By Stephen Lendman
14 January, 2008
Countercurrents.org
Benazir Bhutto led the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) as "chairperson for life" until her death. She was the privileged daughter of former Pakistan President and Prime Minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who was hanged in 1979 at the likely behest of Washington and replaced by military dictator General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq. He later outlived his usefulness and died in a "mysterious" plane crash CIA may have arranged that allowed Bhutto to become Prime Minister in 1988.
She sought the post to avenge her father's death and twice held it as the first ever woman PM of an Islamic state - first from 1988 - 1990, then again from 1993 - 1996. In the end, she was too clever by half and it cost her. She lost out thinking she'd cut a binding deal with the Bush administration to return her to power a third time as Pervez Musharraf's number two and fig leaf democratic face in the scheduled January 8 elections, now postponed. On November 6, she may have been right when she returned from self-imposed exile. Like now, the country was in turmoil, and Washington arranged a power-sharing deal (so it seemed) to restore stability in the wake of this series of events:
-- Musharraf suspended Pakistan's Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry in March, falsely accused him of "misconduct and misuse of authority," and used that excuse to remove a key official likely to block his plan for another five year term as President while illegally remaining chief of army staff (COAS) where the real power lies.
-- The response was outrage from opposition parties, lawyers organizations and human rights groups. They called the action unconstitutional and publicly rallied against it.
-- On October 6, Musharraf held a bogus election like all others in a country where democracy is a joke. It was stage-managed by the military, clearly unconstitutional, and Musharraf won all but five parliamentary votes and swept the Provincial Assembly balloting.
-- Afterwards, Pakistan's Supreme Court said no winner could be declared until it ruled if Musharraf could run for office in his joint COAS capacity. Constitutionally, he can't, protests erupted, the country has been in turmoil since, and Musharraf lost all credibility;
-- That was Bhutto's chance to return, again serve in the post she twice before held, and she thought her Washington allies arranged it. Maybe yes or maybe not. It didn't matter that she was being used - to be a democratic face and fig leaf adjunct to Musharraf's dictatorship, but whatever was then clearly changed by December 27 without Bhutto's knowledge. Now she's gone, and Musharraf nominally transferred his army chief post to close ally General Ashfaq Kayani last November. He also lifted a six week long state of emergency in mid-December ahead of the scheduled January 8 elections, now postponed after Bhutto's assassination until February 18 as of this writing.
Today, she's bigger in death than life, spoken of reverentially as a populist, and her 19 year old son, Bilawal (in school at Oxford), now heads the PPP as its figurehead leader and third generation family dynasty standard-bearer with his father, Asif Zardari, co-party chairman and de facto chief. More on him below.
Who Was Benazir Bhutto and Why Is She Important
Who was this woman, why the worldwide attention, and why another article with so many written and more likely coming? Bhutto was an aristocrat, privileged in every respect, and raised in opulence as the Harvard and Oxford-educated daughter of a wealthy landowning father who founded Pakistan's main opposition party (Pakistan Peoples Party - PPP) that Bhutto headed after his death.
While in office, she was no democrat in a military-run nation since its artificial creation in 1947. Elections, when held, are rigged, and the army runs things for Washington as a vassal state in a nation called a military with a country, not a country with a military. Its Army strength is 550,000, its Air Force and Navy 70,000, and 510,000 reservists back them with plenty of US-supplied weapons for the "Global War on Terrorism."
Today, FBI agents freely roam the streets, the Pentagon operates out of Pakistan military bases, and it has de facto control of its air space as part of the Bush administration's permanent state of war "that will not end in our lifetime." Pakistan is a client state, but what choice does it have. Post-9/11, Deputy Secretary of State Armitage warned Musharraf to comply or be declared a hostile power and "bombed back to the stone age." He got the message and a multi-billion dollar reward as well.
Bhutto knows the game, too, and the New York Times explained that she "always understood Washington more than Washington understood her" in a feature December 30 article called "How Bhutto Won Washington." Her relationship began in the spring of 1984 on her first "important trip" to the Capitol. At the time, she tried to persuade the Reagan administration it would be better served with her in power, but to do it she had to overcome her father's anti-western reputation. With considerable help she succeeded by assuring congressional members she was on board and supported Washington's proxy war on the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.
Faults aside, she had her attributes, and The Times called her "completely charming," very beautiful, and a woman "who could flatter the senators," understand their concerns, and better serve US interests than the man who hanged her father, General Zia-ul-Haq. At the same time, she began working with the Democratic National Committee's Executive Director, Mark Siegel, who later lobbied for her government when she was Prime Minister. Early on, he walked her through the halls of Congress, helped her develop relationships, and made her understand that to get along she had to go along.
She caught on fast, and it made her Prime Minister in December, 1988 after she ran for the post, won a plurality but not a majority, and got Reagan administration officials to arrange with Pakistan's acting President to have her form a government. According to a Washington insider, it was the "direct result of her networking, of her being able to persuade the Washington establishment, the foreign policy community, the press, the think tanks, that she was a democrat," a moderate, and that she backed the US Afghanistan agenda against the Soviets. Public rhetoric aside, she was on board ever since, but she paid with her life by not understanding how Washington operates: like other rogue states - using leaders and aspiring ones, then discarding them.
In the end, it didn't matter that she twice survived dismissal from office on corruption charges or that she managed to co-exist with her country's military and intelligence service (ISI) that deeply mistrusted her. Until her luck ran out, she maintained ties to Washington and key members of the press. She politicked well and "understood the nature of political life, which is to stay in touch with (key) people whether you're in or out of office" and let them know you back them.
Like others of her stature, she also relied on a PR firm to arrange meetings with the powerful and had plenty of resources to do it. She "kept up her networking," but she paid with her life. She tried to convince Washington that Musharraf's "war on terrorism" failed, she could do it better as a loyal ally, and she would eliminate extremist elements (meaning the Taliban and Al-Queda) by a determined effort to maintain pressure.
It sounded good but was risky and dangerous. Pakistan's army opposes it, especially in the ranks; a stepped-up effort assures a huge public outcry; disrupting the Taliban benefits India; and trying and failing might embolden their forces as the US occupation learned in Afghanistan. In the end, Washington and Pakistan's ISI may have concluded Bhutto was more a liability than an asset and had to go. Things came to a head on December 27, she's now a martyr, and larger than life dead than alive.
It wasn't that way as Prime Minister, however, when her tenure was marked by nepotism, opportunism, scheming, corruption, poor governance and selling out to the West. Her early popularity faded, especially when word got out about her businessman husband's dealings. Asif Zardari was known as "Mr. Ten Percent" (by some as "Mr. Thirty Percent") because he demanded a cut from deals as the Prime Minister's spouse and in some cases wanted more.
He was also reportedly into drugs trafficking and was investigated for it. With his wife in power, he amassed billions including what he stole in public funds that was even excessive by Pakistan standards and enough to get the country's President to sack Bhutto after 20 months in office. Whether personally culpable or not didn't matter. As Prime Minister, she made her husband a cabinet minister, gave him free rein to dispense favors in return for kick-backs, had to know about them, there was no evidence she objected, and she enjoyed the riches in office and thereafter.
In spite of it, Bhutto got a second chance. She returned as Prime Minister in 1993 for another three years, but was again dispatched on even greater corruption and incompetence charges than in her first term - this time by President Farooq Leghari, a member of the PPP and someone she thought was an ally. He certainly had cause as the amount stolen earlier was prologue for the fortune she and her husband (as Minister of Investment) amassed in her second term.
It was enough to get Transparency International, an independent watchdog group, to name Pakistan the second most corrupt country in the world in 1996 (Bhutto's last year in office). It also got her convicted in Switzerland of money laundering and bribe-taking and made her a fugitive with charges pending in Spain, Britain and her native Pakistan. That was until Musharaff signed a US-brokered "reconciliation ordinance," absolved her of all outstanding offenses, and allowed her to run for Prime Minister a third time as part of a power-sharing deal with her as number two.
Bhutto's earlier tenure had another notable feature as well. It was when Pakistan's military and ISI established the Taliban with covert CIA help. The link still exists, and at a September, 2006 Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, General James Jones, former NATO Supreme Commander (who oversaw US-NATO Afghanistan operations), testified that it was "generally accepted" that Taliban leaders operated out Quetta, Pakistan, the capital of Baluchistan province bordering Afghanistan and Iran.
Musharraf and other Pakistani officials deny it, but there's no hiding the facts or that nothing of consequence happens in Pakistan without Washington's knowledge and/or consent. It's also no secret that Pakistan's ISI is a CIA branch, and their regional activities are closely linked. Bhutto was on board, but what choice did she have.
All along, she was a daughter of privilege, acted like one, and enjoyed the good life the way billions allow. Today, the major media lionize her, but omit her dark side: as Prime Minister, she lusted for power, was arrogant and contemptuous, ignored the poor and Pakistani women, allowed outrageous laws to be enforced, gave the Army free reign including over nuclear weapons, and considered Pakistan her personal fiefdom. Her home was a $50 million mansion on 110 acres, and she ruled like a feudal overlord. The family still owns a 350 acre UK estate complete with helipad and polo pony stables, a mansion in Dubai, two Texas properties, six in Florida, more homes in France and large bank accounts strategically stashed around the world, including in the US and France.
From the time of her father's death to her own, Bhutto had close ties to Washington, the CIA, Pakistan's military, its ISI, as well as to the Taliban (established in her second term), "militant Islam" and Big Oil interests. She was a servant of power and pocketed billions for her efforts. In the end, she lost out and paid with her life on December 27.
Who Killed Bhutto and Why
Bhutto's now dead, shot in the back of the head by one or more assassins at close range, plus the effects of a suicide bombing that killed two dozen or more and wounded many others tightly packed around her. It happened in Rawalpindi, "no ordinary city" as Michel Chossudovsky explains. It's the home of Pakistan's military, its CIA-linked ISI, and is the country's de facto seat of power. Chossudovsky adds: "Ironically Bhutto was assassinated in an urban area tightly controlled and guarded by the military police and the country's elite forces."
Rawalpindi and the country's capital, Islamabad, are sister cities, nine miles apart. They swarm with intelligence operatives including from CIA, and Chussodovsky stresses that Bhutto's assassination "was (no) haphazard event." Blaming Al-Queda misses the point, but that's how these schemes work. They're also clearer when convincing video is broadcast as UK's Channel 4 did on December 30. It debunked the official story and exposed Musharraf as a liar - that Bhutto died from a fractured skull "when she was thrown by the force of the (explosion's) shock wave (and) one of the levers of (her car's) sunroof hit her."
The video contradicts this. It shows a clean-shaven man in sunglasses watching close by with a concealed gun and the suspected suicide bomber behind him dressed in white. The gunman then approaches Bhutto's car and at point blank range fires three shots. Immediately after, the suicide bomber detonates his device, killing and wounding dozens nearby.
The question then is - not who killed her, but who ordered her killed and who profits from it? Musharraf quickly named the usual suspect - Al-Queda but ignored what William Engdahl observed in his January 4 Global Research article called "Bhutto's Assassination: Who Gains?" He notes how well protected political leaders are so it's no simple task killing them. "It requires agencies of professional intelligence training to insure the job is done" right, and no one can reveal who ordered it or the motive.
Engdahl also states that naming Al-Queda serves Musharraf and Washington. It increases public fear, revs up the "war on terror," and provides justification for it to continue. It also reinforces the Al-Queda myth as well as "enemy number one" bin Laden, and ignores the evidence that the CIA created both in the 1980s for the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan. It's just as silent on the possibility bin Laden is dead, killed (as Bhutto told David Frost last fall) by Omar Sheikh whom the London Sunday Times called "no ordinary terrorist but a man who has connections that reach high into Pakistan's military and intelligence elite and into the innermost circles" of bin Laden and Al-Queda.
If true, a dead bin Laden disrupts Washington's national security doctrine that needs enemies to scare the public, eliminates "enemy number one" as the main one, and exposes strategically released bin Laden tapes as made-in-Washington frauds. Today, we're told that bin Laden-led Islamic terrorists endanger the West, but at the same time we use them for imperial gain as we did against the Soviets, in the Balkans and now do in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and elsewhere. If Al-Queda operatives killed Bhutto, it means Pakistan's ISI and CIA were involved, and what's more likely than that. Forget a lone gunman theory, a lose cannon terrorist or a sole anti-Bhutto assassin. Consider "Cui bono," examine the evidence, and it points to Washington and Islamabad.
Today in Pakistan, intrigue abounds, and the country is destabilized as Michel Chossudovsky observes in his December 30 Global Research article called "The Destabilization of Pakistan." Assassinating Bhutto contributes to it, and Chossudovsky sees a US-sponsored "regime change" ahead. Musharraf is so weak and discredited "continuity under military rule is no long the main thrust of US foreign policy." Musharraf's regime "cannot prevail," and Washington's scheme is "to actively promote the political fragmentation and balkanization of Pakistan as a nation."
From it, a new political leadership will emerge that will be "compliant," have "no commitment to (Pakistan's) national interest," and will be subservient to "US imperial interests, while concurrently....weakening....the central government (and fracturing) Pakistan's fragile federal structure."
It makes perfect sense as part of Washington's broader Middle East-Central Asia agenda. Pakistan is a key frontline state, a "geopolitical hub," with a central role to play in the "Global War on Terrorism." It includes "balkanizing" the country Yugoslavia-style the way it's planned for Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran - a simple divide and conquer strategy. Chossudovsky adds: "Continuity, characterized by the dominant role of the Pakistani military and intelligence (that worked up to now) has been scrapped in favor of political breakup and balkanization." The scheme is to foment "social, ethnic and factional divisions and political fragmentation, including the territorial breakup" of the country.
It's a common US strategy with covert intelligence support, and consider The New York Times article on January 6 called "US Considers New Covert Push Within Pakistan" to exploit Bhutto's death. It states that senior national security advisers (including Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice and Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Michael Mullen) may "expand the authority of the CIA and the military to conduct far more aggressive covert operations in the tribal areas of Pakistan" against Al-Queda and the Taliban to counteract their efforts and "destabilize the Pakistani government."
The article states that Musharraf and the military are on board, gives the usual boiler plate reasons, but omits what's really at stake even as it admits Musharraf is unpopular and a US intervention could "prompt a powerful popular backlash against" both countries.
Chussodovsky fills in the blanks and explains that US strategy aims to trigger "ethnic and religious strife," abet and finance "secessionist movements while also weakening" Musharraf's government. "The broader objective is to fracture the Nation State....redraw the borders of Iraq, Iran, Syria, Afghanistan and Pakistan" and replace Musharraf in the process. He's unpopular, damaged goods and has to go.
Bhutto was an unwitting part of the scheme but not the way she planned. She thought Washington needed here, and she was right - not as Prime Minister but as a martyr to destabilize the country and break it up if the plan works. It may as internal secessionist elements are strong, especially in energy rich (mostly gas) Balochistan province, and "indications" are they're supported by "Britain and the US." The idea is a "Greater Balochistan" by integrating Baloch areas with those in Iran and southern Afghanistan.
Chossudovsky explains that it was not "accidental that the 2005 National Intelligence Council-CIA report predicted a 'Yugoslav-like fate' for Pakistan" through internally and externally manufactured "economic mismanagment." Remember also that the country split before in 1971 when East Pakistan became Bangladesh following months of civil war and against India that took a million or more lives. Pakistanis may face that prospect again as US plans unfold.
Future Outlook Remains Uncertain
Big questions remain, and key ones are will breakup plans work, who'll emerge with enough popular support to lead it, and will the public go along. They've got no incentive to do it once anger over Bhutto's death subsides, and recent polling data show overwhelming public opposition to US or other foreign intervention that's very much part of the scheme. In the end, their views don't count, and it may happen anyway through political intrigue and Washington-led brute force.
Reports prior to Bhutto's assassination point that way. They suggest US Special and other forces already operate in Pakistan, and head of US Special Operations Command, Admiral Eric Olson, arranged with Musharraf and Pakistan's military last summer and fall to substantially increase their numbers early this year. Involved as well is what The New York Times reported in November that the "US Hopes to Use Pakistani Tribes Against Al Queda" in the country's "frontier areas."
The scheme is similar to the effort in Iraq's al-Anbar province with bribes and weapons to seal a deal apparently now finalized. US Central Command Commander Admiral William Fallon alluded to it in a recent Voice of America interview by saying we're ready to provide "training, assistance and mentoring based on our experience with insurgencies," but he left out the bribing part that's part of these deals.
