| 27 March 2005 The Hindu Front Page By Siddharth Varadarajan NEW DELHI, MARCH 26 . The Bush administration's decision to sell the F-16 fighter aircraft to Pakistan, even if packaged with `sweeteners' like the offer of advanced multi-role combat aircraft (MRCA) to India or a dialogue on civilian nuclear cooperation, is likely to have an adverse impact on the security environment in South Asia, highly-placed sources in South Block told The Hindu today. Alarmed at how the announcement about the sale of F-16s to Pakistan might impact Indian public opinion, the External Affairs Ministry last night put out an upbeat spin on the prospects for a major upgrading of the strategic relationship between India and the U.S. Privately, however, the mood is not so optimistic. "What the Americans have announced is the actual, physical delivery of F-16s to Pakistan and a bunch of nice promises for India," an official said. "It is possible that some of the promises may be transformed into reality. But at this point, one cannot give them the benefit of the doubt. Only tangible outcomes count, and that is the transfer of the planes to Islamabad." Expenditure will go up Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who conveyed India's disappointment to U.S. President George W. Bush, is particularly concerned that Washington's decision will needlessly push the region towards greater expenditure on armaments. Offering India the chance to buy U.S. planes is not the answer, given the socio-economic priorities and commitments of the United Progressive Alliance government. India will be forced to spend more on advanced weaponry and Pakistan too will feel obliged to do the same. "What we are looking at really is an arms race triggered by America," the sources added. If there is to be an arms race in South Asia, the U.S., clearly, would like its weapons manufacturers to do the selling. But although Washington's offer of "even working towards defence co-production" would be a first for India, especially if this involves either the F-16 or the F-18, the Indian side is not very clear that it wants U.S. MRCAs in the first place. The Indian Air Force considers the French-made Mirage a far more attractive prospect and there is also the Sukhoi bid. `Deeply unfriendly act' Shortly after he fielded Mr. Bush's telephone call about the sale of the F-16s to Pakistan, the Prime Minister discussed the matter with Congress president Sonia Gandhi. Though the party will issue a statement on Sunday, senior leaders have termed the U.S. decision a "deeply unfriendly act," as the only target against which the advanced fighter can be used is India. In Washington itself, the announcement about the sale of F-16s to Pakistan was "balanced" with an off-the-record briefing by a senior State Department official — presumably Philip Zelikow, named as senior adviser by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice last month — in which he said the U.S. was offering to upgrade its strategic interaction with India as part of a plan to "turn India into a major world power in the 21st century." Mr. Zelikow, who helped conduct the Track-II Aspen dialogue with India on security issues, is a familiar and friendly face as far as Indian strategic elites are concerned. But there is a gap between what he might be willing to offer and what the U.S. system would be prepared to give. Above all, there is need to consider the cost of the bargain that Washington is promising to put on the table — especially the effect this will have on the peace process with Pakistan and India's emerging relationship with China. The U.S. announcement of the sale of F-16s to Pakistan and the offer of an expanded strategic partnership with India come on the eve of crucial visits to New Delhi by Pakistan's President, Pervez Musharraf, and China's Premier, Wen Jiabao. The Pakistani military establishment might feel emboldened by Washington's decision and put roadblocks in the composite dialogue process. And forcing India into the position of denouncing big-ticket arms sales to Pakistan on the eve of an important summit meeting between the two countries is not going to help in creating a conducive bilateral atmosphere. © Copyright 2000 - 2005 The Hindu |
27 March 2005
F-16s for Pakistan, India will fuel arms race
21 March 2005
Modi, the U.S. and visa power
| Date:21/03/2005 http://www.thehindu.com/2005/03/21/stories/2005032101731000.htm Opinion - Leader Page Articles By Siddharth Varadarajan
THE DENIAL of a U.S. visa to Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi has evoked a predictably strong reaction from the Bharatiya Janata Party, less strident objections from the Congress party and a formal, diplomatically correct protest from the government of India, whose note verbale requesting a visa went unheeded. For Mr. Modi, who identified closely with many of the policies of the Bush administration, the visa denial is a particularly cruel blow. After all, the United States was perhaps the only major (or minor) country in the `West' not to express its concerns about the Gujarat violence while it was going on. Even tiny Finland saw fit to raise its voice, inviting a stinging rebuke from the External Affairs Ministry, but not Washington. The BJP says the visa rejection has hurt India's national pride but this does not appear to be a perception that is shared widely by Indians, who see the saffron party's appeals to swabhimaan (self-respect) and constitutionalism as largely self-serving. There is no Constitution in the world that requires a country to grant foreign nationals a visa to enter its territory; on the other hand, every Constitution, India's included, obliges governments to investigate and punish individuals involved in large-scale violence against its citizens. Investigations by the National Human Rights Commission, the CBI (in the Bilkis Bano case), and scores of non-governmental bodies have documented numerous acts of omission and commission, suggesting official connivance with the perpetrators of the violence. Even if one accepts the argument that Mr. Modi knew nothing at all about the manner in which more than 2,000 Muslims were targeted and killed across his State in the weeks following the Godhra incident of 2002, his failure to investigate these crimes and punish the guilty is manifest. No less a judicial authority than the Supreme Court of India has pointed this out. All countries exercise their right to issue visas (and even passports) keeping in mind their own definition or perception of national interest. Thus, the National Democratic Alliance Government tightened the procedure for granting foreign scholars visas to attend conferences on "political" subjects or conduct research on "sensitive" topics or areas. More recently, a Dutch professor and expert on Assam and the Northeast had his application for an Indian visa rejected. Foreign governments can protest, concerned Indians can criticise their Government's pig-headedness and agitate for a more liberal approach, and the courts may intervene but that is unfortunately the way the law works. In the United States, perhaps more than any other country, visas have always been used as a foreign policy tool. During the Cold War, membership in a Communist party or