FRONTLINE

NOVEMBER 4, 2011 WWW.FRONTLINE.IN INDIAS NATIONAL MAGAZINE RS.25

TAMIL NADU VACHATHI

COMMUNALISM RUDRAPUR

NOBEL PRIZE MEDICINE

Justice, at last 32

Khaki & saffron 41

Immunity unravelled 109

Little to choose between

Scandals and organisational tussles tarnish the ruling Congress image. The Bharatiya Janata Party, beset by similar problems, is in no position to emerge as a credible alternative.

VOLUME 28

NUMBER 22

OCTOBER 22 - NOVEMBER 4, 2011

ISSN 0970-1710

WWW.FRONTLINE.IN

TH E STAT E S West Bengal: Mamata vs Maoists Tamil Nadu: Justice for Vachathi Red badge of courage COMM U N A L I S M Rudrapur riots: Khaki and saffron WOR L D A F F A I R S Occupy Wall Street U.S. & Pakistan: Feuding allies Karzai in India Bangladesh: Day of reckoning Anwar al-Awlaki: Death by drone NATU R AL S C I E N C E Bees and beetles JNA NP IT H A W A R D S Amar Kant and Srilal Shukla: Moral historians Chandrashekar Kambar: Modern myth-maker SC IE NCE Adaptive optics: For a true picture OBITU A R Y Steve Jobs: The genius of Apple Jagjit Singh: Timeless music NOBE L P R I Z E Medicine: Immunity unravelled Physics: Chasing supernovae

C O V ER S T O RY 30 32 34

Emerging crisis

With a scam-hit government and a factionridden main opposition groping for direction, the polity presents a poignant picture. 4

Bhaskar Ghose: The basic structure R.K. Raghavan: Question of ethics Jayati Ghosh: Misleading picture

85 105 107

41 44

UP D A TE Putins Eurasia plan B OOKS LE TTE R S

60 72 134

47 50 53 57 61

87 90

RELA T ED S TOR I E S

92

98 102

Interview: Oscar Fernandes 6 UPA coming adrift 9 Congress & DMK: Grin and bear it 10 West Bengal: Unequal alliance 14 2G spectrum: Shifting spotlight 16
T H E S T A T ES It has been a long and difcult road to justice for the tribal people of Vachathi village in Tamil Nadus Dharmapuri district. 32 C O M M U N A LI S M Rudrapur, an industrial town in Uttarakhand, witnesses large-scale rioting and clashes of a communal nature. 41 N O B EL P RI Z E The Prize in Medicine has gone to three scientists who found out the key mechanisms underlying the activation of the immune system. 109

Yatra politics 19 Interview: Nirmala Sitharaman 20 Interview: Sharad Yadav 22 Gujarat: Modi makeover 24 Karnataka: Power and pelf 28
On the Cover Congress leaders (top row, from left): Manmohan Singh, Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and P. Chidambaram. BJP leaders (bottom row, from left): Narendra Modi, L.K. Advani, Nitin Gadkari and B.S. Yeddyurappa.
COVER DESIGN: U. UDAYA SHANKAR Published by N. RAM, Kasturi Buildings, 859 & 860, Anna Salai, Chennai-600 002 and Printed by P. Ranga Reddy at Kala Jyothi Process Private Limited, Survey No. 185, Kondapur, Ranga Reddy District-500 133, Andhra Pradesh on behalf of Kasturi & Sons Ltd., Chennai-600 002. EDITOR-IN-CHIEF: N. RAM (Editor responsible for selection of news under the PRB Act). All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited. e-mail: frontline@thehindu.co.in Frontline is not responsible for the content of external Internet sites.

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FOCU S: TOWA R D S T O M O R R O W M A NA G E M E N T S T UD I E S Moulding managers 118 FOCU S: V I G YA N PR A S A R Science for all 126 Access to science 128 Reaching out 130 Popularising chemistry 132 Science for women 132 COL U M N C.P. Chandrasekhar: Financial crisis 2.0

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Cover Story

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

Little to choose
With a scam-hit government and a faction-ridden main opposition groping for direction, the polity presents a poignant picture. B Y V E N K I T E S H R A M A K R I S H N A N

Heading a troubled alliance, the ruling Congress has often looked leaderless. The BJP, handicapped by its own corruption scandals and beset by factionalism, has failed to impress in the opposition.
IN what could well be termed a rare political quirk, the state of affairs in the ruling Congress and the principal opposition, the Bharatiya Janata Party, ts the same description: desperately seeking direction in an atmosphere marred by unparalleled political challenges, intra-organisational tussles and consequent confusion. There is a high level of activity on both sides and in different forums, including public spaces, the executive and the judiciary, but its impact in the immediate and possibly medium term is likely to be more confusion. Thus, in the BJP one witnesses veteran leader and former Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishna Advani embarking on yet another rath yatra, with the professed objective of raising awareness about the need to cleanse public life. However, the vast majority of supporters of the BJP and the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS)-led Sangh Parivar perceive it as a manoeuvre in organisational one-upmanship to re-emphasise his credentials as a prime ministerial candidate. In the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA), the leadership, including Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, has repeatedly asserted its commitment to make amends for the corruption and illegal actions of the UPAs constituents at various junctures during its seven-year rule. At the same time, it has advanced the argument, among others, that the continued imprisonment of industrialists arrested in corruption cases works against the objective of attracting greater investment in key sectors such as infrastructure. On the government side, the activity manifested
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itself as legal arguments in the Supreme Court for in camera trial in the 2G spectrum case considered to be the biggest corruption scam in the country on the plea that public trial in the case was destabilising the system. This when the governments imagerebuilding exercise apparently hinges on showing greater commitment to transparency in governance. A similar dichotomy is present in the opposition campaign too. A major charge raised by Advani during his yatra relates to the ight of Indian capital through illegal and illicit nancial streams. To buttress his argument, the veteran leader has often quoted the report of Global Financial Integrity (GFI), the renowned international advocacy group. Quoting from the GFI report, Advani has pointed out repeatedly that India lost $213 billion between 1948 and 2008 through illicit nancial ows or illegal capital ight. He also quoted GFIs conclusion that these illicit nancial ows were generally the product of corruption, bribery and kickbacks, criminal activities, and efforts to hide wealth from the countrys tax authorities. But, even while stating this Advani has kept silent about one aspect of the GFI report: the nding that this illegal process gathered greater momentum after India opened up its economy in 1991 and that 68 per cent of the total illegal siphoning off of money from India since Independence happened after 1991. In other words, the contribution made by the liberalisation of the economy to the deepening and strengthening of corrupt practices is glossed over conveniently in what is called a nationwide anti-corruption drive. The reasons for such silence are obvious. Both the BJP and the Congress are votaries of the same economic policy, which promotes liberalisation and triggers the accentuation of corruption and other illegal dealings in governance. Along with the political confusion, internal tussles and frenzied activity, the afnity and adherence to liberalisation is also shared by the Congress and the BJP. Evidently, the lack of clarity about actions on the political and organisational fronts, along with the consequent pulls and pressures, portends an emerging crisis for both the ruling dispensation and the principal opposition.

