POLITICAL DIARY

New Delhi, 1 September 2007

India Soft On Terror

SET WONKY PRIORITIES RIGHT

By Poonam I Kaushish

This is a tragic tale of the myth and reality of mounting terror in India. Circa 1993-2007. The story of a Government that meekly looks at violence as no more then someone playing dirty tricks. That hot air and empty rhetoric will take care of it. Oblivious that the horror is for real and the dead and maimed are not mere statistics. Wallowing in the false belief that wars are games born in the minds of men which can be won peacefully by waving the white flag. A war can be won only by war!

Over a year after Mumbai went down the suburban railway in seven serial blasts that hit the heart of the city on Black. Tuesday 7/11 and barely three months after the blasts at Mecca Masjid in Hyderabad, India’s cyber city was once again rudely jolted by the icy harsh reality of terror, terror and still more terror. When the city was ‘lasered out’ by two gift-wrapped bombs. Which left over 40 innocents dead and 60 injured.

The irony of India’s myth and reality was on full display when VVIP after VVIP fell over one another in condemning the perpetrators ‘cowardly’ (sic) act. Followed by a series of high-profile appear-and-vanish visits to the city to profess their angst and, hopefully, extract political mileage. The Opposition seized the opportunity to blast the UPA Government for its failure to combat terrorism by moving an adjournment motion in the Lok Sabha. The Union Home Minister reiterated what the Prime Minster has repeated ad nauseum: “No one can make India kneel. We will win this war against terror.” He also announced grandiosely: “We will look at setting up a federal agency to combat terrorism.”

Needless to say, it was mostly myth and little reality. A make-believe that has no co-relation to the fact that India is in the crosshairs of terrorists, serious and deadly terrorists. Please think. Of the 670 districts in the country as many as 270 are terror-prone of which 70 districts have already been ravaged by terrorists. Terror has already cost India more than 72000 civilians and 12000 security personnel. In fact, since 2004 the country has lost more lives to terrorist incidents than North, South and Central America, Europe and Eurasia put together. So much for fighting terror!

Besides terror today has become a big yawn. Our polity cocoons itself in the mistaken belief that terrorism has seeped into our psyche so deeply that it no longer scares. Reduced to becoming an inane excuse for incompetence and dubbed as an intelligence failure a la Kargil. Or the Centre and the affected State conveniently fobbing off their responsibility on the other. Never mind the guns that send a chilling reminder that all is not well with India.

Forgetting that the problem of dealing with terror is not merely limited to cracking the Hyderabad blasts, the Mecca Masjid strike, the attack on the Samjhauta Express train, Delhi’s serial blasts in October 2005, the twin blasts in Varanasi in March 2006 and the Mumbai carnage. The malaise is infinitely deeper and widespread. Thanks to New Delhi’s continuing short-sightedness and half-baked measures.

Each terror attack elicits a predictable and misdirected State response. Pakistan’s ISI and their jehadi cahoots within India and elsewhere are accused of the dastardly attacks, followed by a slew of VVIP visits. Knee-jerk reactions are then announced with dollops of false bravado. A ritual drama whose script is familiar and draws the same cynical reaction ---- more and more of the same.

Fire-fighting measures and quick-fix solutions are put into force without either understanding the issues involved or any comprehensive plan to resolve the crisis. Myopic in its introspection, the Centre unfortunately ends up mostly reacting, instead of looking ahead and acting. Crisis over the State is soon forgotten like a bad dream till another crisis erupts. Merely curing the symptoms, not the disease.

Interestingly, a former Director of the Intelligence Bureau, Ajit Doval, has blasted as “a myth the widespread belief that the terrorists strike anywhere, at any time and any target.” In his view, they strike where their intentions and capabilities meet the opportunities. Hence, the success of counter-terrorism lies in degrading their capabilities, forcing them to change their intentions and denying them opportunities to strike. New Delhi, he feels needs to think of ways and means to neutralise their fast-growing domestic base, availability of hardware and human resource, collaborative linkages with organized crime, gun runners, drug syndicates, hawala operators, subversive radical groups et al.

