Project Perception

Curtain Call: Op Odyssey Dawn

2011-03-25T15:36:00.004+05:30

Defining the scope of the military intervention in Libya, there’s an excellent treatise courtesy Dirk Vandevalle.

As Catherine Ashton, the European Union's high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, wrote in a March 18, 2011, New York Times editorial about the European Union’s options in Libya, “sometimes the toughest question in world politics is: ‘And then what?’” In light of the furious pace of the negotiations surrounding the previous day’s adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 1973 -- which extended a no-fly zone over Libya and authorized the international community to take whatever additional measures necessary to protect the country's population short of sending ground troops -- it is not surprising that no one had really stopped to consider her question. Indeed, more time seems to have been spent getting the European Union, the Arab League, the G-8, and the Security Council to agree on the language than on the content. Still, if those hurried diplomatic negotiations seemed a Herculean task, they may pale in comparison to the challenge that comes next: keeping Libya intact and on the road to recovery.

For his part, U.S. President Barack Obama promised that intervention would be short -- a matter of "days, not weeks." And British Prime Minister David Cameron admonished that international involvement should be limited to stopping Colonel Muammar al-Qaddafi’s violence. Both caveats will prove unrealistic.

At this point, the international community has two options: to either protect the opposition movement in Cyrenaica, the vast eastern province in which Benghazi is located, but not force Qaddafi out of power, or make Qaddafi’s ouster an explicit goal. The former seems to be what Cameron had in mind when he spoke of selective containment -- perhaps in an attempt to sanitize international involvement. It was also echoed in Obama's call for short-term intervention. Still, this kind of containment is neither possible nor feasible. Indeed, it would defeat the very logic of Resolution 1973.

Of course, ongoing military strikes will undoubtedly strengthen the rebels’ resolve. Seeing the destruction wreaked by the international coalition, Qaddafi loyalists are unlikely to put up much opposition. Even if the strikes stopped in the course of a cease-fire, rebels would likely take advantage of Qaddafi’s weakness to try to push the remnants of his assault forces westward, reigniting the fighting.

A Libya with Qaddafi in even partial control would be unacceptable to the international community.

If international action simply contained Qaddafi by halting his advance, he would be left in control of Tripolitania, the northwestern province in which Tripoli is located, leaving Cyrenaica effectively independent. The two provinces are divided by long-standing tensions. Qaddafi historically neglected the economy of Cyrenaica, because he judged the tribes in those areas to be potentially disloyal. And tensions between the two provinces were further exacerbated by Qaddafi’s attempts to play each off the other in order to stay in power. Protecting half of the country while leaving the other to Qaddafi would harden the provinces’ resolve to go their own ways. And economically speaking, that would be possible; both provinces have oil fields to rely on for revenue.

But politically speaking, such a division would be disastrous. In Tripolitania, Qaddafi would still have the resources and territory to continue to wage war against the opposition. If the brutal state terrorism Qaddafi instituted in the 1980s to secure Libya’ position in the region is any indication, he would not hesitate to do so. Even if he does observe a future cease-fire, selective containment would allow him to play a long-term cat-and-mouse game, stopping violence while surreptitiously extending his reach into the eastern part of the country by manipulating or buying such Cyrenaican tribes as the Warfalla, a powerful group that has so far adopted a cautious wait-and-see policy.

Meanwhile, the weapons that flowed through Libya’s porous borders and into the hands of Cyrenaican opposition forces during the anti-Qaddafi campaign will leave the regional tribes substantially more powerful than before. Having suffered through Qaddafi’s violence against them and then emboldened by Western intervention on their behalf, they would be ready to fight back at all cost. Thus the specter of all-out intertribal and interprovincial warfare would rise once more.

A Libya with Qaddafi in even partial control would be unacceptable to the international community; the country would be highly unstable and a real liability to North Africa and Europe. The world’s inability or unwillingness to displace an unreconstructed Qaddafi would give succor to a number of groups, including al-Qaeda, that could seize chaos in Libya and North Africa as an opportunity to extend their influence. Indeed, Qaddafi’s threat to turn the Mediterranean into a zone of instability is a reminder of precisely what a divided Libya could yield.

Internal instability aside, there is another reason why selective containment is unwise: it would severely constrain the international community’s future options. It seems inevitable that EU and U.S. efforts will successfully drive Qaddafi's forces from Benghazi. But selective containment would require them to stop there. Given Qaddafi’s rhetoric of the past few weeks, it seems unlikely that they would be able to pressure him into any kind of settlement from such a position. Further, it is improbable that, having achieved the limited objective of securing Cyrenaica relatively quickly, the United Kingdom and France, the leaders of the intervention forces, would be content to settle rather than march on to Tripoli to dislodge Qaddafi himself.

Of course, the alternative, forcing Qaddafi out of power, is fraught with its own problems and complications. Qaddafi’s departure would leave behind a political vacuum that would need filling as soon as possible. The choice of local interlocutors would be key. For all the sympathy the international community may currently feel for the opposition movement headed by the Libyan National Council, the provisional government, it would have to be cautious about unconditionally supporting it. Indeed, the threats that the LNC is already issuing should give the international community doubts about its readiness to lead in democratic government. Throughout the conflict, the LNC has threatened that there will be dire consequences for those countries in the West that had not sufficiently supported the rebel side if it won.

It is worth noting that although there is as yet no other opposition group, the LNC is national only in its aspirations. Much of Tripolitania still genuinely supports Qaddafi and would likely be resentful of whatever took his place and refuse to join an LNC-led government. To overcome antagonism between the provinces and to guide the country through the arduous process of state building and reconstruction that would follow Qaddafi’s departure, institutions would need to be truly national and representative. Since the settling of scores seems inevitable in Libya after decades of Qaddafi’s deliberate divide-and-rule policies, the international community would need to help establish a Libyan version of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that brought political opponents in South Africa to some kind of understanding. Meanwhile, the international community would also have to steer the development of democracy and good governance in a country that has not known anything except tyranny for decades.

It is only such a process of democratization and reconstruction that would truly lessen the salience of Libya’s enduring divisions. The reintegration of Libya with its North African neighbors after decades of self-enforced isolation under Qaddafi would also help. After years of ostracism, reintegration in the region could bring some measure of pride and responsibility to Libyans.

For all of this to happen, Libya, in addition to removing Qaddafi from power, needs what Ashton called in her article a “Marshall plan for North Africa” that would help a post-Qaddafi Libya (and other countries in the region) start building their states, developing their economies, and improving democratic governance through a number of educational, economic, and political initiatives. Libya's survival as a unified country will not only depend on how its own citizens deal with its long-standing fissures but also on the careful planning of outside powers.

Unless the United States and the European Union reach a decision quickly, they may wind up in a self-imposed stalemate that Qaddafi could exploit. The international community needs a proactive agenda and a clear plan for the intervention, starting now.

A not so High Definition- Presenting India ‘s HDI

2010-11-10T15:56:00.001+05:30

The latest Human Development Report, or HDR, (2010), marking its 20th anniversary, is both remarkable and useful. Remarkable because it brims with intellectual confidence, born out of a sense of vindication over the “conceptual brilliance and continued relevance” of Mahbub ul-Huq’s original human development paradigm set out in the first sentence of the 1990 report — “People are the real wealth of nations.” The idea of human development, which, through the human development index (HDI), measures health, education and income instead of just income, has not only not withered away but gained in strength and sophistication.

The report is useful for India because it really does leave behind the controversy that has surrounded the measurement of poverty and its supposed level of reduction under the new economic policies initiated in the 90s. When the government claimed success for its policies by citing a reduction in poverty from 36 per cent in 1993-94 to 26 per cent in 1999-00, many issues like discrepancies between surveys and national accounts, and the design of questionnaires, arose to question the figures. A majority agreed but not all were convinced that those numbers painted too rosy a picture, particularly for rural India. Today, matters like choice of poverty line seem irrelevant. The HDR tells so much more, establishing the primacy of the idea that what matters is whether people can lead long, useful lives, get the opportunity to become educated and are able to use their knowledge and talents to shape their own lives.
The latest report, as part of the continuing effort to adopt more sophisticated and comprehensive measures of well being and its obverse, deprivation, has added three new indexes — inequality adjusted HDI, gender inequality index and multidimensional poverty index. The first is in response to the idea that an aggregate measure of development fails to tell us how much of inequality is hidden in it. Inequality detracts from the level that an arithmetical average may indicate. The gender inequality index is self-evident and underlines the idea that gender inequality lies at the core of a group’s overall level of deprivation. The multidimensional poverty index acknowledges that different deprivations (be they over health, education, housing and the like) make up the total burden and counting them individually makes for better measurement.

Where do all these measures put India after almost 20 years of new economic policies and is there a case for policy adaptations to look at the ground reality behind the shine in the growth numbers? In the two decades, among four countries which matter to India, Bangladesh has posted the maximum improvement in its HDI score, followed by China and Pakistan. India brings up the rear, with only Sri Lanka faring poorer, presumably because it had already reached a high plateau when the period began. Sri Lanka and Bangladesh leave India, China and Pakistan behind in scoring better through HDI rank than per capita gross-national-income rank. Going by the income measure of poverty (purchasing power parity $1.25 per head per day), Sri Lanka and China are way ahead of India, which is followed by Bangladesh and Pakistan.
In terms of multidimensional poverty, it is only Bangladesh that is behind India, with even Pakistan scoring better, not to speak of China and Sri Lanka. And in intensity of deprivation, not just China and Sri Lanka but Bangladesh also is ahead of India, with only Pakistan behind.

According to the inequality adjusted HDI, which captures the effect that inequality has on development, Sri Lanka and China again lead the pack, India and Bangladesh come next with Pakistan following. When it comes to gender inequality, China and Sri Lanka are far ahead, with higher ranks in gender equality than their regular HDI ranks. Pakistan and Bangladesh score only slightly better in gender equality than HDI rank. Startlingly, India’s gender rank is lower than its HDI rank.
A third of the population of developing countries, totalling 1.75 billion, lives under the burden of multidimensional poverty and over half of this number is accounted for by South Asia, though poverty rates are higher in Sub-Saharan Africa. People in Sub-Saharan Africa suffer the most from income inequality followed by South Asia. India loses 41 per cent of its HDI score due to educational inequality and 31 per cent on account of health inequality. Eight Indian states, with over 400 million people who are as badly off as 26 of the poorest African countries, account for a larger number of the multidimensionally poor than the African countries.

The HDR finds that 40 years of learning and data indicate that “focusing exclusively on economic growth is problematic” and an unbalanced emphasis on growth is often associated with negative environmental and distributional consequences, as the cases of China and, to an extent, India indicate. If growth is a means to various ends, “success” in growth must be seen to serve the broader human development goals that growth aims to achieve. For development, people have to actively participate in the development process and not remain passive beneficiaries. Their health and educational levels are enormously important and progress on these fronts can happen even when growth is elusive. Near universal as these paradigms are becoming, they should not be applied thoughtlessly as formulae. Context matters. Technocratic solutions which assume a well-functioning state and regulatory system and developed institutions can come unstuck in the absence of those. It is thus vital to experiment and learn, as the Chinese have done. Thus, India’s battle for a better lot for its people is barely half done, or may be even less.

The Indian portrait of the 2000's

2010-10-18T17:08:00.003+05:30

India was erupting in dreams.

It was the dream to own a microwave or refrigerator or motorcycle. The dream of a roof of one’s own. The dream to break caste. The dream to bring a cellphone to every Indian with someone to call. The dream to buy out businesses in the kingdom that once colonized you. The dream to marry for love, all the complicated family considerations be damned. The dream to become rich. The dream to overthrow the rich in revolution.

These dreams were by turns farsighted and farfetched, practical and impractical, generous and selfish, principled and cynical, focused and vague, passionate and drifting. They were tempered by countervailing dreams and, as ever in India, by the dogged pull of the past. Some were changing India palpably; others had no chance from the beginning. But that was never the point. It was the very existence of such brazen, unapologetic dreams, and their diffuse flowering from one end of India to the other, that so decisively separated the present from the past – and separated the India of the license raj systems from the India to which we now belong.