allied organisation was grounds for a visa rejection, as was former membership of the Nazi party. Over the years, hundreds of dissident or progressive intellectuals and artistes were denied U.S. visas because of their Leftist views (and this continues to happen on a slightly diminished scale even now). In practice, being a Nazi was much less of a disqualification — since the U.S. was interested in recruiting German rocket and nuclear scientists and intelligence assets — but that issue need not detain us here. Ever since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. has started rejecting visas on the grounds of involvement in corruption, torture and human rights abuses, and violations of religious freedom. These restrictions have developed in tandem with the growing tendency to consider gross violations of human rights as transgressions of international law and international humanitarian law. However, unlike the attempt to prosecute offenders in jurisdictions other than that of their own countries — for example the well-known case against former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in a Spanish court — the denial of visas per se does not represent the extra-territoriality of law enforcement. Prominent U.S. visa rejects in recent years include Lt. Gen. Prabowo Subianto, the son-in-law of former Indonesian President Suharto, who was denied a visa in 2000 on the grounds of being suspected of involvement in torture, former Philippine President Joseph Estrada, who was denied a U.S. visa for medical treatment ostensibly because Washington said it could not "guarantee his security," and two senior Yugoslav parliamentary officials — Srdja Bozovic, who was president of the Chamber of Republics, and Ljubisa Ristic, president of parliament's foreign policy committee — because their names figured on a list of "regime associates" of Slobodan Milosevic. For many years, the U.S. has informally used the existence of corruption charges against public officials as a reason to deny a visa. Last year, for example, Gregory Surkis, a Ukrainian MP and close ally of then Ukrainian Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, was denied a U.S. visa for allegedly interfering with his country's electoral process. The then Ukrainian Interior Minister Mykola Bilokon was put on a visa watch list with the presumption of denial in case he ever applied. In 1996, Ernesto Samper's U.S. visa was revoked when he was Colombia's President. On January 12, 2005, President George W. Bush formally issued a proclamation amending section 212 of the U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act to "suspend" entry into the U.S. of public officials "whose solicitation or acceptance of any article of monetary value, or other benefit, in exchange for any act or omission in the performance of their public functions has or had serious adverse effects on the national interests of the United States." The new rule has already been invoked against Panamanian and Kenyan officials and elected representatives. There is no denying the subjective, arbitrary and ultimately political nature of these provisions. For every alleged money-launderer, corrupt official, violator of religious freedom or torturer kept out, hundreds of others have had no problem getting a U.S. visa. Indeed, double standards have been explicitly written into the law: Section 2 of Mr. Bush's January 12 proclamation says the visa ban "shall not apply with respect to any person otherwise covered by (the ban) where entry of the person into the United States would not be contrary to the interests of the U.S." And this determination is at the sole discretion of the Secretary of State. But if Mr. Modi today cries that he is a victim of double standards, BJP leaders have also benefited from these double standards in the past. When the human rights of Muslim Gujaratis were being violated on a large-scale in 2002, for example, the U.S. preferred to keep its counsel. Had 2,000 Bahais been killed in Iran or Christians in Indonesia or Malaysia, there would have been howls of protest from Washington. But those were the days of great bonhomie between the BJP leadership and the Bush administration and Washington perhaps did not want to bring up an issue that might come in the way of the strategic realignment it was trying to engineer in Indian foreign policy. L.K. Advani, who travelled to the U.S. as Deputy Prime Minister in June 2003 and promised Indian soldiers as cannon fodder for the U.S. occupation of Iraq, had no trouble getting a visa despite being formally charge-sheeted in a major case involving religious discrimination — the demolition of the Babri Masjid. Even as he leads the rally for Mr. Modi's right to accumulate frequent-flyer miles, Mr. Advani should ask why it was in U.S. national interest to give him a visa in 2003 and why it is not in U.S. national interest to let the Gujarat Chief Minister in today. My own guess is that given the defeat of the BJP-led NDA at the Centre, Washington can now afford to pay heed to its own domestic lobbies — including the patriotic Indian-American community — that believe that Indian officials suspected of involvement in mass violence should not be allowed to travel to the U.S. Simply put, denying a visa to Mr. Modi is a relatively low-cost political decision. For all those concerned about U.S. double standards, the Modi visa affair throws up a number of challenges. Denying a visa to one alleged violator of religious freedom but granting it to another is a matter of domestic U.S. policy that public opinion in the United States will have to take up. But if the BJP is serious, it cannot cherry-pick which instances of double standards it will oppose. When the party was in power, it endorsed the underlying discourse of hegemonic arbitrariness (whereby, for example, some countries get designated as `terrorist sponsors'), applauded the growing extra-territorial reach of the U.S. and sought closely to align India with the projection of Washington's military might. Today, BJP leaders are referring to the Iraq invasion and Abu Ghraib. If they are serious, let them declare that senior U.S. officials whose memos created the legal cover under which Iraqi prisoners were tortured (including the Attorney-General and Defence Secretary) should not be given visas to visit India. I don't think any right-thinking Indian would oppose such a demand. It is a well-established principle in international law that sovereignty does not provide an inviolable shield behind which gross violations of human rights can be committed. Countries that are powerful (such as Israel or indeed the U.S. itself) can get away with murder, but others cannot. Smaller states can buy impunity by aligning themselves with the U.S. but as and when contradictions emerge, that impunity can rapidly melt away. For India, a fitting answer to the insult Mr. Modi has brought upon the country in having his U.S. visa revoked is to put in place legal systems that deliver quick and impartial justice in all instances of mass violence like Delhi 1984 and Gujarat 2002. That is the only way to guarantee we never again find ourselves in the embarrassing position of having high officials and functionaries accused of abetting mass murder.