That is not all. He then spells out what he believes should be the broad approach: “For any anti-terrorist operation to succeed one needs to be focused on the vitals, keeping a watch on the essentials and leaving the desirables till the vitals have been achieved and essentials addressed.” He also has a timely message for India’s polity. “For those who govern, let political interests, at best, fall in the category of desirables.”

Doval is dead on. The tragedy of India is that we have our priorities badly mixed up, indeed, upside- down. Today what may be viewed by some as “desirable” (read minority appeasement) have become vital and essential and what should be “vital and essential” (read eliminating terrorism) has been relegated to merely desirable. Thus, the country’s basic security imperatives and supreme sovereign interests play second fiddle to political interests and electoral considerations. Concurred another security expert B. Raman: “The problem is that our polity is not concerned with the lives of people. They are concerned only with their votes”. Thus, more and more are aggressively pandering to the Muslim voters, a la Sachar report.

Only in India terror is being compartmentalized on the basis of caste and creed for the sake of votes. Only in India can we think of pushing for granting pardon to those who dared to attack India’s high temple of democracy ---- Parliament. Recall, seven brave men and women gave their lives to protect Parliament in 2001. Six years on, the UPA’s secular Government is virtually pleading for clemency for the terrorist Mohammed Afzal Guru. Despite the Supreme Court awarding him the death penalty for his heinous role in the attack.

Most sadly, the Government has callously ignored the strong signal it would send to the Muslims that the Government will not do anything which may even remotely hurt the Muslim sentiment. Plainly, this is appeasement at its crassest worst. More. There is no sense of shame or remorse that the families of those who laid down their lives to defend Parliament have returned the gallantry medals and monies in sheer and understandable disgust.

No amount of appeasement will change the intentions of the terrorists who are determined to bleed India whatever it takes. Remember a terrorist has no caste or creed. For him terrorism is the religion. Be it a Hindu, a Muslim or a Sikh. He is an invisible enemy who uses our resources and freedom to hit us. Adept in exploiting the latest technologies, he identifies and exploits our weaknesses. While we talk, he acts. Inflicting maximum loss at minimum cost.

Clearly, the time has come that our polity should shed and shed fast its blinkered communal approach. If the battle against terror has to be won, terrorism will have to be de-communalised. Political considerations, communal pressures, administrative and police lethargy and a weak legal-judicial regime will have to be negated. New Delhi must realize that normal deterrence doesn’t work against a faceless and fearless enemy. Specially when terror comes packaged as a suicide bomber as in the case of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.

When the State’s existence is in peril, the only way to strike back is to carry the fight into the enemy camp effectively. It is not enough to assert “we have might and muscle.” One has to display that power. The Government desperately needs to restore its Iqbal, the shining authority that ensures respect for law and order. The British did. Under the Raj no one dared to even touch the uniform of a policeman.

We need to give sharp teeth to our anti-terror laws. Top experts are agreed that we need stringent laws like the defunct POTA which provided for all the safeguards suggested by the Supreme Court in TADA. True, POTA was not able to end terrorism. Parliament was attacked when it was in operation. Nevertheless, POTA helped in speedily tackling cases of terrorism and bringing the culprits like Afzal Guru to book. Such a revamped anti-terror law would send a much needed signal down the rank and file of terrorists that India is no longer soft.

What next? Much will depend upon the Government’s willingness to acknowledge without any sugar-coating that India is ensnared in the vicious grip of terror. Already prolonged inaction has proved much too costly. The Centre may have to launch major offensives to drive home the message that terror is not a zero-sum game and that India has no use for a live terrorist.  Self-serving decisions of minority appeasement may feed the polity’s vote-banks temporarily. Ultimately, it will only fuel discord and spell double disaster. Enough of self-invited terrorism and self-seeking vote-bank politics. India’s freedom and unity is at stake. ----- INFA

(Copyright, India News and Feature Alliance

POLITICAL DIARY

NEW DELHI, 17 August 2007

Corruption, What’s That?