The Indian revolution was within. It was a revolution in private life, in the tenor of emotions and the nature of human relationships. The very fabric of Indianness – the meaning of being a husband or wife, a factory owner or factory worker, a mother-in-law or daughter-in-law, a student or teacher – was slowly, gently unraveling by the force of these dreams, and allowing itself to be woven in new ways.

Vegetating, are we?

2010-08-14T17:14:00.002+05:30

Management has literally come to the marketplace. As retail chains line up across neighbourhoods offering one stop shop solutions to all our domestic needs, shopping for rations essentially turns into a task that’s as goal oriented as its time bound. So much so, that we run to the same super mart for buying everything from shaving cream to vegetables. Now, while most of us rejoice in the 5% rate cuts that are to be gained from picking up a packet of french beans, along with the detergent and frozen peas, what we fail to realise is that this discount comes at a price.

Buying at a retail store is a mechanical exercise that accustoms us to head to the same racks to pile in the same stuff and hear the beep of the barcode. It is a choice that we make to turn ourselves into robots, literally sucking the joys that our parents had the chance of deriving from a visit to the market place. Since the advent of convenience stores, how many of us have gone back to the local vegetable market. Back in the days of the venerable mandi, visiting it for rations was a part of the experience of cooking.

As human beings, our impulse is to feel and the experience is as important as the end result. From the unattractive manner of simply dumping vegetables into plastic racks to the fact that most of what arrives at these air-conditioned units is a day old or simply rotting in the artificial environment, the so called convenience of picking up your veggies from where you buy your facewash, can never compensate for what you stand to lose. All it takes is but one visit to your long forgotten vegetable mart to spot the difference. Brimming with energy and bursting with colours, these brightly lit environs are as welcoming as they are enchanting. It’s like being inside a photograph.

Picture rows of tin roofed shops with their wallpapered backdrops and brilliant bulbs. While you walk by, beaming eyes peer at you from behind columns of attractively arranged farm fresh produce. Every face tells a story and every story gets a face. Sounds of frenetic haggling, of shopkeepers persuading and helpers announcing the next big price slash intermingle with murmurs of private conversations and the cacophony of chit chats. This visit is momentous not just because of the sudden explosion of colours, odours and flavours that greets us round every bend but also because of a more sombre realisation. This twenty minute trot is perhaps the only time in the week when we look beyond our comfortable existence and interact with the other India.

Food becomes a great equaliser summoning everyone from princes to paupers and bankers to peons, to the same court. If we’re social animals who interact for inclusion and acceptance, every visit to the local mart is an exercise in community building and in feeling a sense of oneness with the mass of humanity that surrounds us. Pitched against million dollar enterprises, local traders wage a losing battle. Their invisibility makes us immune to their plight.

Protecting the local against the global requires an engagement that goes beyond words and translates into action. Have we ever dared to exact five rupee discounts from branded outlets to allow ourselves to reclaim those from the needy? How many decades old, round the corner shops have we seen perish in our lifetime? Do we want our children to lead such mechanical lives devoid of life’s simple pleasures? Adventure lies in surprises .You don’t necessarily have to turn a robot and shop mechanically at the retail chain and wince about that weekend in Goa. Adventure can happen anywhere any day. Somedays it lies in seeking the best brinjals or in choosing to not squabble with a father of five and discovering the joy of giving.

Micro states and pan nationalism- strange times, strange worlds

2010-07-20T10:56:00.001+05:30

A year ago, tiny Georgia tried to regain control over its breakaway enclave of South Ossetia. The Russians quickly expelled the Georgian army, to almost universal opprobrium from the West. South Ossetia, together with Abkhazia (combined population 300,000), promptly declared their ‘independence’, creating two new fictional sovereignties, and acquiring in the process all the official trappings of statehood: national heroes, colourful uniforms, anthems, flags, frontier posts, military forces, presidents, parliaments, and, most important, new opportunities for smuggling and corruption.

So far, only Russia and Nicaragua recognise the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Russian recognition was widely seen as retaliation for Western recognition of Kosovo (population 2 million), the breakaway province of Serbia, earlier last year.

A thousand miles to the west of Georgia is Moldova (population 3.5 million), which lies between Romania and Ukraine. Annexed by Tsarist Russia in 1812, joined to Romania in 1918, and re-annexed by the Soviet Union in 1940, it seized its independence from Moscow in 1991. It is a member of the United Nations, the Council of Europe, the World Trade Organisation, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, and various other prestigious international bodies.

Moldova’s claim to fame is King Stephen the Great, who defeated the Ottomans in a great 15th century battle. It also produces rather good wine. An enduring memory from my own recent visit to its capital, Chisinau, is the election poster of a local politician called Lupu, who holds a pair of spectacles to his eyes, whether to suggest visions or wisdom isn’t clear.

To get to Moldova from Odessa (now in Ukraine), one must drive through the self-proclaimed ‘republic’ of Transdniestria (population 700,000), a sliver of land on the north shore of the Dniester river. A clump of peeling buildings, rusting wire, and a filthy lavatory mark the start of Transdniestrian sovereignty.

Progress through this squalid, but well manned, frontier post involved the stamping of lots of documents and a liberal scattering of bribes, a process repeated on leaving the ‘republic’. A shadowy mafia-style company, Sheriff, owns most of the economy. It is said to have close links to the president and his family. It has built a giant football stadium in the capital, Tiraspol, which seems to be some kind of symbol of Transdniestrian virility. Unrecognised by the rest of the world, Transdniestrian ‘independence’ is secured by a Russian garrison.

The world’s population is about 6 billion. Suppose it was divided into independent political units of 2 million people each. That would mean 3,000 micro-States, each refusing to accept any sovereignty superior to its own. Of course, this would be a recipe for global anarchy.

Yet the trend over the past century has been towards a continuous increase in the number of small States, mainly owing to nationalist revolts against multi-national empires: the latest bout of state-creation followed the disintegration of the USSR. Even long-established States like the United Kingdom now have strong separatist movements. In its political life, the world has been regressing to a form of tribalism, even as its economic life has become increasingly globalised.

The equation of State with nation is the arch-heresy of our time. A ‘nation’ is, at root, an ethno-linguistic — occasionally religious — entity, and because it is through language and liturgy that culture is transmitted, each nation will have its own distinctive cultural history, available for use and misuse, invention and discovery.

The State, however, is a political construction, designed to keep the peace in an economically viable territory. There are simply too many ‘nations’, actual or potential, to form the basis of a world system of States, not least because so many of them, having been jumbled up for centuries, cannot now be disentangled.

Micro-States can never be made small enough to satisfy their advocates’ exalted standards of cultural integrity. So the unravelling of multi-national States is a false path. The way forward lies in democratic forms of federalism, which can preserve sufficient central authority for the

purposes of statehood, while respecting local and regional cultures.

Today’s upsurge of micro-nationalism is not just a consequence of the revolt against empires: it is also a revolt against globalisation. There is widespread resistance to the idea that the chief function of modern states is to slot their peoples into a global market dominated by the imperatives of efficiency and cheapness, heedless of the damage to non-economic activities. This feeling is strengthened when the global economy turns out to be a global casino. National assertion is a way of combating impersonal forces and remote authorities.

Globalisation promises too much in terms of welfare gains, particularly to developing countries, to be abandoned. But the lesson from the current crisis is that we will have to develop styles of global economic governance to manage, regulate, and mitigate the creative, but often disruptive forces unleashed by the global market. In the absence of an actual world government, this can be done only through cooperation among States. The fewer ‘sovereigns’ there are, the easier it will be to secure the necessary cooperation.

The Bretton Woods Agreement of 1944, which laid the institutional foundation for the post-war World War II economy, was made possible because the United States and Britain called the shots. When objections were raised to Cuba being put on the drafting committee, Harry Dexter White, the American representative, remarked that Cuba’s function was to provide cigars.

Such a cavalier attitude to the demands of lesser powers to be heard is no longer possible. But all this means is that the facades will have to be more subtle and the fictions more elaborate. Provided we do not deceive ourselves about where real power lies, let presidents and parliaments be three a penny if that is what makes people feel good about themselves.

Breaking News

2010-01-22T18:31:00.008+05:30

The line between fact and fiction and news and entertainment has merged as 24 hour news channels pitch to survive in a free market.

The era of sedate looking anchors and sombre sets that characterised much of DD news broadcasts is long over. What liberalisation

and FDI flows brought to the television industry, specifically news channels, was a sea change in settings. Private players emerged slowly but surely with Zee and Star TV being the pioneers. Today, they find themselves competing for attention with two dozen news channels in a scenario where proposals for setting up several others are awaiting final clearances. What this plethora of news channels brought with them was the 24×7 format, hitherto unknown to the Indian audience. Now, while it was easy to retain audience attention for a half hour news update, it became equally difficult to do so in this new world order where channels remained on air throughout the day and programming was round the clock. Operating costs tripled and so did the TRP anxieties. Tabloidization of news became the unavoidable answer to churning out content in a cost effective manner .Traditional competitors thus, no longer limit themselves to rival news channels but extend to the GECs. In such a climate, questions about the integrity of news per se are bound to be raised. What we are witnessing then is a blurring of lines between fact, fiction, news and entertainment.

The television news industry is shaping and being shaped in turn by a ‘sound byte society’. A sound byte society is one that is flooded with images and slogans, bits of information and abbreviated or symbolic messages- a culture of instant but shallow communication. I t is not just a culture of gratification and consumption, but one of immediacy and superficiality, in which the very notion of ‘news’ erodes in a tide of formulaic mass entertainment. It is a society anesthetised to violence, one that is cynical but uncritical and indifferent to,if not contemptuous of, the more complex human tasks of cooperation, conceptualisation and serious discourse.

There is an economics behind the politics.TV advertising is the electronic linchpin of consumer capitalism: a relentless invitation to self indulgence and unlimited consumption. The 24×7 news cum fiction format supports these ends not just in its dependence on commercial advertising but also in its content which tends to celebrate affluence and acquisitiveness as normal, while ignoring activities such as voluntarism, community activism, political engagement or other pursuits that involve self sacrifice for larger causes. Stories on the India Auto Expo or panel discussions on which laptop is better are commonplace and often fuel complete shows like Overdrive and Newsnet2.0 while chances of spotting a piece on say recycling one’s mobile or the sarva shiksha abhiyan are hard to come by. Another factor to be blamed for this turn of events is the rising carriage costs that news channels have to pay which leaves very little for programming and content. This perennial fund crunch prevents channels from sending reporters to cover elections in the north east or engage in serious investigative journalism. The law of optimal allocation of scarce resources sadly works to favour the production of soppy page 3 news stories that are both low on effort and cost. Examples include the massive media coverage meted out to the Abhi-Ash wedding and the success of Star News’ ‘Saas,bahu aur saazish’.

With advancements in telecommunications and the internet, we have become an impatient society when it comes to information gathering and the 24×7 news format reflects that. Television is essentially a kinetic medium capable of changing images and subjects quickly. Unless it compresses time this way,it will lose out on viewership. However, this compression comes at a price. A fast forward effect is generated which demands quick and final solutions to complex and intransgient problems. Anchors like Arnab Goswami and Barkha Dutt make sweeping assertions and reduce issues to a numbers game always asking for a one word summation or a ten point tackle. Such a breezy and bulleted simplification of complex issues cannot be called news. It is entertainment.

Because 24×7 news traffics mainly in scenes and images that are highly localised in time and space and in words that must condense their messages to accommodate the medium’s visual dimensions and severe time constraints-it is also essentially a symbolic rather than discursive medium. The communicative function of symbols is to simplify. The Indian flag and Independance day news programmes evoke patriotism and not its moral ambiguities. Entertainment merges with news and facts with fiction. India TV recently used karate shots from Chinese films to illustrate the idea that the Chinese army is growing in strength and is therefore a cause of concern for India thus bollywoodising the news experience by adding some symbolic masala .

The 24×7 news format priviledges quantity over quality. With limited budgets and a vast amount of air time at its disposal,channels are pressured into taking up stories that are light and breezy; attracting eyeballs without the hike in price. So news channels will devote several time slots for airing stories on cookery,the fashion week and celebrity gossip. The addition of shock value to stories is a compulsory requirement for the medium because the murkier the details the better is the audience response. Also constraints over the time and finances allocated to each news story prevent a research into their historical past or analysis of the future. Most stories on the Naxals focus on the violence portraying them as terrorists without as much as backgrounding the backlash as a response to the decades of displacement and exploitation at the hands of the Indian state. TV news thus creates black and white caricatures of economic, political and social actors and institutions which can hardly be said to be corresponding to factual realities.

