State Govt to set up ATC

By Nandini Sharma

HYDERABAD: Having suffered serious humiliation at the hands of terror groups during the last 15 years, the State Government has finally woke up and declared a war on terror by deciding to set up “Anti-Terrorist Cell” in the Intelligence Wing.This was decided at a high-level meeting chaired by Chief Minister YS Rajasekhara Reddy.

The ATC would function on the lines of elite anti-Naxalite Grey Hounds which had been successfully hunting down the Naxalites. The State Government was in a piquant situation after the Saturday’s twin blasts and the Chief Minister himself admitted that the State police do not have wherewithal to deal with such crisis.

The post-bombing scenario was even pathetic. The State police wing has no information with regard to the terror groups and their modus operandi. Besides the political parties, people from cross sections of the society demanded that the Government declare a war on terror.

Having been cornered by all sections, Rajasekhara Reddy government was trying to wriggle out of the situation and ultimately it was decided to have an exclusive wing in the Intelligence department.Speaking to mediapersons at the Secretariat before leaving for the camp office, the Chief Minister said that a high-level committee comprising Director-Gerenal of Police MA Basith, Intelligence chief K Aravinda Rao and a few other senior police officials will finalise the structure, duties and responsibilities of the ATC.

The committee would submit a detailed report to Chief Secretary J Hari Narayan on Monday and the Chief Minister himself will review it next day.The proposals would be placed before the Cabinet in the next meeting and subsequently necessary infrastructure will be created.

The Chief Minister said that the personnel to be attached to the ATC will be trained at par with international standards, he said.

Debate on deal: not rocket science

By A N Mitra

The Indo-US Nuclear deal has understandably generated a good deal of controversy, mostly political. Unfortunately, the great emotion that has marked the debate inhibits an objective assessment of the subject. First, look at the political aspects. It all started as a historic initiative of the Vajpayee government symbolised by Pokhran II. This predictably caused a furore worldwide, with the then Chinese president Hu Jintao, joining hands with US counterpart Bill Clinton, in condemning this act of ‘presumption’ by a nuclear have-not.

Not content with this, they overtly prodded Pakistan to follow suit. Nearer home, the Congress found it difficult to overcome its oppositional stance. It refused to pat the NDA government on it back for this unique achievement. But look at the way the scenario has changed in less a decade. The NDA government has fallen, but not before making amends with the same US government of Bill Clinton and even starting negotiations on a nuclear deal.

The deal Prime Minister Manmohan Singh concluded after prolonged negotiations with the US and with the full involvement of representatives from both government and the nuclear establishment, may therefore be regarded as an ‘analytic continuation’ of the earlier efforts by the NDA. Admittedly, there was bound to be a lot of give and take in an agreement of this kind.Of course, it is not easy to judge its overall impact, yet a good index is the response of our two neighbours. The profound unhappiness in China over this coming together of the world’s two largest democracies and Pakistan’s desire to be given a corresponding privilege, speak for themselves. To come to the scientific aspects of the issue.

A lot of fuss has been made about not taking the scientific community into confidence. BJP leader, Murli Manohar Joshi, in an interaction with this website’s newspaper emphasised his party’s deep commitment to the scientific community. But to what end? True, our scientific workforce is numerically the second or third largest in the world, but its collective impact must be judged by the degree of ‘coherence’ it enjoys as a community.

In this respect, some truths are unavoidable. While it is true that a few scientists have acquired great international prominence in their individual capacity, the same is unfortunately not the case with the community as a whole. And the reason for this has to do with the peculiar ethos that pervades all sections of our society, scientists included: individual interests are placed above those of the community. For the scientific community this trait often shows up in the pathetic manner a typical member of the community looks to his western counterparts for ideas, oblivious of compatriots nearer home — something almost unheard of in scientific communities elsewhere.

In the long run, this trait militates against the formation of a collective school of thought at the level of ‘intellectual software’.Fortunately the trait is less noticeable at the level of scientific hardware (atomic energy/space science), thanks to a modicum of professional discipline enforced from the top, which ensures some sort of professional coherence. And whatever little that has been articulated by the community in the matter of these nuclear negotiations has been articulated by precisely this section. Now what could be the possible benefits, if any, from the deal itself?

The very first one concerns the procurement of nuclear fuel to meet civilian energy needs. It is too late in the day to ask if we could have been self-sufficient with our own efforts. Often the question has been raised about our vast thorium reserves, which, if they had been efficiently tapped during these 60 years of Independence, might well have served our energy needs.China would not have taken much time in such matters since the gap between knowing and doing simply does not exist in that country.

But, in India, even 60 years are inadequate. We are therefore left with the choice of either importing nuclear fuel or standing on prestige and doing nothing. The latter stance may suit the Left, but both the UPA, and the NDA before that, have quite sensibly chosen to adopt the former alternative. Other benefits include those related to several scientific and industrial sectors, which will now receive a range of dual-use equipment and components, which were previously denied to India because of their potential applications in the manufacture of nuclear weapons. Of course nothing comes without a price, but presumably the price was found acceptable. All said and done, the biggest benefit from this deal is ending India’s isolation from the global nuclear community.

Asia dives into moon race

By M H Ahsan & M Raja

With the Chinese and Japanese making plans to establish moon bases, can India be far behind? “Global players have declared that by 2020, they will have their bases on the moon,” Madhavan Nair, chief of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), declared on August 18. “I don’t think India can afford to be lagging behind in that.” Nair said ISRO is defining technologies needed for India’s first manned space mission in an Indian space vehicle scheduled for 2015 (Squadron Leader Rakesh Sharma spent eight days aboard a Soviet Soyuz T-11 in 1984).

Fifty-nine of 122 lunar probes launched worldwide were successful. More are heading moonward in a renewed interest in Earth’s neighbor 385,000 kilometers away. Leading Asia’s moon ambitions is the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), which rescheduled its lunar orbiter, Kaguya, to September 13 instead of this month. On August 17, China insisted its lunar Chang’e I program is purely scientific and not competing with any other country (read Japan).

India is expected to invest US$1.5 billion over the next five years to develop technologies for a manned space flight by 2015 and a moon flight by 2020. Most of the designing, research and technical jobs are to be completed by 2012. The United States wants a permanent outpost on the moon. This month, the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) released a master list of potential lunar objectives, consulting more than 1,000 people from businesses, and it included developing lunar commerce.

Scientists say moon resources could support life on Earth with cheaper and cleaner energy and help human exploration of the solar system and outer space with cheaper rocket fuel and space-travel construction materials. Lunar mineral deposits include aluminum, magnesium, titanium, iron (for building moon structures), and silicon (to make solar cells for energy), besides the lunar soil enriched with oxygen (for astronauts to breathe and for making rocket fuel) and hydrogen; the soil could also be melted into casts and used as construction blocks. Former Apollo astronaut Harrison Schmitt says a tonne of helium-3 from the moon could be returned to Earth to produce fusion power that would be price-competitive with oil at $30 a barrel. But this technology could be still decades away to make it cost-effective.

“If investment visionaries have their way, the moon of the 21st century is going to be dotted with robot factories, underground cities, power towers, tourist stopovers, science stations, even lunar burial sites,” promised Space.com at the turn of the millennium, reporting on the second annual Lunar Development Conference held in the US and attended by entrepreneurs, land developers, space technologists and researchers. Growing interest in space tourism makes moon inhabitation closer to reality.

Patrick Collins, a space-tourism expert and professor of economics at Azabu University, Japan, says that just 10% of existing governmental space budgets would be needed to make space tourism a $100-billion-a-year business. Russia’s Federal Space Agency has announced a moon-tourism project to be launched by 2010. With California-based Space Adventures and the Tokyo-based travel agency JTB Corp as partners, the project offers around-the-moon trips on board a Russian Soyuz spacecraft. Two tourists per trip will go on the moon ride, accompanied by a professional astronaut. The return ticket? Just $100 million. Shimizu Space Systems, a Japanese company working on space and lunar tourism, plans to build lunar bases with inflatable buildings served with golf courses and tennis courts.

A Lunar Hilton bigger than the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada, could dot the moonscape if British architect Peter Inston’s designs for a lunar complex for Hilton International appears. The Lunar Hilton would be a 5,000-room, domed, solar-energy-powered structure, with drinking water from lunar ice, and with restaurants, a church, a beach, and moon buses taking guests on lunar picnics. Asia could soon have its versions of the Texas-based Moon Society, affiliated to the Artemis Society, whose Artemis Project works to “design, fund and deploy the first private lunar base for commerce and tourism”.

The Moon Society’s top agenda is to establish human communities on the moon and promote large-scale industrialization and private enterprise on the moon. Greenpeace, of course, would then have its lunar branch. NASA, aiming for a moon base at either the north or south pole of the moon, estimates that by 2024, there will be continual presence on the moon, with International Space Station-like crews being rotated around the year. Private US space companies are already in business, each with projects to send orbiters, landers or robot rovers to the moon in the next few years.

On August 13, California-based SpaceDev – describing itself as “an entrepreneurial space-systems company” – declared its second-quarter and six-month fiscal results, reporting $17.7 million in revenue, a 12% increase from the previous year. TransOrbital, with its tagline “The moon is open for business,” says it’s the first private company to be authorized by the US State Department for commercial flights to the moon. Given the Indo-Chinese economic-growth rate, Asian companies will not be far behind.

Foreign terrorism and state negligence: A fatal mix behind Hyderabad blasts

By Madabhushi Sridhar

Undoubtedly it is a deadly terrorist attack targeting the nation, but this time the blast site is chosen to be Hyderabad. Forty two died and hundreds injured in twin blasts rocking Lumbini Park, a tourist attraction of AP capital and Gokul Chat, a very popular eatery in Kothi on fateful 25th August, 2007. Though the two bombs caused considerable damage, the toll could have been much higher if police had not found and defused 19 more bombs hidden at bus stops, movie theaters, and bridges. “They could have killed hundreds,” said Balwinder Singh, Hyderabad’s police commissioner.

Secularism survives
Hyderabad– the 16th-century capital of the Muslim Qutb Shahi dynasty – is targeted because it is a centre of India’s developing information technology industry, with dozens of top Western companies and many foreign executives’ working day and night. Like the bomb at Mecca Masjid 100 days before twin blasts, this attack also appears to have been designed to provoke a fresh bout of violence between Hindus and Muslims in the city of 6.5 million people. Hyderabad has one of India’s largest Muslim communities. Of India’s 1.1 billion population is 80 per cent Hindu and about 13 per cent Muslim, but Hyderabad has more than 40 percent Muslim. The people have rightly responded with peace and tolerance.

Hyderabad is cosmopolitan capital of Andhra Pradesh, where Muslim population is dense in old city while, all religion people live in peace in largely expanded new city including Hi-tech city and Secunderabad. In spite of communal politics and riots disturbing the city around ten times, the secularism still survives. By and large, the people prefer peace and progress except those who paint every controversy with the colour of religion and use it for polarization of votes on communal lines.

Eating center without security systems
Gokul chat in Kothi, a middleman’s bazaar and densely populated area, where 33 eaters died and 50 others injured, was an open to road eating center. Thousands with their families throng this place for samosa, cutlet, pav bhaji, paani poori, bhel poori, etc. Some one coolly walks in, keeps a bag (looks like a school bag) on ice cream box, and retreats, twenty minutes after which it explodes. And no one notices it. One of the occupiers of car would supply the others, and all enjoy the fast food sitting in air-conditioned cars. One such colleague bringing the ordered food from outlet to car did not return after serving friends four times. He fell to the blast. While hundreds hold money in hands and crave to grab the hot edibles, the outlet servers do not find time to collect money and deliver. Crazy eaters and greedy sellers do not mind any thing else.

The officers of Municipal Corporation of Hyderabad during March 2007 sealed this Chat Bhandar. While it is permitted to run three outlets, Gokul chat was operating six more centers using the footpath and brisk public road for eating and for parking of customer’s vehicles. The Commissioner issued closure orders after the AP High Court had upheld the civic body action to close the eating joint following complaints of unhygienic food being served, unauthorised running of the premises and lack of mandatory parking space.

It had only three trade licences and two food licences when it was mandatory for all nine to have both the permits. The building itself was found to be an illegal structure lacking any sanctioned plan. All this would go to show that it was the center of unmanageable crowd and unimaginable money making food joint. This atmosphere provided a ‘secure’ place for placing the deadly explosive devises, which took heavy toll. And as the audience stood to render the anthem a powerful blast rent the night. Had it not been for the rain god, the tragedy that struck the city on Saturday night would have been much worse.

There was a sharp drop in the number of visitors at Lumbini Park, a relatively inexpensive entertainment park alongside Hussainsagar, where one of the bombs exploded. The bomb went off at the famous laserium when a laser show was on. The laserium can seat about 2,000 people. However, due to heavy rain in the evening, only 500 people turned up for the show. The fate of the visitors to laser show is also decided by luck but not by any fool proof security arrangements. Any body could walk in plant whatever they want underneath the chairs (arranged at laser show).

Blast at Mecca Masjid: Lessons not learnt
Officials accused the same group of bombing a mosque in Hyderabad in May, which left 11 people dead, when a bomb exploded in the open-air courtyard at the historical Mecca Masjid mosque as Friday prayers are concluding. Timely arrived Bomb squad could defuse a second bomb. Fingers pointed to Shahid Bilal alias Abdul Rehman, 24, a former Hyderabad resident linked to terror groups like the Jaish-e-Mohammed, Lashkar-e-Toiba and the Harkat-ul-Jehadi, an explosives expert with a history in Hyderabad.

Criminal negligence
Things just happen, that’s all. If there are no blasts any where, it is because nobody wanted it. Basic duty of any constitutional governance is protecting the peace, for which the sovereign ‘state’ is authorized to collect taxes and authorized to spend thousands of crores of rupees.

Apart from the deliberate and well planned terrorist action, it is the lack of security systems and absolute disorganization of crowded places in Hyderabad contributed to ghastly deaths of innocents.

Explosion opposite the seat of State Power
While the Lumbini park is exactly opposite to main gate of state secretariat, Chat Bhandar is the center for crowds to throng for books, food and small business shops. Both are densely crowded and very near to police presence. Lack of intelligence, active diligence and very serious slackness on the part of the machinery are significant factors that aggravated the violence.

Misdirected Explosives
The state of Andhra Pradesh is reportedly a biggest manufacturer of explosives like slurry and detonators in the country. Nalgonda, nearby district is the headquarters for this activity. Most of the times these explosives find their easy way into the hands of terrorists or any other mafia gangsters. Out of 57 factories manufacturing explosives in the country, nine are located in Nalgonda, and out of 66 licences, Nalgonda has 25. If Nagpur has highest sale licenses, Nalgonda is the next highest. These explosives can be improvised into bombs. The steel balls which are used in the explosives were traced to Bibinagar, in Nalgonda district.

CM Concedes Lapses
It is alleged that the police is mostly concentrating on eliminating Maoists and in the process ignored the surreptitiously increasing terrorist activities. The Special Investigations Team, SIT was once considered to be efficient team to tackle such problems, not it is not properly manned by the police and the government. A Telugu newspaper reported that whenever police could narrow down on some suspect, one of the cabinet ministers of Dr Y S Rajasekhar Reddy regime used to come to their rescue, causing much demoralizing effect on the investigative efficiency. One of the Congress MPs openly pleaded that cabinet ministers should not intervene and get the accused released from police custody.

The Chief Minister conceded that counter intelligence and special intelligence wings should have been strengthened further. Former Police Senior Official of Police Department Anjaneya Reddy made certain pertinent recommendations to tackle such explosive incidents, but they were not implemented at all. Even the central team from Union Home Ministry felt that the blasts could have been avoided by diligent action. The police machinery was not properly activated to spruce up intelligence and security at least three months after Mecca Masjid bomb incident.

Fake Currency Links
The police caught on the same day a few hours before the bomb blasts, a big network dealing with huge amount of fake currency, which was suspected to be linked to mafia including terrorists. Four persons were arrested for conspiring to circulate 2.36 crore Rupees fake notes allegedly printed in Pakistan. The team dealing with currency consisted of three Pakistanees also. The police commissioner of the city explained that several terrorist outfit agencies were encouraging ‘sleeper cells’ of their wings who could not be caught until they resort to violence.

Old City with Criminal Past
Hyderabad continues to be the hub of Pakistan’s ISI organization, which increased its activity after the demolition of Babri Masjid in Ayodhya. In 1993 the explosions and violent incidents were attributed to ISI. Almost all terrorist organizations, for instance Laskhar-e-toiba, Deendar Anjuman, Students’ Islamic Movement of India, etc, have either base or extensions in Hyderabad. Hyderabad’s old city has assumed the notoriety for Pakistani’s and other foreigners living beyond their Visa and immigration limits without being checked or clandestinely permitted.

Juned of Lasker-e-toiba made Hyderabad as his headquarters and operated as in charge of southern states for violent activities. His aides Pakistani nationals Mansur and Farooq Ahmed escaped out of the country from Hyderabad. Eleven bomb blasts during 2000 in Goa, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh were spearheaded from Hyderabad as the center for Deendar Anjuman. Azam Ghori, a key leader of Deendar was killed in an encounter in Karimnagar district, while Mohmed Aziz organized a training center for ISI agents in Hyderabad in 2002. around Rs 3 crore was released from Hyderabad through Havala transaction to secure the release of kidnapped industrialist of Kolkata.

Another ghastly crime of murdering Haren Pandya, a former Home Minister of Gujarat was planned and organized from Hyderabad. Even the police suspect that conspiracy for attacking Aksharadham in Ahmedabad was hatched in the state capital. After Haren’s murder, the CBI could catch Mohmad Ravoof, Intiyaz, Asghar Ali, Ifthikar in Hyderabad only. Ravoof is suspected to be responsible for securing for Asghar Ali, an appointment as ISI agent and also for explosions at thickly crowded Saibaba Temple in Dilsukhnagar of the city.