NO LOK PAL AND MR Q WALKS FREE….

By Poonam I Kaushish

Phew? It has been a real busy week for the media. Keeping track of the tamashas of the poweratti, glitterati and chatteratti. Forget the Congress-CPM jhagra over the Indo-US nuclear deal. Or the first ‘At Home’ of our new lady Rashtrapati that left many Union Ministers fuming. And the scandalous spectacle of Mr Q (Quottrocchi) walking away a free man. What to say of the razzmatazz Independence Day celebration in Parliament’s Central Hall which saw our President Pratibha Patil and the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh play party-pooppers by raising the bogey of corruption, so grating to the ears. Didn’t anyone tell them that as far as our polity is concerned it’s akin to flogging a dead horse!

Never mind, the show must go on. Asserted the President: “Corruption today poses a grave challenge to our system and it is time the nation begins to determinedly combat this menace.” Really? Echoed the Prime Minister, “For all the benefits of development to reach the poor it is essential that the delivery systems of the Government at all levels, are more efficient and purged of corruption. The cancer of corruption must be extinguished if democracy and development have to have a real meaning for our people.” 

Brave words, indeed. Which have been repeated ad nauseum year after year. The moot point is what has the UPA Government done so far and is doing to eradicate this cancer? Zilch, if its track record is anything to go by. In fact, like many Government’s before it, there is a lot of empty rhetoric, convenient amnesia but when push comes to shove to act, it falls flat on its face. Three examples out of many which expose the Government’s serious intent or shall we say indifference to corruption. The implementation of the much-promised Lok Pal Bill. The latest ignominious chapter of the Bofor’s gun saga. The Government’s adamant opposition to pursuing the Taj corridor scam.

Take the Lok Pal Bill. It has been hanging fire for over 37 long years, pending Parliamentary approval since 1977. It was expected to go a long way in curbing corruption and making our netagan accountable. Alas, this has turned out to be easier said than done. The last one heard of it was three years ago, when the Union Cabinet, presided over by Singh took it up for consideration. But nothing came of it as the Cabinet was divided on the issue. Some favoured it. Most others sought clarifications. Not a few simply trashed it as useless. The main stumbling block was whether the Prime Minister should be included in its purview. Predictably, the exercise turned out to be still born, and the draft Bill was referred to a Group of Ministers. And it remains there till date. Dumped and conveniently forgotten.

Early this year, amidst a slew of scandals, the Government once again talked about introducing a liberal dose of “Ethics in Governance”. The institution of the Lok Pal was suddenly rediscovered when the five-member Administrative Reforms Commission (ARC), headed by senior Congress leader and former Karnataka Chief Minister Veerappa Moily pushed for many constitutional amendments to put an end to corruption which, it felt, was not only an ethical issue but one that was “hindering our growth and seriously hurting social services which are critical for the poor.” It also wanted a stop to “collusive bribery” which resulted in a loss to the state, public or public interest.

One recommendation stood out among the many path-breaking measures that the ARC proposed to ensure a clean and transparent executive, an honest polity and an accountable judiciary. It wanted soonest the setting-up of a long-discussed and eagerly awaited Rashtriya Lokayukta at the Centre and in the States but excluding the Prime Minister, once again, from its ambit.

That apart, nothing epitomizes corrupt India more than the Bofors scandal. True, the kick-back of Rs 64 crore in the Howitzer gun scandal is a pittance in an era when scams run into mind-boggling thousands of crores. Nevertheless, it exposed as never before the rot, deceit and collusion at the highest level of Government and led to the fall of the Rajiv Gandhi Government. It still raises a basic question: Can Government leaders and functionaries continue to play ducks and drakes with national security. Not surprisingly, the scandal continues to have the UPA Government scurrying for cover, makes the Congress see red and even brings Parliament to a grinding halt. 