© Copyright 2000 - 2005 The Hindu |
19 March 2005
No intention to end energy projects in Iran: Japan
The Hindu
No intention to end energy projects in Iran: Japan
By Siddharth Varadarajan
NEW DELHI, MARCH 18. Despite the United States' well-known concern about third countries investing in the oil and gas sector of Iran, Japan has no intention of ending its energy projects with the Islamic Republic.
In an interview with The Hindu here on Thursday, the Japanese Prime Minister's Foreign Policy Adviser, Yoriko Kawaguchi, said that while she could not comment on Washington's desire that India abandon its Iran pipeline project, securing energy supplies was as important to Japan as its concerns about the Iranian nuclear programme.
Iran is today Japan's third-largest supplier of oil after Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Although Tokyo had backed off from making major investment in Iranian energy projects for most of the past decade because of the U.S. policy of sanctioning firms which get involved in Iran, Japanese companies are poised to clinch a mammoth deal involving the development of the multi-billion dollar Azadegan oil field.
Transparent dealings
"We share the U.S. concerns over Iran, over the questions that the International Atomic Energy Agency has raised", said Ms. Kawaguchi, who was Japan's Foreign Minister until last year when Prime Minister
Koizumi named her as his diplomatic adviser. "We have been telling the Iranian authorities that they should abide by the IAEA resolutions, answer the questions the agency has raised and ratify the Additional Protocol". "At the same time, Japan has no energy source of its own", she added. "We are dependent on foreign oil and our needs are to diversify and secure our supply. So that is another political policy we have and we are taking measures (such as looking to develop Azadegan) to protect our supply". In doing so, she said, "We are transparent and responsible".
Asked about Japan's attitude towards the U.N. High Level Panel report on the reform of the world body and its Security Council, Ms. Kawaguchi said Tokyo was for `Model A,' i.e. the induction of a few additional permanent members, rather than the broader expansion involving semi-permanent members envisaged by `Model B.' Japan has already begun the process of convincing U.N. members that `Model A' is the way to go forward, she said, adding that she expected other candidates for permanent membership were doing likewise.
On the question of veto power, she said: "When we become permanent members of the UNSC, we should have the same rights as the other permanent members. This is our position in principle. But there is the High Level Panel's recommendation on not extending the veto power and due weight also can be given to that report."
Ms. Kawaguchi defended Japan's participation in both the U.S.-led Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) and Theatre Missile Defence. She described missile defence as "a purely defensive measure" which would not spark off a missile race in the region. In a reference to India's own controversial decision to back U.S. missile defence plans, she said: "The security environment has changed since 9/11 and both Japan and India share the same views with respect to security today."
Asked why an initiative such as the PSI — about which many countries in Asia, like China, have grave reservations — has been launched unilaterally rather than under the aegis of the U.N., Ms. Kawaguchi said there was an urgent need to stop terrorists from acquiring weapons of mass destruction. "Working within the framework of international law, we should work to stop them, and many countries should get on board, including India".
