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Monday,
October 22, 2001, Chandigarh, India   |
Missing: an Afghan policy Bihar gangsters go hi-tech |
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Afghanistan sidestepping Kashmir
Two nights and three days
Bananas with anthrax vaccine
Reservation or discrimination?
S. African HIV baby sues govt for negligence
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Missing: an Afghan policy IT is becoming increasingly clear that India is groping to put together an Afghan policy but so far without success. It is feeling sidelined and kept out of the international efforts to wipe out terrorism. Its sense of frustration is genuine since it has suffered the most from militant violence in Punjab then and Kashmir and the North-East now. But it is unwarranted. As one blunt commentator has pointed out, Hindu India cannot be a partner in an alliance fighting against an Islamic fundamentalist regime. Particularly at a time when this country is battling a Muslim separatist movement in the Kashmir valley. New Delhi’s enthusiasm to be in the forefront of the so-called global campaign was clear when this country offered military bases and other facilities to the USA even before a formal request. The request did not come but what India received was a formal thank-you statement and a huge load of embarrassment. On Friday the country tried to enter the great Afghan game through another route, so to speak. It announced generous relief to Afghan refugees, a million tonnes of wheat, medicines, tents and blankets in view of the coming winter which is very harsh in the mountain-clad country. There was also the promise to grant slightly more than $ 100 million to reconstruct the devastated land but only in the post-Taliban period. Pakistan shot down the offer of relief supply saying that it is unable to transport it and it does not have large enough warehouses to keep the mini mountain of wheat. It is a mess. As a newspaper report has it, there has been no serious consultation and planning before the Cabinet Committee on Security embraced the plan. The government, particularly the bureaucratic component, was out of the picture in planning how a million tonnes of wheat would be carried to Peshawar. It has to be done within weeks since the winter sets in there by the middle of the next month. Pakistan was definitely not taken on board, giving it the freedom to rudely reject the humanitarian gesture. Worse, the UN, which is in the forefront of reaching food to the starving millions, was not in the picture. The UN and other relief agencies would have warmly welcomed India’s food donation if they had the primary role in shifting the wheat. Now India says it will simply hand over the stuff to the UN and forget the Pakistan rebuff. In this there is a dilemma for the UN. Pakistan will still refuse the relief since a dramatic change of stand will expose it to both hard-boiled anti-Indian policy and insensitivity to Afghan sufferings. This is not all. India has no friends in the land-locked country. The Taliban is a sworn enemy and the Northern Alliance is now a stranger. New Delhi has cut off all ties since 1995, stopping military and financial aid. Rebuilding a new friendship is difficult as India finds it every day.
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Bihar gangsters go hi-tech LOCAL
terrorism has gone hi-tech in Bihar and this is bad news for those who have been arguing that if the Laloo Yadav group is demoralised numerically and outmanoeuvred legally, there would be a change in the non-governance process. The Jayanandan Yadav gang engineered the murder of 16 Dalits in notorious pockets of caste and class conflict — Masaurhi and Datmani. One month is a long period for plotting anti-police vengeance. Gangsters can buy landmine devices in Patna itself and plunder police stations to get arms and ammunition to make their arsenals more lethal. Officers like S.K. Suman, who killed Jayanandan in an encounter, are rare. In fact, such encounters are rare! So, Suman would be finished with his daring men. There should be no surprise about the episode. But the qualitative upgradation of the killers' weaponry should cause concern. A Rajput or a Bhumihar is killed as heartlessly as a Munda or an Oraon. Then why mourn the caste label or the tribe tag? It is, however, necessary to look into the causes of the leap in criminality. The terrain in former Chhotanagpur is hilly and mines can be laid there without the fear of their detection by police parties engaged in a counter-offensive or a terror-containment drive. Ambushing is easier. Sumans wilt because of poor equipment of the police. The authorities had prepared a police modernisation programme which could have shown good results if honest and brave leaders were available at the helm of the force. A sum of Rs 82 crore was sanctioned for the project. Nothing was done to deter the gangsters and their supporters based near the India-Nepal border and in some identified places in West Bengal. The police is
