HYDERABAD MANDATE

Patience is Key for 2009

2008-12-29T22:51:00.000-08:00

By M H Ahssan

Although markets will likely spend much of the coming year wallowing in a broad trading range, a few macro themes will still dictate underlying trends.

As the New Year approaches, investors across the world are feeling like locusts in a dessert. After getting used to picking off a feast, there are currently no asset classes that offer any obvious appeal.

In many parts of the marketplace valuations and sentiment do seem quite depressed. But that largely pertains to risky assets and with the global economy entering its worst growth spell since the Great Depression, it’s hard to make a universal case for being long risk. On the flip side, government bonds and companies with a relatively steady earnings stream — mainly in the consumer staples and healthcare sectors — offer greater safety but valuations in this space have been stretched to the extent that there’s talk of ‘risk averse’ assets falling victim to the next bubble.

Not surprisingly, then, markets are stuck in a tight trading range. And this tug of war between deteriorating economic fundamentals on the one side and oversold markets with low valuations and hyperactive policy action on the other will likely continue for much of 2009. Patience is the key in such an environment as there could be many false dawns and misleading breakdowns.

A major takeaway from the 1930s’ experience is that there is nothing wrong in husbanding cash in a deflationary world. In a piece of telling research, Birinyi Associates estimates that a dollar invested in the US stock market in 1966 would be worth only $1.11 today if you missed the best five trading days during the entire period. But if you avoided the worst five days, the dollar would be worth $2,696 — emphasising the point that the first rule of investing is not to lose money. Still, even in a broadly sideways market, it’s important to have a fix on the few themes that will prove to be enduring and serve as the fundamental backdrop for making investment decisions in the year ahead:

Japan in the 1990s is currently the playbook for the US: Policymakers in the US will probably succeed in preventing a Great Depression redux, but they cannot engineer a new growth cycle. There is a certain inevitability about what follows a debt binge: total credit as a share of the US economy is at a record 350%, similar to the levels in the Japanese economy preceding the end of its boom in 1990. After having borrowed growth from the future, the US economy will now have to sacrifice growth for a long time to come.

Much the same as Japan over the past two decades, US economic growth is likely to average a meagre 1% for the foreseeable future. That implies some sort of a growth recovery in the US as policy action will arrest the current sharp pace of economic contraction. The Japanese economy has witnessed several mini-growth cycles within an era of stagnation and those recoveries have led to sharp market rallies. At some point in 2009, the US economy too will start to turn around providing the stimulus for a more meaningful rally in the stock market. Typically, the market bottoms 3-6 months ahead of the low in an economic cycle.

However, any rally will be capped by the feebleness of the economic recovery given the underlying economic problems related to over-indebtedness. A very firm long-term top for the benchmark S&P 500 index is most likely 1200 — the level that prevailed just before the world changed in mid-September when Lehman Brothers went bankrupt. The episode marked the definitive end of the 2003-07 credit bubble and the hard reality is that the world is not going back to the pre-Lehman days. In technical terms too, support levels from a bull-market era often end up being resistance points in the ensuing bear market regime.

Emerging markets are still the place to be on a relative basis: The acceleration in the growth of developing countries from an average 3.6% prior to 2003 to more than 7% over the following five years was an aberration largely rooted in the global credit bubble. However, emerging markets are nowhere near as leveraged as the US and most other developed countries and should, therefore, be able to expand at their 1980-2002 average economic growth rate of 3.5-4.0%. That is not too bad an outcome at a time when the US and much of the developed world face an extended period of sub-par growth.

The sluggishness in the west will increase the relative appeal of investing in emerging markets. This is in contrast to the 1980s and ’90s when the US was growing at a robust 3% — nearly as fast as the developing world — and looked much less risky. Furthermore, emerging markets are currently trading at a 25% discount to the developed world on most valuation metrics. While it will be hard for emerging markets to completely free themselves of the US market’s ball-and-chain, this asset class should over time deliver higher returns as has been the case over the past five to 10 years despite the high daily and weekly correlations.

A secular bear market in commodities: It’s amazing to see how many financial analysts are still consumed by the myth that commodity prices are in a secular uptrend due to the continued industrialisation of emerging market economies such as China and India. They are forgetting lessons from history. Commodity prices decline over the long-term as the cost of production falls with better technology, increased automation and greater economies of scale. Although they oscillate wildly around their long-term trend line, the broad direction is unmistakably down.

After overshooting in the late 1970s, commodity prices steadily fell through the 1980s and ‘90s even though global growth remained robust through those two decades. As the 2003-07 credit bubble artificially inflated growth across the world to well above trend levels, commodity prices surged but are now quickly reverting to their longterm mean. They have no justification for trading above their marginal cost of production and in times of distress, the prices fall well below the cash cost of production. All of this suggests that prices of commodities from oil to copper are going back to levels that prevailed prior to the 2003-07 boom. One clear implication is that the price of oil over the next couple of years is more likely to average closer to $30 a barrel rather than the consensus price of $60/bbl factored into estimated future earnings for oil-related companies.

A mix of value and quality at a reasonable price should outperform: The dispersion in valuations — defined as the gap between the highest- and lowest-priced stocks — is currently at near record levels. Ordinarily that would suggest it is time to blindly buy the lowly valued equities and sell the relatively richly priced stocks, typically in the defensive stocks. But the problem is that the cheap stuff is mostly in troubled sectors such as financials. It’s hard to see such stocks outperforming unless the bear market regime comes to an end.

But the valuation gap is too extreme to ignore. Therefore, it’s time to overweight that part of the equity universe where valuations are cheap even after normalising earnings and stripping away the abnormal profits of the past few years. However, a premium still needs to be paid for companies with high management quality as survival of the fittest is still an issue and when corporate governance standards are on the decline.

The dollar is most likely confined to a trading range: It’s intellectually easy and fashionable to be bearish on the dollar. But as has been the case for so many years now, reports of the dollar’s demise are greatly exaggerated. To be sure, the dollar is currently on a declining trend and with US adopting a quantitative easing approach to monetary policy, the image of too many dollars flooding the market readily springs to mind.

However, there will be a limit to the dollar’s decline. The deflation of the credit bubble is a global phenomenon and almost all countries around the world are in an aggressive easing mode. It’s just that the US is ahead of the curve. But expect other central banks to soon enough engage in a similar accommodative policy framework as the US, which in turn should limit any downside for the dollar. The dollar is unlikely to make fresh record lows against major currencies in 2009.

Tackling E-Waste

2008-12-29T22:48:00.000-08:00

By Sheena Shafia

With drastic changes in weather patterns across continents, rise in sea level, melting of polar icecaps and ever-increasing levels of all forms of pollution; conservation of environment is a major concern for nations. Initially disbanded as the task of the 'green brigade', the corporate world has woken up from its deep slumber. Embedded as an important postulate of social responsibility among most organisations across sectors, adherence to environmental sustainability has emerged as a major consideration for them.

Expansive IT infrastructure is a cardinal component of most business processes and has improved productivity exponentially. But it is one of the major reasons for consumption of energy, water, emission of greenhouse gases and generation of electronic or e-waste. Hence, the transition towards the idea of 'green IT' has caught up. Tangible and visible efforts like data centre energy cost reduction, virtualization leading to server consolidation, remote management leading to CO 2 footprint reduction, reducing software footprint of applications by consolidation form the backbone of Green IT culture.

However the scale of the problem is simply immense. About 3.3 lakh tonnes of e-waste generated last year was dumped into the rivers, land fills and sewage drains. While the chemicals used to corrode e-waste seep into the ground, e-waste junk like refrigerator bodies, compressors from air conditioners and waste plastic used to make phones just keep on piling up. Only 19,000 tonnes of the annual e-waste is recycled. This is due to high refurbishing and reuse of electronics products in the country and also due to poor recycling infrastructure.

E-waste is of concern largely due to the toxicity and carcinogenicity of some of the substances. Toxic substances may include lead, mercury and cadmium. Carcinogenic substances in electronic goods include polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). A typical computer monitor may contain more than 6% lead by weight, much of which is in the lead glass of the CRT. Capacitors, transformers, PVC insulated wires, PVC coated components often contain dangerous amounts of polychlorinated biphenyls. "E-waste is going to be one the major problems facing the world after climate change and poverty," says Nokia India managing director D Shivakumar.

According to a report by hardware body Manufacturers Association of Information Technology (MAIT), e-waste from discarded computers, TVs and mobile phones is projected to grow to more than 800,000 tonnes by 2012 with a growth rate of 15% in the country. "If the situation is not controlled, we may see large land fills of junk e-waste around our cities 10 years down the line," says MAIT executive director Vinnie Mehta.

"For Green IT initiatives to achieve a sustainable impact, firms have to transform their approach from obligation to opportunity. As IT adoption increases in India, we also need to ensure that incorporation of green IT infrastructure is inculcated right from the beginning," says Nasscom vice-president Rajdeep Sahrawat.

Wipro, HCL, Cisco and IBM have ensured green data centres within their organisations and provide consultancy services to set them up for clients. "We have been helping companies actively in developing a complete road map on green IT including the non-IT elements like infrastructure design, hardware used, et all. The effective management of IT infrastructure helps in reducing of carbon footprint of an organisation. We all need to contribute," said vice-president of professional services division in Wipro Infotech Deepak Jain.

British Telecommunication (BT) has designed a carbon impact assessment mechanism that enables organisations to accurately calculate the amount of CO 2 emissions produced with the use of networked IT services. It allows a number of business scenarios to be tested and an assessment made of the associated energy and carbon reductions.

"The link between sustainability and commercial success is, without doubt, becoming clearer all the time. India is rapidly becoming a global centre for information and communications technology development and its economic growth rate is high. It is vital that this commercial success is matched by a commitment towards social responsibility," says BT India chairman Arun Seth.

Many companies are trying to adopt a more macro-level approach by constructing green buildings. According to Indian Green Building Council, green buildings use less energy, water and natural resources and create less e-waste. So it's healthier for the people living inside compared to a standard building.

Eventually, the government has to define roles of each stakeholder including the vendors, the users, the recyclers and regulator for environment friendly recycling. Also, companies must realise that going green actually results in money saved and hence focus their efforts on eco-friendly products that reduce carbon and other harmful emissions. Products sold must be backed by efficient disposal strategies to effectively tackle the problem of e-waste.

Mumbai Still a Ashok Chavan’s Vulnerable City

2008-12-26T03:12:00.000-08:00

By Seema Kamdar

Private entities ramp up security but govt yet to devise foolproof plan to protect city

A month after the Mumbai carnage, you can still enter the city’s municipal corporation building without having your bag checked and walk right into the mayor’s office.

You can even enter Mantralaya without being asked about the large plastic bag in your purse, or walk into JJ Hospital and no one will stop you for your identification.

The scars of November 26- 28 are visible. The hurt remains but Mumbai has typically bounced back. Yet the lessons from the three horrific days in November may not have been fully learnt. The gaps in the city’s security cover have not been plugged.

Look around you, and you will find there are more policemen around now. On the ground, though, real change has not come about – where intelligence gathering and sharing are concerned, where coordination among security agencies is concerned.

Taking no chances, private entities have stepped in to secure areas under their control. Even as most government buildings and other installations still have poor security, many hotels in Mumbai have initiated steps to

prevent a repeat of the November 26 events.

The Taj Mahal hotel, for instance, is using private security companies to build an elaborate security wall around its premises. Armed guards are strategically positioned on the fourth floor balcony on all sides. At least five private security personnel guard the two main roads leading up to the hotel.

The hotel’s main entrance has two armed Black Cat commandos. At the Gateway of India entrance is a police van with eight police officers.

Inside the hotel, 70 CCTV security cameras monitor the public spaces. More will be installed soon. The live feed directly goes to the Anti- Terrorism Squad ( ATS) control room.

The Trident has a similar set- up. Hotel staff and private security guards man the barricaded entrance where no cars are allowed unless you have reservation. There are beat policemen stationed at all times, but they have no weapons.

At the Taj Land’s End in Bandra, which is close to actor Shah Rukh Khan’s bungalow Mannat, the security is extremely tight. All public and private transport vehicles are told stop at a distance from the hotel. Private security guards are stationed along the way.

The hotel itself has multiple layers of security operated by both hotel staff and private security agencies. This contrasts with what the state government has done for the common man. At the first meeting of his cabinet, chief minister Ashok Chavan approved a 127- crore plan for security that was hailed as a step in the right direction. Insiders, however, punctured this claim as an eyewash because this was a routine outlay for this year in a five- year plan already in place.

According to the plan to beef up the police force, 11,000 policemen should be added to the state police every year. This implies that around 110 crore out of Rs 127 crore will towards the salaries of the new recruits this year. How then will the government fund the setting up of a crack security system to make India’s financial capital secure? Another lesson that has not been learnt from the November attacks: intelligence intercepts continue to be ignored at the respective action stations.

The reason, argues a state government official, is that “ nine out of ten inputs are routine or redundant”. But just such an approach caused the specific intelligence inputs on Leopold Cafe, the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, the Taj Mahal Hotel and the Oberoi to be ignored, allowing the terrorists to attack the city.

If there are gaps in inland security, there is a lot to be firmed up in coastal security. Had anyone asked, they would have learnt one shocking detail: Mumbai’s coastline is manned by only five patrol boats.

Chief minister Chavan has announced his government will acquire 40 speedboats for patrolling.

Like the Rs 127 crore plan to beef up the security apparatus, this too is a dusted- up scheme which was part a larger central coastal security plan that had been neglected for two years.

From the look of it, the government would rather go ahead with plans that have been in cold storage for years — such as a fresh move to issue smart cards to 50,000 fishermen.

This long- pending scheme, again, doesn’t address the lacunae, like giving permission to fishermen to take outsiders on their trawlers without identification.

Sources said at present a pass is issued in a fisherman’s name and then the number of people being ferried by him is added on the pass. No names were given or identification sought. “ As it is, in the absence of proper regulation, all kinds of people drift into the city’s waters for fishing, some even from Bangladesh,” a coastal defence officer said.

The string of private ports and jetties coming up along the 720- km coastline of the state have no security.

One view is they are a security concern. But, the earlier Vilasrao Deshmukh government wooed them against the advice of security agencies. In fact, Deshmukh is believed to have once brushed aside the warnings of a naval officer that the small stretches of Maharashtra’s coastline should not be marketed to private parties.

Now, about 1,740 m of the waterfront at Dharamtar is to be given to Ispat Industries for “ development of a self- controlled jetty”. Initial approval has been given to another company for setting up a captive jetty at Dehra creek in Sindhudurg district, sources said.

Unlike Nhava Sheva port, Mumbai Port — which controls a vast network of roads in south Mumbai, apart from sensitive rigs and installations — refuses to hand over its security to the Central Industrial Security Force ( CISF) after years of debate. Intelligence agencies have found its internal security system to be inadequate.

Living With Terror

2008-12-23T23:04:00.000-08:00

By Dipesh Chakrabarty

Only security won’t do; we need better governance too

The most recent Mumbai tragedy points to a general way some of the negative effects of globalisation are bringing us to the threshold of a post-democratic age in the 21st century. Given the diverse global tensions in the world — with terrorism, economic-environmental crises, and civil wars dislocating populations — democratic states will increasingly tend to develop a strong security aspect in the coming decades.

The violence in Mumbai was perceptibly different from terrorist violence that India has seen before. This time the terrorists themselves wanted to create a “global” event. Their targets included many “ordinary” Indians but also the transnational elite that patronises the most well-known hotels of Mumbai, itself the most global city in India. Their technology and targets were global — witness their use of Voice over Internet Protocol system to keep in touch with their masters in Pakistan or their deliberate targeting of a small Jewish community from overseas. Indian democracy has now, sadly, been ushered into a debate of the 21st century: Should democratic states become security-states as well? Security measures are, of course, no substitute for the political processes needed to heal rifts between countries and communities. But they cannot be ignored either.

This immediately raises two challenges. One is related to questions of democracy in general. The prospect of a security-state understandably and rightly concerns rights activists. Yet it is clear that the “security of populations” is itself emerging as a powerful right. In the developed countries today, it is hard to distinguish measures adopted to fend off terrorist attacks from the politics of refugees and “illegal” immigration. Of course, the balance between security and other rights cannot be decided in any a priori fashion, which is why it always should be open to debates with reference to specific contexts. There is, besides, the very important question of ensuring that the pursuit of security does not become a tool for oppression of and discrimination against minorities or immigrants. But the globalisation of this debate is what marks our times.