The blurring of lines between fact,fiction and news and entertainment is dumbing down audiences. 24×7 news television scales the world down to fit on the screen. It isolates us from the larger environment and our responsibility towards it such that ‘we see without being seen and hear without being heard’. Viewers are becoming increasingly passive and devoid of the zeal to bring about change, passing the dal and curry while viewing live images of the war in Iraq as if theres nothing unsettling about it. Of course there is the ‘sms your opinion in a yes,no and maybe format’ for tokenism but is this push button campaigning representative of an educated public and informed opinion or even responsible news programming, remains to be seen.

The Urumqui effect

2009-07-11T09:09:00.000+05:30

This is a surprisingly expansive and relatively unbiased article on the current situation in Urumqui,coming from the stables of WSJ.

In some ways,its an eye opener into the fiscal failings and deeply entrenched fault lines within the Chinese society and a stark reminder of the fact that this could well be 'the summer of discontent' for our northern neighbour as it might just find itself embroiled in a crisis of legitimacy in frontier areas that would need more than just 'wishing away' or party high handedness.

The rioting by Uighurs in Xinjiang's capital Urumqi in early July has put the spotlight back on China's handling of its ethnic minority regions. Coming just over a year after a similar outburst in Lhasa, the incident shows that hardline policies designed to suppress dissent have fostered bitter resentment. However, it would be a mistake to interpret this as a sign that China's control over Tibet and Xinjiang are unraveling. Rather the incidents should be put into a broader context of rising tensions within Chinese society.

Certainly Tibet and Xinjiang pose their own unique challenges. The seeds of the current unrest were planted in the mid-1990s, when government strategy toward the restive regions shifted to a more hardline approach. That has shut off avenues for the expression of discontent, bottling up tensions until they explode.

Despite the obvious costs of this policy, Beijing apparently regards them as worth paying to maintain a tight grip on its sensitive border areas, which are regarded as vital national interests. From its perspective, the policies may even be regarded as a success because the migration of Han Chinese into the sparsely populated regions enhances government control over the longer term, regardless of the friction it may create.

However, seen in the context of the wider Chinese society, the upsurge in unrest raises some worrying questions for Beijing. Despite the strictest possible control, the spread of information and rights consciousness has encouraged Uighurs and Tibetans to take to the streets in spontaneous demonstrations, and violent repression has stoked further unrest. This mirrors events taking place elsewhere in China, where potent fault lines within society are bursting into the open, despite the government's best efforts to foster a "harmonious society."

This suggests that China may be entering a period similar to that in the late 1980s, when demonstrations began to break out over a variety of issues. As during that period, the Chinese economy is under stress, with rising expectations running up against the reality of limited opportunities. Add in anger about corruption and abuse of power by local officials and the stage is set for what are euphemistically known as "mass incidents." While the government may be able to manage localized riots, there is a danger of a repeat of 1989, should an event provide the impetus for the formation of a wider national protest movement.

Widespread use of the Internet and mobile phones accelerates the spread of unrest beyond the capacity of the authorities to respond. The proximate cause of the rioting in Urumqi on July 5 happened thousands of miles away in Guangdong province. At a toy factory in Shaoguan, Han Chinese attacked young Uighur workers after rumors spread that they had raped several women. The state media reported that two Uighurs were killed, but graphic pictures and rumors of a higher death toll spread quickly over the Internet to Xinjiang. Complaining that the authorities were not doing enough to protect their compatriots, Uighurs took to the streets of Urumqi in an initially peaceful protest. Although the details are murky and the truth may never be known, the incident turned violent quickly after confrontations with the police.

This contagion effect must give Chinese leaders pause because it presages an era in which national stability is held hostage to the mistakes made by local leaders. When information flows were easier to control, violence in one area had little impact on the rest of the country. Today, by contrast, the Xinjiang violence dominates the consciousness of the whole Chinese population.

In part that's because propaganda authorities are under pressure to be proactive about reporting incidents in order to pre-empt the spread of rumors. Even then, as we saw recently, this coverage itself may not be accurate or effective in reassuring the population. And in any case, the net effect may be to undermine confidence in the government's ability to maintain law and order. It also tends to inflame Han nationalism, which, as with anti-U.S. and anti-Japanese protests in the past, can quickly spin out of control.

Paradoxically, the government's strict control over the official media combined with underground channels for information of dubious origins can prove to be a combustible mixture. Because Chinese netizens do not trust the media, they are more inclined to believe reports passed along the electronic grapevine. In this case, the spread of rumors quickly polarized both Uighur and Han communities.

Moreover, even though the state has extensive mechanisms to censor online communications, it has never been able to develop the "surge capacity" to stop the flow of information during a crisis. This also tends to make the system more unstable, as people discontented over other issues latch on to the issue of the moment.

Economic considerations are also coming into play -- it is significant that the initial rape rumors were spread by a Han Chinese angry that he lost his job in the factory where the Uighurs were working. While the macroeconomic statistics suggest China has been relatively insulated from the global financial crisis by massive government spending and new loans from the state-owned banks, on the ground the picture is more mixed. Privately owned export-oriented factories have closed, the fresh credit has tended to go into speculative investments, and infrastructure spending takes time to ramp up. The net effect may be to actually exacerbate tensions, as the poor struggle to find jobs while the rich and politically well-connected have access to government contracts and easy credit.

Several recent incidents suggest that society is becoming more volatile. Most dramatically, rioters fought a pitched battle with police in Shishou, Hubei, province, in late June after the suspicious death of the chef in a hotel with connections to the mayor. As is often the case in these incidents, the extent of the violence can be attributed largely to mishandling of the initial protest by local officials.

But it is not hard to conceive of circumstances that could lead to a wider protest movement. For instance, the scandal over melamine-contaminated milk powder last year was handled relatively well by the central government, with punishments handed down to those responsible and compensation paid to the victims. But were such an incident to implicate the family of top leaders, or the government fail to resolve it expeditiously, the same mechanism that spread protests from Guangdong to Xinjiang could come into play.

As the government increases its involvement in the economy through stimulus measures, there is an increased risk that corruption will again become a source of public anger. This would parallel to some extent the late 1980s, when a dual pricing system allowed Party officials in state enterprises to profit by buying commodities at state prices and then selling them on the open market. Today the mechanisms are different, such as the "land grabs" in which officials take plots from farmers and urban residents with minimal compensation and sell them on to real estate developers.

Another parallel to the 1980s is the increasing activism of intellectuals after decades of being silenced and coopted by the Party. Over the last five years, a loose grouping of legal professionals and academics haved tried to protect the rights of ordinary citizen against abuses of power by Party officials, a movement known as "Weiquan."

The pressure for political change today differs from the 1980s, however, in its emphasis on bottom-up activism, using a combination of the courts, media and other channels to put pressure on local officialdom. The late Party Secretary General Zhao Ziyang's recently published memoir highlights how the liberal wing of the Party that once pushed for political reform was eliminated after 1989. After that, he noted, the Party elite became increasingly enmeshed in the business world, creating vested interests that seek to preserve the Party's monopoly on power.

How this shift will affect social stability remains to be seen. On the one hand, the leadership split within the Party in 1989 was one of the key contributing factors to the protest movement gaining momentum and the ensuing crackdown. Today the Party elite is relatively united at least on policy issues, and the main intra-Party conflict is between the center and the regions, as local officials seek to cover up their misdeeds at the risk of spreading instability.

In other ways, the current situation could prove more volatile. As the Xinjiang experience shows, when dissatisfaction reaches the point where people no longer feel they have much to lose, even a massive security force cannot deter violence. Tensions may be highest in the minority areas, but the feeling of marginalization and victimization by Party officials is widespread.

Why we dont want a Nuclear free world

2009-07-11T09:07:00.000+05:30

'Nuclear weapons are used every day." So says former Defense Secretary James Schlesinger, speaking last month at his office in a wooded enclave of Maclean, Va. It's a serene setting for Doomsday talk, and Mr. Schlesinger's matter-of-fact tone belies the enormity of the concepts he's explaining -- concepts that were seemingly ignored in this week's Moscow summit between Presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev.

We use nuclear weapons every day, Mr. Schlesinger goes on to explain, "to deter our potential foes and provide reassurance to the allies to whom we offer protection."

Mr. Obama likes to talk about his vision of a nuclear-free world, and in Moscow he and Mr. Medvedev signed an agreement setting targets for sweeping reductions in the world's largest nuclear arsenals. Reflecting on the hour I spent with Mr. Schlesinger, I can't help but think: Do we really want to do this?

For nuclear strategists, Mr. Schlesinger is Yoda, the master of their universe. In addition to being a former defense secretary (Nixon and Ford), he is a former energy secretary (Carter) and former director of central intelligence (Nixon). He has been studying the U.S. nuclear posture since the early 1960s, when he was at the RAND Corporation, a California think tank that often does research for the U.S. government. He's the expert whom Defense Secretary Robert Gates called on last year to lead an investigation into the Air Force's mishandling of nuclear weapons after nuclear-armed cruise missiles were mistakenly flown across the country on a B-52 and nuclear fuses were accidently shipped to Taiwan. Most recently, he's vice chairman of a bipartisan congressional commission that in May issued an urgent warning about the need to maintain a strong U.S. deterrent.

But above all, Mr. Schlesinger is a nuclear realist. Are we heading toward a nuclear-free world anytime soon? He shoots back a one-word answer: "No." I keep silent, hoping he will go on. "We will need a strong deterrent," he finally says, "and that is measured at least in decades -- in my judgment, in fact, more or less in perpetuity. The notion that we can abolish nuclear weapons reflects on a combination of American utopianism and American parochialism. . . . It's like the [1929] Kellogg-Briand Pact renouncing war as an instrument of national policy . . . . It's not based upon an understanding of reality."

In other words: Go ahead and wish for a nuclear-free world, but pray that you don't get what you wish for. A world without nukes would be even more dangerous than a world with them, Mr. Schlesinger argues.

"If, by some miracle, we were able to eliminate nuclear weapons," he says, "what we would have is a number of countries sitting around with breakout capabilities or rumors of breakout capabilities -- for intimidation purposes. . . . and finally, probably, a number of small clandestine stockpiles." This would make the U.S. more vulnerable.

Mr. Schlesinger makes the case for a strong U.S. deterrent. Yes, the Cold War has ended and, yes, while "we worry about Russia's nuclear posture to some degree, it is not just as prominent as it once was." The U.S. still needs to deter Russia, which has the largest nuclear capability of any potential adversary, and the Chinese, who have a modest (and growing) capability. The U.S. nuclear deterrent has no influence on North Korea or Iran, he says, or on nonstate actors. "They're not going to be deterred by the possibility of a nuclear response to actions that they might take," he says.

Mr. Schlesinger refers to the unanimous conclusion of the bipartisan Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States, which he co-led with Chairman William Perry. The commission "strongly" recommended that further discussions with the Russians on arms control are "desirable," he says, and that "we should proceed with negotiations on an extension of the START Treaty." That's what Mr. Obama set in motion in Moscow this week. The pact -- whose full name is the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty -- expires in December. But what's the hurry? Mr. Schlesinger warns about rushing to agree on cuts. "The treaty . . . can be extended for five years. And, if need be, I would extend it for five years."

There's another compelling reason for a strong U.S. deterrent: the U.S. nuclear umbrella, which protects more than 30 allies world-wide. "If we were only protecting the North American continent," he says, "we could do so with far fewer weapons than we have at present in the stockpile." But a principal aim of the U.S. nuclear deterrent is "to provide the necessary reassurance to our allies, both in Asia and in Europe." That includes "our new NATO allies such as Poland and the Baltic States," which, he notes dryly, continue to be concerned about their Russian neighbor. "Indeed, they inform us regularly that they understand the Russians far better than do we."

The congressional commission warned of a coming "tipping point" in proliferation, when more nations might decide to go nuclear if they were to lose confidence in the U.S. deterrent, or in Washington's will to use it. If U.S. allies lose confidence in Washington's ability to protect them, they'll kick off a new nuclear arms race.

