It's my duty to engage everyone, says Imran Khan
Pakistan's Tehreek-e-Insaf party leader Imran Khan has justified his association with Jamaat-ud-Dawa chief Hafiz Saeed, the key conspirator for the Mumbai attack, saying it was his duty to engage everyone, "however extreme they be". In the same breath, he said it was "only an allegation" against Saeed so far.
"As a politician, I have to engage everyone, however extreme they are. You can't resolve issues with guns. It's in the interest of India, too. If Hafiz Saeed is killed, he will become a martyr," Imran said in an exclusive interview to Rahul Kanwal for Khaas Mullaqat on Aaj Tak.
The Pakistan cricketing legend, whose Tehreek-e-Insaf is hoping to wrest power in the country, was speaking in the context of an earlier invitation for him to share the stage with Saeed at a JuD-organised convention, where the speakers spewed venom against India.
Reminded that Saeed was believed to be the man who had plotted the 26/ 11 attack, Imran said it was only an allegation.
"Can we convict people merely on the basis of the evidence that India provides? There's a due process of law. Let Pakistan's Supreme Court decide (on his guilt)." On his agenda after coming to power, Imran said he could "fully assure" that he would work towards peace with India.
"Mine will be a genuine leadership... with the authority to rule Pakistan. I will take big decisions. Pakistan will have such leaders but will India reciprocate? It's time to deal with all our differences, including Kashmir. This cloak-and-dagger policy has to end. You can't keep on raising the Kashmir issue and Pakistan can't keep bringing up Balochistan. If we have a civilised relationship, it will help both the peoples," he said.
He expressed confidence that the military would never rule Pakistan again.
"After Musharraf's rule, our people have realised that he left Pakistan in the worst condition the country has ever been in. Musharraf instituted the NRO, which gave the corrupt Zardari protection. There is a consensus against military rule in Pakistan today."
On whether he could eliminate the terror camps operating on Pakistan's soil, he said: "I am a politician. I have no idea if there are terror camps operating in Pakistan. Let me come to power, then I'll have all the details."
Imran, who was in the city on Monday to address a session at the Kolkata Literary Meet, said the Kashmir issue can't be solved unilaterally. "There is only one issue between Pakistan and India and that is Kashmir. This issue has to be resolved in a civilised manner," he said.
Imran said the two countries needed strong leaders who could take big decisions, but lamented that there were no such leaders, either in India or in Pakistan.
He, however, expressed hope that the "new generation in both the countries will change things".
-With inputs from Soudhriti Bhabani
Monday, January 30, 2012
The world has truly woken up to India.As our highcommissioner 2 d UK said,“Our growth is your opportunity./Reforms here have been disappointingly slow
‘Reforms in India have been disappointingly slow’
January 29, 2012
By P.T. Thufail
Lord Karan Bilimoria, the founder of the famous brand Cobra beer in the UK, is a prominent British personality. He has maintained close links with India. In this interview with P.T. Thufail, he speaks of investment prospects for overseas Indians and their strong interest in charity, education and health in India.
This year the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas (PBD) — created officially to forge links with overseas Indians — was observed recently in New Delhi. Are there tangible benefits from such events?
I have attended the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas since its inception in 2003. I have found it to be a tremendous government initiative which brings together thousands of non-resident Indians (NRIs) and persons of Indian origin (PIOs). It is wonderful to celebrate the success of the over 25 million members of the Indian diaspora across the world. Wherever you look, Indians are now reaching the very top in every field.
The PBD has led to the formation of the ministry of overseas indian affairs. It is at the PBD that I made the suggestion to the Indian government that there should be a Prime Minister’s Global Advisory Council, which has just had its third meeting.
This council — of which I am a founding member — has been able to process such issues as voting rights for NRIs and the merging of the PIO card and Overseas Indian Citizenship.
People of Indian background abroad are vastly different from one another in their social and economic makeup. Has the Pravasi arrangement helped to bring them together?
The PBD has been wonderful in bringing together the Indian diaspora, like those in South Africa and the Caribbean. Through the Pravasi Bharatiya Samman, the global Indian community has been able to come together to celebrate achievements of prominent NRIs from across the globe. I am very proud to have been awarded the Pravasi Bharatiya Samman by the President of India in 2008.
If Indian people abroad choose to seriously invest in India, what sums can we be looking at? What do we need to do here to facilitate that effort?
India has one of the highest levels of foreign remittances, running into tens of billions of dollars a year. Over and above this, the diaspora is increasingly investing in Indian business. The PBD has actively enabled the various states of the country to promote inward investment.
In my case, in June 2011, Cobra entered into a joint venture with Molson Coors — the last of the global brewing giants to enter India — forming Molson Coors Cobra India. We own the only brewery in the state of Bihar, and have almost completed its expansion and upgrade, doubling its capacity from two million cases to four million.
How effectively has the government helped in promoting investments?
The government is actively supporting NRIs in investing in India. The PBD is about bringing together PIOs, inspiring each other. It is also about connecting Indian residents and NRIs in a kind of global exchange of ideas.
The PBD is also about making the diaspora aware of investment opportunities in India. Without fail, the PBD is graced by the President, the Prime Minister, Union Cabinet ministers and chief ministers.
That said, the reforms in India have been disappointingly slow. Most recently, we were faced with the disappointment of FDI in multi-brand retail being announced and then withdrawn almost straightaway. More broadly, there are still a number of roadblocks to foreign investment by NRIs and others.
The Foreign Universities Bill is still pending; Lloyds of London is barred from trading in India (the only large country that does not allow it in); foreign lawyers cannot practise in India. These reforms will help India get the one trillion dollars of FDI in infrastructure it will require over the next decade.
What investment fields appear most attractive to a high-profile businessman like yourself, given the way things are in India?
I have just given the example of my own business. India is the fastest-growing beer market in the world. Yet, at only 1.5 litres per person per year, it is still one of the smallest markets. China, the world’s largest beer market, has a consumption of 30 litres per person per year. Germany consumes 150 litres per person per year. So, there is a great deal of potential in my industry.
There are opportunities in practically every field. The UK-India Business Council, of which I am the president, is promoting a huge range of sector-based investment opportunities in key silos, like advanced engineering, digital innovation, infrastructure, life sciences, healthcare, retail supply chain logistics, skills and education.
Apart from business, in what other ways would overseas Indians like to stay in touch with their mother country? Do they like their children to visit India for short-term study or work?
The PBD has led to several initiatives that have seen young NRIs spending time experiencing India first hand. Personally, I have been very keen that my children, while they live and study in Britain, come to India without fail for at least one month every year. We visit our relatives in Mumbai, Hyderabad, Delhi and Dehradun. Our children have been growing up with close contact to their Indian roots. I’m sure many overseas Indians feel the same way.
Apart from the PBD, which is a government-run affair, have overseas Indians shown an interest in starting social organisations on their own, or with the help of Indians in India, to promote business, religious or cultural ties?
I think this is particularly prevalent in the charity sector. I chair the advisory council of the Loomba Trust, which educates the children of poor widows. The Trust started in India and has members from Indian communities in different countries.
Again, speaking from personal experience, there is Pratham, a wonderful charity which does a lot in the field of education in India; Child in Need India, which is active in the area of public health and raises awareness about malnutrition; and Thare Machi Education, which works to raise awareness on health issues in many developing countries, including India.
From a religious perspective, we can find the Zoroastrian Trust Funds of Europe, of which I am a member. It was the first ever Indian religious organisation in the UK, and is celebrating its 150th anniversary this year.
Overseas Indians have helped enhance India’s soft power. Can they leverage this to bring about durable political links between the countries they live in and India?
This is happening in a very significant way in the UK, where we now have several Indians in Parliament, both in the House of Lords and the House of Commons. Indian issues are playing an ever-larger role in British politics. One of the strongest examples of this was that Prime Minister David Cameron announced at the beginning of his term that he wanted to enhance Britain’s relationship with India. His first overseas visit, in July 2010, was to India and I was honoured to be able to accompany him.
The world has truly woken up to India. As India’s high commissioner to the UK said, “Our growth is your opportunity.”
January 29, 2012
By P.T. Thufail
Lord Karan Bilimoria, the founder of the famous brand Cobra beer in the UK, is a prominent British personality. He has maintained close links with India. In this interview with P.T. Thufail, he speaks of investment prospects for overseas Indians and their strong interest in charity, education and health in India.
This year the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas (PBD) — created officially to forge links with overseas Indians — was observed recently in New Delhi. Are there tangible benefits from such events?
I have attended the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas since its inception in 2003. I have found it to be a tremendous government initiative which brings together thousands of non-resident Indians (NRIs) and persons of Indian origin (PIOs). It is wonderful to celebrate the success of the over 25 million members of the Indian diaspora across the world. Wherever you look, Indians are now reaching the very top in every field.
The PBD has led to the formation of the ministry of overseas indian affairs. It is at the PBD that I made the suggestion to the Indian government that there should be a Prime Minister’s Global Advisory Council, which has just had its third meeting.
This council — of which I am a founding member — has been able to process such issues as voting rights for NRIs and the merging of the PIO card and Overseas Indian Citizenship.
People of Indian background abroad are vastly different from one another in their social and economic makeup. Has the Pravasi arrangement helped to bring them together?
The PBD has been wonderful in bringing together the Indian diaspora, like those in South Africa and the Caribbean. Through the Pravasi Bharatiya Samman, the global Indian community has been able to come together to celebrate achievements of prominent NRIs from across the globe. I am very proud to have been awarded the Pravasi Bharatiya Samman by the President of India in 2008.
If Indian people abroad choose to seriously invest in India, what sums can we be looking at? What do we need to do here to facilitate that effort?
India has one of the highest levels of foreign remittances, running into tens of billions of dollars a year. Over and above this, the diaspora is increasingly investing in Indian business. The PBD has actively enabled the various states of the country to promote inward investment.
In my case, in June 2011, Cobra entered into a joint venture with Molson Coors — the last of the global brewing giants to enter India — forming Molson Coors Cobra India. We own the only brewery in the state of Bihar, and have almost completed its expansion and upgrade, doubling its capacity from two million cases to four million.
How effectively has the government helped in promoting investments?
The government is actively supporting NRIs in investing in India. The PBD is about bringing together PIOs, inspiring each other. It is also about connecting Indian residents and NRIs in a kind of global exchange of ideas.
The PBD is also about making the diaspora aware of investment opportunities in India. Without fail, the PBD is graced by the President, the Prime Minister, Union Cabinet ministers and chief ministers.
That said, the reforms in India have been disappointingly slow. Most recently, we were faced with the disappointment of FDI in multi-brand retail being announced and then withdrawn almost straightaway. More broadly, there are still a number of roadblocks to foreign investment by NRIs and others.
The Foreign Universities Bill is still pending; Lloyds of London is barred from trading in India (the only large country that does not allow it in); foreign lawyers cannot practise in India. These reforms will help India get the one trillion dollars of FDI in infrastructure it will require over the next decade.
What investment fields appear most attractive to a high-profile businessman like yourself, given the way things are in India?
I have just given the example of my own business. India is the fastest-growing beer market in the world. Yet, at only 1.5 litres per person per year, it is still one of the smallest markets. China, the world’s largest beer market, has a consumption of 30 litres per person per year. Germany consumes 150 litres per person per year. So, there is a great deal of potential in my industry.
There are opportunities in practically every field. The UK-India Business Council, of which I am the president, is promoting a huge range of sector-based investment opportunities in key silos, like advanced engineering, digital innovation, infrastructure, life sciences, healthcare, retail supply chain logistics, skills and education.
Apart from business, in what other ways would overseas Indians like to stay in touch with their mother country? Do they like their children to visit India for short-term study or work?
The PBD has led to several initiatives that have seen young NRIs spending time experiencing India first hand. Personally, I have been very keen that my children, while they live and study in Britain, come to India without fail for at least one month every year. We visit our relatives in Mumbai, Hyderabad, Delhi and Dehradun. Our children have been growing up with close contact to their Indian roots. I’m sure many overseas Indians feel the same way.
Apart from the PBD, which is a government-run affair, have overseas Indians shown an interest in starting social organisations on their own, or with the help of Indians in India, to promote business, religious or cultural ties?
I think this is particularly prevalent in the charity sector. I chair the advisory council of the Loomba Trust, which educates the children of poor widows. The Trust started in India and has members from Indian communities in different countries.
Again, speaking from personal experience, there is Pratham, a wonderful charity which does a lot in the field of education in India; Child in Need India, which is active in the area of public health and raises awareness about malnutrition; and Thare Machi Education, which works to raise awareness on health issues in many developing countries, including India.
From a religious perspective, we can find the Zoroastrian Trust Funds of Europe, of which I am a member. It was the first ever Indian religious organisation in the UK, and is celebrating its 150th anniversary this year.
Overseas Indians have helped enhance India’s soft power. Can they leverage this to bring about durable political links between the countries they live in and India?
This is happening in a very significant way in the UK, where we now have several Indians in Parliament, both in the House of Lords and the House of Commons. Indian issues are playing an ever-larger role in British politics. One of the strongest examples of this was that Prime Minister David Cameron announced at the beginning of his term that he wanted to enhance Britain’s relationship with India. His first overseas visit, in July 2010, was to India and I was honoured to be able to accompany him.
The world has truly woken up to India. As India’s high commissioner to the UK said, “Our growth is your opportunity.”
How do we build a system of accountability of babus to ensure that they have done what they were paid to do,
How do we build a system of accountability of babus to ensure that they have done what they were paid to do,
Wholesale elimination of corruption a utopian dream; administrative reform can minimise it
30 Jan, 2012, 02.04AM IST,
Wholesale elimination of corruption a utopian dream; administrative reform can minimise it
By Pradeep S Mehta
In one of our seminars on regulatory issues, a gentleman suggested that we should have a regulator of retail corruption who would set standards of 'fees' and timelines to deliver what the system should have done ab initio. He was of course referring to simple issues like ration cards which cause a public pain. Some laughed but I think there was merit in the suggestion because corruption will not disappear, whether we have empowered Lokpal or Lokayuktas in our States. It is like a man eating tiger, who having tasted the human blood, will not stop at doing so even if it is faced with the threat of being eliminated. Many of our babus are like man eating tigers, and not even afraid of being eliminated. The way forward is to tackle the causes of the corruption so that the menace is curbed.
There are many such causes, but here I will be speaking about just one issue on how babus and politicians extract rents from the system and what we need to do to shrink the menace. If we can start reforming systems, which create such opportunities, much of the corruption can be curbed. Wholesale elimination is a utopian dream. The suggestions, not an exhaustive list, are reiterations, but they have to be said again, again and again, with the hope that change can happen.
How do we build a system of accountability of babus to ensure that they have done what they were paid to do, and in spite of what their ministers may want them to do? (The 2-G spectrum scam is case in point).
For example, the Right to Information Act provides for penalties for furnishing the answers in time. Consequently, things are moving and babus are more careful and armed to withstand pressures. On the other hand, the RTI has also been attacked since it causes delays and paralysis. But wisdom has prevailed to not to tinker with it.
Many states like Bihar, Rajasthan have also started adopting a public service delivery guarantee law, which too provides for penalties for non-performance within a specified time limit. Central government is also proposing a national law. In order to buttress accountability we need several other stronger and innovative methods wrought into the law. For example, responsibility of the supervisor should be built in, as many just shirk in their supervisory duties.
An award system too should exist to promote good practices/behaviour and thus act as an incentive to the good performers and shame the laggards. In our driving licencing system, there is a provision that if there are many faults then the licence is suspended or withdrawn. Likewise, a babu with many strikes should be sacked rather than just be penalised. For this action to be sustainable, article 311 of our Constitution should also be amended, because that provides an impenetrable armour to government employees.
Speaking about the lifetime job security to civil servants at all levels, why is it that a gradual elimination process cannot be built into the system. This can function like the system in the armed forces where promotion beyond the rank of Colonel in the army (Group Captain in the Air Force and Captain in the Navy) is only done on the basis of competence and not years of service, and one has to quit if not promoted. In our administrative system whether in the IAS or IFS or IPS or IRS, the employee can go right to the near top and retire at 60 years, even though s/he may have become incompetent on their way up. Consequently, the subordinates have to suffer them and do so willingly because they will be writing their annual performance reports on the basis of which their promotions take place. So incompetence will breed more incompetence.
In my long career, I have come across several such persons but had to suffer them because they had the unbridled power of doing what they should have done in routine course. This is moral corruption though not money corruption necessarily. This is somewhat like what has been happening at our top level in the recent past when the PM has been making valiant efforts to defend corrupt ministers.
The fact is that ministers alone cannot make money easily, without the active support of babus, or at least their forbearance. A nearly true story here will illustrate the point. A minister, after his babu informed him that a deal has been struck with the beneficiary, signed "Approved" on the file noting. The babu went back to the minister to say that the party is backing out and wishes to pay lesser amount. The Minister added the word "Not" before the word 'Approved'. The babu showed the file noting to the beneficiary, who then surrendered to the original deal.
The file went back to the minister, and using the same pen, he added an 'e' after Not, i.e., Note Approved. The babu also benefited financially in the bargain, and got more. Having reached the age of 60 years, he was to retire soon. But being an obedient servant, the minister rewarded him with a sinecure job in a regulatory commission under his charge. He will continue to live in Delhi for another five years, and perhaps make more money in doing a job, of what he knows little about.
So here is a system which rewards the corrupt. How does one deal with that? One suggestion is that there should be no sinecures at all to prevent corruption. More on this in the next article, on how the steel-frame perpetuates its stranglehold and promotes systemic corruption.
(The author is secretary general, CUTS International)
Wholesale elimination of corruption a utopian dream; administrative reform can minimise it
By Pradeep S Mehta
In one of our seminars on regulatory issues, a gentleman suggested that we should have a regulator of retail corruption who would set standards of 'fees' and timelines to deliver what the system should have done ab initio. He was of course referring to simple issues like ration cards which cause a public pain. Some laughed but I think there was merit in the suggestion because corruption will not disappear, whether we have empowered Lokpal or Lokayuktas in our States. It is like a man eating tiger, who having tasted the human blood, will not stop at doing so even if it is faced with the threat of being eliminated. Many of our babus are like man eating tigers, and not even afraid of being eliminated. The way forward is to tackle the causes of the corruption so that the menace is curbed.
There are many such causes, but here I will be speaking about just one issue on how babus and politicians extract rents from the system and what we need to do to shrink the menace. If we can start reforming systems, which create such opportunities, much of the corruption can be curbed. Wholesale elimination is a utopian dream. The suggestions, not an exhaustive list, are reiterations, but they have to be said again, again and again, with the hope that change can happen.