Police could gun down Azam as prime accused in these blasts along with another terrorist. From gold smuggling to fake currency, from bombings to ISI sponsored activities, the capital city became a safe platform, and despite the arrest of 160 ISI extremists within a span of 15 years and killing six in encounters, and discovering 25 kilograms of RDX, ten pistols, AK 47 rifle, and five kilos of silver nitrate, the August 25th bomb blasts could not be averted.

Bad counsel proved tough for AP CM

By M H Ahsan

HYDERABAD: If at all anyone has to own up responsibility for the Black Saturday bombings, it is Chief Minister YS Rajasekhara Reddy himself for bowing to pressure from one of his Cabinet colleagues, who is hand in glove with a ‘like-minded’ political party, and shunting out able police officials.

A couple of ministers, who felt outraged over the twin blasts, sent him a message loud and clear at Sunday’s emergency Cabinet meeting: The State Government’s image has taken a terrible beating.Some others vented their anger on the Minister before the press. “He is responsible for the current state of affairs. To please some of his friends, the Minister brought pressure on the Chief Minister to take a certain decision which proved very costly,” a senior Minister, who is considered very close to Reddy, told HNN.

The same view was expressed by a few other senior ministers, who are understood to have talked to the Chief Minister in private of the gravity of the situation and the incident.Sources say a senior minister from the Telangana region sought to know what was happening in the State capital. “Why the visible policing was completely missing in the city? What the State Police Intelligence wing and the city police did even after the Intelligence Bureau sounded an alert?,” they wondered.

Another Minister from a neighbouring district was vocal in his tirade against the “inefficient city police.” Both questioned the logic behind the way the police shrugged off responsibility in Mecca Masjid blast case. “What did our police do? We say the case has been transferred to the CBI.

Is it not our responsibility to unearth the sleeping modules that are waiting to strike?” they questioned.They also targeted Home Minister K Jana Reddy for being indifferent to the situation though the time bomb was kicking and the Intelligence Bureau was sending regular alerts.

The sources say that the Chief Minister and the Home Minister almost agreed with the issues raised by the two ministers. The decision to shift City Police Commissioner Balwinder Singh and some other IPS officers holding key positions in the city was taken. Orders will be issued.

Hyderabad blasts: is it another puzzle?

By M H Ahsan

HYDERABAD: With bombs ripping through the heart of Hyderabad Saturday questions are now being raised about the fate of investigations into yet another dastardly terrorist strike to have hit the country.

Investigations of the previous bomb blasts have not been able to pinpoint the actual culprits and terrorist conspirators raising alarms whether the investigation methods have been fundamentally flawed in nature.

A brief glance into the investigations of the Malegaon, previous Mecca Masjid strike in Hyderabad, the Samjhauta Express blasts, Varanasi and the commuter trains combings in Mumbai last year point to unanswered questions and provide little information about the precise nature of the terrorist plots and operatives who drew up the attacks blueprints.

If at all, investigators have only been successful in arresting grassroots-level operatives who are not aware of who the actual planners and plotters are since terrorist operations are many-layered in nature. “In all cases the investigation trail reaches a dead end when it is revealed that terrorist groups from across the border could be involved,” a senior police officer said.

In the Mecca Masjid blasts the investigators could not clearly establish the involvement of HuJI and its fugitive commander Shahid Bilal. Also little is made known about the Secunderabad-based HuJI commander Abdul Sattar and his operational “chemistry” with Bilal. “Little could be made out as regards Sattar’s equation with Bilal,” said a official connected to the Mecca Masjid blasts.

Another aspect the probe was silent about was whether HuJI had been “hand-in-glove” with other similar outfits like Lashkar-e-Tayyiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad in the run-up to the bombings.

Sttar’s “role” in 11/7 was also being probed since he had paid numerous visits to Mumbai before the blasts, according to intelligence and security officials connected to the probes. Investigators did not managed to effectively link 11/7 with Malegaon despite claiming that “common operatives” executed both bombings.

The Varanashi blasts too have yielded little with the investigators choosing not impart with any relevant information.

In the 11/7 probe little has come out in regard to detail about the band of Pakistani nationals who had sneaked into the country prior to the blasts. Also the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) failed to throw much light on the fugitive Lashkar-e-Tayyiba chief of anti-India operations Azaam Cheema. Investigators also did not succeed to secure background information about how and where the plot was conceived.

“It is difficult to track down operational hiding in foreign countries. But in the 11/7 case we has sought Interpol’s assistance on tracing some of the accused,” said Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad chief KP Raghuvanshi. Even though the case is in the trail stages in the court, the charge-sheet put up by the ATS is not very encouraging and could be ripped apart by defence advocates.

The only major serial bombing case which the investigation agencies have successfully solved so far is the 1993-serial bomb blast case in Mumbai.

Hyderabad In the blood

Will politics of terror policing change?

So do we add Hyderabad to the list now? The list of major terrorist outrages that may remain unsolved when the UPA, its term-time dependant on how the strange politics at the Centre plays out, demits office. The May 18 terrorist incident at Hyderabad’s Mecca Masjid has still not been traced to its perpetrators. This is part of a pattern that, of course, is explained partly by local factors.

The underlying common explanation is however to be found at the Centre. The message to security agencies everywhere is that between erring on the side of investigative zeal and politically correct ineffectual policing the former is by far the worse offence. No one is suggesting that the police and other agencies be not held accountable or that some form of community profiling does not sometimes bias investigators.

But the solution is surely not the home ministry signaling that it is far more important for security agencies to be nice than effective.Hyderabad’s local factor deserves a separate mention. YSR Reddy, otherwise among the better Congress chief ministers, was instrumental in giving violent outlaws who claim to be political radicals, aka Naxalites, a state welcome out of police encirclement. This touchy feely approach to internal security is linked to the kind of politics that doesn’t allow penalising political allies who overtly attack civil liberties in the name of religion.

The Congress has had a good time accusing the BJP of helplessness and/or complicity in the context of antics by its political fellow travelers. The Congress can be accused of the same thing. Witness the confidence with which UPA allies who targeted Taslima Nasreen in Hyderabad move about.The Hyderabad attack is also another sharp reminder of terror’s Southern dimension. There are two elements, surely not wholly disconnected: militant Muslim politicians, often encouraged by mainstream parties, gaining ground and the South becoming a recruitment hub for terror.

Many mainstream politicians welcomed the recent acquittal of the main accused in the Coimbatore blasts despite the fact that the person in question isn’t exactly a votary of secular, reasonable politics. The Congress reckons there are votes in what can be bluntly called communalisation of internal security. That assumes ordinary people will always remain indifferent to the prospect of getting slaughtered by terrorists.

Written by M H Ahsan

NGOs, charities new face of terror in Hyderabad

By M H Ahsan

The face of Brand India and the target of two consecutive terror attacks, Hyderabad, is in the radar of not just terror groups, but of another source as well – NGOs.

North block has been tipped off that five Indian charities are being investigated by the US government for money laundering, narcotics and terror funding.

Shockingly, four of these charities are based in Hyderabad and the fifth in Guntur.

Just six months ago, the National Security Advisor had admitted at an international conference that: “An important source of funds to jehadi terrorist outfits are religious charities and contributions go to fund terrorist activities.”

The source of these funds is Dubai — the very city which sent the biggest consignment of fake currency in recent memory to Hyderabad through a suspected Dawood aide.

Rushing to assure that investigations are underway, the Hyderabad Police Commissioner has said, “One UAE citizen has been arrested as have four Hyderabadis.”

Meanwhile, intelligence officials say more counterfeiters are waiting offshore:

Rs 1.73 crore of fake Indian currency was seized from Kuala Lampur. And Rs 2.63 crore has been seized from Colombo

Just how much of the money that has been smuggled into Hyderabad is meant for funding terror is not clear.

What’s clear though is the fact that with a haul of Rs 2.36 crores, Hyderabad leads from the front amongst southern cities in the fake currency racket, followed by Chennai and Bangalore.

Terror groups indoctrinated in the Jamiat philosophy have been operating sleeper cells for the past nine years from Hyderabad alone and that’s not just because Hyderabad represents brand India, but because terrorists want Hyderabad along with Junagadh and Kashmir to secede from the Indian state.

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Terror spreads but Govt won’t revive tough laws

From HNN Bureau

A day after twin blasts ripped through Hyderabad, initial investigations suggest the involvement of terrorist organisations based in Bangladesh and Pakistan. Forty-four people were killed in the two near-simultaneous blasts that occurred in the city’s crowded Lumbini Park and Goku Chat Bhandar areas on Saturday night.

The Andhra government has announced an ex-gratia of Rs five lakh for the families of victims.
While Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y S R Reddy confirmed the involvement of cross-border terror organisations, the Centre doesn’t seem convinced enough.

Virtually ruling out revival of tough anti-terror laws like POTA, Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil said on Sunday that despite having intelligence information on likely terror strikes, it was not possible to determine when and where terrorists could strike.

“We won’t talk about the investigative leads in the open. Discussion on revival of POTA should be in Parliament and even POTA cannot prevent such acts,” he said, adding, “The country is very big and even if we have the information that something is likely to happen, sometimes we don’t know when and where this is likely to happen.”Patil made these remarks while speaking with journalists after a tour of the scene of Saturday night’s twin blasts.

Patil refused to specify whether terror groups based in Pakistan and Bangladesh were behind the attacks and it was for investigating agencies to ascertain all facts about the explosions.
Asked to comment on statements made by BJP leader L K Advani that terrorist attacks could have been prevented if anti-terror laws like POTA were in force, Patil said “We did what we felt was right.”

Hyderabad blues: Of fake notes, RDX and hoax calls

By M H Ahsan & Swati Rao

HYDERABAD: Twenty-four hours after two blasts ripped through the city on Saturday evening, many questions are emerging. On Saturday, hours before the blasts, the city police seized Rs 2.36 crore in counterfeit notes that they now say was smuggled into Hyderabad by an ISI-sponsored group linked to Dawood Ibrahim.

“Three consignments of Indian currency have been brought. It has originated from Pakistan and via Dubai it has been brought to India,” says Hyderabad Police Commissioner Balwinder Singh.
Police sources say the ISI had smuggled counterfeit currency and RDX into Hyderabad in March through hawala channels – all meant for sleeper cells of the Jaish-e-Mohammad and Harkat-ul-Jehadi Islami.

Sources in the intelligence bureau have also not ruled out the possibility of a suicide bomber deployed to trigger off the blasts. After the Mecca Masjid blast, the city police had received four hoax calls warning about bombs being placed in various corners of city everyday. Police now suspect that the calls may have been made to gauge just how well they were prepared. Details of those calls are now being dug out.

Police say RDX and an explosive called Neo Gel 90, suspected to have been bought in Nagpur, was used in the blast, along with ball bearings purchased from Bibinagar. Investigators are waiting for the forensic report on the unexploded bomb that was found in Venkatadiri theatre.

75 killed and 145 injured in Hyderabad twin blasts

By M H Ahsan & Sailesh Reddy

HYDERABAD: At least 75 people, including five women and seven students, have been killed and 145 injured in two explosions at a crowded park and a popular eatery in Hyderabad last evening, three months after the Mecca Masjid blasts, police said. The week-end outing at the popular Gokul Chat shop at Kothi locality turned into a tragedy when a deafening explosion ripped through it killing 32 people and wounding 21, they said.

Five minutes earlier, 10 people, most of them from outside the state, were killed and 29 injured in another blast in an open air auditorium in Lumbini Park near the state secretariat in the heart of the city when a laser show was underway, they said. The blast at the auditorium, where 500 people were present, was so powerful that some bodies were flung in the air. Among the dead at the Lumbini Park were two students from Ahmedabad. Four Railways employee are among those killed in the blasts. The condition of some of the injured was stated to be serious, police said. Hyderabad Collector Chandravadan said round-the-clock medical care is being provided to the victims by experts. “Critical care support is being provided to them at several hospitals including corporate hospitals. Every effort is being made to help the victims.”

Hyderabad blasts: AP govt blames terror groups in Pak, Bangladesh

By M H Ahsan

HYDERABAD: The Andhra Pradesh government on Sunday blamed terrorist groups based in Bangladesh and Pakistan for the two blasts here that claimed 42 lives and said it would revive a tough law to deal with terrorist activities.After an emergency meeting of the state cabinet, Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy told reporters that, “The available information points to the involvement of international terrorist organisations in Bangladesh and Pakistan”.Reddy also blamed terror groups in the two neighbouring countries for the explosion in the Mecca Masjid here on May 18 that claimed nine lives.

Emerging from an all-party meeting that condemned Saturday’s bomb attacks, State Home Minister K Jana Reddy said the government planned to revive the Andhra Pradesh Control of Organised Crimes Act, which lapsed two years ago, to deal with terrorism.An expert committee of senior officials will be formed to “deal with ISI activities”, Jana Reddy said.Though the Chief Minister said Saturday’s near simultaneous blasts claimed 40 lives, Police Commissioner Balwinder Singh told PTI that 42 people died and 54 were injured in the attacks at Lumbani park near the state secretariat and Gokul chat Bhandar, a popular eatery in the busy Koti locality.As investigators searched for clues, an expert said the explosives used in Saturday’s blasts and the Mecca Masjid attack were different.”In the Mecca Masjid blasts, it was a RDX and TNT mixture…

Here it is entirely different (as some) ammonium nitrate-based chemical (was used),” said T Suresh, Chief scientific officer of the clues bomb detection squad. The Chief Minister rejected a suggestion that the blasts were a result of intelligence failure.”Most of the Times, external terrorist organisations are responsible for such ghastly acts. The state government will not have the wherewithal to go into this sort of intelligence operations.

“We cannot have intelligence networks in Bangladesh and Pakistan,” he said. Before leaving Delhi for Hyderabad, Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil condemned the blasts. Patil was accompanied by a high level team led by special secretary (internal security) M Kumawat.Officials said no arrests have been made so far in connection with the blasts. a forensic expert said the material used in the twin blasts — neogel-90, an ammonium nitrate-based emulsifier explosive — was manufactured at Nagpur in Maharashtra by a company named Omni Explosives.

Another bomb defused in Dilsukhnagar was fitted with explosives and metal balls, he said.Compensation of Rs 5 lakh will be paid to the kin of the dead and a government job will be given to families who lost their bread earners while Rs 20,000 will be paid to the injured. among the dead were seven engineering students from Nasik in Maharashtra, two railway policemen from Madhya Pradesh, six women and three children.Thirty-eight of the dead have been identified, officials said.

The state cabinet reviewed the law and order situation in the backdrop of blasts and appreciated the “exemplary behaviour of citizens who maintained calm and stood by” the authorities in quickly restoring normalcy.In a resolution, the cabinet condemned the “cowardly act” and conveyed its condolences to bereaved families

Prime Minister review the situation of Hyderabad in Delhi

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Sunday tonight chaired a high-level meeting to assess the security scenario in the aftermath of Saturday night’s twin blasts in Hyderabad that left 42 dead. The meeting was attended by Home Minister Shivraj Patil, who briefed the Prime Minister about his visit to the Andhra Pradesh capital earlier in the day, media advisor to the Prime Minister Sanjaya Baru said. The meeting was also attended by National Security Advisor M K Narayanan, Home Secretary Madhukar Gupta, Cabinet Secretary K M Chandrasekhar and Director of the Intelligence Bureau P C Haldar.

19 MORE BOMBS FOUND IN HYDERABAD

By M H Ahsan

HYDERABAD: Police found 19 unexploded bombs in Hyderabad a day after at least 70 people were killed in blasts Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy blamed on terrorists based in Bangladesh or Pakistan. New Delhi has sent extra police and special bomb detection equipment to Hyderabad, an IT hub, after bombs packed with metal pellets exploded at a food centre and an amusement park on Saturday night. About 150 people were wounded by the three blasts that went off within minutes of each other. Police discovered the unexploded bombs, most fitted with timers and placed in plastic bags, at bus stops, by cinema halls, road junctions and pedestrian bridges and near a public water tap across the capital of Andhra Pradesh.

The explosive substance that was used in the deadly twin blasts in the city on Saturday evening was manufactured at Nagpur in Maharashtra, a forensic expert said on Sunday.It was Neogel-90, an ammonium nitrate-based emulsifier explosives that was manufactured in Nagpur by a company named Omni Explosives, he said. The expert said the bomb that was defused at Dilsukhnagar was fitted with the explosives and metal balls.Asked about the explosive substance, city Police Commissioner Balwinder Singh said “It was too early to arrive at a conclusion.”

The government on Sunday said it would not be cowed down by terrorist strikes like the twin blasts that killed 42 people here but refused to specify whether terror groups based in Pakistan and Bangladesh were behind the attacks. “We are sorry but we are not cowed down. We will definitely see to it that it is reduced and eliminated ultimately,” said Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil. Patil, was here to take stock of the security situation in the aftermath of the two blasts last night and refused to comment on whether groups based in Pakistan and Bangladesh could have been responsible for the attacks.

He told reporters “these things cannot be openly discussed” and it was for investigating agencies to ascertain all facts about the explosions. Earlier in the day, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy had blamed “international terrorist organisations” based in Pakistan and Bangladesh for the blasts. Patil also spoke of the need for timely action on intelligence inputs to avert such attacks. “We had bits of information, but we didn’t know when and where it would happen,” he said, replying to questions on whether some intelligence inputs had been received about the blasts.

Pointing out that it was “not an easy job” to prevent terrorist attacks, Patil said, “The country is very big and even if we have the information that something is likely to happen, sometimes we don’t know when and where this is likely to happen.” Asked to comment on statements made by BJP leader L K Advani that terrorist attacks could have been prevented if anti-terror laws like POTA were in force, he said he would not like to enter into a discussion on this issue.

