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Monday,
December 10, 2001, Chandigarh, India  
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Opportunity
in Afghanistan PM’s
economic diplomacy
After
Afghanistan, Kashmir |
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With sky
marshals in El Al flight
High
Court on the verge of losing national character
Depression
drives man to ‘bobbitise’ himself
1938, Physics: ENRICO FERMI
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Opportunity in Afghanistan DEVELOPMENTS during the past few days provide proof that the new government in Afghanistan, slated to take over on December 22, has great expectations from India for the reconstruction of that war-torn country. The latest is Interior Minister-designate Younus Qanooni's visit to New Delhi when he met Home Minister L. K. Advani and External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh and strongly criticised Pakistan for sponsoring the disastrous Taliban experiment. After the signing of an agreement on an interim administrative arrangement the Afghan leader came to India straight from Bonn (Germany) even before visiting Kabul. This is not without significance. Before reaching his homeland Mr Qanooni perhaps wanted quickly to learn from India's experience in maintaining law and order which may help him considerably. Though India has never had the kind of law and order problem Afghanistan is faced with because of tribal rivalries and socio-economic backwardness, New Delhi is in a position to offer a few useful tips. Over the years India has developed specialised police training facilities where Mr Qanooni can send his men to hone their skills. Besides maintaining law and order, the new Afghan regime has to arrange massive food supplies to the hungry millions. India has already offered a million tonne of foodgrains but that is not enough. This country has mountains of food stocks rotting in its godowns. It can offer as much foodgrains as Afghanistan wants, and this will be the best investment for bringing New Delhi's relations with Kabul to the level maintained during the King Zahir Shah regime before 1973. India should come to the Afghans' rescue in a big way in the areas of healthcare and clothing too, but it is better placed in the matter of food supplies where it should concentrate. In fact, it would be better if India institutes an Afghanistan Reconstruction Fund. There is enough goodwill for Afghans in this country, and people will contribute liberally to such a noble cause. Mr Advani and Mr Jaswant Singh have assured Mr Qanooni unconditional help from India towards Afghanistan's reconstruction, but that means assistance from one government to another government. The involvement of the people in this major task will have a different kind of impact on the psyche of the troubled Afghans. This is necessary to change their Pakistan-centric thinking noticed for the past few years, particularly after the emergence of the Taliban. There was a time when India had very warm relations with Afghanistan but the atmosphere was vitiated because of the increased involvement of Pakistan during the mujahideen struggle against the Soviet occupation forces and the rise of the Taliban. The circumstances have completely changed today. India-friendly leaders like Mr Qanooni, Mr Mohammad Fahim Khan, Defence Minister-designate, and Mr Abdullah Abdullah, Foreign Minister-designate, are destined to play a key role and, therefore, it is obligatory for this country to provide them all kinds of assistance they need. The Prime Minister-designate, Mr Hamid Karzai, is supposed to be ambivalent towards India because he was denied a visa to pursue his research programme in the 1980s and after that incident no contact could be maintained with him. But he cannot forget the love and affection he got from his teachers during his days at Shimla as a student of political science. He is a liberal leader and hates Pakistan because of its disastrous role in Afghanistan and owing to his own bitter experience when he lived in Quetta and Peshawar. It should not be difficult for India to cultivate friendly relations with a sensible leader like Mr Karzai. |
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ECONOMIC diplomacy is a tricky business. It requires a keen appreciation of mutual needs and capabilities and forging a system that benefits both countries. It means a thoughtful give and take and adjusting oneself to the other’s industrial and commercial traditions and perceptions. These preconditions are absent in the case of Indo-Japanese relations. And that is the reason why Prime Minister Vajpayee’s hardsell of the Indian need for greater investment is unlikely to bear fruit. One, Japan specialises in steel making, ship building, silicon chips, miniaturisation and video games. And there is no market for these things in India. So investment is out. Automobiles are different but Toyota’s experience is not very happy. Suzuki has a firm base in Maruti but politicians and bureaucrats love to create problems partly because of ideological hang-ups or obsession with