How do we build a system of accountability of babus to ensure that they have done what they were paid to do, and in spite of what their ministers may want them to do? (The 2-G spectrum scam is case in point).
For example, the Right to Information Act provides for penalties for furnishing the answers in time. Consequently, things are moving and babus are more careful and armed to withstand pressures. On the other hand, the RTI has also been attacked since it causes delays and paralysis. But wisdom has prevailed to not to tinker with it.
Many states like Bihar, Rajasthan have also started adopting a public service delivery guarantee law, which too provides for penalties for non-performance within a specified time limit. Central government is also proposing a national law. In order to buttress accountability we need several other stronger and innovative methods wrought into the law. For example, responsibility of the supervisor should be built in, as many just shirk in their supervisory duties.
An award system too should exist to promote good practices/behaviour and thus act as an incentive to the good performers and shame the laggards. In our driving licencing system, there is a provision that if there are many faults then the licence is suspended or withdrawn. Likewise, a babu with many strikes should be sacked rather than just be penalised. For this action to be sustainable, article 311 of our Constitution should also be amended, because that provides an impenetrable armour to government employees.
Speaking about the lifetime job security to civil servants at all levels, why is it that a gradual elimination process cannot be built into the system. This can function like the system in the armed forces where promotion beyond the rank of Colonel in the army (Group Captain in the Air Force and Captain in the Navy) is only done on the basis of competence and not years of service, and one has to quit if not promoted. In our administrative system whether in the IAS or IFS or IPS or IRS, the employee can go right to the near top and retire at 60 years, even though s/he may have become incompetent on their way up. Consequently, the subordinates have to suffer them and do so willingly because they will be writing their annual performance reports on the basis of which their promotions take place. So incompetence will breed more incompetence.
In my long career, I have come across several such persons but had to suffer them because they had the unbridled power of doing what they should have done in routine course. This is moral corruption though not money corruption necessarily. This is somewhat like what has been happening at our top level in the recent past when the PM has been making valiant efforts to defend corrupt ministers.
The fact is that ministers alone cannot make money easily, without the active support of babus, or at least their forbearance. A nearly true story here will illustrate the point. A minister, after his babu informed him that a deal has been struck with the beneficiary, signed "Approved" on the file noting. The babu went back to the minister to say that the party is backing out and wishes to pay lesser amount. The Minister added the word "Not" before the word 'Approved'. The babu showed the file noting to the beneficiary, who then surrendered to the original deal.
The file went back to the minister, and using the same pen, he added an 'e' after Not, i.e., Note Approved. The babu also benefited financially in the bargain, and got more. Having reached the age of 60 years, he was to retire soon. But being an obedient servant, the minister rewarded him with a sinecure job in a regulatory commission under his charge. He will continue to live in Delhi for another five years, and perhaps make more money in doing a job, of what he knows little about.
So here is a system which rewards the corrupt. How does one deal with that? One suggestion is that there should be no sinecures at all to prevent corruption. More on this in the next article, on how the steel-frame perpetuates its stranglehold and promotes systemic corruption.
(The author is secretary general, CUTS International)
In campaign article, Putin says Russia’s economy should diversify away from oil and gas
In campaign article, Putin says Russia’s economy should diversify away from oil and gas
By Associated Press, Updated: Monday, January 30, 1:38 PM
MOSCOW — Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who is running for the Russian presidency, on Monday called for the country’s economic diversification away from oil and gas to high-tech products to ensure future prosperity.
Five weeks before the presidential election, he is expanding on crucial points of his campaign programs in weekly articles in the Russian press.
Putin, who was Russia’s president from 2000 to 2008, could occupy the top post for at least six years if he wins the March 4 vote.
Although his popularity has been dented by alleged vote rigging in the December parliamentary vote and mass street protests in Russian cities, pollsters still say he could get from 44 to 62 percent of the vote.
In an article published Monday, Putin, who presided over an oil-fueled economic boom of the 2000s, admitted that the current economic model is ruinous for the country.
Exports of oil, gas, metals, timber and other raw materials account for a quarter of Russia’s gross domestic product, Putin said, lamenting the amount imports into Russia.
“Russia cannot afford to have an economy that does not provide us with stability, sovereignty or prosperity,” Putin wrote in his article in the Vedomosti daily.
He also urged to cut state shareholding in state-owned natural resource giants — a privatization roll that his government has spoken of for years. However, Putin’s close ally and energy czar Igor Sechin has recently advocated against the sale of such assets as oil producer Rosneft, citing unfavorable market conditions.
Columnists in Vedomosti blasted the eleven-page essay as lacking substance and offering few solutions.
Authors of Vedomosti’s editorial have pointed to the predominance of phrases like “ought to”, “necessary” and “will be” and the lack of words, signaling Putin’s responsibility for the country’s development. “What has he been doing all the past years?” the editorial asked.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
By Associated Press, Updated: Monday, January 30, 1:38 PM
MOSCOW — Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who is running for the Russian presidency, on Monday called for the country’s economic diversification away from oil and gas to high-tech products to ensure future prosperity.
Five weeks before the presidential election, he is expanding on crucial points of his campaign programs in weekly articles in the Russian press.
Putin, who was Russia’s president from 2000 to 2008, could occupy the top post for at least six years if he wins the March 4 vote.
Although his popularity has been dented by alleged vote rigging in the December parliamentary vote and mass street protests in Russian cities, pollsters still say he could get from 44 to 62 percent of the vote.
In an article published Monday, Putin, who presided over an oil-fueled economic boom of the 2000s, admitted that the current economic model is ruinous for the country.
Exports of oil, gas, metals, timber and other raw materials account for a quarter of Russia’s gross domestic product, Putin said, lamenting the amount imports into Russia.
“Russia cannot afford to have an economy that does not provide us with stability, sovereignty or prosperity,” Putin wrote in his article in the Vedomosti daily.
He also urged to cut state shareholding in state-owned natural resource giants — a privatization roll that his government has spoken of for years. However, Putin’s close ally and energy czar Igor Sechin has recently advocated against the sale of such assets as oil producer Rosneft, citing unfavorable market conditions.
Columnists in Vedomosti blasted the eleven-page essay as lacking substance and offering few solutions.
Authors of Vedomosti’s editorial have pointed to the predominance of phrases like “ought to”, “necessary” and “will be” and the lack of words, signaling Putin’s responsibility for the country’s development. “What has he been doing all the past years?” the editorial asked.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
That has made Gandhism immobile whereas its essential strength lies in its mobility, its capacity 2 expand n change according 2 d pressures of time.
That has made Gandhism immobile whereas its essential strength lies in its mobility, its capacity to expand and change according to the pressures of time.
The problem with Gandhism has been that it has been made into a rigid monument and put on a pedestal.
The problem with Gandhism has been that it has been made into a rigid monument and put on a pedestal.That has made Gandhism immobile whereas its essential strength lies in its mobility, its capacity to expand and change according to the pressures of time.
Remembering Gandhi: Interpreting the Mahatma/It talks about how Gandhism can actually be applied in the life of modern India.
Remembering Gandhi: Interpreting the Mahatma
On the 63rd death anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, we bring you this article published in the India Today magazine issue dated October 15, 1976. It talks about how Gandhism can actually be applied in the life of modern India.
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi has always been an enigma. The Mahatma to some, Mickey Mouse to others. The loin-cloth clad figure has been accepted as the "father of the nation" by a nation exporting nuclear-know. The name of the votary of the idyllic non-industrialised society is invoked before commissioning mammoth structures of concrete and steel.
The problem with Gandhism has been that it has been made into a rigid monument and put on a pedestal. That has made Gandhism immobile whereas its essential strength lies in its mobility, its capacity to expand and change according to the pressures of time.
Is Gandhism really an "ism", or is it the anti-model devised by perhaps the greatest exponent of a new form of agit prop?
Gandhi's greatest contribution was that he spoke with the people. Before him the main emphasis was on speaking for them. In involving the people Gandhi tapped an almost limitless reservoir. Gandhism drew its strength by adding this new dimension to Indian polity. It is Gandhi, who aroused, involved and led the masses. And free India passed almost pointlessly into government by adult franchise - a procedure which took a century in most countries.
Throughout the tenets of Gandhism there is one underlying theme and assumption. The acceptance of social equilibrium as a necessary prerequisite of all action. Added to this was Gandhi's concept of natural harmony based on a step-back into history.
Gandhian action was never a total rejection. It was the much milder non-acceptance. Rejection by itself would mean stepping out of the structure, non-acceptance would imply an effort to change it.
Critics of Gandhi have concentrated on his rejection of industrialization and his harking back to the idyllic Ramrajya as proof of his irrelevance to a modern India
Gandhian thought and ideas can best be understood in the background of Gandhian politics. Essentially Gandhi and his concepts gave a dream to millions of Indians. Against the industrial exploitation of British imperialism, he created the anti-model of Ramrajya. Against the prevalent "constitutionalists" fighting according to the rules laid down by the exploiters, he devised the concept of Satyagraha. Against the terrorist weapons of bombs and guns he called for non-violence.
In all Gandhian concepts, social and class contradictions were resolved by the process of simplifying. Gandhi believed in the equality of all classes but he strived for the unity of all classes. His "theory of trust" simplified the problem by making the rich the "trustees" of the poor. It did not solve it.
In spite of apparent non-modernism in Gandhian thought there were aspects in which he showed phenomenal insight. In an essentially rural society he emphasized the need for adopting the village as the fundamental unit. His concentration of village-level industries in a labour-surplus society has now been accepted. His warnings against the ecological and value damage by unhampered modernism are all the more apparent today. Where Gandhi is usually misinterpreted is in propagating these ideals. He built up the anti-model on the basis of negatives alone.
Nobody can really claim that they can fully understand Gandhism. The enigma which is Gandhi and Gandhism is seen in the following article through the eyes of T.K. Mahadevan who has been actively associated with the Mahatama. In this companion piece he sets down his random thoughts on paper in an unusual style. But then any thought on Gandhi and his "ism" has to be so.
Is Gandhi good for India? How much of his blueprint remains valid in a fast changing world? Must it be all or nothing, or can we pick and choose among his ideas? The question is not how much of Gandhi is good for us, but how much of him we can take. The cuisine is just right. what needs to be improved is our digestion. But aren't we already too pigeon-livered to be able to respond to Gandhi's O'Henry twists?
Instead of this annual ritual of looking for the needle in Gandhi's haystack, let's begin to look for it in our own haystack. We may never find it, but at least we'll have the satisfaction of searching in the right place. In plain words, what I am asking for is introspection and a moratorium on this horrible vivisection of Gandhi year after year.
What Gandhi said is couched in the simplest language imaginable. No jargon. No esotericism. No circumlocution. No prevarication. Why then do our social scientists spend so much of their breath "analysing" him? Shouldn't they rather direct their energies to examining the national psyche? That way they may help isolate the virus of misperception that stood between us-that still stands between us-and Gandhi.
To serve Gandhi, to serve the India that Gandhi fashioned for us, the October jamboree and the beating of breasts which takes place every January won't do. Nor will it do to reaffirm the essential validity of His vision and then start mumbling excuses. If we don't have Gandhi's guts, let's be honest about it. Forget him, put him away in the attic, we have had no dearth of great men in this country. And this is precisely how we disposed of them all. India's rich heritage of wisdom has been her very undoing. When you have wisdom on tap, as it were, you begin to cherish it less.
We took Gandhi for granted. That was our first act of folly. He fought every inch of his way. We have to do likewise. There is no short-cut for a country's growth to full nationhood. The snag is that Indians, as a rule, are the victims of two conditioned reflexes inherited from the past. Let me call them the Karna reflex and the Kumbhakarna reflex. The first is all drive and dynamism; the second all indolence and inertia. Our known history can be summed up this way: long spells of slumber punctuated with short, very short, spells of a sudden awakening.
Currently we are passing through the Karna phase. Nothing short of a miracle that a fighting leader should be at the heart of it all. But the forces of inertia never lie low for long. Such has been our history. When a comparatively unknown, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, swooped on the Indian scene like a streak of lightning, we woke up with a start. But we woke up only to go to sleepsagain. We said yes to whatever he said. We left everything in his hands. And when it was time for him to leave us, what did we do? We did what we have always done to our mentors: with a duplicity hard to match we turned Gandhi into a clutch of epigrams, a repertoire for drawing-room conversation. (By "we", I mean especially the self-professed followers of Gandhi. He had great respect for his critics. He welcomed criticism. But what would he do with the tribe which outwardly said yes and inwardly meant no?)
It is this epigrammatic Gandhi we invoke, whether to deify ourselves or to damn others. The real Gandhi eluded us long ago-and still does. We thought we understood him, but we did not. He spoke on one wavelength and we were tuned to another. Rather like the difficulty Gulliver had in trying to communicate with the Lilliputians.
Let me attempt two things. First, a glimpse of the Gandhi we know. And then, a bit of guesswork about the unknown Gandhi-the one nobody heard nor heeded.
The Gandhi we know is really nothing more than a mirror-image of ourselves. One part fantasy, two parts demonology, the rest ayuapura. Lace it with a bit of reality-and you have the concoction. The fantasy comes in two different packs. The house-hold pack makes the amazing claim that there is a "Gandhian solution" to every conceivable national problem and that its contents do not deteriorate with time. Consumers of this pack are the hardcore Gaodhians. For them time came tg a standstill somewhere in the late 40's.
What does the pack contain? Nostrums of all shapes and sizes. Though Gandhi had no hand in their making, there is no running away from the fact that they all derive their potency from the weakest link in his chain of thought. I have called it the arithmetical fallacy: the notion that what one man can do a hundred can do as well; and what a hundred can do, why not a hundred thousand? All great men have suffered from this infirmity of universalizing from particulars, forgetting that life in the raw is something quite else. Symmetry, equality, predictability-these are man-made fictions. They do not exist in nature.
The other sophisticated fantasy pack is for the exclusive use of politicians and publicists. Its argument runs like this: Had Gandhi survived and been. young enough to head the national government, after the transfer of power, the whole gamut of his revolutionary ideas would have sprung to life and we would all now be living in the Ramarajya of his conception. Sceptical readers may, according to taste, substitute for Ramarajya one of the following: Thomas More's Utopia, Samuel Butler's Erewhon, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, or George Orwell's 1984.
Since Gandhi did not survive Independence, and in any case was no longer in his prime, his dream India was bound to turn to ashes. How cogent it all seems! But look at it closely and you will see how cleverly the argument sidetracks two crucial aspects of the matter. First of all, Gandhi never did want political or any other kind of material power for himself. (He had walked out of the Congress long, long ago) Secondly-and this is much more to the point-his metier was agit prop, not administration. Prime Minister Mohandas Gandhi-I delve into my mind's eye for an image-would have cut as pitiable a figure as a fish out of water.
So much for fantasy packs. The demonology that has grown , ' around Gandhi is a monster of another kind. Its tentacles reach far and deep. No aspect of our life, whether public or private, is a spared. Do you eat beef? Too bad. Do you wear a terene shirt instead of a khadi kurta? Too bad. Don't you ply your charkha in the precincts of Rajghat, when the cameras are clicking? Too bad. It is an endless catalogue of do's and don'ts. What particularly irks me is its rank un-Indianness.
Authentic Indian civilization was not prim and priggish. It was a highly permissive one. To give but one example: the original Ramarajya, as depicted in the Valmiki Ramayan(1, celebrated the safe return of Sita not in prayer but in Bacchanalia. The choicest meats and wines were gunled in delirious joy. Our current prescriptive ethos is an imported graft and it has enfeebled us no end. A pity that Gandhi has lent his weight to this enfeeblement. Now the Gandhi that we buy in these fast-selling packs-and consume in a state of euphoria-is stale stuff. Look at the expiry date before you buy your next pack. The modern acceleration of time and technology overtook this Gandhi long ago.
But the real Gandhi, the Gandhi whom nobody knows, is evergreen. He can never date. Not because, like all great men, he mumbled verities which one can neither accept nor reject. Such as: Do good. Be True. Covet not. Harm none. If I ask: Why the hell should I do good? A deafening silence is all the answer I get. Anyone can mouth platitudes. What makes Gandhi evergreenespecially for us of this last quarter of the 20th century-is that he warned us, at the very beginning of the century, not to give up our rightful place at the steering wheel. Man must remain the chooser or he is finished. Against the fashionable homily of our time: "Technologize or perish", Gandhi warned, "Technologize and perish." Who listened to him? Who even heard him? His was a wail in the wilderness.
Now after we have been thoroughly drenched in the macabre fallout of technology-exploding population, depleting energy resources, threats of instant extinction (nirvana?) in a nuclear holocaust or slow death by asphyxiation in a polluted environmeg-we scratch our heads and wonder: Can't we go back to Gandhi ?
Let's not fool ourselves-seeing that we still have our bullockcarts, our mud huts, our oxen ploughs, our artisans-that somehow India can stop short of the brink and take the big turn. She can't. Third-worlder, nonaligned, or what have you, India is very much a part of the global technological swindle. The megamachine has unmanned us all-for ever. Take the back seat, please. And knit one, purl one...
In sum, our tragedy is that we consumed too much of the wrong Gandhi and too little of the right Gandhi. The result: not cardiac -arrest, but carcinome computeritis. There is no cure.
Source:
On the 63rd death anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, we bring you this article published in the India Today magazine issue dated October 15, 1976. It talks about how Gandhism can actually be applied in the life of modern India.
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi has always been an enigma. The Mahatma to some, Mickey Mouse to others. The loin-cloth clad figure has been accepted as the "father of the nation" by a nation exporting nuclear-know. The name of the votary of the idyllic non-industrialised society is invoked before commissioning mammoth structures of concrete and steel.
The problem with Gandhism has been that it has been made into a rigid monument and put on a pedestal. That has made Gandhism immobile whereas its essential strength lies in its mobility, its capacity to expand and change according to the pressures of time.
Is Gandhism really an "ism", or is it the anti-model devised by perhaps the greatest exponent of a new form of agit prop?
Gandhi's greatest contribution was that he spoke with the people. Before him the main emphasis was on speaking for them. In involving the people Gandhi tapped an almost limitless reservoir. Gandhism drew its strength by adding this new dimension to Indian polity. It is Gandhi, who aroused, involved and led the masses. And free India passed almost pointlessly into government by adult franchise - a procedure which took a century in most countries.
