Proxy war as roadblock
WHEN Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee declared in the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday that there could be no improvement in the relations between India and Pakistan unless Islamabad scrapped its policy of proxy war in Jammu and Kashmir, he did not say it for the first time.

Value of eco-cooperation
BY condemning the concept of eco-colonialism in New Delhi on Tuesday, British Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott has done a great service to the cause of global environment.

Spare a thought for Tibetans
FORTY years after the Uprising, 40 years of Chinese oppression and 40 years of exile in India, Tibet continues to trouble the conscience of the world.

POLITICS OF POPULISM
by Hari Jaisingh
A MAJOR bane of Indian politics is the tendency of political leaders to woo voters with tall promises which invariably do not make economic sense. This is not a new phenomenon. It has been very much part of the national and regional scene for several decades. In a way, it is an old disease which has spread like cancer in the body politic.

Headway in regional cooperation
by S. Sethuraman
ECONOMIC transformation, steady if not spectacular, under way in the seven-nation SAARC holds out bright prospects of regional cooperation gaining momentum and accelerating the emergence of a South Asian Economic Community within a decade.

US leadership — the Indian experience
By M.S.N. Menon
THE 20th century is called the “American century”. Did the USA deserve it? Was the US leadership reliable? India has its experience. Rather a sad one of continuing crises in Indo-US relations. It has been like this most of the time in the last 50 years. There is a simple explanation. Indo-US relations are more often determined by the pride and prejudices of the Americans. John Foster Dulles, Richard Nixon, even Bill Clinton come to mind. One was a religious moralist, the other rabidly anti-Soviet and the third an opportunist.

How long is long?
by V.N. Kakar
“FOR the last half an hour,” screamed my wife from the kitchen, “I have been telling you to wait for a minute. Can’t you wait for a minute? Don’t you see how busy I am?” I couldn’t see that but knew that. Kitchen is a woman’s domain, her fortress, from where she rules over her praja, the bloody fool of a husband included.

75 Years Ago

Babbar Akali conspiracy case
AT the adjourned hearing of the Doaba Akali conspiracy case in the court of Mr Louis A. Bull, Special Magistrate, the approver identified a letter written by Kishen Singh (accused) to the Sikh brothers by Kishen Singh describing Chakravarti’s roving expeditions, a copy of a fifteen-page poem about Canada written in Gurmukhi by the accused, and several other documents.

Proxy war as roadblock

WHEN Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee declared in the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday that there could be no improvement in the relations between India and Pakistan unless Islamabad scrapped its policy of proxy war in Jammu and Kashmir, he did not say it for the first time. He, like most other Indian leaders, has been talking about it for quite some time. He also did not miss the chance at Lahore during his well-received bus yatra to that historic city. Yet he signed the Lahore Declaration along with his Pakistani counterpart, Mr Nawaz Sharif. The point is clear: efforts should continue to be made for the normalisation of relations between the two neighbours with the hope that some day success will knock at our doors. Hoping for a better tomorrow is in human nature. But the sponsors of cross-border terrorism in Pakistan must realise that a congenial atmosphere so essential for translating the peace plan into a reality cannot be created so long as terrorists and secessionists continue to kill innocent people in Jammu and Kashmir.

We cannot have peace and war at the same time. For peace to come, war has to go. This is simple logic. It all depends on the intentions of the ruling establishment in Islamabad. If the Nawaz Sharif government is sincere about helping the process of building the bridges of understanding, now is the time for it to come out with a policy that terrorist-training camps will henceforth not be allowed in the entire territory of Pakistan. He will, however, have to rise above party politics to join the class of statesmen. No one can deny it that terrorist-training centres are spreading fast in Pakistan. Enough proof has been provided not only by India but independent international agencies also. These centres of destruction being run with the ill intention of bleeding India white have proved to be doubled-edged weapons. Life is refusing to become normal in Karachi and certain other cities in Pakistan's Sindh province because of growing activities of terrorists of Muhajir, local and other varieties. It is not for nothing that the Islamabad government has set up special courts to try and punish people caught on charges of indulging in terrorism. This has been done after dismantling the military courts established there for the purpose following the intervention of the Supreme Court of Pakistan. Thus there should be no doubt about it that as long as the terrorist-training camps are not destroyed root and branch, peace on both sides of the border will continue to elude us.