Where this will lead is speculation, but consider a feature Wall Street Journal January 8 article. It's headlined "Bhutto Killing Roils Province, Spurring Calls to Quit Pakistan" and calls Bhutto's native Sindh province (second largest of Pakistan's four provinces) the "Latest Fault Line In a Fractured Country; Like Occupied Territory."
Mourners filed past Bhutto's grave chanting "We don't want Pakistan," and in the wake of her death "Sindh has been swept by nationalist rage." Many in the province are "calling for outright independence," and support for separation has grown among rank and file PPP members. There's even talk of an "armed insurgency" as anger is directed against neighboring Punjab, the largest province, and home of the military, ISI and government.
The Journal quotes Qadir Magsi, head of the nationalist Sindh Taraqi Passand movement saying...."Bhutto was the last hope (for unity). Now this Pakistan must be broken up." The article continues saying what's happening in Sindh is already in play in the Northwest Frontier province where central government authority withered in recent years. In addition, Pakistan's Army has been embroiled in Baluchistan's insurgency for the past few years adding to overall instability. The theme of the Journal article is that calls for unity are falling on deaf ears, and one PPP veteran sums it up: "What we need is separation."
That suits Bush administration officials fine, they're likely stoking it, and one thing is clear. US forces are in the region to stay, and Washington under any administration (Democrat or Republican) intends to dominate this vital part of the world with its vast energy reserves. The strategy appears similar to the divide and conquer one in Yugoslavia. There it worked, but the Middle East and Central Asia aren't so simple. Stay tuned as events will likely accelerate, the media will highlight them, and it looks like stepped up conflict (and its fallout) is part of the plan.
Tuesday, 15 January 2008
Monday, 14 January 2008
Attack polluting policies, not the Nano
13 Jan 2008, 0135 hrs IST,Swaminathan S Anklesaria Aiyar
SMS NEWS to 58888 for latest updates
RK Pachauri, head of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change, is getting nightmares because of the Nano, Tata's Rs 1 lakh car. Sunita Narain of the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) says that it isn't the Nano by itself but cars overall that give her nightmares. The villains in my nightmares are neither the Nano nor cars overall, but stupid government policies that subsidise and encourage pollution, adulteration and congestion.
Sanctimonious greens call the Nano disastrous because of its affordability— millions more will now clog roads and consume more fossil fuel. This is elitism parading as virtue. Elite greens own cars, but cannot stand the poorer masses becoming mobile, since the consequent congestion will eat into the time of the elite!
More logical would be a protest against big cars that use more space and fuel, or highly polluting old cars. Instead, green hypocrites aim at a new car with the lowest cost, best mileage and least emissions.
The Nano will not burden us with too many cars. India has very few cars per person by world standards. London and New York have ultra-high car densities, yet have clearer air than Delhi. Our problem is too many bad policies, not too many cars.
We subsidise vehicles on a gargantuan scale invisible to layfolk. Roads and flyovers cost crores to build and maintain, yet road use is free (save on a few toll roads). Traffic police and lights are costly, yet are provided free. These invisible subsidies starve cities of funds to expand roads and public transport.
Land in cities now costs lakhs per square metre. Yet parking is free in the suburbs, and costs just Rs 10/day in city centres. A single parking space of 23 sq m occupies land worth Rs 40 lakh. A car occupies more space than an office desk, yet the desk space pays full commercial rent while parking space costs just Rs 10 per day.
Daily parking charges range from $15 (Rs 600) in Washington DC to $30 (Rs 1,200) in New York. CSE launched a sensible campaign to raise parking fees in Delhi to Rs 120, but was foiled. So, parking space now exceeds green space, a scathing comment on priorities.
The world price of oil has risen tenfold to almost $100/barrel, but Indian prices have barely doubled. Left Front politicians, who once wanted to soak the rich, now want to subsidise them. Under-recoveries of oil companies' total may be Rs 80,000 crore, far more than the cost of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and the employment guarantee scheme put together. We sanctimoniously lecture rich countries to reduce their greenhouse emissions, yet subsidise our own.
Diesel is subsidised to be cheaper than petrol. So, Indian car producers produce the highest proportion of diesel cars in the world. Diesel fumes contain deadly suspended particles, P-10 and P-2.5. This subsidy kills.
So does kerosene provided at throwaway prices, ostensibly to benefit poor villagers. One-third of all kerosene is used to adulterate petrol and diesel. That causes horrendous pollution even in the greenest
of cars.
What's the way forward? We must abolish subsidies and raise taxes on vehicles and fuels to reflect their full social cost. The biggest but least visible subsidy is for parking, and we should start there.
Many car owners in the West take public transport to work since parking space downtown is costly and scarce. We should levy parking fees on an hourly, not daily basis. Rs 10/hour could be a starting point in the metros.
In parts of Tokyo, you cannot own a car unless you own a private parking space. This is too extreme for India, but indicates the future path. If we charge owners the full social cost of parking, people will buy smaller and perhaps fewer vehicles, and fewer still will take them to work. That will slash congestion and pollution.
Cities should levy stiff annual taxes on vehicles, not a one-time tax as in Delhi, and use the revenue to constantly expand public transport and roads. This will create economic synergy: private transport will finance public transport. London and New York have high-density public transport as well as high car density.
Apart from underground rail, cities need elevated roads to ease congestion and pollution. Lata Mangeshkar killed a proposal for an elevated road near her Mumbai flat saying pollution at her flat's level would affect her throat. She did not care that the throats of poor people living on the pavements were far worse affected by fumes, and might get relief if some fumes were diverted to a higher level. What elitism!
Next, some medicine that will be really bitter, politically. The excise duty on all automotive vehicles should be raised to reflect their social costs. Fuel subsidies should be abolished. Price differentials between petrol, diesel and kerosene should be removed, ending incentives for adulteration. Diesel cars should bear a heavy additional cess to finance improved healthcare for those affected by their emission of harmful particulate matter.
That is a long, politically difficult agenda. Only part of it will ever be achieved. Yet that is the way to go, rather than agitate against the Nano.
SMS NEWS to 58888 for latest updates
RK Pachauri, head of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change, is getting nightmares because of the Nano, Tata's Rs 1 lakh car. Sunita Narain of the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) says that it isn't the Nano by itself but cars overall that give her nightmares. The villains in my nightmares are neither the Nano nor cars overall, but stupid government policies that subsidise and encourage pollution, adulteration and congestion.
Sanctimonious greens call the Nano disastrous because of its affordability— millions more will now clog roads and consume more fossil fuel. This is elitism parading as virtue. Elite greens own cars, but cannot stand the poorer masses becoming mobile, since the consequent congestion will eat into the time of the elite!
More logical would be a protest against big cars that use more space and fuel, or highly polluting old cars. Instead, green hypocrites aim at a new car with the lowest cost, best mileage and least emissions.
The Nano will not burden us with too many cars. India has very few cars per person by world standards. London and New York have ultra-high car densities, yet have clearer air than Delhi. Our problem is too many bad policies, not too many cars.
We subsidise vehicles on a gargantuan scale invisible to layfolk. Roads and flyovers cost crores to build and maintain, yet road use is free (save on a few toll roads). Traffic police and lights are costly, yet are provided free. These invisible subsidies starve cities of funds to expand roads and public transport.
Land in cities now costs lakhs per square metre. Yet parking is free in the suburbs, and costs just Rs 10/day in city centres. A single parking space of 23 sq m occupies land worth Rs 40 lakh. A car occupies more space than an office desk, yet the desk space pays full commercial rent while parking space costs just Rs 10 per day.
Daily parking charges range from $15 (Rs 600) in Washington DC to $30 (Rs 1,200) in New York. CSE launched a sensible campaign to raise parking fees in Delhi to Rs 120, but was foiled. So, parking space now exceeds green space, a scathing comment on priorities.
The world price of oil has risen tenfold to almost $100/barrel, but Indian prices have barely doubled. Left Front politicians, who once wanted to soak the rich, now want to subsidise them. Under-recoveries of oil companies' total may be Rs 80,000 crore, far more than the cost of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and the employment guarantee scheme put together. We sanctimoniously lecture rich countries to reduce their greenhouse emissions, yet subsidise our own.
Diesel is subsidised to be cheaper than petrol. So, Indian car producers produce the highest proportion of diesel cars in the world. Diesel fumes contain deadly suspended particles, P-10 and P-2.5. This subsidy kills.
So does kerosene provided at throwaway prices, ostensibly to benefit poor villagers. One-third of all kerosene is used to adulterate petrol and diesel. That causes horrendous pollution even in the greenest
of cars.
What's the way forward? We must abolish subsidies and raise taxes on vehicles and fuels to reflect their full social cost. The biggest but least visible subsidy is for parking, and we should start there.
Many car owners in the West take public transport to work since parking space downtown is costly and scarce. We should levy parking fees on an hourly, not daily basis. Rs 10/hour could be a starting point in the metros.
In parts of Tokyo, you cannot own a car unless you own a private parking space. This is too extreme for India, but indicates the future path. If we charge owners the full social cost of parking, people will buy smaller and perhaps fewer vehicles, and fewer still will take them to work. That will slash congestion and pollution.
Cities should levy stiff annual taxes on vehicles, not a one-time tax as in Delhi, and use the revenue to constantly expand public transport and roads. This will create economic synergy: private transport will finance public transport. London and New York have high-density public transport as well as high car density.
Apart from underground rail, cities need elevated roads to ease congestion and pollution. Lata Mangeshkar killed a proposal for an elevated road near her Mumbai flat saying pollution at her flat's level would affect her throat. She did not care that the throats of poor people living on the pavements were far worse affected by fumes, and might get relief if some fumes were diverted to a higher level. What elitism!
Next, some medicine that will be really bitter, politically. The excise duty on all automotive vehicles should be raised to reflect their social costs. Fuel subsidies should be abolished. Price differentials between petrol, diesel and kerosene should be removed, ending incentives for adulteration. Diesel cars should bear a heavy additional cess to finance improved healthcare for those affected by their emission of harmful particulate matter.
That is a long, politically difficult agenda. Only part of it will ever be achieved. Yet that is the way to go, rather than agitate against the Nano.
Friday, 11 January 2008
Parted-at-birth twins 'married'
A pair of twins who were separated at birth got married without knowing they were brother and sister, a crossbench peer has told the House of Lords.
A court annulled the UK couple's union after they discovered their true relationship, Lord Alton said.
The peer - who was told of the case by a High Court judge involved - said the twins felt an "inevitable attraction".
He said that they were adopted by separate families, and neither was told that they had a twin sibling.
Details of their identities have been kept secret, but Lord Alton said the pair did not realise they were related until after their marriage.
'Truth will out'
The former Liberal Democrat MP raised the couple's case during a House of Lords debate on the Human Fertility and Embryology Bill in December.
"They were never told that they were twins," he told the Lords.
"They met later in life and felt an inevitable attraction, and the judge had to deal with the consequences of the marriage that they entered into and all the issues of their separation."
He told the BBC News website that their story raises the wider issue of the importance of strengthening the rights of children to know the identities of their biological parents .
"If you start trying to conceal someone's identity, sooner or later the truth will out," he said.
"And if you don't know you are biologically related to someone, you may become attracted to them and tragedies like this may occur."
A court annulled the UK couple's union after they discovered their true relationship, Lord Alton said.
The peer - who was told of the case by a High Court judge involved - said the twins felt an "inevitable attraction".
He said that they were adopted by separate families, and neither was told that they had a twin sibling.
Details of their identities have been kept secret, but Lord Alton said the pair did not realise they were related until after their marriage.
'Truth will out'
The former Liberal Democrat MP raised the couple's case during a House of Lords debate on the Human Fertility and Embryology Bill in December.
"They were never told that they were twins," he told the Lords.
"They met later in life and felt an inevitable attraction, and the judge had to deal with the consequences of the marriage that they entered into and all the issues of their separation."
He told the BBC News website that their story raises the wider issue of the importance of strengthening the rights of children to know the identities of their biological parents .
"If you start trying to conceal someone's identity, sooner or later the truth will out," he said.
"And if you don't know you are biologically related to someone, you may become attracted to them and tragedies like this may occur."
Thursday, 10 January 2008
Cricket must crack down on the abuse
By Geoffrey Boycott
Last Updated: 2:20am GMT 10/01/2008
Have your say Read comments
I can't help noticing what a resounding lack of sympathy there has been around the world, and even in Australia, for Andrew Symonds and his sad little protestations of racial abuse. So Harbhajan Singh called him a monkey. So what? The Aussies have been dishing out far worse for years, as anyone in the cricket world will tell you.
# Kumble asked Ponting not to report racist accusation
# In pics: Indians protest after Australia row
For some reason, the Australian team think it's their right to lord it over every opposition team, to disparage them and mock them. Yes, Australia are the world champions. Yes, they're an exceptionally talented and consistent side. But that doesn't give them the right to behave like gods who are outside the normal standards of behaviour.
Cricket must crack down on the abuse
Flare up: Andrew Symonds and Harbhajan Singh
I've always said that sport should abide by the same principles as the rest of society. If a comment is unacceptable in a pub, and would earn you a fist in the face, then it's unacceptable on a playing field. In my view, umpires have been far too lax on this sort of thing for too long. When a fast bowler finishes his follow-through, he's only 10 yards away from the stumps: how can an umpire not hear what he's saying to the batsman? The only reason they don't take any action is because they prefer an easy life.
The Australians have been the leaders in this unsavoury field for as long as I can remember. And I'm not talking about them calling us Englishmen "Pommie bastards" - even though we could treat that as a racial insult if we wanted to, because the word 'Pommie' refers to the fact that our white skin turns red in the hot sun, until we look like pomegranates.
In fact I don't mind the term: I see it as a sort of backhanded compliment. But the Aussies come out with far worse than that. Until a couple of years ago, they had a captain, Steve Waugh, who publicly supported the practice of sledging, although he wrapped it up in a euphemism and called it "mental disintegration".
Waugh's principal fast bowler, Glenn McGrath, was one of the worst offenders. Back in 2003, he had a big bust-up with Ramnaresh Sarwan in the West Indies, after accusing Sarwan of having an unnaturally close relationship with Brian Lara, shall we say. When Sarwan turned around and gave him a mouthful back, and brought McGrath's wife into it (unfortunately, she had just developed cancer), he flipped completely and there was a really ugly incident.
It wasn't long before the Australian Cricket Board rang up and told the captain and players to cut it out. Which is all very well, except that they should keep a closer eye on their team all the time, and not just when there is a nasty scene that makes the news. The administrators must have known that their players were developing a reputation for abusive language. If they had sat them down and laid out an acceptable code of behaviour, and then warned them that anyone who crossed the line would be dropped, we would have seen an end to it all.
If you keep abusing people, sooner or later someone is going to turn around and talk back to you. My message to Symonds - and to his captain Ricky Ponting, who reported Harbhajan to the umpires - is "Don't be a cry baby". If you dish it out, you've got to be prepared to take it in return, and not go running to teacher.
Frankly, I'm not surprised that the Indians threatened to call off the tour. They see this whole affair as a slur on their country. You've got to remember how big the cricket team are over there: they are at the heart and soul of India's national identity. And cricket still has these long-standing associations with sportsmanship and gentlemanly conduct, though I wonder how they have survived with everything that's been going on.
In the past, sledging used to be humorous and colourful. I always mention my old friend Fred Trueman, because the things he used to say would crease us up. And I'm not suggesting we should do away with that sort of banter, but let's give it a rest with the abuse, shall we? It's not just the Australians; the whole world are at it and the onus lies with the umpires to be tougher, to nip things in the bud before they reach the stage where the bust-ups are pushing the runs and wickets out of the headlines.
Indian row video
In my day, you didn't get on the wrong side of umpires, because you knew they had the ultimate sanction: they could give you out if the ball was going down leg. These days, umpires can't go around handing out rough decisions because of TV. But they can use the disciplinary process more firmly, and national boards should give them support by cracking down on any player who steps out of line. It's time everybody in cricket worked together to rid the game of this sickness.
Last Updated: 2:20am GMT 10/01/2008
Have your say Read comments
I can't help noticing what a resounding lack of sympathy there has been around the world, and even in Australia, for Andrew Symonds and his sad little protestations of racial abuse. So Harbhajan Singh called him a monkey. So what? The Aussies have been dishing out far worse for years, as anyone in the cricket world will tell you.
# Kumble asked Ponting not to report racist accusation
# In pics: Indians protest after Australia row
For some reason, the Australian team think it's their right to lord it over every opposition team, to disparage them and mock them. Yes, Australia are the world champions. Yes, they're an exceptionally talented and consistent side. But that doesn't give them the right to behave like gods who are outside the normal standards of behaviour.