That's a reason Mr. Schlesinger wants to bring Japan into the nuclear conversation. "One of the recommendations of the commission is that we start to have a dialogue with the Japanese about strategic capabilities in order both to help enlighten them and to provide reassurance that they will be protected by the U.S. nuclear umbrella. In the past, that has not been the case. Japan never was seriously threatened by Soviet capabilities and that the Soviets looked westward largely is a threat against Western Europe. But now that the Chinese forces have been growing into the many hundreds of weapons, we think that it's necessary to talk to the Japanese in the same way that we have talked to the Europeans over the years."

He reminds me of the comment of Japanese political leader Ichiro Ozawa, who said in 2002 that it would be "easy" for Japan to make nuclear warheads and that it had enough plutonium to make several thousand weapons. "When one contemplates a number like that," Mr. Schlesinger says, "one sees that a substantial role in nonproliferation has been the U.S. nuclear umbrella. Without that, some and perhaps a fair number of our allies would feel the necessity of having their own nuclear capabilities."

He worries about "contagion" in the Middle East, whereby countries will decide to go nuclear if Iran does. "We've long talked about Iran as a tipping point," he says, "in that it might induce Turkey, which has long been protected under NATO, Egypt [and] Saudi Arabia to respond in kind . . . There has been talk about extending the nuclear umbrella to the Middle East in the event that the Iranians are successful in developing that capacity."

Mr. Schlesinger expresses concerns, too, about the safety and reliability of U.S. nuclear weapons, all of which are more than 20 years old. "I am worried about the reliability of the weapons . . . as time passes. Not this year, not next year, but as time passes and the stockpile ages." There is a worry, too, about the "intellectual infrastructure," he says, as Americans who know how to make nuclear weapons either retire or die. And he notes that the "physical infrastructure" is now "well over 60 years" old. Some of it "comes out of the Manhattan Project."

The U.S. is the only major nuclear power that is not modernizing its weapons. "The Russians have a shelf life for their weapons of about 10 years so they are continually replacing" them. The British and the French "stay up to date." And the Chinese and the Indians "continue to add to their stockpiles." But in the U.S., Congress won't even so much as fund R&D for the Reliable Replacement Warhead. "The RRW has become a toxic term on Capitol Hill," Mr. Schlesinger says. Give it a new name, he seems to be suggesting, and try again to get Congress to fund it. "We need to be much more vigorous about life-extension programs" for the weapons.

Finally, we chat about Mr. Schlesinger's nearly half-century as a nuclear strategist. Are we living in a world where the use of nuclear weapons is more likely than it was back then? "The likelihood of a nuclear exchange has substantially gone away," he says. That's the good news. "However, the likelihood of a nuclear terrorist attack on the United States" is greater.

During his RAND years, in the 1960s, Mr. Schlesinger recalls that "we were working on mitigating the possible effects [of a nuclear attack] through civil defense, which, may I say parenthetically, we should be working on now with respect, certainly, to the possibility of a terrorist weapon used against the United States. . . . We should have a much more rapid response capability. . . . We're not as well organized as we should be to respond."

Mr. Schlesinger sees another difference between now and when he started in this business: "Public interest in our strategic posture has faded over the decades," he says. "In the Cold War, it was a most prominent subject. Now, much of the public is barely interested in it. And that has been true of the Congress as well," creating what he delicately refers to as "something of a stalemate in expenditures."

He's raising the alarm. Congress, the administration and Americans ignore it at their peril.

Bemoan the BJP

2009-06-27T09:51:00.000+05:30

Hindus want to celebrate their strength, not wallow in misplaced victimhood and majoritarianism.

For a party born in April 1980, mid-life crisis and the consequent existential questions have visited the BJP rather early.

You could blame the Acquired Ideological Deficiency Syndrome it inherited from its political avatar known as the Jan Sangh. Or you could blame the presence of too many leaders and the resultant absence of leadership.With 125 seats and half-a-dozen states the party is anything but sunk. But you can't deny that the metaphor is apt. It would have been hard to visualise this disarray when "abki bari or every bari Atal Bihari" had the nation mesmerised not too long back. But then Vajpayee had lived long enough in the opposition ranks to comprehend the essential road to power.

As the bard mused, many in the party wonder "whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles... " To be or not to be is not the question. What to be and what not to be is.

Here are five steps the party must take if it wants to avoid what Shakespeare described as 'devout consummation'.

Be the Change

I am writing this from Pune - the crucible of Tilak's nationalism and 'pure-bred communalism'. Last night three Maharashtrians, all successful, definitely from the BJP catchment, and Brahmins to boot said: "Neither our children or their friends can identify with this Hindutva line. The BJP must dump the communal agenda to be acceptable." Hindus don't identify with misplaced victimhood or majoritarianism. India is secular because Hindus want it to be secular. They want this strength to be celebrated.

Back to Basics

When was the last time the BJP stood up on the street to be counted on issues that impact the common man? Yes, TV debates are good but the perception is that leaders have lost mass connectivity and have mistaken the virtual arena for the real thing. The party must ask itself if it played the role of the opposition between 2004 and 2009.

Politics is a 24x7 show, not an election special. It is not surprising that the BJP trailed in 69 of the 70 Assembly segments in Delhi in the Lok Sabha polls. It's the party which rules the MCD-run 1,072 schools where the poorest send their kids to study in tents, and nobody found it objectionable. Unless you are willing to lead the next morcha for bijli, pani or sadak, you are irrelevant. BiPaSa has the power to make a star of you. Be the opposition.

Be an all-India party

Till such time they find the next Vajpayee with pan-India popularity, BJP leaders must do what mere mortals do: build to expand. With no presence in 10 states, the BJP is a little better than the Jan Sangh was in the 70s. For the next five years, it must focus on acquiring market share. Start with West Bengal and Tamil Nadu which are both ripe for a new alternative and ring-fence Kerala with a growth agenda.

Be the Party with a Difference

Long back the BJP was the party with a difference. Now even the quip 'a party with differences' has become a cliché. The first step would be to fix a retirement age, preferably 60. Senior citizens should become mentors and each should mentor at least two leaders. Fix a three or four-term limit for all posts - be it MP or MLA to give others an opportunity. Whether it is Varun or Judeo, the mantra should be sack instantly. Guilty till proved innocent.

Buy into Valmiki

Forsake communalism and the communal agenda. Despite losing their tallest leader to the agitation, the Congress has apologised for the Sikh riots, Operation Blue Star and the Emergency. What makes the BJP think it can get away with Babri and the Gujarat pogrom? It must follow Valmiki and apologise to seek redemption.

Last night Jaswant Singh, arguably one of the best finance ministers, urged ideological distillation in thinking. Rooted in Jan Sangh ideology the party for long has pretended to be the protector of Hindus. By inference it suggests they are weak. So for starters the party must cease to think of itself as protectors of anybody or anything: lives, religion or culture. New India is not interested in supari politics.

If it is serious about tomorrow, the BJP must forget about yesterday and invest in the concept of what is Right. For civil society functions on the construct of right. Not might.

Star Trek: Rubbish!

2009-06-12T09:25:00.001+05:30

In a recent article posted on The Independant,Johann Hari has brought to light another impending disaster.No,this aint about global warming,poverty,world food crisis or even the threat to global security.
Governments around the world have woken up to the challenges that these pose to humanity at large and their native country's competitive advantage on the home front.However,the G-20 has largely overlooked a side effect of its space exploration endeavours that is poised for snowballing into a communications disaster that has more far reaching consequences than the current compendium. Take a look for yourself :

Johann Hari: We're covering our planet with a cloud of space junk

Governments won't even agree to stop adding to the rubbish.

In 1965, the American astronaut Edward White dropped a glove, and it has been orbiting the earth at 17,000 miles per hour ever since. This sounds like a quirky Trivial Pursuit answer – what is the deadliest garment in history? – but it could be about to give us all a galactic slap in the face.

That glove is now joined by so much space trash that scientists are warning it could be poised to take out the satellites we depend on every day – and trap us here on a heating earth.

In just 50 years of exploring space, humans have left 600,000 pieces of rubbish in space, all circling us at super-speed. When it is whirring so fast, a one millimetre fleck of paint hits you as hard as a .22 calibre bullet fired at point-blank range. A hard-boiled pea is as dangerous as a 400lb safe smacking into you at 60mph. And a chunk of metal the size of a tennis ball is as explosive as 25 sticks of dynamite.

We are adding to this junk faster than ever before. There is no international agreement not to leave trash in the skies – and all nations are being reckless. The International Association for the Advancement of Space Safety warns that, at the current rate, the volume of Star Drek will increase fivefold in the next decade. More flights leave more rubbish, and more countries test their fancy new weapons systems by blowing up old satellites – and creating new torrents of trash.

This creates a minor danger, and a major danger. There is a small risk that this rubbish will smack into human beings when minor amounts of it re-enter the Earth's atmosphere. For example, in March 2007, the wreckage of a Soviet spy satellite nearly crashed into a passenger plane over the Pacific. But only one woman has ever been hit by space junk: Lottie Williams from Oklahoma was smacked in the shoulder by a charred piece of space rocket. She was not injured.

But there is a greater danger that an unstoppable chain reaction will begin: the rubbish will crash into other pieces of rubbish, causing it to shatter into smaller chunks that will then crash into each other – and on, and on, until the earth is circled by a haze of impassable metal debris that remains there for millennia. There are (contested) fears that the process began in February this year, when an old Russian satellite crashed into a US satellite high above Siberia.

Dr Marshall Kaplan at John Hopkins University Applied Phyiscs Laboratory says that we face a "coming catastrophic disaster. If we don't clean up this mess in the next 20 years, we're going to lose our access to space". Vladimir Solovyov, Russia's space mission control chief, agrees. He warns: "The clouds of debris pose a serious danger... to earth-tracking and communications satellites."

What would it mean? The super-speed of our globalized world is dependent on satellites. If they are taken out by a barrage of 17,000mph rubbish, you can say goodbye to your mobile phones, GPS, and weather forecasts – and we'll be needing them in this century. We will be trapped here, unable to explore space. Hubble telescope bubble, toil and trouble.

What can we do now? There are some proposals for removing the rubbish, like creating a series of lasers that would sweep the trash back into our atmosphere, where it would mostly burn up. But they are regarded as of dubious scientific plausibility, and a long way off.

The most urgent task is to stop adding to the rubbish – but the 20 governments that have access to space are refusing to do it. They will not agree a deal; they don't want to tell each other where their spy satellites are, or to agree not to blow them up when they feel like it, to test their flashy new weaponry.

This wall of garbage orbiting us all seems like a symbol of the great dilemmas facing humanity in the 21st century. We have become capable of the most stunning technological breakthroughs – but we are sabotaging them by proving ourselves incapable of the most basic forms of self-restraint. At the moment of victory, we regress. The achievements of our frontal lobes are undermined by the backwardness of our adrenal glands.

This story is being played out, with mild variations, again and again, in this century. We have dramatically improved human health – yet now seem poised to cook it under a thick blanket of our own carbon emissions. We have made it possible to fish and farm more efficiently than ever – so we do it till we have taken all the fish and destroyed all the soil.

It doesn't have to be like this. We can restrain ourselves to save our satellites, and our ecosystem. Individuals restrain themselves all the time; why can't we do it collectively? The only alternative is to become a species who heroically reach for the stars – only to smack into a wall of our own trash.

Dial P for Propaganda

2009-06-05T12:16:00.000+05:30

Here are the seven common propaganda devices:
1. Name-calling :

This involves the use of words to connect a person or idea to a
negative concept. The aim is to make a person reject something without examining the evidence because of the negative associations attached to it.
Examples of words include ‘Terrorist‘, ‘Nazi‘ and ‘Queer’.
Name Calling is used as a substitute for arguing the merits of an idea, belief, or proposal. It is often employed using sarcasm and ridicule in political cartoons and writing.

2. Glittering Generalities
The opposite of name-calling, this involves the use of highly valued concepts and beliefs which attract general approval and acclaim. These are vague, emotionally attractive words like ‘freedom‘, ‘honor‘ and ‘love‘.
This method works because these concepts/words mean different things to different people, while still having a positive implication.
When someone talks to us about democracy, we immediately think of our own definite ideas about democracy, the ideas we learned at home, at school, and in church.
Our first and natural reaction is to assume that the speaker is using the word in our sense, that he believes as we do on this important subject. This lowers our ’sales resistance’ and makes us far less suspicious..

