A mandate by scriptures
DR MANMOHAN SINGH has cited the Bhagvad Geeta to justify his betrayal of Iran in the IAEA vote. The Iranians will have no dearth of verses from Hafiz and Rumi to describe Dr Singh as an unreliable friend. But this is not the first time that the Indian prime minister has let the mask of a gentleman that he has worn so assiduously slip.
In fact he began his political career with a moral compromise when he cleverly declared himself a resident of Assam (of all the places!) to become eligible for election to the Rajya Sabha from the northeastern state. And of course, it is an incontrovertible fact that the pioneer of India’s celebrated economic reforms that have ruined many a government’s political career has never won a genuine election to the Lok Sabha, the house of the people.
President Bush condescendingly called Dr Singh a good man he could work with. What is curiously true though is that the good man would perhaps not be prime minister today had the Bombay stock markets not been manipulated by heaven knows who into such a frenzied fall that it was construed as a political message against New Delhi’s coronation of Sonia Gandhi. In fact, that manipulation became the last obstacle to deny the widow of Rajiv Gandhi her rightful claim to become India’s new leader in May last year.
Just around that time all kinds of rumours were being spread, including the possibility of a military opposition to her election as prime minister. And of course the Hindu right was colluding in the orgy of threats that emanated from mysterious quarters to deny the Indian public what they had chosen as a finely balanced political option to be cobbled by the Congress president.
So this is how the current Indian prime minister came to be elected. Is it his mandate, if he ever had one, to take India away from the non-aligned path, into the waiting arms of President George W. Bush, as our communist parties are alleging? The debate doing the rounds in India today pits Dr Singh against his foreign minister Kunwar Natwar Singh in which the prime minister is said to represent the ascendant class of technocrats and corporate interests who are firmly aligned with the United States.
Natwar Singh is being regarded as a pro-Nehruvian socialist who was tutored by Indira Gandhi in the cold war school of diplomacy. There has been speculation of a rift between the pro-American prime minister’s office and a pro-nonaligned, third world camaraderie school of diplomacy led by the foreign minister.
But now the Indian government, reportedly cajoled by the prime minister’s office, says reports of a rift with the foreign ministry are mischievous and that there is no difference of opinion on the anti-Iran vote between Mr Singh and Dr Singh.
If this were really true, the Americans would not be frothing at the mouth at the mere mention of Natwar Singh quite the opposite of the warmth they reserve for the Indian prime minister.
Now, according to the Asian Age, derogatory remarks made by US congressman Tom Lantos against the Indian foreign minister at the House International Relations Committee hearing in Washington have sparked strong anger and resentment in and outside the government circles in New Delhi.
The full transcript published in several newspapers is being quoted by senior officials and diplomats as a sign of ‘American arrogance’, says the Age. A former foreign secretary has been wondering why the issue was not taken up forcefully by Prime Minister Singh during his recent visit to New York.
Mr Lantos, who upped the ante in the US Congress against India’s friendly relations with Iran, has described Natwar Singh as dense and Stalinist. He said that Mr Singh’s remarks in Iran “shows a degree of denseness that occasionally very intelligent people are burdened with. They’re (Indians) brilliant and they’re dense. They’re brilliant, which is obvious, but they are simply dense because they are incapable of comprehending that other countries have very important concerns”.
At the hearing, as the transcripts show, a clear link was established between Iran and the civilian nuclear deal with Mr Lantos again being the first to point out that if India “tells us go fly a kite, the goodwill will dissipate and they will pay a very heavy price for their total disregard of US concerns vis-à-vis Iran”.
There are published claims today, endorsed by many including the communist allies of the government, that the Americans were now dealing directly with Prime Minister Singh, and not with Natwar Singh. The Age quotes a senior analyst as saying that US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had directly asked the prime minister to make concessions to Pakistan President Gen. Pervez Musharraf and not to her Indian counterpart, Natwar Singh.
The Congress party too is beginning to be worried. If a seasoned politician like P. V. Narasimha Rao could send the party into eight years of political oblivion, from 1996 to 2004, what would be the fate of the party at the hands of Dr Singh, who has a tiny constituency to shore him? This is the question being asked.
Of course, even more embarrassing questions have come from the opposition. Former foreign minister Jaswant Singh, not known to be exactly hostile to Washington, has asked on behalf of the Bharatiya Janata Party the following questions that have yet to be answered:
“In India’s view what aspect of the NPT Agreement was violated by Iran?
“If a regular Board meeting of the IAEA is actually due in November, then what was the hurry in holding a meeting towards the end of September, and at whose behest was this done?
“Was this decision of the UPA government a Cabinet decision? If not, where was the decision taken and by whom?
“Does this resolution tantamount to redefining the NPT, but without any formal amendments of the Treaty?
“If ‘clandestine acquisition’ of nuclear material by nuclear weapons states is a violation of the NPT, then is IAEA resolution discriminatory?;
“Does this Resolution not amount to attempting an enforcement of non-proliferation through a control over production of fissile material, but without any international treaty for it? Has the government examined the ramifications of such an approach for India’s own nuclear policy and security?”
Jaswant Singh’s questions are as compelling as Dr Singh’s faith in the Bhagvad Geeta. Take your pick.
THERE IS no end to poignant visa woes between India and Pakistan. Take the strange case of the India-born Punjabi woman who first married a Pakistani and later an Indian.