demoralised. Security men are seeking security cover! The trouble will predictably escalate in the belt in the coming months. Mr Laloo Yadav has to face trial on many counts involving corruption and wrong official decisions in Jharkhand where support for him is scarce. Patna cannot sustain the monsters or freaks created by Mr Laloo Yadav and his opponents for their survival. This existentialism of the netherworld is a challenge to human political ingenuity. It cannot be met with
crookery. Every gang has political patronage. Every "patron" is corrupt. Every group talks in the name of the people and murders or maims in their name. But power is not based on the accumulated social and economic processes and government is a fake operation. The Centre is said to have been "disturbed" by the landmine-killing of policemen. We hope this information turns to be correct. The consequence of this disturbance should be Rabri Devi's ouster, imposition of President's rule and ruthless steps against the goondas who include ministers, legislators and businessmen. Time is running out. |
Afghanistan sidestepping Kashmir THIS will remain India’s great disappointment, not just with Mr Tony Blair’s and Mr Colin Powell’s visits but by the way it is suffering in Kashmir and the world is turning its face away. The Indian fears that in the spitfire-like American action against the Taliban in Afghanistan Kashmir might be side-stepped are coming out true. The West is so overwhelmed by the danger Osama bin Laden has posed to it with the attack on September 11 and the scare of anthrax that it seems to have no time left to think of the dangers the others face. The Indian pleading that terrorism shows one face in one place and another in another place has not evoked the kind of response we expected. Kashmir continues to bleed. The sudden shelling of Pakistani positions on the LoC in the Akhnoor and Mendher sectors came as an unnecessary surprise, perhaps only to show that someone was trying to impress the new Defence Minister before he displayed his legitimacy. The Indian shelling sadly came when Mr Colin Powell was flying into Pakistan. Hardly a way of telling him that India was behaving with patience. It was like when a mother is distributing food, one baby cries out to attract attention to itself. Yet, India needed no morsels of food. This was made even worse by different kinds of reaction that came from the Indian government. The Ministry of External Affairs and the Defence Minister spoke with different nuances. Surprising when the grammarians in the government spent precious hours trying to find out whether Mr Colin Powell meant “a” central issue or “the” central issue. How much was the shelling under the direction of South Block or at the initiative of the local commander no one said. One report even specified that the government was trying instead of looking for militants to find a scapegoat. No wonder, Mr Colin Powell got away with it cheaply, with a helpful Mr Jaswant Singh giving rise to great eloquence in assuring him of the great truth that one might change friends but not geography. Was this really needed when the nation linked to you by geography has been playing havoc with your history? Was this really needed at this time when the requirement was for India to din into American ears what Pakistan has been doing. How would the USA wake up to what has been happening in Kashmir when all that its Secretary of State on a visit for less than 24 hours heard was the Indian shelling on the
LoC? It may sound hard to digest but we must learn from the way General Musharraf has been turning to his advantage what has been happening to him. The General, true enough, has capitulated where he had to. Pure strategy for a military man. He told his people that the situation has changed and so must his policy. From being a friend of the Taliban he has joined those who want to destroy it. The main objective was to save his job and to get something for his people. In contrast when Mr Colin Powell was in the subcontinent, from being victims of terrorism we showed ourselves as aggressors. Yet we had given our total support to him even before we were asked to. After the surrender General Musharraf got the best of what was available: end of sanctions, mighty dollar aid, assurance that the USA would want to make him stable, another assurance that America would not disturb him in Kashmir. He has also got himself recognised as a legitimate ruler of Pakistan. He has had the cleverness to tell the world that it is not terrorists but freedom fighters who are fighting in Kashmir. The only mistake he made was to have