© Copyright 2000 - 2005 The Hindu
17 March 2005
Rice brings reality check on India-U.S. ties
| Date:17/03/2005 http://www.thehindu.com/2005/03/17/stories/2005031707951100.htm Opinion - News Analysis By Siddharth Varadarajan
NEW DELHI, MARCH 16. In publicly expressing her concerns about the Iran-India gas pipeline during her press conference here on Wednesday, the visiting United States Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, made it clear that India's energy security and the Indo-U.S. "strategic partnership" will matter less to Washington than its policy of isolating and undermining the Islamic Republic of Iran. Dr. Rice also dropped a broad hint that the Indian aspiration for a greater role in international affairs would be better served not through reform of the United Nations — and a permanent seat in the Security Council — but through ad hoc U.S.-led multilateral initiatives such as the controversial and short-lived "core group" set up by Washington in the wake of last year's tsunami. Two key issues
For the first time since India and the U.S. inaugurated their "strategic partnership," then, it is evident that on the two key issues animating policymakers here — energy security and a greater role for India in a multipolar world — Washington is keen on defining the rules and setting the limits and that there is little congruence of interest. While both India and the U.S. agree that today's world is no longer the world of 1945, the change that each country perceives is radically different. New Delhi sees the rise of a number of new powers, itself included, who need to be accommodated in a formal power structure. Washington, however, sees only the rise of its own strength, untrammelled by the presence of any rival power. India wants the U.N. Security Council to reflect the change that it believes has occurred. But the Bush administration believes the U.N. system has to be reformed to accommodate the reality of U.S. power and that if this does not happen, the U.N. itself will be made irrelevant. Thus, Dr. Rice noted at her joint press conference with External Affairs Minister Natwar Singh: "So, we will continue to talk with people about Security Council reform, reform of the U.N. but clearly we also note that there have been great changes in the world and that international institutions are going to have to start to accommodate them in some way." Asked point-blank whether the U.S. supported the Security Council's expansion and a permanent seat for India, Dr. Rice stonewalled, saying the world was still at the "beginning of the reforms process." She then said: "I was really quite interested in the fact that when we had the tsunami cooperation which was a kind of ad hoc arrangement for a while to respond to the immediate needs of the tsunami, India was able, I am told, to mobilise its ships and go to sea in about 48 hours. That is extraordinary and that shows that India's potential is very great to help resolve humanitarian and other needs of the world." The fact is that India mobilised its ships even before being invited by the U.S. to join its "core group." And it was left to Mr. Natwar Singh to explain that India's contribution to humanitarian relief, especially peacekeeping, went back many decades. If Iran is going to be to the second Bush administration what Iraq was to the first then it is more than likely that Dr. Rice's message on the pipeline will be repeated often, and more forcefully. India-Iran ties
Until now, Washington has accepted India's friendship with Iran as an irritant which could be ignored. India's recent acceptance of the pipeline proposal has altered the equation dramatically. For the better part of two decades, successive administrations have attempted to isolate the Iranian hydrocarbon sector through the imposition of sanctions on companies which invest in large projects in that country. When the Central Asian oil and gas boom started in the 1990s, the U.S. effort has been to ensure the energy resources of the region transit westward through Turkey and the Mediterranean rather than southwards through Iran. The Iran-India pipeline would not only give a boost to the Iranian energy sector but also open up new possibilities for the export of oil and gas from the wider Caspian region. Neither outcome is desirable from Washington's point of view. While it is hard to assess the contours of the proposed "energy dialogue" between India and the U.S. that Dr Rice mentioned, this is unlikely to go beyond the scope of the discussions already under way on the civilian nuclear sector within the framework of the Next Steps in Strategic Partnership (NSSP). However, with the second phase of the NSSP nearing completion, it is already apparent that the U.S. domestic laws and international commitments (such as its membership of the Nuclear Suppliers Group) impose very real constraints on any significant collaboration in this field.
© Copyright 2000 - 2005 The Hindu |
15 March 2005
Meerut massacre: No light at end of tunnel
The Hindu
Meerut massacre: No light at end of tunnel
By Siddharth Varadarajan
NEW DELHI, MARCH 14. More than two years after the Supreme Court — anguished by endless delays in the prosecution of 19 Uttar Pradesh Provincial Armed Constabulary officials for the killing of 42 Muslim men from Hashimpura in Meerut in 1987 — transferred the sensational case from Ghaziabad to Delhi, charges against the accused have yet to be framed. There is no telling when the trial will actually start.
At the last hearing on Friday, R.K. Jain, additional district and sessions judge, Tees Hazari, Delhi, set a new date for completing the arguments on charge since one of the accused is in the custody of the Varanasi police on another murder charge and was not present in court. The prior two hearings also ended in deferment because one of the accused died and this had to be verified. Before that, the prosecutor and the defence counsel had both requested an adjournment. And on and on the story has gone all the way back to September 2002, when the apex court shifted the matter to Delhi.
The fate of the case — involving the arrest and subsequent cold-blooded execution of dozens of Muslims — is a chastening reminder of the enormous odds the victims of mass crimes must battle in their quest for justice. It also underlines the pressing need for time-bound trials in all incidents involving mass crimes.
No prosecutor
A review of the case record makes it clear that the presence of "secular" parties such as the Samajwadi Party, the Bahujan Samaj Party or the Congress in the Uttar Pradesh government has not made the pursuit of justice any easier. Indeed, much of the past two years was wasted because the Mulayam Singh Yadav Government simply did not bother to appoint a proper special public prosecutor (SPP).
From October 2002 to March 2004, there was no SPP and the case could not proceed. The Uttar Pradesh Government then named as SPP a lawyer who was not qualified in terms of experience and had to be removed by the court after counsel for the victims complained. In November 2004, the State Government named a new SPP, S. Adlakha, but the victims' counsel are not satisfied with his grasp of what is after all a complex criminal case.
"At first, the State of Uttar Pradesh appointed an SPP who lacked the necessary legal qualifications as mandated by law," Vrinda Grover, a counsel for the Hashimpura complainants, told The Hindu . "Now the new SPP has till date only sought adjournments, and arguments on charge have yet to commence. Surely a case of this gravity deserves an SPP who has considerable experience and expertise both in prosecution as well as in criminal trials."
On his part, Mr. Adlakha insisted that he was fully qualified. "I have handled many criminal cases as a defence lawyer," he told The Hindu . Asked how many murder cases he had prosecuted, he said "many" but declined to provide a specific example.
Views of victims ignored
According to Ms. Grover, the victims have a right to be consulted in the choice of public prosecutor. "The Hashimpura victims have pursued this case with all the meagre resources at their command, and despite the Supreme Court's opinion in the Best Bakery case that in the appointment of the SPP in such matters suggestions from affected persons may be taken into account, the Uttar Pradesh Government has repeatedly chosen to ignore their representations."
