P A G E
Saturday, June 5, 1999
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E D I T O R I A L P A G E |
Saturday, June 5, 1999 |
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Nachiketa
& the Pak game
KARGIL
IN PERSPECTIVE |
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Address
ordinary Pakistani directly
Off
the beaten track
Dinner
table university
Shri
Ganga Ram Free Hospital, Lahore |
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Nachiketa & the Pak game THE release of Flt. Lt. K. Nachiketa at the "behest" of Pakistan's Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif makes good news. However, the high drama preceding the fighter pilot's freedom and other events concerned with the Dras-Kargil-Batalik incursion adulterate the joy, which the act could have generated, with bitter political cunning and military deceit. Nachiketa was in Pakistan's custody for eight days. His plane had developed engine trouble. His drifting into Pakistan-occupied Kashmir across the Line of Control (LoC) was a result of the natural reflex action of a flier facing mechanical trouble. The world knew that he was not a Prisoner of War (PoW). The government in Islamabad gave the assurance that he would receive "traditional Islamic hospitality". Religion was dragged into a purely routine military procedure. Sqd Ldr Ajay Ahuja, who was trying to trace Nachiketa and his aircraft, was attacked in the air by Pakistani troops near the LoC with deadly missiles. He jumped out of the plane and was captured. He was shot at point-blank range savagely. He died of gun-shot wounds. The post-mortem report shows the extent of brutality to which he was subjected after he had already suffered multiple fractures following the fall. Was he accorded "traditional Islamic hospitality"? Nachiketa will, perhaps, tell the full story when the service rules and circumstances permit him to do so. Mr Nawaz Sharif should
not have allowed the Nachiketa handing-over process to be
delayed or procedurally prolonged. Has he really shown a
goodwill gesture? His forces are opening new fronts in
the Akhnoor-Uri-Poonch and Ladakh segments. The
propaganda blitzkrieg is being intensified. Foreign
Secretary Shamshad Ahmad has held out a nuclear war
threat from his side of the LoC. Foreign Minister Sartaj
Aziz, who may visit India soon, has questioned the
validity of the LoC itself. This line has been
effectively acknowledged for a quarter of a century. The
bilateral factor in the Simla Agreement and the Lahore
Declaration is being negated. Much is being done to
attract international attention to the ground unrealities
crafted by Pakistan. The powerful nations of the world
have not allowed themselves to be involved in Pakistani
calumny. They deserve abundant appreciation. There is no
transparency in Pakistani leaders' word or deed. Remember
Katha Upanishad's Nachiketa who had received warm
treatment in the house of Yama? Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan
quotes from the Vedas and says: "Shokam atitya
gachchati" — sorrow is left behind — by
Nachiketa. The nation has waited all these days to
welcome the brave man. But let not his release be
misunderstood as an act which should make us leave our
sorrows of violated territorial integrity behind as an
insignificant incident of the past. The battle for the
preservation of sovereignty needs sacrifice. We are proud
of our Nachiketas and Ahujas. |
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AT a time when the entire nation feels indebted and beholden towards the gallant soldiers fighting a glorious battle to push out the intruders in the Kargil-Dras area of Jammu and Kashmir, the news that a jawan who laid down his life in the service of the country was cremated like a nobody strikes an extremely discordant note. The Tribune report from Dharamasala in Himachal Pradesh on Friday described in grim detail how no military or civil official cared to be present when the mortal remains of Bajinder Singh of Nandloo village in Dehra subdivision were consigned to the flames. From the Press report, it appears that the family of the martyr was not even aware that he had laid down his life. Apparently, either Army Headquarters did not send the customary black-border telegram bearing the tragic news in time, or it was delayed due to the vagaries of the postal authorities. Imagine the condition of his aged mother - who happens to be the widow of a soldier and was all alone in her house - when the coffin of her son was all of a sudden brought to the village in a taxi by a Havildar. The whole episode reeks of neglect and lack of coordination of the worst order. What is even worse is that when the SDM of the area reached the village after the cremation was over, he reportedly chided the relatives of the martyr for having lit the pyre without waiting for him. The anger of the people of the area is understandable. Whether it is Army HQ, the Sub Area Commander, the Rajya Sainik Board or the civil administration, they all need to hang their head in shame at this slipup, which is too crude for words. Mistakes do occur at times but such a series of them is too gruesome. It may be argued by some
that it was an isolated incident because most others who
laid down their lives for the country were cremated with
full military honours. Ironically, the dereliction stands
out all the more for that very reason. Those who were