Cricket must crack down on the abuse
Flare up: Andrew Symonds and Harbhajan Singh
I've always said that sport should abide by the same principles as the rest of society. If a comment is unacceptable in a pub, and would earn you a fist in the face, then it's unacceptable on a playing field. In my view, umpires have been far too lax on this sort of thing for too long. When a fast bowler finishes his follow-through, he's only 10 yards away from the stumps: how can an umpire not hear what he's saying to the batsman? The only reason they don't take any action is because they prefer an easy life.
The Australians have been the leaders in this unsavoury field for as long as I can remember. And I'm not talking about them calling us Englishmen "Pommie bastards" - even though we could treat that as a racial insult if we wanted to, because the word 'Pommie' refers to the fact that our white skin turns red in the hot sun, until we look like pomegranates.
In fact I don't mind the term: I see it as a sort of backhanded compliment. But the Aussies come out with far worse than that. Until a couple of years ago, they had a captain, Steve Waugh, who publicly supported the practice of sledging, although he wrapped it up in a euphemism and called it "mental disintegration".
Waugh's principal fast bowler, Glenn McGrath, was one of the worst offenders. Back in 2003, he had a big bust-up with Ramnaresh Sarwan in the West Indies, after accusing Sarwan of having an unnaturally close relationship with Brian Lara, shall we say. When Sarwan turned around and gave him a mouthful back, and brought McGrath's wife into it (unfortunately, she had just developed cancer), he flipped completely and there was a really ugly incident.
It wasn't long before the Australian Cricket Board rang up and told the captain and players to cut it out. Which is all very well, except that they should keep a closer eye on their team all the time, and not just when there is a nasty scene that makes the news. The administrators must have known that their players were developing a reputation for abusive language. If they had sat them down and laid out an acceptable code of behaviour, and then warned them that anyone who crossed the line would be dropped, we would have seen an end to it all.
If you keep abusing people, sooner or later someone is going to turn around and talk back to you. My message to Symonds - and to his captain Ricky Ponting, who reported Harbhajan to the umpires - is "Don't be a cry baby". If you dish it out, you've got to be prepared to take it in return, and not go running to teacher.
Frankly, I'm not surprised that the Indians threatened to call off the tour. They see this whole affair as a slur on their country. You've got to remember how big the cricket team are over there: they are at the heart and soul of India's national identity. And cricket still has these long-standing associations with sportsmanship and gentlemanly conduct, though I wonder how they have survived with everything that's been going on.
In the past, sledging used to be humorous and colourful. I always mention my old friend Fred Trueman, because the things he used to say would crease us up. And I'm not suggesting we should do away with that sort of banter, but let's give it a rest with the abuse, shall we? It's not just the Australians; the whole world are at it and the onus lies with the umpires to be tougher, to nip things in the bud before they reach the stage where the bust-ups are pushing the runs and wickets out of the headlines.
Indian row video
In my day, you didn't get on the wrong side of umpires, because you knew they had the ultimate sanction: they could give you out if the ball was going down leg. These days, umpires can't go around handing out rough decisions because of TV. But they can use the disciplinary process more firmly, and national boards should give them support by cracking down on any player who steps out of line. It's time everybody in cricket worked together to rid the game of this sickness.
Wednesday, 9 January 2008
Rupee madness and modern maharajahs
By Sudha Ramachandran
BANGALORE - If "simple living, high thinking" was what Indians of another era aspired to, today it is a different creed that's driving their lifestyles. If you have the money, modern Indians would argue, flaunt it. And they seem to have plenty of money to flaunt.
Take Mukesh Ambani. The chairman of Reliance Industries, number 14 on Forbes' list of the world's richest and India's richest resident, is building a vertical palace for himself in Mumbai that will rise to a height of 570 feet. The "palace in the sky" will have three floors of gardens, two floors of swimming pools, a helicopter pad and space to park 170 cars. His wife, mother and two kids will occupy the top four floors. The family of six will be waited on by over 600 servants.
Or consider liquor tycoon Vijay Mallya, whose net assets have been pegged at about US$1.5 billion. He has some 42 homes scattered across the world, 250 vintage cars, a customized Boeing 727 and two other corporate jets, and three yachts, including one once owned by actor Richard Burton. He wears gold chains, diamond earrings and a big bracelet with his initials spelled out in diamonds.
Mallya's loud lifestyle might have provoked disdain among most Indians some years ago. Not anymore it seems, if one goes by the number of those who now mimic Mallya's flashy lifestyle.
No event provides Indians greater opportunity to show off their affluence than weddings. Weddings have turned into extravaganzas, with rich - and even middle class - families competing with each other to put on the flashiest show in town. The clothes, the jewelry, the gifts, the menu, the entertainment, the locale, even the guest list drip with ostentation, the showier the better.
When steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal got his daughter married in the summer of 2004, guests received a 20-page silver-cased invitation. The engagement and the wedding were in French palaces, Kylie Minogue entertained the guests. The wedding was a $60-million Bollywood production. Hotelier Vikram Chatwal's week-long wedding to model Priya Sachdev spanned three Indian cities and is estimated to have cost about $80 million. The icing on the wedding was the star invitee - former US president Bill Clinton. The wedding of the two sons of Subrato Roy, head of the Sahara Group, had about 11,000 guests, including powerful politicians, the entire Indian cricket team and Bollywood celebrities.
India was once associated with Gandhian austerity. The unmaterialistic "other-worldliness" of Indians was often seen as a trait unique to this country.
Indian leaders like Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru gave up lucrative professions and comfortable lifestyles to plunge themselves in the freedom struggle. They dressed simply in khadi (handspun cotton fabric), ate and traveled like the masses. Gandhi celebrated his austerity, wearing little more than a loincloth. Simplicity carried a statement.
At her wedding in 1942, Indira Gandhi, daughter of Nehru and later India's prime minister, wore a khadi sari made of yarn her father wove while in prison during the freedom struggle. The "jewelry" she wore at her wedding was made of flowers strung together by the family gardener. Whatever happened to that understated elegance of the Indian wedding?
It never existed, some might say.
Indeed, Hindu weddings have always been elaborate affairs, with celebrations running into several days and hundreds, even thousands being invited for the ceremonies. Yet a wedding had a personal touch to it, even if the invitees were distant cousins one had never met previously. It was still an occasion when people would invite their kindergarten teachers, the family cook and the old chowkidar (watchman) and their entire families.
Not anymore, it seems.
It is unlikely that Mittal or Roy would have known personally even a tenth of the people they invited to their weddings. Their invitees were people who provided the event with star power and glamour. Weddings today provide Indians with an opportunity to display their influence and connections with the rich and the powerful.
And it's not just the seriously rich that love showing off. Even the middle class do so, often running into serious debt to organize weddings with ceremonies looking more like a glitzy scene from a Bollywood film. They pay horrific amounts to have people they do not know attend their weddings.
Indians love showing off the power they wield, the perks their jobs bring them. Officials and politicians vie with each other to ensure that they are surrounded by gun-toting security personnel and that they are given an "official car" with plaques announcing their position in the hierarchy and sirens signaling their VIP status.
This compulsion to show off wealth and status seems at odds with the general perception of the Indian as unmaterialistic in outlook, parsimonious in spending and austere in lifestyle.
But "Indians have never been, and will never be 'other-worldly'," argues Pavan K Varma in his book Being Indian: The truth about why the 21st century will be India's. Hindus worship Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth and prosperity. "The pursuit of material well-being, artha is a principal goal of life," Varma points out. Indians "hanker for the material goods that this world has to offer, and look up to the wealthy". And like wealth, "power in the Indian way of thinking is a legitimate pursuit".
Indian society is deeply hierarchical. A person's entire worth is dependent on the position he occupies in the hierarchy. In such a system, "The assertion of status [and its recognition by others] becomes of crucial importance," Varma argues.
Whether an official has direct access to the minister, how many telephones are on his office table, whether his car is air-conditioned - all these are indicators of his status. When a person's sense of self worth and his social standing are so intimately connected with who he knows or what he owns, it is not surprising then, that people look for any opportunity to put these on public display.
Today there are more wealthy Indians than ever before. India is now home to the largest number of billionaires in Asia. The number of millionaires in the country has crossed 100,000 and is growing at a rate of 20.5% per year - the second fastest in the world after Singapore. A booming economy and a robust stock market have contributed to a more prosperous, 320-million strong middle class with growing disposable income. Not only do they want to spend it but also they want to be seen splurging.
And unlike the pre-liberalization years, when Indians had few things to show off besides an Ambassador car or gold jewelry, today they have access to the finest of branded goods. They don't have to go to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates to buy what they crave, they can purchase it here.
With liberalization, not only do Indians have the means to lead opulent lifestyles, but also the stigma associated with "Western materialism" and excessive lifestyles during the freedom struggle and the decades of socialism have now been removed. The pursuit of wealth is not considered dirty any longer. Being rich and showing it off as did the the kings and emperors in the past is fashionable again.
It's the era of the modern maharajahs and nouveau nawabs.
Sudha Ramachandran is an independent journalist/researcher based in Bangalore.
BANGALORE - If "simple living, high thinking" was what Indians of another era aspired to, today it is a different creed that's driving their lifestyles. If you have the money, modern Indians would argue, flaunt it. And they seem to have plenty of money to flaunt.
Take Mukesh Ambani. The chairman of Reliance Industries, number 14 on Forbes' list of the world's richest and India's richest resident, is building a vertical palace for himself in Mumbai that will rise to a height of 570 feet. The "palace in the sky" will have three floors of gardens, two floors of swimming pools, a helicopter pad and space to park 170 cars. His wife, mother and two kids will occupy the top four floors. The family of six will be waited on by over 600 servants.
Or consider liquor tycoon Vijay Mallya, whose net assets have been pegged at about US$1.5 billion. He has some 42 homes scattered across the world, 250 vintage cars, a customized Boeing 727 and two other corporate jets, and three yachts, including one once owned by actor Richard Burton. He wears gold chains, diamond earrings and a big bracelet with his initials spelled out in diamonds.
Mallya's loud lifestyle might have provoked disdain among most Indians some years ago. Not anymore it seems, if one goes by the number of those who now mimic Mallya's flashy lifestyle.
No event provides Indians greater opportunity to show off their affluence than weddings. Weddings have turned into extravaganzas, with rich - and even middle class - families competing with each other to put on the flashiest show in town. The clothes, the jewelry, the gifts, the menu, the entertainment, the locale, even the guest list drip with ostentation, the showier the better.
When steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal got his daughter married in the summer of 2004, guests received a 20-page silver-cased invitation. The engagement and the wedding were in French palaces, Kylie Minogue entertained the guests. The wedding was a $60-million Bollywood production. Hotelier Vikram Chatwal's week-long wedding to model Priya Sachdev spanned three Indian cities and is estimated to have cost about $80 million. The icing on the wedding was the star invitee - former US president Bill Clinton. The wedding of the two sons of Subrato Roy, head of the Sahara Group, had about 11,000 guests, including powerful politicians, the entire Indian cricket team and Bollywood celebrities.
India was once associated with Gandhian austerity. The unmaterialistic "other-worldliness" of Indians was often seen as a trait unique to this country.
Indian leaders like Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru gave up lucrative professions and comfortable lifestyles to plunge themselves in the freedom struggle. They dressed simply in khadi (handspun cotton fabric), ate and traveled like the masses. Gandhi celebrated his austerity, wearing little more than a loincloth. Simplicity carried a statement.
At her wedding in 1942, Indira Gandhi, daughter of Nehru and later India's prime minister, wore a khadi sari made of yarn her father wove while in prison during the freedom struggle. The "jewelry" she wore at her wedding was made of flowers strung together by the family gardener. Whatever happened to that understated elegance of the Indian wedding?
It never existed, some might say.
Indeed, Hindu weddings have always been elaborate affairs, with celebrations running into several days and hundreds, even thousands being invited for the ceremonies. Yet a wedding had a personal touch to it, even if the invitees were distant cousins one had never met previously. It was still an occasion when people would invite their kindergarten teachers, the family cook and the old chowkidar (watchman) and their entire families.
Not anymore, it seems.
It is unlikely that Mittal or Roy would have known personally even a tenth of the people they invited to their weddings. Their invitees were people who provided the event with star power and glamour. Weddings today provide Indians with an opportunity to display their influence and connections with the rich and the powerful.
And it's not just the seriously rich that love showing off. Even the middle class do so, often running into serious debt to organize weddings with ceremonies looking more like a glitzy scene from a Bollywood film. They pay horrific amounts to have people they do not know attend their weddings.
Indians love showing off the power they wield, the perks their jobs bring them. Officials and politicians vie with each other to ensure that they are surrounded by gun-toting security personnel and that they are given an "official car" with plaques announcing their position in the hierarchy and sirens signaling their VIP status.
This compulsion to show off wealth and status seems at odds with the general perception of the Indian as unmaterialistic in outlook, parsimonious in spending and austere in lifestyle.
But "Indians have never been, and will never be 'other-worldly'," argues Pavan K Varma in his book Being Indian: The truth about why the 21st century will be India's. Hindus worship Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth and prosperity. "The pursuit of material well-being, artha is a principal goal of life," Varma points out. Indians "hanker for the material goods that this world has to offer, and look up to the wealthy". And like wealth, "power in the Indian way of thinking is a legitimate pursuit".
Indian society is deeply hierarchical. A person's entire worth is dependent on the position he occupies in the hierarchy. In such a system, "The assertion of status [and its recognition by others] becomes of crucial importance," Varma argues.
Whether an official has direct access to the minister, how many telephones are on his office table, whether his car is air-conditioned - all these are indicators of his status. When a person's sense of self worth and his social standing are so intimately connected with who he knows or what he owns, it is not surprising then, that people look for any opportunity to put these on public display.
Today there are more wealthy Indians than ever before. India is now home to the largest number of billionaires in Asia. The number of millionaires in the country has crossed 100,000 and is growing at a rate of 20.5% per year - the second fastest in the world after Singapore. A booming economy and a robust stock market have contributed to a more prosperous, 320-million strong middle class with growing disposable income. Not only do they want to spend it but also they want to be seen splurging.
And unlike the pre-liberalization years, when Indians had few things to show off besides an Ambassador car or gold jewelry, today they have access to the finest of branded goods. They don't have to go to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates to buy what they crave, they can purchase it here.
With liberalization, not only do Indians have the means to lead opulent lifestyles, but also the stigma associated with "Western materialism" and excessive lifestyles during the freedom struggle and the decades of socialism have now been removed. The pursuit of wealth is not considered dirty any longer. Being rich and showing it off as did the the kings and emperors in the past is fashionable again.
It's the era of the modern maharajahs and nouveau nawabs.
Sudha Ramachandran is an independent journalist/researcher based in Bangalore.
Players are the problem - not umpires
* Jonathan Agnew
* 8 Jan 08, 03:17 PM
Anybody who finds themselves surprised by the events on India's tour of Australia must have been living on a different planet for the past five years.
The unedifying drama unfolding in Sydney is the result of a number of issues which have been bubbling away beneath the surface with increasing intensity.
They all exploded in a furious head as Australia single-mindedly homed in on their record-equalling 16th Test victory, without giving a damn about the consequences on the way.
Let’s start what will probably be a controversial, but honest, assessment by congratulating Australia on their achievement.
What a shame it is that the legacy of this fine team will be so tarnished by the ugly and offensive manner in which it plays the game – and has done for at least three years.
Ricky Ponting’s men have trampled all over the spirit of cricket by offering the lame excuse that they are "hard". In their world, deliberately conning the umpire is part and parcel of the game: “It’s his decision," they offer as a cop-out.
Just look at Andrew Symonds, who visibly gloated for the media when he admitted he had got away with a catch behind the wicket early in his first innings - what a miserable performance.
And what effect does that have on the umpire’s confidence – or that of the players in him?
This Australia team plays the game to win – there’s nothing wrong in that – but it has negated its responsibility to those who watch it and, more importantly, the next generation of cricketers who will inherit the battered sprit of cricket that Ponting’s team leaves in its trail.
Cricket can be an aggressive sport, but it is the ball and the bat that should do the talking. The hostile, nasty and intimidating environment that the Australians create on the pitch is a key ingredient in unsettling an opponent.
Little wonder that, sometimes, a volatile character lashes out in what he would perceive as self-defence, and what does it say of these "hard" men that they then go and report him to the umpire?
They can give it, but can’t take it.
That, of course, does not offer any defence for racism. If Harbhajan Singh did racially abuse Symonds, he must be punished for it.