A charge sheet against the 19 PAC men was first filed before the court of the chief judicial magistrate in Ghaziabad in May 1996, following an investigation by the State Government's Crime Branch Central Investigation Department (CB-CID). The CB-CID, which was asked to probe the killings in 1988, submitted its report only in 1994. The report was never made public and its findings would probably have been given a quiet burial but for a petition filed by the victims before the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court in 1995.
No progress
However, once the Ghaziabad charge sheet was filed in 1996, the case made no progress. The State Government failed to ensure that the accused were arrested and produced in court. Despite the fact that all of them were on active duty with the Government and drawing salaries, it said the men could not be located. Following news reports about the Government's lack of interest in the case, the accused were finally produced in court in 2000. Again nothing happened, prompting the Supreme Court's intervention in 2002.
While it is expected that the accused will use every ruse in the game to try and delay the trial, it is the indifferent attitude of the Mulayam Government, which has Ms. Grover worried.
© Copyright 2000 - 2005 The Hindu
04 March 2005
Chavez is India's passport to Latin America
The Hindu
Chavez is India's passport to Latin America
By Siddharth Varadarajan
NEW DELHI, MARCH 3. Thousands of miles separate Venezuela and India but when Hugo Chavez, the charismatic Venezuelan President, arrives here on Friday on a State visit, the reality of a shared destiny will be only too apparent.
First, India, as one of the fastest growing economies in the world, needs to diversify its sources of energy. Venezuela, as one the world's largest producers of oil, is looking to develop markets in Asia in order to reduce its dependence on the United States, its biggest customer. In her confirmation hearings, Condoleeza Rice, the new U.S. Secretary of State, called the Chavez government a "negative influence." Mr. Chavez — whose democratically-elected government was brought back to office three years ago by popular demonstrations after U.S.-backed Army officers staged a brief coup — has said repeatedly that Washington is hell-bent on assassinating him. He repeated the charge again on Wednesday, saying in Uruguay, "If I'm killed, the U.S. can forget about getting even one drop of oil." On its part, the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee has asked the General Accounting Office to examine contingency plans for the eventuality of Mr. Chavez stopping oil exports to the U.S. — which depends on Venezuela for 15 per cent of its daily oil consumption of 20 million barrels.
Second, India — and the Manmohan Singh Government in particular — is committed to the promotion of a multi-polar world. Venezuela, though not by itself a `pole' in the international system, is nevertheless spearheading an exciting project for the economic, social and political integration of Latin America. South America has suffered because of its dependence on the North, says Mr. Chavez, and needs to get its act together. In tandem with the Left-oriented President Lula of Brazil, Ricardo Lagos of Chile, Nestor Kirchner of Argentina, Fidel Castro of Cuba and now Tabare Vazquez of Uruguay, the Venezuelan President is working on a number of pan-Latin American economic projects.
On February 14 this year, Venezuela and Brazil announced a `strategic alliance' with more than 20 agreements for joint projects in the energy, petrochemical, agriculture, mining and communication sectors, including Telesur — the project for a joint Latin American television network to rival CNN. Needless to say, the new strategic alliance between Brasilia and Caracas fits in well with the promising India-Brazil-South Africa (IBSA) initiative.
Positive signals
In the run-up to Mr. Chavez's visit, senior ONGC Videsh Ltd. (OVL) officials visited Caracas for discussions with PDVSA, the Venezuelan state oil company. OVL has been looking to develop oil fields in Venezuela for some time and was disappointed when a $50 million deal struck in 2000 did not materialise because PDVSA backed out citing OPEC production quotas. This time, say Indian officials, the signals are positive and it is likely that OVL will soon be making its entry there. Reliance Industries already imports nearly seven million barrels of Venezuelan oil every year.
What has changed since 2000 is the sense of urgency with which Mr. Chavez has begun to leverage Venezuela's oil wealth in order to develop strategic autonomy. In Latin America, this has meant giving a push to integration with energy as one of the driving forces. PDVSA has already tied up with Petrobras of Brazil and Enarsa of Argentina but Mr. Chavez wants the whole of the continent to be linked by Petrosur, a pan-Latin network that will exclude the oil majors from the U.S. And internationally, this has involved aggressive networking with both the world's largest energy producers — such as Iran, Libya and Russia — and consumers such as China. Venezuela reaching out to India is, thus, very much part of this logic.
China, with large investible surpluses, has moved fast to capitalise on Venezuela's desire to diversify. When the Chinese Vice President, Zeng Qinghong, visited Caracas in January, he signed agreements allowing the China National Petroleum Corporation to develop oil and gas reserves in Venezuela, including in the Orinoco basin. In a rare but significant concession, Mr. Chavez has agreed to allow CNPC to continue producing orimulsion, a heavy crude.
© Copyright 2000 - 2005 The Hindu
03 March 2005
Budget 2005: Still waiting for the big push
The Hindu
Budget 2005
Still waiting for the big push
In defeating the NDA last year, the electorate wanted a change in the direction of the economy and not the continuation of anti-social reforms with a `human face.' The UPA's new Budget talks the right talk but fails to set a new course.