This is the list of "positive, governing words" that GOP candidates were told to use when speaking about themselves or their policies.
Active(ly)
Activist
Building
Candid(ly)
Care(ing)
Challenge
Change
Children
Choice/choose
Citizen
Commitment
Common sense
Compete
Confident
Conflict
Control
Courage
Crusade
Debate
Dream
Duty
Eliminate good-time in prison
Empower(ment)
Fair
Family
Freedom
Hard work
Help
Humane
Incentive
Initiative
Lead
Learn
Legacy
Liberty
Light
Listen
Mobilize
Moral
Movement
Opportunity
Passionate
Peace
Pioneer
Precious
Premise
Preserve
Principle(d)
Pristine
Pro-(issue) flag, children, environment
Prosperity
Protect
Proud/pride
Provide
Reform
Rights
Share
Strength
Success
Tough
Truth
Unique
Vision
We/us/our
Workfare

3. Transfer
This is a technique used to carry over the authority and approval of something you respect and revere to something the propagandist would have you accept. One does this by projecting the qualities of an entity, person or symbol to another through visual or mental association.
This stimulates the recipient and makes him/her identify with recognized authorities.
In the Transfer device, symbols are constantly used. The cross represents the Christian Church. The flag represents the nation. Cartoons like Uncle Sam represent a consensus of public opinion. Those symbols stir emotions. At their very sight, with the speed of light, is aroused the whole complex of feelings we have with respect to church or nation.

Single hand symbols: 1.Dissenting person, 2.Beetle, 3.Ray, 4.Anger, 5.Excellent, 6.Bangle, 7.Neck, 8.Armlet, 9.Negative

Double hand symbols: 1.Tusk, 2.Seperation, 3.Forlimb, 4.Waist, 5.Vedam, 6.Brother, 7.Pillar, 8.Mortar, 9.Speedy, 10.Devil, 11.Growth

4. Testimonial
The aim of testimonial is to leverage the experience, authority and respect of a person and use it to endorse a product or cause. Testimonials appeal to emotions instead of logic because they generally provide weak justifications for the product or a cause of action.
‘The Times said,’ ‘John L. Lewis said…,’ ‘Herbert Hoover said…’, ‘The President said…’, ‘My doctor said…,’ ‘Our minister said…’ Some of these Testimonials may merely give greater emphasis to a legitimate and accurate idea, a fair use of the device; others, however, may represent the sugar-coating of a distortion, a falsehood, a misunderstood notion, an anti-social suggestion…”

5. Plain Folks
A technique whereby the propagandist positions him or herself as an average person just like the target audience, thereby demonstrating the ability to empathize and understand the concerns/feelings of the masses.
One may perform ordinary actions or use language and mannerisms to reach the audience and cohere with their point of view.
We are all familiar with candidates who campaign as political outsiders, promising to “clean out the barn” and set things straight in Washington. The political landscape is dotted with politicians who challenge a mythical “cultural elite,” presumably aligning themselves with “ordinary Americans.” As baby boomers approach their sixth decade, we are no longer shocked by the sight of politicians in denim who listen to rock n roll.

6. Card Stacking
A way of manipulating audience perceptions by emphasizing one side of an argument which reinforces your position, while repressing/minimizing dissenting opinions. An example of this articles/media events which compare and contrast the best possible scenarios with the worse examples.
Assume a newspaper editor were in favor of the non-enforcement of immigration laws. Should the issue of immigration law enforcement ever be debated among legislators, the editor might publish articles and editorials that ignore all mention of illegal alien criminals, gang members, and prisoners and report only on decent, hard-working foreigners instead. This sort of card stacking could go on for weeks and influence public opinion on the issue.

7. Bandwagon
The basic premise for the bandwagon technique is to suggest that ’since everyone is doing it, you should too’. It’s aim to persuade people to follow a general trend by reinforcing the human need to participate on the winning side. One can suggest to an audience that he or she will lose out by not moving with the rest of the crowd, thus preying on their insecurities and fears.
With the aid of all the other propaganda devices, all of the artifices of flattery are used to harness the fears and hatreds, prejudices and biases, convictions and ideals common to a group. Thus is emotion made to push and pull us as members of a group onto a Band Wagon.

Diversity of opinion-a right to inform,a right to protect

2009-03-17T19:35:00.000+05:30

'm not too sure whether 'surprise' is the right word here but it sounds too tragically hillarious to be dispensed with, in the context that i plan to use it henceforth... you will be surprised to know that the reprinting of an article on standing up for the right to criticise religion in one of the leading dailies of India,irked a bunch of Islamic hardliners into staging a 4000 men strong protest which ultimately led to the arrest of the editor and publisher of the paper in question.

Now in the light of the oncoming elections in most states, this incident of the West Bengal state govt.'s buckling to electoral pressures could be viewed as an open and shut case of votebank appeasement.You have a) a power hungry political class at their wits' end to bolster public approval for a re-election, B) a natalist,largely uneducated,unaware mass of mullahs weilding their sticks against abomination of the shariah.One doesnt need to be a rocket scientist to combine the two into C)an oppurtunity to translate vociferous demands for censuring alleged disrespect to religious sentiments into votes.

but get this,in a similar attempt at obfuscating the freedom of speech and expression in another state of India,Karnataka to be precise, the state government summarily dealt with the perpetrators,at the risque of mutiny from within their own ranks and alienating their party's personal right-wing fundamentalist history.
http://www.thehoot.org/web/home/story.php?storyid=3696&mod=1&pg=1&sectio nId=19&valid=true

ive been following the follow up of the events in Calcutta and cant help but remark that civil society can only be granted the sanction of being labelled thus, if it chooses to play the part of being 'civil'.For what is most fundamental to the survival of a' public sphere' than the freedom of speech and expression that guarentees diversity of opinion. As a student of journalism, one of the papers i took last semester was called-'Law,Society & Media'.It reqiured us to examine the core concerns of our constitution makers, especially with regards to article 19 1(a) which guarentees the right to freedom of speech and expression.
Heres what we found out-
''in a democracy the deliberative forces shall prevail over the arbitrary so public discussion is a political duty and therefore the greatest menace to freedom is an inert people.''
freedom of speech and expression and consequently freedom of the press thus rests on the assumption that the widest possible dissemination of information from diverse and antagonistic sources is essential to the welfare of the public.

To me,surprise is therefore THE word that underpins all that has transpired in the past few days.I'm surprised ,pleasantly, at that, to find that as a student of journalism,i need not be cynical about the inability to effect change in the critical political economy theory guided agenda setting media marketplace.Johann Hari's article is an absolute delight to stumble upon.
i'm surprised over the lack of support and the apathy that The Statesman has had to deal with in its struggle against religious bigotry.I'm surprised to the point of being appalled over the fate of Sayed Parvez Kambaksh and the rest of the tribe of unsung heroes.
The noted American journalist,Walter Lippmann, once said ,
"true democracy is a goal that cannot be reached in a complex world''. He argued that people are more likely to beleive the 'pictures in their heads' than come to judgement by critical thinking.In the light of industrialisation,events leading to WWII and the rise of totalitarian states,the man became disillusioned with the idea of an educated electorate taking informed decisions. Lippman argued that distortion of information was inherent in the human mind and hence coined the term "stereotypes" to define the greatly fragmented reality that people choose to live with.

here's the article that helps break a few.--kudos to johann hari for compiling it :--

The UN rapporteur who is supposed to be the global guardian of free speech has had his job rewritten – to put him on the side of the religious censors

The right to criticise religion is being slowly doused in acid. Across the world, the small, incremental gains made by secularism – giving us the space to doubt and question and make up our own minds – are being beaten back by belligerent demands that we “respect” religion. A historic marker has just been passed, showing how far we have been shoved. The UN rapporteur who is supposed to be the global guardian of free speech has had his job rewritten – to put him on the side of the religious censors.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights stated sixty years ago that “a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief is the highest aspiration of the common people.” It was a Magna Carta for mankind – and loathed by every human rights abuser on earth. Today, the Chinese dictatorship calls it “Western”, Robert Mugabe calls it “colonialist”, and Dick Cheney calls it “outdated.” The countries of the world have chronically failed to meet it – but the document has been held up by the United Nations as the ultimate standard against which to check ourselves. Until now.

Starting in 1999, a coalition of Islamist tyrants led by Saudi Arabia demanded the rules be rewritten. The demand for everyone to be able to think and speak freely failed to “respect” the “unique sensitivities” of the religious, they said – so they issued an alternative Islamic Declaration of Human Rights. It said you can only speak within “the limits set by the shariah [law]. It is not permitted to spread falsehood or disseminate that which involves encouraging abomination or forsaking the Islamic community.” In other words: you can say anything you like, as long as it precisely what the reactionary mullahs tell you to say. The declaration makes it clear there is no equality for women, gays, non-Muslims, or apostates. It has been backed by the Vatican and a bevy of Christian fundamentalists.

Incredibly, they are succeeding. The UN’s Rapporteur on Human Rights has always been tasked with exposing and shaming those who prevent free speech – including the religious. But the Pakistani delegate recently demanded that his job description be changed so he seeks out and condemns “abuses of free expression” including “defamation of religions and prophets”. The council agreed – so the job has been turned on its head. Instead of condemning the people who tried to murder Salman Rushdie, they will be condemning Salman Rushdie himself.

Anything which can be deemed “religious” is no longer allowed to be a subject of discussion at the UN – and almost everything is deemed religious. Roy Brown of the International Humanist and Ethical Union has tried to raise topics like the stoning of women accused of adultery or child marriage. The Egyptian delegate stood up to announce discussion of shariah “will not happen” and “Islam will not be crucified in this council” – and Brown was ordered to be silent.

Of course, the first victims of locking down free speech about Islam with the imprimatur of the UN are ordinary Muslims. Here is a random smattering of events that have taken place in the past week in countries that demanded this change. In Nigeria, divorced women are routinely thrown out of their homes and left destitute, unable to see their children, so a large group of them wanted to stage a protest – but the Shariah police declared it was “un-Islamic” and the marchers would be beaten and whipped. In Saudi Arabia, the country’s most senior government-approved cleric said it was perfectly acceptable for old men to marry ten year old girls, and those who disagree should be silenced. In Egypt, a 27-year old Muslim blogger Abdel Rahman was seized, jailed and tortured for arguing for a reformed Islam that does not enforce shariah.

To the people who demand respect for Muslim culture, I ask: which Muslim culture? Those women’s, those children’s, this blogger’s – or their oppressors’?

As the secular campaigner Austin Darcy puts it: “The ultimate aim of this effort is not to protect the feelings of Muslims, but to protect illiberal Islamic states from charges of human rights abuse, and to silence the voices of internal dissidents calling for more secular government and freedom.” Those of us who passionately support the UN should be the most outraged by this.

Underpinning these “reforms” is a notion seeping even into democratic societies – that atheism and doubt are akin to racism. Today, whenever a religious belief is criticised, its adherents immediately claim they are the victims of “prejudice” – and their outrage is increasingly being backed by laws.

All people deserve respect, but not all ideas do. I don’t respect the idea that a man was born of a virgin, walked on water, and rose from the dead. I don’t respect the idea that we should follow a ‘Prophet’ who at the age of 53 had sex with a nine-year old girl, and ordered the murder of whole villages of Jews because they wouldn’t follow him. I don’t respect the idea that the West Bank was handed to Jews by God and the Palestinians should be bombed or bullied into surrendering it. I don’t respect the idea that we may have lived before as goats, and could live again as woodlice. This is not because of “prejudice” or “ignorance”, but because there is no evidence for these claims. They belong to the childhood of our species, and will in time look as preposterous as believing in Zeus or Thor or Baal.

When you demand “respect”, you are demanding we lie to you. I have too much real respect for you as a human being to engage in that charade.

But why are religious sensitivities so much more likely to provoke demands for censorship than, say, political sensitivities? The answer lies in the nature of faith. If my views are challenged I can, in the end, check them against reality. If you deregulate markets, will they collapse? If you increase carbon dioxide emissions, does the climate become destabilised? If my views are wrong, I can correct them; if they are right, I am soothed.

