Bad pressure tactics

THE ‘face painting’ the president’s lawyer got yesterday from his irate colleague at the Supreme Court is the latest in the theatre of the absurd, now playing to packed houses in Islamabad. On the other hand, the Chinese curse, ‘May you live in interesting times’, seems to define the political brinkmanship that our leaders practise. The wholesale arrests of opposition legislators and leaders cannot be condoned under that ubiquitous, colonial-time law of exigency called ‘Maintenance of Public Order’. In a country where top public office holders have been found wanting when it comes to respecting the law, pre-emptive arrests of opposition leaders come as intimidation by a panicked administration. That said, the opposition leaders in question, too, must also be seen as masters of brinkmanship; the motive behind laying siege to the Supreme Court must be questioned when a verdict is due anytime now on the eligibility of President Musharraf to get elected for another term. Desperate resort to such pressure tactics ill becomes the opposition, howsoever constrained it may feel in view of the government’s somersaults to get its way — by hook or by crook, even as it were. In the whole unfolding scene, it is political maturity and responsibility that have been lacking. There is no substitute for commonsense, which eludes the rulers as well as the opposition leaders. Both seem to be out to rock the boat in which they are sailing.

The Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal, as a key component of the opposition alliance, the All Parties Democratic Movement, has only itself to blame for its acquiescence in the passage of the Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution that indemnified all of Gen Musharraf’s actions after the 1999 coup. The opposition’s lacklustre show on September 10 and the swift deportation of Nawaz Sharif were a sign of public apathy, betraying the irrelevance of its political agenda which many see as self-seeking attempts. Where are the real issues touching the lives of the people, say, inflation, corruption, lawlessness, etc. in the whole debate as to why the current rulers should be booted out?

The APDM’s quest for the restoration of democracy has at best remained bookish; it is cited, endlessly, as the panacea for all ills, and not as a means to achieve the goals which reflect the people’s aspirations. Justice, of late, has assumed new meaning since the restoration of the Chief Justice to his office. The legal community mobilised the people to restore the rule of law. But what a lawyer did yesterday, spraying the president’s lawyer with black paint, does not serve the rule of law or justice. Also, justice cannot endure in isolation from the polity, and it is no substitute for meaningful politics. Of the latter, politicians have precious little to show. With such cynicism prevailing, any attempt to exert pressure on the overheated judicial system from any quarter will find little sympathy with the people who continue to reel under their own everyday trials and tribulations.

International oil price hike

THE surge in international oil prices last week seems to have been driven more by market perception of supply constraints and growing demand rather than the actual production falling short of current needs. Triggered by bigger than generally anticipated cuts in the key rates of the US Federal Reserve, the crude oil price has soared to an all time high of $84.10 per barrel in New York. It has raised hopes that a steeper reduction in interest rate would shore up a sagging US economy and raise oil demand in the largest oil consuming country. The reality may however prove to be somewhat different. The American credit crisis is not over and could last up to 2009. In case of the US economy slowing down, the Asian economies, critically dependent on exports to the United States, run the risk of achieving a lower than targeted growth.

At this point of time, OPEC which has over one-third of the global oil market share, does not seem to have been prodded into action either by the sudden price spurt or by the alarming forecasts that oil would hit $90 by end of 2007 and $100 in the first half of 2008. OPEC blames refining shortage, geopolitical instability and speculation in futures for the situation. It does not seem inclined to raise its output beyond 50,000 barrels per day from Nov 1 as it had promised earlier. Instead of keeping the demand and supply almost balanced, the oil exporters must boost production to prevent a price spiral. The $ two trillion dollar oil trade is one of most strongly entrenched international businesses as the efforts to find oil efficient technologies and alternative renewable sources of energy have only just started bearing fruit. The new energy products have become competitive due to the quadrupling of oil prices since 2002. Till such time that these energy products gather critical mass, the oil market may not be disciplined.

But in the immediate context, the global economic imbalance created by the unprecedented oil price hike needs to be addressed. While the oil exporting countries are accumulating hundreds of billions of dollars in trade surplus, the oil importers — especially the developing countries — suffer from huge current account deficits. While an estimated $500 billion dollars of the oil money has been invested in financial markets in the UK and the USA to help them tide over their trade deficits, the developing countries that are worse affected have not received adequate support in the form of massive investments from oil exporting countries. Do not they also deserve a much fairer deal — and more so from the oil business?