given a befitting farewell by the nation happened to be
of officer rank. That may make some reach the unfortunate
conclusion that Bajinder Singh was left out because he
was a mere soldier. The glorious tradition of the Indian
Army is that it respects the life of a soldier as much as
that of a General. That is why those who could not even
arrange the laying of wreaths on his body on behalf of
the military or civil authorities have done irreparable
damage to the name of the Army. Many youth of the Kangra
area are in the Army and one shudders to think what
message this disrespect of the worst kind will send to
them. The only way those responsible for the unpardonable
sin can atone for it is by assuring that never ever is
such mistake allowed to recur. That is the least that a
country can ensure for its sons in uniform. |
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PERHAPS the only remedy left for dealing with the problem of "VIP crimes" is to somehow effect the destruction of the VIP culture itself. To expect the political class to take the initiative in this matter is like asking a leopard to shed its spots. Following the murder of model Jessica Lal at the high society restaurant of a Delhi-based socialite it would have been normal for politicians, who love carrying firearms as symbols of power, to lie low until such time as it normally takes for the people to forget a major crime and the police to tank a case. However, going by a report carried by a Delhi newspaper it is business as usual for at least an MLA from Uttar Pradesh. He may have done to two women, who had the misfortune of sharing seats next to those occupied by his armed entourage at PVR Anupam in New Delhi, what was done to Jessica Lal allegedly by the sons of two high-profile politicians. The fact that armed men had been allowed entry in the cinema hall itself may never have come to light had the firearm of the personal bodyguard of the MLA not kept hitting the knee of the woman sitting next to him as he dozed through the movie. Just because a more
serious incident did not occur does not mean that the
cinema hall management,the MLA and his bodyguards should
not be tried for the violation of various provisions of
the law. It very nearly occurred during the interval when
the women, both social activists, decided to bring up the
issue of carrying weapons inside the hall. First the
gunman walked up and down the aisle threatening anyone
who dared to ask the VIP party to leave. This was
followed by the MLA himself pulling out a revolver from
under his kurta and threatening the women with dire
consequences for having dared to tell him about the
illegality of his action. However, the silver lining of
the otherwise sordid tale of the lawmaker's disrespect
for the law was the courage of the women in filing an FIR
with the Malviya Nagar Police Station. But the question
of the VIP culture's role in promoting corruption and
crime needs a larger debate. Since such an exercise may
put politicians in the dock it should preferably be
conducted by public-spirited individuals like the two
women at PVR Anupam who stood up to the bullying of the
MLA and his armed guards. |
KARGIL IN
PERSPECTIVE FOR the first time in history, military blows have been exchanged between two nuclear weapon countries. The outcome can be momentous, either way, and is awaited with hope and apprehension. But in the meantime, events in Kargil during the past few days have set some doubts at rest. They have also given reassuring answers to some questions, though these are incomplete as yet at the time of writing, at the end of May. But they have also thrown up some anxieties, and some dangerous questions. Over the past few years military officers of the highest ranks have questioned the need for India to maintain its small military positions on the Siachen glacier. They have stressed the hardship suffered by those posted on these high altitude deserts of snow. Their sympathy for the soldiers is praiseworthy. But their doubts regarding the value of these posts should have been eliminated by the events of the past few weeks in the mountains of Kargil, which lie immediately to the south and west and compete with Siachen for height and inhospitality. Operational problems in the soft snows of Siachen may be greater than in the Kargil rockies. But that does not diminish the strategic potential of the former. The best supply route from Srinagar for the defence of Ladakh is at its most vulnerable in the Kargil stretch. But Siachen dominates the trijunction of Pakistan, China, and the Ladakh region of India, and as such it is open to joint use against India by the only two countries which have militarily attacked India ever since it became independent. Therefore, it is as important for India to see that Siachen does not fall into hostile hands as it is to ensure that the life is made bearable for those who are defending it. It would be best for both India and Pakistan if they could agree on parallel and simultaneous steps to demilitarise Siachen under the supervision of joint inspection teams, so that neither side can surreptitiously do what Pakistan did in recent months in the Kargil region. But until such an agreement is reached India cannot afford, any more in Siachen than in Kargil, any unilateral thinning down of its military responsibilities, which is sometimes suggested when sympathy surges for the defenders of “the deserts