The second challenge arises from deep within the history of Indian politics. To have an effective cordon sanitaire against terror would require India to inject a degree of efficiency, alertness, and performance into an administrative apparatus that simply has not delivered on these scores for decades. Since the 1970s, government or public institutions in India have gradually ceased to be effective deliverers of goods and services. There is much that democracy in India has achieved by way of giving many low-caste and marginalised communities a sense of participation in the country’s governmental institutions.

The growth of this politics of identity, however, has made elections into the mainstay of Indian democracy. It has distanced politics from issues of governance, and has gone hand in hand with a deepening of corruption, financial and otherwise, on the part of politicians and officials. A large number of the elected members of Parliament have criminal cases pending against them. Media reports and everyday experience suggest an elephantine, unaccountable, inefficient bureaucracy mired in selfindulgent use of resources with corruption and inefficiency often going together.

There was, for example, no effective coast guard force to intercept the Mumbai terrorists. It took the first lot of firefighters hours to respond to the fire at the Taj. It took nine hours to mobilise the commando force many of whom are usually kept busy providing “security” to politicians who often see such security as a matter of prestige. It has also been reported that a very large grant recently given to the Mumbai police for their modernisation was mostly spent on buying luxury cars and other expensive items for the use of senior officers and their ministers!

Creating a security system that will provide effective protection to the population from terrorist attacks will not be easy. Corruption follows public money in India as it does, unfortunately, in many countries, and undermines performance. Secondly, the effective functioning of any institution in India in a non-partisan manner would require that institution to be insulated from political interference. The second condition is not easily met. The required reforms thus call for a certain kind of political will that the political class in India has not quite shown in recent times.

Yet India cannot any longer avoid debates over security and other rights. The government has already announced certain measures making anti-terror laws more stringent. Some other reforms will also certainly follow on paper and perhaps in action as well. Many members of the Indian educated middle classes are angry at the inability of their government to protect them.

We do not know how effective that anger will be. If the nature of the political class remains the same, Indians will probably have to get used to living with a degree of terror the exact quantum of which is difficult to predict. One hopes though that the nation will address both the long-term and short-term problems together so that, important as security considerations are, this tragedy will initiate not just a rethink but also a revitalisation of democratic institutions in India as they cope with the challenges of this global century.

It Ain’t Working

2008-12-17T21:59:00.000-08:00

By M H Ahssan

US should stop propping up the Pakistani military

US aid to Islamabad is now close to $2 billion a year, putting Pakistan on par with Israel and Egypt as the top recipients of American assistance. And on the eve of the Mumbai terrorist assaults, the US persuaded the IMF to hand a near-bankrupt Pakistan an economic lifeline in the form of a $7.6 billion aid package, with no strings attached. Despite such largesse, Pakistan is host to the world’s most wanted men and the main al-Qaeda sanctuary. Recent polling shows that Osama bin Laden is more popular in Pakistan than ever, even as America’s negative rating there has soared.

Let’s be clear: US policy on Pakistan isn’t working, and unless Washington fundamentally reverses course, it risks losing the war in Afghanistan and making the West an increasing jihadi target, including the scene of Mumbaistyle murderous rampages. After all, as the history of terrorism since the 1980s attests, innovative terrorist strikes carried out against Indian targets have later been replicated in the West. That includes attacks on symbols of state authority, the mid-air bombing of a commercial jetliner and coordinated strikes on a city transportation system.

The jihadis’ logic in employing softstate India as their laboratory has been that if they can bleed the world’s largest democracy through novel and recurrent attacks, they perfect techniques for application against the tougher free societies in the West. If the terrorists can bring the developing world’s most successful democratic experiment under siege, with the intent to unravel its secular and pluralistic character, it is only a matter of time before western societies get similarly besieged. That the tourism ad’s “incredible India” is, in reality, little more than a miserable India — which presents itself as an easy target by merely craving international sympathy as a constant victim — does not detract from the danger that the Mumbai attack masterminds have set up a model for use elsewhere.

Yet the US response, however positive in the diplomatic realm, has failed to recognise that the Mumbai attacks mark a potent new threat to free societies and that unless the masterminds are brought to justice, such cold-blooded rampages are likely to be carried out in the West. The alacrity with which the American media returned to the India-Pakistan hyphenation in covering the Mumbai assaults betrayed superficiality and old mindsets — a failing compounded by media organisations calling the attackers not terrorists but “militants” (like the ‘New York Times’) or “gunmen” (including the ‘Washington Post’). Diplomatically, it has been deja vu — the US exerting pressure and Islamabad staging yet another anti-terrorist charade to deflect that pressure and pre-empt Indian retaliation.

Given the easy manner outlawed terrorist outfits in Pakistan resurface under new names, the US knows well that a ban on any group or temporary detention of a terrorist figure is of little enduring value. More Mumbai-type attacks can be prevented only if the masterminds are identified and put on trial and their sponsors in the Pakistani military-intelligence establishment are, with the help of Europeans, indicted in The Hague for war crimes. Yet, despite a broken Pakistan policy, the US seems reluctant to fix its approach. The reason for that is not hard to seek: US policy remains wedded to the Pakistani institution that reared the forces of jihad — the military.

Indeed, US policy is still governed by a consideration that dates back to the 1950s — treating the Pakistani military as central to the pursuit of American geopolitical objectives. As American scholars Lloyd and Susanne Rudolph have put it, “For roughly 50 years, the US destabilised the South Asia region by acting as an offshore balancer. Its actions allowed Pakistan to realise its goal of ‘parity’ with its much-bigger neighbour and to try to best that neighbour in several wars”. The more recent “de-hyphenation” of India and Pakistan was not a calculated US policy shift but the product of Pakistan’s descent into shambles and India’s notable rise after 1998. Under George Bush, US policy simply went from hyphenation to parallelism. That has involved building strategic partnerships with and selling arms to both. For the first time ever, the US is building parallel intelligence-sharing and defence-cooperation arrangements with both.

The war in Afghanistan and the containment strategy against Iran have only reinforced the US dependence on the Pakistani military, despite mountains of intelligence indicating the latter is playing both sides — bolstering the Taliban and other terror groups while pretending to be a counterterror ally. Instead of helping empower Pakistan’s civilian government to gain full control over the national security system, including the nuclear establishment and the ISI, US policy acts as a stumbling block by continuing to prop up the Pakistani military through generous aid and weapon transfers, including bombers and submarines of relevance only against India. For its own sake, Washington has to stop pampering and building up the military as Pakistan’s pivot.

By fattening the Pakistani military, America has, however inadvertently, allowed that institution to maintain cosy ties with terror groups. A break from this policy approach would be for the Barack Obama administration to embrace the idea currently being discussed in Washington — condition further aid to the reconfiguration of the Pakistani military to effectively fight terror and to concrete actions to end institutional support to extremism. If not, the US is bound to lose two wars — the one in Afghanistan and the other on transnational terror — while staying mired in Iraq.

Plug The Security Holes

2008-12-16T23:35:00.000-08:00

By Radha Kumar

For the federal investigating agency, look at US example

The government has finally put security reforms on a fast track. They have announced a Bill to set up a National Investigating Agency, a new coastal command, amending the CISF Act to protect private facilities and a slew of other measures. How far will these help to prevent the security lapses Mumbai made so painfully clear?

The three key areas for reform are: intelligence gathering and communication, specialist training and equipment and coordination between the federal and state ministries concerned. The first of these areas has received the greatest attention. In September, the Moily commission on administrative reforms suggested the creation of a federal investigative authority which could be set up by ordinance or through a constitutional amendment to the National Security Act of 1980. A similar proposal was made by the Subrahmanyam committee on security reforms set up by the NDA government. Neither proposal was acted upon, in part, according to Moily, because the states are concerned that this might infringe upon their rights in the federation. While this is an important concern, it ought to be possible to accommodate it, for example, through state consultation in an advisory capacity, so that national security, which is a federal responsibility, is not jeopardised as it has so often been.

According to the Moily and Subrahmanyam committees’ recommendations, the authority would be responsible for coordinating tasks that are divided amongst different intelligence agencies, such as RAW, IB and CBI. Additionally, it has been suggested that the authority coordinate between state police forces through the appointment of special police commissioners. Though the coordination of intelligence inputs is under the purview of the national security adviser and the coordination of police forces is under the home ministry,having a dedicated authority will at least make a sole agency responsible. To this extent it may succeed in plugging some of the existing gaps, especially in information communication to prevent or minimise terrorist attacks.

But an authority whose mandate is restricted to intelligence would not be able to deal with the national security challenge of how to effectively protect us from terrorism. While some of the other measures announced, such as setting up a coastal command, are intended to remedy glaring problems such as the navy lapses, coast guard breaches and police inadequacies that the Mumbai attacks pinpointed, it is not clear that a slew of complementary measures will work unless they are integrated with each other. As the failure to implement the Dharma Vira and Soli Sorabjee committees’ recommendations for police reforms shows, leaving this job to the respective ministries or service branches is chancing our luck.

In the past 15 years of terrorist attacks, our security forces have progressively weakened rather than strengthened in their capacity to protect us, and successive ministers and chiefs of services appear to bicker amongst themselves rather than attempt to reverse the trend. Who will tackle this problem? The federal authority would have been ideally positioned to build consensus on reforms and their implementation in the security forces, but many fear that such a comprehensive mandate might concentrate too much power in the hands of a very few.

In the US, the Department of Homeland Security faced similar problems. It was given too many and far too wide-ranging executive powers to counter terrorism, and it ran into stiff resistance in implementing recommendations that required reform in powerful departments and agencies. Nevertheless, it did have important success in coordinating between the border forces, coast guard, customs, transport, immigration and citizenship officials, and in acting as a conduit between them and the intelligence agencies. This success was generated only after the department won the right to choose its personnel rather than have them nominated.

While in actual practice the Department of Homeland Security infringed human rights, especially at immigration points, these violations diminished over time as it appointed special advisory and monitoring bodies. Its activities include training in emergency response and disaster preparedness. And it comprises not one but a series of coordinating councils, between services, departments and states. Most of its advisory bodies constitute a public-private partnership: they include members of industry, academia and think tanks, and their job is to propose innovative and practical measures for improving national security as well as to monitor performance for efficiency and human rights protection. In our case, for example, a first aim should be to regulate our financial and cellular services.

Most of the lessons to be learned from the US are those that we know. Our intelligence agencies and security services have to work together if they are to be effective; we need to combine training, materials and fair working conditions if we want our forces to be alert; and we have to develop a publicprivate partnership, with a focus on human rights protection and community outreach, if we are to give our security the deep roots that it needs.

A federal investigative authority alone may not be sufficient to reform our security. We need an authority which can, at the least, oversee the reforms that are required in our armed forces, coast guard, police and intelligence agencies as well as in our financial and cellular services. If those reforms are to be separately undertaken by the concerned ministries, then we need to hear what they will be and on what time frame. Logically, they should be simultaneous and the reforms should be integrated in order to facilitate interoperability in times of crisis. Otherwise it will be impossible to coordinate between intelligence and action, a scenario that we are all too familiar with.

High Risk Games

2008-12-15T03:41:00.001-08:00

By M H Ahssan

Taliban attempt to choke NATO supplies offers India diplomatic opportunity

In the aftermath of 26/11, Taliban forces have attacked NATO military vehicles and supplies passing through Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) five times over the last week. This is the route through which 70 per cent of NATO supplies for troops in Afghanistan pass. But close to 250 NATO vehicles have been blown up over the past week alone. Given the international nature of the outcry following 26/11 and the Security Council’s ban on the Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD), this could be the Taliban’s way of warning the US not to put too much pressure on Pakistan.

Despite repeated Taliban attacks security at NATO’s shipping terminals appears to have been left to overstretched local police. Taliban violence against members of the secular Awami National Party now ruling NWFP has also been spiralling, unchecked by security forces. Meanwhile, President Asif Zardari has demonstrated the shakiness of civilian control by acting on the basis of a hoax call supposedly made to him by Indian foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee, which resulted in the redeployment of troops from the Afghan to the Indian border. The lack of security for NATO supplies suggests that somebody is sending the message that Pakistan controls a critical route for supplying NATO troops in Afghanistan, and too much pressure on Pakistan could lead to this route being choked.

This, however, is a high-risk strategy as it will end up alienating the world. Even a minimal definition of the Pakistani military’s responsibilities would require it to protect NATO’s supply lines. Consistent failure to do so would expose unwillingness to assume any responsibility. At the same time, failure to protect NWFP’s elected government would end up ceding the province to the Taliban, in which case the army would have demonstrated its incapacity to defend Pakistan’s sovereignty. Neither will choking what is currently NATO’s main supply route into Afghanistan work, as NATO is already working on two alternative supply routes, one through Russia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan and the other through Georgia, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan.

German interior minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said in New Delhi on Friday that Pakistan needs to do more than just banning the JuD. The Taliban attacks offer a diplomatic opportunity to New Delhi to build an international coalition to pressure Pakistan to curb jihadi militias, as everybody’s interests — including Pakistan’s — are affected by Islamabad’s inability to rein them in. India suffered 26/11 and would like to prevent further terrorist attacks. President-elect Barack Obama plans to increase US troop presence in Afghanistan, which would require enhanced rather than degraded supply lines, not to mention the denial of Pakistani territory as a safe haven to launch attacks on NATO troops. Pakistan itself can undergo true democratic consolidation only when religious extremists and their sympathisers in the security services are taken out of the equation.

It’s all in the Mind

2008-12-15T03:39:00.000-08:00

By Mukul Sharma

People who believed the development of language, writing, printing and the internet were revolutionary milestones in communication, are in for a surprise: the next revolution will literally blow their minds. For starters, being able to control a computer with the mind was the ultimate goal of human-machine interaction. It’s now going to be available from next year. An Australian company plans to release an adventure game which will allow players to move items on screen using merely their thoughts. Move over Yoda.

The game comes with a helmet containing non-invasive brainwave sensors to tune into electroencephalograph (EEG) signals that are naturally produced by the brain to detect players’ thoughts and connect them wirelessly to their PCs. So when the action requires a boulder to be moved out of the way, all that the player has to do is concentrate mentally on shifting it. No keystrokes, no mouse, no joystick.

Want to make it more magical? Why not will the rock to vanish? Volunteers testing the game who did that the first time said it left them feeling totally freaked out and spooky, as if some ‘Star Wars’ kind of force was suddenly with them.

And that’s not all. Such helmets are also capable of monitoring a subject’s emotional state and facial muscle movement so that even a wink, frown or smile can be transferred automatically without any added input to onscreen personas. People who have a presence in such virtual worlds like ‘Second Life’, for example, and have to key in ‘grin’ for their avatars to do likewise now merely have to grin themselves.

Among other things it means that communication between humans and machines which has so far been limited to conscious interaction, with non-conscious communication — expression, intuition, perception — reserved solely for the human realm, is about to change forever.

More significantly, what’s also about to change is how people communicate with one another. The US Army has just awarded a $4 million contract to the universities of California at Irvine, Carnegie Mellon and Maryland to start work on developing similar ‘thought helmets’ that would harness silent brainwaves for secure communication among troops. The army hopes the project will lead to direct mental control of military systems by thought alone and the idea is to have the device evaluate parts of the brain that interpret speech, translate the activity into information that can be relayed wirelessly to someone else’s headset, and then send the other person the message.

Initially the receiver would hear a robotic voice speaking the command into his headphones but scientists plan to develop a more sophisticated version in which commands are rendered in the speaker’s voice. Ultimately, the voice too could be retranslated back into reversed EEG signals and delivered directly to the brain so that the recipient would perceive the message as a thought.

With advances in miniaturisation and nanotechnology it’s only a matter of time before the helmet functions become small enough to be implanted directly into the brain so that the headset can be done away with altogether. People are already talking about the first civilian use for such embedded ‘radio telepathy’ being used for cellphone talking.

Does this mean our thoughts would be available to everybody? Not at all; just like our talking on telephones is not for general public consumption (but yes, hacking could still be a problem). Also, like cellphone service providers that exist today, there would then be thought transference providers who would automatically route callers through a controlled gateway and if one then didn’t want to pick up an incoming or ‘missed thought’, he or she could refuse to acknowledge or answer. A social network of concurring group minds, though, would flourish who wouldn’t require any other device to communicate between themselves.

At present we have no way of telling what such a world would be like to live in but — mind it — it would be spectacularly different from the one in which we live now.

The Guilty Men

2008-12-15T03:36:00.000-08:00

By V Balachandran

Our intelligence agencies must be held to account.

On September 28, 1977, Japanese airliner JAL 472 from Paris to Tokyo was hijacked by Japanese Red Army (JRA) terrorists and taken to Dhaka. The hijackers had boarded the aircraft at Bombay. Osamu Maruoka, a JRA leader, when arrested in Tokyo on November 25, 1987, told his interrogators that they chose Bombay airport for its lax security after surveying other airports.