But the above might offer some insight into how a cowed opponent could suddenly react to the intense pressure and intimidation that has been deliberately and ruthlessly applied to him by the fielding team.
Purely because we are talking about India here, I am going to throw in Sreesanth’s name as an example of an Indian cricketer who has often – and recently - gone well beyond the spirit of cricket: it is not purely an Australian thing.
And that is why the decision to remove Steve Bucknor from the next Test is so short-sighted.
As I warned when Darrell Hair was seen off by the Pakistan Cricket Board 18 months ago, the way was opened for powerful cricket teams to dispose of officials when a decision is made they do not like. How dare the game be held to ransom in this way.
But the real fault lies with the players – and it is their behaviour, attitude and respect for the game and its traditions that need urgently to be addressed.
Umpires will always make mistakes – just as the players do (although you wouldn’t believe it sometimes) and undermining their confidence by removing their most senior colleague in this way is unbelievably foolish.
Cricket is truly at a crossroads.
Administered these days by businessmen who have no feel for, or genuine love and understanding of the game, cricket is played purely for money, ego and power for those who control it.
Goodness knows where it will end unless a stand is taken, and that action must be directed by all the countries at all of their players, and not the umpires.
* 8 Jan 08, 03:17 PM
Anybody who finds themselves surprised by the events on India's tour of Australia must have been living on a different planet for the past five years.
The unedifying drama unfolding in Sydney is the result of a number of issues which have been bubbling away beneath the surface with increasing intensity.
They all exploded in a furious head as Australia single-mindedly homed in on their record-equalling 16th Test victory, without giving a damn about the consequences on the way.
Let’s start what will probably be a controversial, but honest, assessment by congratulating Australia on their achievement.
What a shame it is that the legacy of this fine team will be so tarnished by the ugly and offensive manner in which it plays the game – and has done for at least three years.
Ricky Ponting’s men have trampled all over the spirit of cricket by offering the lame excuse that they are "hard". In their world, deliberately conning the umpire is part and parcel of the game: “It’s his decision," they offer as a cop-out.
Just look at Andrew Symonds, who visibly gloated for the media when he admitted he had got away with a catch behind the wicket early in his first innings - what a miserable performance.
And what effect does that have on the umpire’s confidence – or that of the players in him?
This Australia team plays the game to win – there’s nothing wrong in that – but it has negated its responsibility to those who watch it and, more importantly, the next generation of cricketers who will inherit the battered sprit of cricket that Ponting’s team leaves in its trail.
Cricket can be an aggressive sport, but it is the ball and the bat that should do the talking. The hostile, nasty and intimidating environment that the Australians create on the pitch is a key ingredient in unsettling an opponent.
Little wonder that, sometimes, a volatile character lashes out in what he would perceive as self-defence, and what does it say of these "hard" men that they then go and report him to the umpire?
They can give it, but can’t take it.
That, of course, does not offer any defence for racism. If Harbhajan Singh did racially abuse Symonds, he must be punished for it.
But the above might offer some insight into how a cowed opponent could suddenly react to the intense pressure and intimidation that has been deliberately and ruthlessly applied to him by the fielding team.
Purely because we are talking about India here, I am going to throw in Sreesanth’s name as an example of an Indian cricketer who has often – and recently - gone well beyond the spirit of cricket: it is not purely an Australian thing.
And that is why the decision to remove Steve Bucknor from the next Test is so short-sighted.
As I warned when Darrell Hair was seen off by the Pakistan Cricket Board 18 months ago, the way was opened for powerful cricket teams to dispose of officials when a decision is made they do not like. How dare the game be held to ransom in this way.
But the real fault lies with the players – and it is their behaviour, attitude and respect for the game and its traditions that need urgently to be addressed.
Umpires will always make mistakes – just as the players do (although you wouldn’t believe it sometimes) and undermining their confidence by removing their most senior colleague in this way is unbelievably foolish.
Cricket is truly at a crossroads.
Administered these days by businessmen who have no feel for, or genuine love and understanding of the game, cricket is played purely for money, ego and power for those who control it.
Goodness knows where it will end unless a stand is taken, and that action must be directed by all the countries at all of their players, and not the umpires.
Sydney siege one slip from a bloodbath
THERE’s a siege at the hotel. A gun is pointed at the baby’s head.
The footpath is full of reporters and cameras and fans shouting nationalistic slogans.
Turn off the sirens, put down the megaphone and proceed with the utmost caution. Don’t spook the horses. That’s a nervous finger on the trigger.
Give them a bus, fill it with petrol and let them cool down in the sea. For god’s sake don’t let them swim outside the flags.
We just don’t need another disaster.
Indian cricket is twitching and hasn’t been sleeping. It’s been up all night on the phone, talking across time zones. It needs to be treated with respect and taken seriously.
The Indians are deadly serious on this one.
Cricket needs to examine the Indians’ grievances, but it’s not easy. Trying to work out what the problem is here is akin to a game of Where’s Wally?
Where to begin?
The Indians are upset with the International Cricket Council over the conviction of Harbhajan Singh for racism.
They want him freed or the baby is going to get it.
They believe the bowler and Sachin Tendulkar told the truth and that Andrew Symonds, Michael Clarke and Matthew Hayden did not.
The match referee did not believe the Indians. Doubting Harbhajan is one thing, questioning Tendulkar is heresy.
Tendulkar has been a catalyst in this.
He has apparently sent a text message to the head of the Board of Control for Cricket in India backing the bowler and pushing for a boycott unless the conviction is overturned.
Feeding the Indian angst are a number of grievances arising from the Sydney Test. Grievances with the umpires and the Australian players.
They believe the umpires dudded them and they have fair cause. They wanted Steve Bucknor removed. The authorities have caved in on that one and that’s good as it seems to have calmed everybody a little.
One senior player claimed the Australians “cheated” in Sydney and the side contained “liars” over the issues of walking, or not, catching and not catching. India is peddling a fair line in hypocrisy here. Or shall we say, let those who have not sinned bat first?
Go to YouTube and type in “Dhoni” and “Pieterson” (sic) or “cheat”. You will see the Indian wicketkeeper, a man with a reputation for his good sportsmanship and for walking when he nicks, claiming a catch off Kevin Pietersen in last year’s Test series against England.
For all the world the ball appears to bounce before Dhoni claims it and umpire Simon Taufel raises his finger after Pietersen’s decision to walk. Pietersen then turns on his heel after urging from team-mates who had seen the replay. The on-field umpires then decide to refer the incident to the third umpire. Pietersen is given not out and the booing England crowd cheers.
Cameras can lie on these matters, but the Indians believe Clarke claimed to have caught Sourav Ganguly in similar circumstances. If it is such a heinous crime for Clarke why is it not so for Dhoni, the team’s leader-in-waiting?
The Indians are upset that Clarke didn’t walk until he was given out, but seem quite comfortable with Yuvraj Singh and a number of their batsmen taking an age to walk when actually given out.
And of course, India No11 Ishant Sharma also waited for the umpire’s decision after he, too, snicked to first slip for the match-deciding wicket.
Which crime is worse, waiting for an umpire or waiting after the umpire has told you to go?
Certainly Clarke should have walked when he hit it, but maybe, like Yuvraj said in his own defence in the first Test, Clarke was too stunned to move. It was, after all, a golden duck.
Ponting’s claimed catch is harder to defend when you know the rules of cricket. In his defence Ponting didn’t claim one that bounced in the first innings and perhaps his interpretation of the rule is that he had control of body and ball before hitting the earth.
As for Bucknor, well, that’s another interesting one.
It could also be argued that India won last year’s England series because the umpires did not give Sree Santh out leg before wicket in the last minutes of the first Test, allowing India to hang on for a draw.
Sree Santh was plumb, the umpire appeared to have made an error. Guess who was officiating? That’s right, Bucknor.
These events are not mentioned in the grievance list handed over to negotiators during the Sydney hotel siege, nor is the decision which saved Tendulkar when Clarke trapped him in front early in his big century.
These are just things you might want to think about but keep to yourself because nobody wants to upset anybody further. Nobody is in the mood to be reasonable.
Harbhajan’s defenders are claiming that there was no incident in Mumbai last October. They are also arguing that if it happened why didn’t Ponting take it to the referee then. And they’re arguing that Ponting and Kumble should have defied the ICC and dealt with it like men.
Oh, hang on, they are also arguing that “monkey” isn’t a racist term. Members of the BCCI have said this and it will be interesting news for the defence of people arrested for using the term in Mumbai late last year.
None of this, however, addresses the ongoing problem for Australian cricket. The Indians, despite all their announcements about fighting fire with fire and not taking a backward step, are screaming about how hard the Australians play cricket.
It appears, from a number of polls and blogs, that the majority of Australians agree with India.
Remember that there was no ill-feeling off the field in this match. The way the SCG crowd responded to Tendulkar, VVS Laxman and Rahul Dravid was extraordinarily warm and made you proud to be part of a cricket crowd that could treat visiting sportsmen so well. Especially having seen how Indian crowds treated Australia in the one-day series last year.
Australian cricketers have won the match but lost the public relations war on this one. India’s cricketers lost the Test but won the hearts and minds.
A crisis shines a harsh light on many things and perhaps brings peripheral matters into focus. There is an argument that Harbhajan was denied natural justice. If so, the ICC must address this.
There is evidence the umpiring was below standard and the ICC might want to think about its problems in this area.
There is an argument that Australia did not play fairly. The Australian players and officials must address this.
The team had a lecture on the spirit of cricket when they went into camp late last year. At it they were told “perception is reality”.
If that is the case, there is a lot of work to be done. It is no good being the best side in the world if nobody wants to watch you, or play against you.
India, for its part, has ridden roughshod over the ICC and the notion the game must go on.
If there is any realpolitik allowed into this situation it will be that India has the power to do what it wants and if upset it must be appeased, for the last thing cricket needs is India to pack its bat and ball and go home.
Right or wrong, the Indians hold the baby’s life in their hands.
The footpath is full of reporters and cameras and fans shouting nationalistic slogans.
Turn off the sirens, put down the megaphone and proceed with the utmost caution. Don’t spook the horses. That’s a nervous finger on the trigger.
Give them a bus, fill it with petrol and let them cool down in the sea. For god’s sake don’t let them swim outside the flags.
We just don’t need another disaster.
Indian cricket is twitching and hasn’t been sleeping. It’s been up all night on the phone, talking across time zones. It needs to be treated with respect and taken seriously.
The Indians are deadly serious on this one.
Cricket needs to examine the Indians’ grievances, but it’s not easy. Trying to work out what the problem is here is akin to a game of Where’s Wally?
Where to begin?
The Indians are upset with the International Cricket Council over the conviction of Harbhajan Singh for racism.
They want him freed or the baby is going to get it.
They believe the bowler and Sachin Tendulkar told the truth and that Andrew Symonds, Michael Clarke and Matthew Hayden did not.
The match referee did not believe the Indians. Doubting Harbhajan is one thing, questioning Tendulkar is heresy.
Tendulkar has been a catalyst in this.
He has apparently sent a text message to the head of the Board of Control for Cricket in India backing the bowler and pushing for a boycott unless the conviction is overturned.
Feeding the Indian angst are a number of grievances arising from the Sydney Test. Grievances with the umpires and the Australian players.
They believe the umpires dudded them and they have fair cause. They wanted Steve Bucknor removed. The authorities have caved in on that one and that’s good as it seems to have calmed everybody a little.
One senior player claimed the Australians “cheated” in Sydney and the side contained “liars” over the issues of walking, or not, catching and not catching. India is peddling a fair line in hypocrisy here. Or shall we say, let those who have not sinned bat first?
Go to YouTube and type in “Dhoni” and “Pieterson” (sic) or “cheat”. You will see the Indian wicketkeeper, a man with a reputation for his good sportsmanship and for walking when he nicks, claiming a catch off Kevin Pietersen in last year’s Test series against England.
For all the world the ball appears to bounce before Dhoni claims it and umpire Simon Taufel raises his finger after Pietersen’s decision to walk. Pietersen then turns on his heel after urging from team-mates who had seen the replay. The on-field umpires then decide to refer the incident to the third umpire. Pietersen is given not out and the booing England crowd cheers.
Cameras can lie on these matters, but the Indians believe Clarke claimed to have caught Sourav Ganguly in similar circumstances. If it is such a heinous crime for Clarke why is it not so for Dhoni, the team’s leader-in-waiting?
The Indians are upset that Clarke didn’t walk until he was given out, but seem quite comfortable with Yuvraj Singh and a number of their batsmen taking an age to walk when actually given out.
And of course, India No11 Ishant Sharma also waited for the umpire’s decision after he, too, snicked to first slip for the match-deciding wicket.
Which crime is worse, waiting for an umpire or waiting after the umpire has told you to go?
Certainly Clarke should have walked when he hit it, but maybe, like Yuvraj said in his own defence in the first Test, Clarke was too stunned to move. It was, after all, a golden duck.
Ponting’s claimed catch is harder to defend when you know the rules of cricket. In his defence Ponting didn’t claim one that bounced in the first innings and perhaps his interpretation of the rule is that he had control of body and ball before hitting the earth.
As for Bucknor, well, that’s another interesting one.
It could also be argued that India won last year’s England series because the umpires did not give Sree Santh out leg before wicket in the last minutes of the first Test, allowing India to hang on for a draw.
Sree Santh was plumb, the umpire appeared to have made an error. Guess who was officiating? That’s right, Bucknor.
These events are not mentioned in the grievance list handed over to negotiators during the Sydney hotel siege, nor is the decision which saved Tendulkar when Clarke trapped him in front early in his big century.
These are just things you might want to think about but keep to yourself because nobody wants to upset anybody further. Nobody is in the mood to be reasonable.
Harbhajan’s defenders are claiming that there was no incident in Mumbai last October. They are also arguing that if it happened why didn’t Ponting take it to the referee then. And they’re arguing that Ponting and Kumble should have defied the ICC and dealt with it like men.
Oh, hang on, they are also arguing that “monkey” isn’t a racist term. Members of the BCCI have said this and it will be interesting news for the defence of people arrested for using the term in Mumbai late last year.
None of this, however, addresses the ongoing problem for Australian cricket. The Indians, despite all their announcements about fighting fire with fire and not taking a backward step, are screaming about how hard the Australians play cricket.
It appears, from a number of polls and blogs, that the majority of Australians agree with India.
Remember that there was no ill-feeling off the field in this match. The way the SCG crowd responded to Tendulkar, VVS Laxman and Rahul Dravid was extraordinarily warm and made you proud to be part of a cricket crowd that could treat visiting sportsmen so well. Especially having seen how Indian crowds treated Australia in the one-day series last year.
Australian cricketers have won the match but lost the public relations war on this one. India’s cricketers lost the Test but won the hearts and minds.
A crisis shines a harsh light on many things and perhaps brings peripheral matters into focus. There is an argument that Harbhajan was denied natural justice. If so, the ICC must address this.
There is evidence the umpiring was below standard and the ICC might want to think about its problems in this area.
There is an argument that Australia did not play fairly. The Australian players and officials must address this.
The team had a lecture on the spirit of cricket when they went into camp late last year. At it they were told “perception is reality”.
If that is the case, there is a lot of work to be done. It is no good being the best side in the world if nobody wants to watch you, or play against you.
India, for its part, has ridden roughshod over the ICC and the notion the game must go on.
If there is any realpolitik allowed into this situation it will be that India has the power to do what it wants and if upset it must be appeased, for the last thing cricket needs is India to pack its bat and ball and go home.
Right or wrong, the Indians hold the baby’s life in their hands.
Some balance, please
True, India were sinned against in the Sydney Test, but they're no innocents, and the reaction of the media back home has been consummately over the top
Suresh Menon
January 9, 2008
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If India's media are to be believed, the Indian players are angels, and anyone who thinks otherwise is an unpatriotic Gandhi-hater and should be condemned to watching Navjot Sidhu expressing his views on a dozen television channels.
By hauling up a player for a racial slur (just as all who drink are not alcoholics, all who use racially charged words are not racists), the match referee has apparently called into question our manhood, nationhood, honour, Gandhian way of life, support for Nelson Mandela in the days of apartheid, and the sacrifices made by our martyrs.
Yes, we lost a Test. Yes, the umpiring was horrendous. Yes, the charges against Harbhajan Singh might not hold up in a court of law. But do we have to go overboard like this? One television channel dragged out Harbhajan's mother, that expert on racial slurs and leg-before appeals, to share her thoughts with us.