of snow.” There is as yet an incomplete but partially reassuring answer to the troublesome question whether the events in and about Kargil have wholly undone the gains of the “bus diplomacy”. At one level there can be only one complete and final answer to that question, that Mr Vajpayee’s peace aims have died a natural death in Kargil that India might as well recognise the reality that Pakistan is an incurably hostile neighbour, and then proceed to deal with it accordingly — and finally. But the answer can be different at another level. Mr Vajpayee’s bus ride to Lahore produced the Lahore Declaration and the Memorandum of Understanding between the two countries, which are the two most important documents to be signed by India and Pakistan since the Simla Agreement of 1971. But we should judge their value by their content, not by our wishes. They did not promise to solve the “Kashmir dispute”, not to end the kind of support Pakistan has always given to the “mujahideen”, whatever the term might mean from time to time. The documents signified three types of gains. First, the direct and bilateral dialogue which India’s former Prime Minister, Mr Gujral, opened with the Pakistani Prime Minister, Mr Nawaz Sharif, was established between the latter and the new Indian Prime Minister, Mr Vajpayee, despite the very different hues of the governments led, respectively, by Mr Gujral and Mr Vajpayee. Second, at Lahore, the two sides quite firmly and clearly grasped the newest and the most prickly issue between them, the nuclear weapon status acquired by them. Since the Gujral-Sharif initiative, which has given new dimensions to all the 50-year old issues. As pointed out on this page soon after the “bus yatra”, the Memorandum of Understanding in particular is full of words which, if words mean what they say, confirm that the two sides, for the first time, discussed the bilateral implications and obligations of their new status in the framework of some specific as well as comprehensive concepts. Third, at Lahore Pakistan resiled from the hard line it has taken in recent years, that nothing can be discussed with India until the “Kashmir dispute” is settled. At Lahore this line was quietly by-passed. To these can be added a more general and intangible gain: that at least at the level of the two Prime Ministers, a new level of communication began in Lahore. None of the first three gains can be said to have been derailed in Kargil — yet — and the fourth has proved to be of some use. The two Prime Ministers have been twice on the phone with each other since the beginning of the Kargil crisis. In the first, Mr Vajpayee gave Mr Sharif a clear warning of what India would have to do to get the infiltrators out, a wise precaution, possible only at a certain level of mutual trust, for ensuring that the impending Indian air action would not be misunderstood by Pakistan, as an intentional attack on itself. From the second call, it seems, came the suggestion — from Pakistan — that its Foreign Minister should visit New Delhi for talks. What will come out of the talks is unknown as yet, but the suggestion met Mr Vajpayee’s position that for talks to begin for some de-escalation in Kargil. Pakistan must take some initiative. Perhaps in a reciprocal gesture, New Delhi has specifically excluded Mr Nawaz Sharif from other elements in Pakistan whom New Delhi has blamed for the infiltrations into Kargil. India has also conceded the possibility that the aircraft which was shot down by Pakistan might have strayed across the agreed Line of Control. But the debit side of this balance sheet of Kargil in perspective is much more worrisome. First and foremost this situation is wholly replicable and recurable. Too much blood has been shed on both sides for it to flow away quietly, unless preventive means are found by both sides and soon. Pakistan has at its disposal a reservoir of idle warriors in Afghanistan, heavily armed with deadly weaponry which America poured into that country with a single-minded — or mindless — disregard of the consequences for the people of this region. Where the terrain favours them, as it permanently does in the Kargil region, they can be quite a handful for Indian defenders, particularly when guided and assisted by Pakistan as they seem to have been this time as well. India will of course not permit them to come in and squat. But in evicting them India will face a tough time. Either it will have to use modest means, like its soldiers slogging up the hill in the face of enemy fire. Or it will have to use more dramatic means — air power, as this time, or counter raids into Pakistan — and run the risk of international reactions, particularly at the hands of America, which does not often refrain from turning the screw of the Kashmir issue on India for the sake of collateral aims, such as its cold war with the Soviet Union at one time, and now India’s nuclear capability. For dealing with the latter, America will find illegitimate encouragement in the illegitimate precedent it has established in Kosovo with the help of a Europe chained hand and foot to NATO. Kargil has illustrated India’s dilemma. Pakistan is said to have some 3000 militants huddled up on its side of Line of Control, in Gurez, to be poured across in suitable doses. When India tried to deal with what was only the tip of this iceberg, in Kargil, Pakistan complained that India used a “local