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NOVEMBER 4, 2011

between
The travails of the government revolve essentially around four factors. First, the seemingly never-ending exposes of corruption scandals and the political twists and turns these generate; second, the clumsy handling of both the corruption scams and the civil society-driven movement against corruption; third, the tussles that have broken out within the Union Cabinet on these and other issues; and fourth, the absence of a creative and competent political leadership to address these challenges. In normal circumstances, the cumulative impact of these factors would be enough to tilt the balance of power in favour of the opposition. But the plight of the BJP is such that it has failed to capitalise on this situation, though from time to time it has given the impression of fullling the role of the main opposition. The reasons that have held it down are similar to those the Congress faces, and range from the lack of a cohesive and creative leadership to intra-party personality tussles and corruption scandals involving BJP-run State governments. The troubles of the Union government are for the most part linked to the exposes of corruption in the allocation of 2G spectrum. The political twists and turns following every expose have been such that the culpability of several senior leaders is under consideration. Preliminary investigations have been carried out into allegations made against Home Minister P. Chidambaram pertaining to the time when he was the Finance Minister. There are also demands that the involvement of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the current Finance Minister, Pranab Kumar Mukherjee, among others, be looked into. The clumsy handling of the corruption scams in court and in terms of engaging civil society has been show-

BJP L E AD E R L . K . Advani addressing party supporters during his Jan Chetna Yatra at Maihar in Madhya Pradesh on October 14.
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MANVENDER VASHIST/PTI

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

Quality of life has gone up

Interview with Oscar Fernandes, AICC general secretary. B Y P U R N I M A S . T R I P A T H I
CONGRESS president Sonia Gandhis long absence from the country for medical reasons and her apparent lack of intervention in crucial issues before and after her illness have fuelled speculation about an imminent leadership change in the party. Senior leader Oscar Fernandes, who is a party general secretary and is considered close to the Congress president, does not rule out a change of leadership before the next general election. In a conversation with Frontline, he said Rahul Gandhi was already a leader in his own right and it was for him to decide when he wanted to take over. He, however, reiterated that Sonia Gandhi was fully t and actively participating in all party activities. Excerpts from the conversation: The Congress president has not been seen to be fully active for a long time. She has not been present at distribution meeting for National Advisory the U.P. Assembly elecCouncil meetings and tions. Even on October her interventions in 2, she could have kept crucial issues are few away, but the day being and far between. Is such a holy day for us, this an indication of an she attended the funcimminent change of tion. She is meeting all leadership in the party functionaries party? Is Rahul Gandhi since her return. Her about to step into her health is not a factor in shoes? Rahul Gandhi is a the leadership issue. leader in his own right OS CA R FE R N AN D E S : Why is the impression and it is for him to de"THE UPA government gaining ground that the cide at what time he is giving money to States government is not wants to play what role. like never before." pursuing policies for That decision has to be the aam admi? his and his alone and he only will decide the timing. As for Mrs GandThis is political vendetta by the his health, despite her health prob- opposition parties. They are trying to lems she is fully active in party work. blur whatever good work the governEven before she went away she was ment is doing. Besides, in the federal discharging all her responsibilities. structure that we have, the impleImmediately after her return, she at- mentation is to be done by the States. tended the second phase of the ticket And there are States that have not
K. BHAGYA PRAKASH

cased in the demand for in camera trial in the 2G scam and in Union Minister Salman Khurshids argument that investments will not go up if industrialists are put in jail on corruption charges. What is more worrying for the UPA is the traction the exposes have got from the actions of different sections of the government. A case in point is the March 25 note prepared by the Finance Ministry, which virtually held Chidambaram responsible for the huge loss to the exchequer in 2G spectrum allocation. The note and the controversy it generated rendered the Union government largely dysfunctional for about eight days. At the level of the individual, the contents in the Finance Ministry note and the September 27 letter of clarication by Pranab Mukherjee to Con-

gress president Sonia Gandhi and the Prime Minister have struck body blows to Chidambarams political credibility. There are also indications that Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa is gearing up to increase Chidambarams discomture by bringing up the controversy surrounding his election to the Lok Sabha, which is the subject of an election petition in the Madras High Court, alleging fraud, by his rival candidate of the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK). Several Congress leaders themselves point out that contexts that suggest tussles between Ministers can be overcome only by a strong political leadership. When the Pranab-Chidambaram face-off erupted, the ministerial leadership, particularly the Prime Minister, was found wanting in
6 F R O N T L I N E

taking remedial measures. In the words of an outspoken south Indian Congress leader, Manmohan Singhs studied inaction only helped reinforce the public perception that he heads the most corrupt government India has seen in decades and that instead of leading the nation he has allowed himself to be guided by those who have no understanding of politics. The leader added that this particular development strengthened the case of those who had suggested, albeit in private Congress forums, the replacement of Manmohan Singh as Prime Minister. It nally required the intervention of Sonia Gandhi, who was recuperating after a medical procedure abroad, to broker peace between the Ministers. But there are suggestions that the truce is a fragile one. There are suf-

