The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Swine flu is spreading
Health authorities must not drop guard

WHEN the world woke up to the threat of swine flu, India had not reported even a single case. But now as the world is facing a pandemic for the first time in 41 years, alarmingly, the number of cases in India too is on the rise. While Andhra Pradesh has the maximum number of swine flu cases, there have been cases from other parts too including Delhi and Karnataka. A boy from Jalandhar has also tested positive for swine flu. Though the virus has claimed about 140 lives worldwide, India where the first swine flu case was detected a month ago has not reported any fatalities. It is reassuring that the infected patients have been responding well to the treatment and five patients have already been discharged.

However, with new cases coming to light there is reason to intensify both screening and quarantine. India has been fighting the swine flu ever since WHO sounded the global alert. From travel advisory to screening of inbound passengers at 21 international airports to stocking up medicines found effective against the virus, suitable measures have been taken. The government has been asserting time and again that there is no cause for panic and it is fully prepared to tackle the virus. India is as yet in the containment stage, meaning that the spread of the virus is still not out of control.

The Delhi government that invoked the Epidemic Diseases Act, 1879 has done well to ask the hospitals to stay on guard to ensure that infected patients undergoing treatment do not leave without permission. People, too, must realise their responsibility and cooperate fully with airport and health authorities. Quarantine and heightened surveillance are effective ways to tackle the spread of the infection that knows no boundaries and cannot be locked. Dr Margaret Chan, Director- General, WHO, has already expressed concern saying, “We do not know how this virus will behave under conditions typically found in the developing world.” With swine flu vaccine still several months away, India must continue to remain in a state of high preparedness and be particularly wary of cluster cases.

The bat and the ball
BCCI needs to rethink its role

Indian cricket fans have reasons to be disappointed at the exit of the team from the ICC World T20 tournament. The disappointment, however, is largely due to the hype built around the Indian team thanks to non-stop television coverage, which had led fans to expect that the defending champions would return home with the trophy. But the scrappy performance of the team, which lost to New Zealand in a warm-up game and went on to lose to West Indies and England during the tournament, should leave nobody in any doubt that Dhoni’s men deserved to be knocked out.

It would be unfair, however, to blame the players. In a close contest in which one more boundary for India or one less for England actually stood between victory and defeat, fans ought to savour the thrill and compliment players for giving their best. Fans at home are unfortunately known for not taking a defeat sportingly. The best of teams go through ups and downs and the fans ought to take victory or defeat in their stride.

However, the Board of Control for Cricket in India cannot be absolved of its responsibility. It has not only sold television rights but has also allowed cricketers to be auctioned and sold. While the Board has fattened itself and earned several thousand crores by promoting non-stop cricket and non-stop television coverage, only a small fraction of its revenue is actually shared with cricketers. And not more than a hundred cricketers in this country of a billion-plus people actually benefit from BCCI’s ever-growing greed. The Board appears to have abdicated its responsibility to ensure the growth of cricket in the country and allowed an ambitious Lalit Modi to hijack its agenda. Cricket is not an individual sport and it is the team that has to perform. But the Indian Premier League, promoted by Modi, has arguably destroyed the team while seemingly promoting the business of cricket. The gentleman’s game has changed beyond belief , from an absorbing battle between bat and ball, which it was meant to be, to a spectacle, almost a blood sport.

Thought for the Day

To be totally understanding makes one very indulgent. — Mme de Stael

ARTICLE

BJP in a fix
How to live with Hindutva and survive?
by S. Nihal Singh

THE turmoil in the Bharatiya Janata Party has brought to the surface its central contradiction: How can it be a modern party with a future and yet remain true to the tenets of its mentor, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)? The party’s defeat in the Lok Sabha election for the second time in succession has re-ignited the dilemma because many of the party leaders seem convinced that the RSS has become an albatross around its neck.

Yet there is no easy way out of the dilemma. Party presidents, including Mr L.K. Advani, have chafed at the RSS harness even while genuflecting to it, saying they are the handiwork of the RSS and what it stands for. The truth is that over the years the RSS has tightened its grip on the BJP through placing its workers in key posts – such as Mr Narendra Modi in Gujarat – and in giving directives to the party bosses.