Throughout the tenets of Gandhism there is one underlying theme and assumption. The acceptance of social equilibrium as a necessary prerequisite of all action. Added to this was Gandhi's concept of natural harmony based on a step-back into history.
Gandhian action was never a total rejection. It was the much milder non-acceptance. Rejection by itself would mean stepping out of the structure, non-acceptance would imply an effort to change it.
Critics of Gandhi have concentrated on his rejection of industrialization and his harking back to the idyllic Ramrajya as proof of his irrelevance to a modern India
Gandhian thought and ideas can best be understood in the background of Gandhian politics. Essentially Gandhi and his concepts gave a dream to millions of Indians. Against the industrial exploitation of British imperialism, he created the anti-model of Ramrajya. Against the prevalent "constitutionalists" fighting according to the rules laid down by the exploiters, he devised the concept of Satyagraha. Against the terrorist weapons of bombs and guns he called for non-violence.
In all Gandhian concepts, social and class contradictions were resolved by the process of simplifying. Gandhi believed in the equality of all classes but he strived for the unity of all classes. His "theory of trust" simplified the problem by making the rich the "trustees" of the poor. It did not solve it.
In spite of apparent non-modernism in Gandhian thought there were aspects in which he showed phenomenal insight. In an essentially rural society he emphasized the need for adopting the village as the fundamental unit. His concentration of village-level industries in a labour-surplus society has now been accepted. His warnings against the ecological and value damage by unhampered modernism are all the more apparent today. Where Gandhi is usually misinterpreted is in propagating these ideals. He built up the anti-model on the basis of negatives alone.
Nobody can really claim that they can fully understand Gandhism. The enigma which is Gandhi and Gandhism is seen in the following article through the eyes of T.K. Mahadevan who has been actively associated with the Mahatama. In this companion piece he sets down his random thoughts on paper in an unusual style. But then any thought on Gandhi and his "ism" has to be so.
Is Gandhi good for India? How much of his blueprint remains valid in a fast changing world? Must it be all or nothing, or can we pick and choose among his ideas? The question is not how much of Gandhi is good for us, but how much of him we can take. The cuisine is just right. what needs to be improved is our digestion. But aren't we already too pigeon-livered to be able to respond to Gandhi's O'Henry twists?
Instead of this annual ritual of looking for the needle in Gandhi's haystack, let's begin to look for it in our own haystack. We may never find it, but at least we'll have the satisfaction of searching in the right place. In plain words, what I am asking for is introspection and a moratorium on this horrible vivisection of Gandhi year after year.
What Gandhi said is couched in the simplest language imaginable. No jargon. No esotericism. No circumlocution. No prevarication. Why then do our social scientists spend so much of their breath "analysing" him? Shouldn't they rather direct their energies to examining the national psyche? That way they may help isolate the virus of misperception that stood between us-that still stands between us-and Gandhi.
To serve Gandhi, to serve the India that Gandhi fashioned for us, the October jamboree and the beating of breasts which takes place every January won't do. Nor will it do to reaffirm the essential validity of His vision and then start mumbling excuses. If we don't have Gandhi's guts, let's be honest about it. Forget him, put him away in the attic, we have had no dearth of great men in this country. And this is precisely how we disposed of them all. India's rich heritage of wisdom has been her very undoing. When you have wisdom on tap, as it were, you begin to cherish it less.
We took Gandhi for granted. That was our first act of folly. He fought every inch of his way. We have to do likewise. There is no short-cut for a country's growth to full nationhood. The snag is that Indians, as a rule, are the victims of two conditioned reflexes inherited from the past. Let me call them the Karna reflex and the Kumbhakarna reflex. The first is all drive and dynamism; the second all indolence and inertia. Our known history can be summed up this way: long spells of slumber punctuated with short, very short, spells of a sudden awakening.
Currently we are passing through the Karna phase. Nothing short of a miracle that a fighting leader should be at the heart of it all. But the forces of inertia never lie low for long. Such has been our history. When a comparatively unknown, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, swooped on the Indian scene like a streak of lightning, we woke up with a start. But we woke up only to go to sleepsagain. We said yes to whatever he said. We left everything in his hands. And when it was time for him to leave us, what did we do? We did what we have always done to our mentors: with a duplicity hard to match we turned Gandhi into a clutch of epigrams, a repertoire for drawing-room conversation. (By "we", I mean especially the self-professed followers of Gandhi. He had great respect for his critics. He welcomed criticism. But what would he do with the tribe which outwardly said yes and inwardly meant no?)
It is this epigrammatic Gandhi we invoke, whether to deify ourselves or to damn others. The real Gandhi eluded us long ago-and still does. We thought we understood him, but we did not. He spoke on one wavelength and we were tuned to another. Rather like the difficulty Gulliver had in trying to communicate with the Lilliputians.
Let me attempt two things. First, a glimpse of the Gandhi we know. And then, a bit of guesswork about the unknown Gandhi-the one nobody heard nor heeded.
The Gandhi we know is really nothing more than a mirror-image of ourselves. One part fantasy, two parts demonology, the rest ayuapura. Lace it with a bit of reality-and you have the concoction. The fantasy comes in two different packs. The house-hold pack makes the amazing claim that there is a "Gandhian solution" to every conceivable national problem and that its contents do not deteriorate with time. Consumers of this pack are the hardcore Gaodhians. For them time came tg a standstill somewhere in the late 40's.
What does the pack contain? Nostrums of all shapes and sizes. Though Gandhi had no hand in their making, there is no running away from the fact that they all derive their potency from the weakest link in his chain of thought. I have called it the arithmetical fallacy: the notion that what one man can do a hundred can do as well; and what a hundred can do, why not a hundred thousand? All great men have suffered from this infirmity of universalizing from particulars, forgetting that life in the raw is something quite else. Symmetry, equality, predictability-these are man-made fictions. They do not exist in nature.
The other sophisticated fantasy pack is for the exclusive use of politicians and publicists. Its argument runs like this: Had Gandhi survived and been. young enough to head the national government, after the transfer of power, the whole gamut of his revolutionary ideas would have sprung to life and we would all now be living in the Ramarajya of his conception. Sceptical readers may, according to taste, substitute for Ramarajya one of the following: Thomas More's Utopia, Samuel Butler's Erewhon, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, or George Orwell's 1984.
Since Gandhi did not survive Independence, and in any case was no longer in his prime, his dream India was bound to turn to ashes. How cogent it all seems! But look at it closely and you will see how cleverly the argument sidetracks two crucial aspects of the matter. First of all, Gandhi never did want political or any other kind of material power for himself. (He had walked out of the Congress long, long ago) Secondly-and this is much more to the point-his metier was agit prop, not administration. Prime Minister Mohandas Gandhi-I delve into my mind's eye for an image-would have cut as pitiable a figure as a fish out of water.
So much for fantasy packs. The demonology that has grown , ' around Gandhi is a monster of another kind. Its tentacles reach far and deep. No aspect of our life, whether public or private, is a spared. Do you eat beef? Too bad. Do you wear a terene shirt instead of a khadi kurta? Too bad. Don't you ply your charkha in the precincts of Rajghat, when the cameras are clicking? Too bad. It is an endless catalogue of do's and don'ts. What particularly irks me is its rank un-Indianness.
Authentic Indian civilization was not prim and priggish. It was a highly permissive one. To give but one example: the original Ramarajya, as depicted in the Valmiki Ramayan(1, celebrated the safe return of Sita not in prayer but in Bacchanalia. The choicest meats and wines were gunled in delirious joy. Our current prescriptive ethos is an imported graft and it has enfeebled us no end. A pity that Gandhi has lent his weight to this enfeeblement. Now the Gandhi that we buy in these fast-selling packs-and consume in a state of euphoria-is stale stuff. Look at the expiry date before you buy your next pack. The modern acceleration of time and technology overtook this Gandhi long ago.
But the real Gandhi, the Gandhi whom nobody knows, is evergreen. He can never date. Not because, like all great men, he mumbled verities which one can neither accept nor reject. Such as: Do good. Be True. Covet not. Harm none. If I ask: Why the hell should I do good? A deafening silence is all the answer I get. Anyone can mouth platitudes. What makes Gandhi evergreenespecially for us of this last quarter of the 20th century-is that he warned us, at the very beginning of the century, not to give up our rightful place at the steering wheel. Man must remain the chooser or he is finished. Against the fashionable homily of our time: "Technologize or perish", Gandhi warned, "Technologize and perish." Who listened to him? Who even heard him? His was a wail in the wilderness.
Now after we have been thoroughly drenched in the macabre fallout of technology-exploding population, depleting energy resources, threats of instant extinction (nirvana?) in a nuclear holocaust or slow death by asphyxiation in a polluted environmeg-we scratch our heads and wonder: Can't we go back to Gandhi ?
Let's not fool ourselves-seeing that we still have our bullockcarts, our mud huts, our oxen ploughs, our artisans-that somehow India can stop short of the brink and take the big turn. She can't. Third-worlder, nonaligned, or what have you, India is very much a part of the global technological swindle. The megamachine has unmanned us all-for ever. Take the back seat, please. And knit one, purl one...
In sum, our tragedy is that we consumed too much of the wrong Gandhi and too little of the right Gandhi. The result: not cardiac -arrest, but carcinome computeritis. There is no cure.
Source:
Sunday, January 29, 2012
undertake needed police reforms, or bring an end to torture. Internationally, India missed opportunities to be a leader at the
undertake needed police reforms, or bring an end to torture. Internationally, India missed opportunities to be a leader at the United Nations Security Council and Human Rights Council in protecting the rights of vulnerable people abroad."
Asia director at the city-based organisation Brad Adams said the Indian government took few steps to "prosecute abusive soldiers,
Asia director at the city-based organisation Brad Adams said the Indian government took few steps to "prosecute abusive soldiers, undertake needed police reforms, or bring an end to torture. Internationally, India missed opportunities to be a leader at the United Nations Security Council and Human Rights Council in protecting the rights of vulnerable people abroad."
India's human rights record in 2011 "disappointing"for its "failure" to protect vulnerable communities and rapped the government : Human Rights Watch-
29 Jan, 2012, 06.12PM IST, PTI
India's human rights record in 2011 "disappointing": Human Rights Watch
NEW YORK: India's human rights record in 2011 got a thumbs down from a leading global rights group for its "failure" to protect vulnerable communities and rapped the government for custodial killings, police abuses, including torture.
Human Rights Watch also criticised the Indian government for its inaction in repealing the controversial armed forces act and for remaining silent on the "gravest abuses" in countries like Syria.
In its World Report 2012, Human Rights Watch (HRW) assessed progress on human rights during the past year in more than 90 countries. In India's case, HRW said it has been a "disappointing year for human rights".
"Custodial killings, police abuses including torture, and failure to implement policies to protect vulnerable communities marred India's record in 2011 as in the past," HRW said in its report.
Asia director at the city-based organisation Brad Adams said the Indian government took few steps to "prosecute abusive soldiers, undertake needed police reforms, or bring an end to torture. Internationally, India missed opportunities to be a leader at the United Nations Security Council and Human Rights Council in protecting the rights of vulnerable people abroad."
HRW said the Indian government took no action to repeal the "widely discredited Armed Forces Special Powers Act ( AFSPA), disregarding the recommendations of political leaders and advisers.
"Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's call for 'zero tolerance' of abuses by the armed forces has been undercut by the near zero progress in holding the abusers responsible," Adams said.
HRW however said violence in the northern state of Jammu and Kashmir dropped significantly during 2011. While the government has promised a thorough inquiry into the discovery of over 2000 unmarked graves in the state.
India's human rights record in 2011 "disappointing": Human Rights Watch
NEW YORK: India's human rights record in 2011 got a thumbs down from a leading global rights group for its "failure" to protect vulnerable communities and rapped the government for custodial killings, police abuses, including torture.
Human Rights Watch also criticised the Indian government for its inaction in repealing the controversial armed forces act and for remaining silent on the "gravest abuses" in countries like Syria.
In its World Report 2012, Human Rights Watch (HRW) assessed progress on human rights during the past year in more than 90 countries. In India's case, HRW said it has been a "disappointing year for human rights".
"Custodial killings, police abuses including torture, and failure to implement policies to protect vulnerable communities marred India's record in 2011 as in the past," HRW said in its report.
Asia director at the city-based organisation Brad Adams said the Indian government took few steps to "prosecute abusive soldiers, undertake needed police reforms, or bring an end to torture. Internationally, India missed opportunities to be a leader at the United Nations Security Council and Human Rights Council in protecting the rights of vulnerable people abroad."
HRW said the Indian government took no action to repeal the "widely discredited Armed Forces Special Powers Act ( AFSPA), disregarding the recommendations of political leaders and advisers.
"Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's call for 'zero tolerance' of abuses by the armed forces has been undercut by the near zero progress in holding the abusers responsible," Adams said.
HRW however said violence in the northern state of Jammu and Kashmir dropped significantly during 2011. While the government has promised a thorough inquiry into the discovery of over 2000 unmarked graves in the state.
Are India's corrupt and the dishonest becoming role-models for youngsters of the country?How many people in our public life can you be proud of for
Corrupt are becoming role-models for youth in India: Narayana Murthy
PTI, 29 Jan 2012 | 10:07 PM
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Video
India can achieve 7% growth if credit constraints ease: SBI Chairman
13:54
Are India's corrupt and the dishonest becoming role-models for youngsters of the country? Software icon N R Narayana Murthy believes so.
"The number of role-models that our youngsters can look up to is decreasing. How many people in our public life can you be proud of for honesty, courage, commitment and hardwork? And that number is dwindling", the Co-Founder of Infosys Ltd said.
"Our youngsters don't have role-models to look up to and therefore and sadly because of corruption, some of the people who are doing exactly the opposite, dishonest, deceit, 'chalta hai' and all of that...they are becoming more and more powerful, they are becoming wealthier", the Chairman Emeritus of the Bangalore-headquartered IT major, listed on the NASDAQ, said.
"Therefore, our youngsters are getting the wrong signals. They think may be this is the way to succeed. I don't blame them", Murthy said at a function here last night to release the book "Upwordly Mobile" written by Founder and CEO of cross-cultural training and services firm Global Adjustments, Ranjini Manian.
He also said Indians are perhaps the mostm "thin-skinned" people in the world. "We see insults where none is meant. We get upset very easily. We think that somebody is out to make India look bad. That's not true".
Murthy said Indians put the interest of their family ahead of society which "has caused enormous damage to the country". In someway, there is good way of balancing in the West between the two.
He also said that Bhagavad Gita does give "all of us a path to peace of mind. That's what I found", he observed, adding, the Gita has nothing to do with any religion. It's a way of life, like Hinduism, Murthy added.
Ranjini said with 3138 foreign companies currently registered and operating in India and one lakh new MBA graduates in India every year, scope for cultural misunderstandings due to a lack of a common norm of global behaviour is infinite.
"As Indians increasingly engage with foreigners and foreign companies, cultural intelligence is a crucial tool to succeed in doing business with people to work, dress and behave differently, yet we have to make a concerted effort to understand", she said.
The book is designed to equip Indian managers and their expatriate colleagues with cultural intelligence tools to succeed in business, it was stated.
PTI, 29 Jan 2012 | 10:07 PM
Email0 0 3 23
Video
India can achieve 7% growth if credit constraints ease: SBI Chairman
13:54
Are India's corrupt and the dishonest becoming role-models for youngsters of the country? Software icon N R Narayana Murthy believes so.
"The number of role-models that our youngsters can look up to is decreasing. How many people in our public life can you be proud of for honesty, courage, commitment and hardwork? And that number is dwindling", the Co-Founder of Infosys Ltd said.
"Our youngsters don't have role-models to look up to and therefore and sadly because of corruption, some of the people who are doing exactly the opposite, dishonest, deceit, 'chalta hai' and all of that...they are becoming more and more powerful, they are becoming wealthier", the Chairman Emeritus of the Bangalore-headquartered IT major, listed on the NASDAQ, said.
"Therefore, our youngsters are getting the wrong signals. They think may be this is the way to succeed. I don't blame them", Murthy said at a function here last night to release the book "Upwordly Mobile" written by Founder and CEO of cross-cultural training and services firm Global Adjustments, Ranjini Manian.
He also said Indians are perhaps the mostm "thin-skinned" people in the world. "We see insults where none is meant. We get upset very easily. We think that somebody is out to make India look bad. That's not true".
Murthy said Indians put the interest of their family ahead of society which "has caused enormous damage to the country". In someway, there is good way of balancing in the West between the two.
He also said that Bhagavad Gita does give "all of us a path to peace of mind. That's what I found", he observed, adding, the Gita has nothing to do with any religion. It's a way of life, like Hinduism, Murthy added.
Ranjini said with 3138 foreign companies currently registered and operating in India and one lakh new MBA graduates in India every year, scope for cultural misunderstandings due to a lack of a common norm of global behaviour is infinite.
"As Indians increasingly engage with foreigners and foreign companies, cultural intelligence is a crucial tool to succeed in doing business with people to work, dress and behave differently, yet we have to make a concerted effort to understand", she said.
The book is designed to equip Indian managers and their expatriate colleagues with cultural intelligence tools to succeed in business, it was stated.
Make Rahul PM,...two years term is still left... let people judge his ability to run the country: BJP/ Jan 29, 2012
Make Rahul PM, let people judge his ability: BJP
PTI | Jan 29, 2012, 07.38PM IST
Taking a dig at Rahul Gandhi, BJP has said that the Congress general secretary should be made the Prime Minister for the remaining two years of the UPA rule so that people can judge his ability.
LUCKNOW: Taking a dig at Rahul Gandhi, BJP on Sunday said that the Congress general secretary should be made the Prime Minister for the remaining two years of the UPA rule so that people can judge his ability.
"Let Rahul Gandhi become the Prime Minister...two years term is still left...let people know how much ability he has to run the country," BJP national general secretary and chief spokesman Ravi Shankar Prasad told reporters here.
"More so, he does not need anything to become the PM, he only needs to ask Manmohan Singh to step down," he added.
Prasad also accused Congress, SP and BSP of poralising Muslim votes.
"Population of UP is 20 crore... whether the minorities alone are the voters... this is deeply unfortunate," the BJP leader said.
Meanwhile, reacting to BJP's attack Congress leader Abhishek Manu Singhvi said Prasad's suggestion indicates the party's acceptance of Rahul's ability to serve as the Prime Minister of the country.
"Prasad has accepted the reality. BJP knows the leadership ability of Rahul Gandhi very well and it's defeat reflects from this statement," he said.