How do we drop so quickly into us-and-them mode? The media paranoia feeds itself. If one channel demands an apology from Australia, another displays greater patriotism by asking for the Test result to be nullified. Pundits push themselves to the head of a gathering trend. Or, if they are Sidhu, suggest that Indian bowlers should kick the umpires as they approach the wicket to bowl. If this is what a Test player feels, what of the regular effigy-burners and professional naysayers?
That mythical creature, the Average Man, wants the team to return home, we are told. Politicians speak for the Man in the Street (who is there because politicians, in their rush to defend the millionaires abroad, have omitted to build a house for him).
"This is not about cricket," Sidhu thunders, "This is about national honour." The President-elect of the ICC, Sharad Pawar, is upset. This is not something trivial like farmers committing suicide, which he can ignore in his other avatar as the Minister of Agriculture. This is the real thing. The BCCI runs the ICC and the media run the BCCI.
Brinkmanship is our national sport. The way India treats the ICC is no different from the manner in which the "veto powers", England and Australia, did in their heyday. When the cycle turns and the power base shifts, we will have at least nine countries waiting to get at us for all that we are doing to them now.
Pawar has the bogey of Jagmohan Dalmiya on his shoulder. Didn't that worthy threaten to split the cricket world more than once? Didn't he save India's honour, nationhood, manhood and all other hoods by annulling the result of a match in South Africa a few years ago? How can Pawar go one better? Can he annul Australia's nationhood?
The board could not have asked for a better chance to show its patriotism. The players could not have asked for a bigger distraction from their own pathetic display in the second innings at Sydney. Two batsmen got poor decisions. What about the others? Is batting through two sessions to save a Test beyond the ability of the greatest batting line-up in the world? As for the board, the criticism about pushing the players into Tests in Australia without adequate time to acclimatise themselves is now residing under a carpet somewhere.
It is all so convenient.
But what of the incidents? We have been mixing apples and oranges. The boorish behaviour of Ricky Ponting and his men is independent of the umpiring boo-boos, which have nothing to do with what Harbhajan Singh said to Andrew Symonds. By bundling it all together, and then garnishing the mix with almost plausible quotes and Peter Roebuck's unusually over-the-top reaction, the Indian media have taken breast-beating to new levels.
A clever lawyer can pick on anything Symonds said and give it a racial twist. Even honourable cusswords like "bastard" and "son of a bitch" can be seen as insulting the parental uncertainty or animal origins of all non-whites. Logicians call this reductio ad absurdum - stretching a proposition to its logical absurdity. But logic has been a casualty in this fracas.
Let's get a sense of balance. No Indian writing or broadcasting from Sydney mentioned that replays showed Sachin Tendulkar was out leg-before when he was in the twenties. He added roughly the same number of runs that Symonds did after being reprieved when he was first out.
| Brinkmanship is our national sport. The way India treats the ICC is no different from the manner in which the "veto powers", England and Australia, did in their heyday. When the cycle turns and the power base shifts, we will have at least nine countries waiting to get at us for all that we are doing to them now | |||
Ponting's integrity may be in question after he claimed a catch off Mahendra Singh Dhoni though the ball touched the ground. Just as you can't be a little pregnant, you can't be a little upright. Integrity is indivisible. But if the two captains had an agreement regarding catches close to the wicket, then Mark Benson was right in turning to Ponting when Sourav Ganguly was caught. After all, Steve Bucknor was further away from the action.
Indians are not innocents. The average number of Tests played by the Sydney XI is 65. That's enough time to learn all the tricks. Ishant Sharma, in his third Test, showed you don't need to have played 65. His ridiculous time-wasting tactic of walking out with two right gloves would have embarrassed a schoolboy.
For a team that is trailing 0-2 in a Test series, India are on top Down Under. This is remarkable. It is the result of a combination of the BCCI's financial arrogance and media-inspired jingoism. This is dangerous, however exciting and ballsy it might be for an Indian. For it is this combination that makes huge headlines of incidents that might otherwise be handled with delicacy and tact. Already the ICC has replaced Bucknor for the Perth Test (question: if India had long-standing disputes with him, why didn't the board object at the start of the tour?). This may be good PR, but it is a bad precedent to set.
Likewise with the Harbhajan case. The ICC can neither revoke the ban nor endorse it without getting into a bigger mess. The Indian media are probably getting ready to speak to Malcolm Speed's relatives even as you read this.
Suresh Menon is a writer based in Bangalore
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Bucknor's blackballing bodes badly
What will the dumping of umpire Steve Bucknor mean for attracting umpires in the future?
January 9, 2008
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He's umpired in a record 120 Tests, as well as five World Cup finals, but Bucknor's future is uncertain to say the least. Like Hair, he has attracted the opprobrium of a powerful member of the Asian bloc, but unlike Hair, his blackballing doesn't even come with the proviso that his actions were correct within the letter of the law. Instead, in the opinion of the BCCI, his crime was "incompetence" and even allowing for the shrill levels of outrage that have been doing the rounds this week, you'd be hard-pressed to disagree.
On one level, Bucknor's removal from next week's Perth Test is a blessing. His presence on the field would have been a distraction, and the scrutiny to which he would have been subjected would have been unbearable even for a man of his vast experience - umpires are only human, as this week's events have overwhelmingly demonstrated. Malcolm Speed's explanation of the ICC's decision was that it would "alleviate the tension".
Sanity in the short-term, however, is a heavy price to pay for the precedent that this decision sets. Only 24 hours earlier, the ICC reiterated that there would be no change to the umpiring appointments for the Perth Test. A spokesman even invoked clause 3.1.7 of the playing conditions that both teams signed ahead of the series: "Neither team will have a right of objection to an umpire's appointment."
That ruling is up in smoke now, sacrificed on the altar of expediency as is too often the case in cricket's convoluted world. The BCCI have expressed satisfaction with the outcome, as well they might, although arrogantly, their sights have already been on what they describe as the bigger issue, the racism charge that has been levelled against Harbhajan Singh. Bucknor doesn't even get to be the main event in his hour of humiliation. Instead he has been left with his wings clipped in a hotel-room in Sydney, waiting to be whisked away from the mayhem.
At the age of 61, there's no knowing whether he'll be back, or whether he'll want to be back. There has long been a suspicion that his best days of officialdom are behind him - India still hasn't forgiven him for an lbw decision against Sachin Tendulkar at Brisbane in 2003-04 - but for the rest of the world, the overwhelming evidence was provided at the World Cup final in Barbados in April. Admittedly, he was just one of five men to concoct that particular farce, although it was his passivity as the senior on-field umpire that truly exacerbated the situation.
This isn't how he deserves to go out, however, nor how the game should wish him to go either, given the dread it will instill in anyone who dares to follow in his footsteps. Mark Benson is counting his blessings not to have been scheduled to stand at Perth (although his card is clearly marked), while even an ego the size of Billy Bowden's will surely house one or two fears when he steps out to replace Bucknor at the WACA.
Even so, the madness of the past week does seem to be drawing to a close. The flames of righteous indignation are beginning to die down, and while it is hardly the ideal solution, Brad Hogg's tit-for-tat citation for the use of the word "bastard" (a term of endearment in Aussie circles, a term of grievous insult among Indians) could yet be the filter through which Harbhajan's alleged monkey slur can be seen for the naïve, unthinking remark that it surely was.
But the forensic teams will be sifting through the charred remains of this contest for several weeks and months yet. What will become abundantly clear is the need for greater protection for the next generation of umpires - which means more recourse to replays, more breaks between games, and more respect from the players, some of whom made a mockery of the spirit of the game at Sydney.
But before that can happen, the replacements for stalwarts such as Bucknor need to be identified and nurtured, and it's not immediately obvious where they will come from. Tellingly, for all its riches, passion and power, India has not produced a top-class official since Srinivas Venkataraghavan. It's become clearer this week why that is the case. It's a mug's game in this modern world, where a billion armchair critics are better informed than the men out in the middle. In a week of madness, that's possibly the maddest thing of all.
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Tuesday, 8 January 2008
Dominic Lawson: Have the Australians been caught out?
It might have been an unwise remark, but this neutral finds it impossible not to sympathise with the Indians
Published: 08 January 2008
Is it racial abuse to call someone "a monkey"? Under the modern dispensation, it is if the person so described believes it is. The International Cricket Council subscribes to this interpretation and as a result has banned the Indian spin-bowler Harbhajan Singh for the duration of the current Test series against Australia, after he – allegedly – called the Aussie player Andrew Symonds "a monkey".
The president of the group representing Indian Australians, Raj Natarajan, protested – admittedly somewhat disingenuously – that "the Monkey God is one of the revered idols of Hindu mythology and worshipped by millions. It is surprising that it was considered a racist term."
As might have been expected, the Indian cricketing authorities, the BCCI, have furiously denied that Harbhajan, or indeed any of their players, is a racist, and – absent an official exoneration – have even threatened to abandon the Test series. If that were to happen, it would make this the most politically damaging cricketing encounter since the notorious "bodyline" series of 1932, in which a carefully executed plan of physical intimidation by the England fast bowlers caused an unprecedented diplomatic rift between Australia and "the mother country".
At the height of that conflict, the English team manager, Pelham Warner, visited the Australian dressing room to inquire after the health of the Aussie captain, Bill Woodfull, who had been struck several fearsome blows to the body by the lethally quick Harold Larwood. From his prone position on the treatment table, Oldfield delivered a devastating rebuke to the self-righteous Warner: "I do not want to see you, Mr Warner. There are two teams out there. One is playing cricket, the other is making no attempt to do so."
Those remarks are as well known as any in the history of cricket. So it surely cannot be an accident that the studious Indian captain, Anil Kumble, declared in a press conference after the recent match in Sydney: "Only one team was playing within the spirit of the game. That's all I can say." Apparently the Indian press present stood as one to applaud Kumble's comment.
It might have been an inflammatory and unwise remark, but this neutral finds it impossible not to sympathise with the Indians. Regardless of whatever Harbhajan might have said in the heat of conflict, the Australians – not least Andrew Symonds – played the entire match in their usual unremittingly hostile spirit, successfully intimidating even the neutral umpires into making decisions which were scandalously unfair to the visiting side.
Above all, there is something deeply unappealing in the fact that the Aussies – the Aussies! – have been the ones to go running to the authorities to complain about verbal abuse on the field. I spoke yesterday to the former England captain, Michael Atherton, who had experienced as much abuse as any from Australian sides over the years. He told me that, when he started, " the Australians were a disgrace. They would just gob off at you all day long. Some of us could take it, some couldn't".
The point, of course, was to establish who couldn't take it and concentrate the abuse on those who were less impervious to the insults. The former Australian captain, Steve Waugh, openly admitted the purpose of the whole exercise – it was part of a policy, he said, to bring about " mental disintegration".
Atherton told me that, by Waugh's time, the cricketing authorities had already acted to reduce the worst of the abuse; but, he added,"the Aussies would still find ways of getting under opponents' skins, even if it meant saying things to each other that were clearly directed at the incoming batsman".
You might dismiss this as just the moaning of losers – which in practice has meant pretty much everyone who has played the Australians over the past 20 years. So, see if you like this bit of playful banter: when the New Zealand player Chris Cairns came in to bat against an Australian side shortly after his sister had been killed in a train accident, he heard – or so it was reported – some of the fielders making "choo-choo" noises at each other. Of course, this was nothing so crude as direct abuse – and since it involved no racial element, it was clearly of no great political concern to the game's governing body.
The current Australian captain, Ricky Ponting, is understandably sensitive to the charge that he is a "dobber" – Aussie slang for one who informs to the authorities. An article appears under his name in today's issue of The Australian in which he declares: "I was particularly disappointed to hear television commentators suggest during the Test that I was a 'dobber' who had opened a 'Pandora's box' by making a report of what I believed was racial abuse towards Andrew Symonds. Over the past two years, match referees have made it clear at the start of every series that it is the captain's responsibility to immediately report any form of racism from either the crowd or on the field.
"When I heard what had taken place with Andrew I immediately informed the umpires and then left the field at the end of the over to inform our team manager, which we are instructed to do. There is absolutely no place for racism in sport or society generally, and I fully support the International Cricket Council's anti-racism policy."
I wouldn't want to impugn Mr Ponting's journalistic skills or sincerity, but those remarks read as if they were copied out of some sort of ICC best practice manual. They are politically correct, in every sense of the term, but don't come near to acknowledging the genuine dismay that many feel at the way in which a relatively trivial remark – itself a response, even by Symonds' own account, to some ripe language on his part – has led to the banning of a great player by the game's authorities.
Perhaps the Indians' reaction has been excessive. It can never be a sensible reaction to threaten to abandon an entire Test series, however politically inept the decisions of over-fussy officialdom. Yet such criticism would not take account of the peculiar intensity of this particular cricketing battle. India increasingly feels its own emerging significance as a mighty economic power, as the "old" economies of the West fade in relative significance.
Moreover, India now sees itself, and not the apparently unconquerable Australians, as the true superpower in world cricket. It is not just that the intense love of cricket in India – as anyone who has been there to witness it can attest – makes the English obsession with football seem dilettante by comparison; on numerical grounds alone, there are more cricket fans in India than in the rest of the world combined.
If the cricketing authorities want to insult those billions, then they are free to do so: on the other hand, it is they, as a result, who might end up looking like monkeys.
Published: 08 January 2008
Is it racial abuse to call someone "a monkey"? Under the modern dispensation, it is if the person so described believes it is. The International Cricket Council subscribes to this interpretation and as a result has banned the Indian spin-bowler Harbhajan Singh for the duration of the current Test series against Australia, after he – allegedly – called the Aussie player Andrew Symonds "a monkey".
The president of the group representing Indian Australians, Raj Natarajan, protested – admittedly somewhat disingenuously – that "the Monkey God is one of the revered idols of Hindu mythology and worshipped by millions. It is surprising that it was considered a racist term."
As might have been expected, the Indian cricketing authorities, the BCCI, have furiously denied that Harbhajan, or indeed any of their players, is a racist, and – absent an official exoneration – have even threatened to abandon the Test series. If that were to happen, it would make this the most politically damaging cricketing encounter since the notorious "bodyline" series of 1932, in which a carefully executed plan of physical intimidation by the England fast bowlers caused an unprecedented diplomatic rift between Australia and "the mother country".
At the height of that conflict, the English team manager, Pelham Warner, visited the Australian dressing room to inquire after the health of the Aussie captain, Bill Woodfull, who had been struck several fearsome blows to the body by the lethally quick Harold Larwood. From his prone position on the treatment table, Oldfield delivered a devastating rebuke to the self-righteous Warner: "I do not want to see you, Mr Warner. There are two teams out there. One is playing cricket, the other is making no attempt to do so."
Those remarks are as well known as any in the history of cricket. So it surely cannot be an accident that the studious Indian captain, Anil Kumble, declared in a press conference after the recent match in Sydney: "Only one team was playing within the spirit of the game. That's all I can say." Apparently the Indian press present stood as one to applaud Kumble's comment.
It might have been an inflammatory and unwise remark, but this neutral finds it impossible not to sympathise with the Indians. Regardless of whatever Harbhajan might have said in the heat of conflict, the Australians – not least Andrew Symonds – played the entire match in their usual unremittingly hostile spirit, successfully intimidating even the neutral umpires into making decisions which were scandalously unfair to the visiting side.
Above all, there is something deeply unappealing in the fact that the Aussies – the Aussies! – have been the ones to go running to the authorities to complain about verbal abuse on the field. I spoke yesterday to the former England captain, Michael Atherton, who had experienced as much abuse as any from Australian sides over the years. He told me that, when he started, " the Australians were a disgrace. They would just gob off at you all day long. Some of us could take it, some couldn't".
The point, of course, was to establish who couldn't take it and concentrate the abuse on those who were less impervious to the insults. The former Australian captain, Steve Waugh, openly admitted the purpose of the whole exercise – it was part of a policy, he said, to bring about " mental disintegration".
Atherton told me that, by Waugh's time, the cricketing authorities had already acted to reduce the worst of the abuse; but, he added,"the Aussies would still find ways of getting under opponents' skins, even if it meant saying things to each other that were clearly directed at the incoming batsman".
You might dismiss this as just the moaning of losers – which in practice has meant pretty much everyone who has played the Australians over the past 20 years. So, see if you like this bit of playful banter: when the New Zealand player Chris Cairns came in to bat against an Australian side shortly after his sister had been killed in a train accident, he heard – or so it was reported – some of the fielders making "choo-choo" noises at each other. Of course, this was nothing so crude as direct abuse – and since it involved no racial element, it was clearly of no great political concern to the game's governing body.