outmoded rules. This was brought out by the Japanese Ambassador some time back to the Minister of Commerce, and the Prime Minister would have done well by pledging to remove these irritants on the eve of his state visit to Japan. Setting up a cell in the Finance Ministry to solve these problems is not so exciting. What is needed is a thorough overhauling of the system to clear a project without delay and without somebody demanding speed money, a euphemism for bribe. In India it takes almost a year to get a project cleared even if it is in the high priority infrastructure area. In Singapore, on the other hand, it takes less than a month to go through the formalities. This procedural simplicity helps the investor to tie up with his financiers and start construction. It saves a lot of money and makes investment attractive. Laws in India are cumbersome and are a hark back to the days when self-reliance (read blocking import of foreign goods or investment) was the national mantra. This is an entrenched mindset and it should be attacked before the government solicits large investment. On his first day in Japan Mr Vajpayee dwelt on the cultural ties with that country, meaning the centuries-old Buddhist relation. India has given up Buddhism and Japan fulfils its obligations by sending a few thousand pilgrims to Bodh Gaya, Saranath and other places. Industrialists and bankers are hard nosed and will venture out only when they smell solid profits. It is here that India should concentrate. |
After Afghanistan, Kashmir It is good that Afghanistan has gone along the lines which should satisfy India. The kind of government that is going to shape in Kabul and the relations it may have with India will not be something that will hurt India as badly as the Taliban did or would have done. This is almost clear. We should be confident that most of India’s objectives in Afghanistan have been achieved. At least Afghanistan will not be the armoury for trouble in Kashmir. That is saying a great deal. But this is the emerging reality. To an extent Pakistan’s capacity to harass India in Kashmir will be lessened. If comparisons are to be made in assessing how India has fared, we should conclude that Pakistan has a great deal to feel sorry for. In the loss of the Taliban in Afghanistan, Pakistan should in reality be feeling deeply distressed. It is almost as if it has lost an arm. Afghanistan under the Taliban was a sword arm of Pakistan in providing support to the ISI’s activities. It provided the men for suicide missions not only in Afghanistan but also in Kashmir. It enabled Pakistan facilities for training saboteurs. Pakistan could manage Afghanistan under the Taliban the way it wanted. The Taliban was always ready to beckon to its call. That facility is now lost. Worse, Pakistan was pushed into the American-sponsored alliance against the Taliban and Osama bin Laden. General Musharraf has candidly said that Pakistan had to take notice of the new situation that arose after September 11 and change its policy. It could not have remained outside the alliance. Reluctantly, it had to become a frontline state for the American-sponsored alliance against the Taliban. This happened against its inner conscience. It had to work against the Taliban to which it had given birth. Will Pakistan change too? Will it be less warlike? Will it know that terrorism doesn’t pay and should thus tailor its policy? No answers have yet come. One should watch General Musharraf in his television interviews as he goes on to convince the people of Pakistan of the wisdom of the policy he has pursued. He says that he has been realistic. This is not wrong. He could not have remained outside the alliance. If he had, the alliance would have acted against him too. By joining the alliance he has placed himself in the pack sharing the spoils of war. Had he remained outside he would have given a huge advantage to India — something that he does not want to do. And the destruction of both Afghanistan and Pakistan would have been vast. General Musharraf chose the only way he could. But in doing that he had to go against all that Pakistan had stood for. The General is apologetic in confessing to Pakistanis that he had to choose a policy that would save Pakistan although he had to surrender its set principles. The people of Pakistan understand this but something itches underneath their skin. In their heart they know that they had to give up what they had been taught to believe in. This was the close relationship with the Taliban and the common undertaking of profiting by terrorism. General Musharraf has clarified that it was not because of his dislike of the Taliban that he had joined the alliance. He has said that it was the “security of the country and our core interests of Kashmir and nuclear programme (that) were kept uppermost while taking the decision after September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States.” This is the key of his policy today. The danger now for India is this: the General has given up Afghanistan and the Taliban to achieve a victory on Kashmir. This is his only consideration now. He