Confidant of Congress' victory in all the five poll bound states, Singhvi said that Rahul's leadership was like a storm of victory in the poll ground.
In a reply to a question the Congress leader said that a delegation led by him met officials of the Election Commission in which the issue of notice to law minister Salman Khurshid on his statement on Muslim reservation was also raised.
Elections 2012 News
PTI | Jan 29, 2012, 07.38PM IST
Taking a dig at Rahul Gandhi, BJP has said that the Congress general secretary should be made the Prime Minister for the remaining two years of the UPA rule so that people can judge his ability.
LUCKNOW: Taking a dig at Rahul Gandhi, BJP on Sunday said that the Congress general secretary should be made the Prime Minister for the remaining two years of the UPA rule so that people can judge his ability.
"Let Rahul Gandhi become the Prime Minister...two years term is still left...let people know how much ability he has to run the country," BJP national general secretary and chief spokesman Ravi Shankar Prasad told reporters here.
"More so, he does not need anything to become the PM, he only needs to ask Manmohan Singh to step down," he added.
Prasad also accused Congress, SP and BSP of poralising Muslim votes.
"Population of UP is 20 crore... whether the minorities alone are the voters... this is deeply unfortunate," the BJP leader said.
Meanwhile, reacting to BJP's attack Congress leader Abhishek Manu Singhvi said Prasad's suggestion indicates the party's acceptance of Rahul's ability to serve as the Prime Minister of the country.
"Prasad has accepted the reality. BJP knows the leadership ability of Rahul Gandhi very well and it's defeat reflects from this statement," he said.
Confidant of Congress' victory in all the five poll bound states, Singhvi said that Rahul's leadership was like a storm of victory in the poll ground.
In a reply to a question the Congress leader said that a delegation led by him met officials of the Election Commission in which the issue of notice to law minister Salman Khurshid on his statement on Muslim reservation was also raised.
Elections 2012 News
Saturday, January 28, 2012
BJP promises temple, cows; Cong jobs, quota
BJP promises temple, cows; Cong jobs, quota
HT Correspondents, Hindustan Times
Lucknow/Ayodhya, January 27, 2012
Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi waves during an election rally in a village near Allahabad.
The Bharatiya Janata Party — fighting to regain lost ground in Uttar Pradesh — reposed faith in the Ram temple at Ayodhya issue, reviving it in the party's election manifesto released Friday.
The return of the BJP's oft-used poll plank, which had fuelled its rise in national politics
in the 80s and early 90s, coincides with the second innings of Hindutva proponent Uma Bharti in the party.
The BJP 2012 UP manifesto also promises to do away with the 4.5% sub quota for minorities within the 27% reservation for OBCs approved by the union cabinet, while taking concrete steps for progress of Muslims.
Within hours of attending the manifesto release in Lucknow, Bharti said at an election rally in Ayodhya assembly segment she was ever desirous to see a grand Ram temple. The reappearance of the temple issue, however, did not create any flutter in temple town Ayodhya in Faizabad district.
Mahant Bhaskar Das, 83, and Hashim Ansari, 92 — the only two living original litigants in the dispute over the site — laughed at the temple promise. Das said, "What's new. They 'build' one every election, and forget it post-election."
Ansari said, “The election commission must ban such promises."
The manifesto also promises one milch cow each to all below poverty line families. The other pre-poll sops include free cycles for girls, free computers and tablets to poor students and subsidised ones to others and sops for farmers.
A Sawarn Ayog (commission for forward castes) to look into the economic status of the poor among the 50% unreserved population is also in the manifesto.
Better governance, unemployment allowance, one crore jobs in five years, improved health services and women's empowerment are among the promises.
Cong focus on SCs-STs,minorities, weavers
The Congress on Friday promised to create 20 lakh jobs, provide sub-quota for most backward classes and eliminate corruption in Uttar Pradesh, besides revamping education, employment and the state economy.
The 'Vision for 2020', released here by Union minister and chairman of the election manifesto committee Salman Khurshid and state Congress chief Rita Bahuguna Joshi also has in store a Rs 3,000-crore package for handloom weavers.
"There is a need to rationalise the present quota system," said Khurshid. The Congress would also explore the possibility of bringing a sub-quota for the "ati-dalit" (most dalits), he added. The party also plans to conduct fresh census of people living below poverty line.
Referring to freebies announced by the Samajwadi Party and BJP in their manifestoes, Khurshid said, "The parties which are not coming to power could make such promises".
On corruption, he said, "We are planning to put in place a citizen's charter, whereby a time frame will be prescribed for delivery of all public services."
Against the backdrop of the controversial acquisition of farmers' land in Noida by the BSP government, the Congress promised a new pro-poor -landless and -farmer law, while providing adequate land for industrialisation and urbanisation. Khurshid said, "A Congress government in the state will ensure that land is acquired with the consent of owners and those affected get livelihood security."
The document also mentions revamping of state watchdog Lokayukta, to make it more independent and effective, and bringing the chief minister under the Lokayukta's purview.
Seeking to impress upon all that the party was set to come to power in the state where it last ruled about 23 years ago, Khurshid said, "We will create 20 lakh new jobs over five years to tackle distress migration." Asked how, he shot back, "We are not talking off our hat. We propose to set up 1,000 skill development centres, besides revamping the polytechnics and ITIs."
The 22-page vision document, in Hindi, Urdu and English, was released simultaneously at 10 places in the state. The party would release its election manifesto on January 30.
HT Correspondents, Hindustan Times
Lucknow/Ayodhya, January 27, 2012
Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi waves during an election rally in a village near Allahabad.
The Bharatiya Janata Party — fighting to regain lost ground in Uttar Pradesh — reposed faith in the Ram temple at Ayodhya issue, reviving it in the party's election manifesto released Friday.
The return of the BJP's oft-used poll plank, which had fuelled its rise in national politics
in the 80s and early 90s, coincides with the second innings of Hindutva proponent Uma Bharti in the party.
The BJP 2012 UP manifesto also promises to do away with the 4.5% sub quota for minorities within the 27% reservation for OBCs approved by the union cabinet, while taking concrete steps for progress of Muslims.
Within hours of attending the manifesto release in Lucknow, Bharti said at an election rally in Ayodhya assembly segment she was ever desirous to see a grand Ram temple. The reappearance of the temple issue, however, did not create any flutter in temple town Ayodhya in Faizabad district.
Mahant Bhaskar Das, 83, and Hashim Ansari, 92 — the only two living original litigants in the dispute over the site — laughed at the temple promise. Das said, "What's new. They 'build' one every election, and forget it post-election."
Ansari said, “The election commission must ban such promises."
The manifesto also promises one milch cow each to all below poverty line families. The other pre-poll sops include free cycles for girls, free computers and tablets to poor students and subsidised ones to others and sops for farmers.
A Sawarn Ayog (commission for forward castes) to look into the economic status of the poor among the 50% unreserved population is also in the manifesto.
Better governance, unemployment allowance, one crore jobs in five years, improved health services and women's empowerment are among the promises.
Cong focus on SCs-STs,minorities, weavers
The Congress on Friday promised to create 20 lakh jobs, provide sub-quota for most backward classes and eliminate corruption in Uttar Pradesh, besides revamping education, employment and the state economy.
The 'Vision for 2020', released here by Union minister and chairman of the election manifesto committee Salman Khurshid and state Congress chief Rita Bahuguna Joshi also has in store a Rs 3,000-crore package for handloom weavers.
"There is a need to rationalise the present quota system," said Khurshid. The Congress would also explore the possibility of bringing a sub-quota for the "ati-dalit" (most dalits), he added. The party also plans to conduct fresh census of people living below poverty line.
Referring to freebies announced by the Samajwadi Party and BJP in their manifestoes, Khurshid said, "The parties which are not coming to power could make such promises".
On corruption, he said, "We are planning to put in place a citizen's charter, whereby a time frame will be prescribed for delivery of all public services."
Against the backdrop of the controversial acquisition of farmers' land in Noida by the BSP government, the Congress promised a new pro-poor -landless and -farmer law, while providing adequate land for industrialisation and urbanisation. Khurshid said, "A Congress government in the state will ensure that land is acquired with the consent of owners and those affected get livelihood security."
The document also mentions revamping of state watchdog Lokayukta, to make it more independent and effective, and bringing the chief minister under the Lokayukta's purview.
Seeking to impress upon all that the party was set to come to power in the state where it last ruled about 23 years ago, Khurshid said, "We will create 20 lakh new jobs over five years to tackle distress migration." Asked how, he shot back, "We are not talking off our hat. We propose to set up 1,000 skill development centres, besides revamping the polytechnics and ITIs."
The 22-page vision document, in Hindi, Urdu and English, was released simultaneously at 10 places in the state. The party would release its election manifesto on January 30.
Advani attacks UPA on corruption, price-rise
Advani attacks UPA on corruption, price-rise
PTI | 12:01 AM,Jan 28,2012
Uttarakashi (Uttarakhand), Jan 27 (PTI) BJP leader L K Advani today accused the Congress-led UPA government of failing to control price-rise and corruption in the country, and said only his party can give a "real Ram Rajya." "On the orders of the Supreme Court, a couple of ministers of the Congress-led government at the Centre went to jail. This amply shows that Congress is neck-deep in corruption," Advani said here at an election rally. He also lamented that the UPA government had failed to control prices of essential commodities like petrol and gas. "During the NDA regime, we did not allow the prices of petrol to go up," he said. Advani said the BJP never comprised on corruption and security of the country. "The Kargil victory brought honour to the whole country. We feel proud that some of those who laid down their lives in the Kargil war were from Uttarakhand," he said. Advani said since BJP promotes transparency and fights against corruption, it was the only party which can bring real "Ram Rajya" in the country. He said the BJP has given the charge of Uttarakhand to B C Khanduri, who is not only honest, but also comes from an army background. He also called for developing tourism in the state which can generate employment opportunities, and said a tourism directorate could be set up in Uttarakashi. Advani said only the BJP can take the country forward in terms of development and prosperity. "The twentieth century belonged to US, Russia and Japan. But the 21st century will definitely belong to India. If we have to move forward, then you must bring BJP to power," he said.
PTI | 12:01 AM,Jan 28,2012
Uttarakashi (Uttarakhand), Jan 27 (PTI) BJP leader L K Advani today accused the Congress-led UPA government of failing to control price-rise and corruption in the country, and said only his party can give a "real Ram Rajya." "On the orders of the Supreme Court, a couple of ministers of the Congress-led government at the Centre went to jail. This amply shows that Congress is neck-deep in corruption," Advani said here at an election rally. He also lamented that the UPA government had failed to control prices of essential commodities like petrol and gas. "During the NDA regime, we did not allow the prices of petrol to go up," he said. Advani said the BJP never comprised on corruption and security of the country. "The Kargil victory brought honour to the whole country. We feel proud that some of those who laid down their lives in the Kargil war were from Uttarakhand," he said. Advani said since BJP promotes transparency and fights against corruption, it was the only party which can bring real "Ram Rajya" in the country. He said the BJP has given the charge of Uttarakhand to B C Khanduri, who is not only honest, but also comes from an army background. He also called for developing tourism in the state which can generate employment opportunities, and said a tourism directorate could be set up in Uttarakashi. Advani said only the BJP can take the country forward in terms of development and prosperity. "The twentieth century belonged to US, Russia and Japan. But the 21st century will definitely belong to India. If we have to move forward, then you must bring BJP to power," he said.
In a state of despair Manipur goes to polls in the backdrop of bullets and blockades/Can 2012 polls in Manipur stabilise its political economy?
In a state of despair
Manipur goes to polls in the backdrop of bullets and blockades/Can 2012 polls in Manipur stabilise its political economy?
Two hundred and seventy-nine candidates contested the elections to the 60 seats in Manipur's assembly. Their fate was sealed into ballot boxes on January 28 at 2,357 polling booths. The security arrangements involved 350 companies of paramilitary forces: seven booths for each company. Compare this to the Uttar Pradesh elections, spread over four weeks, where each paramilitary company has had to guard well over a hundred polling stations.
Before you begin to roll your eyes, look at another number: 36 militant groups are active in Manipur, perhaps the most on the planet for a geography of this size. It is no surprise then that the state has become hostage to bandhs, blockades and blackmail.
Students and activists from Manipur protesting against terrorism at Jantar Mantar, New Delhi
Every government servant in Manipur pays a portion of her salary to one of the militant groups every month. In many cases, it is deducted by their department's cashier. The consent of the militant groups is necessary for award of every government contract, so much so that these groups have designated Project Officers to deal with contracts. They collect 35 to 40 per cent of the estimated cost of projects. This throws the contractor's finances out of gear. Naturally, grass begins to grow on the roads within months of their construction.
Hema Malini on the campaign trail in Manipur
Bollywood actress and Rajya Sabha MP Hema Malini on the campaign trail in Manipur
The traders, for their part, are trying to recoup their capital and flee with it to neighbouring Guwahati, in Assam, or Siliguri, in West Bengal. Some Marwari traders are even returning to the land of their forefathers in Rajasthan.
Blockades and Bullets
Mahendra Patni is a descendant of the first Marwari trader family to come to Manipur 120 years ago. He is a former president of the Manipur Chamber of Commerce, a traders' body which has shut shop. He says the chamber had no option but to wind up after the militants asked it to collect 'taxes' on their behalf from its members.
Labour is in short supply. The non-native workers, from Bihar and Odisha, have fled. Their options, too, were limited, since the militants were gunning for them in retaliation for the killing of their cadres by the army. So if you have a plumbing problem, you need to find a do-it-yourself (DIY) guide.
But no DIY book will help you escape the highway blockades. There have been three major ones in the last five years, the last of which lasted a crippling 150 days. Changanbam Boy, 38, runs a shop in suburban Imphal, selling cement and iron rods. He is losing customers because his cement costs Rs 550 a bag, against Rs 300 in Silchar or Bokajan in Assam. But Boy cannot reduce the price because his overheads pile up by the time the bags reach his shop: Rs 10,000 for every truck carrying iron rods and Rs 8,000 for a truck of cement to the National Socialist Council of Nagalim (Swu-Muivah). This group controls National Highway No. 39, which connects the state with the rest of India. Boy also pays Rs 1 lakh to valley-based militant groups as an annual 'tax'.
Samarwal Agarwal, 60, came from Rajasthan 30 years ago and set up Manipur Steel Tubes, an iron and steel fabrication unit. He is not able to pay his workers' salaries on time because there is not enough money coming in. He does not get iron rods for days. When the trucks do come, he has to shell out a higher price. To make matters worse, there is no power and he has to buy diesel in the black market at Rs 100 a litre, against the official price of Rs 42, to run generators.
It is the same tale of woes that one hears from P.K. Jain, who manages Mangalam Pharmacy in Imphal's Paona Bazar (not enough supply) and Laishram Rajive Singh, who has a cycle shop (no cycles to sell). However, some Marwari traders make good in border trade what they lose in the state. Thiyam Suresh, alias Robert, is what is called a Moreh trader. His Sunrise Enterprises deals in Chinese goods - electronics to generators - coming from Moreh on the Indo-Myanmar border. According to him, the Marwari merchants, who control the border trade, have doubled their prices.
If the traders are bleeding, the farmers are not exactly in the pink of health . Thiyam Munindro Singh, 55, was forced to sell his tomatoes for Rs 2 a kg in Manipur. He wanted to take his harvest to Nagaland, where he would have got Rs 20 a kg, but the highway was blocked.
The last economic blockade , along National Highways 39 and 53, which lasted 150 days, was called by both the Kukis and the Nagas. The Kukis were demanding a district and the Nagas were opposing it. The Centre did not do much to end to blockade, although the Congress, which leads the United Progressive Alliance government at the Centre, is in power in the state. As for the state government, Chief Minister Okram Ibobi told reporters he did not believe in using force. Eventually, the blockade had to be ended by a Supreme Court directive to the Centre.
Though the blockade is off, you still have to wait for six months to get an LPG cylinder. If you want it sooner, you pay Rs 2,000 for it, five times the price at the official outlet. Petrol pumps open only for about half the day because they do not have enough to sell. If you are truly desperate, you can get some petrol for Rs 200 a litre, about three times the official price. For diesel, like Agarwal of Manipur Steel Tubes, you pay two and a half times. Kerosene has disappeared altogether.
Priced at Rs 22 a litre officially and at Rs 70 a litre in the black market, it may be yielding more profits for some by being used to adulterate petrol or diesel.
According to a top official of the state's Planning Department, Manipur's economy is one of "transferred gross domestic product" because it is dependent on central grants and aids. According to him, the blockades and bandhs have pushed construction costs up by 75 per cent. Plan funds leakage exceeds 40 per cent. The state received Rs 13,000 crore from the 13th Finance Commission for the next five years and a plan allocation of Rs 3,216 crore for 2011/12.
Bombs and Bluster
During the election campaign, the usual suspects made their presence felt. A conglomeration of seven major militant groups, called the Coordination Committee - Cor Com for short - decided to oppose the Congress and rained grenades on its candidates' and workers' houses.
The Armed Forces Special Powers Act continues to figure in the manifestoes of the parties. The BJP has promised to abolish it and improve law and order. The Congress says it has already done away with it in seven constituencies in the Imphal area and says it will abolish it elsewhere if law and order improves.
The Election Commission removed the Director General of Police, Y. Joykumar Singh, handpicked for the job by the chief minister, from his post. Complaints had been lodged by political parties that Singh was misusing his position. Activist organisations like the People's Campaign for Assembly elections organised rallies urging people to vote. There have been Facebook campaigns to prod voters to choose candidates who have raised issues of public, rather than private, interest.
Ibobi has been accused of trying to import dynastic politics from the rest of India; his wife is an MLA. Some observers say the Congress may still reap the benefits of a sympathy wave triggered by the militant attacks. In that case, Ibobi will do a Tarun Gogoi and, like the Assam Chief Minister, become CM for a third time. But among businessmen there is little optimism. "I expect no change, except for an individual or two. The rest of those standing for elections belong to the moneyed class and are in the fray for profit only," says Thangjam Joykumar, 53, the owner of Thangjam Agro Industries.
The story is from the Business Today's latest print edition of Feb 19, 2012. To get more in depth and insightful stories on the business and economy click here for subscription of the latest edition.
Manipur goes to polls in the backdrop of bullets and blockades/Can 2012 polls in Manipur stabilise its political economy?