Jaish-e-Muhammad go in for a blood bath in the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly. It had the Chief Minister, Dr Farooq Abdullah, cry in the assembly chamber. Yet we got nothing more out of it until Mr Colin Powell said that the USA did not accept this kind of terrorism too. Still, he did not directly condemn Pakistan for it. General Musharraf plainly told Mr Colin Powell that most of the people in his country were against the American strikes on Afghanistan. This, instead of showing up his weakness made him very praiseworthy for the USA. The American Secretary of State accepted the statement which any diplomat would have found it hard to enunciate. But General Musharraf managed it because his single point of view, after capitulating on Afghanistan, was to sell off the idea that India was troubling him on his borders. Every American spokesman has been saying that General Musharraf is doing a great job for the coalition. He has thus succeeded in selling the idea that “moderate” Taliban rulers may be included in the government that will follow the fall of the Taliban. The USA after setting out to destroy the Taliban, has come down to accept, on General Musharraf’s recommendation, that there is a “moderate” Taliban wing which, incidentally, will do Pakistan’s bidding in the new government. Just when Pakistan is trying to reap rewards, we show a different image of ourselves, an image that is not ours in reality. If Mr Fernandes justifies the strikes he should have the courage to tell the USA that if it can bomb Afghanistan, we can also bomb Pakistani posts. If that is India’s policy, jolly well do it and make it known to the world. Government spokesmen have been saying that India will deal with terrorism in its own way. If that is so, then why write a letter to President Bush complaining against Pakistan? And if a letter was sent to President Bush, why not to many more friendly heads of government? The plain fact is that in America’s fight against the Taliban, it is Pakistan that counts. We have no reason to feel left out because of this. Pakistan, of course, is extracting the maximum reward for it. That is an advantage which geography and religion have given it. We don’t have these advantages. Neither should we want to have them. Yet, why do we want to be a participant in the game? Why, for instance, do we want Mr Tony Blair and Mr Colin Powell to come to India too when they go to Pakistan? They have something to do with Pakistan in the present situation, nothing with us. When they come to Pakistan, they do not, for instance, go to China. (Mr Colin Powell went there not to discuss the Afghanistan policy but for another meeting arranged previously). We should stand aloof and watch our interests according to our needs. We would then be doing a great job for ourselves and not have to hear shibboleths from others. Those in the Government of India who have studied Mr Colin Powell would know that he has set 13 rules that govern his life. The very first of these is. “It ain’t as bad as you think. It will look better in the morning”. That is what had happened to him when he came to India from Pakistan on a certain Tuesday. |
Two nights and three days I
had hardly made myself comfortable on the office seat when a sweet voice called me up on the phone in a completely western accent. “Could I talk tooooo(reading from her notes) Mr Deswal, please?” “Yes, speaking.” “Oh, good morning sir. I am to inform you, and congratulations for that, you have won a two-nights and three-days free package to any one of the five star hotel destinations in North India, including the one in Kathmandu, Nepal!” “How Come!” I reacted in natural excitement trying to match the artificial, seemingly zealous tone of the caller. “Your telephone number has been picked up randomly by our computer for a publicity campaign launched by our company. And all you have to do is to come and collect your package and some gifts, spend your evening with us in a hotel. In a short while, my boss will confirm to you the offer. Also, sir, you will have refreshments at the hotel.” I literally pinched myself to know if I had really risen from my morning slumber and wasn’t enjoying the pleasant offer in a dream. Next thing I was to immediately do was inform the wife back at home. She too jumped at the information as if we had hit a jackpot or so we thought. I could feel her exuberance and a lifting out of herself on the phone itself when she even suggested quickly: “Isn’t it verily too long since we visited Nainital darling! Or shall we go to Nepal…But no…Nainital should be all right!” She herself withdrew as if recovering reflexively, probably recalling