The current Australian captain, Ricky Ponting, is understandably sensitive to the charge that he is a "dobber" – Aussie slang for one who informs to the authorities. An article appears under his name in today's issue of The Australian in which he declares: "I was particularly disappointed to hear television commentators suggest during the Test that I was a 'dobber' who had opened a 'Pandora's box' by making a report of what I believed was racial abuse towards Andrew Symonds. Over the past two years, match referees have made it clear at the start of every series that it is the captain's responsibility to immediately report any form of racism from either the crowd or on the field.
"When I heard what had taken place with Andrew I immediately informed the umpires and then left the field at the end of the over to inform our team manager, which we are instructed to do. There is absolutely no place for racism in sport or society generally, and I fully support the International Cricket Council's anti-racism policy."
I wouldn't want to impugn Mr Ponting's journalistic skills or sincerity, but those remarks read as if they were copied out of some sort of ICC best practice manual. They are politically correct, in every sense of the term, but don't come near to acknowledging the genuine dismay that many feel at the way in which a relatively trivial remark – itself a response, even by Symonds' own account, to some ripe language on his part – has led to the banning of a great player by the game's authorities.
Perhaps the Indians' reaction has been excessive. It can never be a sensible reaction to threaten to abandon an entire Test series, however politically inept the decisions of over-fussy officialdom. Yet such criticism would not take account of the peculiar intensity of this particular cricketing battle. India increasingly feels its own emerging significance as a mighty economic power, as the "old" economies of the West fade in relative significance.
Moreover, India now sees itself, and not the apparently unconquerable Australians, as the true superpower in world cricket. It is not just that the intense love of cricket in India – as anyone who has been there to witness it can attest – makes the English obsession with football seem dilettante by comparison; on numerical grounds alone, there are more cricket fans in India than in the rest of the world combined.
If the cricketing authorities want to insult those billions, then they are free to do so: on the other hand, it is they, as a result, who might end up looking like monkeys.
Johann Hari: We're fixating on Barack and Hillary. Let's listen to the white guy from the Deep South
Alone among the Democrats, John Edwards has taken a stand against corporate power
Published: 07 January 2008
The world is gaping with awe – and disbelief – at the prospect of a black or female President of the United States. If George Bush symbolises everything we hate about the United States, Barack Obama seems to symbolise everything we love about the country: its warm openness to immigrants, its shimmering civil rights movements, its idealism. So it feels strange to say it, but reader, it's time to look away from the woman and the black guy towards the white man from the Deep South – because he is more left-wing, and more electable, than either of them.
You might remember John Edwards as the plastic vice-presidential candidate standing at John Kerry's wooden side in 2004. Back then, he offered anodyne Clintonian soundbites and centrist platitudes – but losing to Bush yet again did something strange to him. It turned him into an angry whistle-blower, exposing the corruption consuming both of Washington's parties.
He explained: "I have seen the seamy underbelly of what happens in Washington every day. If you're Exxon Mobil and you want to influence what's happening with the government, you go and hire one of these big lobbying firms. This is what you find. About half the lobbyists are Republicans, and about half the lobbyists are Democrats. If the Republicans are in power, the Republican lobbyists take the lead, passing the money around. If the Democrats are in power, the Democratic lobbyists take the lead. They're pushing the same agenda for the same companies. There's no difference."
He announced that "the system in Washington is rigged and our government is broken". The failures of US politics – not just under Bush, but under Bill Clinton too – can only be understood as a result of this endemic corruption. Global warming? It will never be dealt with while presidents and senators have to suck at the oil pump for campaign contributions. Forty-seven million Americans without health insurance? Thank the lavish campaign contributions of the drug and medical companies. Iraq? Look again to the oil donors, the defence donors, the "private military contractor" donors. And on, and on. Edwards adds, "This is personal for me. When I see the lobbyists all over Washington taking our politicians to cocktail parties, the picture I get in my head is of my father and my grandmother going to a mill in South Carolina every day. Where is their voice in this democracy?"
When ordinary American voters hear this, they love it. For decades, the US has been soaked in a fake right-wing populism, where the likes of Karl Rove and Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly claim to be "looking out for the little guy". In reality they have pushed a corporate agenda that has ramped inequality up to levels unseen since the Depression. But when the voters hear real populism, its appeal is vast. When they are shown clips of the major candidates, Edwards beats the Republicans by a larger margin than either Obama or Clinton.
So why won't he be the candidate? It's not inverse racism, or sexism. It's because the corporations are not giving money to a candidate committed to finally curbing their power, and Edwards wouldn't take it anyway. As a result, he can't afford to run much further, or much harder. Barring a pretty unlikely political breakthrough in New Hampshire or South Carolina, he's out.
This is a political parable that tells us a lot about how US politics works – and about what to expect realistically from the successful Democratic candidate. Both Clinton and Obama have chosen to make accommodations with corporate power that will severely curtail any progressive instincts they have. Hillary has inhaled more cash from defence and union-bashing corporations than any other candidate, Democrat or Republican. Her most senior adviser is Mark Penn, a corporate PR man whose firm has represented a slew of monsters, from Shell to the fascist Argentine junta to Union Carbide in the wake of the Bhopal catastrophe. He was fired by Al Gore in 2000 for being too right-wing.
Obama has made similar accommodations. His biggest contributors include Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, and the telecoms and defence investment firm Henry Crown and Company. It is possible these corporations have suddenly set aside their sole motivating principle, profit, and become interested in liberal progress – but it is more likely they expect a return on their "investment". Obama didn't even have to do it. As the investigative journalist Allan Nairn notes, "Obama has the ability to get all the money he needs from the internet, through $50 donations. He actually doesn't need to go to the hedge funds and Wall Street, but he does anyway, because he fears if he doesn't they might think he is on the wrong team, and start attacking him."
Obama, as a state senator in Illinois and then in Washington, has taken lots of important, progressive steps. He managed to build unlikely coalitions to end police torture in Chicago, ban loan sharks, introduce tax credits for poor families, and increase funding to secure Russia's loose nukes. But these are not antithetical to corporate interests; whenever he would have to take them on, he has largely changed the subject.
You can see clearly how corporate donations have skewed Obama's politics. After receiving a fortune from ethanol companies, he became a cheer-leading champion of ethanol. Even though the biofuel has caused a disastrous rise in world food prices. Even though it is worse for global warming than petrol, once you factor in the use of carbon-spewing nitrogen fertilisers.
It is visible, too, in the shape of his foreign policy team. His most senior adviser is Zbigniew Brzezinski, who as Jimmy Carter's Secretary of State oversaw the funding and fuelling of al-Qa'ida in Afghanistan to fight the Soviets. "What's a few riled-up Muslims?" he asked. Obama is also advised by Richard Holbrooke, who was in charge in the 1970s of shipping weapons to the totalitarian Indonesian military so that they could systematically slaughter a third of East Timor's inhabitants. And as a finishing touch, he has on board Dennis Ross, who led the recent assault on Jimmy Carter for stating simple facts about Israel's abuse of the Palestinians.
Don't misunderstand me: Barack would be a far better President than Hillary, and both would be far better than any of the Republicans. They would represent symbolic victories over racism and misogyny. But they will still be in hock to a system of corporate power that will make it very hard to deal with the world's major crises, whether it's global warming, or developing a foreign policy that actually undermines Islamic fundamentalism.
As Edwards puts it, "All the nice ideas in the world won't make a difference if they have to go through this broken system that remains controlled by big business and their lobbyists." For stating this honestly and trying to fight back, Edwards has been priced out of a Presidential race he would – and should – have won.
Published: 07 January 2008
The world is gaping with awe – and disbelief – at the prospect of a black or female President of the United States. If George Bush symbolises everything we hate about the United States, Barack Obama seems to symbolise everything we love about the country: its warm openness to immigrants, its shimmering civil rights movements, its idealism. So it feels strange to say it, but reader, it's time to look away from the woman and the black guy towards the white man from the Deep South – because he is more left-wing, and more electable, than either of them.
You might remember John Edwards as the plastic vice-presidential candidate standing at John Kerry's wooden side in 2004. Back then, he offered anodyne Clintonian soundbites and centrist platitudes – but losing to Bush yet again did something strange to him. It turned him into an angry whistle-blower, exposing the corruption consuming both of Washington's parties.
He explained: "I have seen the seamy underbelly of what happens in Washington every day. If you're Exxon Mobil and you want to influence what's happening with the government, you go and hire one of these big lobbying firms. This is what you find. About half the lobbyists are Republicans, and about half the lobbyists are Democrats. If the Republicans are in power, the Republican lobbyists take the lead, passing the money around. If the Democrats are in power, the Democratic lobbyists take the lead. They're pushing the same agenda for the same companies. There's no difference."
He announced that "the system in Washington is rigged and our government is broken". The failures of US politics – not just under Bush, but under Bill Clinton too – can only be understood as a result of this endemic corruption. Global warming? It will never be dealt with while presidents and senators have to suck at the oil pump for campaign contributions. Forty-seven million Americans without health insurance? Thank the lavish campaign contributions of the drug and medical companies. Iraq? Look again to the oil donors, the defence donors, the "private military contractor" donors. And on, and on. Edwards adds, "This is personal for me. When I see the lobbyists all over Washington taking our politicians to cocktail parties, the picture I get in my head is of my father and my grandmother going to a mill in South Carolina every day. Where is their voice in this democracy?"
When ordinary American voters hear this, they love it. For decades, the US has been soaked in a fake right-wing populism, where the likes of Karl Rove and Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly claim to be "looking out for the little guy". In reality they have pushed a corporate agenda that has ramped inequality up to levels unseen since the Depression. But when the voters hear real populism, its appeal is vast. When they are shown clips of the major candidates, Edwards beats the Republicans by a larger margin than either Obama or Clinton.
So why won't he be the candidate? It's not inverse racism, or sexism. It's because the corporations are not giving money to a candidate committed to finally curbing their power, and Edwards wouldn't take it anyway. As a result, he can't afford to run much further, or much harder. Barring a pretty unlikely political breakthrough in New Hampshire or South Carolina, he's out.
This is a political parable that tells us a lot about how US politics works – and about what to expect realistically from the successful Democratic candidate. Both Clinton and Obama have chosen to make accommodations with corporate power that will severely curtail any progressive instincts they have. Hillary has inhaled more cash from defence and union-bashing corporations than any other candidate, Democrat or Republican. Her most senior adviser is Mark Penn, a corporate PR man whose firm has represented a slew of monsters, from Shell to the fascist Argentine junta to Union Carbide in the wake of the Bhopal catastrophe. He was fired by Al Gore in 2000 for being too right-wing.
Obama has made similar accommodations. His biggest contributors include Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, and the telecoms and defence investment firm Henry Crown and Company. It is possible these corporations have suddenly set aside their sole motivating principle, profit, and become interested in liberal progress – but it is more likely they expect a return on their "investment". Obama didn't even have to do it. As the investigative journalist Allan Nairn notes, "Obama has the ability to get all the money he needs from the internet, through $50 donations. He actually doesn't need to go to the hedge funds and Wall Street, but he does anyway, because he fears if he doesn't they might think he is on the wrong team, and start attacking him."
Obama, as a state senator in Illinois and then in Washington, has taken lots of important, progressive steps. He managed to build unlikely coalitions to end police torture in Chicago, ban loan sharks, introduce tax credits for poor families, and increase funding to secure Russia's loose nukes. But these are not antithetical to corporate interests; whenever he would have to take them on, he has largely changed the subject.
You can see clearly how corporate donations have skewed Obama's politics. After receiving a fortune from ethanol companies, he became a cheer-leading champion of ethanol. Even though the biofuel has caused a disastrous rise in world food prices. Even though it is worse for global warming than petrol, once you factor in the use of carbon-spewing nitrogen fertilisers.
It is visible, too, in the shape of his foreign policy team. His most senior adviser is Zbigniew Brzezinski, who as Jimmy Carter's Secretary of State oversaw the funding and fuelling of al-Qa'ida in Afghanistan to fight the Soviets. "What's a few riled-up Muslims?" he asked. Obama is also advised by Richard Holbrooke, who was in charge in the 1970s of shipping weapons to the totalitarian Indonesian military so that they could systematically slaughter a third of East Timor's inhabitants. And as a finishing touch, he has on board Dennis Ross, who led the recent assault on Jimmy Carter for stating simple facts about Israel's abuse of the Palestinians.
Don't misunderstand me: Barack would be a far better President than Hillary, and both would be far better than any of the Republicans. They would represent symbolic victories over racism and misogyny. But they will still be in hock to a system of corporate power that will make it very hard to deal with the world's major crises, whether it's global warming, or developing a foreign policy that actually undermines Islamic fundamentalism.
As Edwards puts it, "All the nice ideas in the world won't make a difference if they have to go through this broken system that remains controlled by big business and their lobbyists." For stating this honestly and trying to fight back, Edwards has been priced out of a Presidential race he would – and should – have won.
The Churchill wannabes destroy any hope of a violence-free life in Pakistan
Benazir Bhutto's death is just the latest evidence of the disastrous legacy of western involvement in the country's politics
Pankaj Mishra
Tuesday January 8, 2008
The Guardian
Last week the portrait of Benazir Bhutto as the last great hope for democracy in Pakistan had barely received its finishing touches in the world media when it was muddied by accusations that the former prime minister had sponsored jihadists in Afghanistan and India-held Kashmir.
Neither assertion is without a measure of truth. Yet both obscure the major events that have rendered Pakistan unstable, even ungovernable, for at least two generations: the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in late 1979; the American decision to turn Pakistan into the frontline state for a global anti-Soviet jihad; and, more recently, the Bush administration's corralling of Pakistan into the so-called war on terror.
Like many Asian countries, Pakistan stumbled from primeval chaos into postcolonial life, with an army as its strongest institution - which grew even more formidable after enlisting on the US side in the cold war. Six decades later, it is possible to see how in a less exacting climate Pakistan could have moved durably to civilian rule, as happened in Taiwan and Indonesia, two other pro-American dictatorships frozen by the cold war.
Such, however, was the scale and intensity of the CIA's programme to arm the Afghan mujahideen that it couldn't but retard political processes in Pakistan. General Zia-ul-Haq, who faced disgrace domestically and internationally after his execution of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, abruptly became a prestigious ally in Washington and London. Emboldened by American patronage, Zia brutally suppressed all opposition, which included some of the country's greatest writers and artists.
Pakistan's military strategists had long plotted to install a friendly regime in Afghanistan, which shares a fiercely autonomous and traditionally volatile Pashtun population with Pakistan. The CIA's generosity gave them the perfect opportunity to impose their will in Kabul through proxies like the warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who, like many Islamists feeding off US largesse, spent more time building private armies and bullying women than fighting the Soviets. Military officers seeking revenge for their humiliation by India in the war over Bangladesh in 1971 redirected US resources more radically to anti-India insurgencies in Punjab and Kashmir.
Pursuing their separate agenda, western cold war adventurers and their local allies deeply damaged Pakistan's frail society. Three million Afghan, mostly Pashtun, refugees poured into Pakistan, along with cheap guns and drugs. Furthermore, political Islam - until then a marginal force in Pakistani politics - acquired buoyancy, and a radical edge, from the anti-communist jihad in Afghanistan. Pakistan knew a spell of civilian rule after Zia's death in 1988. But elected leaders such as Benazir Bhutto could hardly supervise, let alone restrict, the cherished ventures of the all-powerful military intelligence elite, such as the backing of the Pashtun-dominated Taliban in Afghanistan's destructive civil war, and the training of extremists for jihad in Kashmir.
The US cancelled its aid programme to Pakistan before the last Soviet soldier left Afghanistan in 1989; it went on to impose sanctions on Pakistan for its nuclear programme. Visiting Pakistan in early 2001, I was struck by the anger Pakistanis of all classes expressed toward the US. Far from being a generalised Islamist hatred of American women wearing miniskirts, anti-US sentiment was rooted in particular grievances. Diplomats and ex-generals raged against US selfishness in leaving Pakistan to sort out the post-Soviet mess in Afghanistan; journalists and NGO workers described in anguished tones how the CIA-sponsored jihad strangled Pakistan's democracy, endowing the military intelligence establishment with a sinister extra-constitutional authority.
In late 2001, George Bush's resolve to eliminate al-Qaida and the Taliban with the help of the very same establishment inaugurated another cycle in which Pakistan's long-delayed tryst with civilian rule would be again postponed by US priorities in neighbouring Afghanistan.