By Siddharth Varadarajan
IN BOTH its `growth with equity' rhetoric and statistical architecture, the Manmohan Singh Government's first full budget marks a welcome — if small — departure from the minority-interest manifestos that successive Finance Ministers have served up with messianic zeal, bad poetry and florid accents these past few years in the name of `reform.'
Whatever their own instincts might have been, P. Chidambaram and the `dream team' which put together this year's budget knew there could be no getting away from the reality of last year's electoral verdict which swept the Bharatiya Janata Party and its allies away and brought the United Progressive Alliance into power. The election result was no fluke produced by the artifice of coalition but the logical outcome of the democratic majority's long-simmering frustration and impatience with the direction the Indian economy has been taking for more than a decade.
And yet, after the Finance Bill is passed, after the rare examples of a new tax here and there are rolled back under pressure from a vocal elite and the percentage changes between last year's actual developmental expenditure and this year's promises are calculated, we are likely to find that nothing much has changed. The hostility with which the proposed National Employment Guarantee Scheme has been greeted and the lukewarm fiscal support promised to it by Mr. Chidambaram in the budget suggest there is still no willingness at the highest levels of government to be bold and decisive in giving the economy the big push that is needed to push it on to a higher income-consumption-taxation trajectory.
Foreign exchange reserves have grown exponentially and shopping malls might be filled with the latest consumer products but joblessness, poverty, and destitution are also still very much part of the Indian economic reality. The country's income has grown but a disproportionate share has gone to the rich and super-rich. A study by Abhijit Banerjee and Thomas Pilketty of trends in the income share of the very rich on the basis of individual tax returns data has established that the shares of the top 0.01 per cent, 0.1 per cent and 1 per cent in total income has risen considerably from the mid-1980s onwards after having steadily fallen during the `socialistic' era which preceded the 1990-91 reforms. (`Top Indian Incomes, 1956-2000', Bureau for Research in Economic Analysis of Development, Harvard, Working Paper 046, 2003.) Indeed, Banerjee and Pilketty found that the income shares of the rich and super rich are only slightly below what they were in 1956, implying that inequality has risen sharply in the reform years. In the decade of the 1990s, the income of the richest 0.01 per cent of Indians grew by a staggering 285 per cent in real terms — compared to the mere 71 per cent growth recorded by the richest 1 per cent.
Though it is possible the lower peak tax rates in the 1990s might have induced greater compliance by the rich, thereby distorting the findings, the study notes that this is unlikely. Between 1987-88 and 1999-2000, the top rate fell monotonically from 50 to 40 per cent but the income share of the top 0.01 per cent as measured by income tax returns more than doubled from 0.7 per cent to 1.5 per cent, suggesting the surge was due to rapid rises in income rather than less tax evasion.
The Banerjee-Pilketty study on the growth of the rich provides a firm statistical clue to what many economists have suspected all along — that the reason the National Sample Survey (NSS) based data on expenditure comes up with a lower overall growth figure for the 1990s than the aggregate data generated by the National Accounts statistics (NAS) is because the benefits of this growth have largely gone to the rich whose expenditure patterns are rarely picked up by NSS surveys. The two economists themselves say their study can account for only a maximum of 40 per cent of the `growth paradox' — i.e. the gap between the NSS and NAS growth rates — but if we consider the fact that the rural rich are not taxed at all and the likelihood that the urban rich have hidden income streams, it is clear that growing inequality will explain most of this paradox.
If the rich are today back where they were before, enjoying the lion's share of economic benefits, the poor are still very much at the bottom of the pile. "Just to take one telling figure," writes Prof. Prabhat Patnaik in the latest issue of Social Scientist, "per capita foodgrain availability for the country as a whole stands today at the same level where it was on the eve of the Second World War." After rising to 178 kg by the 1980s, it is today at around 155 kg. "Per capita output did of course decline," he writes, "but the decline in availability was much sharper because there was a massive increase in foodgrain stocks with the government, which clearly pointed to a decline in purchasing power in the hands of the poor in general, and the rural poor in particular."
In keeping with the Common Minimum Programme, Mr. Chidambaram's budget aims to improve the well-being of the rural poor by promising increased expenditure under a variety of development and social sector heads. The Sarva Shikhsa Abhiyan, mid-day meal scheme and drinking water programme have received enhanced allocations, though the promised funding of Rs.11,000 crore (being the sum of a cash component of 5,400 crore and 50 lakh tonnes of grain) is not likely to be enough to see even the stripped down, pilot version of the employment guarantee scheme through safely.
Deciding that discretion is the better part of valour, the Finance Minister pointedly avoided using his budget speech to announce new reforms or concessions that the national and international elite have come to take as their God-given right. He made no mention of privatisation, which does not mean disinvestment has been taken off the radar screen; and on the issue of foreign direct investment, he simply urged Members of Parliament to take a "pragmatic view." Invoking the example of China, presumably for the benefit of Left MPs, Mr. Chidambaram hinted at the Government's intention to further liberalise FDI norms in sectors such as mining, trade and pensions. Real estate has already been opened up to FDI and the retail industry is said to be next in line. As and when the Government makes formal proposals, these will have to be evaluated carefully from the perspective of employment loss, environmental degradation, and the land rights of tribals who are already being displaced to make way for large mining concessions.
On the tax front, none of the measures announced by the Finance Minister is likely to raise our abysmally low tax:GDP ratio. From a high of 10 per cent in the 1980s, the tax:GDP ratio fell to a low of 8.2 per cent in 2001-02 before recovering somewhat to the current level of 9.2 per cent in the last fiscal.