It is good that India and Pakistan have begun working on a plan to finalise a liberalised visa regime to allow hassle-free travel to five categories of people — parliamentarians, scientists, artists, business persons and judges — at the initial stage. This can be described as a significant confidence-building measure. It may help in clearing the mist of mistrust to a great extent. But people of India will continue to believe that the rulers in Pakistan are not sincere in whatever measures they take towards improving the bilateral relations unless they stop providing arms training to insurgents, who have killed thousands of innocent persons in Jammu and Kashmir, as also elsewhere earlier, since the outbreak of the proxy war a few years ago.

Value of eco-cooperation

BY condemning the concept of eco-colonialism in New Delhi on Tuesday, British Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott has done a great service to the cause of global environment. All nations and countries are ecologically inter-dependent and there can be no better way of enforcing globalisation than the adoption of a harmonious stance which acknowledges each other's constructive role in protecting the environment. The prevention of pollution is the first step. The U. K. has offered to India a total policy concept which will ensure that India does not repeat the British environmental mistakes while trying to help its citizens in leading a better life qualitatively. Of course, no government can dictate an ecological formula to another State. But it is possible to have enhanced levels of information exchange and shared research facilities. Mr Prescott was right in pointing a finger at the deteriorating quality of environmental community existence in Delhi. Britain had made a major mistake by neglecting its public transport systems. India could reduce its stress on private vehicles and give greater importance to public transport system. Mr Prescott visited the Delhi-Haryana border and was deeply impressed by two projects of the Tata Energy Research Institute (TERI). One is a tissue culture facility capable of producing more than one million cloned plants every year and the second is the sustainable habitat site which relies on renewable material to meet its energy needs. It is not connected to any grid. It utilises the state-of-the-art passive solar architecture and air-tunnelling methods for maintaining constant temperature at a place throughout the year.

One is reminded of the need for mass education about environment. It should be a major activity of non-governmental set-ups. Probably, the most dramatic example is that of the students of the Intermediate Vanrajik College in Chandrapur, Maharashtra. Their work took its cue from Rabindranath Tagore who on every 22nd of the month of Shravana would organise a big function in Santiniketan. A small sapling, "Balataru", would be brought in a flower-bedecked palanquin and with great rejoicing taken out in a long procession. Later, the sapling would be lovingly planted. This tradition was emulated by Baba Amte in his ashram. Taking inspiration from Baba Amte, the Chandrapur students took out a 41-km padayatra from Chandrapur to Warora with a palanquin carrying a sapling, the "Balataru", on their shoulders. The young sang, shouted slogans and planted saplings all the way. NSS volunteers from a Vidarbha college also joined in the yatra. Later, 1,500 students from 350 colleges belonging to seven different universities cycled all the way to Aurangabad to plant one lakh saplings. This campaign took on an even bigger form: it became the "Vishal Madhya Bharat Vriksha Ganga" (Greater Central India Tree Ganga). Students from Chandrapur cycled 550 km to Bhopal taking with them the message of the importance of trees. Many village youths joined them on the way. In Bhopal, students from five Madhya Pradesh universities also joined them for a two-day rally and a sapling planting camp. The campaign organisers thought of bigger things for the future, which is just how it will have to be if community forestry is to become a crusade. From grandiose afforestation plans to small "vanamahotsavas", we have adopted many environment development plans. We have sufficient awareness of the harm being caused to our total health because of poor ecological action—both governmental and public. Mr Prescott has promised us full cooperation in the development and transfer of environmentally sound technologies. Our needs in this field are great. He deserves praise for the promised help.