Revival of KCR

ABOUT two years ago this time, Sindh Governor Dr Ishratul Ibad issued directives asking officials to expedite work on the Karachi Circular Railway. Flash forward to the present and things are more or less the same: the KCR is still being asked to be revived, this time by the Railways Workers Federation. One would think that the KCR is simply jinxed, its revival constantly put on the back-burner for some reason or the other, the most popular theory being that authorities would rather spend money on a monorail or elevated train system. There has been no word on those ill-thought out plans either. The city’s worsening traffic caught the suo motu attention of the Supreme Court in August which should have served as yet another reminder to the city administration to address issues of public transport that would ease the burden on the roads. The KCR’s revival is just one step in that direction, even if the first phase of the revival two years ago — the opening of the route from City Railway Station to Landhi — proved to be a bit of a damp squib. Nonetheless the second phase of the revival is due to start at the end of the year and this time and is due to be completed in 2010, by which time the traffic chaos may truly be out of control. Its expediency is thus crucial as is the need to come up with alternative solutions to the traffic problem.

All cities need a properly thought out mass transit system and not half-baked proposals that require huge foreign loans and cause more disruptions than ease. There are scores of architects, contractors and town planners with local expertise that city administrations can turn to for advice when drafting plans to address this issue. It is time to stop pontificating and take action.

An amoral code

WHEN a coalition begins to melt, its partners subtly, if not silently, begin to shift their public agenda from common concern to individual need. The debate over the bridge built by Lord Ram between the Tamil coast and Sri Lanka is hardly new.

A year ago, the supreme leader of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, Mr M.K. Karunanidhi, would not have fractured sensibilities nationwide with intemperate, unacceptable remarks about Lord Ram, revered and worshipped by Hindus as the paradigm of virtue. Today, the political calendar has a premature general election marked within the first half of 2008. His party’s fortunes are now more important to him than his coalition’s fate. After all, what use is any coalition to him if he cannot get the seats that can make him a power broker?

Under pressure, Mr Karunanidhi is dipping into the source of Dravida nectar for sustenance. The origins are lost to public memory, so it may be useful to recall them.

The movement began in 1914 when Dr C. Nadesan Mudaliar started the Dravida Association. But it got its first impetus when the son of a rich landlord, privileged enough to be educated in England, walked away from his background to fight for the lower castes against the domination of the Brahmins.The name of this remarkable man was E.V. Ramaswamy Naicker, popularly known as ‘EVR’ and then ‘Periyar’. His philosophy was practical: he likened caste to malaria and said that his search was not for medicine but for the mosquitoes that spread malaria. He declared himself an atheist and went to war against Brahmins, the chief perpetrators of caste iniquity.

He launched an agitation against his personal friend, the Maharaja of Travancore, for reform: an untouchable could not walk on the streets of the princely state, let alone raise his eyes in front of someone from an upper caste.

You can get a flavour of EVR’s views from this quotation: “(Aryans) concocted absurd stories in keeping with their barbarian status… The blabberings of the intoxicated Brahmins in those old days are still faithfully observed in this modern world as the religious rituals, morals, stories, festivals, fasts, vows and beliefs.” Inherent in the doctrine was the Aryan as an outsider, who had driven true Indians, the Dravidians, south and then maintained his power through an iniquitous system. The Brahmins were agents of that domination.

The Dravida movement would move away from the eccentricities of EVR into the sager leadership of C.N. Annadurai, but the basic philosophy did not alter. When the DMK was formed after the split in the Dravida Kazhagam on Sept 17, 1949, it did not name a chairman. That chair was kept vacant for the “soul of Periyar”.

Mr Karunanidhi has made two basic miscalculations in trying to revive his party by resurrecting the spirit of Periyar. No faith has undergone more dramatic reform than Hinduism has in the last 75 years. This is a tribute to both Hinduism’s leaders, the most notable of them being Mahatma Gandhi, and to ordinary Hindus, who realised that the excesses of caste were self-defeating.

The India of 2007, with a supremely confident Mayawati as chief minister of India’s most important state, would be unrecognisable to the Hindus of 1932, a dramatic year in the history of caste relations. A nation cannot be modern until it destroys the shibboleths that have kept it chained to regression.

There is much talk of a Hindu renaissance in the 19th century. That is a myth compared to the true renaissance that came in the 20th century, and became the engine of social change, a vital necessity for the kind of economic growth that India is witnessing.

When the Brahmin votes for Mayawati, he makes Periyar, once a crucial catalyst of change, irrelevant. Periyar’s genius created the change that has made Periyar unnecessary. Tamil Nadu has changed as much as the rest of India. The “low caste” Hindus of Tamil Nadu are no longer subservient to the Brahmin. Mr Karunanidhi’s electoral success is evidence of this.

Mr Karunanidhi is talking to the Tamil Nadu of 1967, not the Tamil Nadu of 2007.Nor does the venerable Dravida leader quite understand the meaning of secularism, at least as we practise it in India. The European benchmark of secularism is the separation of faith and state.

In India, secularism means respect for the other’s right to practise faith in whatsoever manner the other chooses. Hindus and Muslims have lived with each other almost as long as Muslims and Christians. But there is no instance of the kind of ferocious diatribe that Dante, author of Divine Comedy, indulged in against the person of Islam’s Prophet (PBUH), in any epic written by a Hindu.