It is clearer now that Pervez Musharraf's promises to the US could only be empty, no matter how sincerely he believed in them. Military and intelligence officers who had staked their careers on making reliable Pashtun friends were unlikely to launch more than a few token assaults on the Pak-Afghan borderlands, which even the British Indian Army couldn't subdue.
Nevertheless, the Bush administration has persisted for almost seven years in the hope that the Pakistani military could be bullied or bribed into scoring successes in the global war on terror.
Many generals and spies probably couldn't believe their luck as they received billions of US dollars for yet another phoney war. Paranoid western visions of crazy Islamists getting hold of Pakistani nukes ensured a steady flow of cash, which, as the New York Times recently revealed, the military mostly spent on objectives not remotely resembling those drawn up in Washington.
In any case, the Taliban and their sympathisers can't be "eliminated". The web of strategic tribal and ethnic alliances has represented the strongest Pashtun claims in recent decades as traditional rulers of Afghanistan's ethnic mosaic. Even today, as the writer Rory Stewart has pointed out, "many Pashtun clearly prefer the Taliban to foreign troops". In actuality, the Taliban can only be contained. But even that may remain a fantasy if foreign occupation continues to radicalise Pashtuns in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Musharraf has himself only just escaped assassination. Even though he grudgingly accepted Washington's choice, Bhutto, as a civilian facade for military rule, he can't be unaware that Pakistan's stability depends on successful deal-making in the Pashtun heartland rather than in the White House. This lesson is not entirely lost on western policymakers. EU diplomats expelled from southern Afghanistan a day before Bhutto's assassination were trying to reach out to the Taliban. But such peacemakers face their most influential adversaries among those who think that errant natives respond best to a bit of stick. Writing in the Wall Street Journal last week, the Tory MP Michael Gove warned the west not to betray any "sign of weakness" to the Taliban.
Doubtless the Churchill wannabes that have proliferated since 9/11 would fight on their laptops to the last drop of Afghan and Pakistani blood. Intoxicated by their own cliches, they remain blind to how their warmongering in the cause of democracy in Afghanistan and Pakistan has boosted the most militaristic elements there, ruining even the basic hope of a violence-free life, not to mention the grand ambition of democracy.
The CIA's anti-Soviet jihad not only ensured the dominance of the military intelligence establishment over elected government in Pakistan; it also spawned a new radical force, which now menaces military as well as civilian authority in Pakistan. We may praise or blame Benazir Bhutto for what she did or did not do, but as long as Pakistan remains hostage to failed western policies those aspiring to lead it can achieve little apart from personal power - along with a high risk of martyrdom.
· Pankaj Mishra is the author of Temptations of the West: How to be Modern in India, Pakistan and Beyon
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Friday, 4 January 2008
How Britain Became Party To A Crime That May Have Killed A Million People
How Britain Became Party To A Crime That May Have Killed A Million People
By George Monbiot
03 January, 2008
Monbiot.com
If you doubt Britain needs a written constitution, listen to the strangely unbalanced discussion broadcast by the BBC last Friday. The Today programme asked Lord Guthrie, formerly chief of the defence staff, and Sir Kevin Tebbit, until recently the senior civil servant at the Ministry of Defence, if parliament should decide whether or not the country goes to war. The discussion was a terrifying exposure of the privileges of unaccountable power. It explained as well as anything I have heard how Britain became party to a crime that may have killed a million people.
Guthrie argued that parliamentary approval would mean intelligence had to be shared with MPs; that the other side could not be taken by surprise ("do you want to warn the enemy you are going to do it?"), and that commanders should have "a choice about when to attack and when not to attack". Tebbit maintained that "no prime minister would be able to deploy forces without being able to command a parliamentary majority. In that sense, the executive is already accountable to parliament". Once the prime minister has his majority, in other words, MPs become redundant.
Let me dwell for a moment on what Guthrie said, for he appears to advocate that we retain the right to commit war crimes. States in dispute with each other, the UN charter says, must first seek to solve their differences by "peaceful means" (article 33). If these fail, they should refer the matter to the security council (article 37), which decides what measures should be taken (article 39). Taking the enemy by surprise is a useful tactic in battle, and encounters can be won only if commanders are able to make decisions quickly. But either Guthrie does not understand the difference between a battle and a war - which is unlikely in view of his 44 years of service - or he does not understand the most basic point in international law. Launching a surprise war is forbidden by the charter.
It has become fashionable to scoff at these rules and to dismiss those who support them as pedants and prigs, but they are all that stand between us and the greatest crimes in history. The International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg ruled that "to initiate a war of aggression ... is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime". The tribunal's charter placed "planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression" at the top of the list of war crimes.
If Britain's most prominent retired general does not understand this, it can only be because he has never been forced to understand it. In September 2002, he argued in the Lords that "the time is approaching when we may have to join the US in operations against Iraq ... Strike soon, and the threat will be less and easier to handle. If the UN route fails, I support the second option." No one in the chamber warned him that he was proposing the supreme international crime. In another Lords debate, Guthrie argued that it was "unthinkable for British servicemen and women to be sent to the International Criminal Court", regardless of what they might have done. He demanded a guarantee from the government that this would not be allowed to happen, and proposed that the British forces should be allowed to opt out of the European convention on human rights. The grey heads murmured their agreement.
Perhaps it is unfair to single out the noble and gallant lord. The British establishment's exceptionalism is almost universal. According to the government, both the Commons public administration committee and the Lords constitution committee recognise that decision-making should "provide sufficient flexibility for deployments which need to be made without prior parliamentary approval for reasons of urgency or necessary operational secrecy". You cannot keep an operation secret from parliament unless you are also keeping it secret from the UN.
Tebbit appears to have a general aversion to disclosure. In 2003, the Guardian obtained letters showing he had prevented the fraud squad at the MoD from investigating allegations of corruption against the arms manufacturer BAE, that he tipped off the BAE chairman about the contents of a confidential letter the Serious Fraud Office had sent him, and that he failed to tell his minister about the SFO's warnings. In October 2003, under cross-examination during the Hutton inquiry into the death of the government scientist David Kelly, he revealed the decision to name Kelly was made in a "meeting chaired by the prime minister". That could have been the end of Tony Blair, but a week later Tebbit sent Lord Hutton a written retraction of his evidence. No one bothered to tell parliament or the press; the retraction was made public only when the Hutton report was published, three months later. Blair knew all along, and the secret gave him a crushing advantage.
The discussion also reveals that Guthrie and Tebbit appear to have learned nothing from the disaster in Iraq. They are not alone. Just before he stepped down last year, Blair wrote an article for the Economist headlined "What I've Learned". He had discovered, he claimed, that his critics were both wrong and dangerous and that his decisions, based on "freedom, democracy, responsibility to others, but also justice and fairness", were difficult but invariably right. He called his article "a very short synopsis of what I have learned". I could think of an even shorter one.
We have yet to hear one word of regret or remorse from any of the main architects - Blair, Brown, Straw, Hoon, Campbell and their principal advisers - of Britain's participation in the supreme international crime. The press and parliament appear to have heeded Blair's plea that we all "move on" from Iraq. The British establishment has a unique capacity to move on, and then to repeat its mistakes. What other former empire knows so little of its own atrocities?
When people call our unwritten constitution a "gentleman's agreement", they reveal more than they intend. It allows the unelected gentlemen who advise the prime minister to act without reference to the proles. Britain went to war in Iraq because the public and parliament were not allowed to know when the decision was made, what the intelligence reports said, and what the attorney general wrote about the its legality. Had the truth not been suppressed, Britain could never have attacked Iraq.
Real constitutional reform requires much more than the timid proposals in the green paper on the governance of Britain, which are likely to appear in a bill in a few weeks' time. Yes, parliament should be allowed to vote on whether to go to war, yes the royal prerogative should be rolled back. But the prime minister, his diplomats, civil servants and generals would still decide which wars parliament needs to know about, which crimes could be secretly committed in our name. Real constitutional reform means not only handing power to parliament but also confronting the power of the hard, unaccountable people who act as if it is their birthright.
By George Monbiot
03 January, 2008
Monbiot.com
If you doubt Britain needs a written constitution, listen to the strangely unbalanced discussion broadcast by the BBC last Friday. The Today programme asked Lord Guthrie, formerly chief of the defence staff, and Sir Kevin Tebbit, until recently the senior civil servant at the Ministry of Defence, if parliament should decide whether or not the country goes to war. The discussion was a terrifying exposure of the privileges of unaccountable power. It explained as well as anything I have heard how Britain became party to a crime that may have killed a million people.
Guthrie argued that parliamentary approval would mean intelligence had to be shared with MPs; that the other side could not be taken by surprise ("do you want to warn the enemy you are going to do it?"), and that commanders should have "a choice about when to attack and when not to attack". Tebbit maintained that "no prime minister would be able to deploy forces without being able to command a parliamentary majority. In that sense, the executive is already accountable to parliament". Once the prime minister has his majority, in other words, MPs become redundant.
Let me dwell for a moment on what Guthrie said, for he appears to advocate that we retain the right to commit war crimes. States in dispute with each other, the UN charter says, must first seek to solve their differences by "peaceful means" (article 33). If these fail, they should refer the matter to the security council (article 37), which decides what measures should be taken (article 39). Taking the enemy by surprise is a useful tactic in battle, and encounters can be won only if commanders are able to make decisions quickly. But either Guthrie does not understand the difference between a battle and a war - which is unlikely in view of his 44 years of service - or he does not understand the most basic point in international law. Launching a surprise war is forbidden by the charter.
It has become fashionable to scoff at these rules and to dismiss those who support them as pedants and prigs, but they are all that stand between us and the greatest crimes in history. The International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg ruled that "to initiate a war of aggression ... is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime". The tribunal's charter placed "planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression" at the top of the list of war crimes.
If Britain's most prominent retired general does not understand this, it can only be because he has never been forced to understand it. In September 2002, he argued in the Lords that "the time is approaching when we may have to join the US in operations against Iraq ... Strike soon, and the threat will be less and easier to handle. If the UN route fails, I support the second option." No one in the chamber warned him that he was proposing the supreme international crime. In another Lords debate, Guthrie argued that it was "unthinkable for British servicemen and women to be sent to the International Criminal Court", regardless of what they might have done. He demanded a guarantee from the government that this would not be allowed to happen, and proposed that the British forces should be allowed to opt out of the European convention on human rights. The grey heads murmured their agreement.
Perhaps it is unfair to single out the noble and gallant lord. The British establishment's exceptionalism is almost universal. According to the government, both the Commons public administration committee and the Lords constitution committee recognise that decision-making should "provide sufficient flexibility for deployments which need to be made without prior parliamentary approval for reasons of urgency or necessary operational secrecy". You cannot keep an operation secret from parliament unless you are also keeping it secret from the UN.
Tebbit appears to have a general aversion to disclosure. In 2003, the Guardian obtained letters showing he had prevented the fraud squad at the MoD from investigating allegations of corruption against the arms manufacturer BAE, that he tipped off the BAE chairman about the contents of a confidential letter the Serious Fraud Office had sent him, and that he failed to tell his minister about the SFO's warnings. In October 2003, under cross-examination during the Hutton inquiry into the death of the government scientist David Kelly, he revealed the decision to name Kelly was made in a "meeting chaired by the prime minister". That could have been the end of Tony Blair, but a week later Tebbit sent Lord Hutton a written retraction of his evidence. No one bothered to tell parliament or the press; the retraction was made public only when the Hutton report was published, three months later. Blair knew all along, and the secret gave him a crushing advantage.
The discussion also reveals that Guthrie and Tebbit appear to have learned nothing from the disaster in Iraq. They are not alone. Just before he stepped down last year, Blair wrote an article for the Economist headlined "What I've Learned". He had discovered, he claimed, that his critics were both wrong and dangerous and that his decisions, based on "freedom, democracy, responsibility to others, but also justice and fairness", were difficult but invariably right. He called his article "a very short synopsis of what I have learned". I could think of an even shorter one.
We have yet to hear one word of regret or remorse from any of the main architects - Blair, Brown, Straw, Hoon, Campbell and their principal advisers - of Britain's participation in the supreme international crime. The press and parliament appear to have heeded Blair's plea that we all "move on" from Iraq. The British establishment has a unique capacity to move on, and then to repeat its mistakes. What other former empire knows so little of its own atrocities?
When people call our unwritten constitution a "gentleman's agreement", they reveal more than they intend. It allows the unelected gentlemen who advise the prime minister to act without reference to the proles. Britain went to war in Iraq because the public and parliament were not allowed to know when the decision was made, what the intelligence reports said, and what the attorney general wrote about the its legality. Had the truth not been suppressed, Britain could never have attacked Iraq.
Real constitutional reform requires much more than the timid proposals in the green paper on the governance of Britain, which are likely to appear in a bill in a few weeks' time. Yes, parliament should be allowed to vote on whether to go to war, yes the royal prerogative should be rolled back. But the prime minister, his diplomats, civil servants and generals would still decide which wars parliament needs to know about, which crimes could be secretly committed in our name. Real constitutional reform means not only handing power to parliament but also confronting the power of the hard, unaccountable people who act as if it is their birthright.
Thursday, 3 January 2008
Whither Indian Constitution
by Girish Mishra; December 30, 2007
More than six decades have elapsed since India’s independence and almost fifty years of its becoming a republic. It is interesting to look back and see how far it has marched towards its declared goals.
In the very beginning of the Constitution of India, there is Preamble that states the goals towards which the people of the country have to try their level best to march. These goals have to inform each and every action of theirs. Preamble reads as follows:
“WE, THE PEOPLE OF INDIA, having solemnly resolved to constitute India into a SOVEREIGN SOCIALIST SECULAR DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC and to secure to all its citizens:
JUSTICE, social, economic and political
LIBERTY of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship
EQUALITY of status and of opportunity and to promote among them all
FRATERNITY assuring the dignity of the individual and the unity and integrity of the Nation.”
Keeping in view the basic spirit of the Preamble, the Constitution has provided for only one kind of citizenship throughout the country. In other words, there can be no discrimination among citizens on the basis of religion, gender, caste, language, colour and place of residence. In 1976, the 42nd amendment joined the words “socialist” and “secular” together. Thus the establishment of a society in which there would be no discrimination on the basis of religion and belief was mandated. Every citizen was given the freedom to propagate his religion or faith peacefully. It was made crystal clear that state would have no religion of its own. In state-run or funded institutions, no religious education or preaching would be encouraged nor would the construction of any place of worship be allowed. Simultaneously, the state was mandated to strive for establishing an equalitarian society in which there would be no place for exploitation and oppression.
State was to work towards doing away with regional economic imbalances inherited from British imperialist rule of almost two hundred years. This was necessary to strengthen national integrity and ward off the danger of separatism cropping up. At the same time, an emphasis was placed on eliminating inequalities and discriminations prevalent in the society. It was felt that, without this, there could be no social cohesion. To this end in view, special measures were needed to uplift Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and women. Special scholarships, quotas in jobs, etc. were proposed. To begin with, reservation of seats in Parliament and state legislatures for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes was provided for by the Constitution.
Speedy economic development with emphasis on doing away with regional imbalances and all sorts of social discriminations and inequalities rampant for ages was thought to be the panacea. It was realized by national movement and the leaders who came to preside over India’s destiny after Independence that speedy economic development was predicated on modern science and technology, though it was not by itself sufficient. Secularism, rationalism and socialism were no less important.
Secularism stressed that state and society should concentrate their attention on mundane, rather than otherworldly, matters and supernatural phenomena. Religion should not play any role in the conduct of business by society and state. It should remain confined strictly to private domain of individuals. High value is placed on the rational manipulation of human and material environment. Rationality is the opposite of superstition and magic. In the context of economic development it means the adoption of means, processes, and organisation of production to turning over goods and services in the most efficient possible way. From the days of renaissance and reformation, the fight against superstition and magic had accelerated. Scientists like Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, and others and philosophers like Voltaire, Rousseau, Hobbes, Locke and so on and, much later, Charles Darwin pushed up rational ideas. This lessened the hold of religion and the Church on state and public life.
Rationality aroused the need to decipher the mysteries of nature and its laws scientifically. In Western Europe, the barriers against the import of scientific ideas and technological devices from other societies collapsed. It imported many useful ideas and devices from China and elsewhere. In India, no such urge was witnessed. In fact, the upper caste Hindus looked down upon the West as the abode of the barbarians. Till the nineteenth century, West Europeans were regarded as greedy, ignorant and uncultured and all contacts with them were to be shunned. Orthodox Hindu opinion in India frowned upon crossing the seas and oceans to go to European countries. The people like Raja Ram Mohun Roy constituted a minuscule group with not much influence outside the English educated.