conflict” to launch “a major air attack”. Pakistan appealed for international support. America and Britain responded with an apparently even handed appeal to India and Pakistan to exercise restraint but which was in fact biased in favour of continuation of the illegal occupation of Kargil territory by Pakistan. The UN Secretary-General, attentive to American signals, obliged with the offer of sending a mission to help the two countries to ease the tension between them. India rightly rejected the offer, knowing the past partisanship of such missions under the influence of the western permanent members of the Security Council. The dilemma India faces is serious but not surprising. What is surprising is lack of Indian preparedness. We seem to have denied ourselves the best means we have of forestalling the dilemma. India was taught a serious lesson by China in the Aksai Chin area of this very Ladakh: that if you do not even know that someone is nibbling away at your territory, you will find it is too late when you do wake up. Yet the same thing has happened again, and this time in an area of much greater and more immediate sensitivity, and a lot more full of forewarnings. This is not a plea for manning, let alone defending “every inch”. That would be impractical, unwise, wasteful, as has been pointed out on this page by authors much more knowledgeable in these matters than the present one. But the difficulties they mention about knowing what is going on belong to a pre-electronic, pre-satellite, pre-sideways radar age of intelligence. With all these technologies well at hand these days it should have been easy for India to discover that a vast assembly of men and material, including weapons too large to be hidden away when in transit, was being built up. If India had known that, it could have prevented that assembly from reaching proportions which at worst would be difficult to deal with, and at best would require highly controversial use of air power, which is difficult anywhere in terrain such as this and all the more so when the border is only a few kilometres away. What is worse is that
India has had more difficulty in analysing and
interpreting the available information than in collecting
some more of it. It appears that while some elements in
our intelligence structure knew what was going on some
months ago, others did not, and coordination between the
two was so poor that clear conclusions eluded both. The
holes and contradictions in the information being
trickled out to the daily press indicate that
ill-coordination persists and the credibility of our
claims has a lower priority than their size. |
Helping
the aged THE world is going through a demographic transition. Socio-economic progress and advances in medical science have increased life expectancy. Simultaneously, fertility is falling. As a result, we have the phenomenon of “population ageing”. The number of old people is increasing and ensuring a proper quality of life for them is both a matter of concern and a challenge to the world community. Therefore, the UN has designated the last year of this millennium as International Year of Older Persons. In the last 50 years global life expectancy increased by 20 years to its present level of 66 years. The fall in fertility is dramatised by the Chinese and Indian experience. In China fertility fell from 5.5 in 1970 to 1.8 in 1998. The corresponding figures for India are 5.9 and 3.1. Within the last five decades, the proportion of the world population over 60 years old has changed from one in 13 to one in 10. In Europe it is already 1 in 5. The current global population of old people is 580 million, of whom 355 million (60 per cent) live in the developing countries. The world is expected to have 1 billion old people by 2020. In India, life expectancy was just 23 years in 1901. It took 50 years to add 9 years and bring it to 32 years in 1951. It took another 30 years to add 20 years and bring it to 52 years by 1981. It has taken 15 years to add 10 more years and bring it to 62 years in 1996. Our life expectancy will be close to 70 years before 2020. India’s current population of old people is over 70 million. Rich countries can afford to look after their old reasonably well. Mr M.M. Sabharwal, President Emeritus, HelpAge India, a non-government organisation, says: In Australia there is a carer attached to every old person. The government and society make various arrangements for aged persons. They have special clubs, games, shows, theatre and cinema. There was a golf competition for the aged when I was there.” Compared to this, what poor countries like India can do for their aged is limited. The lacuna has to be made up by the joint family system which, unfortunately, is breaking down. Urbanisation, economic crunch and employment of women are resulting in nuclear families. A recent study, quoted at a seminar organised by the Institute of Human Behaviour and Allied Sciences in New Delhi, pointed out that 40 per cent of the elderly in the capital have no care-givers. It is a challenge to the Indian society, particularly social scientists, to devise ways and means to arrest further breakdown of the joint family system. The World Health Organisation has rightly pointed out that old persons should not be treated as a burden. It says: “Old age is not an affliction but a great opportunity to make use of resources acquired over the course of