“We did what we felt was right,” he said, adding that there was no guarantee that such incidents would not have occurred if POTA had been in force. Such incidents, in fact, took place even after POTA was brought in, he pointed out. As part of measures to prevent such incidents, the strength of police forces is being enhanced and their arms and equipment are being modernised, Patil said.

There was also a need for better coordination between states and Central security agencies. Patil said “when floods and incidents like this happen, people try to help each other” to mitigate suffering. Patil said the investigations into the blasts would establish whether there was a failure on the part of intelligence agencies and necessary corrective measures would be taken thereafter.

Tata project needs technical audit

By N S Venkataraman

The Tata Group has announced several times in the past its intention to set up a titanium dioxide project in Tamil Nadu. Titanium dioxide is a versatile pigment produced from ilmenite ore. India has more than 150 million tonnes of ilmenite deposits, which are estimated to be around 14 per cent of the total world reserves.Titanium dioxide content of the ilmenite deposits available in India is the highest compared to other ilmenite deposits in the world. But India produces only around one per cent of the global output.

While global production of titanium dioxide pigment is around 4.5 million tonnes per annum Indian production is hardly 55000 tonnes per annum. The global demand is steadily growing at 3 to 4 per cent per annum.Clearly, India has been losing opportunities in the field of titanium dioxide and the project of the Tata Group would enable India to exploit the advantages. The Tata group itself has already delayed the project considerably, as it was not able to make up its mind in the past among the various project opportunities available to it.The group has provided explanations to allay the apprehensions of the political parties and local agitators over its proposed Rs.2,500-crore titanium dioxide project in Tamil Nadu.

However, one gets an impression that there is a communication gap between the Tata group and the local citizens who are objecting to the project.The group should interact with the agitators and understand their views and meet their expectations to the extent possible. The Tamil Nadu Government which has approved and welcomed the project should take the initiative to develop dialogue as well. If it is a subject of social issues involving the problems of deprived people, the government has even more responsibilities than the Tata group.

The apprehension of local citizens about the project relates to possible demolition of dwelling units and large-scale eviction of people, destruction of agriculture land and means of livelihood, over-exploitation of water resources and jobs.The Tata Group wants to acquire 10,000 acres of land for the project which will cover around 50 villages and causing eviction of more than 20000 families accounting for around one lakh people. The local people maintain that the compensation of a few lakhs of rupees for the acquired land cannot undo the damage and they have no other place to go.I feel that the requirement of 10,000 acres of land for this project is on the very high side. A technical audit should be carried out to find whether the requirement is justified.

Internationally, projects are being planned on smaller areas. This could be possible in this case also by adopting appropriate designs. Tata Steel Ltd. says that such a large tract of land is required as the thickness of mineral sands occurring in the inland deposit is limited to only 6 to 7 metres and in some stretches, it is as low as 0.5 metres. Further, the percentage of heavy minerals content of the mineral sands is about 10 per cent as against 35 to 40 per cent in the beaches of Tamil Nadu.If the ilmenite available is as low as what Tata group has claimed and if the ilmenie deposits in areas nearby are much larger, then the site itself can be termed as uneconomic for mining purposes. In such circumstances, it should opt for other areas where more ilmenite content is available. There should be a reasonable relation between the area of mining and the quantity of mineral mined.

Has there been any independent study made by the Government of Tamil Nadu to find out whether the requirement of so much land for the project is justified? The claims of the Tata group have not been verified by any independent agency. Perhaps, the opinion of the Geological Survey of India should be obtained. To obtain one tonne of titanium dioxide 2.2 tonnes of ilmenite is required. For the proposed titanium dioxide project of capacity one lakh tonnes per annum, the requirement of ilmenite would be only 2.2 lakh tonnes per annum.Tata group says that the mining capacity would be 5 lakh tonnes per annum that would need 10,000 acres of land. Is the case then that the Tata group may be planning to export surplus ilmenite and the land is required not only for mining ilmenite for the proposed titanium dioxide project but also for producing surplus ilmenite for export?

The land can be drastically reduced, if the mining capacity and mining area would be limited to the requirement of production of one lakh tonnes per annum of titanium dioxide.Until a technical audit is carried out by a team consisting of geological and mining experts and chemical engineers with hands-on experience in designing and operating titanium dioxide project, the requirement of land for the project cannot be conclusively established. The Government of Tamil Nadu or the State Planning Commission or the Tamil Nadu Industrial Development Corporation do not have the expertise to carry out such technical audit at present. Possibly, the local citizens will welcome the project if the Tata group reduces drastically the area of land required.

Edit: Love with Tokyo

If we come closer, guess who gets upset most?

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

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

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

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

Edit: CPM and CMP

It sort of predicted what’s happening

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

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

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

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

RPO is BPO industry’s new billion-dollar baby

By Staff Writer

High attrition rates may be a blot on the great Indian BPO success story, but this problem has helped spin off a niche industry – Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO)- which is expected
to grow by a billion dollar this fiscal to about 3.5 billion dollars. The
industry is set for rapid growth with a large number of companies in India and
from abroad seeking to outsource their hiring-related jobs to third-party
vendors here in order to save costs as well as time.

“India has been a hub of global outsourcing activities and RPO is the sunrise
segment in this sector,” hiring industry umbrella body Executive Recruiters
Association’s Executive Director B R Muralidharan told. “In India, RPO is
already a 2.5 billion dollar market and is expected to grow at a rate of 30 to
40 per cent during this financial year,” he said.

This new buzzword is already enjoying taste of success with a number of
corporate giants adopting the RPO model for their hiring needs inside and
outside India. The hiring needs of British mobile major Vodafone is taken care
of by RPO provider Alexander Mann Solutions, which also handled accounts of
clients like Credit Suisse, HP, Prudential and Capgemini.

Closer home in India, the BPO arm of the country’s third largest IT firm Wipro
has outsourced its recruitment process to MeritTrac and aims to reduce its
hiring costs by 15-20 percent by this move. “Right hiring is the first and the
most important step toward reducing attrition. Our objective is to move to a
‘hands-free’ recruiting process and this is the first step towards it,” Wipro
BPO CEO T K Kurien said. Kanika Vaswani, Associate Partner at city-based RPO
service provider Elixir Web Solutions said: “RPOs have been a well accepted
tool especially in the mature markets. This allows an HR manager to focus on
other core functions.

Elixir started its RPO business about six years back, catering mostly to the
information technology clients. However, the market has expanded considerably
and now its clients come from across the sectors, Vaswani said. “We are now
hiring in hundreds for many Fortune 1000 companies across sectors and 80 per
cent of all the hirings we are doing are for US-based companies and the
remaining 20 percent are for companies from Europe, Australia and Canada,” she
added.

Another Indian RPO service provider Blue Square Consultancy Services’ CEO Madhu
Khanna said India has managed to get a leverage in the business with its rich
outsourcing experience. “The future of RPO sector is bright with a chunk of the
US workforce retiring in the next 5 to 10 years, thus creating a severe problem
of talent acquisition. “At present, the US-based recruiting and staffing
agencies outsource their back-end operations to India on a revenue sharing
basis and will continue to do so, but a significant difference would be seen
going forward with a large number of vacancies coming on board,” Khanna added.
Besides saving costs and reducing cycle time, RPOs also help companies improve
quality of hiring, the industry players believe.

While companies had reservations initially about outsourcing their recruitment process — one of
the mostimportant human resource practice in an organisation – rising attrition
rates and expanding sphere of overall HR functionshave made. All that a firm
seeking to outsource its hiring functions needs to do is to provide an RPO with
the details of job openings and the salary range in the offering.

From here the RPO takes over, going through the process of advertising for the
position, to screening resumes, shortlisting candidates and finally going to
the employers with the right kind of professionals. The openings can range from
a fresher to a very senior employee of a company. At the same time, the shift
in the trend has been lapped up by the outsourcing service providers with an
additional area of operation leading to a growing number of niche firms focused
on HR outsourcing business.

RPOs have also come as a new lease of life for smaller companies with a workforce of around 100 to 150 people, who may not have a human resource
department at all, Vaswani said. Initially, the RPO business was limited to the
IT sector and only recently non-IT companies have begun outsourcing their HR
functions, domestic IT and outsourcing firm Birlasoft’s global HR Vice
President Narendra Puppala said.

However, the industry players are not worried about the BPO sector’s current
nemesis in form of high attrition rates denting the growth story. This sector
will not feel the heat of attrition so much as the BPOs as there, the people
were only able to use their hand and feet, wherein in this process they get the
satisfaction of using their minds as well, Puppala said.

Salman to be jailed in poaching case

By Staff Writer

A Jodhpur court rejected the bail plea of Bollywood star Salman Khan in a 1998 poaching case on Friday, a verdict that would send the actor to jail. The actor had filed an appeal against an earlier court ruling which had sentenced him to five years of “rigorous” imprisonment
in connection with poaching of a chinkara, an endangered deer. Khan was not present in the court when the verdict was announced. It was not immediately known when he would be taken into custody.

Earlier, district and session judge KR Singvi on August 7 had adjourned the
proceedings after hearing the arguments by the counsel of Salman and the public
prosecutor. Chief Judicial Magistrate Brijendra Kumar Jain had on April 10 last
year convicted Salman in the poaching case and sentenced him to five years
imprisonment. The court had also imposed a fine of Rs. 25,000 on him. Salman
has filed the appeal against the verdict.

The case relates to the poaching of two blackbucks at Ujiyala Bhakhar near
Ghoda farm on September 28, 1998 during the shoot of Hindi feature film Hum
Saath Saath Hain. Salman has also been sentenced to one-year imprisonment in
another poaching case of bhawad and has filed an appeal against that decision
also. But the hearing has not started as the record is pending with the
Rajasthan high court where the state government filed an appeal for enhancement
of the sentence.

Salman behind bars? No! say producers

By Naseem Shaikh

Just 24 hours after actor Sanjay Dutt was bailed out and members of the film industry were about to smile, actor Samlan Khan’s verdict came by. It is now the turn of the industry’s ‘bad boy-number two’ to face charges for the Chinkara poaching case. While actor Sanjay Dutt is out of the jail for now, his colleague and Bollywood’s favourite controversy child Salman Khan is struggling.

The countdown has begun for Bollywood’s self-proclaimed ‘bad’ boy and a session’s court in Jodhpur is set to pronounce its verdict in the actor’s appeal against the five-year jail term awarded to him in the Chinkara poaching case in April 2006. Salman had spent three days in the Jodhpur Central Jail after he was sentenced for shooting a Chinkara in 1998 while shooting for the film Hum Saath Saath Hain. Salman’s lawyers say their case is strong.

“The court has initiated proceedings against the key eyewitness Gypsy driver Harish Dulani in this case, he went absconding right after giving his testimony. How can Salman be sentenced on the basis of the testimony of an absconder?” says the actor’s lawyer Hastimal Saraswat.
Salman’s lawyers also say the forensic evidence found on the actor’s car was inconclusive, and the case – registered under the Wildlife Protection Act – was filed by the police and not the forest department officials. But the Bishnoi community of Rajasthan – that played a major role in the Salman’s conviction – says the arguments aren’t new.

“The strong evidence we presented before the court including the forensic report are solid. There are all possibilities that the court will reject Salman’s appeal against his sentence,” says the community’s lawyer, Mahipal Bishnoi. While Salman’s fans pray for his acquittal, the Bishnois – who regard the Chinkara as a sacred animal – will be hoping that the actor’s stay in jail will last a little longer this time.

No water in Godavari for irrigation

By HNN Bureau

Farmers in the district, especially those who wanted to take up paddy, have been desperately looking skywards for rains.The district is now almost witnessing drought like conditions. Normally paddy transplantation for Kharif has to be completed by this time but, the deficit and scanty rainfall in a majority of mandals has become a cause of concern for the farming community.

The Sri Ram Sagar Project (SRSP) which is the main irrigation source for the entire Karimnagar district as well as other north Telangana districts is yet to receive water. It has only 14.57 tmc water against its actual capacity of 90 tmc as there are no rains in catchments areas of the Godavari in Maharastra.

The district has so far recorded 43.6 percent deficit rainfall. Going by the statistics, up to June 7, it received 143.9 mm against the normal 151.2 mm in 10 rainy days.From June 7 to July 7, 99.3 mm rainfall was recorded against normal 283.8 mm and up to August 20, only 88 mm rainfall recorded against the normal of 144.5 mm. So far the district has recorded 331.2 mm rainfall against normal of 579.5 mm out of 32 rainy days.

Last year by this time it was 527.8 mm.Out of total 57 mandals, seven mandals – Velgatur, Ramagundam, Kataram, Maha Mutharam, Mustabad, Ellanthakunta and Darmaram, have recorded scanty rainfall and 46 mandals have received deficit rainfall.Only four mandals – Ellanthankunta, Yellareddypet, Boinpally and Odela, have received normal rainfall.Due to non-availability of the water in the SRSP, paddy transplantation under the project ayacut is yet to take off.

In the entire district paddy transplantation has taken place in only 75,950 hectares, that are irrigated by wells, this is 59.8 percent of the normal area of 1,27,081 hectares.The area proposed to be brought under paddy in Kharif is 1,98,000 hectares. Overaged paddy nurseries under the SRSP ayacut have become a cause of concern.Speaking to this website’s newspaper District Collector M V Satyanaranayana said that cloud seeding was being taken up in some mandals of the district by the Rainshadow Areas Development Department.

According to official information cloud seeding was done on July 22, 27, 30 and August 21 in about 10 mandals of the district but only Huzurabad, Chendurthi and Kathalapur have reportedly received rains due to cloud seeding, and the remaining mandals have not received any rainfall.However, the district Agriculture Department officials are trying to encourage farmers to take up alternate crops.

CPI(M) warns Govt of withdrawal of support

From HNN Delhi Bureau

The CPI(M) today warned the UPA government of withdrawal of support if it went ahead with operationalising the Indo-US nuclear deal as its Central Committee authorised the top leadership to take “appropriate decision at an appropriate time” to block the agreement.
At the end of the two-day meeting, senior party leaders said on grounds of anonymity that a strong message was being sent to the Congress-led coalition that the 123 agreement should not be operationalised without addressing the major concerns expressed by the Left parties.

“We will withdraw support to the government if it goes ahead with operationalising the agreement. The Central Committee has endorsed the stand of the Politburo in this regard and authorised it to take an appropriate decision at an appropriate time,” the leaders said, emerging out of the two-day meeting which started here yesterday.

The Left parties, which would now closely follow Atomic Energy Commission Chairman Anil Kakodkar’s visit to Vienna to attend the IAEA’s General Assembly, have made it clear that they have no objection on him attending the meet as a member of the IAEA Board.

Their ground for objection is that during this meeting, Kakodkar should not begin formal negotiations on a safeguards agreement with the United Nations’ watchdog body on the basis of the 123 agreement.

“All we are asking from the government is to press the pause button. It should properly evaluate all the implications before proceeding further,” CPI(M) polit bureau member Sitaram Yechury said. His comments came amid signals that the government was not prepared to heed its ultimatum on the contentious issue.

The party General Secretary, Prakash Karat, who had earlier warned the government of serious consequences if it went ahead with the deal, submitted a report of the Politburo on the contentious deal before the Central Committee. He is also understood to have apprised the Central Committee of his meetings with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi to iron out differences on the issue.

The major Left party is maintaining that negotiations with IAEA on the safeguards agreement would bind India in perpetuity. If Kakodkar discusses the Indo-US nuclear deal with IAEA, the Left parties will decide on future of the relationship, the sources said.

The CPI(M) Central Committee is likely to meet again in mid-September. The National Executive of the CPI will also meet on August 28-29 to take stock of the situation.

Lokesh-Brahmani wedding to be low a key affair

From HNN Hyderabad Bureau

Arrangements are in full swing for the wedding of Lokesh, son of Telugu Desam president N. Chandrababu Naidu, with Brahmani, daughter of Mr. Naidu’s brother-in-law and Telugu film star N. Balakrishna at Hitex Grounds here on August 26. By all accounts, the wedding, like the engagement, is going to be low- key affair with only close family members and a select others being invited.

But there will two receptions, one hosted by Mr. Naidu at his native Naravaripalle village in Chittoor district on August 28 and the other one by Mr. Balakrishna at Nimmakuru in Krishna district on August 29.

Mr. Naidu has been making it clear at the party fora, right from Mahanadu, that he will not be able to invite the party cadre to the wedding as he wants it to be a personal affair. Party sources say Mr. Naidu has drawn a select list of invitees.

Only the Polit Bureau members have been invited. But on the other side, Mr. Balakrishna is believed to have invited a number of film personalities and his friends including Assembly Speaker, K. R. Suresh Reddy.

Reverse brain-drain may affect the US: Study

From HNN Bureau

More than one million skilled immigrant workers, including engineers, doctors and researchers compete for 120,000 permanent US resident visas each year and this imbalance may fuel a reverse brain-drain from America affecting the country, a new study has said.The situation is even bleaker as the number of employment visas issued to immigrants from any single country is less than 10,000 per year with a wait time of several years, the report by the Ewing Marion Kauffman foundation said.

“The United States benefits from having foreign-born innovators create their ideas in this country,” said Vivek Wadhwa, Wertheim fellow with the Harvard law school and executive in residence at Duke university.“Their departures would be detrimental to us economic well-being,” he said.

The earlier studies documented that one in four engineering and technology companies founded between 1995 and 2005 had an immigrant founder.Indian immigrants founded more companies than the next four groups from the United Kingdom, China, Taiwan and Japan combined.Researchers found that these companies employed 450,000 workers and generated usd 52 billion in revenue in 2006.

The key finding from this research is that the number of skilled workers waiting for visas is significantly larger than the number that can be admitted to the US.This imbalance creates the potential for a sizable reverse brain-drain from the united states to the skilled workers’ home countries, the foundation said.

Exclusive: Was Mumtaz really buried at Taj Mahal?