Two hundred and seventy-nine candidates contested the elections to the 60 seats in Manipur's assembly. Their fate was sealed into ballot boxes on January 28 at 2,357 polling booths. The security arrangements involved 350 companies of paramilitary forces: seven booths for each company. Compare this to the Uttar Pradesh elections, spread over four weeks, where each paramilitary company has had to guard well over a hundred polling stations.
Before you begin to roll your eyes, look at another number: 36 militant groups are active in Manipur, perhaps the most on the planet for a geography of this size. It is no surprise then that the state has become hostage to bandhs, blockades and blackmail.
Students and activists from Manipur protesting against terrorism at Jantar Mantar, New Delhi
Every government servant in Manipur pays a portion of her salary to one of the militant groups every month. In many cases, it is deducted by their department's cashier. The consent of the militant groups is necessary for award of every government contract, so much so that these groups have designated Project Officers to deal with contracts. They collect 35 to 40 per cent of the estimated cost of projects. This throws the contractor's finances out of gear. Naturally, grass begins to grow on the roads within months of their construction.
Hema Malini on the campaign trail in Manipur
Bollywood actress and Rajya Sabha MP Hema Malini on the campaign trail in Manipur
The traders, for their part, are trying to recoup their capital and flee with it to neighbouring Guwahati, in Assam, or Siliguri, in West Bengal. Some Marwari traders are even returning to the land of their forefathers in Rajasthan.
Blockades and Bullets
Mahendra Patni is a descendant of the first Marwari trader family to come to Manipur 120 years ago. He is a former president of the Manipur Chamber of Commerce, a traders' body which has shut shop. He says the chamber had no option but to wind up after the militants asked it to collect 'taxes' on their behalf from its members.
Labour is in short supply. The non-native workers, from Bihar and Odisha, have fled. Their options, too, were limited, since the militants were gunning for them in retaliation for the killing of their cadres by the army. So if you have a plumbing problem, you need to find a do-it-yourself (DIY) guide.
But no DIY book will help you escape the highway blockades. There have been three major ones in the last five years, the last of which lasted a crippling 150 days. Changanbam Boy, 38, runs a shop in suburban Imphal, selling cement and iron rods. He is losing customers because his cement costs Rs 550 a bag, against Rs 300 in Silchar or Bokajan in Assam. But Boy cannot reduce the price because his overheads pile up by the time the bags reach his shop: Rs 10,000 for every truck carrying iron rods and Rs 8,000 for a truck of cement to the National Socialist Council of Nagalim (Swu-Muivah). This group controls National Highway No. 39, which connects the state with the rest of India. Boy also pays Rs 1 lakh to valley-based militant groups as an annual 'tax'.
Samarwal Agarwal, 60, came from Rajasthan 30 years ago and set up Manipur Steel Tubes, an iron and steel fabrication unit. He is not able to pay his workers' salaries on time because there is not enough money coming in. He does not get iron rods for days. When the trucks do come, he has to shell out a higher price. To make matters worse, there is no power and he has to buy diesel in the black market at Rs 100 a litre, against the official price of Rs 42, to run generators.
It is the same tale of woes that one hears from P.K. Jain, who manages Mangalam Pharmacy in Imphal's Paona Bazar (not enough supply) and Laishram Rajive Singh, who has a cycle shop (no cycles to sell). However, some Marwari traders make good in border trade what they lose in the state. Thiyam Suresh, alias Robert, is what is called a Moreh trader. His Sunrise Enterprises deals in Chinese goods - electronics to generators - coming from Moreh on the Indo-Myanmar border. According to him, the Marwari merchants, who control the border trade, have doubled their prices.
If the traders are bleeding, the farmers are not exactly in the pink of health . Thiyam Munindro Singh, 55, was forced to sell his tomatoes for Rs 2 a kg in Manipur. He wanted to take his harvest to Nagaland, where he would have got Rs 20 a kg, but the highway was blocked.
The last economic blockade , along National Highways 39 and 53, which lasted 150 days, was called by both the Kukis and the Nagas. The Kukis were demanding a district and the Nagas were opposing it. The Centre did not do much to end to blockade, although the Congress, which leads the United Progressive Alliance government at the Centre, is in power in the state. As for the state government, Chief Minister Okram Ibobi told reporters he did not believe in using force. Eventually, the blockade had to be ended by a Supreme Court directive to the Centre.
Though the blockade is off, you still have to wait for six months to get an LPG cylinder. If you want it sooner, you pay Rs 2,000 for it, five times the price at the official outlet. Petrol pumps open only for about half the day because they do not have enough to sell. If you are truly desperate, you can get some petrol for Rs 200 a litre, about three times the official price. For diesel, like Agarwal of Manipur Steel Tubes, you pay two and a half times. Kerosene has disappeared altogether.
Priced at Rs 22 a litre officially and at Rs 70 a litre in the black market, it may be yielding more profits for some by being used to adulterate petrol or diesel.
According to a top official of the state's Planning Department, Manipur's economy is one of "transferred gross domestic product" because it is dependent on central grants and aids. According to him, the blockades and bandhs have pushed construction costs up by 75 per cent. Plan funds leakage exceeds 40 per cent. The state received Rs 13,000 crore from the 13th Finance Commission for the next five years and a plan allocation of Rs 3,216 crore for 2011/12.
Bombs and Bluster
During the election campaign, the usual suspects made their presence felt. A conglomeration of seven major militant groups, called the Coordination Committee - Cor Com for short - decided to oppose the Congress and rained grenades on its candidates' and workers' houses.
The Armed Forces Special Powers Act continues to figure in the manifestoes of the parties. The BJP has promised to abolish it and improve law and order. The Congress says it has already done away with it in seven constituencies in the Imphal area and says it will abolish it elsewhere if law and order improves.
The Election Commission removed the Director General of Police, Y. Joykumar Singh, handpicked for the job by the chief minister, from his post. Complaints had been lodged by political parties that Singh was misusing his position. Activist organisations like the People's Campaign for Assembly elections organised rallies urging people to vote. There have been Facebook campaigns to prod voters to choose candidates who have raised issues of public, rather than private, interest.
Ibobi has been accused of trying to import dynastic politics from the rest of India; his wife is an MLA. Some observers say the Congress may still reap the benefits of a sympathy wave triggered by the militant attacks. In that case, Ibobi will do a Tarun Gogoi and, like the Assam Chief Minister, become CM for a third time. But among businessmen there is little optimism. "I expect no change, except for an individual or two. The rest of those standing for elections belong to the moneyed class and are in the fray for profit only," says Thangjam Joykumar, 53, the owner of Thangjam Agro Industries.
The story is from the Business Today's latest print edition of Feb 19, 2012. To get more in depth and insightful stories on the business and economy click here for subscription of the latest edition.
"Capital expenditure is up but investment is down and stagnating as a percentage of the GDP. The choice is clear:
"Capital expenditure is up but investment is down and stagnating as a percentage of the GDP. The choice is clear: To invest more in agriculture with the right strategies, policies and interventions."
It suggested that Indian agriculture should diversify from just crop farming to livestock, fisheries, poultry
It suggested that Indian agriculture should diversify from just crop farming to livestock, fisheries, poultry and horticulture, besides focusing on raising farm productivity with adequate focus on rain-fed areas.
of nutrition-rich crops like pulses, fruits and vegetables — which remained untouched in the first Green Revolution.
of nutrition-rich crops like pulses, fruits and vegetables — which remained untouched in the first Green Revolution.
It suggested that Indian agriculture should diversify from just crop farming to livestock, fisheries, poultry and horticulture, besides focusing on raising farm productivity with adequate focus on rain-fed areas.
It suggested that Indian agriculture should diversify from just crop farming to livestock, fisheries, poultry and horticulture, besides focusing on raising farm productivity with adequate focus on rain-fed areas.
"The need for a Second Green Revolution is being experienced more than ever before." It said special attention is required to increase production
"The need for a Second Green Revolution is being experienced more than ever before." It said special attention is required to increase production of nutrition-rich crops like pulses, fruits and vegetables — which remained untouched in the first Green Revolution.
It suggested that Indian agriculture should diversify from just crop farming to livestock, fisheries, poultry and horticulture, besides focusing on raising farm productivity with adequate focus on rain-fed areas.
It suggested that Indian agriculture should diversify from just crop farming to livestock, fisheries, poultry and horticulture, besides focusing on raising farm productivity with adequate focus on rain-fed areas.
breakthrough since the 1960s. "The agriculture sector is at crossroads with rising demand for food items and relatively slower supply response
breakthrough since the 1960s.
"The agriculture sector is at crossroads with rising demand for food items and relatively slower supply response in many commodities resulting in frequent spikes in food inflation," the Survey said.
"The agriculture sector is at crossroads with rising demand for food items and relatively slower supply response in many commodities resulting in frequent spikes in food inflation," the Survey said.
The Economic Survey has raised an alarm over the dismal performance of the farm sector saying d Indian agriculture has not seen any big technological
The Economic Survey has raised an alarm over the dismal performance of the farm sector saying the Indian agriculture has not seen any big technological breakthrough since the 1960s.
"The agriculture sector is at crossroads with rising demand for food items and relatively slower supply response in many commodities resulting in frequent spikes in food inflation," the Survey said.
"The agriculture sector is at crossroads with rising demand for food items and relatively slower supply response in many commodities resulting in frequent spikes in food inflation," the Survey said.
Economic survey: India needs second green revolution
Economic survey: India needs second green revolution
ET Bureau Feb 26, 2011, 04.09am IST
The Economic Survey has raised an alarm over the dismal performance of the farm sector saying the Indian agriculture has not seen any big technological breakthrough since the 1960s.
"The agriculture sector is at crossroads with rising demand for food items and relatively slower supply response in many commodities resulting in frequent spikes in food inflation," the Survey said.
The food safety net for each of India's billion-plus citizens requires enhanced agriculture production and productivity, it said.
"The need for a Second Green Revolution is being experienced more than ever before." It said special attention is required to increase production of nutrition-rich crops like pulses, fruits and vegetables — which remained untouched in the first Green Revolution.
It suggested that Indian agriculture should diversify from just crop farming to livestock, fisheries, poultry and horticulture, besides focusing on raising farm productivity with adequate focus on rain-fed areas.
Raising concern over a marked drop in the yield and production of cereals, underpinned by abysmally low nutrient consumption per hectare, the Survey called for concerted and focused efforts to address the challenge of stagnating productivity levels.
"Increasing agriculture production and productivity is a necessary condition not only for ensuring national food security but also for sustaining the high levels of growth," it said.
The Survey said the Indian agriculture requires massive doses of capital investments to keep pace with rising demand.
"Capital expenditure is up but investment is down and stagnating as a percentage of the GDP. The choice is clear: To invest more in agriculture with the right strategies, policies and interventions."
Gross capital formation in agriculture has risen from 2.56% of GDP in 2004-05 to 2.97% of GDP in 2009-10.
The survey also argued that farmers must get remunerative prices for their produce. "Enhancing the returns farmers get on their production is essential for incentivising the farmers to produce more," it said. However, it argued that high procurement prices run the risk of stoking inflation.
"The procurement operations linked with MSPs (minimum support prices) cause fiscal stress by way of increasing food subsidies. The issue of efficient food stocks management and offloading of stocks in time needs urgent attention."
Pointing out that foodgrain diversion from ration shops was "too high", the Survey said supply of rice and wheat will have to be doubled if the proposed National Food Security Act for the targeted group is to be implemented with the current delivery mechanism.
The Survey said targeted development of rain-fed area and effective marketing links could serve as a long-term remedy to check food price volatility. Investments in cold chains, packaging, handling and processing of processed foods should also be encouraged.
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ET Bureau Feb 26, 2011, 04.09am IST
The Economic Survey has raised an alarm over the dismal performance of the farm sector saying the Indian agriculture has not seen any big technological breakthrough since the 1960s.
"The agriculture sector is at crossroads with rising demand for food items and relatively slower supply response in many commodities resulting in frequent spikes in food inflation," the Survey said.
The food safety net for each of India's billion-plus citizens requires enhanced agriculture production and productivity, it said.
"The need for a Second Green Revolution is being experienced more than ever before." It said special attention is required to increase production of nutrition-rich crops like pulses, fruits and vegetables — which remained untouched in the first Green Revolution.
It suggested that Indian agriculture should diversify from just crop farming to livestock, fisheries, poultry and horticulture, besides focusing on raising farm productivity with adequate focus on rain-fed areas.
Raising concern over a marked drop in the yield and production of cereals, underpinned by abysmally low nutrient consumption per hectare, the Survey called for concerted and focused efforts to address the challenge of stagnating productivity levels.
"Increasing agriculture production and productivity is a necessary condition not only for ensuring national food security but also for sustaining the high levels of growth," it said.
The Survey said the Indian agriculture requires massive doses of capital investments to keep pace with rising demand.
"Capital expenditure is up but investment is down and stagnating as a percentage of the GDP. The choice is clear: To invest more in agriculture with the right strategies, policies and interventions."
Gross capital formation in agriculture has risen from 2.56% of GDP in 2004-05 to 2.97% of GDP in 2009-10.
The survey also argued that farmers must get remunerative prices for their produce. "Enhancing the returns farmers get on their production is essential for incentivising the farmers to produce more," it said. However, it argued that high procurement prices run the risk of stoking inflation.
"The procurement operations linked with MSPs (minimum support prices) cause fiscal stress by way of increasing food subsidies. The issue of efficient food stocks management and offloading of stocks in time needs urgent attention."
Pointing out that foodgrain diversion from ration shops was "too high", the Survey said supply of rice and wheat will have to be doubled if the proposed National Food Security Act for the targeted group is to be implemented with the current delivery mechanism.
The Survey said targeted development of rain-fed area and effective marketing links could serve as a long-term remedy to check food price volatility. Investments in cold chains, packaging, handling and processing of processed foods should also be encouraged.
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Egypt, Burkina Faso and South Africa have begun adopting hardy, high-yield genetically-modified crops. Six others nations are doing field tests,
Egypt, Burkina Faso and South Africa have begun adopting hardy, high-yield genetically-modified crops. Six others nations are doing field tests, 14 have started contained research and around 27 are setting up R&D labs. Indian businessmen are travelling to Africa to start farm-related ventures.
Farm reforms will dispel fears of global food inflation-Jan 27, 2012
Farm reforms will dispel fears of global food inflation
ET Bureau Jan 27, 2012, 05.04AM IST
When Unilever's global CEO Paul Polman says that the era of cheap food is over, he seems to be making sense. After all, for nearly 20 years now, India has been growing 6.7% on average every year; for 30 years, China's growth has averaged 10% every year. A lot of people now require more than subsistence needs. The growth of food production hasn't quite kept pace, because governments' priorities have been elsewhere.
So, Polman reckons that food prices will rise 2% to 3% every year. Yet, things might not be so dire after all. In India, a second green revolution is waiting for the right nudges to take off. The first made India self-sufficient in grains; now a grain mountain of over 50 million tonnes towers in government storage. The second green revolution will boost output and productivity of vegetables, fruit, meat, fish and milk.
States like UP, Bihar and Bengal have the capacity to be major producers, but lag a state like Punjab in productivity. Purposeful action here can change much for the better. Farmers need freedom from middlemen to respond to price signals: states should amend or scrap the Agricultural Produce Marketing Committee Act that legitimises middlemen in farm trade.
Farm storage and transport need a huge boost to smoothen out price cycles and cut wastage of vegetables and fruit. The rise of Africa will also help. Between 2007 and 2011, the economies of north, north-eastern and central African nations has grown between 5% and 9.8% as they've emerged from strife and instability. With functioning governments in place in many African nations, farm productivity , dismally poor earlier, will shoot up, bringing food to the tables of the world.
Egypt, Burkina Faso and South Africa have begun adopting hardy, high-yield genetically-modified crops. Six others nations are doing field tests, 14 have started contained research and around 27 are setting up R&D labs. Indian businessmen are travelling to Africa to start farm-related ventures. More than 200 years ago, Thomas Malthus issued a dire warning about humanity eating its way into oblivion. The forces that have proved him wrong again and again should prevail over Polman's dire vision.
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ET Bureau Jan 27, 2012, 05.04AM IST
When Unilever's global CEO Paul Polman says that the era of cheap food is over, he seems to be making sense. After all, for nearly 20 years now, India has been growing 6.7% on average every year; for 30 years, China's growth has averaged 10% every year. A lot of people now require more than subsistence needs. The growth of food production hasn't quite kept pace, because governments' priorities have been elsewhere.
So, Polman reckons that food prices will rise 2% to 3% every year. Yet, things might not be so dire after all. In India, a second green revolution is waiting for the right nudges to take off. The first made India self-sufficient in grains; now a grain mountain of over 50 million tonnes towers in government storage. The second green revolution will boost output and productivity of vegetables, fruit, meat, fish and milk.
States like UP, Bihar and Bengal have the capacity to be major producers, but lag a state like Punjab in productivity. Purposeful action here can change much for the better. Farmers need freedom from middlemen to respond to price signals: states should amend or scrap the Agricultural Produce Marketing Committee Act that legitimises middlemen in farm trade.
Farm storage and transport need a huge boost to smoothen out price cycles and cut wastage of vegetables and fruit. The rise of Africa will also help. Between 2007 and 2011, the economies of north, north-eastern and central African nations has grown between 5% and 9.8% as they've emerged from strife and instability. With functioning governments in place in many African nations, farm productivity , dismally poor earlier, will shoot up, bringing food to the tables of the world.
Egypt, Burkina Faso and South Africa have begun adopting hardy, high-yield genetically-modified crops. Six others nations are doing field tests, 14 have started contained research and around 27 are setting up R&D labs. Indian businessmen are travelling to Africa to start farm-related ventures. More than 200 years ago, Thomas Malthus issued a dire warning about humanity eating its way into oblivion. The forces that have proved him wrong again and again should prevail over Polman's dire vision.
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Friday, January 27, 2012
We have been having a number of delegations from both countries on various matters like finance and industry. Certainly cooperation is doable”,
We have been having a number of delegations from both countries on various matters like finance and industry. Certainly cooperation is doable”,
It (climate change) is quite visible in my country. We have suffered both drought and heavy rains in past one year.
It (climate change) is quite visible in my country. We have suffered both drought and heavy rains in past one year. It was horrible, not just by our estimates but also as per the estimates of World Bank,”
Pak wants to work with India: Gilani/Pointing out that Pakistan has “excellent” relationship with India,Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani today said
Pak wants to work with India: Gilani
Jan 27, 2012 - Barun Jha |
Davos
Pointing out that Pakistan has “excellent” relationship with India, Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani today said cooperation between the two to tackle climate change was “doable”.
