THERE are lots of easy gimmicks politicians use to distract our attention from their own failures and inadequacies. Naming and renaming of roads and hospitals, or unveiling portraits of real or make-believe heroes are a time-tested stunt that virtually every leader in public view seems to subscribe to.

Recently, the Vajpayee government sought to garner an easy constituency by installing the picture of V.D. Savarkar, a controversial pre-independence Hindu communalist leader, in the Indian parliament, that too alongside the portrait of Mahatma Gandhi. The entire opposition boycotted the inauguration, but only to soon return to live with the topsy-turvy ways of history.

Similarly, as was to be expected, everyone and his neighbour wanted to milk the Indian cricket team’s impressive march into the World Cup finals against Australia.

Lead singers of paeans for the team were the Pakistan-baiting Shiv Sena party whose cadre are better known for bolstering patriotism by digging up cricket pitches, when they are not setting fire to government property. After all, it was only the other day that they were threatening to burn down the homes of the very same cricketers after they had lost an opening match to Australia.

So these very men, the conscience-keepers of our patriotic masses, as it were, were heard demanding that Sachin Tendulkar’s portrait should be enshrined in the Parliament House alongside the independence heroes, no less.

The only trouble with the Shiv Sena’s brazenly opportunistic demand is that not too long ago their bigger and more powerful colleagues in patriotic obscurantism, the Rashtriya Swayamasewak Sangh (RSS), had described cricket as a colonial legacy that ought to be banished from India. Their party journal was crooning a similar theme as recently as last month or thereabouts.

Along with the RSS, the less rabid but equally convoluted socialists of the Indian hue also began their career in the 1950s, mouthing expletives against cricket for becoming a national pastime.

Journalist and author Ramachandra Guha notes in his latest offering on cricket, A Corner Of A Foreign Field: The Indian History Of A Foreign Sport, aspects of this inexplicable contradiction.

In the 1950s, he notes, RSS chief Golwalkar would lose no opportunity to come down upon cricket.

Wrote Golwalkar in his book to exhort Hindu militancy: “The costly game of cricket, which has not only become a fashion in our country, but something over which we are spending crores of rupees, only proves that the English are still dominating our mind and intellect. The cricket match that Pandit Nehru and other MPs played some years back was the very depth of this Anglicism. Why could they not play kabbadi, our national game which has been acclaimed by several countries as a great game?”

The socialist leader and Nehru-baiter, Dr Ram Manohar Lohia, seemed to be at one with Golwalkar in the wish to banish cricket from the country and promote kabbadi in its stead.

Guha recounts a story related to him by one of Lohia’s associates, Arun Kumar of Delhi.

“To a group of acolytes and left-wing journalists Lohia thundered about how the game of cricket symbolized our continuing colonization, and how the last Englishman to rule India was complicit in this. Throw out Nehru, he said, and we can all happily start playing kabbadi. The scribes departed, to file their stories. But after they had gone, Lohia walked across to the nearest paanwallah, asked for a paan, and while chewing it continued: “Kya Hanif out ho gaya kya?” The answer came back: “No, Hanif is still batting.” He was out only at sundown, run out, for 160.

The question is now that the Indian cricket team has done exceedingly well by reaching the finals of the World Cup, thus arousing national fervour all round, where do people with the mindset of the RSS and the Lohia-type of socialists, of whom Defence Minister George Fernandes is a leading example, stand on this issue.

“Be like Arjuna”, Prime Minister Vajpayee counselled Saurav Ganguly, the Indian captain, citing the example of a mythical hero from the epic Mahabharata. Arjuna had scored a bull’s eye in an impossible archery contest by applying a focused will to win.

Goodness knows how many more turncoats of patriotic ideals is this game of cricket going to produce.

In the United States, the government does not censor newspapers or TV channels. The job is left to the corporate houses that run and own the mega businesses. With the arrival of Rupert Murdoch here via local conduits, the syndrome has come almost intact to India.

I cannot recall any single event, whether it was the Indian budget or the national day, that was covered so uniformly by all the TV channels than the way they were seen eating out of the hands of Donald Rumsfeld at the ‘live’ press conference the other day, which they were privileged enough to be allowed to link up to.

As if to narrow the difference between the sublime and the ridiculous, we have a leading Indian newspaper reporting the Iraq war out of guess where — Washington. Despite the national mood being firmly against the American-led attack, the slant on Indian TV channels too remains by and large partial to the pro-American version of the war.