By M H Ahsan

Even as the world excitedly talks about the recently discovered mummy believed to be of Egyptian queen Hatshepsut, in India the mystery surrounding Mumtaz Mahal’s burial at the Taj Mahal has deepened with several Mughal historians asserting that her body was not mummified.Mughal emperor Shah Jahan built the 17th century Taj Mahal in memory of his beloved wife Mumtaz Mahal who died delivering their 14th child in Burhanpur, a town in Maharashtra.The queen’s body was buried in Burhanpur itself but was believed to have been recovered for transportation to Agra where it was reburied in a grave in the Taj Mahal complex for at least 12 years to be again shifted to her final resting place in the basement of the monument.

As there is no detailed description or reference to any kind of treatment given to the body to keep it in recognisable shape for more than 12 years, two conjectures are now being offered.One, the body remained buried in Burhanpur, only some symbolic relics were brought to Agra in a lead coffin. Two, the body decomposed and virtually vanished, leaving behind some bones and perhaps the bare skelton. “Obviously the coffin was not opened, otherwise we would have had some account of what remained inside it,” says R. Nath, a Mughal historian.

“In any case, how does it matter what state the body was in.”Afzal Khan, a historian of Aligarh Muslim University, says: “It is possible that the body might have been thoroughly decomposed, given the long duration for which it was kept outside and the time taken to transport it from the south to Agra. Since there are no accounts of how the whole process was carried out, one can only guess what could have happened to the body of Mumtaz.”A senior guide, 75-year-old S.K. Tripathi, says the body is believed to have been placed in a lead and copper coffin, which was air tight and sealed.

It was kept at the Taj Mahal premises for a little over 12 years and was shifted as soon as more than half the edifice was constructed. The real graves of the two are in the basement, totally sealed.”No one has gone there to see what state they are in now,” he adds.Archaeological Survey of India officials in Agra say they have no idea when was the last time someone had a close look at the basement and the foundation of the Taj Mahal, let alone the original graves of Shah Jahan and Mumtaz Mahal.”

We have no records of any such inspection,” says one official.The one little passage near the stair case leading to the main marble edifice was sealed more than a decade ago with a brick wall, which means there is now no way one can enter the sealed chambers below the Taj.R.C. Sharma, a historian, says the body of Mumtaz Mahal was buried in Burhanpur.

“What came to Agra must have been just bones in a coffin which was again reburied in the Taj complex.”From historical records available this was a unique feat. “Mumtaz was buried thrice at three different places,” says Amit Mukherjea, who heads the history department of St John’s College here. Most people do not know that the foundation of the Taj was actually laid in Burhanpur but because of the problems and costs involved in the transportation of marble from Rajasthan, Agra became the final choice.

“It was in Ahu Khana in Burhanpur on the bank of the Tapti river that her body was buried to be later transferred to Agra,” according to K.K. Mohammed of ASI.But the question relating to the technique of embalming and preservation remains unanswered.Afsar Ahmed, a media researcher deeply interested in Mughal history, told HNN: “You might find it difficult to believe but there’s a possibility that the body of Mumtaz Mahal is still preserved in the Taj Mahal in the same condition as she was when she passed away. Mumtaz Mahal was buried six months after she passed away in June 1631. She was, however, buried in Jan 1632.

“The question that arises now is: how was her body preserved? Ahmed quotes a report prepared by Armanul Haq, the curator in the Museum of History and Medicine in the Jamia Hamdard University, who claims that Mumtaz Mahal’s body was preserved according to Unani techniques.

The process was used because cutting a body after death is prohibited in Islam. That is why when Mumtaz Mahal passed away in 1631 in Burhanpur, her body was kept in a tin box filled with such herbs as would stop the decay of flesh.”The airtight tin box was filled with herbs like the ash of Babul tree (acacia), Mehendi (henna), Kapoor crystals (camphor), sandalwood ash, and then again camphor applied in layers upon layers.

These herbs would have created a vacuum inside the box and prevented the decay of the body. A point to be noted here is that none of these herbs were put inside Mumtaz Mahal’s body,” says Ahmed.If her body is still preserved and in fine shape, shall we call it the success of the Indian technique of mummification?

OPED: Right on, Ronen

By Arundhati Ghose

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

EDIT: 1942-2007 – The Left Years

A look at the history of Left assertions

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

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

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

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

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

World’s oldest natural mother at 59

From HNN London Bureau

A British housewife has become the world’s oldest natural mother after giving birth at the age of 59, breaking the previous global record for a pregnancy by two years. Dawn Brooke gave birth to a healthy boy without any fertility treatment only 12 months before she became eligible for her old age pension, the Daily Mail reported on Monday, quoting her 74-year-old husband Raymond as saying.

In fact, her husband, a former company director, said the couple had kept the 1997 birth private for a decade to let their son grow up in peace. But, he spoke for the first time yesterday about their delight at having a child so late.

“People are generally not quite aware of the extreme good luck we had at our age. We’re overjoyed to have our son. We’ve been hugely fortunate. He’s such a fantastic boy,” Brooke was quoted as saying. The youngster has been brought up at the couple’s one million pound home on Guernsey and attends school on the Channel Island.

Relatives of the boy – who is ten on Monday- said he’s extremely bright and particularly enjoys maths. But like most children his age he is also a big fan of Harry Potter, a passion he shares with his father. Brooke married his London-born wife a few weeks before their son was born by caesarean section at a Guernsey hospital on August 20, 1997. “When we moved in they came round for a children’s party, and everyone assumed that Mrs Brooke was the grandmother.

But they are devoted to their son and very active. They seem far younger than their age,” the couple’s neighbour Marina Bourgaize told the daily. It may be mentioned that the earlier world record for the oldest natural birth was held by Ruth Kistler, who had a daughter in Los Angeles in 1956 aged 57.

A mini Meghalaya in Hyderabad

By Subhash Reddy

A mention of Meghalaya immediately brings in thoughts about Cherrapunji, the highest rainfall region in the world. However, not many are aware of the region’s famous 300 year old Shiva temples and some of the longest caves of South-East Asia, rich culture and folk dances.

The Directorate of Tourism, Government of Meghalaya in collaboration with NewsPus and IATREILANG Tourism Promotion Forum plans to create more awareness about the State rich culture and cuisine. Starting Aug 23rd, an expo featuring all aspects about the State will be held at People’s Plaza, Necklace Road.The expo, Meghalaya Beckons, will turn the venue into a mini Meghalaya between Aug 23rd and 26th.

“We are trying to show the culture of the State by creating similar ambiences, presenting ethnic dances and food. Apart from giving an insight into what is the best time to visit Meghalaya, economical packages to reach the place and other queries will be answered here, “ said David O Laitphlang, president of the Shillong Press Club and member of IATREILANG.

The expo will also showcase traditional archery. Meghalaya, ’The abode of clouds’ in Sanskrit and Hindi, is a hilly strip in the eastern part of the country stretching about 300 km with most of the region covered with forest.

The subtropical forest supports a vast variety of flora and fauna and harbours two national parks and three wildlife sanctuaries. The region is a delight to adventure tourists as mountaineering, rock climbing, trekking, hiking and water sports are a few exciting opportunities available. The State offers several trekking routes where some rare animals such as the slow loris, the assorted deer and bear could be sighted.The expo from 10 am to 9pm will continue till Aug 26.The inaugural ceremony will start at 4 pm on Aug 23.

India yet to get economic independence

By K P Fabian & M H Ahsan

In the midst of the celebration of sixty years of political independence there should be introspection too. Could we have done better? In the process, we should exaggerate neither our failures nor our successes. Let us illustrate the point about exaggeration. Our GDP grew at the rate of 3.4% a year between 1951 and 1966, corresponding roughly to the Jawaharlal Nehru years. A smart Wordsmith christened it as the ‘Hindu rate of growth.’

The implication is that till the economic reforms started in the mid-1980s and gathered momentum in 1990-91, mainly because of severe foreign exchange shortages, India was not on the right track.The irresistible tide of globalisation imposes on us the imperative to open up our economy, invite foreign investment and technology. There is much merit in such an argument. Yet, the argument is wrong and it lacks, above all, historical depth.

Those who pejoratively refer to the ‘Hindu growth of rate’ do fail to mention that between 1900 and 1947, the annual GDP growth was 0.8%. To put it differently, the growth rate quadrupled during the Nehru years whereas since then, it has grown less than three times, if we take the latest growth figures. As we all know, it takes much more energy to get the engine started than to keep it running.It is not being argued here that the ‘permit-license raj’ and the exaggerated focus on ‘import-substitution’ were perfect policy instruments.

The point being made is that we need to have a historical perspective. It was not possible to move straight to 8 or 9 % growth after 50 years of 0.8% growth. We shall understand the progress made since 1947, only if we can see, with an effort of imagination, what India was like at the time of independence. In 1951, life expectancy at birth was 32 years. Literacy rate was 17%. All that is part of what the economists call the initial conditions. The initial conditions have another dimension to them and that is the global situation, or the initial conditions (global). There was a time when the West was unwilling to part with industrial technology to India. One example will make our point clear: the steel technology.

We should review the progress made under three headings: political, economic, and social. The three sectors are interconnected. There cannot be sustained progress in one field without corresponding progress in the other two. Politically, we have preserved and deepened the democratic foundations of our polity. But even though we have a higher level of voter participation in our elections than the Western democracies in general our democracy needs much improvement. The quality of those who get elected, at times, leaves much to be desired.There is no excuse whatsoever for the Indian electorate to elect those who are proclaimed criminals and known to be corrupt. Corruption is spreading like cancer into the system.

The quality of governance is unacceptably low in many areas. Government schemes for the poverty-stricken do not deliver. The bureaucracy, with some exceptions, has not proved itself to be capable of carrying out the tasks assigned to it. A democracy that does not deliver good and effective governance to the advantage of those who are at the bottom of the income pyramid has a long way to go.Economically, the progress we have made is writ large and clear and it cannot be denied. But, other countries that were at the same level of per capita income as us, say South Korea, is way ahead of us. GDP growth is, of course, important. But it is not enough unless the growth is inclusive and the sad truth about India is that our economic growth has been far from inclusive. A third of us live on Rs 20 a day.

Do they have anything to celebrate? About 400 million workers have no social security. Social progress that we have accumulated cannot be denied. The Dalits are better off today than they were in 1947. It is true that atrocities against them do take place. The Dalits have occupied some of the highest offices, starting from the presidency of the Republic. They have become chief ministers.It will be naive to dismiss all this as tokenism.

It is unconscionable that we have failed successively to meet universal elementary education targets and that the largest number of the illiterates for any country. Here it is not a question of lack of resources, financial or human, it is purely a question of lack of will on the part of the government and the rest of the society, especially on the part of those of us who are literate. According to a recent UNESCO report India has the highest rate of teacher absenteeism.We are yet to gain our economic independence. We can truly say that we are economically free only when no Indian goes to sleep hungry; when every Indian can lead a life of dignity free from poverty, ignorance, and ill- health.

We live in an age dominated by the West. We speak of an interconnected, interdependent, shrinking world. But, there is a distressing asymmetry about the interdependence we are talking about. The North is able to dominate and shape the course of the countries in the South whereas the latter have hardly any power or means to influence the North. Much of what goes under the name of interdependence or even globalisation is dependence in one direction and domination in the opposite direction.

Exclusive: What’s religion got to do with 123?

By Abusaleh Shariff & M H Ahsan

The current controversy between the ruling UPA coalition and the Left on the one hand, and the right on the other, is entirely a political confrontation. This unwarranted war of words and egos should never overshadow the very important accomplishments in the realm of research and technology but should be responsibly resolved within the political framework. The issue of nuclear energy at hand is not a laughing matter. Not only is it linked with the destiny of 1.2 billion Indians today, but it will be of remarkable consequence to innumerable billions in the generations that are to follow.

What is at stake is not just the ‘present’ but the ‘future’ as well.During debates and arguments it has come to the notice of intellectuals and concerned citizens such as this writer that the Muslim community in India as a whole is being seen to be opposing the current nuclear deal. This illusionary and concocted idea is presented before the people of India as the dominant opposition to the 123 agreement. Such allegations, with no evidence whatsoever, will throw the Muslim community in India into another confrontation with liberal and progressive-minded Indians in the future.

What is important for the world to know is that Indian Muslims, in their psyche, behaviour and views, are as progressive as, if not more than, other outwardly looking communities across India. The desires and aspirations of younger Indian Muslims are the same as those of Hindu and Christian communities in India. For example, one would find educated Muslim boys and girls lined up in as much number and in similar proportions as any other social group in front of diplomatic missions of countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Canada.

The educated middle class amongst the Muslim community is no more inclined to be content with meagrely paid and often exploitative jobs in Saudi Arabia, Dubai and other countries in the Middle East. Above all, newly educated Muslims indeed have already become aware of the fact that future jobs and satisfying professional lives are to be found more in India than abroad. Yes, Muslims of the older vintage do get sensitive at the utterance of the word ‘Israel’, but these are dying noises. What is common knowledge is that India has since long balanced foreign policy options with both the Palestinian cause — notwithstanding the great personal affinity with the late Yasser Arafat displayed by many of its leaders — and Israel.

Who in India now does not know that Israel is one of the largest suppliers of defence equipment and ammunition to the country? It has partnered in a number of high technology agricultural projects. You will even find Israelis undertaking tulsi cultivation in some parts of Uttar Pradesh. One finds Israelis living in large numbers in many parts of the Himalayas, albeit as tourists. Even so, I have yet to come across any Muslim in these specific areas or elsewhere who is agitated over government policy.It is, however, important to say that George W. Bush is not the United States and the United States is not Israel. The Muslims in India are now mature enough to know the difference and judge accordingly.

I am at pains as an Indian Muslim to understand as to how a highly respected and distinguished political party can use the Muslim community as a whole as canon fodder, so to speak, in order to make its own vulnerable position secure. It is also not uncommon to find heretic and self-centred and self-proclaimed leaders within the Muslim community. They are indeed far too great in number and we all know who they are and how much political and social support they actually claim from the larger community across India.In this context it is important to highlight an important political reality: the Muslims in India are the most secular voters. I know of no political party in India for which the Muslims have voluntarily not voted. As psephologists will confirm, when the BJP came to power, a good proportion of Muslims did indeed vote for that party.

This is evidence good enough to make the point that it would be wrong on the part of any single party to say that they represent the whole of the Muslim community in India — or that any one single party can influence the community as a whole.Political parties must not project the Muslim community as a whole as a political constituency. It is a sum of heterogeneous groups. In any case, now there is an educated class emerging within the Muslim community and no one can afford to ignore its point of view.

EDIT: Comment most fowl

Our man in Washington turns chicken

In describing as headless chickens those who oppose the nuclear deal with the USA, Ronen Sen, our man in Washington, has done our collective manhood a disservice. Does not the fact that we want to retain the right to conduct future nuclear tests prove we are roosters, and not mere chickens? When Sen sneered, in his ‘‘off-the-record’’ interview to Rediff, about headless chickens running around, he was probably picturing Yashwant Sinha tripping over his dhoti and plunging headfirst into the Speaker’s well in Parliament (we were tipped off by the fact that the BJP’s former foreign minister was the only MP named in the interview). To Sinha we quote the old joke: Why else did the Indian chicken cross the nuclear threshold, but to get to the other side? Sen must have been irritated by the Left, collectively emulating Chicken Little, shrieking that the sky was falling, when all that was happening was that a US tent was moving into position to cover our heads (or our headlessness).

Perhaps he was worried that opposition to the deal was sweeping the country like an Avian flu epidemic, and the only way to stop it was to cull the poultry – make them headless. After all, both he and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh have invested so much personally in the deal they are afraid to see it fly the coop. To quote Sen further, ‘‘and there has not been and I don’t think in the near future we will see such a friend and supporter as this President. Absolutely. There is none.’’ Though a bird in the hand is worth two in the Bush, we headless chickens are suspicious about the rush to formalize something that is predicated on the good feelings of one of the most unpopular persons the planet has ever seen.

There is no point clucking in disapproval about Sen’s choice of words, but rather, we wonder why he should have done so. If Singh gave Sen the go ahead, then he would have foreseen the consequent hardening of positions by the other parties. The go-ahead logically follows from his ill-advised challenge to the Left to withdraw support to his government; it means he wants out of the UPA-Left marriage. But if he thinks the nuclear deal will enamour him to the electorate, we’d just like to remind him of the sad fate of the slogan ‘‘India Shining’’ in 2004. We would advise him instead to do some damage control; the headless chickens now demand no less than Sen’s head, his qualified clarification/apology notwithstanding.

EDIT: Unique Political Angst

Don’t revive old prejudices against coalitions

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

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

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

EDITORIAL: Generally modified

Research must be ramped up. Farmers need GM

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

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

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

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

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

EDITORIAL: New clear deal

The big issue is India’s foreign policy

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dutt’s release likely on Wednesday

By Tanveer Khan

Actor Sanjay Dutt is likely to be released on interim bail only on Wednesday as formalities and paper work may not be completed on Tuesday. Sanjay has been lodged in the Yerawada jail since August 1, after being convicted for six years RI under the Arms Act in the 1993 Mumbai bomb blasts case.

Sources said family members, including Sanjay’s sister and Congress MP Priya Dutt, were waiting for release orders from the apex court. They will be submitting the papers to the TADA court in Mumbai on Tuesday afternoon or Wednesday morning for the release orders.

“We need to see if the orders from the TADA court will reach here before 1700hrs, even so we have our procedures that take over an hour minimum, therefore his release on Tuesday appears to be unlikely”, said jail authorities.

The police resorted to a mild lathicharge to disperse the jostling crowd, who were waiting to have a glimpse of their hero outside the Yerawada jail.