The Banerjee-Pilketty study suggests there is plenty of scope to make the rich and super-rich pay more tax. After all, if they are cornering most of the benefits of reforms, they should pay to help those left behind find food, jobs, education and healthcare. Sadly, Mr. Chidambaram breaks no new ground. The Securities Transaction Tax rate on day-trading in the stock market has been increased only marginally, the tax on cash withdrawals of Rs.10,000 or more — which most Indians might not have minded paying if it were honestly described as a tax rather than an "anti-black money" move — has already backfired, and the corporate sector is gearing up to fight the fringe benefits tax.
If the Finance Minister's annual speech attracts more public attention in India than other countries, this is mainly because the budget is seen as the principal arena for the struggle to shape and mould the country's economic direction.
As in other countries which have witnessed rising inequality, the dogmatism of an elite-oriented neoliberal reforms agenda is in sharp conflict with a democratic, inclusive vision of the economy rooted in policies which fulfil the needs of the people. Budget 2005-2006 is the product of this conflict, though it is still very much anchored in the old agenda.
© Copyright 2000 - 2005 The Hindu
02 March 2005
Gulberg Society victims claim Rs. 64 crores `bandh' damages
The Hindu
Gulberg Society victims claim Rs. 64 crores `bandh' damages
By Siddharth Varadarajan
NEW DELHI, MARCH 1. In a dramatic step that will test the limits of tort law in India, residents of the Gulberg Housing Society in Ahmedabad — where the former MP, Ahsan Jaffri, and more than 40 Muslim residents were killed on February 28, 2002 — have begun civil legal proceedings against senior leaders of the BJP, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad claiming damages of Rs. 64 crores for the loss of life and property sustained by family members during the Gujarat bandh called by the three organisations.
The move is the second time a 1997 Supreme Court judgment on the banning of bandhs and the imposition of damages is being invoked by victims to demand monetary compensation.
Last July, a group of Mumbai residents led by Gerson da Cunha and B.G. Deshmukh successfully sued the Shiv Sena for damages stemming from a city-wide bandh, with the Bombay High Court, in a landmark judgment, ordering the Shiv Sena and the BJP to pay Rs. 20 lakhs each to the city of Mumbai for causing ``hardship to lakhs of people.''
According to Teesta Setalvad of the Citizens for Justice and Peace, which is supporting the legal action, statutory notices under the Limitations Act were served by registered post to the presidents of the Gujarat state BJP, RSS and VHP as well to the VHP international general secretary, Pravin Togadia, on February 26 and 27, within the three-year limit stipulated by law. The suits will now be filed under the Civil Procedure Code in an Ahmedabad court.
The Gulberg Society, once a prosperous compound housing several two-storeyed bungalows, today lies completely gutted and abandoned. Not only are the former residents unable to move back, there is little prospect of them selling their property for anything like a fair price.
The legal notice served on behalf of Zakia Jaffri, widow of Ahsan Jaffri, states that because of the ``Gujarat bandh'' call issued by the respondents, "some people... attacked the Gulberg Society and, therefore, the mob had looted the movable articles from the house of my client and burnt alive several people including husband of my client namely late Mr. Ahsan Jafri... This gruesome incident has taken place because of the `Bandh Call' issued by you... The pain and mental agony undergone by my client is due to the incidents that occurred due to the bandh call issued by you. The approximate loss incurred by my client is about Rs. 70 lakh and therefore my client is liable to sue you for the compensation of Rs. 70 lakh... ''
Several other residents have also served similar notices for varying amounts. In the Mumbai case, the Bombay High Court rejected the claim of the Shiv Sena and the BJP that the bandh was a ``spontaneous gesture'' by residents to protest against the July 2003 bomb blasts. Though the court admitted that there was no ``factual data available to ascertain the cost suffered by citizens,'' it nevertheless held the damage to have been substantial. Similarly, the Jharkhand High Court declared in a December 2003 order restraining the JMM from calling and enforcing a bandh in the State that any loss of public property or production during such a bandh would be recovered from the assets of the party and its office-bearers.
The Gujarat bandh was called by the VHP soon after the Godhra train incident of February 27, 2002.
Rajendrasinh Rana, Gujarat BJP president, endorsed the bandh call, as did some ruling ministers.
In its 1997 judgment (Bharat Kumar), the Supreme Court upheld a Kerala High Court judgment declaring bandhs illegal and mandating the imposition of punitive costs on those who call them in the event that there was any damage to property. In the High Court hearing, the State Government had said that action for recovery of damages to property was not possible because of the difficulty in identifying the persons who actually caused the damage.
The court said that it could not accept the plea that the miscreants could never be identified. But assuming that the Government's argument is correct, ``even then it is clear that those who have called for the bandh would be liable for the damage caused to public property and we do not see why they cannot be sued on the principle of compensation or on tort.''