would not mind losing anything if he can win a victory on Kashmir that would satisfy the people of Pakistan. Not necessarily a military victory, though he would not like to rule that out, but an overall victory with America’s help that will take Kashmir away from India. This should sound a sign of warning. General Musharraf will have nothing to show if he cannot gain Kashmir for Pakistan. His one point now would be to concentrate on Kashmir. There are two points that can form his Kashmir policy. He may wink over it or he may allow his eyes to be wide open but he would like to push into Kashmir the old Taliban forces, the Taliban-trained Arabs and Pakistanis. How he will do it should be watched. The way the Pakistani authorities have tried to bring them back from Afghanistan shows that it needs them. Yet, General Musharraf cannot keep them in Pakistan. He has no use for them there. They will only mean more trouble to him. He knows and India should also know that if Pakistan manages to send them into Kashmir, many of them will be happy to go there for a job to do. India has not been able to completely stop infiltration across the passes. A large number would get killed as they try to cross the LoC but many can come across. They would fulfil the Pakistani ways of continuing trouble in Kashmir. This is important for Pakistan. The trouble in Kashmir would keep the “dispute” alive as an issue for Pakistan to fight for. For this Kashmir has to be a trouble spot. It would not create the same sentiment and alarm in America and the United Kingdom if there is peace. Killings and destruction in Kashmir would not create the kind of revulsion that the bombing of the World Trade Center did. One method open to India would be to stop the infiltration from across the LoC. Would this be possible? The government’s energies should be directed towards this. After the Afghanistan war Pakistan is morally weakened. The world knows that Pakistan supports saboteurs. Pakistan has got a bad name as a harbinger of saboteurs. The world now knows that it used to be the haven to saboteurs going into Kashmir. This will put a limitation on Pakistan training new saboteurs. General Musharraf would give anything to maintain Kashmir as a disputed territory. The best way for him is to make out that this is no terrorism and the people of Kashmir are fighting for freedom and India is keeping them under its heel. For this his policy planners have invented the jargon that a “freedom fight” is on in Kashmir. Pakistan will try its best to give the trouble in Kashmir this colouring. This will be the shroud under which terrorism in Kashmir can be hidden from worldview. This is a line of propaganda which Pakistan will keep on selling. Because of the trouble and violence, it will be easy for General Musharraf to sell the idea that a freedom fight is on in Kashmir. India should fight this line of propaganda. This is going to be the General’s best line of attack. It would make it possible for Pakistan to tell the world why there is violence in Kashmir. Fortunately for India the world has now known that trouble can be created by one country in another. The forces that were encircled in northern Afghanistan comprised not just the Afghanistani Taliban but also Pakistanis and Arabs. When they were earlier sent to Kashmir, at first the world did not believe that they were sent across by Pakistan. But now it is wiser. |
With sky marshals in El Al flight My ship arrived in the port of Tel Aviv to pick up a cargo of oranges for Nairobi. A six-day clear stay was scheduled. Two years earlier one of my Jewish friends from Mumbai, Mr Jimmy Raymond, had migrated to Israel. He was advised about the prosperous but hard and disciplined life ahead before making his final decision. He had settled down in Jerusalem and had given me his address in case my ship called on any nearby port. On our own my wife had decided to bring Indian “pachranga” mixed pickle and Bengali rasgulas in sealed tins as small gifts for the family. On the second day of arrival we booked our air tickets for a very short flight from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem by Israeli Airline El Al. We were required to be at the Bengurion airport three hours ahead of departure time in view of tight security requirement. We were greeted by two pistol-armed lady police officers (with low velocity bullets) even before we could enter the airline counter. The car park was 400 metres away from the terminal. Our hand baggage, suitcases, were meticulously checked by magnetic image method. The two food tins were opened, inspected and recanned in front of us, in more sophisticated cans. Even the multipurpose pen knife was politely requested away from my hand baggage to be delivered to me at destination. Inflammable perfumery items were removed from our hand baggage. The lower half soles of our shoes were also x-rayed for possibility of any rogue material. All liquid items which could remotely linked with any biological or chemically offensive chemicals were also checked. The armed airport staff very politely regretted this mandatory inconvenience