Call it a twist of irony or whatever else, the Bofors ghost, spanning over 27 years, was virtually laid to rest on 15 August. As India celebrated its 60th Independence, the main accused Italian businessman Ottavio Quattrocchi was gifted out-of-the-blue his own freedom. All thanks to the bungling or connivance of the two arms of the Government --- the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the Law Ministry. For reasons best known to the two, the Government shockingly withdrew its appeal in Argentina’s Supreme Court challenging the Federal Court’s order rejecting its plea for Quattrochhi’s extradition.

Recall, the Italian businessman accused of receiving $7 million in bribe as a middleman in the $1.2 billion purchase of the Bofors gun from Sweden was arrested in Argentina in February last based on an Interpol Red Corner alert. One presumed the CBI would rejoice over this unexpected windfall and would go all out to seek Quattrocchi’s extradition having failed to extradite him from Malaysia two years ago. More so, after the sharp flak it justifiably received for having allowed the defreezing of his accounts before the UK Crown Prosecution Service on the ground that there was no case against him.

Wrong. One has only to see the sordid somersaults by the Government from the Prime Minister downwards, the Congress and the CBI in la affaire Quattrocchi to know that all talk of morality, accountability and honesty is essentially public posturing and making the right noises. By Government after Government. All setting up Committee after Committee. All tom-toming their intentions. The net result? A big, big zero.

What else can one expect from a polity which rationalizes the irrational and even tries to justify the inclusion of tainted ministers in the Cabinet by arguing that there is no such law or any Parliamentary convention that bars them from holding office. And deplores the expulsion of 18 errant MPs in the cash-for-question scandal and the MPLADS (Local Area Development Fund) as an attack on the poor-have-nots and illiterate MPs.

Whats new? Aren’t we accustomed to an immoral, corrupt, criminal and unaccountable polity who could stoop to anything for paisa and gaddi. Wherein a ghotala of few thousand crores is not worthy of feeding the chara of morality. To quote former Prime Minister Vajpayee’s speech in the Lok Sabha during the debate in the Hawala scam in 1996: “Politics has become a way of making money.”

What troubles one is the new dimension to this age-old malaise. That it does not strike any chord among our leaders who have reduced graft to a farcical political pantomime. They conveniently wash their hands off corruption by calling it a “systematic failure.” Or cursorily dismiss it as one of the ‘unlisted’ perks of their jobs. Are they kidding? In plain English this translates into a fig leaf to cover their shocking incompetence and scandalous failure.

Most distressing is that there is no sense of outrage or shame. Now corruption is naked, unashamed, public and brazen. Sanjiva Reddy’s words haunt and taunt us. On the eve of laying down his office as the President of India he told INFA years ago that public morality has sunk so low that “anyone who has opportunity to make money and doesn’t do so is a bloody fool.” How true.

Tragically, India’s downslide has been rapid. With every passing year and election, the barometer of corruption and immorality is steadily rising wherein it no longer shocks or causes mass protests. It is slowly becoming an accepted norm, part of one’s routine. Curse all, but the majority willingly has come to lump it. Shrugged off as a price one has to pay for democracy.

How does one eradicate this scourge? There are many remedies if one is dead serious. Remember, what the people ultimately want is transparency and accountability. That is the crux of the problem of our polity. Alas, this has so far been only preached ad nauseum but seldom practiced. The top has to be clean to make the lower levels clean. Yatha raja tatha praja. The harsh truth is that no politician has till date been able to overcome his greed and bell the big fat cat of corruption. All have reduced it to merely chasing a mirage and indulging in shameless hypocrisy and humbug.

All in all, the UPA and its leaders, especially Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Chairman Sonia Gandhi, are clearly on test. Are they really serious about combating corruption or have they willy nilly decided to surrender shamelessly to horrendous corruption? In case they are serious, the Government must finalise the Lok Pal Bill without delay and ensure that it is enacted latest in Parliament’s winter session. Else, an increasingly agitated and restive public will be justified in concluding that honesty is only a fallacy of imagination and no longer the best policy! ---- INFA

(Copyright India News and Feature Alliance)          

POLITICAL DIARY

NEW DELHI, 11 August 2007

Democracy, Did I Hear Right

……AND WE CALL OURSELVES INDEPENDENT!