Spare a thought for Tibetans

FORTY years after the Uprising, 40 years of Chinese oppression and 40 years of exile in India, Tibet continues to trouble the conscience of the world. Everyone would love to forget the small land and its people, but the towering presence of the Dalai Lama, who radiates moral authority as very few do, has kept the spotlight unerringly on the long suffering of his people and the denial of a homeland to them. The Tibetans have launched a year-long campaign to protest against the repressive policies of the Chinese government and to remind the people everywhere of their struggle. China is busy devising ways of weakening, if not erasing, the religion and culture of Tibet. The majority ethnic community of Hans are encouraged to settle in Tibet and take over available jobs and property. Very soon the Hans will constitute the majority in what was once Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR), if they have not already outnumbered the original Tibetans. The Tibetans face many hurdles in freely practising their Buddhist religion, and other social restrictions threaten to overwhelm the local culture. In this respect, the struggle by the Tibetans is total and all-embracing.

The most devious of the Chinese ways is the tireless propaganda. Even now it dubs the Dalai Lama a separatist, refuses to talk to him unless he declares himself a full-fledged Chinese citizen. This is doing gross injustice to the spiritual leader. More than a decade ago, he first told the European Parliament in Strasbourg that his people demand only meaningful autonomy within China. Since then he has elaborated on this stand to say that his people should have freedom of religion and to live the way they want to. On the face of it, this is being very reasonable and meets the conditions China has set for discussions. There is much to build on this, particularly in view of Chinese President Jiang Zemin’s assurance to President Clinton that his country had reopened lines of communication with the Dalai Lama. The general idea should be to prod Beijing to shed its indifferent and adamant attitude and seriously take up the issue of restoring Tibet to the Tibetans.

The world, the big powers in the main, can play a big part in this. They can gently goad China to live up to its promise of talking to the religious leader. If it can grant near total economic freedom to Hong Kong in the name of one-country, two-systems, it can grant religious freedom to Tibet in the name of one-country, two-belief systems. Western countries, which spend so many hours every week in trying to stop killing first in Bosnia and now in Kosovo, can spare some time for the Tibetans too. And China is likely to be more amenable than Serbia despite its loud protests. China is changing itself rapidly and is keen on emerging as a respected member of the international community. India intensely yearns for an early solution, but because of its delicate relations with the northern neighbour it has to be content to playing a behind-the-scene role. The 40th anniversary of the Uprising should encourage the international community to stand by the Tibetan freedom fighters.

POLITICS OF POPULISM
Missing 'guardians of rationality'

by Hari Jaisingh

A MAJOR bane of Indian politics is the tendency of political leaders to woo voters with tall promises which invariably do not make economic sense. This is not a new phenomenon. It has been very much part of the national and regional scene for several decades. In a way, it is an old disease which has spread like cancer in the body politic.

When Indira Gandhi gave the call for "gharibi hatao", she probably knew that the country's deep-rooted poverty could not be banished overnight. It requires sharp thinking, tough policies and a strong political will to bring sunshine in the lives of the disprivileged sections of society. Mere wishful thinking can take the poor nowhere.

Most politicians privately acknowledge the pitfalls of populist policies and postures. In public, however, they behave erratically. Apparently, they throw their common sense to the wind and constantly play to the gallery to the detriment of national interests.

Having given considerable thought to the problems of poverty and development, I have come to the conclusion that the politics of populism is a major grey area in our national life. Practically, every leader is guilty on this count.

We started off very well on the morrow of Independence. The nation had the privilege of having a visionary in Jawaharlal Nehru who was fired by lofty ideas and a vision. He dreamt of transforming feudal India into a modern welfare state and hailed the nation's development projects as "temples of modern India".

However, somewhere along the line these "modern temples" got low priority in our mad pursuit of false symbols. No wonder, the nation's "tryst with destiny" has gone sour.