Shahida Parveen, 29, has approached the Punjab and Haryana High Court in Chandigarh to untangle her citizenship crisis. The lady from Malerkotla town married Pakistani national Mohammed Shehbaz of Lahore in 1996. She acquired citizenship of that country and even came to India in 1998 on a Pakistani passport with an Indian visa.
However, her arrival here was followed by a ‘talaqnama’ (divorce) sent by her husband from Pakistan. Parveen, who later remarried Indian national Mohammed Aslam in 2001, has received communication from the Indian home ministry a month ago that her Pakistani passport would expire on October 10 and that she had to go back before that.
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Ask the people
The URC is striving to persuade the government to foster participatory democracy by engaging different interest groups and citizens into the decision-making processes.
Hence it recently sent out emails to people exhorting the government to initiate public discussion and consultation in Pakistan. People were asked to endorse this viewpoint so that the URC could then decide its course of action.
What has prompted this move? According to the URC, “Citizens in Pakistan have deep concerns about many development projects, which have not solved their problems and in many cases have added to their miseries. Many of these projects have been funded by the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank and some of them have been funded and promoted by the government. They have failed to meet their objectives for reasons that were identified at the initial stages by communities and concerned professionals. The debt incurred through these failed projects has to be paid by every citizen and this makes each one a stakeholder in government decisions. It is clear that had public consultations been held and their results incorporated in the project design and process, the results of these projects would have been very different.”
According to the URC, the ADB in an internal report prepared by the ADB Operations Department has admitted that in Pakistan, Indonesia and Sri Lanka its financed projects have failed to produce any lasting social and economic benefits. Some of these failed projects identified are:
The Greater Karachi Sewerage Project funded by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) that has put the KWSB in a debt of Rs42 billion and has failed to solve the city’s sewage problems. Its treatment plants function at about 20 per cent of their capacity.
Baldia Sewerage System funded by the ADB to the tune of Rs600 million has gone down the drain.
Lines Area Redevelopment Project that has turned the Lines Area into a planned slum in Karachi.
Karachi Development Plan 2000 was evaluated by a UNDP team at a cost of Rs430 million and the plan was never implemented.
Left Bank Outfall Drainage (LBOD).
Right Bank Outfall Drainage (RBOD).
The URC is concerned about some current projects such as the privatization of the beaches of Karachi, Lyari Expressway, contracting of fishing rights and evictions from notified Katchi Abadis located on Railway Land.
Elegy of cinema industry
The recent closure of Lyric cinema in downtown Karachi serves as a grim reminder that Pakistan’s ailing film industry can no longer be nursed back to health. Bureaucratic attempts at treatment – some half-hearted, others belated – have borne little fruit. Analysts maintain that a massive overdose of protectionist policies turned out to be the local film industry’s undoing.
The Sindh chief minister told the assembly earlier this year that there were around 100 movie theatres in the city in January 2002. But some 70 cinema-owners had put up the shutters since then, he conceded.
And yet the government has not woken up to the seriousness of the situation. It insists that tax concessions could be a substitute for a permanent cure. In 2001, it lowered entertainment duty levied on cinema tickets. The tax has now been abolished.
But tax cuts will not lure back filmgoers. Some people make out a strong case for the screening of Indian movies in Pakistan, arguing that it will give a new lease of life to the country’s cinema industry. It is a widely held, though rarely articulated, view that most Indian films are as destitute of sense and meaning as our cinematic offerings. Their technological superiority – often a function of heavy investments – should not be mistaken for their artistic soundness.
But there is a powerful body of opinion against the screening of Indian movies in Pakistan. The prime minister, who recently met a group of concerned film-makers, is reported to have trashed the proposal out of hand.
It appears that the cinema industry will remain stuck in limbo for some time. One hopes that wisdom dawns either on Pakistan film-makers, whose track-record leaves a lot to be desired, or the government, which seems to be least bothered, earlier rather than later.
Those were the days
A couple of weeks ago the popular Pakistan band, Strings, performed at the American consul-general’s house to pay tribute to the American journalist Daniel Pearl. It was a scintillating performance, but as a safety measure all guests’ cars were checked thoroughly not at one point but at two points before they were allowed to be parked inside Frere Garden.
This was a far cry from the time when one could go to the USIS library on Abdullah Haroon Road without any hassle. Those days one could walk into the Pakistan television station and the broadcasting house without anyone giving you so much as a second glance. At the broadcasting house, popularly known as Radio Pakistan, on M.A. Jinnah Road, a guard would only stop people without passes to go to the upper storey of the main building where recordings and live broadcasts were in progress. The passes were issued only to those who participated in the programmes. Things, at least initially, were easier at the PTV studios, but restrictions were imposed when fans started pestering TV stars.
Diehard fans stormed Eastern Film Studios at SITE in large numbers once. The two six-foot-plus Makrani guards, who took turns at the gate, were a frightening sight. They had thick sticks but never needed to use them. No one had seen them smiling but everyone had seen them using harsh words. If someone had to be reprimanded and sent away, the guards would say “Shakal gum karo” — a three-word warning difficult to translate.
The only time they needed external help was when film star Nadeem, who had struck gold in Dhaka and had become a super star, was visiting Eastern Film Studios. His programme somehow leaked and a large crowd assembled outside the gate. A police mobile armed with lathis (guns were used only by soldiers in those days) drove from the SITE police station and, to use the words of a reporter from an eveninger, “Seeing the policemen, the fans ran helter skelter. Those who didn’t disappear were subjected to a mild lathi charge.”— By Karachian
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