly irregular. On the other hand, two Governors — conspicuous members of the Congress! — had felt constrained to resign. Cases were going on against the then Congress ministers for converting their discretionary quotas into commerce.... The footnote to the story was truly delicious. It turned out that the spokesman who had traveled all the way to Lucknow to make this sensational disclosure, and his family members had received not a Category-III flat, but five plots of land from Bhajan Lal, the then Chief Minister of Haryana! Each one of the five had been an out-of-turn allotment. Bhajan Lal’s largesse had been taken to court. A Division bench of the Punjab and Haryana High Court had found the allotments to be so bereft of merit that it had canceled all of them in March 1997. Of the five plots, the spokesman and his family had to forfeit three — the remaining two had survived because the Court chose to put the cut-off date at 1995, and these two had been made over earlier. But it would be wholly wrong to think that there was any remorse at having hurled such a silly allegation. The purpose of such hurling is not to convince, but to confuse. Corruption was your characteristic. By these allegations — wild as they are — you convey that the facts which have been established about your misdeeds are also just allegations. Second, that similar allegations exist about your adversary too. The Congress seems to have been advised about an additional advantage. Should your adversary bring up some new embarrassing facts about you during the campaign, you can take the high road, and regret that the campaign, "instead of focusing on real issues," has descended to personal attacks! Better still, you can get friendly journalists to lament "the levels to which the campaign has descended"! This in turn yields several advantages. (i) You are seen to be concerned about "the real issues". (ii) That you are the one who has been hurling baseless allegations is covered up. (iii) You and the adversary are put at par. (iv) Once you have conditioned the people to believe that everybody is hurling allegations and charges, you don’t have to answer the facts that have been revealed about you — they are no better than the baseless allegations which you have been hurling! The more unverifiable the "event" the more useful it is for lies! Summarising the practice of master-liars, Jacques Ellul cautions, "Such lies must not be told except about completely unverifiable facts. For example, Goebbels’ lies could be on the successes achieved by German U-boats, because only the captain of the U-boat knew if he had sunk a ship or not. It was easy to spread detailed news on such a subject without fear of contradiction." Hence, fables about unrest in the Army "because the Prime Minister is not speaking up to shield the higher command in the wake of the controversies that have risen as a result of the letters that Brigadier Surinder Singh is said to have written...." As there is always the risk that some damned fool may come out with the facts sooner than you expect, a handy device is to demand, "All we are asking is that the Prime Minister come clean with all the facts." That leaves a way out: "After all, what did we demand? All we said was that the Prime Minister come clean with the facts." Even better, the demand sets you up as the referee! The Prime Minister is to state the facts, and you will decide whether what he has disclosed amounts to "all the facts"! Recall Sonia Gandhi’s response to questions about her friend, Ottavio Quatrocchi. There are no papers which link him to Bofors, she said. If there are any such papers, let them show us the papers, she demanded. The first part was an outright lie: when the judgments of the highest court in Switzerland, of the Delhi High Court, of the Supreme Court were given out, sudden silence. A glance at the advertisements they have placed in the newspapers — and even more, the advertisements worth crores which they have had placed in the name of a near-bankrupt organization, "Communalism Combat" — will show that there are other Goebbelsian maxims too which the Congress has been following in this campaign. The negative is stronger than the positive: not one positive advertisement in their entire series. Hatred is stronger than love: killers of the Mahatma, butchers of Christians.... Fear is stronger than hope: the advertisements placed in the name of "Communalism Combat" are textbook illustrations of this maxim. The central ingredient here is an instrumental view of truth! The test is not whether what one is saying is true or false. The only test is whether it serves the purpose! In a sense, therefore, it is indeed appropriate that the Congress fielded a lawyer as its spokesman! In theory, lawyers are supposed to be officers of the court. In fact, large parts of the profession have come to believe that their job is to serve their client — and for the purpose use whatever device seems handy. So, it has been entirely in character, that the spokesman should — in his capacity as a lawyer — have appeared for private cellular operators and argued that the then Telecom Policy with its high license fees was a disaster, and, when the switch was made to a revenue sharing regime, the very same person should — in his capacity as spokesman for the Congress — have denounced the changeover, and alleged a scam. It was entirely in character for the spokesman to have raised doubts about the Prime Minister having acquired a Category-III flat in a perfectly normal manner, when he and his family members had got Bhajan Lal, the then Chief Minister of Haryana, to grant them — not one but — five plots out of the discretionary quota. It was entirely in character for him as the spokesman of the Congress to cast doubts at the professional integrity of the Attorney General, without mentioning that in his other capacity he is the lawyer for a paper in a suit which the Attorney General has been constrained to file against it for the falsehood it published about him. It was entirely in character for him to be releasing fabricated letters ostensibly written by a Brigadier, and thus, apart from advancing the interests of the Congress of which he was the spokesman, building up a sort of defence through the press, without disclosing that he was himself the lawyer of that Brigadier. Of course, I do not want to push the parallel too far: Goebbels and his kind — Lenin and his lot, to take an allied example — were masters — diabolic masters. These fellows are just pocket editions! Those masters would never have put out statements which were so patently false: that Vajpayee is a traitor, that he was arming the ISI and the Pakistan Army to invade Kargil.... The lies of Goebbels, Lenin and company held the field for decades. These fellows’ allegations could not withstand a simple miscalculation: that the campaign was a little longer than usual turned out to be enough for their allegations to be shown up to be the falsehoods that they were.... Saved again! In 1987-89 we had been saved by the ham-handedness of the forgers. This time we have to thank the incompetence of these fabricators. * * * |