life. Old people can be a tremendous asset to families and the community”. In Singapore people who can afford to look after their aged parents but do not are prosecuted under the law. A bill on the Singapore pattern was introduced in the Himachal Pradesh assembly, but it has not become law. It is problematical whether the joint family system can be resuscitated by the force of law. It is more a matter of self realisation on the part of people of their filial duty towards their aged parents. The Indian government is trying to help the aged, but its efforts meet a very small fraction of the need. A National Policy for Older Persons was approved by the Union Cabinet in January this year. It talks in rather pompous terms of state support to the aged as regards financial security, health care, shelter and protection against abuse and exploitation. As a follow-up, the Centre some days ago constituted National Council for Older Persons, which is headed by Mr J.S. Verma, former Chief Justice of India, and comprises representatives of central and state governments and NGOs. Since we have a caretaker government, these initiatives are only on paper. Only about 15 per cent of the working population is employed in regular salaried jobs. This segment has social security in the form of provident fund, gratuity and pension. Senior citizens above the age of 65 also have concessions regarding rail and air travel and income tax. The main problem faced by a number of old persons of the middle class is not so much economic security as emotional deprivation because of social ostracism. It is the economic condition of the aged below the poverty line which is a cause of worry. Agewell Foundation and HelpAge India estimate that 40 per cent of the elderly live below the poverty line and 90 per cent of them are in the unorganised sector. Three years ago the Central Government started the National Old Age Pension Scheme for the rural sector. It has about 54 lakh beneficiaries, each of whom gets a pension of only Rs 75 per month. The Prime Minister recently launched the “Annapurna” scheme, under which 10 kilograms of foodgrains are to be given free to rural senior citizens every month. The state governments
have their own patchy pension schemes. Under the Delhi
government’s old age pension scheme, which is
supposed to cover 80000 persons, a beneficiary gets Rs
200 per month. But a recent special audit showed that
about 11000 names in the scheme are bogus. |
Dinner
table university I ONCE read the interesting story of an immigrant Italian family in America where the father had converted the dinner table into a university. When the father was growing up in northern Italy at the turn of the century, education was for the rich. Father was the son of a poor farmer. He was taken from school in the fifth standard and put to work. He made the world his school. He was interested in every thing. He read all the books, magazines and newspapers. He loved to listen to the town elders and learn all about the world. He carried his respect for learning to America, where he emigrated, and later passed it on his family. He was determined that none of his many children was denied an education. He believed that the greatest sin was to go to bed at night as ignorant as when one awoke. “Though we are born stupid, only the stupid remain that way,” he’d say. He insisted that each of his children learn at least one new thing each day. And dinner time was the forum for sharing what each had learnt that day. After food was served and initial eating done, he would pull back his chair, pour a glass of red wine, light up a cigar, inhale deeply, exhale and stare hard at all his children. This always had a slightly unsettling effect on the children as they stared back at him, awaiting for him to say something, and then his attention would settle on one of them. “Felice,” he’d say, “tell me what you learnt today.” The result was that each of the children would pour into an encyclopaedia during the day and would come up with an answer like “the population of Venezuela is ....” There would be a short discussion like “how many men and how many females,” and then the next child would be asked a question. No dinner ended without the children having been enlightened by at least half a dozen such facts. The son who wrote this story stated that in retrospect, “I realised what a dynamic educational technique Papa was offering us. Without being aware of it, our family was growing together, sharing knowledge and participating in one another’s education.” I write this story so
that those Papas who value learning can emulate this
great “5th standard passed Papa” and bring into
the life of their children knowledge, love, togetherness
and the realisation that in life not a day need be
wasted. After all, one never can tell when knowing the
population of Venezuela may prove useful. |
Address ordinary Pakistani directly