By Poonam I Kaushish

Roll out the drums. Uncork the champagne. Independent India will be 60 tomorrow. Why the deafening silence. Where is all the patriotism? The self esteem? The satisfaction of being free and independent? All has evaporated into thin air. Leaving in its wake, a disparate India searching for her soul under the onslaught of immorality, criminalization, caste and creed divide. That dear countrymen, is what 15 August boils down to.

As the Tri-colour flutters aloft from the historic  ramparts of Delhi’s Red Fort and various State Capitals, standing testimony to an end of British ghulami, more and more people are wondering whether the fight for freedom was worth it. Not a few feel we were better off under the Raj. Come of it, things aren’t all that bad. Tragically, they are worse, a lot worse. A travesty of democracy and freedom. Sharp and continuing all-round decline, where things have hit rock bottom. Politically. Administratively. Socially et al. Every which way.

Since everything begins and ends with our polity, the way it is conducting itself we might as well sound the bugle for the beginning of the end. Tellingly encapsulated by outgoing President Kalam, who lashed out at India’s “decision makers with small minds” and deeply grieved over the “shortage of leadership with nobility.” India’s sixtieth year will be remembered not for the fact that we have the first woman Rashtrapati but for how these ‘small minds’ willy nilly succeeded in doing grave injustice to India. Denigrating and destroying the sanctity of the highest bastion of our parliamentary democracy: the President’s office.

The poll dragged the office of the President into an unprecedented cesspool of politics, petty politics, unimaginable till the other day. Replete with shameful games of conmanship and one-upmamship, charges and counter-charges of corruption, court cases, SMS, websites were played out on the political chessboard. More. It was marked by open defiance, abstentions -- individually and group-wise, cross-voting and last minute U-turns. Making one wonder, is the Presidential office sabzi-bhaaji that one buys off the rehriwala on the streets?

What should one say of the UPA Government which boasts of an honest Prime Minister who heads India’s most dishonest Government. For the first time in history, a Union Cabinet Minister is behind bars for allegedly murdering his private secretary, another forced to resign in the Volcker-probed oil-for-food scam. Five tainted Ministers still adorn the Treasury Benches in Parliament. Our Right Honourables have merrily converted offices of public services into playgrounds of private profit and brazenly justify their wrongs as in public interest. What to say of the innumerable criminal netas who strut about in the corridors of power as MLAs and MPs in their ‘bullet-proof’ jackets.

Scams, cash on camera deals have become so routine they no longer shock. Brushed aside as perks of various offices. Even a ration card for a below-poverty line family comes for a price. But that is no guarantee for foodgrains, which are sold in the open market. Nobody has time or the inclination to understand why farmers continue to commit suicide, despite doles by the Prime Minister. Certainly, the aam aadmi had not voted for this.

Against the backdrop of such leadership, any wonder that casualness and indifference has become the touchstone of our culture and attitude. For the last 60 years, real politik is being repeatedly recycled. Like a yo-yo. With its ups and downs. Held together by the nebulous string called democracy. Never mind if in the process it exposes the corruption, adulteration, warts and the ever-increasing rot within. Which our leaders call governance! Exposing how disconnected our rulers are with the reality of Bharat.

Think. What is agitating the people? Terrorism in 15 states, instant killings, price rise, floods and farmer’s suicides. Sadly, our leaders are immune to the cries of distress. Content only in making appropriate noises, expressing hollow concerns but offering no solutions to end the agony. Today, the entire country is inundated by floods. Thousands have died, lakhs have been rendered homeless and property worth crores lost. But it’s like water off a duck’s back. Our leaders go through the disgusting political circus, ritually flood, aerial surveys and relief. All lament the deaths. But the screams of the suffering get gagged by ambitions of the netas.