© Copyright 2000 - 2005 The Hindu
01 March 2005
Reimagining Nepal: Book review of Forget Kathmandu by Manjushree Thapa
| March 1, 2005 The Hindu Book Review FORGET KATHMANDU — An Elegy for Democracy: Manjushree Thapa; Viking- Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11, Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi-110017. Rs. 350. Re-imagining Nepal Siddharth Varadarajan
WRITTEN WITH a deep concern for the political future of a Nepal cornered by the authoritarian impulses of the monarchy, the grotesque factiousness of the parliamentary parties and the anarchic violence of the Maoists, this book is Manjushree Thapa's lament for the apparent impossibility of democracy in her country. Published weeks before King Gyanendra's February 1, 2005 coup, the book is a highly accessible chronicling of not just 200 years of palace intrigue but also the frustratingly circular transition from Rana rule to that of the Shah kings, the compromise which brought in multiparty democracy in 1990, the still mysterious June 2001 massacre which took the life of King Birendra and brought Gyanendra to the throne, and the subsequent usurping of power by the palace in 2002. Maoist movement: insights
Thapa's account of the Maoist movement might lack the academic depth and methodological rigour of other books — I am thinking mainly of Deepak Thapa and Bandita Sijapati's excellent A Kingdom Under Siege: Nepal's Maoist Insurgency, 1996 to 2003 (Kathmandu: The Printhouse, 2004) and Deepak Thapa's edited volume, Understanding the Maoist Movement in Nepal (Kathmandu: Martin Chautari, 2003) — but her chapter based on a week-long trek through insurgent strongholds in the western districts of Dailekh, Kalikot and Jumla is full of insights into the nature of the Maoist movement at the grassroots level. It is clear from her tone, which is sometimes condescending and betrays her impatience with many of the party cadres she met, that she is not impressed with the comrades. And yet, the picture she paints is one which the Nepali elite would find deeply troubling: of villages which fear the Royal Nepal Army (RNA) more than they do the Maoists, of communities so wretchedly poor that the rebels' promise of equality is a magnet for large sections of the youth. After spending days in search of women cadres — and meeting male party leaders and "motivators" whose rhetoric left her cold — Thapa finally encountered a group of teenaged girls active with the Maoists in Jumla. "I asked the first girl... what she was doing before she joined the party. `Nothing,' she said. `I was at home, spending my days cutting grass.' Then, with a blithe tone that belied the grimness of her message, she said, `You see, before, there were only sickles in the hands of girls like me. Sickles and grass. And now there are automatic rifles'." RNA's repression
The author's Kathmandu-bourgeois cynicism wilts in the face of this expression of female empowerment growing out of the barrel of a gun, "All my irritation at the Maoists fell away with this. If I had grown up in one of these villages, and were young, uneducated, unqualified for employment of any kind, and as a female, denied equality with men — hell, I would have joined the Maoists, too," she declares. "The other political parties had not offered better options, and neither had the government. Join the Maoists is what any spirited girl would do." At the same time, the author makes it clear she has no illusions about the Maoists with their often indiscriminate and senseless use of violence and their undemocratic impulses (which has led them to attack members of other parties). Despite travelling through villages which have borne the brunt of the RNA's repression, she never came across anyone who was not a Maoist who acknowledged supporting the insurgents. On the road to Manma in Kalikot, the author spoke to villagers who provided a chilling account of the Army's atrocities — of how soldiers in 2002 had killed innocent men, raped women, burnt more than 30 houses and dropped bombs on the village by helicopter. Asked about Maoist violence, villagers said there had only been one instance — the killing, under rather brutal circumstances, of a man suspected of being an informer. The Maoists also destroyed a local bridge, but villagers rejoiced despite the inconvenience this caused them. "It's been a relief since the bridge was bombed," a boy told Thapa. "Before that, the Army used to come here on weekly patrols... (they) would beat men and boys, they'd speak roughly to women... call them whores." And yet, these villagers were not Maoist supporters. If there were elections here tomorrow, who would win, Thapa asked. "Not the Maoists," a man answered. "Not if they have to put down their arms... The government thinks we are all Maoists, but the fact is, nobody likes them. Nobody." `Destruction of truth'
Nothing sums up the elegiac nature of her narrative better than the dirge of an old widow in western Nepal who tells Thapa the sad story of her family's destruction. "Her elder son and daughter-in-law had been shot dead by security forces because the villagers, on some grudge, had reported them as Maoists," she writes. Fearing for their lives, her second son and one of her daughters fled the village, never to return. "Her entire life had fallen apart around her. After telling me her story in almost one breath, she chanted over and over, `My truth has been destroyed... My truth has been destroyed'." This metaphor — of the destruction of truth — is a recurrent theme in the book and the culprits are many. The sad fact is that Thapa has written an elegy for a democracy that was never, except for brief moments that never lasted more than a few months, allowed to even be born. The promise of a constituent assembly, made by King Tribhuvan in the 1950s, has yet to see the light of day and it is this demand, which the Maoists have made the focus of their political platform today. Time ripe for democracy
For most of her book, the author describes rather than prescribes but in the end she does put her own cards on the table, "Nothing is more critical to Nepal now than winning back democracy... Only democracy, and the sovereignty of the Nepali people, matter. Neither the monarchy nor our failed leaders nor any national myth or relic need be kept if they pose obstacles. It is time to re-imagine Nepal." It is increasingly apparent that King Gyanendra has emerged as the principal obstacle to democracy. A democratically elected constituent assembly with a mandate to retain, reinvent or end the monarchy as an institution is the only legitimate instrument to effect the re-imagining of Nepal that Thapa rightly says the time is ripe for.
SIDDHARTH VARADARAJAN
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