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

even revised their BPL [below poverty line] list for years, hence many poor people are deprived of the benets they are entitled to. The UPA government is giving money to States like never before. Even a tiny State like Arunachal Pradesh recently got Rs.24,000 crore for various pro-people programmes. But the fact remains that food ination is at an all-time high and the government does not seem to be doing anything about it? True, food ination is high and it is hitting the poor badly. But this is also a fact that over 60-70 per cent of our population is dependent on agriculture, and the procurement price of almost all farm produce has doubled since the NDA governments time. The farmers purchasing power has gone up. Non-farm labourers are earning a minimum of Rs.135 a day under the NREGA [National Rural Employment Guarantee Act] scheme. This increased inux of money has pushed up prices. But we also have to acknowledge that the quality of life has certainly gone up in

the last few years. Almost everyone has a mobile phone these days and most households have a TV and a fridge, things that were considered a luxury not too long ago. On the issue of corruption and black money, the government has come under attack for not doing much, and its sincerity in ghting corruption has been questioned. The perception is that whatever has been done is because of public pressure. The government had initiated the Lokpal Bill even before Anna Hazare came on the scene. The Congress president had chalked out a vepoint agenda to ght corruption at the plenary session in January this year and the government is following that agenda. But as far as drafting laws is concerned, there are legal and constitutional issues to be dealt with and that cant be done in a hurry. As for the black money issue, now that Mr Advani is taking out the yatra, he should tell us what his government did about this issue in the seven years that they were in power.

Of late, there has been an impression of a lack of coordination between the government and the party. This was visible during the Anna campaign in August. Not true at all. The government has its own role and the party has its own role. As and when the party feels the need, it discusses with the government if something more needs to be done somewhere. The government never goes against the party. There is perfect coordination. But yes, the party has the mandate to deal with framing policies that directly benet people. We have to frame policies that provide employment to people and contribute to wealth generation. The government has to ensure that the policy direction being provided by the party is followed. But with the government facing the charge of inaction and inefciency on all major fronts, how does the party plan to deal with this? These are nothing but minor tsunamis and typhoons. We will deal appropriately with them at the right time. There is nothing to worry.

P R IM E M I N I S T E R MA N M O H A N Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi during the swearing-in of new Ministers at the Rashtrapati Bhavan in July.
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cient indications that close associates of Pranab Mukherjee still comment that he was pressured to distance himself from the controversial note and that the distancing did not represent his real position. This atmosphere of skulduggery also points to the leadership deciency in the party. According to a number of Congress party activists, Rahul Gandhis failure to emerge as a worthwhile politician has been most disappointing. Said a former Congress Minister of Uttar Pradesh: What Rahul Gandhi has repeatedly shown is that he can come up with the odd dramatic initiative or two, but at no point of time has he been able to assert his credentials as a biggame player like his predecessors in the Nehru-Gandhi family, including his mother. His inability to articulate his views and tendency to say the

SHANKER CHAKRAVARTY

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

A DVA N I W I T H G UJ A RA T Chief Minister Narendra Modi (left) in Ahmedabad on September 17 during the rst day of Modis three-day sadbhavna mission fast.

wrong things at the most inopportune moment have forced senior leaders to come to his rescue, and this does not augur well for the party. The senior activist pointed out that at the level of the organisation, too, the Congress was only a shadow of its past. Gone are the days when there were mass leaders at the district and State levels who supplemented the efforts of State and Central leaders. Naturally, we have a situation where many of the smaller parties in the UPA treat us as a second-class party, he said. This multidimensional crisis in the Union government and the ruling party ought to have spurred the opposition to concerted political action that would have brought decisive political gains. But whenever the BJP leadership has sought to work towards this, skeletons have invariably tumbled out of its own cupboards. The forced removal of two Chief Ministers B.S. Yeddyurappa in Karnataka and Ramesh Pokhriyal in Uttarakhand is a case in point. Both were removed following allegations of corruption. While Yeddyurappa was removed after an indictment by the Karnataka Lokayukta, Pokhriyal was shown the door after allegations against him within the party rose to a crescendo. These evictions seriously hampered the BJP in its campaign to highlight corruption

in the Union government. Advanis Jan Chetna Yatra was essentially an effort to overcome this handicap. But the manner in which it is progressing promises no such gain. The BJPs efciency as a political organisation is compromised more seriously than the Congress by the internecine warfare among senior leaders and their factions. To start with, there is the present tussle between Advani and Gujarat Chief Minister Modi over being the partys prime ministerial candidate. Then there is the long-standing jousting between Sushma Swaraj, Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, and Arun Jaitley, Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, for greater control in political and organisational terms. Leaders like former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Uma Bharati and Sanjay Joshi, who were once expelled from the party but were brought back by the current president, Nitin Gadkari, had once contributed in a big way to the internal tussles but are now apparently disciplined. As a senior Sangh Parivar activist from Uttar Pradesh pointed out, there is no guarantee that these tempestuous leaders will remain quiet for long. Cumulatively, what these show is that the BJP lacks an authoritative and cohesive central leadership. Former BJP Minister Arun Shourie had re8 F R O N T L I N E

ferred to this through his comment exhorting the partys rank and le to bomb the headquarters, and clean up everybody from the top. It was after a series of events, including Shouries exhortation, that the RSS moved in to appoint Gadkari, with whom the Sangh Parivar leadership has strong connections, as party president. But as is evident from the recent developments, including Modis fast and Advanis yatra, Gadkaris appointment by itself has not had a salutary effect in controlling the power games in the party. When Gadkari was appointed, pointed out the Uttar Pradesh-based activist, the RSS admitted that there was a crisis, and that there was a need for a disciplined leadership, but we are yet to see the emergence of the desired kind of disciplined leadership. And it is this absence, more than anything else, that prevents us from playing the role of an effective principal opposition. Put simply, the state of play between the Congress and the BJP has practically turned on its head the conventional political wisdom on the balance of power between the ruling dispensation and the opposition. The situation where a crisis in the ruling dispensation tilting the balance in favour of the opposition or a weak opposition benetting the ruling party is not replicated here in true form. Amidst this uid situation, several players on both sides are thinking in terms of a course correction that involves shufing around the existing power centres and projecting new leaders for important positions. Thus, the names of Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar and Defence Minister A.K. Antony are circulating in Congress circles as possible replacements for Manmohan Singh. In the Sangh Parivar, the name of Gadkari himself is doing the rounds as a possible alternative prime ministerial candidate. It is all well for sections on both sides to do this kind of contemplation, but implementing it will be a different ball game altogether. That could well trigger new crises within both parties and the alliances they head.