Kapil Dev sacked as NCA chairman

From HNN Mumbai Bureau

Taking a tough stand, the BCCI on Tuesday sacked Kapil Dev as chairman of the National Cricket Academy (NCA) for aligning with the rebel Indian Cricket League (ICL) and also barred the defecting players from playing in international and domestic tournaments.The decision to terminate the services of Kapil Dev, who heads the ICL executive board, was taken at the BCCI’s special general body meeting here.

NCA vice-chairman Ajay Shirke has been appointed as acting chairman and a new appointment for the post will be made at the annual general meeting on September 28, board sources said.The sources said that Kapil Dev’s dismissal would come into effect immediately and all the players who have aligned with ICL would be banned from playing for the country or for the states.

The BCCI’s stringent measures came a day after the ICL announced its initial list of 51 players, which has West Indies batting great Brian Lara, former Pakistan captain Inzamam-ul Haq and three of his teammates — Mohd Yousuf, Imran Farhat and Abdul Razzaq — as the star attractions.South African cricketers Lance Klusener and Nicky Boje were among the seven overseas recruits for the multi-million dollar league, funded by media baron Subhash Chandra.

Kapil Dev’s sacking was very much on the cards after the BCCI made it clear that players aligning with the breakaway league would not take part in BCCI activities.Kapil’s term as NCA chairman was to end in September this year and the BCCI will now have to start the process for looking for a replacement for its Bangalore-based academy.

The sources said the BCCI proposal to amend the constitution for appointing a president-elect has been approved by the special meeting. The sources also said that paid selectors would be appointed from September next year.

Andhra Pradesh Under fire!

By M H Ahsan & Srilatha Sharma

Mudigonda, a nondescript village in Andhra Pradesh’s Khammam district, has become synonymous with the suppression of land struggles after a July 28 police firing killed seven workers of the Left parties.

Land struggles are nothing new to the State, which witnessed the communist revolt against the zamindari system and the Nizam’s feudal rule. But the Congress government’s inept responses to the Communist Party of India (M arxist)’s Bhoo Poratam (land struggle) has left everyone looking for precedents.

The pre-Independence armed uprisings have been the inspiration for the Left parties in the State to struggle ceaselessly for equitable distribution of land. As much as 42 lakh acres of land (one acre is 0.4 hectare) is estimated to be available for distribution to the poor even after allotting an equal extent in the past 50 years.

Supporters of the CPI(M), later joined by Communist Party of India (CPI) workers, launched a struggle by forcibly occupying identified government lands after planting red flags and braving the lathis of the police. Countless arrests, including that of CPI State secretary K. Narayana, on charges of sedition, marked the struggle, which the Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy government never seemed to treat with the urgency and seriousness it deserves.

The government was complacent in the belief that its programmes such as the development of fallow lands before distributing them to the poor and the restoration of ‘assignment lands’ to their rightful owners would take care of the problem. Assignment lands were lands given to the very poor for their economic empowerment since the 1960s. Lakhs of acres of these were illegally sold out of dire need or commercial considerations caused by urbanisation and skyrocketing real estate prices.

Chief Minister Rajasekhara Reddy’s family, which was among the numerous buyers of assignment lands, surrendered about 1,200 acres. His portrayal of this relinquishment as “an act of sacrifice” cut no ice with the Opposition as it came ahead of the promulgation of an ordinance for government takeover of all such lands.

In the wake of his electoral victory in 2004, Rajasekhara Reddy constituted an eight-member Land Committee headed by senior Minister Koneru Ranga Rao to look into the entire gamut of land-related problems. As time wore on, political compulsions and shifting priorities caused the initial sincerity and zeal to usher in land reforms to get eroded.

Precious time was lost in processing the Committee’s report after its submission to the government. Vexed by the government’s tardy response, the CPI(M) intensified its land struggle in May while the party’s State secretary B.V. Raghavulu and Narayana began an indefinite hunger strike on July 22. Stormy scenes inside the Legislative Assembly on the land issue and a bandh call by the Left parties made the government to invite Left leaders to the negotiating table. The talks failed.

The Koneru Ranga Rao Land Committee had prepared a candid and well-drafted report that put the government in a fix. It virtually condemned the Revenue Department by saying that “the land administration over the last decade has gradually weakened to a virtual state of paralysis today. The traditional systems of land administration stand diluted. It has been estimated that India loses 1.3 per cent economic growth annually as a result of disputed land titles, which inhibit supply of capital and credit for agriculture.”

During the talks, the Left parties put forth 12 demands, including survey of land and house sites for distribution to the poor. A key demand was the implementation of the Land Committee’s recommendations. “Such is their [the government’s] arrogance that they refuse to implement the report of a Cabinet Minister. What is wrong with our demand?” asked Raghavulu.
The Left leaders also insisted on the constitution of an independent commission with quasi-judicial powers to deal with land issues. The government would settle only for the appointment of a Special Commissioner to deal with land-related issues on the grounds that the Commission would interfere with the Revenue Department’s functioning. It was clearly a case of too little too late. It was a different matter that the government issued orders accepting 74 of 104 recommendations of the Land Committee a few hours after several people died or lay dying in Mudigonda.

A pre-emptive action amid the talks further queered the pitch for the government. A few hours before the Left parties’ Statewide bandh on July 28, the police forcibly removed Raghavulu and Narayana from their hunger strike camp at the dead of night. With an incendiary mix of highhandedness and a stubborn approach on the government’s part, Mudigonda was waiting to happen.

In January, Rajasekhara Reddy upbraided the Khammam Police for failing to act when CPI(M) activists laid siege to the Collectorate, bringing work inside to a halt for two days. An opportunity “to prove their mettle” had arrived by way of the bandh in the district, a stronghold of the CPI(M) and the CPI. In Khammam town, women were mercilessly beaten up with batons, leaving one of them battling for life.

About 12 km away, in Mudigonda, the police rushed in reinforcements led by Additional Superintendent of Police M. Ramesh Babu to end a rasta roko. Instead of waiting for the roadblock to fizzle out, the police used force. The govern ment version is that the mob attacked the Additional SP’s jeep. Angered, the police, including gunmen of the Additional SP, opened fire with AK-47s and self-loading rifles. About 140 rounds were fired at the crowd whose number did not exceed 500. Six people lay dead and one died of bullet wounds a week later. Over a dozen were grievously injured. The target of the police apparently was Bandi Ramesh, a former Maoist, who enjoyed mass support locally.

Amnesty International described the firing as “excessive and unnecessary use of force of police against farmers, political party workers and others”.

The human rights organisation further observed that the crowd was not given any warning that the police were about to open fire. Photographic evidence showed victims with bullet wounds in the abdomen, waist and head. Amnesty International regarded the use of AK-47 assault rifles as a particularly inappropriate method of policing on such occasions.

Nationwide uproar against the firing forced the Chief Minister to suspend the Additional SP, a Circle Inspector and a Sub-Inspector; transfer Superintendent of Police R.K. Meena; institute a judicial inquiry by a retired High Court Judge; and announce a compensation of Rs.5 lakh to each family that had lost its members in the firing and Rs.50,000 each to the injured.

The Mudigonda firing is reminiscent of a similar tragedy at Basheer Bagh in the heart of Hyderabad in August 2000 when the Telugu Desam Party was in power. Three communists died in police action to foil an attempt to reach the Assembly in order to protest against the World Bank-assisted power sector reforms. The CPI(M) vehemently opposes any comparison of the Mudigonda incident with the violence at Nandigram in West Bengal as the latter was essentially a clash between armed gangs and the police.

Although the Congress government has attributed the Mudigonda firing to the overzealousness of some trigger-happy policemen, it reflects poorly on the administration. Rajasekhara Reddy’s admission that his instruction to exercise restraint in handling Left activists were disregarded exposes the lack of a cohesive mechanism to translate orders issued at the highest level into realities on the ground.

Ironically, a large body of far-reaching land reform legislation was passed in Andhra Pradesh between 1956 and 1973. The Land Committee noted that “despite the efforts of the government, only a small percentage of the poor are landowners.” Scheduled Castes (S.C.), it said, constituted 16 per cent of the State’s population but controlled only 7.5 per cent of the operated land. Only 22 per cent of the 43 lakh acres of government land distributed so far had gone to the S.Cs though a lakh of them had lost land ownership between 1961 and 1991.
In spite of such a huge burden of unredeemed pledges on its back, the government refused to give independent status to the Land Commission on the grounds that it would become a body parallel to the Revenue Department. “There is a provision in the Tenancy Act for constituting a commission, which existed even when the all-powerful Board of Revenue used to function,” argued Raghavulu.

The government, he said, lacked political will to implement land reforms. It was not ready to issue pattas for about 25-30 lakh acres that the poor were already cultivating. Moreover, it recently amended the A.P. Assigned Lands (Prohibition of Transfer) Act, to take over assigned lands not in possession of the original assignees. “But it undermined the legislation through the backdoor by stating in the rules that such possession could be regularised,” said Raghavulu.
The Koneru Ranga Rao panel observed that “it has been the Committee’s experience that the issue of land continues to be the single most emotive issue in rural areas. There is no other issue which people connect with as issues of land.” Left leaders insist that the sooner the Rajasekhara Reddy government understands this harsh reality, the better it is for its political health.

Retail wallets closed to Indian mutual funds

By Indrajit Basu & M H Ahsan

Ask bankers or a heads of insurance companies in India about how many retail customers they have added in the past year and chances are that most would give you a number close to the nearest hundred. After all, retail clients are the backbone of their growth, they say, and acquiring new clients is their top priority. But place this question to a fund manager of any of India’s 44-odd mutual funds, and most would draw a blank. No official numbers regarding retail investors in mutual funds are available, but “we have many”, they say. Some even evade the question and try to direct attention instead to the sizzling growth in the amount of money they manage (called assets under management – AUM in industry parlance), which most funds consider a key benchmark for their performance. They can always find an excuse, though, for not having enough retail clients.

According to reported figures, the penetration of mutual funds in India has languished at a mere 3% of household savings, compared with 16% in most developed and developing economies. “If you compare the overall investments of the retail investors, the mutual-fund industry is still struggling to gain the attention of the retail investors,” said Krishnamurthy Vijayan, director and chief executive officer of JPMorgan Asset Management Co. Indeed, although the Indian mutual-fund industry has finally started growing like a teenager since mutual funds in their true sense were opened to the private sector in 1993, the fact is that the sector continues to be the favorite for only the big guns, while most investors from the street push this investment avenue, supposedly the retail investor’s best, way down their preference list. On the face of it, though, the mutual-fund industry has never had it so good.

The AUM or the total corpus of this industry grew by a stunning 21% over the year ending July to exceed US$125 billion. But, said T C Nair, a member of the country’s capital-market regulator, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), even as it is “astonishing that assets managed by mutual funds have doubled in less than 18 months, the mutual-fund industry is still very urban and geared toward institutional investors”. And this has happened despite the fact that the industry aggressively positions itself as a safe investment avenue that can offer better returns than most fixed-interest-bearing investment instruments, such as bonds and deposits. Take these numbers, for instance: according to SEBI, of the $125 billion AUM, as much 81% comes from the eight largest cities of India, while half of the AUM “belongs to corporate clients, banks and financial institutions”. But there’s not much participation of retail investors in the other half, either.

According to industry numbers, there are about 32 million retail accounts in Indian mutual funds. “However, the point to note is that much of this too belongs to the high-net-worth investors, because most usually invest though multiple accounts,” said Jhelum Chowdhury, a financial planner and a mutual-fund broker. Therefore, said Krishnan Sitaraman, head of fund-services and fixed-income research for the credit-rating agency CRISIL, “Although there’s no concrete information on that [retail investors in mutual funds] number, we reckon that no more that 25% of the AUM belongs to the retail investor.” Compare mutual funds in India with its peers in the developed countries, say the United States, where mutual funds truly function as they should – to increase the wealth of smaller investors – the picture looks completely different: more than 80% of the AUM belongs to retail investors.

The ratio is similar in Europe and elsewhere in Asia. So why don’t millions of investors find Indian mutual funds hot? “One major issue with less retail participation [in mutual funds] is the income level of smaller investors,” said Rachana Baid, a professor at the Mumbai-based Indian Institute of Capital Markets. “Indian investors follow a typical investment hierarchy where risk-fee investments like bank deposits and bonds get the top priority and, after making such investments, there is little money in the hands of the investors to invest in equity-linked mutual funds.”

Then there’s the question of risk perception. Experts say that since equity-linked mutual-fund plans – the only mutual-fund plans that retail investors actually invest in – invest primarily in stocks, retail investors perceive “such investments as a proxy for a punt on the stock market”, said Krishnamurthy Vijayan of JPMorgan. Moreover, added Baid, the Indian mutual funds have not been able to communicate their risk profile to the retail investors segment properly. “It is true that mutual funds per se could be risky too, but when one considers this investment avenue from a longer-term perspective, say 30 years, the daily or even few months of volatility of the stock markets should not matter,” said Baid.

Nevertheless, the biggest reason Indian mutual-fund plans haven’t been able to penetrate deep into the retail segment is the mutual funds themselves: all have the principal focus on growth of their AUM in which corporate and institutional markets offer an easy way. “And there are understandable reasons for it,” including a sweetener in the Indian income-tax laws, said Dhirendra Kumar of Valuresearch, which claims to be the first dedicated fund-research company in India. After tax concessions extended to mutual funds in 1999 where dividends from equity funds were made tax-free and where debt funds were taxed concessionally at 10%, “Companies and other large investors prefer to put their money in debt funds of mutual funds instead of putting their money directly in fixed-income-bearing securities, where the earnings are treated as interest income and hence taxed at much higher rates,” said Kumar.

That is also why, say industry sources, about 65% (although SEBI claims it is about 50%) of the AUM consists of debt plans. “Moreover,” said Krishnamurthy Vijayan, “most mutual-fund companies in India are grossly undercapitalized [meaning they do not have enough capital to expand their marketing efforts], so they tend to address the meaty area [where one marketing call could get them the business of many retail clients] to grow.” Small wonder that SEBI is unhappy about the way mutual funds in Indian operate. In a public forum last month, SEBI chairman M Damodaran pointed out that “the mutual-funds industry seems to be prematurely patting itself on the back” and that “the question of who has made what sort of growth provokes more questions than it provides answers”. Damodaran also urged the industry to examine the possibility of getting different kinds of money into funds, rather than bank overwhelmingly on institutional investors, since such “large investments by corporate houses in mutual funds generate conflict of interest”.

The truth, then, is that in India, mutual funds are hardly what their original concept mandates: individual investors should form the bulk of fund investors or participants. But the good news is that this may be changing. Lately, claim both Vijayan of JPMorgan and Vikaas Sachdev, country head of business development for ING Investment Management, some large fund houses have started venturing deep into the micro-investment segment through the systematic investment plans route, and by getting non-government organizations to mobilize funds from even rural areas. “

The inflection point is now,” said Sachdev. “With rising disposable incomes and confidence following three years of a sustained bull run, the share of the retail investors’ wallet in the MFs [mutual funds] is going up; the industry expects that retail participation [will] grow much faster in the next few years.”

De-demonizing Southeast Asian Islam

By M H Ahsan & Sentim Richard Khan

At last the academic community is standing up to the myths being perpetuated about Islam and Muslim identity in Southeast Asia. For years scholars and area specialists have lain supine as the roller-coaster of the “war against terror” has ridden roughshod over truth and history concerning the region’s nearly 300-million-strong Muslim community. Kudos to British political scientist John Sidel for his brief and biting essay “The Islamic Threat in Southeast Asia: A Reassessment” that seeks to redress the appalling imbalance.

In fewer than 60 pages, Sidel, a professor at the London School of Economics, demolishes many of the shaky premises that have shored up the so-called “second front” in the US-led “war against terror” and helped create a dangerous divide between Muslims and non-Muslims in the region. The backlash has regrettably been slow in coming. Perhaps that’s because of the immense weight that US foreign policy carries in Southeast Asia; perhaps also because tales of fanatical bearded jihadis plotting the downfall of secular regimes are just too compelling for the Western media to report straight.

It has become axiomatic in the media and among so-called security specialists that Southeast Asia is home to a resurgent Islamic sentiment that breeds and protects dangerous radicals bent on redrawing the region’s map through the establishment of a pan-Islamic caliphate. Sidel in essence argues the reverse. Using a more refined and informed analysis, he points to the declining fortunes of once-ascendant Islamic forces in the last decade of the 20th century. From the mid-1990s in Indonesia and Malaysia, the intellectual effervescence of Islamic thinkers such as Anwar Ibrahim and the late Nurcholish Madjid offered a promise of a modernist Islamic politics that blended and synthesized modern technology and democracy with the moral tenets of faith.

Their liberal ideas posed a threat to oligarchic and undemocratic interests and were smothered – partly through co-option as in the case of Indonesia, and more starkly in Malaysia by Anwar’s arrest and incarceration. Anwar and his intellectual peers epitomized the nadir of Islamic revival in the region. After 1998, the financial crisis and the ensuing political instability swept away rosy ideas of an Asian renaissance based on enlightened religious ideas. This emasculation, Sidel argues, left more conservative and radical activists feeling that Islam had been sidelined and besmirched, which helps explain, he argues, why a tiny minority turned to violence.

“The turn towards terrorist violence by small numbers of Islamist militants,” Sidel writes, “must be understood as a symptom of a reaction to the decline, domestication and disentanglement from state power of Islamist forces in the region.” Modern roles Finely argued as his thesis is, Sidel is in too much of a hurry to explain away the role of Islam in modern Muslim society and policy. For instance, he neglects to explain fully why conservative Islamic mores are so appealing to a society that sees secular politicians stealing from the people and modern forms of government powerless to defend their interests.

The important distinction here is between Islam as a moral code for governing everyday life and Islam as a war cry for a tiny minority of misguided misfits. It is one thing to explain away the fanatics targeting Westerners in Bali and Jakarta as weak and marginal. It is quite another to play down the trend toward religion in a society that has seen Christianity, Hinduism and Buddhism as well as Islam make huge gains in the region over the past two decades. As a result, there is no escaping the fact that religion has entered the political fray.