He said Islamabad wants to work with New Delhi on this front. “Yes, certainly there can be cooperation. We have an excellent relationship with India and we want to work together,” Mr Gilani said when asked if India and Pakistan can work together to tackle climate change.
“We have been having a number of delegations from both countries on various matters like finance and industry. Certainly cooperation is doable”, Mr Gilani said during a panel discussion on climate change at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2012.
Earlier in his address, Mr Gilani said Pakistan has been hit by “horrible” droughts and floods last year and sought a “global fund” to tackle the climate risk issues. “It (climate change) is quite visible in my country. We have suffered both drought and heavy rains in past one year. It was horrible, not just by our estimates but also as per the estimates of World Bank,” Mr Gilani said.
Jan 27, 2012 - Barun Jha |
Davos
Pointing out that Pakistan has “excellent” relationship with India, Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani today said cooperation between the two to tackle climate change was “doable”.
He said Islamabad wants to work with New Delhi on this front. “Yes, certainly there can be cooperation. We have an excellent relationship with India and we want to work together,” Mr Gilani said when asked if India and Pakistan can work together to tackle climate change.
“We have been having a number of delegations from both countries on various matters like finance and industry. Certainly cooperation is doable”, Mr Gilani said during a panel discussion on climate change at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2012.
Earlier in his address, Mr Gilani said Pakistan has been hit by “horrible” droughts and floods last year and sought a “global fund” to tackle the climate risk issues. “It (climate change) is quite visible in my country. We have suffered both drought and heavy rains in past one year. It was horrible, not just by our estimates but also as per the estimates of World Bank,” Mr Gilani said.
Products(waste material)small entrepreneurs r shaking things up.They r giving a twist to traditional handicrafts available at places like Dilli Haat..
small entrepreneurs are shaking things up. Using the online medium, they are giving a twist to traditional handicrafts available at places like Dilli Haat(WASTE MATERIALS RECYCLED PRODUCTS).
"There's a growing demand for out-of-the-box ideas and products versus the typical branded ones/Small brands are redefining tradition with off-beat P"
Ooh-la-la ideas online
Samar Khurshid, Hindustan Times
New Delhi, January 21, 2012
First Published: 00:08 IST(21/1/2012)
Last Updated: 02:09 IST(21/1/2012)
Delhi has traditionally been seen as more classic in its taste, compared to say Mumbai, which is seen as funkier, but now small entrepreneurs are shaking things up. Using the online medium, they are giving a twist to traditional handicrafts available at places like Dilli Haat.
Small brands are redefining tradition with off-beat products.
Kirin Vas, 23, who sells handmade earrings under the banner Funkanatomy uses junk - bottle caps to old colonial coins - everyday things to make unusual and unique jewellery. These niche products are making their way into the marketplace via the internet.
Rishma Lath, 23, set up Crazy Palette to take her passion for fashion up another notch. Her embroidered cushions and hand-painted sneakers are popular among younger buyers.
"There's a growing demand for out-of-the-box ideas and products versus the typical branded ones," she says.
Some brands have taken to this trend recently. Haathi Chaap, set up by Mahima Mehra in 2004, started online sales last year. As the name suggests, raw material is sourced from elephants - their dung, to be precise.
Mehra, looking for commercially viable options for recycling, decided to make paper from elephant and camel dung. Now, they make everything from books and clocks to paper bags and decorative hangings. Mind you, they don't smell of dung and have the same texture as recycled paper.
Others, while using ordinary goods have given them new avatars.
Swati Seth, 33, owner of The Color Caravan prides herself in selling age-old handicrafts in new-age forms. Her catalogue includes tea kettles and recycled alcohol bottles painted in minute detail with pattachitra and madhubani art forms. Other products include skirts printed with hand-block paints, hand-painted coasters, trays and little figurines of Ganesha in different poses.
Another recent brand is Tungs10, owned by Kani and Kunal Raheja. Their products combine east and west to create an experimental look. Painted with objects and locations from India and the West, their lifestyle range is quirky and fashionable. The line includes salt and pepper shakers, toothpick holders, candle holders, coasters and cushions.
The internet has emerged as a marketplace where these entrepreneurs dealing in off-beat novelties can sell their wares. With the mall and bazaar experience in a web browser window, these funky products are just a push of a button away.
Our pick of the funkiest hand-made products
Samar Khurshid, Hindustan Times
New Delhi, January 21, 2012
First Published: 00:08 IST(21/1/2012)
Last Updated: 02:09 IST(21/1/2012)
Delhi has traditionally been seen as more classic in its taste, compared to say Mumbai, which is seen as funkier, but now small entrepreneurs are shaking things up. Using the online medium, they are giving a twist to traditional handicrafts available at places like Dilli Haat.
Small brands are redefining tradition with off-beat products.
Kirin Vas, 23, who sells handmade earrings under the banner Funkanatomy uses junk - bottle caps to old colonial coins - everyday things to make unusual and unique jewellery. These niche products are making their way into the marketplace via the internet.
Rishma Lath, 23, set up Crazy Palette to take her passion for fashion up another notch. Her embroidered cushions and hand-painted sneakers are popular among younger buyers.
"There's a growing demand for out-of-the-box ideas and products versus the typical branded ones," she says.
Some brands have taken to this trend recently. Haathi Chaap, set up by Mahima Mehra in 2004, started online sales last year. As the name suggests, raw material is sourced from elephants - their dung, to be precise.
Mehra, looking for commercially viable options for recycling, decided to make paper from elephant and camel dung. Now, they make everything from books and clocks to paper bags and decorative hangings. Mind you, they don't smell of dung and have the same texture as recycled paper.
Others, while using ordinary goods have given them new avatars.
Swati Seth, 33, owner of The Color Caravan prides herself in selling age-old handicrafts in new-age forms. Her catalogue includes tea kettles and recycled alcohol bottles painted in minute detail with pattachitra and madhubani art forms. Other products include skirts printed with hand-block paints, hand-painted coasters, trays and little figurines of Ganesha in different poses.
Another recent brand is Tungs10, owned by Kani and Kunal Raheja. Their products combine east and west to create an experimental look. Painted with objects and locations from India and the West, their lifestyle range is quirky and fashionable. The line includes salt and pepper shakers, toothpick holders, candle holders, coasters and cushions.
The internet has emerged as a marketplace where these entrepreneurs dealing in off-beat novelties can sell their wares. With the mall and bazaar experience in a web browser window, these funky products are just a push of a button away.
Our pick of the funkiest hand-made products
Thursday, January 26, 2012
India and the United States have agreed to continue efforts to consolidate upon the "tremendous progress" made in strengthening
India and the United States have agreed to continue efforts to consolidate upon the "tremendous progress" made in strengthening their global strategic partnership and work towards implementing their civil nuclear deal.
Hillary Clinton, Nirupama Rao discuss work for implementing nuclear-deal,civil nuclear cooperation, Iran, Afghanistan
26 Jan, 2012, 05.32PM IST, IANS
India, US to work for implementing nuclear-deal
Hillary Clinton, Nirupama Rao discuss civil nuclear cooperation, Iran, Afghanistan
WASHINGTON: India and the United States have agreed to continue efforts to consolidate upon the "tremendous progress" made in strengthening their global strategic partnership and work towards implementing their civil nuclear deal.
They have also agreed to work towards implementing other initiatives that had been taken in the last few years according to readouts of a meeting here between Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Indian Ambassador Nirupama Rao Wednesday.
It was Rao's first official meeting with Clinton since taking over as ambassador. The two had closely interacted during Rao's previous position as India's foreign secretary.
"Clinton and Rao discussed a broad range of bilateral and regional issues. Both recognised that there has been tremendous progress and they agreed to continue their efforts to further consolidate upon the progress made."
They also agreed to "work towards implementing the initiatives that had been taken in the last few years including in the area of civil nuclear cooperation," the Indian embassy said.
Clinton and Rao also exchanged perspectives on regional issues of mutual interest including the situation in Afghanistan, and recent developments with regard to Iran and Myanmar, it said.
State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland said Clinton "had a good meeting" with Rao, and "they talked about maintaining the momentum in our bilateral relationship and our strategic dialogue".
Rao and Clinton also "talked about the full range of bilateral issues, including the importance of our civil nuclear cooperation and our continued efforts to chart a way forward that will bring India the benefits of American nuclear technology," she said.
Asked about the status of nuclear cooperation she said the two sides were "still trying to work through the legal and regulatory issues that we have in India".
They also talked about Iran and the US and EU sanctions, "and how we can create a global community that goes in this direction", Nuland said.
Afghanistan and the important role that India plays in supporting the New Silk Road initiative and private sector capacity building in Afghanistan also came up. So did Myanmar, she said.
But to her knowledge, Nuland said, the issue of US TV host Jay Leno's objectionable comments about the Golden Temple did not come up.
"We believe in both freedom of religion and tolerance for all religions," Nuland said, adding: "We have complete respect for the Golden Temple as a place of worship and obviously for the Sikh people within the Indian nation."
India, US to work for implementing nuclear-deal
Hillary Clinton, Nirupama Rao discuss civil nuclear cooperation, Iran, Afghanistan
WASHINGTON: India and the United States have agreed to continue efforts to consolidate upon the "tremendous progress" made in strengthening their global strategic partnership and work towards implementing their civil nuclear deal.
They have also agreed to work towards implementing other initiatives that had been taken in the last few years according to readouts of a meeting here between Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Indian Ambassador Nirupama Rao Wednesday.
It was Rao's first official meeting with Clinton since taking over as ambassador. The two had closely interacted during Rao's previous position as India's foreign secretary.
"Clinton and Rao discussed a broad range of bilateral and regional issues. Both recognised that there has been tremendous progress and they agreed to continue their efforts to further consolidate upon the progress made."
They also agreed to "work towards implementing the initiatives that had been taken in the last few years including in the area of civil nuclear cooperation," the Indian embassy said.
Clinton and Rao also exchanged perspectives on regional issues of mutual interest including the situation in Afghanistan, and recent developments with regard to Iran and Myanmar, it said.
State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland said Clinton "had a good meeting" with Rao, and "they talked about maintaining the momentum in our bilateral relationship and our strategic dialogue".
Rao and Clinton also "talked about the full range of bilateral issues, including the importance of our civil nuclear cooperation and our continued efforts to chart a way forward that will bring India the benefits of American nuclear technology," she said.
Asked about the status of nuclear cooperation she said the two sides were "still trying to work through the legal and regulatory issues that we have in India".
They also talked about Iran and the US and EU sanctions, "and how we can create a global community that goes in this direction", Nuland said.
Afghanistan and the important role that India plays in supporting the New Silk Road initiative and private sector capacity building in Afghanistan also came up. So did Myanmar, she said.
But to her knowledge, Nuland said, the issue of US TV host Jay Leno's objectionable comments about the Golden Temple did not come up.
"We believe in both freedom of religion and tolerance for all religions," Nuland said, adding: "We have complete respect for the Golden Temple as a place of worship and obviously for the Sikh people within the Indian nation."
Referring to India 's foreign policy, the President said that India is building bridges of cooperation and friendship with all countries of the world.
Referring to India 's foreign policy, the President said that India is building bridges of cooperation and friendship with all countries of the world. Mrs. Patil said that the country seeks an architecture for global institutions that is more reflective of contemporary realities.
Prez Patil emphasizes need for delivery of services in transparent manner
Prez Patil emphasizes need for delivery of services in transparent manner
Jan 26, 1:45 PM
The President has emphasised the need for hard work to achieve fast, inclusive and sustainable growth. Addressing the nation on the eve of 63rd Republic Day, Mrs. Pratibha Devisingh Patil said that all social welfare programmes must be implemented efficiently to remove poverty, hunger and malnutrition, disease and illiteracy. Asking the agencies involved in the delivery of services to have a strong sense of duty and work in a transparent, corruption free, time bound and accountable manner, Mrs. Patil cautioned that tremendous work remains to be done to move forward on country's social and economic agenda.
Mrs. Patil said that reinforcing health and education sectors is fundamental for developing human resources out of young population that India has. President said that the health care and education must reach every section of the society, she stressed the need to expand health services in rural areas. Calling for integration of agriculture, industry and service sectors for their efficient working, she, however, expressed concern that agriculture is one sector of the economy which remains inadequate.
The President said that women empowerment will have a very big impact on creating stable social structures by eliminating gender inequality. She said women need to be drawn fully into the national mainstream. Hinting on current social strife Mrs. Patil said that all issues must be resolved through dialogue and there can be no place for violence.
Referring to India 's foreign policy, the President said that India is building bridges of cooperation and friendship with all countries of the world. Mrs. Patil said that the country seeks an architecture for global institutions that is more reflective of contemporary realities.
Jan 26, 1:45 PM
The President has emphasised the need for hard work to achieve fast, inclusive and sustainable growth. Addressing the nation on the eve of 63rd Republic Day, Mrs. Pratibha Devisingh Patil said that all social welfare programmes must be implemented efficiently to remove poverty, hunger and malnutrition, disease and illiteracy. Asking the agencies involved in the delivery of services to have a strong sense of duty and work in a transparent, corruption free, time bound and accountable manner, Mrs. Patil cautioned that tremendous work remains to be done to move forward on country's social and economic agenda.
Mrs. Patil said that reinforcing health and education sectors is fundamental for developing human resources out of young population that India has. President said that the health care and education must reach every section of the society, she stressed the need to expand health services in rural areas. Calling for integration of agriculture, industry and service sectors for their efficient working, she, however, expressed concern that agriculture is one sector of the economy which remains inadequate.
The President said that women empowerment will have a very big impact on creating stable social structures by eliminating gender inequality. She said women need to be drawn fully into the national mainstream. Hinting on current social strife Mrs. Patil said that all issues must be resolved through dialogue and there can be no place for violence.
Referring to India 's foreign policy, the President said that India is building bridges of cooperation and friendship with all countries of the world. Mrs. Patil said that the country seeks an architecture for global institutions that is more reflective of contemporary realities.
"All issues, therefore, must be resolved through dialogue and there can be no place for violence.
"All issues, therefore, must be resolved through dialogue and there can be no place for violence. Negativity and rejection cannot be the path for a vibrant country that is moving to seek its destiny,"
Be cautious in bringing reforms: President/"While bringing about reforms and improving institutions,we have to be cautious that while shaking the
Be cautious in bringing reforms: President
Press Trust of India, Updated: January 26, 2012 08:50 IST
New Delhi: In an apparent reference to the civil society movement for a strong Lokpal, President Pratibha Patil today said one has to be cautious in bringing about reforms so that the tree of democratic institutions does not come down.
"While bringing about reforms and improving institutions, we have to be cautious that while shaking the tree to remove the bad fruit, we do not bring down the tree itself", she said in her address to the nation on the eve of 63rd Republic Day.
Ms Patil did not specifically mention the anti-corruption movement of Anna Hazare but the remarks could be seen as a reference to the movement for the anti-corruption ombudsman.
She said India can take pride in its democratic record but as in any functional democracy, it faces pressures and challenges.
Ms Patil said there would be short term pressures, but in this process the long term goals must not be lost sight of, and everyone must work together on core national agenda.
Emphasising that those who believe in democracy must try to see the rationale in the others' point of view, she said concord and not discord is the way forward for a country as large as India.
"All issues, therefore, must be resolved through dialogue and there can be no place for violence. Negativity and rejection cannot be the path for a vibrant country that is moving to seek its destiny," she said.
Patil said Indian institutions may not be flawless but they have coped with many challenges.
Indian Parliament, she noted, has enacted path-breaking laws and Government has put together schemes for the progress and welfare of the people.
Read more at: http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/be-cautious-in-bringing-reforms-president-170428&cp
Press Trust of India, Updated: January 26, 2012 08:50 IST
New Delhi: In an apparent reference to the civil society movement for a strong Lokpal, President Pratibha Patil today said one has to be cautious in bringing about reforms so that the tree of democratic institutions does not come down.
"While bringing about reforms and improving institutions, we have to be cautious that while shaking the tree to remove the bad fruit, we do not bring down the tree itself", she said in her address to the nation on the eve of 63rd Republic Day.
Ms Patil did not specifically mention the anti-corruption movement of Anna Hazare but the remarks could be seen as a reference to the movement for the anti-corruption ombudsman.
She said India can take pride in its democratic record but as in any functional democracy, it faces pressures and challenges.
Ms Patil said there would be short term pressures, but in this process the long term goals must not be lost sight of, and everyone must work together on core national agenda.
Emphasising that those who believe in democracy must try to see the rationale in the others' point of view, she said concord and not discord is the way forward for a country as large as India.
"All issues, therefore, must be resolved through dialogue and there can be no place for violence. Negativity and rejection cannot be the path for a vibrant country that is moving to seek its destiny," she said.
Patil said Indian institutions may not be flawless but they have coped with many challenges.
Indian Parliament, she noted, has enacted path-breaking laws and Government has put together schemes for the progress and welfare of the people.
Read more at: http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/be-cautious-in-bringing-reforms-president-170428&cp
calling upon Americans to unite to solve urgent common problems, transcending political divisions,
calling upon Americans to unite to solve urgent common problems, transcending political divisions, left his Republican opponents unmoved, his fellow Democrats unenthused and a great many Americans unimpressed as to either his sincerity or his capability.
Barack Obama's appeal for unity to solve problems resonates here-
26 Jan, 2012, 06.10AM IST, T K Arun,ET Bureau
Barack Obama's appeal for unity to solve problems resonates here
Obama's State of the Union address, calling upon Americans to unite to solve urgent common problems, transcending political divisions, left his Republican opponents unmoved, his fellow Democrats unenthused and a great many Americans unimpressed as to either his sincerity or his capability.
One place where such a call to unity needs to make an impact is India's own Parliament, where the ruling party is effectively a minority and the Opposition is determined to let nothing work. In India, three parts of the address that contain potential for confrontation are likely to draw more attention.
One is the assertion that all options to stop Iran going nuclear are on the table. Another is the repeated reference to China as an unfair trader, whose manipulative policies tilt the playing ground against hardworking Americans. And the reference to outsourcing as a practice that deserves to be penalised with taxes, rather than rewarded with tax breaks as at present, would have many sounding the alarm on US protectionism. But the resounding theme of Obama's speech was the gap between the people and politics as practised by their representatives.
Swamped by illgotten campaign finance, pursuing special interests and determined to deny their opponents success, even if it means making their country and countrymen fail, these representatives make a mess of governance. They undo the doable, spit at fruit within reach and blame one another as prosperity passes the nation by, letting misery stalk where progress and development could have walked.