Looking back, it can be said that Nehru at least looked at the problems dispassionately and spoke passionately of taking the country forward. He firmly believed in the goals he had set before the nation. This was also true of Indira Gandhi. She felt strongly for the poor and the have-nots. But she could not translate her passion for the downtrodden into a concrete plan of action. Soon she got lost in a web of sycophancy of her Congress supporters.

What is regrettable is that the political culture of sycophancy continues to influence the party's crucial decisions. A close look at the organisation's behaviour and that of the most senior leaders would show that something vital is missing in the Congress. Its free will is subdued. So is its voice of reason.

Interestingly, Rajiv Gandhi, as the country's youngest Prime Minister, too, dreamt of taking the nation to the 21st century. But, ironically, the people and the instruments of power he gathered around himself were either faulty or rusty.

Still, the nation has travelled a long way—from Lal Bahadur Shastri to Morarji Desai, to Chandra Shekhar and to Charan Singh. But when V. P. Singh came to power, he divided the polity during 11 months of his turbulent rule. He "mandalised" Indian society without realising that social justice for the backwards and the weaker sections could not be achieved if the polity got divided vertically on caste lines. As for H.D. Deve Gowda, the less said, the better.

Of course, P. V. Narasimha Rao did initiate the process of liberalisation and put the economy on modern lines. But he got lost in the never-ending politics of scams which involved him personally.

As for the present Prime Minister, Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee, he looks like a daily wage-earner. He is surely well-intentioned and nurses a keen desire to take the country forward. Unfortunately, he cannot go very far because of the limitations of the coalition government he presides over. Perhaps, he has failed to realise that the nation cannot be built on the strength of nuclear bomb power alone. The real thing is economic power which can make or unmake a nation.

In fact, the nation needs to delink economic issues from politics and tackle the innumerable socio-economic problems with fairplay and speed. Money is no problem. The will power is. In any case, the country's entire politics seems to thrive on the unproductive parallel economy. Here we see the full play of Parkinson's Law. In every area, we are only adding to the numbers without any proportionate return.

What is tragic in the new political culture is the growing feeling of helplessness even among those who have a stake in the country's speedy onward march.

The Indian situation is, of course, extraordinarily complex. Its economy cannot be understood in terms of classical theories. Nor can it be "planned" as per the "conceptual apparatus" of a Keynes or Leontief model. For, too much of it is outside the organised sector and a never-ending search for a growth model applicable to poverty-stricken Indian conditions.

Nobel laureate Amartya Sen has, of course, talked a lot of sense. He has been honoured with the Bharat Ratna by the Indian authorities and rightly so. The tragedy with Indian leaders is that they rarely miss a chance to honour the Indian recognised abroad but they hardly care to tread the path shown by him.

Way back in the sixties Gunnar Myrdal propounded his theory on impediments to development in his famous work , "Asian Drama". According to him, India's "soft state" policy after Independence inhibited its leadership from going to the root of the problems. Consequently, the much-needed basic changes in the institutional structure of society remained unattended to.

The "inegalitarian structure" of society continued to consolidate itself. In due course, this created a "long gap" between "verbalisation" (or enactment of laws) and implementation of reforms.

That "long gap" continues. What is regrettable is that the leadership at all levels has sided with those who have opposed real economic and social change. Even decentralisation of power in the rural sectors has not produced the desired results. If anything, it has only led to the concentration of power in the hands of "petty plutocracy".

Ironically, amidst signs of growing socio-economic imbalances, the planners are caught in the numbers game of "below" and "above" the poverty line, while political masters continue to renew their vows to abolish it.

Here what is not being realised is that with the unabated baby boom and the ever declining purchasing power of the rupee (not even at six paise with 1950 as the base year) more and more people are pushed below the poverty line year after year.