I was asked to fly to Pretoria in December 1994 to get a briefing from South African intelligence agencies on a possible white extremist plot to kill President Mandela during his ensuing visit to Delhi in January 1995. The intelligence report said that the assailants had chosen India for its lax security. Fortunately, nothing happened during that visit.

Nothing has changed during the last 30 years. It is, therefore, not surprising that a handful of terrorists could hold Mumbai to ransom for four days last month. Over a period of time our security institutions have deteriorated to such an extent that it would have been better had some of them been disbanded. It was reported that the NSG team could not reach Mumbai in time because the aircraft was not ready. When the NSG was raised in 1984-85 there was a standing instruction that a contingent should be ready at the Delhi airport with an ARC aircraft 24 hours, 365 days a year. Who has amended these instructions?

There have been several instances when ARC aircraft have been used for private purposes — as a VIP taxi — disregarding the standing orders. A parliamentary committee should go into the logs of the ARC fleet to find out how many private visits have been undertaken in the recent past under the guise of security-related visits. UPA leaders who had totally ignored internal security all these years now want to position NSG detachments all over the country. This is a knee-jerk reaction. The success of the NSG is thanks to its constant training in weaponry and mock exercises in their base camp, which keep them alert. Would such training be available all over India? How many years will it take to organise such facilities?

The biggest lacuna in our anti-terrorist methodology is intelligence integration. After every terrorist strike, state police and the Intelligence Bureau (IB) indulge in shadowboxing over the IB’s ‘alerts’ with the latter leaking information to the press that it had passed on intelligence and the states maintaining that what they received was not actionable information. Neither the IB nor the RAW has any legal standing. By the same token they have no legal accountability. The
state police forces, however, are answerable to the courts. They always get the rap.

Most intelligence establishments elsewhere in the world, barring dictatorships, have a system of accountability. The US has the Congressional Intelligence Committee authorising intelligence budgets. UK Parliament’s Intelligence & Security Committee inquires into major incidents involving its three major intelligence services. Most of these reports are available on government websites. In contrast, our intelligence services operate in great secrecy, mostly hiding their failures. It is high time we started an audit system to judge the performance of our intelligence outfits. The huge amounts of secret funds spent by these organisations should also be subjected to external audit since complaints abound that top intelligence officials spend some of the funds on personal indulgences.

While the US could establish a major overhaul of its internal security within 46 days of 9/11 thereby averting any subsequent attack on its soil, we have done nothing despite being battered by major terrorist attacks starting with the 1993 Bombay serial blasts. Till September 2008 the government of India did not think of studying the US government’s successful homeland security system (DHS). The pivot of this system are 58 DHS-funded 24-hour state fusion centres that continuously update state police and local security agencies with inputs from the National Counterterrorist Centre which integrates intelligence from a 16-member Intelligence Community.

In India, coordination between different state police systems and central agencies on terrorism is woefully inadequate. This would not have happened had we adopted a central counterterrorist information exchange centre as recommended by the Kargil review committee. Unlike the clear-cut demarcation of responsibilities laid down when the DHS was formed, we in India have a colonial and antiquated system of rules of business, which only lists the portfolios of different ministries without any description of responsibilities. We still do not know what the exact roles of the National Security Council or national security adviser are vis-a-vis that of the ministry of home affairs with regard to internal security. If at all the responsibilities are demarcated, it is not known publicly.

In the US, apart from constant Congressional oversight, pressure to perform well is codified and monitored by a legally empowered Homeland Security Advisory Council with 24 members, and a majority of them are from outside the bureaucracy. This is because of the belief that citizens are affected by terrorism and they should have a clear idea of what the government is doing for them. Unfortunately in India, general public or their representatives have no say in such matters.

A Novel Way to Tackle Pakistan

2008-12-15T03:14:00.000-08:00

By Sreeram Chaulia

\A new study entitled "World at Risk" by a bipartisan American Congressional commission reveals that if one were to map terrorism and weapons of mass destruction (WMD) today, then "all roads would intersect in Pakistan". It warns that the next attacks on America might originate from Pakistan and urges the US president to take steps on a priority basis "securing" Islamabad's biological and nuclear weapons. Paraphrasing the report, the New Yorker magazine commented that Pakistan as a "nation itself is a kind of WMD".

Coming on the heels of the Mumbai terrorist attacks, which were planned and organized by Pakistani fundamentalists, the American warnings reflect a major dilemma facing international policymakers - how to make the world safe from Pakistan? The nature and extent of this challenge has been summed up by former US secretary of state Madeleine Albright, "Pakistan has everything that gives you an international migraine. It has nuclear weapons, it has terrorism, extremists, corruption [and is] very poor ... "

What options does the world have to counter the multiple threats to international security and peace being posed by a dysfunctional and dangerously adrift country? Should a country that is itself a WMD be allowed to possess actual WMDs, which are not only liable to fall into the "wrong" hands but also be used by the "right" hands for emotional blackmail?

Irfan Hussain, a leading Pakistani newspaper columnist, recently bemoaned that "Pakistan was the only country in the world that negotiates with a gun to its own head. Our argument goes something like this: If you don't give us what we need, the government will collapse and this might result in anarchy, and a takeover by Islamic militants. Left unstated here is the global risk these elements would pose as they would have access to Pakistan's nuclear arsenal." A state which threatens to explode and destroy everyone else on the planet unless it is pampered is akin to a suicide bomber whose message to his enemies is to change their policies "or else".

The issue to ponder for world leaders is whether an "international migraine" and "suicidal" state should be allowed to possess WMDs or, for that matter, be self-governing? Sovereignty, as an organizing principle of world affairs, is not merely a bestower of rights but also comes with certain responsibilities towards one's own people and to other sovereign countries. Pakistan's track record is one of waving the red flag and screaming SOS to assert its rights as a sovereign country, without fulfilling the corollary obligations.

While many developing countries may have failed to live up to the expectations of their populations to improve living standards and governance, Pakistan has the extra cachet of exporting terrorism and extremist religious values to other countries. The controversial call for "international humanitarian intervention" over the failure of a state to protect its own people from grave human rights abuses is premised on what is happening within a country. To be fair, Pakistan has not fared worse than many other developing countries on domestic human development indices. Albright's mention of corruption and poverty as causes for concern about Pakistan is not relevant as these are not unique failings.

What stands Pakistan apart, though, is its ability to breed terrorism, extremist ideology and nuclear fecklessness and project these outwards at the rest of the world. The correct international response to this should not a "humanitarian intervention" but one based on global collective will, represented by the United Nations. Given the sui generis mixture of threats presented by Pakistan, an equally novel response is warranted. Since Pakistani sovereignty has been misused to impair the sovereignty of its neighbors - Afghanistan to the west and India on the east - the first strategy of an international collective will should be to circumscribe the country's sovereignty and place it under custodianship.

After World War I, when a transfer of colonies occurred between the losing German and Turkish empires to the victorious European ones, a mechanism called "mandate" was introduced at the League of Nations. Mandated territories were deemed unfit for self-rule by the victors of the war and taken over as de facto colonies "until such time as they are able to stand alone". After World War II, successors of the League mandates were rechristened "Trust Territories" and passed on to the UN to be "prepared for independence and majority rule".

Although mandates were thinly disguised veneers for colonial aggrandizement, they contain the germs of an idea for application to the now universally acknowledged "Pakistan problem". Both mandates and trusts were believed by practitioners at the time to be temporary waiting phases before a land could earn the spurs of a fully sovereign state. Although the judgement of whether these wards had the attributes of sovereign states was left to imperialist calculations, the notion that an international legal agreement could decide when and whether a country should be allowed to be sovereign is informative.

For Pakistan to be rid of its WMDs, hate preachers, terrorists and their infrastructure, only a handover of its sovereignty to a UN-designated custodian authority will be effective. Since sovereignty is closely associated with nationalism, such a grand experiment will undoubtedly meet fierce resistance within the Pakistani establishment and society. But there is no other way for the country's Augean Stables to be cleaned. Washington's pressure and protestations from Kabul or New Delhi have come and gone in vain for years without any concrete change in Pakistan's behavior.

A spell of international custodianship over Pakistan is the only feasible means for long-term transformation of the sub-continent's problem child. Those representatives of the Pakistani state who wish to strengthen moderation will benefit from a handover of sovereignty to the UN because the move promises to enhance civilian power and demilitarize policymaking. For Pakistani civil society, which has been struggling to counter what Harvard University professor Jessica Stern called the "jihad culture", a decade or so of international custodianship would open the space needed to rebuild the country with the cement of civic consciousness and religious tolerance. Pakistani activists should welcome coming under a UN trust and ally with like-minded forces pressing for this solution.

Besides Pakistani nationalism, an international campaign to bring the country under UN custodianship is bound to run into two stumbling blocks. The 57-member Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) is likely to vote as a bloc in the UN General Assembly to stymie efforts to constrict the foreign and domestic powers of one of its members. Pakistan is no ordinary member of the OIC because of its possession of the so-called "Islamic bomb" and losing a nuclear-armed Muslim power will rankle with the OIC.
The other hurdle is China, for which the temporary loss of Pakistan's sovereignty will be a big blow to its strategic vision of dominating Asia by tying down India. The Chinese veto has been used sparingly in the UN Security Council, but it will definitely come down with a thump on the table if Pakistan is proposed to be delivered to international custodianship.

Can the OIC and China be convinced by a determined international movement to vest Pakistan's sovereignty in the UN's trust? Can Pakistan as a nation come around to accepting this bitter medicine as a necessary prelude to renaissance? These questions need to be answered soon for the sake of world peace. The longer the delay in legal takeover of Pakistan, the greater the chances are that the "WMD nation" will explode.

The Monster in India's Mirror

2008-12-15T03:07:00.000-08:00

By Arundhati Roy

We've forfeited the rights to our own tragedies. As the carnage in Mumbai raged on, day after horrible day, our 24-hour news channels informed us that we were watching "India's 9/11". And like actors in a Bollywood rip-off of an old Hollywood film, we're expected to play our parts and say our lines, even though we know it's all been said and done before.

As tension in the region builds, US Senator John McCain has warned Pakistan that if it didn't act fast to arrest the "bad guys", he had personal information that India would launch air strikes on "terrorist camps" in Pakistan and that Washington could do nothing because Mumbai was India's 9/11.

But November isn't September, 2008 isn't 2001, Pakistan isn't Afghanistan, and India isn't America. So perhaps we should reclaim our tragedy and pick through the debris with our own brains and our own broken hearts so that we can arrive at our own conclusions.

It's odd how, in the last week of November, thousands of people in Kashmir supervised by thousands of Indian troops lined up to cast their vote, while the richest quarters of India's richest city ended up looking like war-torn Kupwara - one of Kashmir's most ravaged districts.

The Mumbai attacks are only the most recent of a spate of terrorist attacks on Indian towns and cities this year. Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Delhi, Guwahati, Jaipur and Malegaon have all seen serial bomb blasts in which hundreds of ordinary people have been killed and wounded. If the police are right about the people they have arrested as suspects in these previous attacks, both Hindu and Muslim, all Indian nationals, it obviously indicates that something's going very badly wrong in this country.

If you were watching television you might not have heard that ordinary people, too, died in Mumbai. They were mowed down in a busy railway station and a public hospital. The terrorists did not distinguish between poor and rich. They killed both with equal cold-bloodedness.

The Indian media, however, were transfixed by the rising tide of horror that breached the glittering barricades of "India shining" and spread its stench in the marbled lobbies and crystal ballrooms of two incredibly luxurious hotels and a small Jewish center.

We're told that one of these hotels is an icon of the city of Mumbai. That's absolutely true. It's an icon of the easy, obscene injustice that ordinary Indians endure every day. On a day when the newspapers were full of moving obituaries by beautiful people about the hotel rooms they had stayed in, the gourmet restaurants they loved (ironically one was called Kandahar), and the staff who served them, a small box on the top left-hand corner in the inner pages of a national newspaper (sponsored by a pizza company, I think) said, "Hungry, kya?" ("Hungry eh?"). It, then, with the best of intentions I'm sure, informed its readers that, on the international hunger index, India ranked below Sudan and Somalia.

But of course this isn't that war. That one's still being fought in the Dalit bastis (settlements) of our villages; on the banks of the Narmada and the Koel Karo rivers; in the rubber estate in Chengara; in the villages of Nandigram, Singur, Chattisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa, Lalgarh in West Bengal; and the slums and shantytowns of our gigantic cities.

That war isn't on TV. Yet.

So maybe, like everyone else, we should deal with the one that is.

Terrorism and the need for context
There is a fierce, unforgiving fault line that runs through the contemporary discourse on terrorism. On one side (let's call it Side A) are those who see terrorism, especially "Islamist" terrorism, as a hateful, insane scourge that spins on its own axis, in its own orbit, and has nothing to do with the world around it, nothing to do with history, geography or economics. Therefore, Side A says, to try to place it in a political context, or even to try to understand it, amounts to justifying it and is a crime in itself.

Side B believes that, though nothing can ever excuse or justify it, terrorism exists in a particular time, place and political context, and to refuse to see that will only aggravate the problem and put more and more people in harm's way. Which is a crime in itself.

The sayings of Hafiz Saeed who founded the Lashkar-e-Taiba (Army of the Pure) in 1990 and who belongs to the hardline Salafi tradition of Islam, certainly bolsters the case of Side A. Hafiz Saeed approves of suicide bombing, hates Jews, Shi'ites and democracy, and believes that jihad should be waged until Islam, his Islam, rules the world.

Among the things he said are:

"There cannot be any peace while India remains intact. Cut them, cut them so much that they kneel before you and ask for mercy."

And: "India has shown us this path. We would like to give India a tit-for-tat response and reciprocate in the same way by killing the Hindus, just like it is killing the Muslims in Kashmir."

But where would Side A accommodate the sayings of Babu Bajrangi of Ahmedabad, India, who sees himself as a democrat, not a terrorist? He was one of the major lynchpins of the 2002 Gujarat genocide and has said (on camera):

We didn't spare a single Muslim shop, we set everything on fire…we hacked, burned, set on fire … we believe in setting them on fire because these bastards don't want to be cremated, they're afraid of it … I have just one last wish … let me be sentenced to death … I don't care if I'm hanged ... just give me two days before my hanging and I will go and have a field day in Juhapura where seven or eight lakhs [seven or eight hundred thousand] of these people stay ... I will finish them off … let a few more of them die ... at least 25,000 to 50,000 should die.

And where in Side A's scheme of things would we place the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) bible, We, or, Our Nationhood Defined by M S Golwalkar, who became head of the RSS in 1944. (The RSS is the ideological heart, the holding company of the Hindu fundamentalist Bharatiya Janata Party, BJP, and its militias. The RSS was founded in 1925. By the 1930s, its founder, Dr K B Hedgewar, a fan of Benito Mussolini, had begun to model it overtly along the lines of Italian fascism.)

It says:
Ever since that evil day, when Muslims first landed in Hindustan, right up to the present moment, the Hindu nation has been gallantly fighting on to take on these despoilers. The race spirit has been awakening.
Or:
To keep up the purity of its race and culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of the Semitic races - the Jews. Race pride at its highest has been manifested here ... a good lesson for us in Hindustan to learn and profit by.
Of course Muslims are not the only people in the gun sights of the Hindu right. Dalits have been consistently targeted. Recently, in Kandhamal in Orissa, Christians were the target of two-and-a-half months of violence that left more than 40 dead. Forty thousand people have been driven from their homes, half of whom now live in refugee camps.

All these years, Hafiz Saeed has lived the life of a respectable man in Lahore as the head of the Jamaatut Dawa, which many believe is a front organization for the Lashkar-e-Taiba. He continues to recruit young boys for his own bigoted jihad with his twisted, fiery sermons. On December 11, the United Nations imposed sanctions on the Jamaatut Dawa. The Pakistani government succumbed to international pressure and put Hafiz Saeed under house arrest.

Babu Bajrangi, however, is out on bail and lives the life of a respectable man in Gujarat. A couple of years after the genocide, he left the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP, a militia of the RSS) to join the Shiv Sena (another rightwing nationalist party). Narendra Modi, Bajrangi's former mentor, is still the chief minister of Gujarat.

So the man who presided over the Gujarat genocide was re-elected twice, and is deeply respected by India's biggest corporate houses, Reliance and Tata. Suhel Seth, a TV impresario and corporate spokesperson, recently said, "Modi is God." The policemen who supervised and sometimes even assisted the rampaging Hindu mobs in Gujarat have been rewarded and promoted.