Mr A.B. Vajpayee had his own way of paying obeisance to the RSS even while making light of his burden but the dilemma that has faced all party leaders became more acute with Mr Advani’s presidency while being in the Vajpayee-led Government, climaxing in his Jinnah remarks in Pakistan. The RSS’s frown cost Mr Advani the presidency and he had to make peace with it before he could secure the status of a prime ministerial candidate.

After the BJP’s defeat, criticism of the RSS became a torrent, with the Vajpayee acolyte Sudheendra Kulkarni setting the cat among the pigeons by penning a long analysis of the party’s plight honing in on Hindutva. Mr Jaswant Singh contributed his bit by questioning the party’s projection of Hindutva. Mr Yashwant Sinha chose to write a treatise in the form of a letter to the BJP president criticising the party’s manner of doing things. Mr Brajesh Mishra, Mr Vajpayee’s confidant, added his view that Hindutva had acquired a negative ring for the minorities.

This barrage invited a riposte from an RSS functionary suggesting in essence that it would go its own way while the party chose its direction. Mr Rajnath Singh, whose slender shoulders can hardly bear the weight of the party crisis, vowed fealty to Hindutva by speciously declaring that the BJP was not seeking power but was more interested in reforming society, a tactic that hardly resolves the contradiction.

The basic problem arises from the manner in which the BJP came to become a power factor in national politics attaining its ambition of attaining power in New Delhi. It was Mr Advani’s clever — and bloody — exploitation of Hindutva by making the Ram temple the central issue leading to the demolition of the Babri Masjid that mesmerised a large swathe of Hindus, particularly in North India, to vote for the BJP.

Inevitably, the BJP, once in power, had to make concessions on the Ayodhya plank, which symbolised Hindutva. It put on back burner the contentious issues of building a Ram temple, abrogation of Article 370 on Kashmir and uniform civil code during the six years it led a coalition. During those years the RSS was content in placing key men in the administration and in pursuing its social engineering ventures under the protection of the Vajpayee Government. Favourable land allotment to itself and its allied causes was only a small part of the bargain.

The BJP and the Sangh Parivar lived in something of a daze after losing the 2004 general election they had convinced themselves was in their bag. Such Parivar-blessed or -affiliated organisations like the Ram Sene, Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the Bajrang Dal had a field day, particularly in BJP-ruled states, to spread their perverse views through hooliganism and denigration of lifestyles they abhorred.

These acts were clubbed together under the Hindutva banner, with the BJP leaders winking at them, if not encouraging them. Large sections of the middle class found such actions revolting, with the Varun Gandhi hate speeches proving to be the party’s coup de grace, in view of the leadership’s tortured response.

Which brings us to the central point one section of BJP leaders has been wrestling with: What is Hindutva? At its most benign, it is an inclusive philosophy emphasising the centrality of Hinduism. In practice, it is often a backward-looking way of viewing modern developments and the mythologizing of a Hindu past to a ridiculous extent. And some of the Parivar outfits evoke Hindutva to promote their plainly parochial, communal and socially reprehensible goals. The philosophy enunciated in the recent election manifesto was a fitting symbol of the confusion that prevails in the party leadership.

As long as the BJP’s symbiotic relationship with the RSS lasts, the task of defining Hindutva will fall on the latter. Even those in or close to the BJP seeking to fine tune Hindutva to be able to sell it are not asking for its abolition. The original Jan Sangh has presented an alternative view of India to the narration of the party of Indian independence, the Congress. However the BJP might choose to express its legacy, it is the exponent of what it now calls Hindutva.

Every political party has its fringe elements, but only the BJP leadership has, more often than not, refused to distance itself from them, whether it relates to carrying out a shameful vendetta against a painter of the ilk of M.F. Hussein or on loonies conducting a raid on a Mangalore bar belabouring its women patrons. Why do BJP-ruled states provide fertile ground for plain acts of moral policing and revolting conduct, as at a Baroda art school?

It would seem that at least a section of the BJP leadership believes in some of the regressive aspects of what goes under the rubric of Hindutva. The new controversy about the merits of Hindutva and how to sell it has become entangled in factional fights in the party, with Mr Jaswant Singh extolling the virtues of a correlation between inam (prize) and parinam (result) in a veiled attack on the promotion of his two colleagues associated with planning the failed election strategy. It is, indeed, open to question whether the BJP or the RSS can survive a re-definition of Hindutva.