AJIT SOLANKI/AP

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

Cover Story

Coming adrift
The UPAs poor responses to scams and its mismanagement of policy issues that affect the people directly reveal a serious leadership crisis. B Y P U R N I M A S . T R I P A T H I

Inaction and inefciency are only part of the crisis. Ministers and alliance partners work at cross purposes. The cohesiveness of UPA-II as an alliance itself is in doubt.
THE United Progressive Alliance (UPA), which was re-elected to power in 2009 with a bigger mandate than in 2004, was probably lulled into such a false sense of security that it sleepwalked through half its second tenure even as crisis after crisis gripped the nation. What is surprising is that those in charge of

handling the affairs of the Congress and the government led by it seem to be oblivious to the problems. Rather, they appear nonchalant, believing that the Congress will tide over the crises and that the TINA (there is no other alternative) factor will keep it going. But this may not always work as is becoming evident with each passing day. Peoples restlessness and anger are becoming visible. This was apparent when a section of the population came out on the streets in support of the social activist Anna Hazares anti-corruption movement and his demand for a Jan Lokpal Bill. This mass anguish over the state of affairs should have been an eye-opener to the government. UPA-II has received the maximum ak on the issue of corruption. The general perception is that senior Congress leaders were indifferent even as huge amounts were being allegedly swindled in the allocation of 2G spectrum or in the conduct of the

UPA C H A I R P ERS O N A N D Congress president Sonia Gandhi with DMK leader M. Karunanidhi at an election rally in Chennai in April.
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S.R. RAGHUNATHAN

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

Grin and bear it

IT is a curious kind of divorce proceedings that are under way between the Congress and the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK). Relations between the two constituents of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) have remained strained since November 2010 when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh made Communications and Information Technology Minister A. Raja of the DMK resign from the Union Cabinet in the wake of the 2G spectrum scam. A further downturn in the ties happened when Kanimozhi, the DMKs Rajya Sabha member and daughter of party president M. Karunanidhi, was arrested on May 20 for her alleged role in the 2G spectrum scandal and remanded in judicial custody in Tihar jail. On July 7, the DMKs Dayanidhi Maran resigned as Union Textiles Minister for his alleged involvement in the 2G spectrum issue when he was Communications and Information Technology Minister in the previous UPA regime. The nominal relationship that existed between the DMK and the Congress worsened further when the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) searched the residences of Dayanidhi Maran and Kalanidhi Maran, his elder brother and Sun Network managing director, and Sun TVs ofces, in Chennai on October 11. The searches relating to the 2G issue were in connection with a case arising out of the Aircel-Maxis deal. Dayanidhi and Kalanidhi are the sons of the late Murasoli Maran, a former Union Minister and a nephew of Karunanidhi. Finding itself in an unenviable position, the DMK has evolved a strategy of staying with the alliance at the Centre but ending the partnership with the Congress in Tamil Nadu. The compulsion to hold hands

D M K M P D AYAN I D HI Maran (left) and Kalanidhi Maran, his brother and Sun TV managing director. The CBI raided their premises in connection with the 2G spectrum scam.

with the Congress at the Centre stems from the fear that Karunanidhis son and Union Chemicals Minister M.K. Alagiri will become vulnerable to the onslaught of the ruling All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) in the State if the DMK pulls out of the UPA government. Besides, the DMK does not want to antagonise the Congress until Kanimozhi gets bail. The DMKs strategy became evident when Karunanidhi announced on September 14 that the party would go it alone in the local body elections, which were slated to be held on October 17 and 19. On that day CBI ofcers had questioned Dayanidhi for about ve hours in New Delhi on the AircelMaxis deal, the alleged irregularities

in the 2G spectrum allocation and the allegations levelled against Dayanidhi by the former Aircel owner, C. Sivasankaran. The CBI had questioned Kalanidhi on September 12 on the same issue. Explaining why the DMK had decided to go it alone in the local body elections, Karunanidhi said the party had formed an alliance with the Congress for the Lok Sabha elections [in 2004 and 2009] to enable the establishment of a progressive government at the Centre and the alliance continued for the Assembly elections of 2011 to form a democratic government in the State. Besides, he was keen that communal and anti-humanitarian power centres should not gain strength. Since the local body

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M.VEDHAN

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elections will not be fought on political and ideological basis but on issues such as civic infrastructure, education and medical facilities, the DMK took a considered decision not to forge an alliance. But the party will have electoral alliances for the Lok Sabha and Assembly elections, he said. The DMKs decision had an unexpected effect. The Congress remained silent on its support to the DMK candidate, K.N. Nehru, for the byelection to the Tiruchi West Assembly constituency, which was held on October 13. The DMK paid the Congress back in the same coin. Its cadre did not campaign for the Congress candidate, A.K.T. Aroumougam, in the Assembly byelection in the Indira Nagar constituency in Puducherry. In a signicant development, former State Congress president K.V. Thangkabalu announced on October 12 that the Congress would contest the Lok Sabha and Assembly elections in the State alone as in the local body elections. He told reporters that the long-cherished desire of Congress workers in the State that the party should contest alone had been fullled now. Thangkabalu said: We forged alliances with the regional parties to block communal parties from coming to power. Henceforth, the Congress will contest all elections alone. We did not contest the Tiruchi West byelection because we wanted to respect alliance dharma. Congress workers know whom to vote for there. It is not clear whether the Congress high command had permitted Thangkabalu to make such a statement. Informed political observers said Thangkabalu, who was perceived to have a soft corner for the DMK, would not have been so outspoken without the approval of the high command. The DMK is worried that Congress president and UPA chairperson