Similarly, there is not a single writer of any standing among Muslims who has ever been insulting towards a Hindu god. We do not have to believe in each other’s creeds to have respect for each other’s religions. That is the essence of co-existence. Mr Karunanidhi, who is probably an atheist, forgot that simple rule.

The debate about proof is inane, to opt for the most polite word. A Christian cannot ‘prove’ that God exists; a Jew cannot ‘prove’ that Jehovah exists. This may be, for all I know, less a reflection on divinity, and more an indication of human limitations.

It is arrogance to believe that truth is merely the little that the human brain comprehends. Gravity existed before Isaac Newton’s brain “discovered” it; indeed, it would be presumptuous to claim that the pyramids were built without a thorough knowledge of gravity. The human brain is a work in progress.

Belief that has sustained itself for centuries is rarely constructed on a chimera, no matter what deviations (like caste) men may impose on the original faith. The past is littered with forgotten claims. Mr Karunanidhi would have been wiser to respect the faith of the millions who have prayed in the temple at Rameshwaram, the offshore island also called the Kashi of the South: no prizes for guessing that Rameshwaram is named after Lord Ram.

It is interesting that a Sri Lankan, King Parakrama Bahu, built the sanctum sanctorum of the Ramanathswamy temple. Incidentally, “mythology” has an answer to Mr Karunanidhi’s question about whether Lord Ram was an engineer: the bridge between the mainland and Sri Lanka was constructed by Nala, the son of Vishwakarma. But such political wisecracks only trivialise a sensitive issue.

A voter decides on the fate of a ruling party because of a bouquet of reasons. There is rarely just one reason that becomes the decisive driver, submerging others. What parties need to worry about is the tipping point, the final straw that persuades a voter to move from the past to a different future. Many voters, across the country, will be hurt by the insult to Lord Ram and establishment’s inability to do anything about it.

Mr Karunanidhi has one advantage over his critics. He knows that no one cares how you win an election, or what you do to stay in power; the only thing that matters is numbers in an age of coalitions. His allies may fudge and squirm but no one will dare ask him to leave the alliance. If he retains his MPs after the next election, he will be welcome in the next permutation and combination, whatever it might be.Power has its own moral, or amoral, code.

The writer is editor-in-chief of The Asian Age based in New Delhi

Internet security...

European Press: Irish Examiner

IT MAY be a tad unfair to describe Justice Minister Brian Lenihan as a modern day King Canute, trying to stem the tide of harmful content on the Internet. Though Canute overestimated his power and failed in his attempts to literally hold back the tide, it is to be hoped that Mr Lenihan...is more successful in his objectives. The Internet is the great empowering invention of our age but it comes with a price. That price is that access is unlimited and that content is also unconfined.

Everything from Granny Brown’s recipe for her brown soda loaf to some things that make the most vigorous suggestions of the Kama Sutra look like Enid Blyton’s Five Have Plenty of Fun.

Mr Lenihan says that firms which fail to sign up to a voluntary code on the exclusion of harmful content will face state regulation. He also threatens to impose a mandatory levy to fund regulatory measures to keep the Internet above board.

All of this is fine...but two truths remain. One is that the Internet is an all pervasive but inanimate tool. The other is that people will behave like they have been taught to behave. Though the Internet is constantly growing...it is incumbent on everyone who has the interest of a child or young person at heart to keep a weather eye open and to learn how to use the technology involved. There is nothing wrong with being intrusive...if the objectives are as clear cut as Mr Lenihan’s — the wellbeing of all young people who use the Internet. — (Sept 21)

Accused becomes accuser!

European Press: Nine O’Clock

THE...state of mind in Romania is so disoriented that even when serious issues...are up for debate the public reaction...varies…. It’s exactly what happened after President Traian Basescu issued a... warning on Romania’s negative population growth rate… He...stated that if we do not do what has to be done...to control the demographic decline, we would...sacrifice the future of our children…

He offered several statistics in support... Romania’s population has fallen by 1.4 million in the last 17 years and by 2025 the population would drop by 20 per cent. For... 2100 Romania’s population is estimated at half the current level and the average age of active individuals would rise to 45 years. State revenues would be lower…this would lead to an increasingly precarious public health situation...

Despite these...facts, the disparaging, ‘reassuring’ reactions urgently made their presence felt. Some...blamed the president’s statements for having an electoral target. Others explained the pathetic character of those statements as being specific to debates within an international reunion. Numerous other interventions sought to point out that Romania’s demographic situation is not an exception...The criticism intensified also on the basis...that the massive Romanian emigration was stimulated precisely by the current politicians in office since very low wages are considered our main card for attracting foreign capital. — (Bucharest, Sept 24)