To hang Afzal Guru or not to hang?
TALES OF TRAVESTY

By Dr. Jitendra Singh

The question is not whether to hang Afzal Guru or not to hang. The question is what are the basic issues that the various mutually contending parties are trying to debate or pretending to debate?

Has Afzal Guru been denied justice and wrongly handed out the death sentence? If so, then the Hon'ble Judges who passed such an order deserve to be called to explain. Is our judicial system fallacious? If so, it calls for appropriate amends. Is the death sentence or hanging too uncivilized in a civilised democracy? If so, it calls for an amendment in the Indian Constitution to once and for all abolish the provision of death sentence and simultaneously also calls for an apology from the Government for some of the politically famous death sentences handed out from Nathu Ram Godse down to Beant Singh.

Interestingly, none of the political parties or groups opposed to Afzal Guru's hanging say with clarity whether they consider Guru innocent. They just want that whatever be Guru's crime, he should not be hanged lest that should have a negative fall-out in the Kashmir Valley--- whatever that means. The common problem with all the Kashmir based ''mainstream'' parties ---whether it be PDP or National Conference----- is that they are not sincerely concerned about the fate of Guru, they are more concerned about making a political capital by trying to outdo each other in a bid to appear ''saviours'' of Kashmiri people because their voter constituency is concentrated in the Valley while problem with the BJP is that its voter constituency lies outside the Valley and therefore the more it raises the bogey of ''nationalism'' by supporting Guru's hanging, the more it hopes to gain.

And, what does Afzal Guru himself want or other socalled Kashmiri ''Mujahideen'' like him want? On the one hand, they proclaim their lack of faith in the constitution of India and find nothing wrong in attacking the parliament house which is the seat of Indian democracy. On the other hand, they expect clemency or mercy from the same constitution which they refuse to subscribe and plead for liniency in the name of democracy from the same democratic order which they vehemently defy. If they are true ''Mujahideens'' with conviction and courage, why don't they gladly accept the death sentence and allow themselves to be hanged without regret like Sardar Bhagat Singh so that tomorrow when Kashmir eventually gains independence, their names figure in the history in golden letters? What is the character and integrity of ''Mujahideens'' like Afzal Guru who are ready to ambush the Parliament house and kill innocents but develop cold feet the moment they are apprehended and at the very prospect of hanging, they send in their wives and children to the President of India to beg for mercy.

In a nutshell, Kashmir has become a vested interest for petty politicking. For the socalled mainstream parties, to exploit their respective vote banks. For the socalled separatist organisations, to blackmail the Govt of India while simultaneously also extracting their pound of flesh from the powers-that-be in Pakistan. To cite just one example of the duplicity of socalled separatist leaders, they find nothing wrong in claiming MLA pensions, concessional air tickets for elder citizens, hospital treatment expenditures and personal security---- all under the provision of constitution of India which they outwardly profess not to accept or subscribe.

Nevertheless, as sanity and wisdom dawn in strife torn Kashmir, the common man will gradually understand that all these self-styled Kashmir protagonists have their own selfish agendas irrespective of whether they belong to ''mainstream'' or ''separatist'' camp. Umapathy sums it up in a single poetic cliche "---Na Yeh Apne, Na Woh Apne!''

Wars over water in future?

By Jyotsna Pandit

The UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, has warned that the next war will not be waged over oil, but over water, which is becoming the scarcest natural resource. His predictions are echoed by a World Bank study, which says: "Be under no illusions: the impact of general water shortages is going to hit our cities. In the 21st century, wars will be fought over water." India is not a stranger to these conflicts, both internally - as witnessed over the sharing of the river waters between states and across frontiers, in the ongoing dispute with Bangladesh and Pakistan.

West Asia, chronically deficient in water, was a potential flashpoint, with Israel occupying the Golan Heights, source of some of the tributaries of the Jordan River, and thus controlling supplies to Palestine and Jordan itself. For the last 15- years, however, there have been negotiations between the three countries over "trading" water for money. Turkey has been damming the Tigris and Euphrates and thereby depriving Syria and, further downstream, Iraq. To complicate matters, the Kurdish separatists occupy the headwaters of the Twin Rivers in Turkey and are fighting to claim their homeland. On the Nile, there are disputes between Egypt, the Sudan and Ethiopia, with the downstream state - Egypt - being dominant, economically and militarily. Closer home, Bangladesh has been claiming with justification that India has cut off its supplies with the Farakka barrage. At the same time, it does not explain how Bangladesh, which witnesses very heavy rainfall, cannot conserve its own water. India has problems with Pakistan over the Indus waters too.