ON the evening that Indian Air Force fighter planes began bombing operations in Kargil, I had an interesting conversation with a senior western diplomat at a Delhi dinner party. Had he heard what had happened, I asked. He said, he had. He then made a most perceptive observation. He said: “The reason why India finds it so hard to make real peace with Pakistan is because you are dealing with a country that quite simply doesn’t have the same structures as you do. So, you can have a Pakistani Prime Minister who might sincerely want peace but he can do nothing about it because of the manner in which governance is structured in Pakistan. He cannot fight the Army when it comes to something like this”. This is probably what our Defence Minister was trying to say when, in a totally needless intervention, he announced on the national television that the Pakistani Prime Minister was not responsible for the incursions across the Line of Control (LoC) in Kargil. This is not the information that Mr George Fernandes needs to share with the people of India, but it is something that policy makers in our own South Block and in the US State Department need to consider very carefully when they are making policies that govern relations with Pakistan. Let us deal with the American aspect of the problem first. Let me say that even as someone who has never participated in the widespread Indian paranoia about America, it worries me that American foreign policy in South Asia is so obsolete, caught up still in perceptions that existed in the old cold war days. Those were times when Pakistan was clearly in the American camp and we were happily ensconced in the arms of the Soviet Union and our leaders totally obsessed with the idea that America was trying to destroy India. Things have changed considerably and there are now only a handful of political leaders left who still believe in our former doctrine of anti-Americanism. The same, alas, does not appear to be true about those who deal with South Asia in the US State Department. It’s true that on the Kargil issue we have not seen any signs of a tilt towards Pakistan but we still continue to see attempts at a balancing act which is unfair when you consider that it was Pakistan who started the war. We have seen when it comes to dealing with Iraq or Serbia, America can be quite forceful in condemning what it sees as the misdemeanours of Saddam Hussein or Slobadan Milosevic so why can we not hear some forthright condemnation of Pakistan? If Pakistan manages still to continue exporting terrorists to Kashmir it is mainly because it gets away with the lie that it is lending only ‘moral support’ to the ‘freedom movement’ in Kashmir. It is more than time that the West recognised that Pakistan is well on the verge of being a rogue state and with a nuclear bomb at that. Surely, India cannot be put in the same category. So what is the need to continue with the balancing act? When, Kashmiri militants kidnapped western hostages four years ago, I put this question to a senior functionary of the State Department who was in South Asia to try and negotiate their release. He replied, unconvincingly, that for a start the USA did not have the kind of leverage with Pakistan that India believed it had. Second, they wanted to prevent Pakistan from becoming a pariah state. The result of this approach is that Pakistan continues to get away with acts of terrorism so serious that we have South Asia in a virtual state of war. Is this what the West wants? To come now to our own problems in dealing with Pakistan. Usually, the Ministry of External Affairs is divided between hawks and doves with the former advocating total intransigence and the latter the very opposite. Our hawks believe that everything is in the hands of the Army so there is no point, whatsoever, in making peace noises with a Pakistani prime minister and our doves believe that since they are now democratically elected leaders in Pakistan, we should try and take full advantage of this. The end result, especially since we have had unstable governments in Delhi for three years now, is that there is almost no coherent policy at all. What semblance of foreign policy there is tends to be in the form of a fire-fighting exercise. What we need, instead, is total firmness when it comes to dealing with the sort of situation that exists in Kargil mixed with a clear message to Pakistan that we do want peace and will make every effort to achieve it because it is in India’s interests to have a peaceful, prosperous South Asia. Which brings us to the point that the western diplomat made: how can we achieve this with a country that does not have the same democratic structures as we do? The answer is that we need to create in ordinary Pakistanis a vested interest in peace with India and this is where not having a coherent policy has let us down. After that euphoric bus ride to Lahore in February, there were many in the Ministry of External Affairs, including Mr Jaswant Singh himself, who were eager to make unilateral gestures that would in the end be in India’s national interest. Among these gestures were possibilities of allowing free trade from Pakistan without expecting any reciprocity. This would be about the best way to create an economic vested interest for peace among ordinary Pakistanis. Sadly, nothing has happened. The other unilateral gesture we could make is to make it easier for ordinary Pakistanis to visit India and for their newspapers, magazines and films to come across the border. None of these gestures will have a detrimental effect on our national interest but again nothing has happened. The result is that our
hawks win the day in South Block and, more importantly,
we end up strengthening the hand of the Pakistani Army.
The result also is that when something like Kargil
happens we get jingoism and war cries on both sides of
the border and peace becomes more and more impossible.