Sonia Gandhi is unhappy with Rajas demand in the trial court that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram be made witnesses in the 2G case. Raja had claimed that Manmohan Singh was aware of the xing of prices for spectrum allocation. Sonia Gandhi is reported to have expressed her displeasure to T.R. Baalu, the DMKs parliamentary party leader, when he met her on September 23. Besides, she did not give a direct reply to Baalu when he told her that Karunanidhi was keen on meeting her following her return from the United States after undergoing medical treatment there. If the DMK is in a quandary about ending its relationship with the Congress, the latter is in a bind too. It needs the support of the 18 DMK MPs to stay in power. We have other problems. We have to settle the Telengana issue. The Congress MPs from the Telangana region are keen that the Speaker accept their resignations. And then there is Anna Hazares anti-corruption movement to tackle, a Congress leader said. For now it is grin and bear it for the DMK and the Congress. Meanwhile, the political situation in Tamil Nadu has taken an interesting turn, with the AIADMK and the DMK totally isolated. They have no major political partners for the panchayat elections. The Communist Party of India (Marxist), the Communist Party of India, the Desiya Murpokku Dravida Kazhagam (DMDK) headed by Vijayakant, the Puthiya Tamizhagam and the Manitha Neya Makkal Katchi have walked out of the AIADMK-led alliance, which was cemented for the Assembly elections held in April. Similarly, the Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK) and the Viduthalai Siruthaigal Katchi (Dalit Panthers) have withdrawn from the DMK-led alliance. T.S. Subramanian

Commonwealth Games (CWG). Though the government tried to counter this impression by pointing out that those facing corruption charges were in prison and legal proceedings were on in the cases, the fact remains that no high-prole Congress Minister, without whose knowledge scams of such huge proportions would not have happened, is in the dock. Instead of answering questions, the political managers of the UPA have gone on the offensive. For instance, the credibility of the Comptroller and Auditor General, Vinod Rai, was doubted. The constitutional body envisaged to audit the governments accounts embarrassed the UPA rst by revealing the irregularities in the allocation of 2G licences and the conduct of the CWG and then citing instances of nancial wrongdoings and over-expenditure by the Congress-led Delhi government in the case of CWG-related projects. Senior Congress functionaries raised questions about the objectivity of Vinod Rais assessment and pointed to his proximity to the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). But by pointing ngers at the CAG, the Congress cannot wish away the taint its own Ministers have attracted, says Subramanian Swamy, the main petitioner in the Supreme Court in the 2G scam case. Another issue in focus is the demand to bring back black money stashed away in foreign tax havens. According to conservative estimates, this is roughly over $500 billion. The government has been seen as dragging its feet on the issue, and whatever little is happening in this regard is because of the activism of the Supreme Court, which is pursuing the case on a petition led by the senior lawyer Ram Jethmalani, former Lok Sabha Secretary-General Subhash Kashyap and former Punjab Police chief K.P.S. Gill, among others. All that the government has done so far is to talk of signing international treaties for exchange of information with tax-haven countries. Despite having the necessary tools at its disposal, it has neither disclosed the names of people who have stashed

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away illegal money abroad nor made an attempt to bring back the money. However, senior Congress leaders do not agree with this perception. It is wrong to say that the government is not acting on corruption or on the issue of black money. If this was true how, come so many people are in jail on corruption charges? This is an opposition vendetta to blur whatever we are doing. But we will deal with these issues appropriately at the right time. On the issue of black money, now that L.K. Advani is going on a Jan Chetna Yatra, he should tell the people what his government did when it was in power for seven years, senior Congress leader Oscar Fernandes said, countering the charges of inaction and inertia on these issues. On the issue of corruption, he said the government had initiated the Lokpal Bill even before Anna Hazare had come on the scene. But there are legal and constitutional issues to handle, and such crucial pieces of legislation cannot be drafted in a rush, he said, justifying the delay in framing the legislation. Price rise, especially in the case of food items, is another crisis facing UPA-II. Food ination has been in double digits over the past two years, and the government is not seen to be doing much to contain it. In this case too, the tendency in the Congress is to blame its allies or the global economic crisis. According to senior Congress leaders, the political dynamics of coalition politics have made it difcult for the party to interfere effectively in managing the food economy. I am not trying to blame a party or an individual [Nationalist Congress Party leader Sharad Pawar, in this case, who is the Food and Civil Supplies Minister], but the fact remains that high ination is a major fallout of mismanagement of the food economy. We have to ensure that hoarding is not happening, that delivery linkages are in place, that proper procurement and distribution systems are in place, that paddy does not rot in the open for lack of storage space. But none of this is happening. I would like to know why the Food Corporation of India has not been mod-

ernised, why foreign direct investment in infrastructure is not happening as much as it should, asked Congress spokesman Manish Tiwari. Besides, the States were also to blame, he said. The Centre has a limited role to play in controlling prices in States owing to the federal structure of the polity. Another major point of concern is the UPAs inability to come up with laws that would change the quality of life of people policy initiatives that got top slots in its agenda for governance. For instance, there is no indication of the Food Security Bill, which has been in the making for long, becoming a reality. Similarly, the Communal Violence Bill and the Land Acquisition and Relief and Rehabilitation Bill, which are expected to have far-reaching consequences, are stuck in the mire of parliamentary procedures.