All developmental efforts are thus more or less neutralised. The poor remain poor or become poorer and join the growing ranks of the poorest of the poor. This disturbing phenomenon is aided and abetted by politicians' bluffs, the statistical jugglery of planners and the indifference of administrators to the basic questions of poverty and development.

Indeed, a "soft state" run by muddle-headed politicians and bureaucrats cannot be expected to eradicate poverty, especially in the rural areas.

India's rural poverty actually has to be understood "in terms of the shortage of land and of life-supporting materials yielded by land, rather than in standard economic terms like income.

A typical villager in India is simple-minded, rooted in traditions, superstitions, class and caste distinctions, and religious taboos. He lives frugally and pursues his vocation diligently to keep the body and soul together. His desire to excel is limited by his circumstances, surroundings, birth and caste labels. He accepts whatever he receives as the Almighty's gift. The non-fulfilment of his desires too is accepted as part of God's scheme of things. Some of these old attitudes are surely changing but the core compulsions remain unchanged. Indeed, the situation in regard to poverty, backwardness and deprivation must be viewed against the backdrop of the caste system, rural stratification, lopsided priorities, erosion of core values and the pulls and counterpulls of the ever-present operators and middlemen. All these factors have understandably precipitated a crisis of confidence among all those concerned with the development of human resource and social justice.

Ironically, the voluminous "statistics of misery" no longer shock the wielders of power and holders of exalted positions. Infused with their own grab mentality, they have ceased to become "guardians of rationality".

Nourish the roots to improve the quality of the Republic. I am not indulging in mere rhetoric. The suggestion is based on a first-hand survey of the existing rural realities. The present policy of sanctioning grants, subsidies, free services and development projects administered from the top downwards, is regressive simply because it kills initiative, self-dependence and the sense of responsibility. It encourages what is known as "mai-bap-ism".

More than free electricity and free water, the villagers need sincere help to generate assets and upgrade their skills. In the long run, it is unwise to subsidise poverty and make the poor dependent on doles. Farmers want uninterrupted power supply rather than the promised free power which is hardly available.

Growth with a human face, that is, with social justice. This is surely our goal. And the route to this growth need not be via controls, restrictions, bureaucratic intervention and politicians' false promises.

The politics of populism can hardly be expected to eradicate poverty. It can only make the poor poorer to the advantage of politicians' crude vote bank politics. This proposition must be rejected by the right-thinking citizens.

It is worth-remembering that populism is a curse in a developing democratic polity. It creates false hopes, diverting the country's attention away from harsh realities and hard options.

Headway in regional cooperation
by S. Sethuraman

ECONOMIC transformation, steady if not spectacular, under way in the seven-nation SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation) holds out bright prospects of regional cooperation gaining momentum and accelerating the emergence of a South Asian Economic Community within a decade.

Geographical and developmental compulsions, besides growing uncertainties in the international economic environment, will increasingly become the binding factors for member-countries of SAARC to forge closer cooperation to realise the inherent strength and potential of the region.

This broad conclusion can be drawn from the first-ever Survey of Development and Cooperation in the SAARC region, undertaken by the Research and Information System (RIS) for the Nonaligned and Other Developing Countries, New Delhi.

The survey, just published, takes a close look at the economic and social trends in the member-countries of SAARC over two decades with an indepth analysis of structural transformation of economies, macro-economic performance, fiscal and monetary policies, trade performance, external assistance and investment flows.

Since its founding in 1975, SAARC has evolved forms of cooperation in several spheres, and the progress, especially in bringing about preferential trading arrangements, as a prelude to a Free Trade Area, gives strength to the expectation that SAARC is “all set to embark upon a new era of regional cooperation”.

The survey calls for the consolidation of the various institutional efforts made to achieve the economic and social objectives outlined in the SAARC Charter, notably in poverty eradication and trade and economic cooperation, and intensification of the integration process through more innovative instrumentalities. With its 1.24 billion people or 22 per cent of the world population, SAARC is a major grouping, though it accounts for only 1.65 per cent of world’s GDP and 1.12 per cent of global trade (1996). It has both low-income and least developed countries.