The question is: How successfully can democracy, which has made great strides in a country like Indonesia, temper the conservative, fanatical fringes? Sidel argues convincingly that Islam has become a marginal force in Indonesian and Malaysian politics. Yet he misses the point that in both countries, there is insufficient ideological ballast to counter the forces of Islam and therefore insufficient middle ground on which to contest elections.

People have the vote, but democracy is still under construction in an institutional sense – party platforms are poorly developed and rhetoric and symbolism outweigh substance. So instead of fighting over better education and garbage collection, gubernatorial candidates in the recently held Jakarta city elections battled over Islamic law and pluralism. In Malaysia, the deputy prime minister provocatively and erroneously described Malaysia as an Islamic state so that the ruling party could get out in front of the opposition Islamic party ahead of elections expected by early next year. Sidel is right about the domestication of Islamic politics. He is wrong about disentanglement, and this is what still concerns many non-Muslims.

None of this detracts from the core of Sidel’s thesis, which is that the violent militancy of the past few years is a marginal anomaly rather than a symptom of growing strength of radical sentiment in society at large. The problem is that he applies this notion rather too broadly to all forms of violence in the Muslim community. He supports the idea, for instance, that the eruption of violence in Muslim minority regions of Mindanao and southern Thailand is a symptom of re-ordered elite relationships that have upset the balance of interests that in the past appeased local Muslim leaders and kept violence at bay.

This is simplistic and ignores deep-rooted issues of ethnic identity and pent-up historical grievances that have at best been contained rather than accommodated over the generations. True enough, legions of so-called terror experts and mainstream journalists have failed to make a convincing case that armed groups in either of these two backwaters are about to link up, break out and sow violent mayhem across the region. Nor is the violence going to subside with the simple restoration of justice and democracy, as Sidel seems to suggest. Ultimately, Sidel’s provocative essay is too short to cover adequately all the valuable new analytical ground he is opening up.

The significance is that he has created a path for other experts and specialists to follow. If the “horrorists”, as British writer Martin Amis calls the more conservative proponents of the Islamist threat, are allowed to dominate the debate much longer, there is a real danger that the distorted perceptions of Muslim Southeast Asia could become dangerous realities. Sidel seeks to paint a less alarming picture and put Islam in a more objective social and political context. He mostly succeeds in defusing the Islamic time bomb, though in places his argument moves too far in the other direction by playing down the importance of assertive Islamic social and political currents. In the face of so much uncritically received nonsense from the other side of the argument, perhaps Sidel can be excused for a modicum of hyperbole.

India splitting atoms over nuclear deal

By M H Ahsan

Just at the apogee of the India-US nuclear agreement saga, Indian domestic politics are condemning its final conclusion to another round of contentious debate. The outcome of this eleventh-hour stumble, however, goes beyond simply evaluating the technical parameters of the recently negotiated bilateral agreement with the United States over civilian nuclear cooperation. The issue at stake is nothing less than redrawing the fundamental premise of Indian grand strategy and the role New Delhi seeks to carve out for itself in the emerging international system. An August 18 resolution by the left-wing parties – vital allies for the ruling United Progressive Alliance central coalition in New Delhi – exemplifies the domestic political divide: “The politburo decided to take the issue of the nuclear agreement and the dangers of the strategic alliance with the United States to the people through a nationwide mass campaign.”

At the outset, it is useful to reflect on the original logic of engagement with the US and specifically on what the nuclear deal was meant to achieve for Washington and for New Delhi. Until the July 18, 2005, India-US joint statement on the nuclear agreement, India’s status in the global non-proliferation system was that of a pariah state. Since the 1974 nuclear test (Pokhran-I) and the ensuing sanctions regime imposed on India, New Delhi’s goal was in essence one of preserving its strategic weapons program and insulating itself from an adverse external diplomatic assault, prosecuted largely by the US.

Finally, in May 1998, India chose to abandon its ambiguous posture by demonstrating a declared nuclear-weapons capability (Pokhran-II). This was a point of no return, and indeed India in the ensuing couple of years endured yet another US diplomatic onslaught, manifested in automatic sanctions to compel New Delhi to reverse course. Suffice it to say, New Delhi stayed the course and by the early 2000s, most pragmatic voices in Washington had accommodated themselves to an India that would be permanently nuclear. As the primary enforcer of the non-proliferation regime, Washington chose to pursue the next logical step of identifying a solution to the Indian nuclear question – enabling India to enter the nuclear system on an exceptional basis and thus eliminating the most contentious obstacle to the normalization of US-India relations.

But why would the US choose to bestow such an extraordinary gesture on India? Students of realpolitik and US foreign policy would be acutely aware that altruism in international affairs is as absurd as “to ravish a woman for a purely moral reason”. This is where the timing of the nuclear deal becomes important. By 2005, it had become clear in Washington that the fantasy of reshaping the security structure of the Middle East had reached an impasse. Geopolitical developments elsewhere were equally disconcerting for Washington. Russia, after more than a decade of internal upheavals, was displaying signs of breaking free of the shell that Washington’s cold warriors had confined it to since 1991.

It will also be recalled that China had gained from the strategic surprise of the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, which had diverted US strategic attention to the West Asian theater, from President George W Bush’s pre-September 11 national-security goal of expanding the scope of its East Asian containment strategy. In sum, by mid-2005, with the US bogged down in Iraq and the two primary Eurasian land powers, Russia and China, rapidly accelerating their geo-economic profiles and influence, America’s unipolar triumphalism appeared all but over. Indeed, China was seeking to refurbish its own equation with India, manifested most importantly by Premier Wen Jiabao’s April 2005 visit to New Delhi and the mutual declaration of a “strategic partnership”. Russia’s expanding military-technical market share in India’s modernization drive in the same year again suggested that the US was being excluded from a growing arms bazaar. Within South Asia, too, there was a sense of deja vu.

After the initial exhilaration of New Delhi’s elite in the aftermath of September 11, one that had anticipated a natural elevation of India-US ties, the United States’ geopolitically expedient decision to ally with Pakistan as its frontline state in Afghanistan implied that the India-US honeymoon was over. It is in such a structural flux that Washington’s subsequent engagement with India must be considered. In retrospect, the timing of Washington’s decision to revolutionize its relationship with New Delhi appears to have immense geostrategic and geo-economic logic, the latter arguably a critical parallel driver for Washington eager to gain the fruits of a belated Indian economic renaissance. By dangling the nuclear deal, it offered an irresistible instrument to New Delhi’s strategic elite and re-altered the incentives for subsequent Indian foreign policy.

The above perhaps succinctly capture the larger US incentives for the nuclear deal – gain a vital strategic foothold in South Asia, one that it had unsuccessfully sought over the entire course of the Cold War. What were the Indian motives for the nuclear deal? This was obvious. As a nuclear-weapon state, but one outside the international system manifested in great-power arrangements, New Delhi’s security elite was acutely aware that until its pariah status was transformed, one that had lasted more than three decades, India would remain condemned to the periphery of the international system, without access to high-technologies in the nuclear sphere, and excluded from any subsequent modifications to such arrangements.

Also cognizant of the reality of India’s lack of system-shaping capabilities, Indian foreign policy chose to engage with the primary manager of the contemporary system, the US, to alleviate its “status discontent” with the prevailing reality. Of course, negotiating the terms of such an entry into the system of non-proliferation was imperative too. Thus preserving the essence of India’s strategic weapons development and its indigenous three-stage reactor program rightly became a vital goal in itself. Indian political and intellectual discourse over the past two years has vividly reflected this imperative and has arguably contributed to New Delhi adopting appropriate negotiating positions.

That New Delhi was largely able to reach a more or less acceptable bilateral agreement last month was as much the result of internal checks and balances as it was to Washington’s larger grand strategy (ie, India as the strategic prize), extending the United States’ maritime cordon sanitaire around the East Asian landmass and thus achieving dominant control over the vital sea lanes from the Persian Gulf to the Sea of Japan. Returning to domestic political events, it should be clear that the nuclear deal was a means to an end. That end was the much-belated acknowledgment of India’s nuclear status and, by extension, its entry into an important multilateral arena of great-power commerce, namely the market for dual-use technologies that would enable India to augment its socioeconomic and military potential.

Up to this point, I suspect there would be little bipartisan objection in India for such a strategy, for it preserves the fundamental premise of Indian foreign policy, one that lays an exceptional premium on independence and autonomy, and an aversion to extra-Indian evaluations of Indian national interest. Suffice it to say, only by the successful adherence to these principles can India achieve its great-power aspirations. The ongoing discord, however, arises from certain domestic political quarters that have viewed or are now viewing the nuclear deal as a stepping-stone to an open-ended strategic alignment with the United States, especially in the military sphere. For such ideologues, the nuclear deal has paved the way for the emergence of a natural relationship between two great democracies that were separated only by the contradictions of the Cold War. In many ways, these ideologues are the mirror-image of the Indian left, which is ideologically anti-American. As usual, India’s international salvation lies in the middle path.

Again, it must be emphasized that constructive engagement with the US is in India’s interest. As is evident from the extraordinary record of Beijing’s own open-door policies since 1978, cultivating economic linkages with the US offers enormous developmental advantages. At the geostrategic level, too, with all major powers continuing to place a premium on their relationship with the United States, India by disengaging only loses out. Yet the major powers are also adopting omni-directional, non-exclusive relationships. The patterns of interaction between today’s actors are a critical element of the evolving order that deserves some elaboration.

The international political economy and its globalizing forces are compelling actors to pursue multi-vector foreign policies – the core thrust of foreign policies of the major states is being driven by non-exclusive engagement. It is useful to recall that the bipolar division of the past system was geopolitical and geo-economic. Both blocs were self-sufficient and inter-bloc trade and investment were irrelevant. Today’s system is clearly more interdependent than during the Cold War. To be sure, this interdependence is state-driven, and the economic division of labor is nowhere near as efficient as in national economies. In an anarchic world, it never will be. But certainly, trade and investment are becoming both the means and ends of state power and leverage.

India’s primary goal must be to assume a growing share of this international division of labor, one that is gradually decoupling from the United States, as the industrial revolution across the Eurasian geo-economic space attests to. Thus India’s US policy must operate in a multi-vector framework. It is only by engaging all major actors that India can achieve strategic flexibility to leverage its foreign and economic goals, and simultaneously preserve the ideational foundations of Indian foreign policy. The ideological discord within Indian foreign policy has also manifested recently in debates over New Delhi’s military diplomacy.

India’s decision to participate in the quadrilateral – US, Japan, Australia and India – naval exercises in the Bay of Bengal next month, while remaining ambivalent to developments in the Eurasian land space exemplified by the recent Shanghai Cooperation Organization military exercises, illustrates New Delhi’s inability to implement a multi-vector policy, and indeed is a futile attempt at ignoring its own geography. Thus while naval cooperation among the quadrilateral group would in principle be defensible, when seen in conjunction with India eschewing other multilateral developments in its periphery, it certainly arouses suspicion toward New Delhi’s exclusive outlook. Surely there’s more to India’s “Look East” policy than naval cooperation?

At a time when China is rapidly integrating the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations into the Chinese economy, New Delhi is engaging with extra-regional actors in the military sphere, and yet achieving little influence in its extended neighborhood. The geopolitical pluralism today is heading one way – a multipolar world – with the underlying fundamentals arguably already in place. In such a scenario of systemic change, and given that the redistribution of power is accruing to the Eurasian geopolitical space, one where India resides, is it wise to pursue an uncritical path toward bandwagoning with an offshore power in relative decline?

India’s blue water dreams may have to wait

By M H Ahsan & Shalini Sharma

Even as the Indian Navy is making its mark projecting power in waters far beyond its shores, its ambitions seem likely to be impeded by delays in a string of big-ticket projects involving new acquisitions. Besides the delay in the delivery of a refurbished Russian aircraft carrier, the construction in India of an indigenous carrier has been hit by rough weather. Under a deal that India signed with Russia in January 2004, the 44,570-ton Admiral Gorshkov, which is being refurbished at Russia’s Shevmash shipyard, was to be ready for induction into the Indian Navy as the Indian Naval Ship (INS) Vikramaditya by next August. But Russian engineers apparently underestimated the length of cabling required to refit the aircraft carrier and are now unable to meet the delivery deadline.

It will take an additional two years for the carrier to be ready for induction. Meanwhile, another prestigious project is running late. India is constructing a 37,500-ton aircraft carrier at the Cochin Shipyard on its west coast. The first indigenous aircraft carrier to be made in India was to enter service in 2012. However, it now appears that the earliest it will be ready is 2015.

The project is running late “on almost all fronts”, according to a report in The Times of India. The 252-meter-long carrier will have two runways, a landing strip with three arrester wires (used to decelerate and stop aircraft), and a flight deck of about a hectare. It will carry 160 officers and 1,400 sailors and accommodate 12 MiG-29Ks, eight Tejas Light Combat Aircraft, and 10 helicopters. When ready for induction, the indigenous aircraft carrier will be a feather in India’s cap. But now it is giving Indian shipbuilders and the navy sleepless nights. The project has been up against formidable problems from the beginning. The indigenous aircraft-carrier project received the government’s green light in 2003.

In April 2005, the symbolic cutting of steel took place marking the formal start of the project, but it was not until 19 months later that construction actually began. Construction has been crippled by procurement woes. There were problems procuring 20,000 tonnes of high-quality steel for the carrier until India’s largest steel manufacturer, Steel Authority of India Ltd (SAIL), stepped in. Then came a delay in procuring the bulb bars. These problems were subsequently sorted out, but new ones have cropped up since, contributing to further delays. The keel of the carrier was to be laid this October, but this has been put off for at least another year, the Times of India report said.

This will push up the project cost “substantially”. “The delay in delivery has thrown India’s plans into some turbulence,” an officer in the navy’s western command told Asia Times Online. Since the decommissioning of India’s first aircraft carrier INS Vikrant in 1997, the country has been left with just one carrier, INS Viraat. But Viraat (formerly HMS Hermes of Britain’s Royal Navy), which was commissioned in May 1987, is aging. It underwent a major refit in the Cochin Shipyard from 1999 to 2001. The refit was not just a facelift; it included upgrades to the carrier’s propulsion systems, its radar suite, communications systems, and weapon systems.

The result was that the aging warhorse – the 50-year old INS Viraat is the oldest aircraft carrier in commission in the world – received another lease on life for about 10 years. India’s purchase of the Admiral Gorshkov and the go-ahead for the construction of the indigenous aircraft carrier were aimed at finding replacements for INS Viraat before its decommissioning in 2010-12. The Indian Navy was hoping that INS Vikramaditya would be operational by 2009, well ahead of the Viraat’s retirement. According to this rather ambitious timetable, the Vikramaditya would join the Viraat and the two would be joined by the indigenous aircraft carrier in 2012.

“It did seem that the Indian Navy’s dream of operating three aircraft carriers would be realized, albeit for a short time,” the navy officer said. “With delivery schedules going haywire, that seems a bit unlikely in the near future.” The Indian Navy’s force projections for the future have long envisaged the operation of three aircraft-carrier groups as essential for the protection of the country’s maritime interests. There are indications now that INS Viraat will have to soldier on for a few more years. In January, navy chief Admiral Sureesh Mehta indicated that the Viraat could remain in active service beyond 2010-12. “We are confident that she is in good condition for another seven years of service,” he told the Indian Express.

The carrier’s commanding officer, Captain Girish Luthra, said at that time: “The ship is in excellent condition. It is up to the Naval Headquarters to decide how long we use her, but I can say she is in top form.” Indeed, for its age INS Viraat appears to be in fighting trim. In June, it went on a goodwill voyage to several ports in Southeast Asia. Next month, it will be the star of the Indian fleet participating in the five-nation naval exercise in the Bay of Bengal. Although naval officials are proud of INS Viraat’s fitness, they are nonetheless annoyed with the perpetual delays in acquisitions. “We are making do with a very old aircraft carrier,” the naval officer said, adding that “INS Viraat is in fine condition, but only for an aircraft carrier of its age. Our ambitions cannot be realized if the navy finds itself constantly hamstrung by delays in procurement.” Meanwhile, India is looking to induct another aircraft carrier by 2017.

This May, Defense Minister A K Antony indicated that this would depend on progress on construction of the indigenous carrier. The order for a third carrier, Antony said, would be placed only after construction of the indigenous vessel progresses “beyond a certain range”. It is not just delayed delivery of aircraft carriers that is annoying navy officials. The Scorpene submarine project – the acquisition of six Scorpene subs is part of India’s “Project 75″, which envisages the building of 24 submarines by 2025-30 – too is running late. It took several years for India to negotiate the deal for the acquisition and building of Scorpene submarines.

The Cabinet Committee for Security sat on the matter for two years before giving its assent. Finally in 2005, the deal for construction of six Scorpene subs was signed. Under the deal, India’s Mazagon Docks Ltd was to deliver one submarine a year beginning in 2012, but two years on, construction of the vessels is yet to start. Construction of a submarine takes a minimum of six years. This means that Mazagon Docks will not meet the 2012 delivery deadline. What is worrying naval officials is that India’s fleet of 16 diesel-electric submarines (10 Russian Kilo-class ships, four German HDWs and two Foxtrots) is aging and several are due for retirement.

“By 2012 we will be left with only nine submarines, with more retirements to follow,” the naval officer said. In 2005, India’s then naval chief, Admiral Arun Prakash, warned that India would have to begin building new submarines immediately to be able to replace the ones being retired. Several of India’s neighbors were acquiring subs and “India seemed to be the odd man out”, he said. Two years on, his warning has not been heeded. Indian naval officials blame the political establishment and the bureaucracy for crippling the navy’s modernization program. Indeed, almost all defense purchases have been mired in scandal. Contracts negotiated by one government have been renegotiated by the next, ostensibly to get a better deal but really for kickbacks.