what had happened in the Himalayan kingdom not very long back. I had hardly put down the receiver when the phone bell rang again with the boss in the Chain of Hotels Company himself being on the line. He gave us a code-Shimla 919— after the fashion of the underworld people who share a coded message before delivering some article etc to confirm the identity of the receiver. We were supposed to tell the receptionist the code on reaching the hotel so that we did not have any problem in reaching the exact venue without the hassles while entering a five star status building which normally fills you up with some sort of an inferiority complex and you start fumbling with words in English even while talking to the waiters and stewards. Hoping to do full justice to the refreshments, which we thought we could substitute with our near dinner largesse, we made it on time to the hotel. The hotel staff on being informed by us that we had been invited by such and such company did not extend the usual courtesy expected while receiving a genuine customer. We were signalled to the basement through a dingy stair. On the counter were sitting three representatives of the company who made us fill about half a dozen forms giving minute details about ourselves. I sort of murmured my code in the ears of one of the men on the counter, which met with a cold response as if it was not at all required. I began being suspicious. We were then ushered into a room where about a dozen tables were laid and on each of them were sitting couples in conversation with the company representative. A smart boy joined us. Shook hands and began grilling us a la the
C.B.I. investigators as if we had masterminded a serious scam of the denomination and dimensions the politicians and the high and mighty are often accused and capable of. One full hour passed in our questioning on our income, interest in holidaying etc and there was no sign of the refreshments being served. Hesitatingly, I asked for a cup of tea and got it after our interviewer painstakingly arranged it. All we were informed about was if we could “buy” the company’s “free holiday package”. Repeatedly I asked him if we could know the price we had to pay for the satisfaction of a footloose traveller in each of us. The boss was called in who announced it was “just a couple of lakhs for whole 20 years to come and that too at about hundreds of destinations all the world over not to talk of India.” Almost frozen in our seats, my wife and I had no courage left in us to even look into each other’s eyes hearing about the cost. We wanted to wind up when the representatives too had made up their minds that we could be excused since we, in their correct estimation, were not the stuff “customers” are made up of. While taking leave we wanted to collect our promised small package. It said that during the two nights and three days stay at the hotel of our choice at the desired destination we shall have to have two meals which was “compulsory” and each meal would make us shell out a thousand bucks. “Then this is not a free tour package. Our stay like this would compensate the hotel for the lodging charges”, I protested and accused the company of having spoiled our evening. “But in lieu of the evening spent with us, we are giving you two nights package, sir!” The representative said. Disgusted I retorted: “ And what is free with these two nights my dear?” “Three days, Sir.” Quipped the man on the counter. Needless to say we did not talk to each other on the way back and had to forgo the dinner since we had already given the cook a free evening in the hope we would really get a free holiday package.
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Bananas with anthrax vaccine
Genetically modified fruit and other food could be used in future to deliver medicine, including a vaccine against anthrax, an Australian bio-technology fund manager said on Saturday. "The distinction between food and drugs will gradually disappear," said Peter
Carre, chairman of Xcelerator Life Sciences Funds Group. "Medicine will be in milk, it'll be in stuff we ingest every day. Food will be the most widely used form to distribute medicine," Carre said at a business conference on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation
(APEC) summit. Carre said bananas were already being genetically modified in research laboratories for all types of medicinal purposes, including immunisation against four strains of anthrax. "Why bananas? They grow quickly, people like them and they took early. You could have done it in a tomato if you wanted," Carre told reporters after a speech to the conference. Carre said Cornell University in upstate New York, USA, was leading development work on genetically modifying food to deliver medicines to people.