MIDDLE

High and dry
by Raj Chatterjee

Texas is a state of the American Union that one usually associates with oil tycoons, cowboys, 10-gallon hats and hard-headed, 5-gallon drinkers. For some years now, I have had a personal link with the state. Over 20 years ago, one of my daughters married an American journalist. She and her two sons live in Fort Worth, Texas.

Recalling all I had heard of the tough Texan males who, apparently, have stomachs lined with cowhide, I was a bit surprised to read a newspaper clipping my daughter sent me a few days ago. It was captioned “Cheers turn into tears”.

I read that a man aged 62 and a 50-year-old woman turned up at the court house one morning, in the city of Weatherford to apply for a marriage licence. They appeared to be slightly unsteady on their feet as a result of holding a pre-nuptial celebration the night before.

The court clerk, smelling their breath and noting their somewhat dishevelled condition, promptly called the sheriff’s office. That officer’s deputies were around in two ticks and they hauled the pair off to jail where they spent, what was to be their wedding night, in two separate cells.

The next morning, having pleaded guilty to the charge of being intoxicated in public they were fined $50 each and discharged.

But this was not the only price the hapless bride-groom-to-be had to pay for his folly. His more-than-mature betrothed decided to call it a day leaving him, if not high, certainly dry. Though equally to blame, she decided that she couldn’t go through life with a man who had a weak head for liquor.

There is a moral in this story which is best summed up in a doggerel.It goes like this:

A man’s not old when his hair turns grey

A man’s not old when his teeth decay

But a man approaches his last, long sleep

When his mind makes appointments his body can’t keep

Contemplating matrimony when one is on the wrong side of 60 is foolhardy enough without indulging in a bacchanal prelude to the event, or non-event. Having learnt this lesson, I am sure that this poor chap in Weatherford, Texas, must have realised that he was past the age both of hard drinking and the much-lauded bliss of a double bed.

It is many years now since I made the sort of appointment derided in the doggerel though I know men, older than I, who not only make them but keep them. They must have access to some sort of elixir that wipes out the years. Not that I am blind to feminine charm. Every now and again my old eyes light up when I am introduced to a girl who could have walked out of the pages of a fashion magazine. It is on such occasions I have to remind myself that she is, probably, younger than my youngest daughter.

OPED

US aid to Pakistan
Washington ignores India’s protests
by Kuldip Nayar

India-America relations are better under the Republicans than the Democrats. Idea-wise or ideology-wise, Indians should feel closer to the latter but it does not happen that way. No doubt, Washington is guided by self-interest which every country does. Surely New Delhi understands that policy.

Yet self-interest is not something euphoric. It does not change in a few months’ time. The same State Department which was singing praises of India is different because a Democratic President is at the helm of affairs.

Even the body language of US officials has changed. They give the impression of a regime which either takes India for granted or follows a policy which is opposed to New Delhi’s interests.

Some unhappy messages to India began emanating as soon as President Obama won. Those messages are taking shape gradually. There is not one point which reflects growing distance between the Government of India and the Obama’s administration.

There are a host of problems which are small but they are not getting resolved because the understanding and the equation which the Bush administration showed towards India is lacking.

Words by the new set-up are effusive like that India is a major power or that without its active presence in South Asia nothing can be sorted out in the region.

Yet when it comes to something concrete, America behaves like the mightiest power in the world—undoubtedly it is— and wants India to accept its wrong perceptions.

New Delhi has protested many a time that the military aid given to Pakistan to fight terrorism is misused and the latter buys weapons. Pentagon documents made public a few days ago said that Islamabad used the $6.9 billion aid it received during the Bush administration to buy modern weapons for a conventional warfare against India.

This is not the first time that Pakistan has used the money to buy weapons. India has faced them in the 1965 war against Pakistan. Then the US administration had said in reply to India’s protest that Washington was helpless.

Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru was committed to holding a plebiscite in Kashmir until Pakistan joined the CENTO.

When America injected modern weapons for the use of the Pakistan army, he said that the whole situation had changed and that India was not bound by its promise to hold a plebiscite because America had injected new weapons in the region.Pakistan had to pay a heavy price for siding with America during the cold war.

The Obama administration has announced an aid of some $1.5 billion to Pakistan per year for the next five years to fight terrorists. The Bill in the US Congress was sought to be amended that the aid would not be used against India.

The Obama administration agreed to Islamabad’s substitution of word neighbour instead of India. Perhaps it comes to the same thing. But then why to change the word if India is not in the mind of Pakistan?