The RSS has 45,000 branches and 7 million volunteers preaching its doctrine of hate across India. They include Narendra Modi, but also former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, current leader of the opposition L K Advani, and a host of other senior politicians, bureaucrats, police and intelligence officers.

And if that's not enough to complicate our picture of secular democracy, we should place on record that there are plenty of Muslim organizations within India preaching their own narrow bigotry.

So, on balance, if I had to choose between Side A and Side B, I'd pick Side B. We need context. Always.

A close embrace of hatred, terrifying familiarity and love
On this nuclear sub-continent, that context is Partition. The Radcliffe Line, which separated India and Pakistan and tore through states, districts, villages, fields, communities, water systems, homes and families, was drawn virtually overnight. It was Britain's final, parting kick to us in 1947.

Partition triggered the massacre of more than a million people and the largest migration of a human population in contemporary history. Eight million people, Hindus fleeing the new Pakistan, Muslims fleeing the new kind of India, left their homes with nothing but the clothes on their backs.

Each of those people carries, and passes down, a story of unimaginable pain, hate and horror, but yearning too. That wound, those torn but still unsevered muscles, that blood and those splintered bones still lock us together in a close embrace of hatred, terrifying familiarity, but also love. It has left Kashmir trapped in a nightmare from which it can't seem to emerge, a nightmare that has claimed more than 60,000 lives.

Pakistan, the Land of the Pure, became an Islamic Republic, and then very quickly a corrupt, violent military state, openly intolerant of other faiths.

India on the other hand declared herself an inclusive, secular democracy. It was a magnificent undertaking, but Babu Bajrangi's predecessors had been hard at work since the 1920s, dripping poison into India's bloodstream, undermining that idea of India even before it was born.

By 1990, they were ready to make a bid for power. In 1992 Hindu mobs exhorted by L K Advani stormed the Babri Masjid and demolished it.

By 1998, the BJP was in power at the center in Delhi. The US "war on terror" put the wind in their sails. It allowed them to do exactly as they pleased, even to commit genocide and then present their fascism as a legitimate form of chaotic democracy.

This happened at a time when India had opened its huge market to international finance and it was in the interests of international corporations and the media houses they owned to project it as a country that could do no wrong. That gave Hindu nationalists all the impetus and the impunity they needed.

This, then, is the larger historical context of terrorism on the sub-continent - and of the Mumbai attacks. It shouldn't surprise us that Hafiz Saeed of the Lashkar-e-Taiba is from Shimla (India) and L K Advani of the RSS is from Sindh (Pakistan).

In much the same way as it did after the 2001 parliament attack, the 2002 burning of the Sabarmati Express, and the 2007 bombing of the Samjhauta Express, the government of India announced that it had "incontrovertible" evidence that the Lashkar-e-Taiba, backed by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), was behind the Mumbai strikes.

The Lashkar has denied involvement, but remains the prime accused. According to the police and intelligence agencies, the Lashkar operates in India through an organization called the "Indian Mujahideen". Two Indian nationals, Sheikh Mukhtar Ahmed, a special police officer working for the Jammu and Kashmir Police, and Tausif Rehman, a resident of Kolkata in West Bengal, have been arrested in connection with the Mumbai attacks.

So already the neat accusation against Pakistan is getting a little messy.

Almost always, when these stories unspool, they reveal a complicated global network of foot soldiers, trainers, recruiters, middlemen and undercover intelligence and counter-intelligence operatives working not just on both sides of the India-Pakistan border, but in several countries simultaneously.

In today's world, trying to pin down the provenance of a terrorist strike and isolate it within the borders of a single nation state is very much like trying to pin down the provenance of corporate money. It's almost impossible.

In circumstances like these, air strikes to "take out" terrorist camps may take out the camps, but certainly will not "take out" the terrorists. And neither will war.

Also, in our bid for the moral high ground, let's try not to forget that the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, the LTTE of neighboring Sri Lanka, one of the world's most deadly terrorist groups, were trained by the Indian army.

Releasing Frankensteins
Thanks largely to the part it was forced to play as America's ally, first in its war in support of the Afghan Islamists and then in its war against them, Pakistan, whose territory is reeling under these contradictions, is careening toward civil war.

As recruiting agents for America's jihad against the Soviet Union, it was the job of the Pakistani army and the ISI to nurture and channel funds to Islamic fundamentalist organizations. Having wired up these Frankensteins and released them into the world, the US expected it could rein them in like pet mastiffs whenever it wanted to. Certainly it did not expect them to come calling in the heart of the homeland on September 11. So once again, Afghanistan had to be violently remade.

Now the debris of a re-ravaged Afghanistan has washed up on Pakistan's borders.

Nobody, least of all the Pakistani government, denies that it is presiding over a country that is threatening to implode. The terrorist training camps, the fire-breathing mullahs, and the maniacs who believe that Islam will, or should, rule the world are mostly the detritus of two Afghan wars. Their ire rains down on the Pakistani government and Pakistani civilians as much, if not more, than it does on India.

If, at this point, India decides to go to war, perhaps the descent of the whole region into chaos will be complete. The debris of a bankrupt, destroyed Pakistan will wash up on India's shores, endangering us as never before.

If Pakistan collapses, we can look forward to having millions of "non-state actors" with an arsenal of nuclear weapons at their disposal as neighbors.

It's hard to understand why those who steer India's ship are so keen to replicate Pakistan's mistakes and call damnation upon this country by inviting the United States to further meddle clumsily and dangerously in our extremely complicated affairs. A superpower never has allies. It only has agents.

On the plus side, the advantage of going to war is that it's the best way for India to avoid facing up to the serious trouble building on our home front.

The Mumbai attacks were broadcast live (and exclusive!) on all or most of our 67 24-hour news channels and god knows how many international ones. TV anchors in their studios and journalists at "ground zero" kept up an endless stream of excited commentary.

Over three days and three nights we watched in disbelief as a small group of very young men, armed with guns and gadgets, exposed the powerlessness of the police, the elite National Security Guard, and the marine commandos of this supposedly mighty, nuclear-powered nation.

While they did this, they indiscriminately massacred unarmed people, in railway stations, hospitals, and luxury hotels, unmindful of their class, caste, religion or nationality.

(Part of the helplessness of the security forces had to do with having to worry about hostages. In other situations, in Kashmir for example, their tactics are not so sensitive. Whole buildings are blown up. Human shields are used. The US and Israeli armies don't hesitate to send cruise missiles into buildings and drop daisy cutters on wedding parties in Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan.)

But this was different. And it was on TV.

The boy-terrorists' nonchalant willingness to kill - and be killed - mesmerized their international audience. They delivered something different from the usual diet of suicide bombings and missile attacks that people have grown inured to on the news.

Here was something new. Die Hard 25. The gruesome performance went on and on. TV ratings soared. Ask any television magnate or corporate advertiser who measures broadcast time in seconds, not minutes, what that's worth.

Eventually the killers died and died hard, all but one. (Perhaps, in the chaos, some escaped. We may never know.)

Throughout the standoff the terrorists made no demands and expressed no desire to negotiate. Their purpose was to kill people, and inflict as much damage as they could, before they were killed themselves. They left us completely bewildered.
Collateral damage When we say, "Nothing can justify terrorism," what most of us mean is that nothing can justify the taking of human life. We say this because we respect life, because we think it's precious.

So what are we to make of those who care nothing for life, not even their own? The truth is that we have no idea what to make of them, because we can sense that even before they've died, they've journeyed to another world where we cannot reach them.

One TV channel (India TV) broadcast a phone conversation with one of the attackers, who called himself "Imran Babar". I cannot vouch for the veracity of the conversation, but the things he talked about were the things contained in the "terror e-mails" that were sent out before several other bomb attacks in India. Things we don't want to talk about any more: the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992, the genocidal slaughter of Muslims in Gujarat in 2002, the brutal repression in Kashmir.

"You're surrounded," the anchor told him. "You are definitely going to die. Why don't you surrender?"

"We die every day," he replied in a strange, mechanical way. "It's better to live one day as a lion and then die this way." He didn't seem to want to change the world. He just seemed to want to take it down with him.

If the men were indeed members of the Lashkar-e-Taiba, why didn't it matter to them that a large number of their victims were Muslim, or that their action was likely to result in a severe backlash against the Muslim community in India whose rights they claim to be fighting for?

Terrorism is a heartless ideology, and like most ideologies that have their eye on the big picture, individuals don't figure in their calculations except as collateral damage.

It has always been a part of, and often even the aim of, terrorist strategy to exacerbate a bad situation in order to expose hidden fault lines. The blood of "martyrs" irrigates terrorism. Hindu terrorists need dead Hindus, communist terrorists need dead proletarians, Islamist terrorists need dead Muslims. The dead become the demonstration, the proof of victimhood, which is central to the project.

A single act of terrorism is not in itself meant to achieve military victory; at best it is meant to be a catalyst that triggers something else, something much larger than itself, a tectonic shift, a realignment. The act itself is theater, spectacle and symbolism, and today the stage on which it pirouettes and performs its acts of bestiality is Live TV. Even as the Mumbai attacks were being condemned by TV anchors, the effectiveness of the terror strikes was being magnified a thousand-fold by the TV broadcasts.

Through the endless hours of analysis and the endless op-ed essays, in India at least, there has been very little mention of the elephants in the room: Kashmir, Gujarat and the demolition of the Babri Masjid.

Instead, we had retired diplomats and strategic experts debate the pros and cons of a war against Pakistan. We had the rich threatening not to pay their taxes unless their security was guaranteed. (Is it alright for the poor to remain unprotected?) We had people suggest that the government step down and each state in India be handed over to a separate corporation.

We had the death of former prime minister V P Singh, the hero of Dalits and lower castes, and the villain of upper caste Hindus, pass without a mention.

We had Suketu Mehta, author of Maximum City and co-writer of the Bollywood film Mission Kashmir give us his version of George W Bush's famous "Why They Hate Us" speech. His analysis of why religious bigots, both Hindu and Muslim, hate Mumbai, "Perhaps because Mumbai stands for lucre, profane dreams and an indiscriminate openness."

His prescription: "The best answer to the terrorists is to dream bigger, make even more money, and visit Mumbai more than ever."

Didn't Bush ask Americans to go out and shop after 9/11? Ah yes. 9/11, the day we can't seem to get away from.

Shadowy history of suspicious terror attacks
Though one chapter of horror in Mumbai has ended, another might have just begun. Day after day, a powerful, vociferous section of the Indian elite, goaded by marauding TV anchors who make Fox News look almost radical and left-wing, have taken to mindlessly attacking politicians, all politicians, glorifying the police and the army, and virtually asking for a police state.

It isn't surprising that those who have grown plump on the pickings of democracy (such as it is) should now be calling for a police state. The era of "pickings" is long gone. We're now in the era of grabbing by force, and democracy has a terrible habit of getting in the way.

Dangerous, stupid oversimplifications like the police are good/politicians are bad, chief executives are good/chief ministers are bad, army is good/government is bad, India is good/Pakistan is bad are being bandied about by TV channels that have already whipped their viewers into a state of almost uncontrollable hysteria.

Tragically this regression into intellectual infancy comes at a time when people in India were beginning to see that, in the business of terrorism, victims and perpetrators sometimes exchange roles.

It's an understanding that the people of Kashmir, given their dreadful experiences of the past 20 years, have honed to an exquisite art. On the mainland we're still learning. (If Kashmir won't willingly integrate into India, it's beginning to look as though India will integrate/disintegrate into Kashmir.)

It was after the 2001 parliament attack that the first serious questions began to be raised. A campaign by a group of lawyers and activists exposed how innocent people had been framed by the police and the press, how evidence was fabricated, how witnesses lied, how due process had been criminally violated at every stage of the investigation.

Eventually, the courts acquitted two out of the four accused, including S A R Geelani, the man whom the police claimed was the mastermind of the operation. A third, Showkat Guru, was acquitted of all the charges brought against him, but was then convicted for a fresh, comparatively minor offense.

The Supreme Court upheld the death sentence of another of the accused, Mohammad Afzal. In its judgment the court acknowledged that there was no proof that Mohammed Afzal belonged to any terrorist group, but went on to say, quite shockingly, "The collective conscience of the society will only be satisfied if capital punishment is awarded to the offender."

Even today we don't really know who the terrorists that attacked the Indian parliament were and who they worked for.

More recently, on September 19th of this year, we had the controversial "encounter" at Batla House in Jamia Nagar, Delhi, where the Special Cell of the Delhi police gunned down two Muslim students in their rented flat under seriously questionable circumstances, claiming that they were responsible for serial bombings in Delhi, Jaipur, and Ahmedabad in 2008. An assistant commissioner of police, Mohan Chand Sharma, who played a key role in the parliament attack investigation, lost his life as well. He was one of India's many "encounter specialists", known and rewarded for having summarily executed several "terrorists".

There was an outcry against the Special Cell from a spectrum of people, ranging from eyewitnesses in the local community to senior Congress party leaders, students, journalists, lawyers, academics and activists, all of whom demanded a judicial inquiry into the incident.

In response, the BJP and L K Advani lauded Mohan Chand Sharma as a "Braveheart" and launched a concerted campaign in which they targeted those who had dared to question the integrity of the police, saying to do so was "suicidal" and calling them "anti-national". Of course, there has been no enquiry.

Only days after the Batla House event, another story about "terrorists" surfaced in the news. In a report submitted to a sessions court, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) said that a team from Delhi's Special Cell (the same team that led the Batla House encounter, including Mohan Chand Sharma) had abducted two innocent men, Irshad Ali and Moarif Qamar, in December 2005, planted two kilograms of RDX (explosives) and two pistols on them, and then arrested them as "terrorists" who belonged to Al Badr (which operates out of Kashmir).

Ali and Qamar, who have spent years in jail, are only two examples out of hundreds of Muslims who have been similarly jailed, tortured and even killed on false charges.

This pattern changed in October 2008 when Maharashtra's Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS), which was investigating the September 2008 Malegaon blasts, arrested Hindu preacher Sadhvi Pragya, a self-styled God man, Swami Dayanand Pande and Lieutenant Colonel Purohit, a serving officer of the Indian army. All the arrested belong to Hindu nationalist organizations, including a Hindu supremacist group called Abhinav Bharat.

The Shiv Sena, the BJP, and the RSS condemned the Maharashtra ATS and vilified its chief, Hemant Karkare, claiming he was part of a political conspiracy and declaring that "Hindus could not be terrorists." L K Advani changed his mind about his policy on the police and made rabble rousing speeches to huge gatherings in which he denounced the ATS for daring to cast aspersions on holy men and women.

On November 25, newspapers reported that the ATS was investigating the high profile VHP chief Pravin Togadia's possible role in the blasts in Malegaon (a predominantly Muslim town). The next day, in an extraordinary twist of fate, Hemant Karkare was killed in the Mumbai attacks. Chances are the new chief, whoever he is, will find it hard to withstand the political pressure that is bound to be brought on him over the Malegaon investigation.

While the Sangh Parivar does not seem to have come to a final decision over whether or not it is anti-national and suicidal to question the police, Arnab Goswami, anchorperson of Times Now television, has stepped up to the plate. He has taken to naming, demonizing and openly heckling people who have dared to question the integrity of the police and armed forces.

My name and the name of the well-known lawyer Prashant Bhushan have come up several times. At one point, while interviewing a former police officer, Arnab Goswami turned to the camera: "Arundhati Roy and Prashant Bhushan," he said. "I hope you are watching this. We think you are disgusting."

For a TV anchor to do this in an atmosphere as charged and as frenzied as the one that prevails today amounts to incitement, as well as threat, and would probably in different circumstances have cost a journalist his or her job.

So, according to a man aspiring to be the next prime minister of India, and another who is the public face of a mainstream TV channel, citizens have no right to raise questions about the police.

This in a country with a shadowy history of suspicious terror attacks, murky investigations, and fake "encounters". This in a country that boasts of the highest number of custodial deaths in the world yet refuses to ratify the international covenant on torture. A country where the ones who make it to torture chambers are the lucky ones because at least they've escaped being "encountered" by our Encounter Specialists. A country where the line between the underworld and the Encounter Specialists virtually does not exist.

The monster in the mirror
How should those of us whose hearts have been sickened by the knowledge of all of this view the Mumbai attacks, and what are we to do about them?

There are those who point out that US strategy has been successful inasmuch as the United States has not suffered a major attack on its home ground since 9/11. However, some would say that what America is suffering from now is far worse.