The officials have said acquisitions are being delayed with deals coming under the scanner for corruption. The navy cannot, however, absolve itself of blame. Senior officers and their kin have been found leaking information and/or receiving bribes in connection with defense procurements. This has been the case with the Scorpene deal, for instance. India’s navy has great ambitions and plans to achieve them, but the hardware to do so is lacking. It seems a classic case of the spirit being strong but the flesh weak.

Herd panic pushing bourse bounces

By M H Ahsan & Yuang Chow Yo

Asia’s stock markets are on a roller-coaster ride, last week dipping drastically on financial contagion fears about the faltering US subprime-mortgage market, and on Monday recovering strongly after the US Federal Reserve in a surprise move cut a key benchmark interest rate by 50 basis points. But are market forces reacting rationally to Asia’s underlying profit and loss prospects?

Asian markets tumbled in near-unison last week, with some bourses notching single-day losses not seen since the September 11, 2001, terror attacks against the United States. On Friday, Japan’s stock exchange recorded its largest one-day loss in more than seven years, shedding 5.5% of its value. The South Korean bourse recorded its worst performance ever last week over any given three-day period, shedding more than 200 points. On Friday, financial hub Hong Kong’s exchange lost more than 6.5% of its total value, while Singapore’s stock market dropped 6% on Friday.

Malaysia recorded its largest one-day loss ever, 5.3%, also on Friday. Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines were similarly all hit hard last week, falling respectively by 6%, 13.5% and 12%. On Monday, regional markets bounced back to varying degrees, propelled up by Friday’s sudden US interest-rate cut. Japanese stocks jumped 3%, Seoul’s bourse was up 5.7%, and Hong Kong was up 3.6% in late trade. Singapore was up 5%, and other Southeast Asian markets also gained. So what happens next? Some financial analysts argue that the equity-market recovery is a knee-jerk reaction to the gains witnessed in the US on Friday, where the Federal Reserve’s announcement drove up the Dow Jones main index by 1.8%.

The stock-market recovery, they say, also prices in widespread expectations of another 50-basis-point cut at the Federal Reserve’s next monetary-policy meeting, scheduled for September. Yet if the US subprime-mortgage market continues its decline and begins to transmit financial contagion through the broad US housing market, where median prices appear to outpace widely individual borrowers’ underlying earning power, the US economy could in a worst-case scenario slip into recession. Speculation is rife that the global financial order, now through financial liberalization measures more integrated than ever, could be on the brink of a crisis as big as or larger than that witnessed in the 1980s US savings-and-loan meltdown and the bursting of the technology bubble in 2001.

Significantly, last week’s contagion effect on Asia’s stock markets was driven more by panic selling than any new critical revelations about the region’s economic and financial fundamentals. Until last week, Asia’s stock markets and currencies had in general this year performed strongly. Apart from Singapore and pockets of China, Asian real estate is frothy but has not experienced the runaway price-inflation rates witnessed in US property markets. Relative to US and European banks and investment funds, regional financial institutions are believed to hold only small amounts of the derivative products that contain securitized subprime US housing loans.

Last week’s financial turbulence in Asia was driven more by revised downward expectations that a slowing US economy would consume considerably less of the region’s exports. All of Asia’s major economies run big trade surpluses with the US. Southeast Asia’s major trade-geared economies, including Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore, which export huge amounts of consumer electronics and their component parts to the US, are all exposed to shifts in US consumer sentiment. However, some regional economists argue that that basic analysis is simplistic.

Frederic Neumann, a Hong Kong-based economist at HSBC, argues in a recent research report that “the region has decoupled to a surprising degree from US demand conditions, and that even if the American economy were to slow down further, Asia could be only mildly affected”. He argues that the region’s “growth drivers” have become more balanced in recent years, with China and the European Union becoming more prominent, and that a deceleration in US economic growth will have a “less severe” impact on Asian than in the past. Recent HSBC sensitivity analysis shows that a 1% decline in US gross domestic product would have an equal or greater impact on only three Asian economies, namely Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan. The negative effect on China was surprisingly only 0.2% for each 1% decline in US growth.

At the same time, Asia’s financial fundamentals are much improved from the last time financial contagion pummeled the region in 1997-98, hedging substantially the risk of a repeat broad-based economic meltdown. Central banks across the region have stockpiled unprecedented amounts of foreign-currency reserves to defend both their currencies and their banks from speculative offshore attacks. Although not universally, several countries in the region have also substantially improved their debt management, with governments reining in their public-debt profiles and corporations trimming the debt-to-equity ratios that left many of them vulnerable to the sudden shift in foreign-investor sentiment in 1997-98.

Many Asian governments are now in a financial position to prime the fiscal pumps of their economies if US growth and demand tail off significantly. While foreign money last week rushed out of regional bourses to cover subprime-mortgage-hit financial positions in the US, last week’s capital flight could be a short-term phenomenon – even if the US slips into recession. Faced with tanking economic growth in the US, institutional money will inevitably seek out higher returns overseas. Asia’s comparatively strong fundamentals and, in many business sectors, low price-to-equity ratios represent a natural counter-cyclical hedge against slowing US growth.

Representatives of big US-based hedge funds who before last week’s turmoil met with Asia Times Online had been trolling Southeast Asia for undervalued stocks exposed to local consumption rather than global exports. To be sure, there are countervailing concerns that Asia’s recent large balance-of-payments surpluses and subsequent buildup of foreign reserves have resulted in buoyant domestic money supplies. Regional central banks have to varying degrees of success attempted to sterilize those capital inflows to avoid a more rapid appreciation of their already rising currencies. Over the past year, domestic monetary aggregates, commonly known as M1 and M2, have soared across the region.

There are at least theoretical risks that, if mismanaged, sterilization of capital inflows could cause new inflationary pressures and asset price bubbles. Economists say that to date, neither is statistically apparent across most of Asia, nor were foreign-investor concerns over recent monetary interventions apparently a contributing factor to last week’s financial turmoil. Indeed, HSBC’s Neumann notes that in Asia over the past 15 years, there has been a weak empirical link between broad money-supply growth and stock prices. In Thailand and Japan, the relationship has historically been negative, while in Singapore, Malaysia and Pakistan the correlation is stronger but not significant. Neumann notes that in all major Asian markets, money-supply growth historically tends to lag rather than lead asset-price gains.

A recent Asian Development Bank report shows instead that the recent rise in Asian asset prices was driven more by capital inflows than domestic liquidity. Investor risk perceptions, however, are often more subjective than empirical, and herd behavior is still clearly the rule rather than the exception. As such, Asia could still be dragged down in tandem with a US slowdown, whether from underlying financial and economic measures the region deserves to be or not.

US deal with India draws more fire

By Sarah Williams & M H Ahsan

Recently, just two days before India celebrated 60 years of independence, its Parliament was disrupted as some members tried to shout down Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. He was defending the nuclear-technology deal he negotiated with the United States against critics, some within his own coalition, who claim the deal will give the US too much leverage over Indian policy. Under the deal, India gets access to civilian nuclear technology and fuel, without having to give up its nuclear-weapons program.

It is even allowed to reprocess spent nuclear fuel, though under the safeguards of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). India has also pledged not to pass on any US technology or materials to third parties. The US will back India joining the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) and even support the creation of an “Indian strategic fuel reserve”, something New Delhi wanted to guard against any supply cutoff due to future nuclear-weapons development. “The agreement does not in any way affect India’s right to undertake future nuclear tests, if it is necessary in India’s national interest,” Manmohan told Parliament.

In the US, critics have tried to block the deal because it ends decades of restrictions that Washington has imposed on India because New Delhi has not signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), nor opened all of its nuclear facilities to the IAEA. Former president Jimmy Carter jumped into the fray with a Washington Post op-ed on March 28, 2006, complaining, “During the past five years, the United States has abandoned many of the nuclear-arms-control agreements negotiated since the administration of Dwight Eisenhower … The proposed nuclear deal with India is just one more step in opening a Pandora’s box of nuclear proliferation.”

However, Ashton Carter, an assistant secretary of defense in the Bill Clinton administration and now a professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, defended the deal in the July/August Foreign Affairs, writing: Washington gave something away on the nuclear front in order to gain much more on other fronts; it hoped to win the support and cooperation of India – a strategically located democratic country of growing economic importance – to help the United States confront the challenges that a threatening Iran, a turbulent Pakistan, and an unpredictable China may pose in the future. Washington’s decision to trade a nuclear-recognition quid for a strategic-partnership quo was a reasonable move.

Though originally signed by Manmohan and President George W Bush during the latter’s visit to India in early March 2006, the details were not finalized until last month. The US Congress will have to approve the final terms, which will give critics another run at it. Democratic Congressman Edward Markey, co-chairman of the Bipartisan Task Force on Non-proliferation and a longtime opponent of all forms of nuclear power, led 23 members of the House of Representatives in sending a letter to Bush on July 25. The Congress members questioned whether the new terms go beyond what is allowed under current law, which, according to the letter, “states that nuclear cooperation shall be terminated, and the US would have the right to demand the return of all material, equipment, and technology, if India again tests a nuclear explosive”.

On the task-force website, more space is devoted to denouncing India than to opposing the nuclear programs of North Korea or Iran, which are far more dangerous to US security. Indeed, helping India build up its economic and military strength is an asset to US foreign policy in both Asia and the Middle East. Washington and New Delhi face many of the same threats from radical Islam and communist China. India already has a small nuclear arsenal and an expanding atomic-energy program. India’s nuclear test was in 1974, prompted by China’s deployment of nuclear arms. India then renounced nuclear weapons, and as late as 1988 was calling for their global elimination. But the rapid rise of China, and the increased militancy of Beijing’s ally Pakistan in supporting terrorism in Afghanistan and Kashmir, heightened tensions.

India and Pakistan conducted nuclear tests in 1998, bringing US sanctions against both. The sanctions on New Delhi were lifted in 2001, as Bush gave priority to improving US-India relations. India was quick to show its willingness to cooperate. When the Bush administration pulled out of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2001, India’s reaction was to endorse part of the US missile-defense initiative. India has a similar concern about the spread of ballistic missiles in its part of the world, a region whose unstable regimes may not be contained by a posture of deterrence only. Cooperation has continued to increase. The largest joint US-India naval exercises ever conducted are set for September 4-9 in the Bay of Bengal, involving two US and one Indian aircraft carriers. Warships from Japan, Singapore and Australia will also participate as a demonstration of the “arc of democracy” along the rim of Asia.

The nuclear agreement with India does have non-proliferation elements. India will place all future civilian nuclear reactors, and 14 of its current 22 reactors, under IAEA control and inspection. The agreement only covers peaceful, civilian cooperation, but knowledge cannot be isolated. This is the legitimate concern about Iran’s nuclear program. So it must be accepted that India’s nuclear capabilities will be advanced across the board. But India is not Iran, and blanket objections to any deal that might contribute to New Delhi’s military development overlooks the fact that the US has long treated countries differently based on strategic calculations.

The US directly helped Britain’s nuclear-weapons program during the Cold War. France developed an independent nuclear deterrent, and while this was often disquieting to American leaders, it was not considered a threat like the weapons deployed by Russia or China. Israel is believed to have nuclear arms, but Washington has rightly refused to consider this as the moral equivalent of an Iranian bomb. Treating friends and rivals differently is the essence of foreign policy. China understands the significance of the US-India deal and has been lobbying against it at the United Nations and within the NSG. It wants India barred from the group, and to sign the NPT as a non-nuclear state, meaning it would have to disarm.

Beijing, of course, has no intention of curbing its growing nuclear arsenal. It has an advantage and wants to keep it. But it is not in the interests of the United States to see democratic India kept in an inferior position to the Chinese dictatorship. A majority in Congress should understand the larger strategic meaning of closer US ties to India and renew the strong positive vote it gave the preliminary agreement last year.

Where Hitler meets Thackeray

By V Sudarshan

A cople of years ago stand up comedian Albert Brooks made a film he called ‘Looking for humor in the Muslim world.’ It was almost entirely shot in India. In the film Albert Brooks, playing himself – a Jewish stand up comedian – is sent on a fact-finding mission, based on the premise that even though George Bush has a great sense of humour, his administration had difficulty understanding very many groups of people: Chinese, Africans, but mainly the Muslims. The American president wanted to develop a secret weapon that would work on the sense of humour in the Muslim world. But what made them laugh? It was a mystery to Bush. It is for Brooks to find out what makes Muslims laugh and he has to produce a 500-page report based on the findings. Brooks wonders: Why India, a Hindu country? The man heading the committee that sends him on the mission responds: ‘‘There are 150 million Muslims there. Is that enough for you? Anyway we’ll consider the job half done if you can tell us what makes the Hindus laugh.’’

Funnily enough, the truth manages to elude the comedian. But Albert Brooks would have got much closer to the truth had he stopped over in Mumbai and met the Shiv Sena chieftain Bal Thackeray, who started out life as a cartoonist but has got to that stage in life where others draw cartoons of him and caricature him in novels where Thackeray is transformed into characters with nicknames like Mainduck, which means frog in Hindi. Salman Rushdie did it in Moor’s Last Sigh, and his book got banned, which is not a bad thing for sales. But sometimes it doesn’t even take a book to stir his followers. The weekly magazine Outlook was targeted by Sainiks last Tuesday for featuring the Sena chieftain under the categorisation of ‘villains’ in an issue that took stock of India at sixty. It was the third time that copies of the magazine were being burnt by Shiv Sainiks.

About ten men burst into the weekly’s Mumbai office broke, among other things, a fax machine, a photocopier and burnt copies of the magazine. It is a Shiv Sena ritual and a way of getting their point of view through as well as an accomplishment, like climbing Everest and sticking a flag there. Outlook got a taste of it in its very first issue in October 1995 when the cover story suggested the majority of the people of the Srinagar valley wanted independence.

Shiv Sena found the article, based on a survey, offensive and anti-national. So they burned copies of the magazine. The second time the magazine was burnt by Shiv Sainiks, there was a debate on what triggered it off: the cartoon, a gentle caricature, drawn by a Muslim cartoonist, Irfan Hussain, who later was to die, stabbed over two dozen times, in mysterious circumstances, or the biting article, which recorded the chieftain’s slide from ‘terror to tamasha’.

This time the offending article was not a lengthy one full of anecdotes to illustrate the point or anything like that. It was just a little snippet, barely a hundred words. It was accompanied by a small caricature of the chieftain where Bal Thackeray wielded a paint brush dressed up as Hitler with a painted toothbrush moustache staring out of an empty photo-frame.The xenophobic German who sent Jews to their death in thousands holds a strange fascination for Bal Thackeray. He is on record as having told the Navakal: ‘‘Yes, I am a dictator. It is a Hitler that is needed in India today.’’ He was once asked in a television programme whether he wanted to be Hitler of Bombay? ‘‘Do not underestimate me,’’ he is reported to have retorted. ‘‘I am (the Hitler) of the whole of Maharashtra and want to be of whole of India.’’ The Hitler question was put to him twelve years ago in September 1996 by the Outlook magazine as well during an interview. ‘‘Once you’d expressed admiration for certain facets of Hitler.’’ ‘Comparison was inevitable,’ the interviewer prompted.

Thackaray said: ‘‘I have not sent anybody to the gas chamber. If I’d been like that, you wouldn’t have dared to come and interview me.’’Thackeray may not have sent thousands of people to the gas chamber to die, but here is an observation Justice Sri Krishna makes in his report which goes back to January 8, 1993, when a reporter Yuvraj Mohite was taken to Matoshri, Bal Thackeray’s residence, during the thick of the Mumbai riots and Mohite makes notes as he listens to the Shiv Sena chieftain: ‘‘From the conversation which could be heard by Mohite, which he has reproduced in extenso in his affidavit, it was clear that Thackeray was directing the Shiv Sainiks, shakha pramukhs and other activists of Shiv Sena to attack the Muslims, to ensure that they give tit-for-tat and ensure that ’’not a single landya would survive to give oral evidence‘‘.(Landya is a derogatory expression).

This is in effect what the magazine highlighted as having contributed to his being featured in its altogether too modest list in the rogues’ gallery – his Hitler fascination, his hatred for Muslims, his reducing of democratic politics to a ‘poor caricature.’ Thackeray did not even head the list; he made an appearance way down after Nathuram Ghodse and Sanjay Gandhi, jostling for space between Dawood Ibrahim and Mohammed Azharuddin.Coming back to Brooks, if he had met Thackeray, he would not have missed the humour lurking in the Shiv Sena supremo proudly letting it be known to the Mumbai chatterati that Michael Jackson used the toilet in Matoshri and Shiv Sena organised a chaddi morcha outside Dilip Kumar’s house for his support to Deepa Mehta’s film Fire. Think of it, a bunch of guys in their underwear, followers of a man who admires Hitler and Whacko Jacko (Would you let your kid sleep over in Neverland?) protesting outside the house of an Indian film icon who received the Nishan-e-Pakistan because he supports a film with a lesbian scene in it. He would also have squeezed some improvisational humour out of the fact that Bal Thackeray is on record as declaring he is ‘not against patriotic Muslims like Mohammed Azharuddin’ and both should land up in a weekly magazine’s random list of ‘villains’, side by side, like two peas in a pod.

The funny thing about drawing up villains’ lists is that somebody’s villain is always some one else’s hero. It is a humourless task, but it has its moments.The simple thing for Brooks to have done would have been to get Bush down to Iraq – unescorted – to find out what makes Muslims laugh. That would have been funny. But picture this: Albert Brooks (a Jew) interviewing Bal Thackeray, a self-confessed Hitler admirer on what makes him laugh? If you can picture that, you can picture Albert Brooks in say Iran, or better yet, in Saudi Arabia doing research on the elusive funny bone. In the film, when Brooks finally turns in his report, he falls 494 pages short. How many pages would he have got had he met Bal Thackeray?