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Halting march toward
destiny India, an ancient and a great country, has been the destination of many civilisations. Quest for India by Columbus led to the accidental discovery of the land now known as the United States of America. With an area of 32,87,263 square kilometres, it is the seventh largest country in the world. From a population of 23,83,327, in 1901, it has grown to nearly 1000 million at the close of the current century. It has broken the shackles of slavery, in which it was bound at the beginning of the twentieth century. From a country fragmented by different rulers and religions, it has arisen as a sovereign Socialist Secular Democratic Republic with a parliamentary system of Government, with our own President at its head. India, which at the time of Independence had penny and pin sized 560 states ruled by autocratic princes is now comprised of 25 States and seven Union Territories. There is a single and uniform citizenship provided for those born in India (b) or either of whose parents was born in the territory of India (c) or any person who has been ordinarily resident in the territory of India. Apart from the fundamental rights, by Amendment 42 to the Constitution, adopted in 1976, certain Fundamental Duties have been cast on the citizen, enjoining upon him to promote harmony and brotherhood amongst the countrymen transcending national, religious, linguistic, regional or sectional diversities. The Directive Principles of State Policy, though not justiciable, are fundamental to the governance of the country. The Directive Principles urge the State to promote the welfare of the people by securing justice, in economic, social, educational and political spheres of the nation and its institutions. If the laws and directions could make our country a model, it would have become so long back. Regarding the intellectual honesty and personal integrity of most leaders of the present day, the less said the better. There is a definite decline in the standards of integrity. The same is the perception of the people about the bureaucrats, who cringe and crawl before the politicians. Between the two, the people have lesser faith in politicians. Some from both categories by their nexuses have enriched themselves and their tribe. Despite all these faults, India has been a success as a multi-caste, multi-religious, multi-cultural and multi-ethnic society. Despite the mediocre men governing the country, large strides have been made in agriculture, industry, education and other spheres. There is no destination in the path of progress. It is a continuous journey. Nehru had put a question the midnight of 14th/15th August, 1947: Are we brave enough and wise enough to grasp this opportunity and accept the challenge of the future? And then declared, Freedom and power brings responsibility.... What we achieve in unanimity, what we achieve by co-operation is likely to survive." Let's have a look at our progress in some sectors. The agriculture sector provides livelihood to 64 per cent labour force in the country and has a share of 18 per cent exports of the country. There has been no dearth of money, which has been pumped in for rural development. It is a different story, as to how much of it has gone for the actual development work. Since the inception of scheme of Integrated Rural Development, an amount of Rs. 30,871.79 crores has been spent on this scheme. Out of this amount, the credit component was Rs. 20,352.63 crores and subsidy was 10,519.16 crores. To the two departments concerned with the rural development, roughly Rs. 10,000 crore is allocated. In 1998-1999, the Department of Rural Employment was given Rs. 2,561 crore and the Department of Rural Development and Poverty Alleviation was given Rs. 7,283 crore. From 1989 to March 1998, an amount of Rs. 25,000 crores has been spent on Jawahar Rozgar Yojna. The main objective of the programme was to generate additional gainful employment for the unemployed and under employed men and women in the rural areas. It also aimed at the creation of community assets, for the rural poor for their direct and continued benefit. Enumerated above are only some of the schemes for the benefit of the poor. It was Rajiv Gandhi, the late former Prime Minister of the country is 1988, who had remarked that only 15 per cent of the money sanctioned reached the actual beneficiaries. Why should we chew more than we can swallow? Why go on carrying the deadweight all the time and be bogged down by it? Take for example, the banking sector. When there are 27 Public Sector banks, why does not the Government cut out the losses, by winding up some of white elephants. As compared to the nationalised and Public Sector Banks, no private bank is running in a loss. Their profits may fluctuate, but their Non-Performing Assets are within the manageable limits. The rulers have been messing around with the country and its resources. It is time to remind them that ideals and objectives can never be divorced from the methods adopted to realise them. Worthy ends are possible only through worthy means. It is time for us again or this occasion to pledge our dedication to the cause of making this country poverty-free, so that all its children can live in a land, "where the mind is without fear and the head is held high." CNF |
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