The tragedy is that the world has taken the availability of water for granted: it is wasted with impunity, either by squandering this precious resource or using it for the wrong purposes. By 2004, there were 1.62 billion people in the world without drinking water - probably the biggest number in this country - and 1.7 billion without sanitation. Considering that something like 80 per cent of all disease in developing countries is water-borne, the human and economic costs of this scarcity are truly awesome. By 2050, it is estimated that two-thirds of the world's people will be short of water.

It is sobering to remember that only three per cent of the world's water is fresh, the remainder being salt. What is even less commonly known is that of this three per cent. 99 per cent is either trapped in glaciers or is underground and therefore not economically assessable. In other words, only 0.03 per cent of the world's water resources are available for all uses -in homes, farms and factories. There is simply not enough to go around unless there are drastic changes in the present consumption levels throughout the globe. Humans feel thirst after loss of only one per cent of body fluid and are in mortal danger near 10 per cent.

At a recent international symposium in Stockholm, held to coincide with the annual water festival there, participants pointed to agriculture being one of the prime culprits.

To add insult to injury, water is subsidised in agriculture almost everywhere. In the US, the average price paid for this resource is less than one-thirtieth of it cost. Of course, the production of meat and dairy produce accounts for a great deal of water use. If people stopped eating meat - in Europe today, there is a 20 per cent drop in beef consumption in the wake of Britain's "Mad cow Disease" - a tremendous amount of water would be freed for other purposes. On the other hand, the new elites of China, India and other developing countries are developing a taste for meat, which is considered essential for modern living. Experts are debating whether such consumption can be discouraged by raising the price of meat or that of water, or both.

Industry is a voracious consumer too. When the Communist Party was in power in Kerala in the late 'fifties, it offered the Birlas free supplies for its Gwalior Rayon plant near Kozhikote. Today, "white goods" manufacturers in the West are one step ahead in the effort to cut down drastically on consumption in appliances, just as automobile manufacturers are streamlining the design of new models. In Sweden, Electrolux has reduced the consumption of energy and water by 75 per cent in its appliances. A dishwasher uses just 15 litres, which is less than a person would use by hand, and a washing machine employs 40 litres for 5 kg. However, this does not answer the fundamental question of whether the water resources of the world permit every family to own such devices, even assuming that they could afford to.

Indeed, the question was raised at the Stockholm meet as to whether people had a fundamental right to water, just as they have to life itself. One speaker stressed that international organisations, national and local governments should adopt a basic human requirement of 50 litres per day and, what is more, guarantee access to it independently of an individual's status. Half of this goes towards drinking water and sanitation, and the remainder for other basic needs like cooking and washing.

The most water-deficient countries are in sub-Saharan Africa: Gambia has just 4.5 litres per day for domestic use. Among our neighbours, Bhutan has less than 15 litres and Bangladesh a little over 17. India and China have reported over 50 litres a head each, but this hides enormous regional variations, as well as class distinctions. It is true that India is blessed with some of the highest rainfall and snow melt in the world, but it is geographically badly distributed and seasonally erratic.

The emphasis today is on "water markets": the World Bank estimates that in a decade, around $ 700 billion will be invested in water-based projects in developing countries. In the West, the service is even being privatised, like the UK, and French and British companies are bidding for global contracts, like that to provide Buenos Aires its water! There is thus a growing "water industry", which assesses the cost of cleaning up water in 2020 at $ 150 billion.

At the same time, there is need for users to band together and decide priorities for themselves, particularly in poor rural societies. Water ought to be managed at the lowest appropriate levels by local people. India already has some outstanding examples, like the Pani Panchayat system in villages outside Pune, where even the landless have a right to water from the canal and can barter or lease such rights. Only by recognising that even the poorest or the weakest have a right to this precious resource can conflicts at every level be avoided. INAV