The gap between the aspirations of the people and of their representatives seems to be the only thing common to rich and poor nations, apart from growing inequality within their societies.
The initial surge of mass support for the Anna agitation was a reflection of public anger against this gap. For now, politicians seem to have managed to divert attention away from their own failings, staging a fight amongst themselves on how best to make politicians accountable.
They have been aided, in the process, by Team Anna's own partisan politicking and the urgency of conducting assembly elections, whose hurly-burly leaves little space for reasoned discussion on political reform , just as the urgency of assuaging hunger will not wait for a debate to be settled on what foods are good for you. But if politicians believe they have succeeded in overcoming popular disgust for their breed, they are mistaken.
Politics has to reform itself. Politicians will have to get back to the agenda of political reform on their own, if they do not want to see a bigger surge of anti-politician protests than what 2011 had witnessed. Politics has to change both its process and its purpose. The two, of course, are inter-related.
If you see the purpose of politics as being the right to grant and receive patronage, the process of such politics would necessarily be corrupt, transactional. If, on the other hand, you see the purpose of politics as empowerment, the process would be mobilisation of the people to enforce their rights and for demands that flow from their rights.
Buying votes with liquor and money is obviously transactional politics. To raise the finances to be able to offer these bribes, the politician must either have amassed wealth during his tenure in office via corruption or commit himself to future corruption. Misuse of elected office to raise money through theft from the exchequer , sale of patronage or plain extortion is the hallmark of patronage politics. People see any relief from the government or any sign of normal working of the government machinery as patronage they are privileged to receive, rather than as their right.
So, getting a ration card made becomes a privilege, rather than an entitlement, and the politician who enables this, a patron and protector, rather than your representative. Ending patronage politics and ending corrupt politics have a common meeting point: politics as empowerment. People have to be politically mobilised to hold parties and politicians to account, as to the amounts they spend on whatever political activity at any level and as to how they have raised the resources to make that expenditure; as to what their leaders are supposed to do and what they actually do.
When politicians rally people in the run-up to polling against the misdeeds of incumbent governments, it is, indeed, one form of mobilisation. This is welcome, but not enough. Sustained mobilisation is possible only when the political party works as an institution, articulating popular concerns, questioning authority and summoning it to the people's cause - in short, mediating power for the collective good. Fine speeches and charisma are good for crystallising action, not a substitute for it. Our own would-be reformers would do well to take this fully on board.
Barack Obama's appeal for unity to solve problems resonates here
Obama's State of the Union address, calling upon Americans to unite to solve urgent common problems, transcending political divisions, left his Republican opponents unmoved, his fellow Democrats unenthused and a great many Americans unimpressed as to either his sincerity or his capability.
One place where such a call to unity needs to make an impact is India's own Parliament, where the ruling party is effectively a minority and the Opposition is determined to let nothing work. In India, three parts of the address that contain potential for confrontation are likely to draw more attention.
One is the assertion that all options to stop Iran going nuclear are on the table. Another is the repeated reference to China as an unfair trader, whose manipulative policies tilt the playing ground against hardworking Americans. And the reference to outsourcing as a practice that deserves to be penalised with taxes, rather than rewarded with tax breaks as at present, would have many sounding the alarm on US protectionism. But the resounding theme of Obama's speech was the gap between the people and politics as practised by their representatives.
Swamped by illgotten campaign finance, pursuing special interests and determined to deny their opponents success, even if it means making their country and countrymen fail, these representatives make a mess of governance. They undo the doable, spit at fruit within reach and blame one another as prosperity passes the nation by, letting misery stalk where progress and development could have walked.
The gap between the aspirations of the people and of their representatives seems to be the only thing common to rich and poor nations, apart from growing inequality within their societies.
The initial surge of mass support for the Anna agitation was a reflection of public anger against this gap. For now, politicians seem to have managed to divert attention away from their own failings, staging a fight amongst themselves on how best to make politicians accountable.
They have been aided, in the process, by Team Anna's own partisan politicking and the urgency of conducting assembly elections, whose hurly-burly leaves little space for reasoned discussion on political reform , just as the urgency of assuaging hunger will not wait for a debate to be settled on what foods are good for you. But if politicians believe they have succeeded in overcoming popular disgust for their breed, they are mistaken.
Politics has to reform itself. Politicians will have to get back to the agenda of political reform on their own, if they do not want to see a bigger surge of anti-politician protests than what 2011 had witnessed. Politics has to change both its process and its purpose. The two, of course, are inter-related.
If you see the purpose of politics as being the right to grant and receive patronage, the process of such politics would necessarily be corrupt, transactional. If, on the other hand, you see the purpose of politics as empowerment, the process would be mobilisation of the people to enforce their rights and for demands that flow from their rights.
Buying votes with liquor and money is obviously transactional politics. To raise the finances to be able to offer these bribes, the politician must either have amassed wealth during his tenure in office via corruption or commit himself to future corruption. Misuse of elected office to raise money through theft from the exchequer , sale of patronage or plain extortion is the hallmark of patronage politics. People see any relief from the government or any sign of normal working of the government machinery as patronage they are privileged to receive, rather than as their right.
So, getting a ration card made becomes a privilege, rather than an entitlement, and the politician who enables this, a patron and protector, rather than your representative. Ending patronage politics and ending corrupt politics have a common meeting point: politics as empowerment. People have to be politically mobilised to hold parties and politicians to account, as to the amounts they spend on whatever political activity at any level and as to how they have raised the resources to make that expenditure; as to what their leaders are supposed to do and what they actually do.
When politicians rally people in the run-up to polling against the misdeeds of incumbent governments, it is, indeed, one form of mobilisation. This is welcome, but not enough. Sustained mobilisation is possible only when the political party works as an institution, articulating popular concerns, questioning authority and summoning it to the people's cause - in short, mediating power for the collective good. Fine speeches and charisma are good for crystallising action, not a substitute for it. Our own would-be reformers would do well to take this fully on board.
A year ago, Egyptians battered by the cold and grinding unemployment, corruption and nepotism during decades-old regime of Hosni Mubarak
A year ago, Egyptians battered by the cold and grinding unemployment, corruption and nepotism during decades-old regime of Hosni Mubarak
Opinion: Emergence of a new order in Egypt/It seems that Brotherhood has learned a lesson from history — from what happened to Hamas in Gaza
SYED FAISAL ALI
Opinion: Emergence of a new order in Egypt
It seems that Brotherhood has learned a lesson from history — from what happened to Hamas in Gaza
A year ago, Egyptians battered by the cold and grinding unemployment, corruption and nepotism during decades-old regime of Hosni Mubarak decided to rebel and descended on Tahrir Square and dispersed only after the regime collapsed.
Again Egyptians, in hundreds, are marching toward the same Tahrir Square to mark the first anniversary of the uprising that toppled one of the most powerful rulers of the region.
But this time they are converging at the historic square every day to realize what they call “the dream of the martyrs” — those who sacrificed their lives, to see a true democratic dispensation in the country of Pyramids.
One year on, this is the time for introspection. Apart from their disappointment with the unpopular Military Council that is holding firm after Mubarak's collapse, Egyptians have many other complaints: No running water. No gas, no power, no factory and, of course, no jobs.
It is difficult to understand how the reforms promised by the present dispensation would help Egypt's immediate battle with a chronically weak economy and a jobless rate that has soared in recent months. Despite a gloomy sociopolitical and economic situation of discontent, the only silver lining is the peaceful general elections.
The Muslim Brotherhood has emerged as the biggest beneficiary of the general elections after its political front, the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), claimed victory.
For a party that has just triumphed in elections, winning nearly half the seats in the first parliamentary polls since last year's revolution, the Brotherhood is sounding remarkably flexible on economic policy, social concerns and religious issues.
The group has promised voters it would improve the lives of the poor. But it is steering clear of radical proposals to redistribute wealth and stresses it will consult other parties in Parliament. It is trying hard to win over businessmen, declaring the stock market vital and pledging to respect private property and protect tourism, a big foreign exchange earner. Though the party still frowns on alcohol and some other issues, it says it will not try to ban them in tourist areas.
The Brotherhood leadership is looking more pragmatic than radical and it seems they have realized the need to keep their radical policies and planks in the backburner and move ahead with a consensus approach hand in hand with liberal voices representing different shades of Egyptians' life.
It seems that the party has learned a lesson from history, from what happened to Hamas in Gaza. And it is trying to appear moderate by adopting an appeasing tone as it strives to set up a coalition with other parties. “We will be part of a Parliament,” Ashraf Badr El-Din, head of the Brotherhood's economic policy committee, said last week. “And we will work with the support of other parties,” El-Din has said, to win over new friends and to dispel some confusion over their intention. A good beginning indeed toward reconciliation, peace and harmony in a battered and divided country.
The much-needed boost and legitimacy was accorded to the FJP when its leaders held unprecedented talks with US Deputy Secretary of State William Burns last week in Cairo. This was something unimaginable before the Tahrir Square movement, a year ago.
The meeting was the latest in a series of moves by the Obama administration to reach out to the Brotherhood in an approval to Egypt's new political reality on the ground. But Washington has indicated concerns linger about the group's attitude toward the country's Christian minority, women and the peace treaty with Israel.
On the economic front, a year after Mubarak's ouster, most of Egypt's main political parties are fumbling toward a consensus on managing the economy, as shrinking foreign reserves threaten a currency crisis and the government is struggling to finance its budget deficit.
It is a difficult, uncertain process, but a common approach is emerging and the consensus may come just in time to avert economic disaster.
The new Parliament faces other major challenges, not the least of which is to try to find a common program to induce confidence and help bring about economic stability.
The biggest party in Parliament has already made it clear, it will not insist on an “integral application of Shariah” law nor would it demand strategic posts — Foreign Affairs and the Interior Ministry? — in a future Cabinet. True to its image, the Brotherhood has indicated to run ministries that provide direct services to the people, like health or social affairs, clearly with an eye to further expand their support base.
These are ample proofs of Brotherhood's pragmatism and moderation, and a reassuring message on the future of Egypt. It also makes it clear that a mixed parliamentary presidential system is the best for Egypt at this current transitional period, with no scope for any party to pursue controversial agendas. That's the triumph of the Tahrir Square movement.
Interestingly, though the Brotherhood is constantly changing, keeping moderates to distinguish itself from the ultra-conservatives. But will the party keep it up? It isn't sure. Some analysts are still skeptical about Brotherhood's future role and plans.
Another cause for concern, for the US, is the fate of the Egypt-Israel peace treaty signed in 1979 on which, the position of the Brotherhood is still ambiguous.
But one thing is crystal clear, the once-banned Brotherhood, which for decades pursued radicalism, is seeking to emerge as a credible and moderate force after the elections and sincerely trying to win over friends cutting across ideological and religious red lines. That's no less an achievement in one year.
A year after the uprising, the first sign of a democratic rule is the opening of the first post-Mubarak Parliament in Cairo and the handing over of the legislative powers to it by the ruling Military Council. That itself is remarkable.
The next major step in this democratic transition will be presidential elections, scheduled to be held in June, when the generals step down.
No doubt, Egypt has a long way to go but certainly, this is the beginning of the emergence of a new order in Egypt.
(faisalali@arabnews.com)
Opinion: Emergence of a new order in Egypt
It seems that Brotherhood has learned a lesson from history — from what happened to Hamas in Gaza
A year ago, Egyptians battered by the cold and grinding unemployment, corruption and nepotism during decades-old regime of Hosni Mubarak decided to rebel and descended on Tahrir Square and dispersed only after the regime collapsed.
Again Egyptians, in hundreds, are marching toward the same Tahrir Square to mark the first anniversary of the uprising that toppled one of the most powerful rulers of the region.
But this time they are converging at the historic square every day to realize what they call “the dream of the martyrs” — those who sacrificed their lives, to see a true democratic dispensation in the country of Pyramids.
One year on, this is the time for introspection. Apart from their disappointment with the unpopular Military Council that is holding firm after Mubarak's collapse, Egyptians have many other complaints: No running water. No gas, no power, no factory and, of course, no jobs.
It is difficult to understand how the reforms promised by the present dispensation would help Egypt's immediate battle with a chronically weak economy and a jobless rate that has soared in recent months. Despite a gloomy sociopolitical and economic situation of discontent, the only silver lining is the peaceful general elections.
The Muslim Brotherhood has emerged as the biggest beneficiary of the general elections after its political front, the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), claimed victory.
For a party that has just triumphed in elections, winning nearly half the seats in the first parliamentary polls since last year's revolution, the Brotherhood is sounding remarkably flexible on economic policy, social concerns and religious issues.
The group has promised voters it would improve the lives of the poor. But it is steering clear of radical proposals to redistribute wealth and stresses it will consult other parties in Parliament. It is trying hard to win over businessmen, declaring the stock market vital and pledging to respect private property and protect tourism, a big foreign exchange earner. Though the party still frowns on alcohol and some other issues, it says it will not try to ban them in tourist areas.
The Brotherhood leadership is looking more pragmatic than radical and it seems they have realized the need to keep their radical policies and planks in the backburner and move ahead with a consensus approach hand in hand with liberal voices representing different shades of Egyptians' life.
It seems that the party has learned a lesson from history, from what happened to Hamas in Gaza. And it is trying to appear moderate by adopting an appeasing tone as it strives to set up a coalition with other parties. “We will be part of a Parliament,” Ashraf Badr El-Din, head of the Brotherhood's economic policy committee, said last week. “And we will work with the support of other parties,” El-Din has said, to win over new friends and to dispel some confusion over their intention. A good beginning indeed toward reconciliation, peace and harmony in a battered and divided country.
The much-needed boost and legitimacy was accorded to the FJP when its leaders held unprecedented talks with US Deputy Secretary of State William Burns last week in Cairo. This was something unimaginable before the Tahrir Square movement, a year ago.
The meeting was the latest in a series of moves by the Obama administration to reach out to the Brotherhood in an approval to Egypt's new political reality on the ground. But Washington has indicated concerns linger about the group's attitude toward the country's Christian minority, women and the peace treaty with Israel.
On the economic front, a year after Mubarak's ouster, most of Egypt's main political parties are fumbling toward a consensus on managing the economy, as shrinking foreign reserves threaten a currency crisis and the government is struggling to finance its budget deficit.
It is a difficult, uncertain process, but a common approach is emerging and the consensus may come just in time to avert economic disaster.
The new Parliament faces other major challenges, not the least of which is to try to find a common program to induce confidence and help bring about economic stability.
The biggest party in Parliament has already made it clear, it will not insist on an “integral application of Shariah” law nor would it demand strategic posts — Foreign Affairs and the Interior Ministry? — in a future Cabinet. True to its image, the Brotherhood has indicated to run ministries that provide direct services to the people, like health or social affairs, clearly with an eye to further expand their support base.
These are ample proofs of Brotherhood's pragmatism and moderation, and a reassuring message on the future of Egypt. It also makes it clear that a mixed parliamentary presidential system is the best for Egypt at this current transitional period, with no scope for any party to pursue controversial agendas. That's the triumph of the Tahrir Square movement.
Interestingly, though the Brotherhood is constantly changing, keeping moderates to distinguish itself from the ultra-conservatives. But will the party keep it up? It isn't sure. Some analysts are still skeptical about Brotherhood's future role and plans.
Another cause for concern, for the US, is the fate of the Egypt-Israel peace treaty signed in 1979 on which, the position of the Brotherhood is still ambiguous.
But one thing is crystal clear, the once-banned Brotherhood, which for decades pursued radicalism, is seeking to emerge as a credible and moderate force after the elections and sincerely trying to win over friends cutting across ideological and religious red lines. That's no less an achievement in one year.
A year after the uprising, the first sign of a democratic rule is the opening of the first post-Mubarak Parliament in Cairo and the handing over of the legislative powers to it by the ruling Military Council. That itself is remarkable.
The next major step in this democratic transition will be presidential elections, scheduled to be held in June, when the generals step down.
No doubt, Egypt has a long way to go but certainly, this is the beginning of the emergence of a new order in Egypt.
(faisalali@arabnews.com)
Egypt press hails 'revival' of revolution-after massive crowds took to the streets to demand democratic changes,
Egypt press hails 'revival' of revolution
(AFP) – 1 hour ago
CAIRO — Egypt's press on Thursday hailed the "revival" of the revolution after massive crowds took to the streets to demand democratic changes, a year after the start of the uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak.
"The revolution continues," trumpeted the independent daily Al-Shorouq, saying millions of Egyptians wanted to see "the end of military rule."
"The people want the continuation of the revolution," proclaimed the state-owned Al-Ahram, above a large picture of massive crowds thronging Tahrir Square -- the symbolic heart of the Egyptian protests.
On January 25 last year, nationwide rallies kicked off the uprising that would change the course of the Arab world's most populous nation, bringing closer ambitions for democratic change.
But a year later, many are disenchanted and even angry at the ruling military, who protesters accuse of reneging on promises of reform and of rights abuses.
Protesters spent a peaceful night in Tahrir Square, despite weeks of warnings by the military council and state media of possible trouble on the day.
Several pro-democracy groups have called a sit-in in the square until Friday when another rally is planned.
On Wednesday, Egyptians poured into the main squares of cities across the country, vowing to re-ignite their unfinished revolution, in a day billed as a celebration by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces that took power when Mubarak was ousted on February 11.
Formal celebrations remained discreet on the day, with the overwhelming demand of rallies focused on working for the goals of the revolution.
The independent Al-Tahrir newspaper listed the goals on its front page, including an immediate handover of power to civilian rule, the election of a president, justice for those killed during the uprising, an end to military trials for civilians, as well as social justice and the guarantee of freedoms.
In Cairo, massive marches snaked through towards Tahrir, with the chant of "Down with military rule!" ringing across the capital.
By late afternoon, the rally had occupied surrounding streets and bridges, in scenes reminiscent of the 2011 protests in which hundreds of protesters were killed and thousands injured.
Tens of thousands also packed the main squares in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria, the canal city of Suez and in the Nile Delta and the Sinai peninsula.
(AFP) – 1 hour ago
CAIRO — Egypt's press on Thursday hailed the "revival" of the revolution after massive crowds took to the streets to demand democratic changes, a year after the start of the uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak.
"The revolution continues," trumpeted the independent daily Al-Shorouq, saying millions of Egyptians wanted to see "the end of military rule."
"The people want the continuation of the revolution," proclaimed the state-owned Al-Ahram, above a large picture of massive crowds thronging Tahrir Square -- the symbolic heart of the Egyptian protests.