Instead of answering questions, UPAs political managers have gone on the offensive.
Even those Bills that were enacted during UPA-I and UPA-II have not been effective on the ground. The much-acclaimed Right to Education (RTE) Bill is a case in point. Though it became an Act more than a year ago, free education for every child in the 6-14 age group, which this legislation guarantees, remains a pipe dream. According to a status report by the Human Resource Development Ministry, only 10 of the 28 States have notied rules for the implementation of the Act. The ones that have notied the rules are nding it difcult to implement them for the lack of either trained teachers or resources. The re1 2 F R O N T L I N E

port states that there is a shortage of ve lakh schoolteachers. Besides, the States are not happy with the proposed 65:35 ratio of funding and want the Centre to take a bigger nancial share. We are aware of the problems in the implementation of the RTE, and a standing committee is soon going to look into the issue, Oscar Fernandes said. Yet another piece of legislation, which had the potential to bring about revolutionary changes but has failed so far to make any impact, is the Forest Rights Act. The Act, which was passed in 2006 and was notied in 2008, remains essentially on paper, and even in States where it has been implemented, it has been inadequate. According to a committee formed by the Ministry of Environment and Forests and the Ministry of Tribal Affairs, in cases where the Act has been implemented, over 65 per cent of the claims have been rejected; those that have been accepted are below par; community rights, a major part of forest-dwellers culture, have not been entertained; and those whose claims have been rejected have no mechanism to go in for appeal as they have been given nothing in writing. Tribal Affairs Minister Kishore Chandra Deo, who assumed charge of the Ministry recently, said he was aware of the inadequacies in the implementation of the Act and would take corrective steps soon. But the fact remains that an Act that had tremendous political potential for the Congress, since traditionally the tribal people have been Congress supporters, has been allowed to remain ineffective. The crisis in the UPA is not only about inaction and inefciency, it is also about Ministers and allies working at cross purposes. The public spat between Home Minister P. Chidambaram and Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee is a case in point. Spy bugs and cameras were discovered in the Finance Ministers chamber and the Home Ministrys hand was suspected in it. Shortly afterwards, in response to a Right to Information query, a Finance Ministry note surfaced disclos-

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Unequal alliance
THE ruling Trinamool CongressCongress coalition in West Bengal is an alliance that began on an acrimonious note. Forged out of political necessity, it continues, notwithstanding bickering, distrust and resentment. The apparent rapport at the top level of the two parties is not reected in the relationship among the grass-roots workers. Behind the facade of an alliance there is a erce struggle to gain political space, and leaders of both parties admit this. A contest for organisational base and expansion, between the Congress and the Trinamool, is in the making, and macro aspects of cooperation and coordination, vital for both the parties at present, are not getting reected at the grassroots and micro-levels. It is unfortunate but inevitable, Pradesh Congress general secretary Om Prakash Mishra told Frontline. The inevitability of it lies in the fact that ever since Mamata Banerjee broke away from the Congress and formed the Trinamool Congress in 1998, the partys vote bank has mostly consisted of what it took away from the parent party. And ever since, the Pradesh Congress has been making a big effort to win it back. Apart from the political battle that often takes a vicious turn, scars of old enmity refuse to heal. The forging of an alliance has done little to straighten out the differences. One of the many causes of tension between the two parties is the continuous exodus of leaders and workers from the Congress to the Trinamool. This attrition seems to have continued even after the alliance was formed. The most telling feature of this trend is the case of Ram Pyare Ram, the six-time Congress Member of the Legislative Assembly, who, at the insistence of the Trinamool, was denied the ticket to contest in the Assembly elections. using the names of its afliate organisations. This has been a point of considerable irritation to Congress workers. There is no justication for adopting names such as Trinamool Chhatra Parishad, Trinamool Yuva Congress, even Trinamool INTUC. This shows either a lack of ideas or an attempt to project itself as the Congress party, a senior Congress leader said. Sources in the Trinamool maintain that this complaint only betrays the Congress fear of being swallowed by its alliance partner. A large section of the Congress insists that the Trinamool was successful in defeating the Left Front in the Assembly elections this year only because it entered into an electoral understanding with the Congress. In spite of this, the Congress has been denied its rightful share of the political largesse, they complain. A party which could not muster more than 25 per cent of the votes when it allied with the BJP became a major force in alliance with the Congress, a Statelevel Congress leader pointed out. The Trinamool leadership, however, dismisses such claims. The reality is that the Congress has no existence in West Bengal. In fact it won 42 seats only because it allied itself with us, Trinamool leader and West Bengal Minister for Public Health Engineering Subrata Mukherjee said. The Trinamool Congress is the single largest party in the State with, a strength of 185 in the 294member Assembly. With a tally of 18 Lok Sabha seats, it is the secondlargest constituent in the UPA. These are two facts that the Trinamool never tires of reminding the Congress. They will not be able to do anything to us in West Bengal, but if we decide to be difcult then the Congress at the Centre will be in a whole lot of trouble, Subrata Mukherjee pointed out. Suhrid Sankar Chattopadhyay

S O N I A GA N DHI W I TH

Mamata Banerjee in May 2011.

He contested, nonetheless, as an independent candidate and lost. Thereafter, he left the Congress to join the Trinamool. I joined the Trinamool to seek respect. I could not get it in the Congress, he said. Political observers, however, attribute an opportunistic motive behind his decision to defect. The Congress leadership believes that the trend is now being reversed. In the past two months, several Congress workers who had joined the Trinamool returned to the party. This development was prominent particularly in South 24 Paraganas and South Dinajpur districts. Party workers in both the regions admit that this is not indicative of a change in the mindset of the voters, who continue to be rmly behind the Trinamool. It means that the downward slide of the Congress fortunes is over, and whether the Trinamool likes it or not, the Congress will now grow at the cost of the Trinamool, a senior party leader said. While the Congress has been angry with the Trinamool for eroding its support base and weaning away its cadre, its major grievance is that the breakaway party is allegedly trying to take over its identity completely by appending its name or