By 1727, the change in values and attitudes in Britain had become so great that men of science and technology were accorded more respect and honour than to politicians and the royalty and it became obvious at the state funeral of Isaac Newton, a mere scientist, in the Westminster Abbey, at which the highest in the land were proud to act as pall-bearers. Voltaire, an eye-witness to the whole thing, wrote in his Letters on England: “Not long ago, in a distinguished company, they were discussing this time-honoured and frivolous question: who was the greatest man, Caesar, Alexander, Tamburlaine, Cromwell, etc.
“Somebody answered that it was unquestionably Isaac Newton. He was right, for if true greatness consists in having received from heaven a powerful genius and in having used it to enlighten himself and others, a man such as Newton, the like of whom is scarcely to be found in ten centuries, is the truly great man, and these politicians and conquerors, in which no period has been lacking, are usually nothing more than illustrious criminals. It is to the man who rules over minds by the power of truth, not to those who enslave men by violence, it is to the man who understands the universe and not to those who disfigure it, that we owe our respect.”
This has been rarely seen in India after the end of the Nehru era. At present, all sorts of criminals and corrupt people command more respect than a scientist or man of letters. India media sing hymns of praise for businessmen, actors and actresses indulging in obscenity and vulgarity and tainted politicians because they happen to be moneyed. Print or electronic media rarely give a few centimeters of space when a distinguished man of science, technology or literature passes away.
To promote economic development, people at large must take interest and participate in it. This can happen only when they hope to receive their due share of the fruits of development. There is no inborn inequality between man and man. This attitude was developed and imparted a scientific basis by socialism. This can be easily understood in the perspective of the Constitution of India. It is a matter of great regret that India has been continuously deviating from it.
To illustrate this, let us take “secularism”. On Saturday, August 16, 2003, from 8.10 to 9 PM, the BBC television had a programme, entitled “Hindu Nation,” in which a number of prominent Indians participated. Two of them were the BJP leader and Deputy Prime Minister of India, L. K. Advani, and the former Chief Minister and prominent Congress leader, Digvijay Singh. Not withstanding sharp ideological differences between their two parties, surprisingly they were one about unsuitability of secularism. They held that secularism had failed to play any effective role in country’s politics and economic development because it was supposedly contrary to people’s thinking. Singh opined that the Congress was unable to fight the RSS, the mother-organisation of the BJP because it was not able to relate itself to religious feelings of the people at large. Advani stressed that, because of secularism, the Hindus could not take pride in their great ancient religion. In short, both leaders, in spite of belonging to two different parties ideologically opposed to each other, was one in holding that Hindu religion, in the garb of secularism, should be made the basis of Indian polity and of the official outlook. Obviously, very few people who run the administration are seriously committed to secularism. Over the years, especially since the demise of Nehru, places of worship have mushroomed on public land, and in the premises of educational institutions and other government establishments. Religious rituals are performed and hymns sung at official functions like inauguration, and launching of projects.
Coming to socialism, nowadays, it is never mentioned by government documents, leaders and, even by Congressmen, Communists and Socialists. It seems, they think, the collapse of the Soviet Union has ended the relevance of socialism. They forget that socialist ideas and the yearning for an equalitarian socio-economic system have been there since time immemorial. Their seeds are found in the works of devotional poets in almost every language of India. Why they have been put under the carpet needs serious investigation. Needless to say that it shows an utter disregard for the Constitution and the commitments made to the people of India during the freedom struggle and after Independence.
Superstitions and religious intolerance were severely attacked by devotional poets and philosophers of India. Sikhism and Arya Samaj, Brahmo Samaj, Prarthana Samaj and so on came heavily on them. Buddhism rejected caste system and religious rituals. In spite of this great tradition, religious intolerance, rituals and superstitions are on the increase. States run by the governments in which the BJP is a participant have been encouraging them. Religious intolerance has manifested itself in attacks on Muslims and Christians. The Gujarat carnage and the riots in the wake of BJP leader Advani’s ratha yatra have not been forgotten. In Gujarat and Orissa, Christian missionaries and churches have been quite often targeted. In Orissa, an Australian missionary, Graham Staines, and his children were burnt alive by the activists belonging to a sister organisation of the BJP. In recent days, a number of churches and Christian families have been attacked in Orissa by the same outfit. In Gujarat, there have been several such incidents of assaults on Christians, their property and places of worship. The famed painter M.F.Hussain and his works are constant targets of the BJP and its ally, Shiv Sena. Only a few months ago, intolerance of the BJP and its sister organisations was seen on the campus of the Sayaji Rao University, Baroda in Gujarat, ruled by Narendra Modi. In the name of preventing religious conversion, repression has been let loose.
When the BJP-led NDA government was in power in New Delhi, its Human Resource Development minister, Dr. M.M.Joshi, did his level best to get history text books re-written to suit his backward-looking ideology and inculcate in the young minds a feeling of hatred and intolerance towards the minorities. He also tried to introduce astrology and other such subjects. He could not succeed because of a strong popular opposition.
. On the economic front, the acceptance of neo-liberalism inherent in economic reforms based on the Washington consensus has led to the demolition of the public sector, shelving the unfinished task of land reforms, reduction in the rates of taxation on the rich, curtailment of subsidies to the weaker sections of the society and making public distribution system more and more ineffective. With growing privatisation and dependence on market forces, the policy of reservations in jobs for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and OBCs is becoming redundant. All this has led to increasing regional imbalances and social inequalities. In Bihar, Jharkhand and U.P., while old industrial units are downing their shutters, no new investments are coming. Liberalisation of foreign trade has killed numerous small-scale industrial units, making people connected with them unemployed and miserable. With the demise of rural industries, there has been an exodus of people from rural to urban areas, leading, among others, to a fast growth in slums. The ascendancy and growing dominance of neo-liberalism has made the constitutional stipulation of India being a “sovereign” nation meaningless.
The aim of a common citizenship has been fast becoming meaningless with growing attacks on the immigrants from other regions. The armed attacks in Assam, Mumbai and elsewhere and concerned authorities looking the other way underline increasing disrespect to the Constitution.
Parliamentary democracy is in a great peril as more and more criminal and corrupt elements have been successfully entering Parliament and state legislature. Not only the Prime Minister but also chief ministers and other ministers have been fighting shy of seeking direct electoral mandate. Most parties are guilty of accommodating defeated candidates in their ministries and helping them to enter Parliament and state legislature through backdoors. Incidents of corruption and criminal acts involving several members of Parliament and state legislature indicate how far our democracy has deviated from the path charted by the makers of our Constitution. It is high time that thinking minds ponder over the present situation before it becomes too late.
gmishra@girishmishra.com
More than six decades have elapsed since India’s independence and almost fifty years of its becoming a republic. It is interesting to look back and see how far it has marched towards its declared goals.
In the very beginning of the Constitution of India, there is Preamble that states the goals towards which the people of the country have to try their level best to march. These goals have to inform each and every action of theirs. Preamble reads as follows:
“WE, THE PEOPLE OF INDIA, having solemnly resolved to constitute India into a SOVEREIGN SOCIALIST SECULAR DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC and to secure to all its citizens:
JUSTICE, social, economic and political
LIBERTY of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship
EQUALITY of status and of opportunity and to promote among them all
FRATERNITY assuring the dignity of the individual and the unity and integrity of the Nation.”
Keeping in view the basic spirit of the Preamble, the Constitution has provided for only one kind of citizenship throughout the country. In other words, there can be no discrimination among citizens on the basis of religion, gender, caste, language, colour and place of residence. In 1976, the 42nd amendment joined the words “socialist” and “secular” together. Thus the establishment of a society in which there would be no discrimination on the basis of religion and belief was mandated. Every citizen was given the freedom to propagate his religion or faith peacefully. It was made crystal clear that state would have no religion of its own. In state-run or funded institutions, no religious education or preaching would be encouraged nor would the construction of any place of worship be allowed. Simultaneously, the state was mandated to strive for establishing an equalitarian society in which there would be no place for exploitation and oppression.
State was to work towards doing away with regional economic imbalances inherited from British imperialist rule of almost two hundred years. This was necessary to strengthen national integrity and ward off the danger of separatism cropping up. At the same time, an emphasis was placed on eliminating inequalities and discriminations prevalent in the society. It was felt that, without this, there could be no social cohesion. To this end in view, special measures were needed to uplift Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and women. Special scholarships, quotas in jobs, etc. were proposed. To begin with, reservation of seats in Parliament and state legislatures for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes was provided for by the Constitution.
Speedy economic development with emphasis on doing away with regional imbalances and all sorts of social discriminations and inequalities rampant for ages was thought to be the panacea. It was realized by national movement and the leaders who came to preside over India’s destiny after Independence that speedy economic development was predicated on modern science and technology, though it was not by itself sufficient. Secularism, rationalism and socialism were no less important.
Secularism stressed that state and society should concentrate their attention on mundane, rather than otherworldly, matters and supernatural phenomena. Religion should not play any role in the conduct of business by society and state. It should remain confined strictly to private domain of individuals. High value is placed on the rational manipulation of human and material environment. Rationality is the opposite of superstition and magic. In the context of economic development it means the adoption of means, processes, and organisation of production to turning over goods and services in the most efficient possible way. From the days of renaissance and reformation, the fight against superstition and magic had accelerated. Scientists like Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, and others and philosophers like Voltaire, Rousseau, Hobbes, Locke and so on and, much later, Charles Darwin pushed up rational ideas. This lessened the hold of religion and the Church on state and public life.
Rationality aroused the need to decipher the mysteries of nature and its laws scientifically. In Western Europe, the barriers against the import of scientific ideas and technological devices from other societies collapsed. It imported many useful ideas and devices from China and elsewhere. In India, no such urge was witnessed. In fact, the upper caste Hindus looked down upon the West as the abode of the barbarians. Till the nineteenth century, West Europeans were regarded as greedy, ignorant and uncultured and all contacts with them were to be shunned. Orthodox Hindu opinion in India frowned upon crossing the seas and oceans to go to European countries. The people like Raja Ram Mohun Roy constituted a minuscule group with not much influence outside the English educated.
By 1727, the change in values and attitudes in Britain had become so great that men of science and technology were accorded more respect and honour than to politicians and the royalty and it became obvious at the state funeral of Isaac Newton, a mere scientist, in the Westminster Abbey, at which the highest in the land were proud to act as pall-bearers. Voltaire, an eye-witness to the whole thing, wrote in his Letters on England: “Not long ago, in a distinguished company, they were discussing this time-honoured and frivolous question: who was the greatest man, Caesar, Alexander, Tamburlaine, Cromwell, etc.
“Somebody answered that it was unquestionably Isaac Newton. He was right, for if true greatness consists in having received from heaven a powerful genius and in having used it to enlighten himself and others, a man such as Newton, the like of whom is scarcely to be found in ten centuries, is the truly great man, and these politicians and conquerors, in which no period has been lacking, are usually nothing more than illustrious criminals. It is to the man who rules over minds by the power of truth, not to those who enslave men by violence, it is to the man who understands the universe and not to those who disfigure it, that we owe our respect.”
This has been rarely seen in India after the end of the Nehru era. At present, all sorts of criminals and corrupt people command more respect than a scientist or man of letters. India media sing hymns of praise for businessmen, actors and actresses indulging in obscenity and vulgarity and tainted politicians because they happen to be moneyed. Print or electronic media rarely give a few centimeters of space when a distinguished man of science, technology or literature passes away.
To promote economic development, people at large must take interest and participate in it. This can happen only when they hope to receive their due share of the fruits of development. There is no inborn inequality between man and man. This attitude was developed and imparted a scientific basis by socialism. This can be easily understood in the perspective of the Constitution of India. It is a matter of great regret that India has been continuously deviating from it.
To illustrate this, let us take “secularism”. On Saturday, August 16, 2003, from 8.10 to 9 PM, the BBC television had a programme, entitled “Hindu Nation,” in which a number of prominent Indians participated. Two of them were the BJP leader and Deputy Prime Minister of India, L. K. Advani, and the former Chief Minister and prominent Congress leader, Digvijay Singh. Not withstanding sharp ideological differences between their two parties, surprisingly they were one about unsuitability of secularism. They held that secularism had failed to play any effective role in country’s politics and economic development because it was supposedly contrary to people’s thinking. Singh opined that the Congress was unable to fight the RSS, the mother-organisation of the BJP because it was not able to relate itself to religious feelings of the people at large. Advani stressed that, because of secularism, the Hindus could not take pride in their great ancient religion. In short, both leaders, in spite of belonging to two different parties ideologically opposed to each other, was one in holding that Hindu religion, in the garb of secularism, should be made the basis of Indian polity and of the official outlook. Obviously, very few people who run the administration are seriously committed to secularism. Over the years, especially since the demise of Nehru, places of worship have mushroomed on public land, and in the premises of educational institutions and other government establishments. Religious rituals are performed and hymns sung at official functions like inauguration, and launching of projects.
Coming to socialism, nowadays, it is never mentioned by government documents, leaders and, even by Congressmen, Communists and Socialists. It seems, they think, the collapse of the Soviet Union has ended the relevance of socialism. They forget that socialist ideas and the yearning for an equalitarian socio-economic system have been there since time immemorial. Their seeds are found in the works of devotional poets in almost every language of India. Why they have been put under the carpet needs serious investigation. Needless to say that it shows an utter disregard for the Constitution and the commitments made to the people of India during the freedom struggle and after Independence.
Superstitions and religious intolerance were severely attacked by devotional poets and philosophers of India. Sikhism and Arya Samaj, Brahmo Samaj, Prarthana Samaj and so on came heavily on them. Buddhism rejected caste system and religious rituals. In spite of this great tradition, religious intolerance, rituals and superstitions are on the increase. States run by the governments in which the BJP is a participant have been encouraging them. Religious intolerance has manifested itself in attacks on Muslims and Christians. The Gujarat carnage and the riots in the wake of BJP leader Advani’s ratha yatra have not been forgotten. In Gujarat and Orissa, Christian missionaries and churches have been quite often targeted. In Orissa, an Australian missionary, Graham Staines, and his children were burnt alive by the activists belonging to a sister organisation of the BJP. In recent days, a number of churches and Christian families have been attacked in Orissa by the same outfit. In Gujarat, there have been several such incidents of assaults on Christians, their property and places of worship. The famed painter M.F.Hussain and his works are constant targets of the BJP and its ally, Shiv Sena. Only a few months ago, intolerance of the BJP and its sister organisations was seen on the campus of the Sayaji Rao University, Baroda in Gujarat, ruled by Narendra Modi. In the name of preventing religious conversion, repression has been let loose.
When the BJP-led NDA government was in power in New Delhi, its Human Resource Development minister, Dr. M.M.Joshi, did his level best to get history text books re-written to suit his backward-looking ideology and inculcate in the young minds a feeling of hatred and intolerance towards the minorities. He also tried to introduce astrology and other such subjects. He could not succeed because of a strong popular opposition.
. On the economic front, the acceptance of neo-liberalism inherent in economic reforms based on the Washington consensus has led to the demolition of the public sector, shelving the unfinished task of land reforms, reduction in the rates of taxation on the rich, curtailment of subsidies to the weaker sections of the society and making public distribution system more and more ineffective. With growing privatisation and dependence on market forces, the policy of reservations in jobs for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and OBCs is becoming redundant. All this has led to increasing regional imbalances and social inequalities. In Bihar, Jharkhand and U.P., while old industrial units are downing their shutters, no new investments are coming. Liberalisation of foreign trade has killed numerous small-scale industrial units, making people connected with them unemployed and miserable. With the demise of rural industries, there has been an exodus of people from rural to urban areas, leading, among others, to a fast growth in slums. The ascendancy and growing dominance of neo-liberalism has made the constitutional stipulation of India being a “sovereign” nation meaningless.
The aim of a common citizenship has been fast becoming meaningless with growing attacks on the immigrants from other regions. The armed attacks in Assam, Mumbai and elsewhere and concerned authorities looking the other way underline increasing disrespect to the Constitution.
Parliamentary democracy is in a great peril as more and more criminal and corrupt elements have been successfully entering Parliament and state legislature. Not only the Prime Minister but also chief ministers and other ministers have been fighting shy of seeking direct electoral mandate. Most parties are guilty of accommodating defeated candidates in their ministries and helping them to enter Parliament and state legislature through backdoors. Incidents of corruption and criminal acts involving several members of Parliament and state legislature indicate how far our democracy has deviated from the path charted by the makers of our Constitution. It is high time that thinking minds ponder over the present situation before it becomes too late.
gmishra@girishmishra.com
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