Pakistan’s structure of government is indeed
different to ours but we need to learn to work around it
because, if we want peace in South Asia, it is the only
way. |
Off the beaten track
WITH cricket coming out of our ears and Kargil making us sad as well as proud and wondering why Pakistan can never play straight, I did a spot of channel-surfing to find something different. Other than the birds and animals on Discovery and National Geographic. I find both the Action Channel and Star World nauseating, the first with its unending sex and violence and Star World, which is beamed to India but is clearly meant for east of India. Its programme timings do not even bother to mention timings in India, as the BBC does and its special news bulletins on Asia to not seem to come further West than Hongkong and never to India. It is a far Eastern Channel and should not pretend to be anything other than Hongkong and Chinese-oriented, a mere sop to Star Plus viewers who miss their Western stuff. Where one can still find Baywatch and the rest. The other serials, again sex and violence and funny programmes are so American slanted that while they may be of interest to Hongkong and its neighbours they are outlandish and alien for Indians. At least Star World should accord Indian viewers the courtesy of making them feel that they also enter into the thoughts of the programme planners of Star World and not just served the left-overs. Sadly, another casualty has been Barry Norman. The acid comments and wry wit of the Barry Norman of the BBC has been transformed into a rather tired looking old gent speaking without any fire. Sky seems to have emasculated poor Norman and he is hardly recognisable. So I returned to Discovery for something worthwhile. And I did find it in its depth report on violence in schools in the USA. It not only took us to the spots where shootings and other forms of violence had taken place and spoke to the people involved, but also got psychologists and other experts to probe the adolescent mind in the country and find out and explain why it was going over the bend. The fact that boys are much more violent than girls was also explored. I find nothing approximating to this on Indian TV except to some extent the socially different, such as single parents, on TVI, which seems to have left off this kind of programme which it was doing so well until its resources presumably dried up and led to endless repeats, however worthy. Then in the field of news I found fascinating the on-the-spot reportage with revealing interviews with angry Serbs in a walkout by Simpson on the streets of Belgrade in the BBC series Simpson’s World. The American bombings of innocent civilians and heritage buildings has brought out the patriot in every Serb. The BBC and the British came in for their share of bashing and even the most ordinary people vented their anger in no uncertain terms. Saeed Naqvi, in his international series, It’s a Small World has also been exploring the ordinary Serb mind down the years. I feel his programme, the only series of its kind on Indian TV, has been very badly situated and again exposed the sorry fact that in their thirst for ads., Tu Tu Main Main gets priority over serious programmes on Star Plus, such as this, of great concern to Indians. In fact, the great Indian rat race on TV has made a casualty not only of programming but also of creativity. The place of the
producer has been so down-graded on Indian TV, and most
of all on Doordarshan, that no producer now dares tell a
politician, a professor or a journalist to speak more
slowly or face the camera or avoid long sentences. I
remember in the good old days how Dr Narayana Menon, then
Station Director of All India Radio in Delhi, and fresh
from the BBC, gently said to Nehru: “Sir, would you
mind speaking a little more slowly otherwise the listener
might miss some of the important things you are
saying?” Nehru complied with a smile. I was reminded
of this while watching journalist Manvender Singh, who is
very readable in print, conducting an interview on
politics on Doordarshan. Mr Singh obviously knew his
subject but what made it difficult for the viewer was to
follow the trend of his question, because he would first
make a long preliminary statement and then follow it up
with his question, instead of asking a brief question and
then getting his interviewee to make the statement. This
is a very common mistake and any professional producer
would have found a way to tell Mr Singh politely to keep
his questions short and not make a long statement. But
the problem is, so much have the political netas cowed
down the professionals, that good producers are too
scared to make even simple suggestions to talkers. Which
is why interviews and panel discussions on DD, whether
camera-wise or production-wise, remain so amateurish,
unless it is a seasoned telecaster who takes over the
reins and manages it himself. |
Shri Ganga Ram Free Hospital, Lahore AS many as 6521 outdoor and indoor patients attended a free camp organised by Shri Ganga Ram Hospital today. Out of them ladies and children of general diseases were 2075. Eye, nose, throat and ear patients were 1344. Urinary patients were 40 and gentlemen of general diseases were 3062. Some 116 operations were performed, out of these 41 were major operations. In the indoor wards the old balance on 29.2.24 was 24. At least 53 were newly admitted, 48 cured, six discharged under other circumstances and one died. Lying-in arrangements are ready. None has taken advantage as yet. Poor men of all religions and classes are treated, operated upon and looked after free of charge. It is requested that
really deserving poor as may need medical help of any
nature be directed to the hospital. |
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