But when the religious are challenged, there is no evidence for them to consult. By definition, if you have faith, you are choosing to believe in the absence of evidence. Nobody has ‘faith’ that fire hurts, or Australia exists; they know it, based on proof. But it is psychologically painful to be confronted with the fact that your core beliefs are based on thin air, or on the empty shells of revelation or contorted parodies of reason. It’s easier to demand the source of the pesky doubt be silenced.

But a free society cannot be structured to soothe the hardcore faithful. It is based on a deal. You have an absolute right to voice your beliefs – but the price is that I too have a right to respond as I wish. Neither of us can set aside the rules and demand to be protected from offence.

Yet this idea – at the heart of the Universal Declaration – is being lost. To the right, it thwacks into apologists for religious censorship; to the left, it dissolves in multiculturalism. The hijacking of the UN Special Rapporteur by religious fanatics should jolt us into rescuing the simple, battered idea disintegrating in the middle: the equal, indivisible human right to speak freely.

why obama makes sense for the indian voter

2008-09-19T10:14:00.000+05:30

OBAMA vs Mc CAIN : WHO'S GOOD FOR INDIA?

fact i) The Lok sabha elections are scheduled for 2009.

fact ii) Lehmann brothers and Merill lynch go down under, and AIG starts to look uncertain.

fact iii) In the post 1991 liberalised India, a major contributor to the rising GDP & soaring sensex , happens to be FII(Foreign Institutional Investment), with FDI following suit.

Pile up the facts together, and what you get is a bleak future, unless the US decides to pull up its socks and start taking the right foreign policy decisions.Living in an increasingly interdependant world comes with its pitfalls and globalisation of the economy can sometimes create unsettling consequences for a major part of the iiird world.

Check out the foll. article by Andrew Romano for the Newsweek to know what i'm talking about:--

Monday, September 15, 2008 4:42 PM By Andrew Romano
John Lennon once sang that "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans." So, it seems, is politics.
The news this morning that two of Wall Street's most storied firms, Merrill Lynch & Co. and Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., were following their distinguished former competitor Bear Stearns toward extinction was met with misery and fear in living rooms and conference rooms across the country--and rightly so. "The biggest reshaping of the financial industry since the Great Depression," wrote Bloomberg News. "Catastrophe," added the New York Post. But something tells me that Barack Obama's brain trust didn't react quite so pessimistically. For two weeks, Chicago has struggled to stay in the news as John McCain and Co. have distracted the nation--or, more accurately, the nation's newspapermen, magazinists, on-air bloviators and blogospheric scavengers--with a lot of yadda about lipstick, pigs and kindergarten sexcapades. But today's massive financial shakeup finally gives us a more important topic to obsess over: the economy. For Obama, this disastrous news is a huge opportunity--a chance not only to be heard addressing an issue that matters, but also to pivot away from a losing message to one that could actually win him the election.
AdvertisementTo get a sense of the shift, it's worth looking at Obama's "other plans" for today--in other words, what might have been. The campaign clearly intended to spend the day attacking McCain as a dishonorable Bush clone. In St. Claire Shores, Mich., Joe Biden was scheduled to deliver, in the words of a campaign press release, a "major address expanding on the case that electing John McCain would just mean four more years of George Bush’s failed economic policies and that the only change in John McCain is the dishonorable and deceptive campaign he’s running." "If you’re ready for four more years of George Bush, John McCain is your man," Biden was supposed to say. "Just as George Herbert Walker Bush was nicknamed 'Bush 41' and his son is known as 'Bush 43,' John McCain could easily become known as 'Bush 44'." Meanwhile, Obama put out an ad called "Honor" (above) slamming McCain for his "vile," "sleazy," "dishonest" "smears." The point, of course, was to battle back: to show that Obama had "taken off the gloves"--yet again--and was responding, as campaign manager David Plouffe promised he would, "with speed and ferocity to John McCain’s attacks." No more Mr. Nice Guy.
Without the collapse on Wall Street, Obama's negative theme probably would've dominated the news. After all, the political press only covers fours things, as the Illinois senator himself has noted: "polls, scandals, gaffes and attacks." But while a loud anti-McCain message and aggressive anti-McCain posture may have been the only way to break through the static, it probably wouldn't have done Obama much good with voters in the end. That's because undecideds don't find either part of that message--a.) McCain is "Bush 44" or b.) McCain is a dishonorable liar--particularly convincing.
Here's why. Every insurgent politician since the dawn of history has accused his opponent of being "more of the same." Given that 70 percent of America disapproves of Bush's job performance, Obama's eagerness to follow in their footsteps is understandable. But the problem is that voters aren't dumb. They realize that John McCain is not George W. Bush. He's a different person--and for most folks, that's enough. As liberal blogger Ezra Klein has noted, "[the American people] know John McCain because he ran against George W. Bush in 1999 [and] spent a few years being a pain in George W. Bush's ass. Yes, as a Republican, McCain has often voted in accordance with the Republican agenda ... [But voters] get people better than they get policies." What's more, they probably have an instinctive sense that McCain has reached across the aisle more often than Obama, with Democrats making up 55 percent of his partners over the last two Congresses (Obama only partnered with Republicans 13 percent of the time).
McCain knows this. It's why he spent the entire Republican convention claiming that he's a "maverick" who will "shake up Washington" and "put country first." And it's why Obama's advantage on the question of who will "bring the needed change to Washington" plummeted from 32 percent in June to 12 percent after St. Paul. The fact is, campaigning against Bush--i.e. "more of the same"--won't work unless swing voters agree that McCain IS Bush. But increasingly they don't. By continuing to push this narrative ad nauseam, Obama risks sounding like the reflexive, angry partisan in the race--while leaving McCain to deliver the message of "postpartisan change" all by himself.
The second half of Obama's planned message--the part where he pivots from convincing voters that they don't want "more of the same" to convincing them that they don't want John McCain--may not have fared much better. Call it the Outrage Offensive--citing the mainstream media to claim that McCain is running a "dishonorable and dishonest campaign." The problem here, as Slate's Mickey Kaus noted this morning, is that most voters don't really care what my MSM chums and I say about anything anymore; these days, truth is the eye of the beholder. As regular Stumper readers know, I happen to think that McCain's lipstick onslaught was idiotic and condescending. But as Mickey rightly points out, there's "no way of knowing what Obama meant by 'lipstick'--just because he and McCain used the word earlier doesn't mean he didn't think using it now, after Palin's speech, didn't add a witty resonance." The truth, in other words, is often indeterminate. As a result, when Team Obama--or the media--lectures the public on what's "true" and what's a "lie," it "plays into some of the worst stereotypes about liberals--that they are preachy know-it-alls hiding their political motives behind a veneer of objectivity and respectability." Ultimately, Obama is preaching to the choir--and the rest of congregation isn't even listening. In 1988, Michael Dukakis released an ad called "Counterpunch" claiming that the election was about President George H.W. Bush "dragging the truth into the gutter." "I'm not going to let them do it," he vowed. We all know how well that worked out for him.
That's why today's tragic economic crisis is such a political godsend for Obama--because it changes the subject. This morning, McCain told rallygoers Jacksonville, Fla., that "the fundamentals of our economy are strong." Noting how starkly McCain's message clashed with the bleak news from Wall Street, delighted Democrats immediately seized on his slip as evidence (along with his inability to remember how many houses he owns and his statement that only those who make over $5 million are rich) that the Republican nominee is "out of touch" with the economic concerns of average Americans, a group of people his top economic adviser once called "whiners." "Apparently his 26 years in Washington have left him incapable of understanding that the policies he supports have created an historic economic crisis," said Obama spokesman Bill Burton. "This is someone who's going to defend the Bush economic policies all the way until November," added Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill. In St. Claire Shores, Mich.; and Grand Junction, Colo., Biden and Obama delivered the day's "McCain is a dishonorable Bush clone" message as planned. But given the headlines, it's now their remarks on McCain and the economy that are making news.
"It’s not that I think John McCain doesn’t care what’s going on in the lives of most Americans," Obama said. "I just think doesn’t know. He doesn’t get what’s happening ... Senator--what economy are you talking about? What’s more fundamental than the ability to find a job that pays the bills and can raise a family?... What’s more fundamental than knowing that you’ll have a roof over your head at the end of the day?... The fundamentals we use to measure economic strength are whether we are living up to that fundamental promise that has made this country great--that promise that America is the place where you can make it if you try."
This--not lipstick, not lies, not Sarah Palin--is the conversation Obama wants to be having: a conversation about why his economic values trump McCain's. But that's only half the battle. Now that the press and the public are finally paying attention, Obama can't just say that McCain is out of touch and call it a day. He has to explain what he would do differently--and better. He has to sell his plan for righting an economy still reeling from the real estate and mortgage crises--something he shied away from doing today, preferring instead to rely on the "same vague... pitc[h] he has sounded over the past few months for fixing what ails the country.” Until now, neither candidate has won the confidence of voters on this issue. Remember: there are only 50 days left until the election. Here's hoping, for the country's sake, that we don't spend too many more of them pontificating about pigs.

the good, bad and the ugly

2008-09-15T19:05:00.000+05:30

Terrorism is synonymous with grief,anger,remorse and regret.Saturday's serial blasts in New Delhi relay all of the above and more. As a college freshman, a certain concept that i heard in political science struck a chord and has remained with me henceforth.Its a concept that defies attention and yet plays havoc unnoticed , in political circles. Its called the logic of unintended consequences.In layman terms, this refers to events that are unforseable but nevertheless emanate from a well thought out plan of action.call it the side effect syndrome if you may but if terror attacks are here to stay ,so are they .

consider this : Since almost everybody has somebody ressiding or working in Delhi & NCR, if 30 people lost their lives in the recent terror plot,at least 30 lakh frantic telephone calls would have been generated to ensure that the caller and the called didnot feature among the select few. telecom operators must surely be smiling their way to the bank on this flash flood styled revenue generation.

cut to the cityscape. Being a metro,New Delhi exhibits a certain style of living or a certain way of life finds resonance across all the major metros of the globe.people in big cities lead increasingly isolated lives. multiple factors lke competition,time crunch and vast distances combine to create atomised individuals who might not even recall the name of their next door neighbours unless something spectacular were to compel this memorisation. the internet and social networking translates into building and maintaining viable 'contacts'-people we choose to invest a lot of time in, even though we'd never dare discuss anything personal or expect sympathy from.sadly, the very frameworkof this rat race ensures an increasing disconnect from schoolmates,old college friends,teenage crushes, relatives and families.surprisingly,it takes one terror attack in your city to bridge all that in an instant.emotional support systems go into overdrive and receiving calls from near and dear ones rids one of the dissapointments of the daily grind.we suddenly feel wanted,loved,cherished and cared for again: an exercise that would on normal ocassions require the assistance of days of therapy and regular attention.

also, news channels have a field day. their TRPs reach the roof and renewed interest in their programmmes generates viewer enthusiasm thats sure to last a week of newscasts.

if thats not enough, we are forcefully awakened from the doldrums of saas bahu serials & reality tv to drive home the realisation that there lies a bigger world around us and that there are inevitably more important things in heaven and earth to watch out for,than wannabe starlets gyrating to remixes. the romans made an interesting statement: if you cant give your people bread, give them circuses. sadly, the psyche of the indian people continues to stay tuned to this comedy circus phenomena-emerging as the unlikely inheritors of the roman legacy.how many of us will really give this incident more thought?how many will try to analyse the symbolism implied before jumping to age old conclusions ranging from, "all muslims are terrorists" to even "the police is ineffective".

and if thats not all, think of the political activity surrounding these blasts. the state of delhi is scheduled to go for polls this november and the lok sabha will witness a similar charade in 2009.add to that the interesting peoccupations of the majority pary and the BJP on Saturday evening and you just cant brush off Modi's comments as coincidence. ( for the uninitiated, the congress party had a meeting with all its important leaders on satuday,possibly to discuss their impending election agenda. the BJP too was organising a conclave in bangalore to chalk out their poll plans ).

the real losers are the unfortunate souls who lose their loved ones in unpreparedness. for no matter how much papers cry hoarse about feeling their plight, it isnt in human nature to feel sorry for the untimely departure of a life you didnt know,before tonight,existed.