If the idea behind the 9/11 terror attacks was to goad America into showing its true colors, what greater success could the terrorists have asked for? The US military is bogged down in two unwinnable wars, which have made the United States the most hated country in the world. Those wars have contributed greatly to the unraveling of the American economy and who knows, perhaps eventually the American empire.

(Could it be that battered, bombed Afghanistan, the graveyard of the Soviet Union, will be the undoing of this one too?)

Hundreds of thousands of people, including thousands of American soldiers, have lost their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan. The frequency of terrorist strikes on US allies/agents (including India) and US interests in the rest of the world has increased dramatically since 9/11.

George W Bush, the man who led the US response to 9/11, is a despised figure not just internationally, but also by many of his own people.

Who can possibly claim that the United States is winning the "war on terror?"

Homeland security has cost the US government billions of dollars. Few countries, certainly not India, can afford that sort of price tag. But even if we could, the fact is that this vast homeland of ours cannot be secured or policed in the way the United States has been. It's not that kind of homeland.

We have a hostile nuclear-weapons state that is slowly spinning out of control as a neighbor; we have a military occupation in Kashmir and a shamefully persecuted, impoverished minority of more than 150 million Muslims who are being targeted as a community and pushed to the wall, whose young see no justice on the horizon, and who, were they to totally lose hope and radicalize, will end up as a threat not just to India, but to the whole world.

If 10 men can hold off commandos and the police for three days, and if it takes half a million soldiers to hold down the Kashmir Valley, do the math. What kind of homeland security can secure India?

Nor for that matter will any other quick fix.

Anti-terrorism laws are not meant for terrorists; they're for people that governments don't like. That's why they have a conviction rate of less than 2%. They're just a means of putting inconvenient people away without bail for a long time and eventually letting them go.

Terrorists like those who attacked Mumbai are hardly likely to be deterred by the prospect of being refused bail or being sentenced to death. It's what they want.

What we're experiencing now is blowback, the cumulative result of decades of quick fixes and dirty deeds. The carpet's squelching under our feet.

The only way to contain - it would be naive to say end - terrorism is to look at the monster in the mirror. We're standing at a fork in the road. One sign says "Justice,” the other "Civil War". There's no third sign and there's no going back. Choose.

Arundhati Roy was born in 1959 in Shillong, India. She studied architecture in New Delhi, where she now lives, and has worked as a film designer, actor and screenplay writer in India. A 10th anniversary edition of her novel, The God of Small Things (Random House), for which she received the 1997 Booker Prize, will be officially published within days. She is also the author of numerous non-fiction titles, including An Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire. This piece was published by Outlook India, which is sharing it with TomDispatch.com.

Terrorism in India: An Uncertain Relief

2008-12-15T01:20:00.000-08:00

By M H Ahssan

While India's relations with most of her neighbours remain fraught with tensions, her most urgent security crises remain overwhelmingly internal. Indeed, even international friction increasingly articulates itself through sub-conventional and terrorist wars that are predominantly internal, in that they manifest themselves principally on Indian soil. Islamist extremist terrorism sourced from Pakistan and, over the past few years, increasingly from Bangladesh, falls into this category.

A relief, in numbers
The recent trajectory of internal conflicts in India has been mixed. Overall, fatalities connected with terrorism and insurgency declined marginally from 2,765 in 2006 to 2,598 in 2007, and dramatically, from their peak at 5,839 in 2001.

In Jammu & Kashmir (J&K), for over a decade and a half the bloodiest theatre of terrorism in the country, there was strong relief, with terrorism-related fatalities – at 777 – falling below the 'high intensity conflict' mark of a thousand deaths for the first time since 1990. At peak in 2001, fatalities in J&K had risen to 4,507. Clearly, 2007 brought tremendous relief to the people of the state, but a great deal remains to be achieved before normalcy is restored.

In India's troubled Northeast, wracked by multiple insurgencies, the situation worsened considerably, with fatalities more than doubling, from 427 in 2006 to 1,019 in 2007, principally because of a dramatic escalation in terrorist activities in Assam and Manipur.

Effects of the war on terror
The numbers alone, however, do not give a clear picture of the magnitude of the challenges confronting New Delhi. Indeed, the sheer spread of Islamist terrorist incidents across India – linked to groups that originally operated exclusively within J&K – is now astonishing, with incidents having been engineered in widely dispersed theatres virtually across the country.

The trend in J&K has little correlation with specific changes in operational strategies or tactics, or with the range of 'peace initiatives' the Government has undertaken domestically and with Pakistan. This is demonstrated by the fact that the downward trend in violence has been consistently sustained since 2001, irrespective of the transient character of relationships between India and Pakistan, or any escalation or decline of operations within J&K, and has been maintained even through periods of escalating tension and provocative political rhetoric. This trend commenced immediately after the 9/11 attacks in the US and the subsequent threat by the US for Pakistan to "be prepared to be bombed back into the Stone Age."

It was this threat, a steady build-up of international pressure, and intense international media focus on Pakistan's role in the sponsorship of terrorism, which combined to force Pakistan to execute a U-turn in its policy on Afghanistan, and dilute visible support to terrorism in J&K. Thereafter, the unrelenting succession of crises in Pakistan have undermined the country's capacities to sustain past levels of terrorism in J&K – particularly since a large proportion of troops had to be pulled back from the Line of Control and International Border for deployment in increasingly violent theatres in Balochistan, NWFP and the FATA areas. Pakistan's creeping implosion has undermined the establishment's capacities to sustain the 'proxy war' against India at earlier levels.

Regrettably, if Western attention is diverted from the region, or if the Islamists in Pakistan are able to carve out autonomous capacities and regions, free of their dependence on the state's covert agencies, or if there is a radical escalation in the 'global jihad' in the wake of the proposed US withdrawal from Iraq in the foreseeable future, the 'jihad' in Kashmir and across India could, once again, intensify dramatically.

Bad governance and marginalization
Similarly, there is overwhelming evidence that the limited 'gains' in terms of declining Maoist violence outside Andhra Pradesh, are the result, not of any significant initiatives on the part of the state's agencies, but rather, of a Maoist decision to focus on political and mass mobilisation in order to "intensify the people's war throughout the country, intending to cumulatively cover virtually the length and breadth of India.

Far from confronting this subversive onslaught, the incompetence of Governments – most dramatically the West Bengal Government and its actions in Nandigram, but less visibly in several other States – has presented the Maoists with proliferating opportunities to deepen subversive mobilization and recruitment.

Despite the dramatic macroeconomic growth experienced over the past decade and a half, vast populations have remained outside the scope of minimal standards on a wide range of developmental indices. Indeed, the processes of 'development' have themselves been severely disruptive; what we are witnessing today is at once a process of globalisation and marginalisation; the rise of oppressed castes through political processes, and parallel increases in the intensity of oppression; unimagined wealth and distressing poverty.

Need stronger political mandate
Nevertheless, in at least two major theatres of insurgency, Tripura in the Northeast and Andhra Pradesh in the South, local administrations have backed the police to execute extraordinarily successful counterinsurgency campaigns. Clearly, where the will and the vision exist, the Indian state has the capacity to combat violence and terrorism.

Unfortunately, a widening crisis of governance afflicts much of India today, with a continuous erosion of administrative capacities across wide areas. There is, moreover, an insufficient understanding within the security establishment of the details of insurgent strategy and tactics, and the imperatives of the character of response. The deficiencies of perspective and design are visible in the fact that no comprehensive strategy has yet been articulated to deal with insurgency and terrorism. The security forces have, at great cost in lives, made dramatic gains from time to time, but there have been continuous reverses, usually as a result of repeated political miscalculations and the refusal to provide the necessary mandate to the forces operating against the extremists.

Islam And Compassion – An Scriptural, Historical And Contemporary Perspective

2008-12-15T00:56:00.000-08:00

By M H Ahssan

Islam is generally associated with Jihad popularly interpreted as war. But the fact is that a careful understanding of the Qur’an in its totality clearly establishes that mercy, compassion and peace are the predominant values. There are few verses in Qur’an on war and killing. These verses have been given more importance both by some Muslims as well as antagonistic non-Muslims.

Muslims, because they wanted to justify war for territorial conquests and non-Muslims as they wanted to prove Islam is a religion of war and violence. Both these Muslim’s as well as non-Muslims, have strong vested interests in understanding the Qur’an in their own ways so as to promote their interests. However, those who have no such interests, would like to understand Qur’an in its real spirit.]

Before we proceed further I would like to emphasize that Islam is a religion, not a political system or ideology, as some Muslims and non-Muslims would like to project it. It is also not true that in Islam politics cannot be divorced from religion. If we examine Islamic history, it would be abundantly clear that Islam as a religion had always been twisted to suit political ends. It is politics which always reined supreme subordinating religion to its interest.

Religion represents human beings’ inner, spiritual need and always stresses spiritual values and practices designed to realize these spiritual values. Spiritual values can be realized only when there are conditions of peace both inner and outer. Inner peace is necessary for outer peace and similarly peace out there reinforces peace within. No religion thus will promote war and destruction.

It is only rulers and conquerors who resort to war and often use religion or certain aspects of religion for the justification of territorial war. But a truly religious person who takes spiritual aspects of religion seriously, would not only shun war but oppose it, whatever justification by the rulers.

The Prophet of Islam was intensely spiritual person and hence Qur’an describes him as Rahmatun lil alamin (Mercy of the worlds). Had he been in pursuit of power he would not be described as such. The whole biography of the Prophet (PBUH) shows he never went out in pursuit of power. He never raised an army for that purpose. He remained committed to peace.

However, there were occasions in his life when he had to fight, fight in defence of himself and fledgling community of Muslims as unbelievers of Mecca never left him in peace. He had to migrate from Mecca when oppression by Meccan unbelievers became intolerable. It speaks volumes for the Prophet (PBUH) that he never prayed against them even during worst of the situations he faced.

When he entered Mecca during last years of his life he never sought revenge from anyone.[1] He showed compassion to worst of his enemies like Hinda who had chewed liver of his Uncle Hamza. The tribal law of Arabia required that she be killed and her liver also be chewed. However, Prophet (PBUH) being highly spiritual man, resorted to compassion rather than qisas (retaliation in equal measure).

The Prophet never declared war against any nation, nor against any tribe. But when attacked he fought for his defense. All such verses in Qur’an about war pertain to such situations Prophet faced. In many cases the tribes with which Prophet had entered into peace treaty broke it and treacherously attacked Muslims. It was only then that Qur’an ordered him to fight in self defence.

We would like to quote some such verses so that we can understand its context. In this context the chapter 9 known as Surah Bara’ or chapter on Immunity. This chapter mainly deals with the problem of some tribes breaking their treaty with Muslims repeatedly and advises Muslims to declare immunity (bara’) from such treaty as these tribes were not observing terms and conditions of the treaty.

Maulana Muhammad Ali, a noted commentator on the Qur’an observed in the opening statement to this chapter, “The title of this chapter is taken from the opening statement, which contains declaration of immunity from obligations with such of the idolatrous tribes as had repeatedly broken their engagements. This declaration is one of the most important events in the history of Islam, for hitherto the Muslims had constantly suffered from the hostility of the unscrupulous idolatrous tribes who had no regard for their treaties, dealing a blow at the Muslims wherever they had an opportunity of doing so.”

Thus it should be remembered that in this chapter there are verses asking Muslims to fight and kill wherever they find members of the tribe who had broken the treaty and dealt heavy blow to Muslim’s. Taken out of this context the verses will surprise any reader of these verses as to how a compassionate and just God could order such killings. But these verses must be read in the context in which they were revealed and utter adversity which Muslims were facing in that society where violence was very way of life.

Thus this chapter opens with these words, ” A Declaration of immunity from Allah and His Messenger to those of the idolaters with whom you made an agreement.” (9:1) Now this statement right at the outset of the chapter 9 explains why Muslims were allowed to fight against idolatrous tribes. The fact that Muslims had entered into treaty with these tribes clearly show that they wanted to co-exist with these idolaters provided they reciprocated. Peaceful co-existence was the main objective.
But when these tribes broke their promise the Qur’an said to Muslims, “Will you not fight a people who broke their oaths and aimed at the expulsion of the Messenger, and they attacked you first. Do you fear them? But Allah has more right that you should fear Him, if you are believers.” (9:13)

Thus this verse clearly states that Muslims have been attacked first and hence they should defend themselves and fight back fearing only Allah and not the enemy. It is well known principle of the civilized world to defend oneself if attacked. How can then one say that Qur’an promotes war and bloodshed and requires believers to kill kafirs. The verses in isolation may seem to mean that way but one must understand significance of these verses only in totality of the Qur’anic verses including value-giving or normative verses. They cannot be taken in isolation.

What is often quoted is the following verse which is apparently shocking, if read in isolation, not only of the historical context but also of normative Qur’anic verses. The verse reads, “Fight those who believe not in Allah, not in the last Day, nor forbid that which Allah and His Messenger have forbidden, nor follow the Religion of Truth, out of those who have been given the Book, until they pay the tax in acknowledgement of superiority and they are in a state of subjection.” (9:29)
Obviously this verse refers to Christians and not idolaters as it uses the words ‘those who have been given the Book’. The Qur’an validates the religions brought by previous prophets from Adam to Christ and calls their followers as people of the Book. And hence there is no reason to declare war against them on the grounds of idolatry. The only reason to declare war against them was determination of Roman Empire which was Christian to uproot Islam and hence Qur’an wanted Muslims to fight to finish with them.

There are other verses in the Qur’an which clearly say that Jews and Christians are also believers and Allah has sent His prophets with truth to them and Muslims must respect them. The Prophet of Islam extended hand of friendship to the Christians of Najran and met their delegation inside his mosque and insisted that they (Christians) pray inside the mosque. He also signed a treaty with them guaranteeing them freedom of their religion and protection of their churches.

Also there are verses in Qur’an which guarantees paradise to Jews and Christians if they do good deeds. Thus in verse 2:62 we read, “Surely who believe, and those who are Jews, and Christians, and the Sabians, whoever believes in Allah and the last Day and does good, they have their reward with their Lord, and there is no fear for them, nor shall they grieve,” if the above verse clearly states that those Jews and Christians who believe in Allah and the Last Day and do good deeds they shall have their reward with their Lord then why Quran ask Muslims to fight until the followers of the Book are defeated unless they are trying to wipe out Muslims and uproot Islam as the Roman Empire wanted to?

The Qur’an in fact is book of guidance, not of war and encourages Muslims to live in peace and harmony and coexist with all people be they unbelievers or Jews or Christians or of any other persuasion whatsoever. It is thus highly necessary that we understand Qur’an and its purpose for which it was revealed. Thorough Meccan period Qur’an kept on advising Muslims to bear all problems with patience and steadfastness and not to retaliate. The Muslims bore all oppression with greatest patience.

In fact the great virtues Qur’an stresses are compassion (rahmah), forgiveness (’afw) and patience (sabr). The Qur’an opens with four words Bism Allah al-Rahman Al-Rahim i.e. I begin in the name of Allah who is Merciful and Compassionate. Thus mercy and compassion are among Allah’s names, among others. And Muslims begin all their work with these words i.e. I begin in the name of Allah who is Merciful and Compassionate. This is so to make Muslims aware of importance of mercy and compassion.

I can say without any hesitation that peace, mercy and compassion are very central to Islam not fighting with non-believers, as one finds in the theology developed during medieval ages. We must thus explore why mercy, compassion, steadfastness, justice and benevolence so central to Qur’anic teachings lost their importance compared to ‘jihad’. In the contemporary world also, some misguided youth who commit acts of terrorism continue to draw from this theology.

As for theology and religious laws called shari’ah were human product in as much as human beings formulated them on selective readings of Qur’an and hadith (Prophet’s sayings. There is definite difference between Qur’anic pronouncements and theological or Shari’ah formulations.

As to this difference we must bear in mind that a religion is practiced at various levels, by people of first generation who live and work with the founder, by ordinary people who convert to that religion for their own reasons, or conviction, by ruling classes to suit their own interests and by those who completely identify themselves with its spirit and renounce their worldly interests.

Among those who were of first generation and lived and worked with the Prophet (PBUH) there were those who imbibed true spirit of Islam and practiced its values and virtues given above. Then there were those who developed political ambitions and interpreted religion in their own way, yet tried also to follow its spirit to a limited extent. Also, Islam kept on spreading outside Arabia and people of non-Arab origin embraced it for their own reasons.

Thus various groups developed in Islam apart from the ruling class Muslims. Many ‘ulama sided with the ruling class and did what was desired by the rulers and some ‘ulama resisted temptations to side with rulers and ruling classes to adhere to the spirit of Islam. Many Muslims withdrew from this struggle and began to live life in isolation from public view in khanqah (hospices).