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ing that the Home Minister, who held the Finance portfolio before Mukherjee, was a party to the decision to not auction 2G spectrum. This damning disclosure put the credibility of Chidambaram in doubt. It took UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhis intervention to end the wrangling between the two Ministers. At times, the Congress seemed to be working at cross purposes with the government. This was evident during the anti-corruption movement launched by Anna Hazare. The government initially sought to handle the issue with an iron st and arrested Hazare. Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhis direct intervention resulted in his release from Tihar jail, but the political mismanagement by the party and the government continued even afterwards. Ministers Kapil Sibal and Chidambaram, who were handling the issue, were replaced by Sand-

eep Dikshit, Member of Parliament and Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshits son, and Union Minister Vilasrao Desmukh to diffuse the crisis and persuade Anna Hazare to break his fast before things totally spun out of control. The cohesiveness of UPA-II as an alliance, too, is in doubt. Allies such as the DMK, the Trinamool Congress and the NCP are known to be unhappy with the government. The DMK has been close to pulling out of the coalition in the wake of the 2G scam arrests, and the NCP is not happy with the Congress attack on Sharad Pawar over the price rise issue. The Trinamool Congress too has its grudges. Its supremo Mamata Banerjee put the Prime Minister in an embarrassing situation recently by refusing to accompany him on his visit to Dhaka. Can the Centre hold the weight of these issues or will it break? Manmo-

han Singh has on many occasions expressed his helplessness, saying that he did not have a magic wand to solve the problems of corruption or ination. It is speculated that Sonia Gandhi, whose interventions in many crucial issues have been minimal in the past few months, is taking a back seat in order to effect a leadership change in the party and bring Rahul Gandhi to centre stage. Her appearances at the National Advisory Council (NAC), which piloted UPA-Is policy initiatives, have declined. As a result the NACs efcacy has also diminished as it has failed to make the government accept its recommendations. Senior Congress leaders have dismissed theories about Sonia Gandhis diminished role in policy interventions. But the BJP has probably sensed an opportunity in this. That is why Advani is harping on midterm elections.

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Shifting spotlight
P. Chidambarams role in the pricing of 2G spectrum when he was Finance Minister in 2008 comes under scrutiny in the Supreme Court. B Y V . V E N K A T E S A N

Both spectrum pricing and sale of licence were part of the CBIs FIR. Therefore, the Centre for Public Interest Litigation argued, the CBI had given a clean chit to Chidambaram without even investigating the evidence.
ON October 10, the Supreme Court Bench of Justices G.S. Singhvi and Asok Kumar Ganguly, which is monitoring the Central Bureau of Investigations probe into the irregularities in the allocation of 2G spectrum and grant of licences, reserved its orders on the plea for a probe into the role of Home Minister P. Chidambaram in the issue. The CBI did not name Chidambaram in its charge sheet led before the Special Judge, O.P. Saini, in the trial court. It sought to charge 17 of the accused with criminal breach of trust, and the Special Judge is close to framing the charges against them after hearing defence counsel at length. The Bench heard two applications seeking a probe against Chidambaram, who was the Union Finance Minister in 2007-08. The Centre for Public Interest Litigation (CPIL), represented by senior advocate Prashant Bhushan, and Janata Party leader Subramanian Swamy had led the applications. Both alleged a conspiracy between Chidambaram and A. Raja, the then Telecom Minister, before the Letters of Intent (LoI) and the licences were issued to ineligible rms in January 2008. The crucial question is whether Chidambaram knew beforehand of Rajas design to issue 122 LoIs without following the policy of auction. Rajas action, on January 10, 2008, allegedly caused a huge loss to the exchequer. Subramanian Swamy had led with his application an Ofce Memorandum (O.M.), issued by the Finance Ministry on March 25, 2011. This note, procured from the Prime Ministers Ofce (PMO) by
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an activist using the Right to Information (RTI) Act, was signed by Dr P.G.S. Rao, Deputy Director, Infrastructure and Investment Division, and sent to Ms. Vini Mahajan, Joint Secretary, PMO. The O.M. carried a copy of the basic facts on the allocation and pricing of 2G spectrum with a specic noting that it had been seen by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee. The O.M. caused acute embarrassment to the Congress and led to a retraction from Mukherjee that he had not endorsed the inferences in it in an attempt to remove the perception of a rift between him and Chidambaram. The O.M. became the basis for a fresh plea in the Supreme Court for a probe against Chidambaram. The facts stated in the O.M. (without taking into account the inferences) reveal that Finance Ministry ofcials had pointed out repeatedly that spectrum allocation could not be determined on the basis of the entry fee of 2001 and that it should be done through a market-discovered price. Another issue was whether Chidambaram was correct in sending a secret note to the Prime Minister on January 15, 2008, wherein he recommended an auction-based mechanism for future allocation of spectrum, while treating the past allocations made by Raja as a closed chapter. Chidambaram admitted in the same note that spectrum was a scarce resource and the price should be determined on scarcity value and efciency of usage. He further concluded that the most transparent method of allocating spectrum would be through auction and that the method of auction would face least legal challenge. The CPILs submissions in the Supreme Court stated: Despite Chidambaram recognising the above facts, he did not stand by his own Finance Secretary and Additional Secretary who had fought a valiant battle all the way till January 9, 2008. He chose to raise his voice only ve days after the scam had been perpetrated.
THE MEMORANDUM

The O.M. reveals that the then Finance Secretary D. Subbarao (now Governor, Reserve Bank of India) had suggested to go for auction for initial spectrum of 4.4 MHz in early February 2008. But the Depart-

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ment of Telecommunications (DoT) was not keen to do so because, it said, that would disturb the level playing eld and that the then LoI holders, who had already paid the entry fee, were likely to go to court. The O.M. points out that there was a way out by invoking Clause 5.1 of the UAS (Unied Access Service) licence, which, inter alia, provides for modication of the terms and conditions of the licence at any time if in the opinion of the licensor it is necessary and expedient to do so in the public interest or in the interest of the security of state or for the proper conduct of the telegraphs. The O.M. said the DoT could have invoked this clause to cancel the licences in case the Finance Ministry had stuck to the stand of auctioning 4.4 MHz spectrum. Perhaps some litigations would have arisen as a consequence, as the O.M. put it. The O.M. also mentions that while the UAS licences were signed between February 27 and March 7, 2008, spectrum allocation started only in April 2008, almost four months after the LoIs were issued. However, these were not charged (beyond the normal spec-