explaining that we were in the most targeted country. At the entrance to the twin engine aircraft our passport photographs were checked along with our boarding cards. Inside, the scene was unique as never seen before. Besides two pistol armed air hostesses, there were four uniformed robust looking, armed, hawk eyed sky marshals escorting passengers to their seats. Earlier, even on boarding an Air France aircraft at the Leonordo de Vinci international airport. I had never seen such security inside an aircraft. They were firm and polite. They stowed our hand baggage in top lockers and locked those after requesting us to remove any medicine for emergency use. Sky marshals positioned themselves near four corners of passenger cabin area close to the central passage. We also noticed that the cockpit was not accessible from the passengers’ section and pilots were seen using a separate ladder from outside for this purpose. All cutlery used was of plastic. Later, we heard that there were two skymarshals in plain dress also amongst the passengers but their identity was not disclosed. Such foolproof security arrangements have made the El Al the safest airline in the world. Twentyfive years ago an Air France plane with Israeli passengers was hijacked to Entebbe airport in Uganda by terrorists. The El Al staff played a crucial role in rescuing the Israeli passengers in a heroic manner from the clutches of dictator Idi Amin. During this short flight I noticed that the managing director of Fiat Co., Italy was also sitting close by. During conversation he mentioned that there had been several murders of top businessmen in Italy and big industrialists were moving about under heavy guards there. But in Israel the general security was so elaborate that he did not feel any necessity of having his guards with him. Perhaps he was right. The above security measures were tightened after two Israeli aircraft were blown off on the airstrip itself by terrorists. There are no incidents of hijacking or violence on aircraft of El Al airline after the above new security measures were introduced. No wonder when foreign delegations or dignitaries enter Israel airports their own security cover is temporarily withdrawn. Their requirement for additional security during this period remains nil. We wish we could emulate them. |
High Court on the verge of losing national character
Seven years after the Punjab and Haryana High Court was fortified by an infusion of Judges from other states, it is on the verge of losing its all-India identity once again. The sudden loss of three “outside” Judges this year — the transfer back of Justice V.S. Aggarwal to Delhi in June, the retirement of Justice S.S. Sudhalkar on November 21 and the impending retirement of Justice K.S. Kumaran on December 23 — leaves the High Court with only three others who are not “local”. Chief Justice A.B. Saharya, the seniormost puisne judge, Justice G.S. Singhvi and, down the line, Justice Swatanter Kumar. And a fourth perhaps, Justice Adarsh Kumar Goel, though I am not quite sure on which side of the divide he can, technically speaking, be said to fall. Technically speaking, I said, for a man’s place of birth or appointment does not, in itself, exhaust his worth and qualify him to be branded either a “local” or an “outsider”, both rather narrow and distasteful terms better avoided in civilised discourse. And, depending upon an individual’s intellectual horizons and his or her universe of values, both local and outside Judges can, with equal ability and success, rise above locality or region as much as caste or creed. And yet, it cannot be denied that “inter-state cross fertilisation”, to use Justice Krishna Iyer’s handsomely pertinent phrase in Union of India vs Sankalchand (1977), is of obvious advantage to the judiciary and an inbuilt safeguard against the temptations of parochialism. Comparisons are odious but if the High Court at Chandigarh is a far more independent Court today at the turn of the millennium than it was about 10-15 years ago — an achievement so certain that it is taken for granted, and forgotten, by almost every one including the members of the Bar — a large part of the credit indubitably goes to the process of transfer of High Court Judges initiated in 1993-94. Nor is it a coincidence that, in the country as a whole, there was an unprecedented upsurge of judicial activism during the mid and late 1990s, though the linkage between the two — judicial transfers, on the one hand, and judicial activism, on the other — has not, to the best of my knowledge, been studied by any one so far. Not even by a scholar of the calibre and keenness of Granville Austin, whose book “Working a Democratic Constitution: The Indian Experience” does not go beyond 1985 though published 14 years later. Interviewing Austin for this paper a year and a half ago, I sensed (though I did not express) that even he, whose first work on the making of India’s Constitution, published in 1966, still remains unsurpassed for its breadth of comprehension, now judges legal and judicial developments from a rather limited if not aristocratic