Those ‘ulama who sided with rulers interpreted Qur’an and hadith in a way acceptable to rulers but never became popular among ordinary Muslims and their views were rejected. But those who developed Islamic laws or constructed Islamic theology independently became acceptable and popular among people but they too carried stamp of their time on their legal and theological systems.

Entire legal and theological system was formulated in a situation in which Muslims were an overwhelming majority and also the time frame and the period in which they worked had its own logic which could not be avoided. Though the Qur’an repeatedly stressed that all previous religions were also true and brought by prophets sent by Allah the view that Islam was superior could not be avoided and Muslims became more privileged than others.

The entire legal and theological system carried stamp of this thinking and is fully validated even today. Muslims belonged to the ruling majority and non-Muslims, even those described as people of the Book faced the same fate though they were fully protected and their lives guaranteed. Yet they were non-equal. I think according to the values of the time it was the best bargain for them as among other religious communities Muslims or people of other religions, other than those belonging to non-ruling religious communities, they were treated in a much worse manner.

But the world of Sufis was very different. Their lives were completely devoted to spiritual practices and there was no question of any discrimination. The Muslim Sufis, Christian mystics and Jewish Cabala parishioners met and indulged in spiritual practices on equal terms. The Sufis were devoted to values and not only rituals. The virtues promoted by Qur’an – compassion, patience, humility and quest for truth were practiced in their real spirit.

The Sufis were not drawn towards grandeurs of this world. They preferred utter simplicity and were content with basic needs. One can practice values in their true spirit only when one resists desires and greed. We find striking examples of compassion and forgiveness among these Sufis. They could not bear suffering of others and were moved to remove suffering.

A Sufi saint called Junaid once saw an ant crawling in his room. He thought he would unconsciously trample upon it and it is likely to be killed and this thought made him very restless. He began thinking of ways and means to save the ant. He saw a vessel containing wheat flour and he gently lifted the ant and left it inside the vessel so that it can feed on it and also be saved.

They never wanted to possess anything beyond their basic needs and would give away the rest in the way of Allah. They used to receive offerings from their followers and they would spend all that by running kitchen called langar where all those hungry could eat whenever they liked. Langar was free for all. Even if they had little they would share with those needier.

Once a poor man came to Nizamuddin Awliya, a great sufi saint of thirteenth century India. He wanted few tankas (currency unit of the time) but Nizamuddin had none. He thought for a while and gave him his worn out shoe. The man was surprised as to how this is going to solve his problem. But he had no other way and took it and went out. On the way he met a man and inquired about the worn out shoe. He said it was given to him by Nizamuddin.

He said how much do you need and the poor man told him how much he needed. He gave him twice as much and took away the shoe as some thing highly precious. Then the man understood why Nizamuddin gave him his worn out shoe. These Sufis would help all suffering souls in whatever way they could. They tried to control their desire and interpreted the word jihad, unlike the ruling classes as war against ones own desires rather than war against eternal enemy. For them greatest enemy was ones own desire as this desire actually leads to war for grabbing others territory, others possessions. They called fighting against own desire as jihad-e-akbar i.e. the greatest jihad.

On their scale of values compassion and forgiveness and reducing others suffering stood much higher than fighting against external enemies. They considered themselves as followers of those of Prophet’s companions who were poor and had no worldly ambition and were ever ready to sacrifice everything they had. It is these Sufis who attracted non-Muslims to Islam by being role model.

Today in our contemporary world consumerism and greed are our great enemies. Without resisting undue desire for luxury and comforts at the cost of others we cannot avoid wars. Gandhiji, the saint of modern India observed that there is enough on this earth to fulfill our desires but not enough to satisfy the greed of one. Only those devoid of compassion and blinded by naked desire are responsible for war and destruction in our age also.

Islam’s basic emphasis is also on compassion, human dignity and justice and peace. Islam as a religion spread fast among people because of these values, not because of sword. Sword was wielded by rulers and they frightened rather than attracted whereas Sufis attracted rather than frightened because of their emphasis on values. Those misguided terrorists need to coolly reflect on these values.

Unfortunately they hardly take into account Islamic values of forgiveness, compassion for human suffering and upholding sanctity of human life. This is possible only when you separate religion and religious conduct from power. Powerfulness and religiosity can never go together. Power and arrogance go together. Any individual or nation drunk with power becomes arrogant.

Maulana Rum, a great sufi of his time chided his disciples when they started beating a drunkard when he fell down on them saying he is not in his senses but you are real drunkard as you are drunk with power on helpless person and he is drunk with wine not with power. We cannot be compassionate if we are too drunk with power. I would like to conclude with a quotation from Maulana Rum who represents real spirit of Islam. He said ‘come come to me if you are a Jew or Christian or a Muslim or even if you are a sinner as you are all human beings. Allah is compassionate and forgives sinners, if they repent sincerely. Compassion and forgiveness, not power and arrogance, will make us better Muslims’.

The Terror Protocol

2008-12-10T22:32:00.000-08:00

By M H Ahssan

The anger is real, as real as the terror we see and experience. The sense of outrage is not against individuals, not against particular political parties, not even against the government but against the system in general and the helplessness to change the behemoth, which we characterise as “the system”. For the first time the terrorist has done us a service. He has ruthlessly scraped the raw and festering wound of Indian pride and not only united us but also imbued us with a determination to settle only for concrete action. In every tragedy and calamity, there is an opportunity. We have to see it, understand it and seize it.

Responses — both at the level of rhetoric and at the level of concrete action — have been many and varied. Both are important. Solid, quiet work towards strengthening our existing system has to be accompanied by the right sounds, the right symbolism, and the right international moves. Each must reinforce the other.

We have to start by developing a terror protocol. The numerous agencies and bodies involved in securing our security have to be vastly improved, and they must function like well-oiled wheels of a common chariot. The terror protocol must provide for specified steps, clearly spelt out, in the event of a terror strike. It can have different sub-categories — for example, to differentiate between a hostage and a non-hostage situation, a hijack versus a bomb explosion — but it must delineate the precise steps to be taken in each situation by each agency, state and federal. This should not be too difficult after the proposed federal anti-terror coordinating agency is set up.

A central control room with a supercomputer is a must, with similar control rooms in each state capital, into which every piece of information, every kind of lead is immediately fed. The best and the brightest Indian IT brains and sleuths must man the central and state control rooms. Prevention and cure are both best done by evaluation of intelligence and of evidence.

In each terror incident, the perpetrators must be made to pay and bleed. Unless there is a price to pay there cannot be even minimalist deterrence. Efficient prosecution to ensure conviction of the accused is one part of the story. Timebound implementation of the sentence in the event of conviction, including a timebound decision on clemency petitions, is another part. This cannot be a matter of politics and the timeline for such decisions must be stipulated by law.

The most important part is to impose a penalty on those actors, be they state or non-state actors, in other parts of the world, especially Pakistan. The possibility of Pakistan ever handing over any such organiser of terror is virtually non-existent. There are enough organisations in every country — RAW in India is one such — and there are enough precedents, practices and protocols in international law and relations where such foreign actors can and have been neutralised without the futile and tedious process of seeking their extradition.

There are also many countries which have done much more than India in this regard, with even less provocation. Democracy has limitations but it has never ceased to be based on realpolitik, whether of the Machiavellian or the Chanakya sort. Formal war is hardly an option and all variants of hot pursuit and targeted missile attacks involve some element of such formal war.

All this has to be accompanied by the usual but vital additions — a global diplomatic and publicity blitzkrieg in every major country sharing the detailed evidence of Pakistani complicity, revamping our intelligence network, considerable enhancement of the power, status and entitlement of the beat constable, larger police reforms,substantial funding for equipment, personnel and institutions engaged in the war on terror and a vow to continue these efforts uninterrupted and unchanged for at least two years continuously. The results will be there for all to see in less than 18 months.

Serious Business Of War

2008-12-10T22:30:00.000-08:00

By M H Ahssan

Can India exercise the military option against Pakistan?

The suggestion of external affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee that India could exercise a military option against Pakistan has alarmed the international community, particularly the US, that a war between the two nuclear-armed neighbours could see the first ever use of nuclear weapons by both sides. It is precisely this nuclear nightmare scenario that Pakistan’s establishment and its military brass, in particular, have often exploited to blackmail the world each time India wants to take them to task for their many acts of terror. Is war really an option?

On at least one occasion in the recent past — after the attack on the Indian Parliament in December 2001 — India appeared serious about exercising the military option against Pakistan. Apparently, our politicians were energised only when they were directly targeted; as if, the deaths of thousands of other Indians — mostly by Pakistansponsored terror groups — weren’t reason enough. But the only chance to hit Pakistan with swift air attacks was in the immediate aftermath of the attack on the Parliament. Technically, Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK), where many of the terror camps were located, is a part of India, since India claims all of the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir. Hitting terror camps within it can thus be justified. This opportunity was lost as the Vajpayee government dithered.

Deploying the army for almost a year thereafter along the Indo-Pak border was of no use. The Vajpayee government gave in to Washington’s pressure not to distract the Pakistan army from supporting America’s ‘war on terror’ on the Pak-Afghan border; as if India’s war was not against terror. Pakistan today is using the same argument now to slip out of its current predicament by threatening to shift its forces from its western border with Afghanistan to the Indo-Pak border. And the Bush administration is once again counting on India backing down. But what was apparent then and even now is that India’s political elite, having taken a tough posture, is in a bind. India has a long tradition of a complete absence of strategic thinking on matters of national security and our politicians are just not up to the task.

This is essentially a Nehruvian hangover. Jawaharlal Nehru insisted that the military must be outside independent India’s policymaking if the country were to shed the tradition of the British raj where the commander-in-chief was second only to the viceroy in the cabinet. That apart, Nehru cut defence spending to 1 per cent of India’s GDP. As a consequence this country was humiliated by the Chinese aggression of 1962. Nehru’s legacy of uninformed politicians and half-informed bureaucrats running the ministry of defence is still alive in Raisina Hill. In short, the lack of understanding of national security issues amongst the neta-babu set-up is glaringly evident.

If India has to become a great power then Nehru’s legacy of civilian supremacy in matters of national security must be abandoned. Just as the Indian economy was turned around by a group of technocratic professionals led by Manmohan Singh in 1990, at this dark hour, we need two cabinet ministers — one each for the ministry of defence and a new ministry of internal security — who understand what military options India can now exercise.

A full-fledged war against Pakistan — on the scale of the 1971 war or on the lines of the American invasion of Iraq — could tie us down in long-drawn battles of attrition and give India little in terms of territorial gains to put pressure on Pakistan. Without that, you cannot negotiate concessions from your enemy. Moreover, Pakistan has always made it known that if India attempts to dismember it again like in 1971 it won’t hesitate to use nuclear weapons. However, as the Kargil conflict has shown, even nuclear weapon states have the strategic space for a swift military operation with India simultaneously attacking a number of terror training camps in PoK by missiles and special forces units.

And if Pakistan were to escalate matters by responding with tactical nuclear weapons in the battlefield then New Delhi must remind Islamabad that it has the capacity to annihilate Pakistan. The fear of mutually assured destruction — the MAD syndrome — prevents even a trigger-happy nuclear weapon state from using nuclear weapons in the first instance. In fact, studies of the Indo-Pak stand-off in 1990 have shown that the professionalism of the Pakistan army and the deep understanding of the damage that nuclear weapons could do prevented the military brass of Pakistan from seriously considering a nuclear strike against India. The same can be said even now about Pakistan’s armed forces and that of India’s. They know the business of conflict management, unlike our politicians.

Winston Churchill had once said that “war is too serious a business to be left to generals”. But Churchill was a passionate student of military history and had done some military service. The British military historian, Basil Liddell-Hart, had also commented that “if you want peace, understand war”. Until our politicians get to understand war, it might be a good idea to turn Churchill’s words on their head, and say that war is too serious a business, to be left only to politicians.

‘2,000 kids die every day due to injuries’

2008-12-10T22:26:00.000-08:00

By M H Ahssan

Injury — unintentional or because of accidents — has become the world’s latest epidemic to affect children.

In the first comprehensive global assessment of unintentional childhood injuries, World Health Organisation (WHO) has made a chilling revelation — 8.3 lakh children are dying every year across the world to such preventable injuries. According to the report, car crashes, drowning, burn injuries, petty falls and poisoning together kill 2,000 children every day.

Road crashes have been found to be the biggest killers with 2.6 lakh children dying of it every year and another 10 million getting injured. They are also the leading cause of death among 10-19-year-olds and a leading cause of child disability. Episodes of drowning is also common in under five-year-olds, killing 1.75 lakh children every year, almost 480 lives every day. Three million children, however, survive a drowning incident.

Fire-related burns kill nearly 96,000 children a year and the death rate is 11 times higher in low-and middle-income countries. A simple fall has also been found to be fatal. Nearly 47,000 children — 130 every day — fall to their death every year, but hundreds of thousands more, sustain less serious injuries from a fall. According to the report, 66% of fatal falls are the result of falls from a height.

Unintended poisoning too has been identified as a major killer with over 45,000 children dying each year of it. “Child injuries are an important public health concern. The cost of treatment can throw an entire family into poverty. Children in poorer families are at increased risk of injury because they are less likely to benefit from prevention programmes,” said WHO director-general Dr Margaret Chan.

UNICEF executive director Ann M Veneman added, “This report shows that unintentional injuries are the leading cause of childhood death after the age of nine years and that 95% of these child injuries occur in developing countries. More must be done to prevent such harm to children.”

“Improvements can be made in all countries,” said Dr Etienne Krug, director of WHO’s department of violence and injury prevention and disability. “When a child is left disfigured by a burn, paralysed by a fall, brain damaged by a near drowning or emotionally traumatised by any such serious incident, the effects can reverberate through the child’s life. Each such tragedy is unnecessary. We have enough evidence about what works.”

According to WHO, a set of prevention programmes should be implemented in all countries, which include laws on child-appropriate seatbelts and helmets, child-resistant closures on medicine bottles and playground equipment.

A Dare Letter from a Post-Terror Voter

2008-12-06T02:06:00.000-08:00

Dear Mr/Ms Politician

I just wanted to remind you that Mumbai bled last week and lay helplessly maimed and crippled. The pictures went out everywhere of a city unable to protect herself, overrun by a clutch of only ten terrorists, too ashamed even to whine or whimper. The world watched her moments of painful embarrassment for more than three eternal days. Mr Politician, I have to remind you because your memory has been playing truant ever since 24/7 television channels began dominating our lives. You seem to forget even the immediate past once the camera lenses disappear from the terror-ravaged spots.

Mr Politician, you display remarkable sensitivity when you escort Bollywood to the hotel where terror challenged the very essence of life and human existence. You are known to be a patron of the arts and you have been encouraging the fledgling career of your actor son for a long time now. So, there's nothing wrong if you accompany a director who probably wants to make a film on terror when the public memory is still quite fresh. You may be the chief minister of the state where the tragedy unfolded but haven't we heard of the great Nero before. At least you weren't fiddling. You are aware that the Congress will take a long time to find a replacement for the unique Vilasrao Deshmukh. Till then, you can spend quality time at one of those film awards functions where your son enthrals the audience with his cute dance steps.

Mr Politician, you are the greatest, you are the face of development. How can you be accused of playing dirty politics when you reach Mumbai while the operation is still on and NSG commandos don't even know where the next hail of bullets will come from? You are, after all, the great Narendra Modi. You have been looking beyond Gujarat and preparing the country for faith and confidence in you before your coronation takes place in Delhi. How would poor Hemant Karkare's widow know that you never accept 'No' for an answer? Nobody does that to Narendra Modi. Modi alone has the right to decide that terror has a religion. Therefore, as long as a policeman is chasing evidence, which incriminates a Sadhvi, he is the face of dangerous pseudo-secularism. As soon as he is slain by Lashkar terrorists, he metamorphoses into a martyr. So, you reserve your right to insult his family with a brutally magnanimous rupees one crore reward. His widow has seen her husband maligned by your henchmen in days preceding his death but then you are the one and only Modi.

And you Mr Politician have every right to hate those apolitical masses, those women with lipstick and those men in suits. They have no right to be angry with the politicians who were doing their duty. While the commandos fought terror, the politicians carefully calculated the impact of terror on state elections. How can you Mr Naqvi tolerate those buffoons marching on the streets with stupid candles in their hands? Mr Naqvi, you have the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh standing by you and insisting that Mumbai is overdoing its grief. You can never go wrong when you are in such august company.