US official held for taking bribes
US Federal agents arrested an immigration supervisor at Miami International Airport on Friday on charges of collecting bribes to allow aliens to enter the country illegally, Fredy
Barragan, a supervisory inspector for the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) at the airport, was charged with bribery, conspiracy, forging an immigrant permit, inducing an alien to enter the United States unlawfully, and other offences. Barragan's wife, Katherine, and his sister-in-law, Monica
Andrioli, were also arrested on charges of conspiring to solicit bribes for him and transferring an illegal identification document, said U.S. Attorney Guy Lewis. If convicted on all the charges, Barragan could face up to 50 years in prison. John
Bulger, acting district director for the INS, said the agency was committed to purging its ranks of employees who break the law. Reuters |
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Reservation or discrimination? STRANGE
as it may sound, living in the Capital of the state has become a ground for discrimination in one’s own state. This is what those residing in Chandigarh face in the matter of admission of their wards to educational institutions in Punjab and Haryana. One wonders if living in Chandigarh makes Punjabis and Haryanavis less so that their children studying in schools in Chandigarh are not treated on a par with their counterparts in Punjab and Haryana in the matter of admission to institutions in these two states. Both Punjab and Haryana have reserved 80 to 90 per cent of the total intake in their educational, technical and medical institutions for their own students and, as pointed out earlier, for this purpose students from Chandigarh are not treated as their own students. Not to be left behind the Chandigarh Administration too has followed suit and has, with effect from the academic session 2000-2001, reserved 85 per cent seats in its educational, technical and medical institutions for students of Chandigarh, leaving just 15 per cent seats in these institutions for the general pool, that is for students of Punjab, Haryana and the other parts of the country. Imagine the problem that serving personnel, whether in the military, government or in the private sector, would on transfer from Chandigarh to Punjab or Haryana and vice-versa, be confronted with in the matter of admission of their children to an educational institution. This constitutes one of the obvious adverse consequences flowing from the reservation policy of Punjab, Haryana and Chandigarh for their educational, technical and medical institutions. The other fallout of this situation being the greatly enhanced pressure for admission to schools in Chandigarh. Parents of children residing in Mohali or Panchkula would now prefer to have their wards study in schools in Chandigarh rather than nearer home, just in order to avail of the benefit of the 85 per cent reservation in graduate and post-graduate institutions, for students of schools in Chandigarh. As for the schools in Chandigarh, the anxiety of parents seeking admission for their children at the start of each academic year is the picture they present. The number of schools in Chandigarh is clearly not adequate to meet the growing needs of the city and there is now the added pressure for admission of children from Mohali and Panchkula. There has been a mushroom growth of private schools in Chandigarh — an inevitable consequence of the Chandigarh Administration not having made the requisite investment in schools that the city needs. There are, no doubt, some excellent private schools providing quality education but they are too few in number. Most of the other private schools are located in residential premises lacking the essential infrastructure so necessary to run a proper school. The fact that such schools, despite their inadequacies, continue to thrive denotes that fulfil a vital need. This also perhaps why after having asked private schools to move out of residential premises the Chandigarh Administration has not tried to enforce this direction. In order to provide for more schools in the city the Chandigarh Administration has, no doubt, offered land at the concessional rate for setting up private schools. This unfortunately has been done under a scheme designed more to ensure control of the administration over the management of the school and also to bring in revenue for the state exchequer. The objective should really have been to enable the school to provide quality education at an affordable price. One of the essential conditions of the scheme being the representation of the administration on the managing body of the school, exposing the school thereby not only to unnecessary government interference in its affairs but more importantly to the tyranny of its petty officials. It will not be officers like the Home or Finance Secretary who will be there to represent the administration on the school management. It will be some minor functionaries having little, if any, experience or knowledge of running a school but a vast potential for exercising their petty tyranny. As is well-known once a school comes to be recognised as a good school, pressures for admission to it mount and instances are not unknown of such pressures being exerted for appointment of staff and teachers too. Such unwarranted pressures cannot but adversely affect the quality and reputation of the school. There is then the price that the Administration demands for the land to be allotted to schools and that too on a leasehold basis. There is thus not only