intellectual standpoint. The kind of standpoint that leading members of the Bar in the nation’s capital, flush with success and with an eye on the future, tend to voice when questioned on matters of judicial power, performance and accountability. Open admiration for the achievements of the higher judiciary, that is, and a muffled acknowledgement of the problems that beset it. Contrary to widespread impression, the policy of transfer of High Court Judges is an indispensable part of the achievement and not merely an integral part of the problem. Nowhere perhaps is this more evident than in the case of the Punjab and Haryana High Court, though there would be many on the Bench who would disagree and many even in the Bar whose memory might have dimmed. It is not only local Judges, however, who resent the very idea of transfer — except transfer as Chief Justice of another High Court — but the transferred Judges themselves who have come from outside, and this cannot but cloud perceptions and prevent a balanced stock-taking of the transfer policy. This rather strange community of sentiment among local and transferred Judges has found a strong echo in the Constitution Review Commission’s Consultation Paper on the Superior Judiciary published in September this year. “(E)xperience shows,” says the paper, “that barring some exceptions, the transferred Judges, even the efficient among them, have lost interest in judicial work. Many of them felt that they have been unjustly and arbitrarily picked out for transfer. They point out that the transfers have not been effected with an even hand.” As a matter of fact, it says, no consistent policy was followed in this regard. Judges appointed during a particular period were, as a rule, transferred, while Judges appointed later were not. In short, the transfer policy “as a whole has produced its own defects and anomalies.” This is about all the Commission has to say on the implementation and impact of the transfer policy of the 1990s, though in point of law the paper does grudgingly acknowledge that the apex court’s decision in the Second Judges’ Case of 1993, as supplemented by Ashok Reddy’s case of 1994, is “adequate to meet the situation”. It is obvious that the Commission has totally missed the wood for the trees. And as Justice Krishna Iyer once said, quoting Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, “it is sometimes more important to emphasise the obvious than to elucidate the obscure.” From the purely personal point of view, it may well be that the lack of consistency in implementation — the “pick and choose” in the transfers actually made — will never perhaps cease to rankle. But a Judge who ceases to work for that reason surely does not add to his qualifications as a Judge. “Adjudicate I will but only in my home state.” Can such a claim ever be accepted so long as public service means only that — public service? And it surely does not become the Constitution Review Commission, a body expected, literally, to go back to the fundamentals of the Constitution, to ignore so completely the essential for the apparent, the institutional for the personal and the ethical for the sentimental. Larger considerations apart, it is simply not true to say as the Commission does with disturbing abandon that “barring some exceptions, the transferred Judges, even the efficient amongst them, have lost interest in judicial work”. If the Punjab and Haryana High Court is any example, and I believe it is for it is here that the call for transfer of Judges was first given, the truth is rather the other way round. With the sole exception of Justice S.C. Datta, who was transferred back after a short while, transferred Judges have always fully participated in judicial work and contributed, alongwith local Judges, to reviving the prestige and reputation of the Court. A couple of them have even stayed back to accept post-retiral judicial assignments in the region, signifying a still deeper process of acculturation. Opinions may vary and the debate over its implementation will go on, but let no one slander in the guise of review a policy so well-intentioned in concept and design. |
Depression drives man to ‘bobbitise’ himself Depression drove a 30-year-old teacher to “bobbitise” himself in Delhi, the police said. Sombit Kumar, a bachelor, was depressed over his failure to find a job as an engineer to fulfil his parents’ desire. Kumar was found lying in a pool of blood late Wednesday night in his one-room rented accommodation in an east Delhi neighbourhood. He was rushed to a near-by hospital where he is recuperating. “Kumar said he had studied to become an engineer but failed to find a proper job. In desperation, he started working as a mathematics teacher,” a police officer told IANS. Kumar taught at the Ambedkar Polytechnic in east Delhi’s Nehru Vihar, close to where he lived. “Kumar told us that his failure to fulfil the dream of his parents had driven him to depression and that he was undergoing medical treatment for his condition,” the police said. Kumar’s parents live in West Bengal and attempts are being made to contact them.