Mr Rahulbaba, is this the right time to compare poverty with terror? Are these really comparable entities when the nation is still in mourning? Or is this another of your politico-intellectual discourses that has become the hallmark of your great discovery of India? And you Madam Vasundhara Raje, one must appreciate your political sense, your astuteness for bringing out newspaper ads which screamed Rahulbaba believes poverty outstrips terror in importance.

Mr Achyuthanandan Sir, you must have always understood terror better than others because you are the ideal Communist. You have been taught in indoctrination classes that Gulags are good medicine for the masses. Absolutely understandable that you have reasons to be upset when a dead commando's grieving father throws a sympathetic chief minister out. Your police had gone there ahead of you with sniffer dogs. And they were rudely shown the door. How inconsiderate of Unnikrishnan's father! You were so delicate and so dead right when you said not even a dog would visit the Unnikrishnan home.

In times like these, we pity you Mr Gopinath Munde, Mr Sanjay Nirupam. Both you politicians, with your love for the spectacular and the Big Boss, were asked to leave by an unintelligent angry crowd who didn't even realize that the two of you are overloaded with political sympathy. How dare they, those Mumbaikars, turn you away? Don't they know we are a democracy. Don't they know we vote. We may vote like morons but we do elect people who get automatically elevated to the political class and grab the right to govern.

Respectfully yours

An Indian

(Who would have been proud to be a Mumbaikar)

P.S. And Mr Raj Thackeray, we dared not mention you because not all of us can write in Marathi. We saw how wonderfully you counted the Marathi corpses while rest of Maharashtra and Mumbai counted the 195 dead. After all, except for the nine terrorists they were all either Indians or guests of India.

Terrorised by TV

2008-12-04T22:13:00.000-08:00

By Anil Dharker

Sixty hours after the 26/11 trauma began and the last terrorist had been killed, one first heard the phrase “TV terrorism”. Did that mean terror on TV? No, was the common reply. We mean TV terror. Since then the phrase keeps recurring in conversations and there’s now no doubt what it means: there are many viewers who feel that our television channels in their coverage of the horrific attack on Mumbai unleashed their own brand of terror.

The criticism centres on four charges. The first is of elitism. In those 60 hours when television covered the carnage, attention was focused almost exclusively on the Taj and Oberoi hotels with some time given to the commando operations at Nariman House. There was virtually no airtime given to the attacks on Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (CST) or Cama Hospital. Yet the mayhem began there and 54 people were killed. Is that because the dead there were not from the elite? Is that because grieving relatives and friends of those killed are more photogenic when they are fair of skin and well-dressed and their mourning is more restrained?

TV channels may well say that they concentrated on the hotels and Nariman House because they were continuing stories, whereas the incidents at CST and Cama were over within the first few hours of the attacks. But their reluctance to go back to these sites and tell viewers of what happened is an omission that cannot be easily justified. It’s not as if there were no stories there. There were enough human interest angles to be covered, like the chaiwala who risked his life to save people, or the motorman of an incoming train who made people get off on a safer platform, or the startling fact that nearly 40 per cent of the people killed across the city were Muslims.

The second criticism is about TV channels becoming the unwitting tools of the terrorists. During the siege of the Taj almost all channels ran the story that 150 people had taken refuge in its Chambers Club. When they were given the signal to leave they found the terrorists waiting for them; only a few escaped being brutally gunned down. The inference is clear. We, sitting in our homes weren’t the only ones watching television. The terrorists were too.

Then there were the NSG commandos — quite rightly everyone’s heroes. But even heroes are not able to resist the lure of television. There they were sitting in a group in their black cat uniforms as if posing for a passing out photograph, though their faces were covered to mask their identities. Their spokesman though wore a diaphanous black cloth over his face through which you could see his features. But that wasn’t all he revealed.

He spoke of the difficulties of the operation, about the problems of moving around in the hotel in the dark when they didn’t have drawings of the interior layouts. The first rule of battle is that you do not reveal your weaknesses to the enemy. Yet here was the NSG doing just that. Who requested the briefing? Did the channels not see the inherent danger in this exercise?

The third criticism is about the channels’ competitiveness. In a time of national calamity many people say, why was there so much emphasis on airing ‘exclusives’? On the fourth point, there is near-complete unanimity. “Why were the anchors so loud and hysterical? Why couldn’t they be more restrained?” As it happens, there were quite a number of television journalists who were balanced, moderate and tried to be dispassionate. And then there were others who shouted rather than spoke and were emotional to the point of being overwrought. These anchors may have become genuinely overcharged because of the situation but viewers want them to be detached, composed and objective.

I saw first-hand how tireless, persistent and yes, brave, TV journalists and their crew were on the field, quite often laying themselves open to being killed by a stray bullet or sniper fire. Yet, the growing criticism shows that this can be counterproductive. Clearly it’s time for TV networks to introspect.

On the record: Mumbai and media coverage

2008-12-04T03:10:00.000-08:00

By Burkha Dutt

Sixty hours of live television at the best of times is impossibly difficult. But when it involves an ongoing and precarious terrorist operation and a potential danger to the lives of hundreds of people, it throws up challenges of the kind that none of us have ever dealt with before.

Even those of us who have reported for years, on conflict, war and counter insurgency weren't prepared for what we encountered in Mumbai: an audacious attack on a city that was more in the nature of an invasion of India, than terrorism in any form, that we have known before.

As India debates where to go from here and whether a "war on terror" is the borrowed slogan that should define our response, I notice there is a different sort of civil war brewing; one that places us in the media on the other side of the enemy line.

For every Mumbaikar who believes we did the best we could in very trying circumstances- and we have received thousands and thousands of such messages- there are some others who are now questioning our ethics, our integrity and our professionalism. On the streets of Mumbai, I only met people who thanked us for providing a larger sense of community to a city seething with rage and grief. But as I fly back to Delhi, Im told that "hate" groups are trying to compete with "fan" communities on social networking sites like Facebook and Orkut. The Internet apparently is buzzing with vitriol and we, in the media in general, and sometimes, me in particular, are being targeted with a venom that is startling. I understand that India is angry, nerves are frazzled and emotions heightened. Even so,many of the charges are not just offensive. malicious and entirely untrue; they are a convenient transference of responsibility. This is not to say, that we made no mistakes- I am sure we inadvertently made a few- as did every department of government, when faced with a situation that India has never dealt with before. But to park concocted and slanderous charges at our door is simply unacceptable, grossly unfair and saddening.

I would also like to stress though that this eruption of allegations is only one small part of a larger picture. In the past week, we have also received countless words of support and encouragement- from thousands of people - Indian citizens of every hue and ilk across the country, as well as some better known ones, like Narayan Murthy, Salman Rushdie, Shashi Tharoor, Sunil Khilnani and Suketu Mehta, to name just a few. When asked in an interview on NDTV, what struck him watching the events unfold on television, Narayan Murthy, said it was the "finest piece of TV journalism in a decade."

But in journalism, we know that, praise and criticism are twins that travel together. And we welcome both and try and listen to both carefully.

So, for those who wrote in to tell us that we got it right- Thank you so much. Your words encourage us.

But for those who charged us with crimes we absolutely assert we have not committed, here is our response. Some of it is answer to general questions about the media and some to specific charges made against our organization.

1. Please do note that at all times, the media respected the security cordon- a cordon that was determined by the police and officials on site- and NOT by the media. If, as is now being suggested, the assessment is that the media was allowed too close to the operations, here is what we say: we would have been happy to stand at a distance much further away from the encounter sites, had anyone, anyone at all, asked us to move. In the 72 hours that we stood on reporting duty, not once were we asked to move further away. We often delayed live telecasting of images that we thought were sensitive so as to not compromise the ongoing operation. Not once, were we asked by anyone in authority, to switch our cameras off, or withhold images. When we did so, it was entirely our own assessment that perhaps it was safest to do so. Across the world, and as happened in the US after 9/11, there are daily, centralized briefings by officials to avoid any inadvertent confusion that media coverage may throw up. Not so in Mumbai. There was no central point of contact or information for journalists who were often left to their own devices to hunt down news that they felt had to be conveyed to their country. No do's and don'ts were provided by officials. While we understand that this situation was new for everyone involved, and so the government could not have been expected to have a full plan for media coverage, surely the same latitude should be shown to us? The NSG chief even thanked the media for our consistent co-operation. Later the NSG commandos personally thanked me for showcasing their need for a dedicated aircraft- which they shockingly did not have - they have now been given there after NDTV's special report was aired.

We have only the greatest respect and admiration for our armed forces, and throughout the coverage repeatedly underlined how they are our greatest heroes. But we were taken aback to hear the Navy Chief, branding us as a "disabling force," for reporting on an ongoing operation. If that is the case, why were his own officers briefing us on camera, bang in the middle of an ongoing operation and that too when they only had a few rushed moments at the site of encounters? Before the encounter was over at either the Taj or the Oberoi, his marine commandos even held a hastily called press conference that was telecast live, with their permission, across channels. If we were indeed the obstacle, or the "disabling force" why did they have time for us in the middle of an operation? While shooting the messenger is convenient , the government also needs to introspect and determine whether it has an information dissemination system in place that is geared for such crises. Blanking out channels- as was done for a few hours- may not be the ideal solution. It only leads to more rumour mongering, panic and falsehoods spreading in already uncertain situation.

2. Why did we interview waiting relatives who staked out at the hotels as they waited for news on their families and friends? Quite simply, because they WANTED to talk. Allegations that I or any of my colleagues across the industry shoved a microphone in the faces of any waiting relative, are untrue in the extreme. Television, for many of these people, became a medium to express pain, grief, anger and hope. Sometimes, they expressed the desire to speak, because as they said, they just wanted to feel like they were doing something, instead of sitting by on the pavement for endless, countless hours. Many did not want to speak or be filmed, and they were neither pressured nor asked. Many personally asked me for my telephone number, and got in touch, requesting whether they could come on our shows and make their appeals. And besides, wasn't the issue at hand as much about their potential loss and anxieties, as it was about an ongoing gunbattle? Wasn't it important to touch upon the human dimension and not just the military one? I believe strongly that it was. Capturing suffering on live television is a delicate issue that needs the utmost sensitivity. We believed we showed that sensitivity, by not thrusting microphones in people's faces, by respecting privacy if people asked for identities or images to be withheld, by never showing a ghoulish close-up of a body, and by respecting the limits set by the people themselves. Those limits were different for different people and had to be adapted to subjectively. But every interview of a relative that was aired on any of my shows, was done so with the full consent and participation of the people speaking. If they wanted to share their story, vent, give an outlet for their grief or just make an appeal for peace- and the emotions varied- how can other people out there determine that they should not be speaking? But to say that we had no business talking to families is an entirely naive and misplaced criticism. They chose to talk. In every case, it was their choice to share and to speak. And their voices were in fact the real tragedy and needed to be heard and told.

Similarly, when the rescued hostages first emerged from the hotels many of them WANTED to speak because they wanted to let their families know they were safe. The unfortunate absence of a cordon created an avoidable crowding in of journalists. But every rescued hostage who appeared on any of our shows did so entirely voluntarily. Every participant on We the People, including Shameem, a man who lost six members of his family at the CST railway station was there because they wanted to share their tragedy or miraculous escape or trauma in a wider community. Shameem, who said he did not have money to bury his dead, has since been offered help and rehabilitation by our viewers. In that moment, television provided a wider sense of community, when no one else had the time of wherewithal to talk to the waiting relatives.

3. Could we have been more aware of the suffering and tragedy of those killed in the first few hours at the CST railway station and not got singularly focused on the two hotels? On this one point, I would concede that perhaps, this was a balance we lost and needed to redress earlier on during the coverage. But, mostly our attention was on the hotels, because they were the sites of the live encounters, and not because of some deliberate socio-economic prejudice. Still, when many emails poured in on how important it was to correct this imbalance, most of us, stood up, took notice, and tried to make amends for an unwitting lack of balance in air time.

4. Should there be an emergency code of dos and donts for the coverage of such crises? We in the media would welcome a framework for sensitive events and are happy to contribute to its construction. But it is important to understand that in the absence of any instructions on site and in the absence of any such framework we broke NO rules. Both the NSG chief and the special secretary untrue took place and we have an official aknowledgment of that, including from then Army Chief, V.P Malik. I would urge Admiral Mehta to read General V.P Malik's book on Kargil for further clarity. General Malik was the Army Chief during the operations and puts to rest any such controversy in his book. In a formal letter, NDTV has also asked for an immediate retraction from the Navy and officially complained that the comments amount to defamation. Several writers have already pointed out how the Navy Chief has got his facts wrong. (DNA, Indian Express, Vir Sanghvi in The Hindustan Times, Sankarshan Thakur in The Telegraph). This, incidentally, was the same press conference where the Admiral threatened literally to "chop the heads off" of two other reporters who aired his interview ahead of schedule.

I believe that criticism is what helps us evolve and reinvent ourselves. But when malice and rumour are regarded as feedback, there can be no constructive dialogue. Viewing preferences are highly subjective and always deeply personal choices, and the most fitting rejection of someone who doesn't appeal to your aesthetics of intelligence, is simply to flick the channel and watch someone else. The viewer, to that extent, is king. But, when, comments begin targeting character, morality and integrity of individuals and the commentary becomes more about the individual, than the issue, then frankly, the anger is just destructive and little else. More than anything else, it is tragic that at this time, we are expressing ourselves in this fashion. Surely, India has bigger lessons to learn and larger points to mull over, than to expend energy over which television journalist tops the charts or falls to the bottom.

The viewer has his own way, of settling such matters. And the last word belongs to him.

It’s Not Just A Game

2008-12-03T22:36:00.000-08:00

By M H Ahssan

English cricket team is likely to return for Test series

Though the last two one-dayers between India and England were cancelled because of the Mumbai terror attack, the two-Test series beginning on December 11 is likely to go ahead on schedule. Responding to security concerns, the BCCI has shifted the two Tests from Ahmedabad and Mumbai to Chennai and Mohali. The final decision by the ECB would be taken only after their security adviser, who is currently visiting the venues, submits his report. There is, however, a strong likelihood that some English players might prefer to skip the tour.

While from the security perspective it might have been prudent to postpone the matches, for the sake of the game it is important that the Tests are played but with every precaution in place. India is now the nerve centre of cricket. Nearly 70 per cent of cricket’s global revenues come from India and the game is like a religion to many Indians. Cricket cannot do without India; India cannot do without cricket. The Twenty20 Champions League, which was scheduled to begin on Wednesday, has been postponed. Any further rescheduling would seriously jeopardise future games in India, including the 2011 World Cup to be hosted jointly by India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. Already most teams are reluctant to play in Pakistan because of the terrorist threat. If India, too, is shunned it’s going to be a serious blow to cricket.

The threat posed to world cricket has been recognised by greats like Steve Waugh. He has written in his column that any long-term interruption of the game in India will have “major ramifications”. Similarly, former England captain Nasser Hussain feels that India is too important for England or other countries to cancel games. It is worth recalling that in 1984 the English team had arrived in India on the day Indira Gandhi was assassinated. Though the English team was forced to spend a few days in Colombo, they came back to play the Test series.

The more knotty issue is whether India should tour Pakistan next year. There are reports suggesting that the Indian government is unlikely to give a green signal. Although there is little doubt that India-Pakistan cricket matches generate enormous goodwill, the fate of the tour depends on the stand that the Indian government takes in the coming days. If New Delhi takes a tough stand on Islamabad for perpetrating terror, it is unlikely that the tour would be on. Though cricket will suffer, cancelling the tour would be part of a larger strategy of isolating Pakistan.

Learn To Talk

2008-12-03T22:35:00.000-08:00

By M H Ahssan

Politicians must be trained to handle mass media sideshow could well have been avoided. A few politicians have whipped up public anger by making insensitive remarks in the context of the carnage in Mumbai. Worse, it has come at a time when their capabilities to govern are under scrutiny. The latest to be afflicted with the foot-in-the-mouth disease is Kerala chief minister V S Achuthanandan, who has said ‘‘not even a dog’’ would visit the home of Major Sandeep Unnikrishnan — the NSG commando who died fighting terrorists in Mumbai — if not for the latter’s martyrdom. VS has half-heartedly apologised for his insensitive remarks since but only after facing censure from his party chief, CPM general secretary Prakash Karat, and a barrage of criticism from many quarters including the Left fraternity.

VS’s remarks came a day after BJP leader Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi took umbrage to ‘‘women wearing lipstick and powder’’ criticising politicians. Naqvi’s party disowned his remarks, but the RSS has come to his support. What do these men want? Women should keep off lipstick and powder? Or, that they should not raise their voices in public? Do Naqvi and the RSS fancy themselves as some sort of an Indian Taliban? Strange it may seem, these leaders are alarmed that the aam aadmi is raising questions about their conduct. They ought to get used to the idea that ours is a democratic society. And they should learn to conduct themselves as well-spoken public servants.