Myths,Kashmir and its costs!

2008-09-11T18:46:00.000+05:30

The Kashmir question has captured the imagination of successive generations of Indians. In a bid to throw new light on this quagmire that has gripped both national and international interest; lets present an investigative Account of the issue’s underbelly.

Renaming Pandora’s Box

Sustaining Kashmir is not just a national pastime but also a huge drain on the nation's resources. Arguments from the other side of the board cry fowl at the use of statistics to enunciate the worth of every rupee spent. To such detractors, this exercise is akin to equating what is essentially seen as a problem of humanity, with one of materialism.
As reductionist as this correlation may seem to some, its a fact that should stir up an equal amount of chagrin as the thought of the crores of private investment that lie plugged in the wake of SEZ oppositions or even developmental costs in a country where the same amount of resources if diverted, could have restored peace and calm in states where resorting to arms is seen as a direct consequence of economic frustration.
In 2002 alone a, Kashmiri got eight times more money from the Centre than citizens from other states. While per capita Central assistance to other states increased from Rs 576.24 in 1992-93 to Rs 1,137 in 2000-1, that of the Kashmiri rocketed from Rs 3,197 to Rs 8,092. To get a perspective, translate the numbers: if this cash, managed by the state Government, were to be despatched by money order, each Kashmiri family (with five members on an average) would get Rs 40,460 every year.

For all that brouhaha over autonomy or azadi, the fact is that Jammu and Kashmir cannot sustain itself without the Centre's support. In 2001-2, the state spent Rs 7,516.6 crore of which Rs 4,577 crore-or 60 paise of every rupee spent-came from the Centre. Forget development, even the state's non-development expenditure was Rs 2,829 crore including a salary bill of Rs 1,193 crore while its own revenues were barely Rs 1,095 crore. Paying wages to its employees thus, would have been a daunting task for J&K if the Centre were not to intervene (financially).

Some in Jammu and Kashmir could argue that it’s the strife and terror that has affected the state’s finances which would have otherwise proved sufficient given its high-value addition exports of handicrafts, fruits & flowers and its tourism value. But could Srinagar have managed an expenditure budget of over Rs 7,500 crore on its own steam? Unlikely. In any case, in a perverse way, the conflict has contributed to the state's GDP. The 5.5 lakh security forces deployed in Jammu and Kashmir are willing buyers who add to its consumer base both for local and manufactured produce. Interestingly per capita consumption expenditure in Jammu and Kashmir has shot up from Rs 134 per month in the 1980s to Rs 746 in 2000 itself.

Why should we then dismiss economy from this debate? If theology was that reasonable, would it have given birth to a fickle mob that places speeches of some above the actions of the state on the credibility meter?

There are so many myths to Kashmir that it’s hard to put them all under the same category. Sadly, the final sufferers of these myths are the people who fall prey to them while leaders and misleaders escape the hazards of the aftermath. Take the recent statements of certain politicians for instance:

Myth: PDP’s Mehbooba Mufti asks "Which government transfers thousands of kanals of forest land to a shrine anywhere?"
Correction: No where does it say in the order that the land stands transferred.

Myth: Syed Ali Shah, the Voice of Pakistan in the Valley and Hurriyat leader says India is trying to change the demographic status of Kashmir and is taking away land from Kashmiris.
Correction: The land allowed to be used is only for pilgrims and only for the period of the yatra. Tourists cannot change demographics.

Myth: Omar Abdullah said in Parliament, "it is the issue of our land, and for our land we will fight till our last drop of blood, till we die."
Correction: Neither has the land been given to anyone,nor can it belong to someone. Besides, this opposition doesn’t justify Omar’s voting in favour of the UPA in the trust vote. Conviction cannot be a convenience. Also, saying “our land” is a lot like justifying Brigadier (retd) Suchet Singh’s remark as a leading member of the AYSS that "Jammu has always received the short end of the stick in the past 60 years, and the Amarnath land issue has given a vent to its pent-up regional aspirations,"

Myth: Mirwaiz Umer Farooq says there has been an economic blockade of goods from the Valley. Urges people to head for Muzaffarabad.
Correction: More than 35,000 trucks carrying supplies reached the Kashmir Valley since July 1, according to the data recorded at the Lakhanpur post—the gateway to Jammu and Kashmir. Also, J&K’s tax revenue totalled Rs 9914 cr for 2005-08 while the grant it received from the Centre for this period added another Rs 24767 cr. Compare that to the prosperity levels in PoK & Muzaffarabad might stop seeming a welcome idea.

Myth: The conference between Sonia Gandhi & Rajnath Singh was an acknowledgement that this issue is a national one.
Correction: With most Hindu majority north Indian states slated for polls soon, this dialogue was more about holding on to one’s votebank . The BJP has lost no time in milking gains out of this emotive issue for its Lok Sabha campaign.( Shri Amarnath Yatra Sangharsh Samiti, a loose conglomerate of Jammu-based organisations, is backed by the RSS- a parent organisation).

Myth:Senior BJP leader L.K. Advani, said amidst chants of "har har Mahadev" that “Denial of land to Shri Amarnath shrine is an affront to the Hindu sentiments and another example of flawed secularism,"
Correction: The context of his statement assumes significance. As a part of its carefully-crafted strategy to keep the Hindutva motif alive, the BJP top brass showed up at the Aradhana Divas on August 11 in Delhi, depicting an ice shivlingam a la the idol of Shri Amarnath cave where Mr. Advani vocalised his grievances. Whatever happened to his throat during the ethnic cleansing of 250,000 Hindus out of Kashmir in the 90s.The current state of the survivors who continue to live like refugees in Delhi is telling enough about concerns for Hindu sentiments.

It takes just one look at the original order to know how craftily it underwent manipulation raising doubts as to whether the PDP,National Conference & Hurriyat bothered to read it :
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Government Order No 104 - FST of 2008
DATED 26-05-2008

Sanction is accorded to the diversion of forest land measuring 39.88 hectares falling under the compartment No 63a/Singh in Block Kullan, Range Sindh, Sindh Forest Division for raising pre-fabricated structures only for camping purposes of pilgrims, without going in for construction of permanent structures, at Baltal and Donnail by Shri Amarnathji Shrine Board on the following terms and conditions.

1: The proprietary status of forest land shall remain unchanged.
2: The forest land so diverted shall be utilised only for the purpose for which it has been diverted. It shall not be transferred to any other agency without approval of the Forest Department.
3: The forest land so diverted shall not be mortgaged, reassigned or sub-leased by user agency in any manner whatsoever to any other agency.
4: The User Agency shall pay net present value of the forest land to the tune of Rs 2,31,30,400/- (Rs Two crore thirty one lakh thirty thousand four hundred only) as calculated by the concerned DFO as per Hon'ble Supreme Court Order dated 30.10.2002 in IA No 566 in Writ Petition (Civil) No 202 of 1995 T N Godavarman Thirumalpad V/S Union of India.
5: The User Agency shall pay Rs 19,94,000/- (Rs Nineteen lakh ninety four thousand only) on account of Compensatory Afforestation to be carried over 79.76 hectares.
6: The User Agency shall take foolproof measures on modern scientific lines to ensure that water of nearby Sindh Nallah does not get polluted.
7: Any damage done to the forest by the user agency or its employees and contractors of people employed by them shall be charged from the user agency at the rate of ten times the standard rate of 1992.
8: The forest land so diverted shall return to the Forest Department free of any encumbrances when it is no longer required by the User Agency.
9: The User Agency shall construct complete retaining/breast walls on the both sides of the road/railway line/earth work/tunnelling etc. and take other necessary steps so as to minimise soil erosion/land slips. In this regard, the user agency shall seek technical guidance from Director, Soil Conservation Department of J&K.
10: The User Agency shall also pay any other amount which will become payable as per the orders of the Hon'ble Supreme Court or Government/Forest Department, J&K.
11: The User Agency shall be responsible to get requisite clearance under any other relevant law in vogue.
12: The User Agency shall submit an undertaking that in case of any upward revision of rates of Net Present Value the User Agency will pay the amount of differential Net Present Value.
13: Possession of Forest land diverted for non-forestry purpose under the orders of the competent authority should be handed over to the User Agency till all payments due against Compensation of trees, NPV/Compensation forest land, Compensatory Afforestation costs etc. are not deposited with Chief Accounts Officer in the office of the PCCF. Before handling over the possession of the Forest land, it should be further ensured that there are no outstanding dues with the said User Agency in respect of the cases sanctioned in the past.
14: The User Agency shall take all possible environmental safeguards in consultation with the State Pollution Control Board prior to erection of the pre-fabricated structures and their use by the pilgrims to ensure that no damage is caused to the ecology of the area.

The proposal stands cleared/approved by the Advisory Committee in its 39th meeting held under the Chairmanship of the Chief Secretary on 12th July, 2007.
By order of the Government of Jammu and Kashmir.
Sd/-
Principal Secretary to Government
Forest Department
NO- FST/Land/41/2007 Dated: 26-05-2008

Since political leverage is easier to gain by maintaining ambiguity and rallying around the UN office with demands of azadi than finding facts, parties like Tehreek – Hurriyat and other separatist hardliners are having a field day matching shoulders with the Abdullah & Mufti. What is threatening about this myopia is that all this separatist propaganda could boomerang into washing all progress made in terms of ceasefires and electoral faith down the drain and parties that seek to make gains through the so called revolution might end up being deserted.

As for the people, they deserve the leadership they promote. One thing is sure azaadi will surely mean the end of good times [no excise, no service tax, grants in thousands of crores and freebies.] If that is what they want, that is what they will get. As Confucius said "beware of what you wish for, your wishes may come true".

The bone of contention called Kashmir

2008-09-11T18:23:00.000+05:30

The separatists, for long divided among themselves, united over the agitation against the land transfer. Some within them, define it as a plot to settle non-local Hindus in the valley, while to some its a wonderful vantage point to promote secession.
Mirwaiz Farooq, chairman of the moderate Hurriyat faction, even suggested that the Kashmiris have no objections to carving a Hindu-dominated Dogra Desh out of the Jammu province-harking back to the dubious Dixon Plan that had suggested a Muslim-majority state south of the Chenab.

In all this turmoil, an army officer posted in the valley, says, “Even if you’re yet not pleased over the fact that the Centre foots your bills, does it give you grounds to resent such subsidies so much that you storm out your house waving Pakistani flags in front of jawans who’ve sacrificed comforts, families and sanity for your security?( the incidence of suicidal tendencies, & ‘fragging’- juniors shooting at seniors is highest in J&K).

"It's a terrible and tremendous setback," said a top state government official. “The flare-up has come at a time when the Valley was experiencing one of the longest spells of relative calm and stability with Pakistan-sponsored militancy at its lowest ebb. The state had been gearing up for the Assembly polls due in October”.
In an interview to a prominent news channel, PDP chief Mehbooba Mufti said, "There is an overwhelming perception in Kashmir that land transfer to the Shri Amarnath Shrine Board will undermine their special status under Article 370. We cannot wish away that perception," conveniently forgetting that her party had agreed to the state cabinet's decision of transferring 100 acres of land to the board before it made a U-turn fearing that the consent could erode its Kashmiri constituency.

While the samiti has stridently struck a "nothing short of land" stance, the Valley-based politicians and separatists are dead opposed to cede "even an inch of land" on paper to Shri Amarnath Shrine which ironically was discovered by a Muslim shepherd more than a century ago. "The agitation will continue till the Government addresses the core issue," said Mr. Sharma, reiterating the samiti's "no-land-no-deal" stance. "It involves our religious faith and there can be no middle ground," he added.
In fact, this issue has created a vent for related issues & sentiments.
"Jammu has always received the short end of the stick in the past 60 years, and the Amarnath land issue has given a vent to its pent-up regional aspirations," said Brigadier (retd) Suchet Singh, a leading member of the samiti.
"In such a surcharged atmosphere, the Valley politicians dare not campaign in Jammu and vice versa," said senior Kashmiri CPI(M) leader Mohammad Yousuf Tarigami.