On January 25 last year, nationwide rallies kicked off the uprising that would change the course of the Arab world's most populous nation, bringing closer ambitions for democratic change.
But a year later, many are disenchanted and even angry at the ruling military, who protesters accuse of reneging on promises of reform and of rights abuses.
Protesters spent a peaceful night in Tahrir Square, despite weeks of warnings by the military council and state media of possible trouble on the day.
Several pro-democracy groups have called a sit-in in the square until Friday when another rally is planned.
On Wednesday, Egyptians poured into the main squares of cities across the country, vowing to re-ignite their unfinished revolution, in a day billed as a celebration by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces that took power when Mubarak was ousted on February 11.
Formal celebrations remained discreet on the day, with the overwhelming demand of rallies focused on working for the goals of the revolution.
The independent Al-Tahrir newspaper listed the goals on its front page, including an immediate handover of power to civilian rule, the election of a president, justice for those killed during the uprising, an end to military trials for civilians, as well as social justice and the guarantee of freedoms.
In Cairo, massive marches snaked through towards Tahrir, with the chant of "Down with military rule!" ringing across the capital.
By late afternoon, the rally had occupied surrounding streets and bridges, in scenes reminiscent of the 2011 protests in which hundreds of protesters were killed and thousands injured.
Tens of thousands also packed the main squares in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria, the canal city of Suez and in the Nile Delta and the Sinai peninsula.
Our liberals need to find their voices in Kashmir or r they are only fair-weather liberals?Conversions by the church of few Kashmiri Muslims??
Conversions in Kashmir: But where are the liberals now?Conversions in Kashmir: But where are the liberals now?a Protestant pastor who has been converting and baptising a few Kashmiri Muslims(Though number of Christians in J and K is very less...MINDLESS ISSUES!!) .
R Jagannathan Jan 23, 2012
Conversions in Kashmir: But where are the liberals now?
Indian policemen stand guard outside a Catholic church in Srinagar. For the last few months now, the Muslim clergy and the political right-wing in the valley have managed to raise a froth over conversions by the church. Reuters
Thanks to a curious alignment of the stars and circumstances, India’s so-called secular-liberal establishment suddenly found its voice and spine over the Rushdie affair. This does not usually happen, since this group gets vocal only when it comes to bashing the Sangh Parivar for its pet foibles.
So it is a fair bet that the current discovery of bravado during the Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF) is likely to be a one-off. The state and the political establishment, as expected, caved in. Rushdie didn’t come, and is busy tweeting impotently. And the authors who decided to read from The Satanic Verses were quietly bundled off and now talk only from other shores. Apologies are also pouring in. Hear Hari Kunzru, one of the JLF tigers on Rushdie, on this.
A better test case for secular-liberals is coming up in Kashmir. For the last few months now, the Muslim clergy and the political right-wing in the valley have managed to raise a froth over conversions by the church. The target of their ire is one CM Khanna, a Protestant pastor who has been converting and baptising a few Kashmiri Muslims.
Even though the conversions are nowhere on the scale that Hindus have faced elsewhere, the Muslim clergy have been raising a storm and one shariat court has already held him guilty and told him to leave the state. The pastor was arrested and released on bail by the state authorities.
However, the persecution of Christians – who are said to number not more than a few hundred in the Kashmir valley – continues and The Times of India reports that almost every Christian in the state is now the object of scrutiny. The most ridiculous case is that of Juan Marcos Troia, an Argentinian football coach who has tried to promote football in the valley. He, too, is looked on with suspicion and his house was recently vandalised.
A nun prays in a Srinagar church. For the last few months now, the Muslim clergy and the political right-wing in the valley have managed to raise a froth over conversions by the church. Reuters
Even supposedly moderate Kashmiri leaders like Mirwaiz Umar Farooq have become active in crying wolf over the conversions of a few Muslims by launching a website for the faithful. According to the newspaper, a Council for Protection of Faith has been set up to “thwart (the) nefarious designs of pervasive forces and the deep-rooted conspiracy of making youth apostate and defectors by giving them concessions and benefits secretly.”
Quite apart from the fact that his fear-mongering sounds suspiciously similar to the alarms often raised by the Sangh Parivar over much larger Hindu conversions, the difference is that there is almost no voice – barring that of the Christian Council of India and a few writers like Shuddabrata Sengupta in Left-wing sites like Kafila.org – talking of this more serious threat to secular-liberal attitudes in Kashmir.
The truth is our alleged liberals like to pretend that Kashmir’s azaadi cry is really about freedom, when it is tinged with lots of bigotry. While the leader of the separatist movement, Syed Geelani, wants to impose sharia in Kashmir if it ever gets independence, on the matter of conversions, every Kashmiri seems united. Both the Muslim clergy, and the state government they are allegedly fighting, appear to have closed ranks to battle this religious subversion.
Sengupta, writing in Kafila, raises the question this writer raised some months ago on the azaadi Kashmiris are fighting for: “I want to ask a serious question about the nature of the ‘azaadi’ that the self-proclaimed leaders of the Kashmiri people are demanding. I do not mean to demean or cheapen this demand, which I consider to be just and morally correct. I only want to know whether or not, many of those who voice this demand in Kashmir, do so after due consideration to what ‘freedom’ actually entails, or whether they are just automatically mouthing a demand whose depth they have no intention of plumbing. If the latter is the case, then the ‘azaadi’ they will bring to bear on Kashmir will not be substantially different from the ‘barbadi’ (devastation) that is currently taking place there under the auspices of the Indian state.”
But Sengupta, despite backing the flawed cause of Kashmiri separatism, at least raises this moral objection to what the Muslim conservatives are doing in Kashmir.
The rest of the liberals are busy fighting phantom battles over The Satanic Verses. There’s not one yip on this issue, which has been brewing over the last few months. They have kept quiet, just as they did when half a million Pandits were thrown out of the Valley in one of the world’s worst acts of ethnic cleansing.
If our liberals are truly liberals, they need to find their voice again. They can’t all be struck with laryngitis. Or are they only fair-weather liberals?
R Jagannathan Jan 23, 2012
Conversions in Kashmir: But where are the liberals now?
Indian policemen stand guard outside a Catholic church in Srinagar. For the last few months now, the Muslim clergy and the political right-wing in the valley have managed to raise a froth over conversions by the church. Reuters
Thanks to a curious alignment of the stars and circumstances, India’s so-called secular-liberal establishment suddenly found its voice and spine over the Rushdie affair. This does not usually happen, since this group gets vocal only when it comes to bashing the Sangh Parivar for its pet foibles.
So it is a fair bet that the current discovery of bravado during the Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF) is likely to be a one-off. The state and the political establishment, as expected, caved in. Rushdie didn’t come, and is busy tweeting impotently. And the authors who decided to read from The Satanic Verses were quietly bundled off and now talk only from other shores. Apologies are also pouring in. Hear Hari Kunzru, one of the JLF tigers on Rushdie, on this.
A better test case for secular-liberals is coming up in Kashmir. For the last few months now, the Muslim clergy and the political right-wing in the valley have managed to raise a froth over conversions by the church. The target of their ire is one CM Khanna, a Protestant pastor who has been converting and baptising a few Kashmiri Muslims.
Even though the conversions are nowhere on the scale that Hindus have faced elsewhere, the Muslim clergy have been raising a storm and one shariat court has already held him guilty and told him to leave the state. The pastor was arrested and released on bail by the state authorities.
However, the persecution of Christians – who are said to number not more than a few hundred in the Kashmir valley – continues and The Times of India reports that almost every Christian in the state is now the object of scrutiny. The most ridiculous case is that of Juan Marcos Troia, an Argentinian football coach who has tried to promote football in the valley. He, too, is looked on with suspicion and his house was recently vandalised.
A nun prays in a Srinagar church. For the last few months now, the Muslim clergy and the political right-wing in the valley have managed to raise a froth over conversions by the church. Reuters
Even supposedly moderate Kashmiri leaders like Mirwaiz Umar Farooq have become active in crying wolf over the conversions of a few Muslims by launching a website for the faithful. According to the newspaper, a Council for Protection of Faith has been set up to “thwart (the) nefarious designs of pervasive forces and the deep-rooted conspiracy of making youth apostate and defectors by giving them concessions and benefits secretly.”
Quite apart from the fact that his fear-mongering sounds suspiciously similar to the alarms often raised by the Sangh Parivar over much larger Hindu conversions, the difference is that there is almost no voice – barring that of the Christian Council of India and a few writers like Shuddabrata Sengupta in Left-wing sites like Kafila.org – talking of this more serious threat to secular-liberal attitudes in Kashmir.
The truth is our alleged liberals like to pretend that Kashmir’s azaadi cry is really about freedom, when it is tinged with lots of bigotry. While the leader of the separatist movement, Syed Geelani, wants to impose sharia in Kashmir if it ever gets independence, on the matter of conversions, every Kashmiri seems united. Both the Muslim clergy, and the state government they are allegedly fighting, appear to have closed ranks to battle this religious subversion.
Sengupta, writing in Kafila, raises the question this writer raised some months ago on the azaadi Kashmiris are fighting for: “I want to ask a serious question about the nature of the ‘azaadi’ that the self-proclaimed leaders of the Kashmiri people are demanding. I do not mean to demean or cheapen this demand, which I consider to be just and morally correct. I only want to know whether or not, many of those who voice this demand in Kashmir, do so after due consideration to what ‘freedom’ actually entails, or whether they are just automatically mouthing a demand whose depth they have no intention of plumbing. If the latter is the case, then the ‘azaadi’ they will bring to bear on Kashmir will not be substantially different from the ‘barbadi’ (devastation) that is currently taking place there under the auspices of the Indian state.”
But Sengupta, despite backing the flawed cause of Kashmiri separatism, at least raises this moral objection to what the Muslim conservatives are doing in Kashmir.
The rest of the liberals are busy fighting phantom battles over The Satanic Verses. There’s not one yip on this issue, which has been brewing over the last few months. They have kept quiet, just as they did when half a million Pandits were thrown out of the Valley in one of the world’s worst acts of ethnic cleansing.
If our liberals are truly liberals, they need to find their voice again. They can’t all be struck with laryngitis. Or are they only fair-weather liberals?
If we accept the basic idea that nations are a state of mind, the idea of what constitutes a state – and what duties it should perform – also needs re
Republic Day thought: Has our constitution failed? Or have we?
R Jagannathan Jan 26, 2012
Republic Day thought: Has our constitution failed? Or have we?
On the 63rd Republic Day, India needs to ask itself: has our constitution failed us, or have we failed the constitution? Or is it a mixture of both? Reuters
This area of the constitution – the division of powers between centre and states – needs to be completely rewritten. In fact, there is scope for each state to have its own constitution, with only the broader goals of free movement of people and commerce and defence being allotted to the centre. Once this happens, we can deal with a Kashmir and Telangana and Nagaland more sensibly.
In the absence of this separation of powers, we have a Mamata threatening the centre on minor issues. We have the centre threatening lawfully-elected governments in opposition-ruled states. We have allowed our flawed constitution to create anarchy and poor governance. In a reworked constitution, a Mayawati would be happy to rule UP instead of aspiring to rule India without really performing in her own state. Only national parties would compete nationally.
In fact, in an ideal constitution with redistributed power, article 356 – which allows the centre to remove state governments – should either be abolished or replaced with a duality of power: the centre should be able to act against states that are not being governed constitutionally; equally, a qualified majority of states should be able to replace the central government if it doing damage to the federation.
Another element of the constitution should be to give people the right to limited internal secession: any territory or people should have the right of self-government within the broader India, and this process should be mediated through constitutionally-valid referendums.
The purpose of this evaluation is not to criticise the old constitution or its provisions, but to modernise it in the context of the completely different world we live in.
Our constitution-writers lived in a world of nation-states, a world emerging from the clutches of colonialism. India’s constitution was modern for the mid-20th century. It isn’t now. Of course, the US has a constitution that has been practically remained unchanged for 200 years. But this is not relevant. The US had a modern society even then – the constitution thus merely upheld what the people wanted. We don’t have modern minds even now. And we are more diverse than what the US was even in the 18th century. We need a different constitution that meets our current needs.
Moreover, the world too has changed dramatically.
Today, we live in a virtual world, where instant access to information makes nonsense of the old territorial idea of a nation. Nations are states of mind and affinity – they require physical borders only in order to enforce law and order and make administration technically feasible. You can’t really administer cyberspace, virtual worlds and independent minds – however hard Kapil Sibal and Markandeya Katju may want it.
The communities we connect to are not just the old groupings of race, religion, caste, gender and language, but communities of interest and active association and involvement. As Amartya Sen points out, we all have multiple identities, but the idea of multiple identities is terrible. Only schizophrenics have multiple-identities; individuals have only one identity, but with many dimensions to it. Our minds live in separate virtual universes simultaneously — I could be a journalist, a father, an internationalist, and a nationalist and many more things at the same time.
If we accept the basic idea that nations are a state of mind, the idea of what constitutes a state – and what duties it should perform – also needs redefinition.
Should the state be an all-powerful entity that can regulate all aspects of its citizens’ lives, or should it be only a facilitator in important areas?
This question is important not only in authoritarian regimes, but also in democratic ones. The size of the state in the US and Europe is huge – thanks to the kind of tasks it has taken on, to serve its citizens from cradle to grave. The US and European economies are crumbling because their citizens have over-extended the state and it is crumbling under its own weight and hubris.
This is the kind of state that thinks it can snatch the children from Anurup and Sagarika Bhattacharya on the assumption that it knows best what is good for the kids. And in this same state, which thinks it has all the answers on parenting, we find a misfit called Anders Behring Breivik who killed 77 of his own people in July to teach them a lesson.
Clearly, the state does not have all the answers to the problems of society. In the 21st century, the state should see itself as an enabler except in areas where no one else is willing to step forward. In business, for example, companies compete, governments can only enable. The job of government is to enable companies to compete, not compete itself.
Similarly, we know the fate of how badly social sector schemes are managed in India. If the hungry must be fed, the state must enable the feeding of its people through appropriate laws and tax-breaks, and not necessarily try to do the job itself. It has to help create incomes, and offer safety nets for the poor when there is no one else to do the job; but if there are others willing to do this, the state’s job is to enable, monitor and audit this work.
We can go on and on and on. But 62 years after we became a republic, we have to examine all our premises as a nation. Maybe, we need a new constitution for a different nation by recognising all our sub-nations.
R Jagannathan Jan 26, 2012
Republic Day thought: Has our constitution failed? Or have we?
On the 63rd Republic Day, India needs to ask itself: has our constitution failed us, or have we failed the constitution? Or is it a mixture of both? Reuters
This area of the constitution – the division of powers between centre and states – needs to be completely rewritten. In fact, there is scope for each state to have its own constitution, with only the broader goals of free movement of people and commerce and defence being allotted to the centre. Once this happens, we can deal with a Kashmir and Telangana and Nagaland more sensibly.
In the absence of this separation of powers, we have a Mamata threatening the centre on minor issues. We have the centre threatening lawfully-elected governments in opposition-ruled states. We have allowed our flawed constitution to create anarchy and poor governance. In a reworked constitution, a Mayawati would be happy to rule UP instead of aspiring to rule India without really performing in her own state. Only national parties would compete nationally.
In fact, in an ideal constitution with redistributed power, article 356 – which allows the centre to remove state governments – should either be abolished or replaced with a duality of power: the centre should be able to act against states that are not being governed constitutionally; equally, a qualified majority of states should be able to replace the central government if it doing damage to the federation.
Another element of the constitution should be to give people the right to limited internal secession: any territory or people should have the right of self-government within the broader India, and this process should be mediated through constitutionally-valid referendums.
The purpose of this evaluation is not to criticise the old constitution or its provisions, but to modernise it in the context of the completely different world we live in.
Our constitution-writers lived in a world of nation-states, a world emerging from the clutches of colonialism. India’s constitution was modern for the mid-20th century. It isn’t now. Of course, the US has a constitution that has been practically remained unchanged for 200 years. But this is not relevant. The US had a modern society even then – the constitution thus merely upheld what the people wanted. We don’t have modern minds even now. And we are more diverse than what the US was even in the 18th century. We need a different constitution that meets our current needs.
Moreover, the world too has changed dramatically.
Today, we live in a virtual world, where instant access to information makes nonsense of the old territorial idea of a nation. Nations are states of mind and affinity – they require physical borders only in order to enforce law and order and make administration technically feasible. You can’t really administer cyberspace, virtual worlds and independent minds – however hard Kapil Sibal and Markandeya Katju may want it.
The communities we connect to are not just the old groupings of race, religion, caste, gender and language, but communities of interest and active association and involvement. As Amartya Sen points out, we all have multiple identities, but the idea of multiple identities is terrible. Only schizophrenics have multiple-identities; individuals have only one identity, but with many dimensions to it. Our minds live in separate virtual universes simultaneously — I could be a journalist, a father, an internationalist, and a nationalist and many more things at the same time.
If we accept the basic idea that nations are a state of mind, the idea of what constitutes a state – and what duties it should perform – also needs redefinition.
Should the state be an all-powerful entity that can regulate all aspects of its citizens’ lives, or should it be only a facilitator in important areas?
This question is important not only in authoritarian regimes, but also in democratic ones. The size of the state in the US and Europe is huge – thanks to the kind of tasks it has taken on, to serve its citizens from cradle to grave. The US and European economies are crumbling because their citizens have over-extended the state and it is crumbling under its own weight and hubris.
This is the kind of state that thinks it can snatch the children from Anurup and Sagarika Bhattacharya on the assumption that it knows best what is good for the kids. And in this same state, which thinks it has all the answers on parenting, we find a misfit called Anders Behring Breivik who killed 77 of his own people in July to teach them a lesson.
Clearly, the state does not have all the answers to the problems of society. In the 21st century, the state should see itself as an enabler except in areas where no one else is willing to step forward. In business, for example, companies compete, governments can only enable. The job of government is to enable companies to compete, not compete itself.
Similarly, we know the fate of how badly social sector schemes are managed in India. If the hungry must be fed, the state must enable the feeding of its people through appropriate laws and tax-breaks, and not necessarily try to do the job itself. It has to help create incomes, and offer safety nets for the poor when there is no one else to do the job; but if there are others willing to do this, the state’s job is to enable, monitor and audit this work.
We can go on and on and on. But 62 years after we became a republic, we have to examine all our premises as a nation. Maybe, we need a new constitution for a different nation by recognising all our sub-nations.
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