Nobody has any doubt that Islamabad will divert a major portion of the US aid to buy weapons instead of using it to build roads, schools or health centres as President Obama has announced.

Pentagon documents or some other papers would reveal after some years that the aid given by Washington was again used by Islamabad to buy weapons.

New Delhi does not object to America helping Pakistan in the social sector and lessening the impact of non-development in that country. But New Delhi’s experience has been unhappy.

Point Four by President Truman was a good programme which helped India also get foodgrains from America at the time when New Delhi needed it the most. But Obama’s programme is specific and earmarks some assistance for weapons.

There is no gun which fires only in one direction. Weapons meant to fight against terrorists are bound to be used by Pakistan to build up its army.

Washington may express regret for that, if it does, but the harm would have been done. It should learn the lesson which Pentagon documents teach. Why does America want to follow the same path?

Similarly, one does not understand the American embassy’s advisory to the US citizens not to travel to India because they would put themselves to risk for coming to a country which is exposed to terrorists.

Ironically, the advisory was issued on the same day when President Obama at Cairo appealed to the Muslim world to forget America’s past mistakes. India too wants Obama not to commit the same mistakes which it had done earlier in the subcontinent.

The latest is that Washington would pursue the policy of non-proliferation more vigorously than before. At a meeting of the Foreign Relations Committee of the US Senate, Ellen Tauscher said that if confirmed for the post of Under Secretary for arms control and international security, she would work towards a number of non-proliferation goals of which one was the ratification of the CTBT.

India was mentioned as one of the countries to be asked to sign the treaty. New Delhi is willing to sign the nuke ban treaty provided Washington also does so.

Once again, America does not want any other country besides itself, Great Britain, France, Russia and China to possess nuclear weapons. Once again, Washington desires to revive the club of the elite five.

Efforts of both India and Pakistan have been to demolish the exclusiveness of the super powers. The Obama administration would get no response from India or Pakistan unless the non-proliferation treaty is accepted by all countries in the world.

Why does not Washington voluntarily promise to sign the CTBT? Ellen Tauscher should tell the Senate committee that the Obama administration would ultimately put its signature on the treaty.

If it were to do so, the other members of the club would also agree. The people all over the world would then be able to sleep in peace. President Obama would go down in history and may go on to win the Nobel Prize.

Election may delay Iran’s opening up
by Adrian Hamilton

This is not a good moment for Iran. It is certainly not a good time for those within who hoped for the liberalisation of Iranian society. And it is clearly not a good time for those who looked to a day when a more open-minded US President might encourage the country to come out of its isolation, stop its nuclear activities and embrace the world.

Supporters of Iran’s moderate presidential candidate Mirhossein Mousavi protest against the election results in Tehran. Reuters

But then this is no time either to impose on Iran the wishful thinking of an outside world that would have the election that they wanted it to be rather than the unpredictable, complex mix of openness and oppression that Iran’s democracy actually consists of.

The last time a presidential candidate got such a sweeping victory in an Iranian election, it should be recalled, was in 1997, when it was actually a reformist, Mohammad Khatami, who was elected to the post by more than 70 per cent of the vote.

Like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad this time, he was re-elected four years later by an even larger majority, only to be rendered powerless in his final years in office by the authority of the conservative clerics and the Supreme Ruler, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Is the latest election then part of a pattern in which the liberals are occasionally allowed their voice but never allowed to threaten the system?

It’s what the reformists, and western observers, certainly believe after an election in which the results seemed far too of a kind to be believable and the consequent clampdown on demonstrations too pre-organised to be anything other than a deliberate act of anti-democratic suppression.

If the efficacy of democracy lies in its ability to incorporate dissenting opinion by giving it a part in the process, then this election has clearly failed the test.

There was too much energy in the campaign, too much interest in the debates for Ayatollah Khamenei to say now that the reforming parties should quietly go away and accept the “verdict of the majority”.

Which is one reason why the forces against liberalisation – the Revolutionary Guard, the pro-Ahmadinejad groupings and the theocratic state – may have reacted so strongly against the reformers.

You don’t need to believe in an anti-democratic coup by the hardliners to recognise that the powers were unsettled by the pressures released in this campaign. Just as in China, there is nothing that the top rulers fear as much as direct clashes of views and interests.