a tidy sum to be paid in lump sum (or in a few instalments) but also the annual lease money. The price fixed has more a commercial element in it than recognition that the institution would be fulfilling an essential social need. Be that as it may, what needs to be borne in mind is that whatever be the amount payable it will ultimately be recovered from the students and this in turn would reflect upon the affordability of study in that school. With such being the conditions, no wonder well-known public schools in the country have shied away from seeking to establish a branch in Chandigarh. Reservation of seats for admission of students to the various types of educational institutions as also the criteria and conditions for allotment of land for schools in Chandigarh is a matter of great, public importance, fraught with far reaching social, economic and political consequences. These are far too important issues to be left just for a handful of bureaucrats to ponder over while sitting behind closed doors culminating in the issuance of a “shahi firman” as it were, for citizens to quietly follow. On matters such as these it is an imperative necessity for a wide-ranging public debate being an integral part of the decision making process. A glaringly conspicuous omission here. Even otherwise, as any good administrator would know, good governance in a democracy is founded upon public information and consultation. The writer is a former Chief Justice of the High Court of Allahabad. |
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S. African HIV baby sues govt for negligence A six-month-old baby who contracted HIV from her mother is suing South African authorities for failing to prevent it, lawyers and health officials said. Lawyers acting on instructions from baby Tinashe's 19-year-old mother—the family name was not been made public—have demanded a provincial health executive pay 700,000 rand ($76,000) in damages for negligence. The suit is being conducted in the baby's name, a precedent allowed under South African law. "This child faces a very bleak future unless we win this case. The mother is unemployed and without help the child will die when she is about five years old," family lawyer Richard Spoor told Reuters. HIV (Human
Immuno-deficiency Virus) is a precursor of the deadly AIDS virus. Spoor alleged health workers had been negligent in not advising the mother on how HIV would impact on her pregnancy and that a key antiretroviral drug,
nevirapine, was available in the private sector that would have cut the risks. "The health authorities and doctors have a duty to care for pregnant women. Their conduct was unlawful, they are liable," Spoor said, adding Tinashe's grandmother had told doctors that the mother was HIV-positive. Sibongile
Manana, Health Minister for Mpumalanga province, had received the damages claim and was studying it, a ministerial spokesman said. Legal sources said the claim could set an important precedent for thousands of women who had already transmitted HIV to their babies. More than 150 children are born with HIV every day in South Africa, which has been hard hit by the global AIDS epidemic. South Africa's biggest AIDS activist group, the Treatment Action Campaign, is set to clash with the government in court later this year over Pretoria's refusal to dispense nevirapine through the public health system. The court cases are likely to throw the spotlight on the government's controversial approach to AIDS that has ruled out using life-prolonging antiretroviral drugs on cost and safety grounds. U.N. figures show that with one in nine people infected, South Africa -- which has a population of 45 million -- has more people living with AIDS or the HIV virus than other country. A report issued this week by the country's leading medical body warned that as many as seven million South Africans could die of the disease by 2010 if there was no change in sexual behaviour and proper treatment offered.
Reuters |
Murderer of sister-in-law gets 5 years
Ferozepur The story told by the prosecution witnesses was that the accused ran to the house of Basti Chaukidar with a gandasa in his hand and there, it is alleged, announced within the hearing of the witnesses the fact that he had killed his sister-in-law, and he then offered himself for arrest. The chaukidar arrested him and took him to the thana and made a report. The accused asserted that the prosecution witnesses had told a true story and that he did confess having killed the woman and that he did kill in anger because she abused him and refused to obey him when he forbade her to go with her paramours |
By merit alone, of our deeds,
We could never be liberated, O Lord,
Every moment, we err and sin.O Saviour True, save us through Thy mercy,
Says Nanak, and take us across the fearful ocean of life. **** The whole purpose of earning wealth and maintaining a home is to provide hospitality to guests. **** If a man cares daily for those who come to him, his life will never suffer the grievous ruin of poverty. **** Wealth's goddess dwells in the hospitable home of those who host guests with a smiling face. **** Charity's merit cannot be measured by gifts given.
**** Even one who has transgressed all the laws of mortality and religion and indulges in all sorts of sinful acts is liberated without doubt through the utterance of Hari's Name. **** The Name of Narayana is known as a famous thief in the world, because as soon as It enters the ears of men, it steals all their sins accumulated through innumerable births.
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