US advice to India

IT is for the umpteenth time that a senior official of the US administration has asked New Delhi to hold talks with Islamabad for seeking ways to end the tense border stand-off between the two neighbours. In an interview with The Hindu newspaper, US National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice said India should give diplomacy a chance so that the two countries could embark on a relationship that led to peaceful coexistence. Prior to Ms Rice’s nudging, Secretary of State Colin Powell and President George W. Bush have repeatedly urged India to take up Pakistan’s long-standing offer of unconditional talks. Unfortunately, those pleas fell on deaf ears, with New Delhi refusing to give an indication of when it would even begin to consider a resumption of talks. As matters stand now, everyone from Prime Minister Vajpayee downwards, including his defence and interior ministers, have said that the decision to maintain the deployment of the forces at the border at the current level would be reviewed only after the snows melt in the Himalayas, since that would allow New Delhi to judge whether “cross border terrorism” and “infiltration” had ceased.

This rather intransigent approach to the issue of unresolved differences, including the core issue, Kashmir, merely serves to perpetuate tension and denies peace to the region. As Ms Rice and many others in Washington have been saying, it is about time India responded to Islamabad’s persistent overtures for unconditional talks. Pakistan was among the first nations to condemn the Dec 13 attack on the Indian parliament building. In fact, since then it has taken a number of decisions which include cracking down on religious extremist groups, controlling sectarian violence, freezing the assets of terrorist outfits and reforming the madressahs. The whole world applauded what Pakistan did, and even India welcomed Islamabad’s initiatives, though in low key. But it did nothing to lessen tension; instead, it took the tension to a very high pitch by massing more than a million troops on Pakistan’s border, forcing Islamabad to take counter measures to ensure its security. With more than a million men engaged in an eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation, the world, if not India, realized there was a real possibility that this could turn into an accidental war.

The real issue, as Delhi perhaps knows only too well, is Kashmir, and lest we be accused of being partisan or making a mountain out of a molehill, it was India’s home minister himself, L. K. Advani, who recently told parliament that 61,000 people had been killed in the disputed territory in fighting during the last fifteen years. Unfortunately, India’s consistent refusal to talk to Pakistan to scale back the military deployment is only to be expected if one looks at its record of persistently refusing to talk about Kashmir. New Delhi looks at the issue as a law and order problem, and then proceeds to insult the indigenous struggle of the Kashmiris by accusing Pakistan of fighting a “proxy war”. Its ploy of hiding the atrocities committed by the Indian army and paramilitary personnel under the cloak of maintaining law and order deceives no one, especially when its own home minister has admitted to the death of 61,000 people in the disputed territory. The refusal to talk on Kashmir can only be explained in terms of India’s obsession to hold on to Kashmir, no matter what the cost. The longer it persists in this folly, the smaller will be the chances for peace and security between the two nuclear-capable neighbours.

SBP’s strange directive

THE decision by the State Bank of Pakistan asking all banks to refuse requests by members of the public to exchange defaced or damaged currency notes for new ones is extremely disappointing and defies common sense. Normally, the commercial banks would forward these damaged notes to the State Bank, which would exchange them for new ones. Now the banks have been stopped from doing this, implying that the State Bank, which issued the notes in the first place and guaranteed their acceptance as legal tender, is no longer in the mood to live up to that guarantee. The move punishes ordinary citizens for no fault of theirs. The government must ask the SBP under what logic it has resorted to this action, especially when much of the defacing is done by the banks themselves because tellers have a habit of stamping currency notes or writing on them for purposes of counting and so on.

The SBP order also seems to have ignored the acute shortage of new and clean bank notes. That was why the finance minister said recently that he would ask the SBP governor to address the problem. Presumably, the shortage of new notes has to do with unscrupulous elements who hoard new bills and then sell them at a premium. This issue is linked with the preponderance of soiled notes circulating in the economy, because if people had clean notes in the first place there would be no reason for exchanging them. The other, perhaps more important, issue relates to sovereignty and the concept of fiat money. All rupee notes are issued with a guarantee by the government of Pakistan to all parties engaged in an economic transaction that they be accepted as legal tender. How, then, can the SBP shy away from its responsibility of replacing old and worn-out bank notes, especially when much of the damage is done by the banks themselves?

Pensioners’ case

WITH preparations for the budget gathering momentum, the question of providing relief to government employees, both serving and retired, is under scrutiny. The most hard-pressed section is that of the pensioners, who were not given a fair deal by the recent pay and pensioners committee. This injustice was compounded by the government, which put off the implementation of even these modest recommendations to July 1, 2002. While those who retired prior to 1991 will receive an increase of 15 per cent, those who retired after 1991 and before 1994 will get 10 per cent and those who retired after 1994 will receive a raise of five percent. This despite the fact that inflation was widely believed to be running in double digits during the ‘90s. These increases in pensions are, to say the least, negligible compared to the cumulative increases in the cost of living during the period. What has added insult to injury is that the increases are calculated on net rather than gross pensions — which, in effect, amounts to only half the pension.

The greatest injustice to pensioners, however, was the withdrawal of the benefit of restoration of the portion of the pension surrendered in lieu of commutation. The commutation amount used to be an advance payment of 50 per cent of the pension of a specified period, which until now stood at 15 years. It was in fact an interest-free advance payable in monthly instalments in the form of a surrendered portion of the pension. This withdrawal of restoration benefit has become effective from December 1, 2001 for all pensioners who had retired up to November 30, 2001. The government made this advanced payment to allow retiring employees to meet their immediate unfinished obligations. After the pay-off, the surrendered portion used to be restored and pensioners could draw their full pensions. The denial of this restoration right is not only unfair but amounts to the confiscation of a person’s assets without any cause. Now that the budget is being prepared, one hopes that the plight of pensioners is taken into account and the injustice done to them undone.