That does not mean that the world at large is facing a more hostile or a more implacable country than it did before. President Ahmadinejad’s continuance as president will certainly colour the rhetoric of relations, while internal dissensions may delay external initiatives.

But the policy towards nuclear development and the responses to Obama’s proferred hand of friendship are not made by the President of Iran, but the Ayatollah and his advisors.

Hossein Mousavi’s election might have opened up new possibilities of international openness, but it would not have changed Iran’s nuclear policy any more than the reverse is true of Ahmadinejad’s re-election.

It is within Iran itself that the presidential elections bodes ill. Ahmadinejad and his supporters are no friends to free speech and tolerance. Under his presidency the country has become more oppressive of the individual and more incompetent in terms of economic management.

The toll of a policy that has blocked investment, held back development, restricted markets and failed to develop its resources is heavy and will get heavier, unless there is a real change approach at the top.

— By arrangement with The Independent

Delhi Durbar
Supreme Court in the dark on new Attorney General

The Supreme Court’s vacation Bench, comprising Justices B. Sudershan Reddy and Aftab Alam, was not even aware of Solicitor General GE Vahanvati’s elevation as the Attorney General of India in place of Milon K. Banerjee

The day he was appointed the top law officer of the country, the judges kept addressing Vahanvati as Mr Solicitor when he appeared in a case.

Vahanvati was also keeping quiet, perhaps to avoid causing embarrassment to the Bench.

After some time, newly elected Supreme Court Bar Association President M.N. Krishnamani, who argued for the other side in the case, apprised the Bench of the appointment.

The Bench congratulated Vahanvati on his appointment and expressed its sentiment that it could have been informed of this at the first instance when it referred to him as Mr Solicitor.

Troubles in BJP

These are hard times for the BJP. Till May 16, before the general election results came in, BJP leaders were all over, on TV channels, in newspaper columns and attending Page 3 parties.

But ever since the outcome became known, most of them have become scarce and inaccessible. One gentleman involved with the media went on an extended honeymoon to Sri Lanka. Upon return, he is devoting his time to running his school, earlier just a source of his livelihood.

It is another thing that the marriage took place more than six months ago. But then he was too involved with the party to find time to take his newly wedded wife out on a honeymoon.

Another one got married just before the election results and is still on a honeymoon.

A third one was allowed only a brief sojourn in the hills and had to return because someone was needed to entertain the media visiting the BJP headquarters at 11, Ashoka Road, out of sheer habit or for want of anything better to do.

As for the leaders, some have already left for cooler climes abroad and others are packing their bags and may even give a miss to the crucial National Executive meeting scheduled for June 20, 21.

Hillary’s worries

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is worried ahead of her visit to India next month. The reason: what if the media here asks embarrassing questions about the funds extended to her by a well-known Indian politician for her election campaign. Indian diplomats and the US embassy here are said to be convincing her she need not worry on this count at all.

After all, her media interaction in India will be a structured one after she meets her counterpart S. M. Krishna. There will be two questions each put to her and Krishna by members of the Indian and American media. So there will be only four questions in all and they will obviously be devoted to Indo-US issues, Pakistan and Afghanistan. But is it so easy to remove all her apprehensions?

Contributed by R. Sedhuraman, Faraz Ahmad and Ashok Tuteja

Corrections and clarifications

n In the Ludhiana datelined report (Page 5, June 13), the headline should have been “Social security complex a nightmare for inmates” not “Security complex, nightmare for inmates”.

n The report on the Governor’s decision in the Vijayan case (Page 8, June 11) says his decision is “not surprising”. However, the headline erroneously says it is “surprising”.

n In the report on Swine flue tally (Page 1, June 14), the expression climbed upto 17 is wrong. It should have been “climbed to 17”.

n In the report on the Himachal Speaker’s call to improve road conditions (Page 10, June 15), the intro is too long and convulated.

Despite our earnest endeavour to keep The Tribune error-free, some errors do creep in at times. We are always eager to correct them.

We request our readers to write or e-mail to us whenever they find any error. We will carry corrections and clarifications, wherever necessary, every Tuesday & Friday.

Readers in such cases can write to Mr Kamlendra Kanwar, Senior Associate Editor, The Tribune, Chandigarh, with the word “Corrections” on the envelope. His e-mail ID is kanwar@tribunemail.com.

H.K. Dua,
Editor-in-Chief