Despite individual variations, the region has maintained a reasonable growth performance, 5.8 per cent on an average in the 1980s and 6.4 per cent in the current decade, till 1997. Though SAARC countries escaped the direct effects of the East Asian currency crisis, their growth projections for 1998 and 1999 have been lowered by 23 per cent mainly because of currency depreciations in East Asian countries and slowdown in foreign investment inflows.

The survey emphasises that SAARC countries could ward off some of the adverse effects of the East Asian crisis (which may linger on for some more time) by increased regional cooperation in production, trade and service activities.

A common feature of the economies of the region is the structural transformation with a decline in the traditional role of agriculture and an increasing share of industry and services in the GDP. The pace of transformation has picked up momentum, the survey notes, and the countries have effected wide-ranging trade and industrial policy reforms.

The extent of economic transition varies from country to country but all of them, given their different resource endowments, realise that the challenges of competition and risks of globalisation make regional cooperation inevitable. Unlike India with a diversified industrial base, including knowledge-based sectors, traditional industries like textiles and apparel are dominant manufacturing activities in other SAARC countries. The region’s industrial structure indicates the existence of considerable complementarities to promote a larger volume of intra-regional trade, which is insignificant at present, less than 5 per cent of the total SAARC exports.

Promising recent developments (subsequent to the period covered by the survey) are the conclusion of an India-Sri Lanka Free Trade Arrangement, exploration of possibilities of a similar accord with Bangladesh and the renewed commitment of India and Pakistan in the Lahore Declaration of the two Prime Ministers (February 21) to work for the attainment of SAARC goals and objectives.

Though Pakistan is yet to extend the obligatory trade treatment to India under the WTO, the two countries are engaged in bilateral discussions for the supply of power by Pakistan. Similarly, Bangladesh can find an attractive market in India for its natural gas. India has already lifted import curbs for 2000 items from SAARC countries. — IPA

How long is long?
by V.N. Kakar

“FOR the last half an hour,” screamed my wife from the kitchen, “I have been telling you to wait for a minute. Can’t you wait for a minute? Don’t you see how busy I am?” I couldn’t see that but knew that. Kitchen is a woman’s domain, her fortress, from where she rules over her praja, the bloody fool of a husband included.

My problem was that the morning tea she had given to me had spilled from the mug and had spread over the sofa on which I was sitting and reading my newspapers. Marks left by tea can’t be removed easily, whatever soap or detergent you may use. I had nothing close by. And so in order to prevent another world war from breaking out, I tried to rub wet tea off the sofa with the aid of a napkin. Needless to say that the effort turned out to be a complete flop.

But my wife’s one minute extended far beyond the half an hour she had mentioned herself. I left the sofa as it was, and while continuing to sit on it, allowed myself to be transported to the Chowringhee Square in Calcutta. There I found a character I had long forgotten. He was fond of picking up folk songs from here and there and compiling them in book form. Good old Saadat Hasan Manto, Urdu’s greatest short story writer of days gone by, had once talked of him in derogatory terms. Leave that aside. The man was standing there in Chowringhee outside a paan shop along with his wife. Apparently he wanted to get a paan for himself and to make the lady feel happy with another.

Suddenly, another man, a friend of his and equally crazy, appeared on the scene and whispered into his ears that lots of folk songs were afloat in Rangoon in Burma and he could gather and compile them and thus add another book to his credit. “Wait for me here,” said the great songs-collector to his wife, “I will be back in a minute.” The lady did not realise what had descended on him all of a sudden. She waited and waited for the man. Days passed, then months, then years. She got involved with someone else and started living with him happily thereafter.