"The turmoil may bring the state back to square one of the '90s and could fritter away all the gains that the elected political dispensations have made in the last decade," he feared.
Further more, an increasing number of reports in the media suggest that India should consider allowing Kashmiris to secede, since the widespread demonstrations taking place day after day would indicate that they don’t want to be a part of India:
“We promised Kashmiris a plebiscite six decades ago. Let us hold one now, and give them three choices: independence, union with Pakistan, and union with India. Almost certainly the Valley will opt for independence. Jammu will opt to stay with India, and probably Ladakh too. Let Kashmiris decide the outcome, not the politicians and armies of India and Pakistan,”- Swaminathan Aiyar,TOI.
“If the experience of the last two decades has taught us anything, it is that the situation never really returns to normal. Even when we see the outward symptoms of peace, we miss the alienation and resentment within. No matter what we do, things never get better, for very long,” writes Vir Sanghvi in the Hindustan Times.
In a follow up to this tirade, Mr.Sanghvi further mentions,“I reckon we should hold a referendum in the Valley. Let the Kashmiris determine their own destiny. If they want to stay in India, they are welcome. But if they don’t, then we have no moral right to force them to remain. If they vote for integration with Pakistan, all this will mean is that Azad Kashmir will gain a little more territory. If they opt for independence, they will last for about 15 minutes without the billions that India has showered on them. But it will be their decision,”.
However,Mr. K Subrahmanyam, a Delhi based strategic defense analyst is of the opinion that, “Disruption is being made part of India’s political culture by most of our political parties. We must ponder over the consequences of yielding to the secessionists in Kashmir & the encouragement it would provide to other such movements elsewhere in the country.”
Some argue that the basic issue is whether the Indian republic is in a position at this stage, 58 years after its constitution, to permit secession of a small portion of its population on the basis of religious identity. “If they are allowed to leave, there would be consequences that have to be anticipated”.
Not only in Kashmir but violent agitations, elsewhere pose a challenge to the idea of India. The country has to seek a comprehensive strategy to deal with this challenge. Yielding to the Kashmiri secessionists is not a solution. It would be the end of the concept of India.
"It's an explosive situation where a solution can lead to a bigger mess," said a top state bureaucrat and member of the governor's crisis-management team to a popular news magazine. For, what is at play in India's most volatile region is a sense of historical hurt.

coopting dissent- the indian way!

2008-09-11T18:08:00.000+05:30

Game for an alliance anyone?
Picture this: Amar Singh questions the crony capitalism that occupies centre stage in UPA's rescue mission of the nuclear deal. This allegiance to national interest though doesn't require of him to hesitate when he implores Manmohan Singh to intervene in the tussle between the Ambani Brothers.
Shibu Soren threatens to withdraw support to the ruling coalition unless he's made Jharkhand's CM. Within a week, the Centre intervenes and photos of Madhu Koda placing sweets and the state before Soren's palate are splashed in all the major dailies.
It only takes a decade for BSP to change its slogan from "tilak,taraju aur talwar,inko maaro jootey char" to "sarvajan hitaya,sarvajan sukhaya" .
Championing land reforms & massive devolution of power through panchayats takes a backseat as the CPI (M) led Left front government in West Bengal becomes virtually indistinguishable from parties that follow the neo liberal agenda.
The study of political science tells you to view nothing in isolation. Weave these divergent threads together and you get a fabric called coalition politics of regional parties. As a narrative that combines the worst impulses of Indian society and the best of Indian democracy, the politics of coalition that these parties pander to, has truly catapulted them onto the national scene.

The roots of this uprising can be traced to the twin issues of the collapse of the Nehruvian consensus and the rise of the agricultural bourgeoisie in the late 80s.The consensus developed at the time, was over an import substituting economy, a broadly secular polity & a non aligned foreign policy which lost its legitimacy post the breakup of USSR. As the optimism of the 50s&60s faded into the disenchantment of the 80s, the Congress increasingly fell from power ushering an era where 17 years have seen 7 coalition governments at the Centre. However, the consequences of this instability have not altogether been negative. Some social groups found their voice and immense liberatory
possibiIities.
Take Dalit empowerment for instance; a community that faces socio economic oppression on a daily basis from all sections of the upper crust realizes that the ruling umbrella party is wanting in its cover. In steps a Mayawati embodying every Dalit aspiration in her being, & the 16.2% populace finally finds a credible vent. Trouble mobilizing support for linguistic reorganization of states? Create a TDP and garnering support shall become the last of your worries. Find yourself sharing funds with the easterners involuntarily? Stir up an Akali Dal & start dreaming of Khalistan - a place where Singhs gets to be kings. Worried that both Hindu & Muslim elites are paying lip service to emancipation of the backward castes? Send an SOS to Samajwadi Party in U.P. & Rashtriya Janata Dal in Bihar & they'll come calling. Started out with workers liberation but are rethinking strategy to favor capital accumulation through MNCs? Set up a trigger-happy youth cadre to secure your vote bank and just in case people question the reorientation, brand it as differences within the New & the Old Left. Troubled that the common man's problem of inflation might not give the kind of political leverage that the nuke deal debate can? Take sides across the board and gun for a trust vote.
Regional political parties should come with a warning label cautioning you, that for the all good that can come off them, it's going to cost you mate!
Sure the true meaning of federalism is brought into action but does it justify brushing 'the national' under the carpet? Should intolerance of 'the other' be allowed to breed so inexorably, that it shall take a Khairlanji to shake us off our seats?

The upsurge of the lower caste struggles is an extremely complex affair that has a dynamic that is specific to the lived experience of the different caste groups, especially the dalits. And if that's not enough, each state in India has a different dynamic & political configuration, separately reflected in the contests within them. Teaming up with the dominant right wing party then is too naively read as treason.
In backing the NDA coalition in 1998, parties were motivated to join the NDA not for ideological reasons but because of the logic of political configuration in their states; for instance the Trinamool Congress opposed the Congress & CPI (M) in West Bengal, Telugu Desam the Congress in Andhra & MDMK & DMK in Tamil Nadu were in electoral rivalry with the other Dravidian party in the State, the AIADMK. Thus, by the mid 1990s the logic of regional parties had come to be decisive in government formation at the Centre.

Also everything that is critical of secular politics need not be dismissed simply as communal. Actors outside of this secular communal polarity fail to be then seen independently of it. The three time alliance of the Dalit party, the BSP, with the BJP in UP is too easily read as opportunistic support for Hindutva when it is more centrally about the politics of caste.
The BSP needs to secure allies for Dalits against the dominant backward caste (pre dominantly Yadav) parties of the state since backward castes ratHer than Brahmins are their immediate oppressors in the villages of northern India. These parties are opposed by the BJP too, with its largely Bania-Brahmin support base; hence the alliance between the two.
Going overboard with the Hindutva ideologue may have cost the BJP an electoral victory but its certainly not shaping up as a vote against communalism. The party's Karnataka chapter has taken away a separate lesson from this defeat. Thinking people have not rejected Hindutva but its 'dilution', party MPs & MLAs have used the economic competition between Hindu & Muslim fisherfolk in coastal Karnataka, to whip up anti Muslim sentiments & consolidate their presence.

It is believed that if the base is secure, then the structure shall stand untarnished. India's adoption of the Mixed economy model in this case, became the foundation on which battle lines over access to resources were drawn. On failing to supply as many jobs as the land demanded, this economic frustration created a political structure, which favored the marginalisation of most to secure gains for some. Consequently, issues of reservation, communalisation, preferential treatment of certain states in the north, ignorance of the South and even a 'tunnel vision' that makes the DMK support the LTTE just because they happen to be Tamilians gain ground.
In the light of the above arguments, it is alarming to note how politics gets reduced to the numbers game & kingmakers emerge to cut deals across the board. Accommodative politics ends up paying obeisance to populist measures like supplying rice at the rate of 2 rupees per kg in areas that do not require activation of such poverty alleviation measures or providing free TVs to Tsunami survivors.

At the same time, it is unlikely that the prevalence of regional parties can do more harm than done and dismissing them as a political degeneration therefore is being unfair to their heroic survival against Congress hegemony. What redeems them is the greater levels of democratization that they brought about.
With the creation of a wider public space, one party dominance came to an end and the development of the Centre (majority) no longer necessitated the underdevelopment of the periphery (minority). So even though the strategy of putting together a 3rd front is unlikely to withstand the pressures of more than one general election (considering the varied ideological standpoints of the participant parties), an undaunted optimism in the vibrancy of Indian democracy obliterates the pessimism of the intellect.

What Makes News

2008-09-05T17:16:00.000+05:30

Theres a lot to be told and a lot to be discovered. Armed with an optimisim of the will and pessimism of the intellect,I'm on a continous journey of understanding the world around us.
For what good is information if its not accessed by one and all.what is the point of education if its limited.how would knowing something more really makea diffrence unless it reverbrates in a thousand tongues.how can u build an opinion abt something unless its openly, publicly discusssed or bought forth in the first place.
news..is generally considered sacrosant. now im not somebody who likes to be the iconoclast(for the uninitiated an iconoclast is somebody who attacks some cherished belief) but its important to know that newspapers and the news that they carry are certainly not an entity that deserves to be kept on a pedestal and their words engraved in stone.
usually in debates,the last word is reserved for the opponent who quotes such and such article of such and such newspaper in his or her defence.now if this very person was to be told about the components of newsmaking and also the disconnect that exists between ethics in journalism and ground realities or should i say market realities,he or she will have to look for an alternative defense.
it is incorrect to think that a newspaper reports everything that goes on around us.the first thing that happens in the world of the media is filtering.the decision of what is newsworthy and wats not follows 5 main points.
Timing
The word news means exactly that - things which are new. Topics which are current are good news. Consumers are used to receiving the latest updates, and there is so much news about that old news is quickly discarded.
A story with only average interest needs to be told quickly if it is to be told at all. If it happened today, it’s news. If the same thing happened last week, it’s no longer interesting.
Significance
The number of people affected by the story is important. A plane crash in which hundreds of people died is more significant than a crash killing a dozen.
Proximity
Stories which happen near to us have more significance. The closer the story to home, the more newsworthy it is. For someone living in France, a major plane crash in the USA has a similar news value to a small plane crash near Paris.
Note that proximity doesn’t have to mean geographical distance. Stories from countries with which we have a particular bond or similarity have the same effect. For example, Australians would be expected to relate more to a story from a distant Western nation than a story from a much closer Asian country.
Prominence
Famous people get more coverage just because they are famous. If you break your arm it won’t make the news, but if the Queen of England breaks her arm it’s big news.
Human Interest
Human interest stories are a bit of a special case. They often disregard the main rules of newsworthiness; for example, they don’t date as quickly, they need not affect a large number of people, and it may not matter where in the world the story takes place.
Human interest stories appeal to emotion. They aim to evoke responses such as amusement or sadness. Television news programmes often place a humourous or quirky story at the end of the show to finish on a feel-good note. Newspapers often have a dedicated area for offbeat or interesting items.
but in this entire discourse..expecting this process of newsgathering to be a harmless and innocent exercise is foolhardy.political science teaches us not to view things in isolation.everything is inevitably interconneceted .all u need to do is look closely ang look hard enough.
so think about it…when a newspaper carries articles about BRTs in delhi calling them big road traumas..talks about the traffic problems caused..all the time referring to quotes of people who own cars and not a single account of whether the BRT is helping daily bus commuters ..the middle class,the low income group…can u really call that report objective?
say if u were to discover that the reason Koel Purie gets frequent publicity regardless of the fact whether shes done as many movies as to be constantly making news is because she happens to be the India today editor’s daughter..would u really typecast this under the ethical rule of prominence.
when the tata group talks about pulling out of Singur,it gets front page coverage in a leading daily replete with statistical accounts of the entire issue from the business house’s perspective,it wouldnt take long to wonder why the justification to the opposition from the poor farmer’s perspective receives no space if u were to look at the 2 page centre ad of indica vista in the papers the next day.
these are just a few instances of what happens in the nws media day in and day out. the point that i seek to make here by invoking this is that the next time when you read an article in the newspaper donot think of it as the only way or the best way of looking at that issue. for all u know, sometimes it could turn out to be the narrowest vision possible. so before u pass a judgement over any incident,think of news not as the end but a the means to an end that u need to discover all by yourself.