IANS
Why don’t fat-free foods taste as good? It’s something in the taste, not the smell, of fat that lures people to rich foods, according to research conducted by a Purdue University scientist. Wearing nose plugs, study participants given a taste, but not a whiff, of cream cheese and crackers stimulated an immediate rise in their blood fat levels, while those given a sniff but not a taste did not show a rise. “This tells us that taste is the stimulus that causes the rise in blood fat levels. The taste, and not the smell, is what the body is responding to,” Richard Mattes, a Purdue professor of foods and nutrition, said in a statement summarising findings he published in Physiology & Behaviour. Fat has been thought of as a tasteless “flavour carrier” that could deliver tasty compounds derived from other parts of food and as a food component that provided texture. But if Mattes’ fat findings hold up, science may have to include it in the list of five flavours human palates can detect: sweet, salty, sour, bitter and “umami”, which is evoked by monosodium glutamate (MSG) in foods. Our physiological response to the taste of fat may explain another mystery: Why don’t fat-free foods taste as good? “I wonder if the less-than-perfect performance of current fat replacers may be due to a lack of understanding of all mechanisms for fat perception,” Mattes said.
Reuters |
Delhi: The report of the working of the Archaeological Department in the Delhi Province during 1925-1926 shows that out of a sum of Rs 89,233 spent on the conservation and maintenance of Mohammedan and British Monuments in the Delhi Province, Rs 27,310 were expended on special repairs, Rs 16,647 on annual repairs and Rs 45,276 on the maintenance of gardens. The special repairs included the conservation of the tomb of Khana-khana, son of Bairam Khan, regent of Akbar the Great and the conservation of Sher Shah’s gate. The latter work was commenced last year. Annual repairs included among others the replacing of the decayed paving stones on the terrace of Humayun’s tomb. The Delhi Fort gardens were maintained at the usual standard. Fees for admission in the Fort brought in the income of Rs 13,423 during the year under review against Rs 13,070 in the previous year. The collection of coins and paintings in the museum was improved during the year.  |
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Activity is superior to Destiny since the former is the maker of the latter, and also because if the activity is well directed, all is well but if it is wrongly directed, all goes wrong. — Swami Dayananda, Swamantavyamantavya, 25 ***** Now would I fulfil myself. But how shall I unless I become a planet with intelligent lives dwelling upon it? Is not this every man’s goal? A pearl is a temple built by pain around a grain of sand. What longing built our bodies and around what grains? When God threw me, a pebble, into this wondrous like I disturbed its surface with countless circles. But when I reached the depths I became very still. Give me silence And I will outdare the night. I had a second birth when my soul and my body loved one another and were married. Remembrance is a form of meeting. Forgetfulness is a form of freedom. Humanity is a river of light running from ex-eternity to eternity. Space is not space between the earth and the sun to one who looks down from the windows of the Milky Way. Make me, Oh God the prey of the lion, there you make the rabbit my prey. One may reach the dawn save by the path of the night. How can I lose faith in the justice of life when the dreams of those who sleep upon feathers are not more beautiful than the dreams of those who sleep upon the earth? — Kahlil Gibran, Sand and Foam, pages 4-8 ***** The accomplishments of the fruits of one’s actions is enjoyed by the door himself; the result of actions done and left undone is clearly seen before our eyes in this world. — The Mahabharata, 13.6.9 |
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