Read the 123 fine print and rest easy

By V P Malik

Given the widely divergent strategic goals and policies followed by India and the US in the past, particularly on nuclear non-proliferation, the Indo-US Civil Nuclear Cooperation Agreement was never going to be as simple as one, two, three! The US, since the mid-sixties, has actively sought to deny proliferation of nuclear weapons/technology outside the P5 countries.

It was the principal promoter of the Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT). President Clinton revised the US nuclear strategy and doctrine for a more active role when new threshold states including India started emerging. The Defense Counter-proliferation Initiative of 1993 included eight functional areas: intelligence, counterforce capabilities, surveillance, inspections, passive defence, active defence, export control and counter terrorism.

President George Bush upgraded it to a ‘forward policy’ in 2002 by including pre-emptive or preventive use of force in handling proliferation and ‘taking anticipatory actions to defend’.For much of the Cold War period, India’s bilateral relations with the US had remained rancorous partly due to different perceptions of the world order but mostly due to US support to Pakistan. Some of those doubts continue to persist. When India blasted its way out of nuclear ambiguity on May 11,1998, causing a major setback to non-proliferation, the US reaction was immediate and severe.

Given this, the tight-rope walking involved in negotiating this deal can well be imagined, especially after Dr Manmohan Singh committed in Parliament that India’s strategic autonomy shall not be compromised in any way, and the US Congress passed the Hyde Act in December 2006. It is evident that the 22-page ‘The 123 Agreement’, named after Section 123 of the US Atomic Energy Act, 1954, worked out after two years of tough negotiations cannot and will not meet every aspiration of the two parties in perpetuity. But I believe that, despite some doubts in a toothcomb analysis, India’s strategic autonomy has not been compromised. One, the Agreement does not impinge on India’s military strategic programmes. Two, it does not deny us the right to carry out nuclear tests.

The tests will no doubt cost us a lot, but that ought to be weighed against (a) our ability to build strategic reserves, (b) the strategic circumstance requiring further tests, and (c) our determination in worldwide sanctions imposed after the Shakti nuclear tests in May 1998.Given India’s new stature, any sanctions even if imposed would be less effective. Three, the right to re-process the spent fuel is not denied. Again, there is some conditionality of ‘arrangements and procedures’. But even if there is a delay or denial in such ‘arrangements and procedures’, no one can walk away with the spent fuel from India without the government’s consent. Four, the Agreement does not grant or promise dual use technologies to India.

But such inputs cannot be stopped once other governments and multinational companies, after NSG approval, begin investing in India’s nuclear power generation plants. Overall, the shadow of the Hyde Act notwithstanding, the 123 Agreement concedes more to India than what many had expected. Given the nature of our polity, the debate on the 123 Agreement can be expected to carry on even after all pending steps are taken to make it operational. But the real difficulties in its implementation may arise in a crisis situation on which India and the US do not see eye to eye, or if there is a souring of bilateral relations.

What matters then is not so much the fine print, but the political will to look after national interests. There are many political leaders and parties who believe that by signing the 123 Agreement, India would become a US camp follower. This is not necessarily the case. In the present world order, a nation of India’s standing can and should play a non-aligned, independent role and cooperate or compete with other nations, depending upon its national interests. However this too depends largely on political will.

UNPA ready to face mid-term polls, says TDP

HYDERABAD: “Speak against US President George W Bush to woo Muslims and the Left,” this is the latest strategy of the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) which is trying hard to win the confidence of minorities and Communists for some time now.

The TDP is leaving no stone unturned to take every political opportunity from the latest controversy in the country arising out of the nuclear agreement reached by Delhi with US.TDP president N Chandrababu Naidu on Sunday convened an emergency meeting with the senior party colleagues to discuss the political situation in the country over the controversy on nuclear agreement.

He also telephoned to CPM general secretary Prakash Karat and volunteered full cooperation to the Left in and outside the Parliament on the nuclear agreement wrangle.Naidu reportedly told the party leaders that George Bush was responsible for political unrest in Muslim countries such as Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq. Bush imposed conditionalities on Muslim countries.

Bush even directed India not to purchase oil from Muslim countries. Now, Bush was trying to reign in supremacy on India through the nuclear agreement, Naidu reportedly explained.Naidu, who recently toured US and shared common dais with former US President Bill Clinton while he was in power, is taking pot-shots against the US President now and painting him as ‘anti-Muslim’. Analysts feel that this is nothing but to garner the votes of minorities in the next elections.

As the CPM too is strongly opposing the nuclear agreement, Naidu is trying to grab the opportunity to move closer to the Left. Naidu announced that the United National Progressive Alliance, in which TDP is a key constituent, was ready for elections whenever they are held.However, on the possibility of mid-term polls, there is a diverse opinion in the TDP. “We are ready for elections.

If elections are held now it would be an advantageous for TDP,” a party general secretary commented.“We went for early elections in 2004 which proved to be fatal for us. If the Congress goes for early elections the TDP would benefit from it,” opined another leader. But, some TDP leaders feel that early elections while in power or in Opposition would prove fatal for TDP.

EDITORIAL: PRIMETIME POLITICS

The medium is the political message

In the good old days when the Congress virtually ruled both the national political stage and the national television screen, there would have been really no need for an institution like Jai Hind TV, which the Congress president has just dedicated to the citizens of Kerala. Doordarshan would then have done the job of projecting Congress news, views and values to the farthest reaches of the land. Alas, no longer.

Even tiny Kerala has a dozen private television stations. Therefore the state must find space for the 13th. One that the Kerala unit Congress president, Ramesh Chennithala, characterises as “independent” but which nevertheless is permitted to be partial to the party. As they say, independent is as independent does.So Kerala is now all set to follow Tamil Nadu in the joys of political television or televised politics, as the case may be. It now has two private channels to project its two dominant parties: Kairali TV for the Left Front and Jai Hind TV for the Congress Front, each with its own committed film superstars — Mammooty emotes for the former, Mohanlal for the latter. But Tamil Nadu is still a hard act to follow. Once it had just Jaya TV and Sun TV.

This made the PMK feel somewhat lonely, so Makkal TV came about. Still later the political sun set on Sun TV and Tamil Nadu’s ruling family is now set to rise on yet another television channel, named aptly enough as Kalaignar TV. Imagine if this trend were to cross the Vindhyas, and we get Lalu TV taking on Nitish TV or Uma Bharati TV taking on Shivraj Singh Chauhan TV, or Balasaheb Thackeray TV beaming down on Deshmukh TV? We should really have no problems with all of this. Let a hundred television channels blare forth if they will. But spare a thought for the poor voter left with sore eyes and addled brains.Going back to Jai Hind TV, wouldn’t it have been more apt to have named it Jai Congress TV instead?

EDITORIAL: Sangh Poori Bahar

But who will give direction and friends back?

The RSS has decided on a “phased withdrawal” from the BJP’s day-to-day affairs, it will “micro-manage” the party no more. The BJP is to be given back to the BJP. Whatever the reason for the RSS’s decision — be it the pragmatic realisation that uncontrolled intimacies and blurring lines between political party and “cultural organisation” were helping neither, or belated acknowledgement of the autonomy of a political party — the prospect of India’s main opposition party emerging from the shadow of an unaccountable organisation is good news. For the BJP, however, it may still not be good enough.

The terms of the withdrawal are likely to be controversial and contested. A BJP that has lost a sense of self and an RSS that has become accustomed to bending the BJP to its will — can the two extricate themselves from the tangled mess and tell the tale? Will the RSS hand back the reins, as it has promised it will, to the BJP’s Big Two? Not so long ago it had urged a generation shift, declaring Vajpayee and Advani to be too old to lead. But even if it were possible to execute such a transfer of power, many of the BJP’s problems remain.

Can Vajpayee and Advani put the genie of factionalism back into the bottle? Can they revive the party’s somnolent second rung, or invent a new one? Too many of the BJP’s state units are convulsed by bitter infighting. Be it Rajasthan, UP, Madhya Pradesh or most notably Gujarat, there is no sense of common purpose in the party any more. The fact also is that none of the once-celebrated second generation leaders in the BJP has shown any signs of being able to rally the whole party behind him or her.

The BJP must ask itself why its allies are distancing themselves from it, one by one. The TDP now considers it an electoral liability; Jayalalithaa prefers the inchoate Third Front; the INLD and AGP have opted out of the NDA; the Trinamool wavers, so does the Shiv Sena and JD(S). It must also wonder why it has been so diminished in the bastions of UP that it straddled so confidently so recently. It must ponder its own bizarre backtracking on policies it advocated vigorously when in power, be it SEZs or the nuclear deal. The BJP has problems, other than the RSS.

Where Hitler meets Thackeray

By V Sudarshan

A cople of years ago stand up comedian Albert Brooks made a film he called ‘Looking for humor in the Muslim world.’ It was almost entirely shot in India. In the film Albert Brooks, playing himself – a Jewish stand up comedian – is sent on a fact-finding mission, based on the premise that even though George Bush has a great sense of humour, his administration had difficulty understanding very many groups of people: Chinese, Africans, but mainly the Muslims. The American president wanted to develop a secret weapon that would work on the sense of humour in the Muslim world. But what made them laugh? It was a mystery to Bush. It is for Brooks to find out what makes Muslims laugh and he has to produce a 500-page report based on the findings. Brooks wonders: Why India, a Hindu country? The man heading the committee that sends him on the mission responds: ‘‘There are 150 million Muslims there. Is that enough for you? Anyway we’ll consider the job half done if you can tell us what makes the Hindus laugh.’’

Funnily enough, the truth manages to elude the comedian. But Albert Brooks would have got much closer to the truth had he stopped over in Mumbai and met the Shiv Sena chieftain Bal Thackeray, who started out life as a cartoonist but has got to that stage in life where others draw cartoons of him and caricature him in novels where Thackeray is transformed into characters with nicknames like Mainduck, which means frog in Hindi. Salman Rushdie did it in Moor’s Last Sigh, and his book got banned, which is not a bad thing for sales. But sometimes it doesn’t even take a book to stir his followers. The weekly magazine Outlook was targeted by Sainiks last Tuesday for featuring the Sena chieftain under the categorisation of ‘villains’ in an issue that took stock of India at sixty. It was the third time that copies of the magazine were being burnt by Shiv Sainiks.

About ten men burst into the weekly’s Mumbai office broke, among other things, a fax machine, a photocopier and burnt copies of the magazine. It is a Shiv Sena ritual and a way of getting their point of view through as well as an accomplishment, like climbing Everest and sticking a flag there. Outlook got a taste of it in its very first issue in October 1995 when the cover story suggested the majority of the people of the Srinagar valley wanted independence.

Shiv Sena found the article, based on a survey, offensive and anti-national. So they burned copies of the magazine. The second time the magazine was burnt by Shiv Sainiks, there was a debate on what triggered it off: the cartoon, a gentle caricature, drawn by a Muslim cartoonist, Irfan Hussain, who later was to die, stabbed over two dozen times, in mysterious circumstances, or the biting article, which recorded the chieftain’s slide from ‘terror to tamasha’.

This time the offending article was not a lengthy one full of anecdotes to illustrate the point or anything like that. It was just a little snippet, barely a hundred words. It was accompanied by a small caricature of the chieftain where Bal Thackeray wielded a paint brush dressed up as Hitler with a painted toothbrush moustache staring out of an empty photo-frame.The xenophobic German who sent Jews to their death in thousands holds a strange fascination for Bal Thackeray. He is on record as having told the Navakal: ‘‘Yes, I am a dictator. It is a Hitler that is needed in India today.’’ He was once asked in a television programme whether he wanted to be Hitler of Bombay? ‘‘Do not underestimate me,’’ he is reported to have retorted. ‘‘I am (the Hitler) of the whole of Maharashtra and want to be of whole of India.’’ The Hitler question was put to him twelve years ago in September 1996 by the Outlook magazine as well during an interview. ‘‘Once you’d expressed admiration for certain facets of Hitler.’’ ‘Comparison was inevitable,’ the interviewer prompted.

Thackaray said: ‘‘I have not sent anybody to the gas chamber. If I’d been like that, you wouldn’t have dared to come and interview me.’’Thackeray may not have sent thousands of people to the gas chamber to die, but here is an observation Justice Sri Krishna makes in his report which goes back to January 8, 1993, when a reporter Yuvraj Mohite was taken to Matoshri, Bal Thackeray’s residence, during the thick of the Mumbai riots and Mohite makes notes as he listens to the Shiv Sena chieftain: ‘‘From the conversation which could be heard by Mohite, which he has reproduced in extenso in his affidavit, it was clear that Thackeray was directing the Shiv Sainiks, shakha pramukhs and other activists of Shiv Sena to attack the Muslims, to ensure that they give tit-for-tat and ensure that ’’not a single landya would survive to give oral evidence‘‘.(Landya is a derogatory expression).

This is in effect what the magazine highlighted as having contributed to his being featured in its altogether too modest list in the rogues’ gallery – his Hitler fascination, his hatred for Muslims, his reducing of democratic politics to a ‘poor caricature.’ Thackeray did not even head the list; he made an appearance way down after Nathuram Ghodse and Sanjay Gandhi, jostling for space between Dawood Ibrahim and Mohammed Azharuddin.Coming back to Brooks, if he had met Thackeray, he would not have missed the humour lurking in the Shiv Sena supremo proudly letting it be known to the Mumbai chatterati that Michael Jackson used the toilet in Matoshri and Shiv Sena organised a chaddi morcha outside Dilip Kumar’s house for his support to Deepa Mehta’s film Fire. Think of it, a bunch of guys in their underwear, followers of a man who admires Hitler and Whacko Jacko (Would you let your kid sleep over in Neverland?) protesting outside the house of an Indian film icon who received the Nishan-e-Pakistan because he supports a film with a lesbian scene in it. He would also have squeezed some improvisational humour out of the fact that Bal Thackeray is on record as declaring he is ‘not against patriotic Muslims like Mohammed Azharuddin’ and both should land up in a weekly magazine’s random list of ‘villains’, side by side, like two peas in a pod.

The funny thing about drawing up villains’ lists is that somebody’s villain is always some one else’s hero. It is a humourless task, but it has its moments.The simple thing for Brooks to have done would have been to get Bush down to Iraq – unescorted – to find out what makes Muslims laugh. That would have been funny. But picture this: Albert Brooks (a Jew) interviewing Bal Thackeray, a self-confessed Hitler admirer on what makes him laugh? If you can picture that, you can picture Albert Brooks in say Iran, or better yet, in Saudi Arabia doing research on the elusive funny bone. In the film, when Brooks finally turns in his report, he falls 494 pages short. How many pages would he have got had he met Bal Thackeray?

Read the 123 fine print and rest easy

By V P Malik

Given the widely divergent strategic goals and policies followed by India and the US in the past, particularly on nuclear non-proliferation, the Indo-US Civil Nuclear Cooperation Agreement was never going to be as simple as one, two, three! The US, since the mid-sixties, has actively sought to deny proliferation of nuclear weapons/technology outside the P5 countries.

It was the principal promoter of the Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT). President Clinton revised the US nuclear strategy and doctrine for a more active role when new threshold states including India started emerging. The Defense Counter-proliferation Initiative of 1993 included eight functional areas: intelligence, counterforce capabilities, surveillance, inspections, passive defence, active defence, export control and counter terrorism.

President George Bush upgraded it to a ‘forward policy’ in 2002 by including pre-emptive or preventive use of force in handling proliferation and ‘taking anticipatory actions to defend’.For much of the Cold War period, India’s bilateral relations with the US had remained rancorous partly due to different perceptions of the world order but mostly due to US support to Pakistan. Some of those doubts continue to persist. When India blasted its way out of nuclear ambiguity on May 11,1998, causing a major setback to non-proliferation, the US reaction was immediate and severe.

Given this, the tight-rope walking involved in negotiating this deal can well be imagined, especially after Dr Manmohan Singh committed in Parliament that India’s strategic autonomy shall not be compromised in any way, and the US Congress passed the Hyde Act in December 2006. It is evident that the 22-page ‘The 123 Agreement’, named after Section 123 of the US Atomic Energy Act, 1954, worked out after two years of tough negotiations cannot and will not meet every aspiration of the two parties in perpetuity. But I believe that, despite some doubts in a toothcomb analysis, India’s strategic autonomy has not been compromised. One, the Agreement does not impinge on India’s military strategic programmes. Two, it does not deny us the right to carry out nuclear tests.

The tests will no doubt cost us a lot, but that ought to be weighed against (a) our ability to build strategic reserves, (b) the strategic circumstance requiring further tests, and (c) our determination in worldwide sanctions imposed after the Shakti nuclear tests in May 1998.Given India’s new stature, any sanctions even if imposed would be less effective. Three, the right to re-process the spent fuel is not denied. Again, there is some conditionality of ‘arrangements and procedures’. But even if there is a delay or denial in such ‘arrangements and procedures’, no one can walk away with the spent fuel from India without the government’s consent. Four, the Agreement does not grant or promise dual use technologies to India.

But such inputs cannot be stopped once other governments and multinational companies, after NSG approval, begin investing in India’s nuclear power generation plants. Overall, the shadow of the Hyde Act notwithstanding, the 123 Agreement concedes more to India than what many had expected. Given the nature of our polity, the debate on the 123 Agreement can be expected to carry on even after all pending steps are taken to make it operational. But the real difficulties in its implementation may arise in a crisis situation on which India and the US do not see eye to eye, or if there is a souring of bilateral relations.

What matters then is not so much the fine print, but the political will to look after national interests. There are many political leaders and parties who believe that by signing the 123 Agreement, India would become a US camp follower. This is not necessarily the case. In the present world order, a nation of India’s standing can and should play a non-aligned, independent role and cooperate or compete with other nations, depending upon its national interests. However this too depends largely on political will.