Leaders like VS complain that the media twists colloquial usages to whip up a controversy. Sure, there are reasons why people talk the way they do. The point is public officials have to speak in a language that does not offend public sensitivities. In this age of 24/7 mass media, politicians should know how to conduct themselves in public. Their vocabulary and manner of speaking should fit the positions they hold. These leaders — VS, Naqvi, Maharashtra CM Vilasrao Deshmukh or former deputy chief minister R R Patil — should recognise that insensitive remarks hurt people as much as the acts of politicians like Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi, who tried to draw political mileage from the bloodshed in Mumbai.

It’s time our politicians took lessons in public speaking. Television is the dominant media platform today. Public officials in India should understand the pressures of this medium and, if necessary, get training to use it. Politicians elsewhere train to handle the media and successful ones are those who master the art. The suggestion is not to have politicians who can charm the public through the media but to have leaders who appear convincing and calm people in times of crises. A prime minister with some schooling in mass communication, for instance, would not have waited 18 hours to address the nation after the Mumbai happening.

Edit: Love with Tokyo

2007-08-24T06:08:00.000-07:00

If we come closer, guess who gets upset most?

Beijing's information warfare is so successful that the very mention of the term ‘Asian Nato’ makes many Indians jump out of their skin. The visiting Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has not proposed the creation of an ‘Asian Nato’; there was no occasion for India to have endorsed it. All that India and Japan have agreed is to have occasional political consultations with the other democracies in Asia Pacific, the United States and Australia.

A few multilateral exercises do not a military alliance make. Meanwhile, is Nato really such a bad word? Why should New Delhi complain when Nato soldiers are dying in Afghanistan fighting our enemy, the Taliban, and America wants to bomb terrorist sanctuaries in Pakistan? The real problem is the issue of Chinese sabre-rattling about Indian foreign policy choices.Modern diplomatic history is replete with China’s repeated efforts to undermine India, its only rival in Asian leadership.

At Bandung in 1955, where India went out of the way to invite an isolated Communist China, Premier Zhou Enlai betrayed Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. Since then China used Pakistan and the smaller South Asian nations to keep India off balance. Beijing keeps India out of the decision-making structures of East Asia Summit process and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. For the first time in decades, India is in a position to return the compliment by deepening its cooperation with Japan and the United States.It seems only the CPM, which wants India to do everything in the name of ‘anti-imperialism’, would like the nation to forgo the new diplomatic possibilities coming its way.

The Indian government has got it just right — participate in the creation of a ‘strategic triangle’ with Russia and China on the one hand and work with the US, Japan and Australia to develop the Asian “democratic quad” on the other. India is not merely staying true to the policy of non-alignment; it is relearning the art of balance of power.

Edit: CPM and CMP

2007-08-24T06:07:00.000-07:00

It sort of predicted what’s happening

Prakash Karat’s unyielding words at the close of the CPM central committee meeting make it yet more clear that general elections are now probably inevitable. His caution to the government on proceeding with the civilian nuclear agreement with the US has been turned that much more into an ultimatum, with the Central Committee authorising the Politburo to do anything it deems necessary to stop “operationalisation” of the agreement. The meeting also adopted a plan for a nationwide agitation in the fortnight leading up to the mid-September IAEA meet in Vienna. For all the quibbling over the implications of the Hyde Act and the detail in the 123 Agreement, this stand-off between the Left and the government is not about nuclear diplomacy.

It is about the rapidly decreasing scope of reconciling two very different world views.This is why if the Left cites the absence in the common minimum programme any reference to a nuclear agreement with the US, it is being disingenuous. That CMP was simply the fig leaf over the very evident contradictions in the political arrangement the two entities agreed upon after the results of the 2004 general elections came in. The Left and the Congress needed to vote together in Lok Sabha if the BJP was to be kept out.

Therefore, UPA-Left coordination was predicated not on any common agenda, but on the negation of an alternative. It is therefore interesting that the Left’s ultimatum to the government implies a readiness to ultimately vote with the BJP, in the event of a confidence or no-confidence motion. The Left-Congress partnership could nonetheless have been a brave one. Even though the faultlines were visible, it could have been a courageous experiment to come to terms with India’s political diversity in ways tangible to good governance. But the Left saw the arrangement only as a way to voice its veto to impart to the government its own ideological inclinations.

It is to the prime minister’s credit that he consistently tried to insist on a forward-looking agenda for governance — even if he was stopped from operationalising most of it, he took it upon himself to articulate where his head and heart were. And now, with the Left’s bluff having been called, he has created the space to concretise some of those things. He has actually gained valuable freedom: to decide precisely when to go to elections, elections which

OPED: Right on, Ronen

2007-08-22T23:47:00.000-07:00

By Arundhati Ghose

Ronen Sen is a diplomat, and one of the best at that. He has also been part of an extraordinary negotiating team, which reasoned, persuaded and cajoled the tough US negotiators over the last two years, to extract from them in the detail what had been agreed to in framework at the highest political levels in both countries. This was to be done within the red lines laid down by the prime minister through his assurances to Parliament, and in consultation with them. Of all the countries in the world, an exception was to be made for only one, India.

Though India alone and steadfastly refused to accept the inequalities of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, technology and other sanctions, imposed at the instance of the US by 44 other countries which had nuclear capabilities, were to be lifted, impacting not only the nuclear sector, but other high technology sectors as well. Thereby, India was to be enabled to participate in the nuclear trade and commerce from which she had been cut off for 30 years.

The team had to achieve this while keeping India’s strategic nuclear programme unaffected. (It is important to remember that it is not just the US that does not approve our nuclear weapon programme, but many of our “friends” in the developing world have refused to acknowledge India as a nuclear weapon state. And of course, China.)Even with India’s inherent strengths, such a task was breathtakingly daunting. It was accomplished by the team, which includes our ambassador to Washington, Ronen Sen, with élan and distinction — as even some of the more graceful members of the opposition parties acknowledged, at first. That there would be doubts, apprehensions and requests for clarification was expected, if only to check whether the PM’s assurances to Parliament had been kept.

However, the reactions, actions and counter-reactions snowballed into a political controversy — where it was not clear, to the public, at least, of whom I am one, whether the intention of the critics was to destroy the deal or the government itself or both. In this politically tense situation, what appears to be a report of a conversation on telephone between our ambassador in Washington and a journalist hit the headlines.As Sen himself has admitted, his comments as quoted were, at worst, “tactless” and general expressions of frustration after the completion of the Herculean job of having finally got the US to agree to undo what they had built up against India over decades. Yet, even if unintended, the comments seem to have caused outrage and offence in Parliament, flippant and occasional though they were. Sen apologised. An infuriated and embarrassed government, already under pressure, reacted sharply.

The speaker of the Lok Sabha promised to look into the matter and to take action if necessary, and privilege motions were tabled. Yet for one more day, Parliament has been stalled on the issue, with MPs baying for blood. What is not at all clear is why this issue should continue to agitate Parliament when it could have been dismissed with words of displeasure as Parliament got on with its job. After all, the media, which were apparently targeted, seem to have reacted more soberly and got on with their job.Sen has been targeted as a civil servant who spoke out of turn, his integrity and loyalty to the country called into question by those who should be among the last to throw stones (he has been called “Bush’s Ambassador”).

But Ronen Sen is no longer a civil servant, he is a political appointee sent to Washington after his retirement from the Indian Foreign Service. Would a mere career diplomat be able to hold up Parliament for two days? Or is this a part of the political attack on the government? Previous ambassadors against whom parliamentary objections were made were also political appointees, and the targeting was by and large on political grounds. So what we are seeing here is not outrage about the conduct of an exemplary diplomat, it is not his blood or his honour being questioned.

That is an inevitable, if unfortunate, conclusion.The strictest norms of behaviour are required from senior civil servants and diplomats. Yet they cannot defend themselves, either in Parliament or in the press. Unfair and unfounded allegations are made, even by parliamentarians, but there is little recourse unless the government defends him or her — unless the behaviour is indefensible, of course.

Who would say that stray comments over the telephone, however embarrassing, amount to indefensible behaviour?On the other hand, as a political appointee, surely he has more freedom to express his views than a career diplomat would have; so why the umbrage? In my experience, career diplomats avoid any commentary on parliamentary proceedings, especially to the press. But again, was Parliament being referred to at all?

The 123 Agreement is after all being discussed with passion, but perhaps without the underlying political agenda, in the press, on the Net, in think tanks, seminars and workshops around the country, and Ambassador Sen, after all, like Parliament, represents these people as well. Shouldn’t our sensitivities have been affected too?

Certainly, the sensitivities of those who pay taxes, and perhaps, even of those who do not, and who have been watching with dismay the stalling of Parliament over what is possibly a non-issue, certainly a trivial one, have been once again abraded, without recourse.

EDIT: 1942-2007 - The Left Years

2007-08-22T23:45:00.000-07:00

A look at the history of Left assertions

Beyond the sound bites of the immediate political crisis which the Left parties have worked up over the nuclear deal, lies a larger predicament. This is not the first time that the Indian Left has taken a stand that is eye-catchingly at odds with the national mainstream. This is not the first time it has invited accusations that its tactical — or ideological — postures are inspired or dictated by national interests of other countries.

This will not be the first time that Left parties will be paying a price for completely misreading the national moment. The only difference is that unlike in the past, Left wrong-footedness will take a higher political toll on it. The Left has more at stake this time, and therefore it has more to lose.A line appears to run through the stances taken by India’s Left in 1942, 1962 and 2007. In 1942, the Communist Party of India officially refused to endorse the impassioned call to ‘Quit India’.

The reason was not far to seek, or only as far as Moscow. In 1941, Hitler had attacked the Soviet Union; for Indian communists, the fight against Nazism had become a people’s war, and Britain an ally. In 1962, a section of Indian communists chose to support China. It was a position that led to an implosion in the Party; it split into two. But there was no resolution, really. The consequences of both those choices — in 1942 as well as in 1962 — have continued to chase the communist movement in India.

They have lingered in the public consciousness as a reminder of the Indian Left’s lack of ease with its own place in the nation-state, defined not merely as a geographical entity but as a bounded way of political and cultural being. Now the Left’s knee-jerk opposition to the Indo-US nuclear deal again suggests a lack of empathy for the national consensus, and a sympathy for China’s position on the issue.But in another sense, the Left parties of 2007 have come a long way. In 1942 they were still swaggering towards a World Revolution that was never to be.

By 1962 the first communist government had already been formed — and dismissed — but they were still not real stakeholders in the system. In 2007, however, after the remarkable parliamentary success notched in 2004, and with the UPA critically dependent on Left support, Left parties are very much in the system. So this time, the price of irresponsibility is much higher.

EDIT: Unique Political Angst

2007-08-21T22:10:00.000-07:00

Don’t revive old prejudices against coalitions

There may be more victims of the current uncertainty engulfing the UPA than we can track. Spare a thought, for instance, for the hit taken by the idea of coalition government. Admittedly, the Left is not a part of the ruling alliance at the Centre; it only supports it from the outside. Even so, the tensions over the nuclear deal between the Congress and Left parties that have stilled all governance and threaten to do worse, are bound to revive the unfortunate folklore about coalition governments that had been showing welcome signs of flagging. Coalitions, it was once believed, mean instability. They meant nervous governments too busy looking over their shoulder to rule.

If the drama initiated by the Left goes on as it has begun, that once-fashionable narrative could well stage a comeback.It would be such a pity. Ever since the Congress system sagged at the Centre in 1989 — in many states such a moment had come earlier — coalition governments have proved that they are not inevitably weak formations marking time before a premature end. It was a coalition government that ushered in the era of economic liberalisation. For all the squabbling egos on board, even the United Front government was responsible for valuable political-institutional innovations towards the end of giving regional players a voice at the Centre. And then the NDA carried forward the federal power-sharing experiment, imparting it with a certain maturity, while becoming the first non-Congress government to last a full term at the Centre.

Many of these coalitions have been turbulent, several have collapsed. But on balance, there is a maturing of the political interactions and a routinisation of the new rules of the game. On the whole, the nostalgia for single party rule is all but buried. The new grammar of politics that has replaced it has been acknowledged and accepted, if not celebrated — with all its puzzles and paradoxes. It would be tragic if Congress-Left antagonisms were to become the cause for a return to an earlier prejudice and blind spot.

EDITORIAL: Generally modified

2007-08-21T08:14:00.000-07:00

Research must be ramped up. Farmers need GM

So much alarmist pseudo-science is still in the air that a one-year delay in gaining permission for large-scale field trials in India of genetically modified brinjal appears just the blink of the eye. The go-ahead by the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee, the country’s apex regulatory body, to Mahyco to test Bt brinjal also addresses many concerns about public safety.

It is therefore expected that forthcoming requests for field tests of other food crops like rice, okra, tomatoes and other varieties of GM brinjal will be swiftly obtained. The GEAC has specified that field trials are not to be conducted on farmer-owned lands and will take place under the scrutiny of specified institutions. This is abundant caution, in case of unforeseen consequences by cross-pollination.

The case for India’s research and regulatory regime for GM crops to be more responsive cannot be overstated. One, we still know too little about how GM crops could affect specific environments. Therefore, when we see that farmers in countries like the United States, Argentina and, to a lesser extent, China are finding it more viable to commercially grow GM crops like cotton, soya bean and maize, the seeds cannot be instantly made available to our farmers. Trials have to be conducted locally, and the slow clearance regime only delays the process further.

Two, state-initiated research in GM crops in India is paltry, with most result-oriented work coming from private companies and foreign institutions. The state bears a responsibility to undertake work on, for instance, crops specific for rainfed areas — perhaps higher-yield coarse grains or less water-consuming varieties of other crops.Much of rural India is still dependent in some way on agriculture as a source of livelihood. Increasing income can no longer come by increasing the area under cultivation — because there is now very little cultivable land lying fallow.

It has to be done by increasing productivity and by minimising the farmer’s probability of losing his crop, especially in the absence of crop insurance. According to one estimate, the annual loss of brinjal crop — planted on small holdings — due to fruit and shoot borers is Rs 900 crore. The 21st century is said to be the biotech century. India’s farmlands still await its full benefits.

EDITORIAL: New clear deal

2007-08-21T08:12:00.000-07:00

The big issue is India’s foreign policy

The Left is right. The Congress-Left battle is not simply over the nuclear deal. There are bigger issues involved. The big issue is India’s foreign policy. The Left wants and, to be fair to it, has been wanting for some time an ideological foreign policy.

No one else in India, at least no serious player at the national level, certainly not the Congress or the BJP, wants a foreign policy strait-jacketed by ideology in the sense of prioritising theories and dislikes over national interests. Therefore, and this is the crucial thing to understand as the Left and the Congress issue reactions to each other’s statements, at the fundamental level what the current crisis has brought to fore is what some observers, including this newspaper, had suspected about this ruling arrangement: the alliance was always artificial, both sides felt unnatural in it, and it could only run so long because the Left’s hard ball tactics were concentrated on economic policy.

This may sound strange because the PM, squarely in the Left’s target, is so much a part of India’s economic transformation. But economics as it has played out in politics recently offers room for manoeuvre that big foreign policy choices don’t. In part because of earlier reforms that released, to use the much-used Keynesian phrase, the animal spirits in India’s private sector, India’s growth could ramp up without radical additional reforms. Manmohan Singh and his handful of reformist ministers would have loved to initiate more reforms. Not being able to do so was frustrating. Listening to the Left’s jibes and threats wasn’t pleasant. But a lot can be tolerated when the economy grows above 9 per cent.

Barring Delhi and Mumbai airport ownership change and the SEZ bill, the UPA can claim no major reform. No one was expecting any more. What was widely expected was that any other reform proposal mooted would be shot down by the Left and the government would have carried on ruing economic policy paralysis but knowing political stability isn’t at great risk.Foreign policy now doesn’t offer these luxuries because redefining India’s role in the world requires action.

The nuclear deal was part of that action. The BJP, never mind what it says now, started it when a Democrat was in the White House and the Congress carried on with it with a Republican president. There’s bipartisan consensus in both countries on the broad and crucial aspects of India’s foreign policy programme. The Left doesn’t want any part of that programme.

Which is why talk about buying time and postponing this or that negotiation on the nuclear deal are ultimately red herrings. Tactical inaction can’t resolve the current dispute. The dynamics of the larger issue around the nuclear deal are very different from, say, those around the pension bill. The Congress has probably understood that.