Twelve years later, the folk songs-collector returned from Burma, went straight to the paan shop in Chowringhee and asked its owner where his wife had gone. That man had naturally forgotten all about him and the woman he had left at his shop. “Thousands and thousands come here,” said he to the songs-collector, “I don’t keep a register here to list their names. How can I remember whom you had left here and how can I tell you where she has gone?” I can’t say what happened thereafter.

But back on the sofa in my drawing room, as my wife returned from the kitchen and saw the havoc I had played over there, she was naturally furious. “Why couldn’t you call me,” asked she, “and tell me what you have done?” In the interest of maintaining conjugal harmony, as well as in overall national interest, I had to keep quiet. But I could not help musing over how long could long be.

US leadership — the Indian experience
By M.S.N. Menon

THE 20th century is called the “American century”. Did the USA deserve it? Was the US leadership reliable?

India has its experience. Rather a sad one of continuing crises in Indo-US relations. It has been like this most of the time in the last 50 years.

There is a simple explanation. Indo-US relations are more often determined by the pride and prejudices of the Americans. John Foster Dulles, Richard Nixon, even Bill Clinton come to mind. One was a religious moralist, the other rabidly anti-Soviet and the third an opportunist.

The arming of Pakistan in the early fifties by the USA in the face of India’s opposition was the first provocation. It has never been forgotten or forgiven. Washington could have retrieved its lost ground in 1962. It could have built up the military sinews of India against China. But it did not. India naturally looked to the Communist bloc for arms. This was, however, resented by the USA.

And when President Nixon and Dr Kissinger made up with China after 20 years of acrimonious relations, Washington became suspect in the eyes of India. And India treated the new alliance of USA, China and Pakistan with some consternation. Hence the Indo-Soviet Treaty of Peace.

But India hardly suspected the extent of the animus of the Nixon-Kissinger duo. This came out during the Bangla crisis. When Kissinger asked China to put military pressure on India, China refused, fearing Soviet reaction. Then Kissinger offered China US satellite data on the Soviet troop deployment! Shows to what extent the two were ready to go to do down India!

During the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, the USA was reckless in sacrificing India’s interests. Being a frontline state, the USA poured vast quantities of arms and resources into Pakistan, which it promptly put to use to mount a proxy war against India. (For years, Washington would not even acknowledge this proxy war!) But worse things happened. Washington looked the other way when China helped Pakistan to develop bombs and missiles. Could India have been anything but mute in these circumstances on Soviet military occupation of Afghanistan?

All these show that it was Washington which was the real cause of the tensions in Indo-US relations. It is even so today. And the US calculations have been that Pakistan is a more reliable partner than India.

But what left a permanent scar on Indo-US relations was the decision of President Nixon to move a naval armada to the Bay of Bengal in order to support Pakistan against India during the 1971 war. It was the greatest provocation that India had ever faced. Sensitive Indians could never forget these displays of excesses of power by the USA.

Today Washington is engaged in rolling back India’s nuclear and missile programmes. India is ready to comply if the nuclear powers agree to eliminate their own stockpiles. But they are not. Might is right — this is the principle they really believe. Admiral Stanford Turner, a former CIA chief, calls it “irresponsible behaviour”.

Can we ever trust such a country to be our real friend? We cannot remain vague on such questions.

It is not that India had no support in the USA. It had — from influential individuals, politicians and the business community. This is true even today. For example, representative Richard Gephardt, the most powerful democrat in the House of Representatives and once a candidate for the Presidency, believes the most important country the USA should forge a lasting relationship with is India. “Not with China, not with Pakistan, not with any other country,” he emphasises.

One can give many other examples of genuine support for India. A December, 1997, study by the US Council of Foreign Relations, a prestigious think-tank, advised Washington to accept India as a major power in South Asia and forge a strategic relationship with it. It described India and Pakistan as responsible nuclear powers, which have “exercised great restraint.” But this conclusion is vastly different from the state department Propaganda of the last six years that a nuclear war was waiting to happen at any moment between the two states. Even today this is the refrain of the State department.