Does anyone really care?  Not at all. It has never occurred to our polity to donate even a token one day’s salary to show their solidarity with the homeless. Tragically, exposing the political and administrative callousness towards human life. India’s millions, now a billion, don’t seem to count for much apart from a sterile statistic.

It is all about political survival. Their hierarchy of status gauged by the gun-totting commandos around them. Funny isn’t it that our leaders need strong protection from the janata they are supposed to represent and serve. Looking for genuine leaders is like looking for a needle in a haystack. Ask them about the nation. What nation, they ask?

To make matter worse, they are recklessly fragmentising society. Caste and religion are the new bywords to electoral power. And minoritysim and reservation are the flavours of the season. Where people are being compartmentalized for sacrifice at the alter of votes in the name of social upliftment. With our netagan merrily converting positive affirmation into vote percentage.

Rechristened as “humanism”, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh recently asserted: “A commitment to equity is not appeasement. It is a mark of one’s commitment to humanism.”  His humanism was evident at its emotive best when he spent a sleepless night after watching on TV the mothers of the two Indians behind the Glasgow terrorist attack. And warned against labelling or branding a religion or people.

Unfortunately, secularism has been carried to such absurd limits that the singing of the historic national song Vande Mataram turned behsura in the hands of our political drumbeaters. Recall, when the Government passed an order making its singing in schools compulsory, the Muslims clerics opposed it on the ground that it was anti-Islamic. Clearly, a day is not far when Mahatma Gandhi’s call for establishing Ram Rajya will be dissected and debunked as the outpourings of a rabid Hindu fundamentalist. This, dear reader is the secular reality of India’s “420 secularism”.

Less said the better about equality for all. Jobs, doles, subsidies even bank loans are now going to be given according to our surnames and the religion we practice. Whatever happened to merit and excellence? What happened to the PM’s much-touted Knowledge Commission? What about enforcing humanism in regard to the vast majority of poor for whom roti exists only in the neon lights of McDonalds. Who should they turn to for succur? Where should they go? 

Yet for our polity, India is Incredible! Economically speaking, our cash tellers are overflowing. Multinationals are wooing everything Indian as never before. India is the flavour and toast globally. Indian tycoons are the new international takeover kings. The 200 million rich and powerful exult in the luxury of Brand Reel India. But what about Brand Asli Bharat? The remaining 800 million poor and hungry stomachs who satiate their hunger by feeding on glib promises of a better tomorrow doled out by our netagan that mock their poverty.

Shockingly, one third of our population, namely 394.9 million, lives on just Rs 20 a day or Rs 600 a month. Not only that. A staggering 86 per cent of India’s working population is in the unorganized sector without any security cover.  These scandalous facts have been compiled in a report by Arjun Sengupta’s National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector.

Worse, nearly 44 million children aged 5-14 years are engaged in economic activities and domestic and non-remunerative work. Another 74 million children are neither enrolled in schools nor accounted in the labour force and come under the category of ‘Nowhere Children’. And yet we talk of a good deal for Gen Next? Mera Bharat is indeed Mahan!

Tragically, nobody has time for the common man’s growing disillusionment with the system which explodes in rage. Turn to any mohalla, district, or state in the country, the story is mournfully the same. Resulting in more and more people taking law into their own hands. Borne out by the increasing chakka jams, rioting, looting and burning of buses. Capital Delhi is replete with gory tales of road rage resulting in murders. The system has become so sick that women today are being raped in crowded compartments of running trains with co-passengers as mute spectators. Sporadically converting the country into an Andher Nagri.

At present reckoning India may well remain indefinitely trapped in its divisive rhetoric. It is time for the country to re-think its strategies and approach to the future. A time to recall Ambedkar’s masterly speech on the concluding day of the Constituent Assembly. He pointedly posed a question for the future generations: “Will India lose its independence a second time, through infidelity and treachery of her own people? Will the Indians place the country above their creed or will they place creed above the country? What would happen to her democratic Constitution? Will she be able to maintain it or will she lose it again?” Much-needed food for thought on the day India turns 60! ------ INFA

(Copyright India News and Feature Alliance)