In fact, one private channel does the easiest thing on offer — it just hooks on to Fox TV, and makes available the unedited, unbridled propaganda to its captive viewers. Naturally, very few would be aware that Indians are protesting virtually every day, every hour against the war. If the protests are being blacked out in the media, it has little to do with the state’s whip hand of censorship. The answer more likely lies in the business interests that the channels and newspapers have to take into account.

IN an editorial marking World Water Day, Ibrat writes that recent rains have improved reservoir levels to some extent but Sindh is still facing acute water shortage. The daily alleges that Punjab has kept on receiving more than its share.

It argues that each session of the Indus River System Authority concludes on one or other controversy over distribution of water between the two provinces.

Recently, Punjab’s representatives created a tense situation at an Irsa meeting by taking up the issue of the Kalabagh and Akori dams. Irritated by this, the representative of Sindh staged a walkout which was supported by those of Balochistan and the NWFP. After Irsa chairman rebuked the Punjab representative for always taking up disputed issues, it was decided that in future, the issues of dams would not be raised at Irsa sessions as they come under the jurisdiction of the government.

Ibrat expresses the opinion that Punjab’s approach to the water issue does not augur well for the national interest.

It appeals to the government to ensure that water- starved Sindh is provided with its due water share.

Kawish says that after the passage of eight years since the killing of six villagers by the Ghotki police, the case has been put up before a court. According to the complainant, the Ghotki police arrested six villagers from Pano Aqil and adjoining areas.

The complainant contended that the villagers were subsequently killed in a fake encounter and their bodies were buried at an undisclosed place.

Later, on the directives of the Sindh High Court, an FIR was registered with the Baiji police against its SHO and four sub- inspectors of the police station, but none of them was arrested. Now, after the lapse of eight years, the police has challaned the case in a court.

The daily writes that no comment can be offered as the matter is subjudice, but at least it can be pointed out that the case can be a wake-up call for the highups of the police department, which, even after the introduction of recent reforms, is not helping the people.

Tameer-i-Sindh writes that the ever-rising incidents of Karo-kari killings call for urgent and effective legalisation against this rampant crime, which has become a social norm in the rural areas. More so, because a case of so- called honour killing is often not seen as a murder case.

This is why the Sindh minister for social welfare, Dr Saeeda Malik, has said that action against the culprits of this crime should be taken under Section 302 of the PPC.

THE Brazilian writer, Paulo Coelho, brilliantly pointed out some of the hypocrisies and contradictions created for itself by the Bush administration in his article, “Thank you, President Bush,” published in Dawn on Sunday. US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has now come out with another startling observation that further exposes US double talk.

He wants coalition prisoners of war taken by Iraq to be treated under the Geneva Conventions which he says prohibit the showing of PoW pictures. After ridiculing the United Nations and doing everything to denigrate the world organization and refusing to honour the will of the international community, the US is now seeking protection for American PoWs under international treaties. It cannot have it both ways, although there can be no debate on the point that both sides should treat combatants and civilians in their custody humanly and with dignity.

CNN and the BBC have obligingly been bringing on representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross to read out chapter and verse from the Geneva Conventions. No one has been asked to tell us in similar fashion about the UN Charter. There has been no one to talk to us on the cable channels about how the US, which so criticizes France and Russia for threatening to veto any resolution authorizing war against Iraq, vetoed resolution after resolution on the Israeli occupation of Arab lands.

The PoW issue is just one of the many problems that the US-led coalition has created for itself. It says it has attacked Iraq to free the people of the country from Saddam Hussein. But at least 50 civilians are reported to have been killed in coalition attacks in Basra alone and there are other casualties among the civilian population elsewhere. How can you kill a people whom you want to be free?

This declared objective of liberating people has posed a strategic problem also for the coalition forces themselves. They can, with their tremendous might, pulverize Iraq and wipe out Iraqis and get it all over with in a matter of days. But they have to tread carefully and be selective in their attacks. Avoiding the use of maximum force means getting bogged down outside populated centres and suffering casualties, which will have repercussions at home in the US and Britain. The arrogant foolishness of the entire adventure has thus been further exposed.

Something else has been starkly underlined as never before since the war began and its saturation coverage by the international media. Hour after hour, you have reporters based in Doha, Qatar, and in Kuwait outlining the progress of the conflict. Suddenly you realize that if Kuwait and Qatar had not given permission to the US-led forces to operate from their territories, there may well have been no war. Let’s wind up the OIC, the Arab League and stop talking of the “ummah”.