The study warned: “The effort to relegate India to second class status while appearing to acquiesce in Pakistan’s clandestine nuclear acquisition with China’s reported assistance of nuclear and ballistic missile technology could persuade India to exercise its nuclear option openly.” This is precisely what has happened. Washington was warned; but it heeded not.

It was the case of the State Department and Pentagon that large supplies of conventional weapons would dissuade Pakistan from pursuing its nuclear ambition. On this the study warned: “It is stretching credulity to assert that conventional military sales would cause Pak to draw back from its nuclear programme.”

And yet it is the State Department and the Pentagon which prevailed over every expert opinion.

What is the global experience? For a long time, the USA has not before itself one goal: to Americanise the world. But even Europe rejects the American way of life. It even rejects the American form of capitalism.

The USA itself is going through a crisis of conscience. “For the moment, at least, we seem exhausted, our great dreams have given way to a corrosive apprehension,” says a commentator. Is this the USA which Washington wants to transplant all over the world?

Washington makes much ado about its foreign aid programme. It seems to bestow on it a proprietorial stake in the world. A study “The Index of Economic Freedom” by the Conservative think-tank, the Heritage Foundation, however, came to the conclusion that “if history is any guide, foreign aid clearly is no pre-requisite to economic prosperity.” USAID, a wing of the State Department, itself is sceptical about the benefits of aid.

Some countries have received US aid for more than 50 years or more but they are no better off than they were before aid. Many are even poorer. Then whom did the aid benefit? Only the USA. Foreign aid generated 450-billion-dollar worth of exports of goods and services. And the money came from the US mints.

It may be recalled that the USA refused to provide aid to the public sector. Only in the mid-seventies this policy was changed. So, much of the development in the developing countries came through the public sector. (Foreign aid was no more than 10 per cent of the total investment.) And yet the USA is asking today for a share of the markets of the developing countries as if it has contributed to their development! And India went all out to bring down the tariff wall in the hope that its exports could go up. This was a delusion. With the Mexican and East Asia crisis, the international market has slumped. It is feared that it will be half of what it was.

And what is the cause for the present crisis in the world economy? In one word: currency speculation. And leading finance managers of the USA are responsible for this. Of the capital flow in the world, only 2.5 per cent is needed for normal international trade. The rest goes into speculation and it grows and grows through speculation. There was a time when one dime would not be added to the stock of capital except in the most legitimate way. Today capital grows through speculation. And by its very nature, speculation leads to crises. Wall Street knows it. The US Treasury knows it. Prof Bhagwati says it is the same “luminaries” who flit to and fro between US Treasury and Wall Street, banks and broking houses. But they will do nothing to stop this speculative mania, for it is their job to find good returns for this speculative capital. Today there is not much scope for investment in industry and agriculture except on long-term basis. As speculative captital wants quick returns, there is only one alternative: to create an artificial crisis to make a fast kill. This is what happened in S.E. and East Asia. Hence the need for globalisation of the economy. But it has already ruined millions of lives.

Is this responsible leadership? The world must judge.

75 YEARS AGO

Babbar Akali conspiracy case

AT the adjourned hearing of the Doaba Akali conspiracy case in the court of Mr Louis A. Bull, Special Magistrate, the approver identified a letter written by Kishen Singh (accused) to the Sikh brothers by Kishen Singh describing Chakravarti’s roving expeditions, a copy of a fifteen-page poem about Canada written in Gurmukhi by the accused, and several other documents.

The court then called upon the defence counsel to cross-examine the witness. But before proceeding with the cross-examination, the counsel enquired from the court if the prohibition sought to be imposed upon him by the Sub-Inspector in charge of the accused, that he should not offer consultation to any accused whom he did not represent, was based on orders issued by the court.

The presiding Magistrate replied in the negative.

Thereupon, the counsel asked for a definite decision from the court whether or not such prohibition should exist. The court preferred, however, to decide as each contingency arose rather than give a definite ruling.