| March 2, 2003 | Sunday | Zul Hijjah 28, 1423 |
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Gujarat: one year after
Another fare hike
IRAQ’s offer to destroy its Al Samoud missiles is yet another proof of its willingness to comply with the UN resolutions on disarmament and facilitate a peaceful resolution of the current crisis. At a meeting between Iraqi officials and technical members of the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission on Thursday, the two sides agreed on the modalities for destroying Al Samoud-2 missiles because their range exceeded the limit laid down by UN Resolution 687. Earlier, Unmovic announced that it had received a letter from Iraq saying that it had agreed in principle to destroy the missiles. This by any standards is good news and should help strengthen the cause of peace. Chief UN weapons inspector Dr Hans Blix said that Baghdad’s move was “a very significant piece of real disarmament.” France, too, seems to share Dr Blix’s view. As French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin put it, Iraq’s decision “confirms that inspectors are getting results.”
True to the pattern, Washington has dismissed the Iraqi decision as yet another instance of “trickery.” So far, it has rejected all Iraqi moves in compliance with Resolution 1441 or in response to specific demands by weapons inspectors. Last October, when Baghdad surprised the world by agreeing to let the UN inspectors in, America called it a ploy designed to deceive, hoodwink and gain time. Subsequently, too, the Saddam regime agreed to every UN move made in the direction of Iraq’s disarmament. It accepted UN Resolution 1441 and went about complying with its provisions. It submitted its declaration to the Security Council within the required 30 days and has since been cooperating fully with Unmovic. Blix later reported that his commission had found no “smoking gun” in Iraq. He did allege at one stage that Iraq was not cooperating to the desired degree, but later corrected himself by saying the Iraqi attitude had improved. Now his latest statement that Iraq’s willingness to destroy the prohibited missiles was “a real piece of disarmament” only confirms the general impression that progress is being made towards disarming Iraq by peaceful means and repudiates the American claim that Iraq can be dispossessed of weapons of mass destruction by military means alone.
An indication of America’s fixation with Iraq is White House spokesman Ari Fleischer’s choice of words. It shows the degree of the Bush administration’s pathological hatred of Iraq. Fleischer said that the Iraqi regime was “a deception wrapped in a lie inside a fraud.” This being illustrative of the White House’s mindset, one wonders if there is anything that will satisfy the Bush administration at all about Iraq’s bona fides in regard to compliance with the disarmament requirements. Unconcerned about Iraq’s positive move and the welcome it has received from Unmovic and sections of the European leadership, the US has announced that it has sent another aircraft carrier to the Gulf region. It appears the UN and Unmovic are wasting their time, because nothing is going to change America’s war plans. In fact, President George Bush has made his intentions clear when he said that even the destruction of the missiles would not save President Saddam Hussein and his regime. Then, one may ask, what is this inspection drama about? And why this second UN resolution? Why not a war even without UN authorization — if truth, justice and international law and morality are to be treated with open contempt. America may be the victor in the short run, but in the longer an American victory over Iraq may prove frightfully pyrrhic.
HUMAN rights watchdogs have censured the governments of India and the Indian state of Gujarat for their anti-Muslim bias. In separate statements issued on Thursday, which marked the first anniversary of the Godhra train burning incident in which 58 Hindu pilgrims were burnt alive, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch accused the Gujarat government of abetting in the massacre of Muslims that followed the incident. The ensuing communal violence in Gujarat claimed over 2,000, mostly Muslim, lives and displaced tens of thousands of families whose homes and businesses were burnt down by Hindu mobs. One year on, many families are still holed up in the shelters set up by charity organizations across Gujarat, fearing for their lives if they returned to their homes. Hindu extremist leaders issued fresh threats to Muslims as they observed the anniversary of the train burning.
In a scathing indictment of Narendra Modi’s state government Amnesty International stated: “double standards appear to have been repeatedly and consistently applied during investigations of responsibilities in the Godhra and post-Godhra massacres.” As a result of this bias on the part of the state, many Muslims, and no Hindus, have so far been charged with looting, arson, murder and incitement to violence, even though Muslim casualties far outnumbered those suffered by Hindus. The BJP-led government in New Delhi firmly backed Narendra Modi’s tactics because, as expected, the fanning of anti-Muslim sentiments strengthened the ruling party’s position in the state. In the state polls that followed in November, the BJP won a resounding victory. BJP stalwarts have since then openly vowed to repeat the ‘Gujarat experiment’ elsewhere as a sure recipe for winning elections. The on-going efforts to garner support for building a temple at the site of the razed Babri Masjid in Ayodhya is part of that wider BJP game plan, given that many more Indian states are up for election in the months ahead. Meanwhile, the wounds inflicted on the secular character of the Indian polity may take many years to heal.
FRIDAY’s decision by the Sindh government to increase transport fares will disproportionately hit those in the low and middle income brackets. The government has said that the rising price of petrol has prompted this decision while the transporters claimed that they had asked for a much larger increase but in the ‘interest of consumers’ had agreed for less. The government has set certain conditions before allowing the fare increase: that the transporters will see to it that they replace their smoke-emitting vehicles, and that, if and when oil prices fall, fares will be reduced accordingly. However, such conditions have always been placed whenever an increase in public transport fares has been sanctioned. Unfortunately, transporters have never delivered on their part of the deal and neither has the government bothered to ensure compliance.
The government will always have a plausible excuse for raising petrol prices given the generally upward direction of world oil prices and because the country is wholly dependent on imports to meet its fuel needs. However, an arrangement could be explored to prevent the rising price of petrol from causing transport fares to go up. This has to do with the petroleum development levy, a charge applied by the federal government on petrol products sold in the country. While the levy enables the government to earn much-needed revenue, it has an adverse impact on the rest of the economy. If the levy, which currently makes up over 40 per cent of the price of a litre of petrol, were reduced to match the rise in the cost of imported oil, the price of petrol sold to consumers would remain unchanged. There would then be little justification to raise transport fares. The federal government must explore this possibility in order to protect the interests of the poor and not-so-well-off commuters.