trum usage charges) since there was consensus at the levels of the Ministers concerned that spectrum beyond the start-up levels only should be charged. For 2G scam-trackers, the O.M. has to be read in two ways. One is to read it literally, and accept the facts therein as incontrovertible. The resultant political crisis in the ruling Congress was tentatively resolved with Pranab Mukherjee issuing a statement to suggest that he did not suspect that Chidambaram could have stopped the scam from unravelling. Mukherjee said the O.M. was based on facts and was made after inter-ministerial consultations. It was an inter-ministerial background paper that was sent to the PMO. Apart from the factual background, the paper contains certain inferences and interpretations which do not reect my views, Mukherjee stated, seemingly satisfying Chidambaram, in order to achieve a truce of sorts. The other way of reading the O.M. is to identify the real participants and understand their omissions and commissions in the context of what has

been revealed by other contemporaneous documents. The CPILs rejoinder submissions on October 10, made in response to the CBIs reply in the Supreme Court, argued that since the Finance Ministry cannot be overruled by a line Ministry (in this case, the Telecom Ministry), it was impossible for Raja to move ahead without the concurrence of the then Finance Minister, Chidambaram. On January 9, 2008, Additional Secretary (Economic Affairs) Sindushree Khullar put up a comprehensive concept paper on telecom policy to Chidambaram, in which she referred to the exchange of letters between the Finance Ministry and the DoT on November 22 and November 29, 2007. It specically recommended multiple options for pricing spectrum through a market-based determination even in the absence of an auction. Chidambaram did not enforce this methodology, which could have met the condition of market valuation and still complied with the governments claim of following a rst-come, rst-served (FCFS) policy, the CPIL claimed. The CPIL interpreted Paragraph

M A R C H 2 009, N E W D E L H I : External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee, Communications Minister A. Raja, Home Minister P. Chidambaram and Power Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde.
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13 of the O.M. as follows: On April 21, 2008, Chidambaram sent a non-paper to Raja conveying the in-principle decision on the agreement that spectrum can be priced only beyond 4.4 MHz. The pricing of spectrum beyond contracted amount was also a part of the same recommendations by the TRAI [Telecom Regulatory Authority of India]. He found it okay to go against the TRAI recommendations beyond contracted amount, but not up to contracted amount (which is what the Finance Secretary wanted to do). The TRAIs recommendations, dated August 28, 2007, did not distinguish between 2G spectrum till and beyond contracted amount. It cannot be Mr. Chidambarams case that he was forced to follow TRAIs recommendations on DoTs advice till 4.4 MHz. If Chidambaram could have taken this stance for auctioning spectrum beyond contracted amount, then he could have taken this exact same stance (consistent with his Ministry ofcials) till the contracted amount and prevented the scam. The CPIL claims to have exposed another inconsistency. The non-paper was dated April 21, 2008. On April 24, 2008, the Finance Ministry abandoned the 4.4 MHz mark and instead agreed to price spectrum beyond 6.2 MHz. The implication is that the additional 1.8 MHz of spectrum when multiplied by 279 UASL/CMTS (cellular mobile telephone service) licences equals 502 MHz of 2G spectrum. At 3G rates, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) estimated the value of this spectrum at approximately Rs.63,000 crore. Chidambaram agreed to change his stance from 4.4 MHz to 6.2 MHz within three days and forced an additional loss on the exchequer, argues the CPIL. The O.M. also reveals that as Finance Secretary, Subbarao had opined to the DoT that auctioning was legally possible for initial allotment of spectrum beyond 4.4 MHz. The DoT opposed this view. Despite the fact that F.S. had taken such a strong view, which had been recorded in the DoTs approach paper (dated February 8,

2008), Mr. Chidambaram chose to side with Mr. Raja on the issue of pricing, the CPIL said. Chidambaram met Raja on January 30, 2008 20 days after the issue of the LoIs, but before the licences or spectrum had been allocated. The minutes of this meeting have been led by Subramanian Swamy in his application. Chidambaram forecast the scam accurately in that meeting, suggests the CPIL. In this meeting, in which both the Finance Secretary and the Telecom Secretary were present, Chidambaram emphasised that the allotment of licences and allocation of spectrum must be based on solid, legal grounds. Both Chidambaram and Raja agreed that consolidation of the number of operators per circle should happen in a healthy way without any rent-seeking. Raja announced modied M&A (Mergers and Acquisitions) guidelines on April 22, 2008, even before the spectrum allocation began. This was seen to be in violation of the TRAI Act. He modied the TRAI recommendation of August 28, 2007, that any proposal for mergers and acquisitions should not be entertained until rollout obligations were met. The CPIL alleged that by virtue of this illegal action, Raja violated the decision he reached with Chidambaram to ensure safeguards against rent-seeking through spectrum-trading owing to M&A. Chidambaram, it alleged, did not raise any objection to the modication of the TRAI recommendation and the violation of the minutes of the January 30, 2008, meeting. The CPIL claimed that it was on record that Chidambaram had approved the deals between Swan and Etisalat and between Unitech and Telenor. If Chidambaram had enforced the agreement he had reached with Raja with regard to the rent accrued to the government and the premium from such spectrum trading, then even at this late stage, the scam could have been partially prevented by ensuring that windfall gains were accrued to the public exchequer and not to companies such as Swan and Unitech, etc.
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Chidambaram did no such thing and ignored what he had already forecast. Instead, he ignored the illegally modied M&A guidelines of April 22, 2008, and later approved the Swan and Unitech equity infusions, which, according to the CAG, indicate a massive loss to the exchequer, the CPIL alleged. The CAG concluded in its report dated November 16, 2010, that the high value paid by Telenor was primarily for spectrum and not for other inputs claimed to have been infused by Unitech. Such large equity infusion by investors was a price they paid for 2G spectrum which was allocated to Unitech, a company with no experience in telecommunications sector, at a throwaway price by DoT. The value which should have accrued to the public exchequer went as a favour to the new licensees in form of huge capital infusion for enriching their business, the CAG noted. Both the issue of spectrum pricing and sale of licence were part of the CBIs rst information report. Therefore, the CPIL argued, the CBI had given a clean chit to Chidambaram, ignoring the overwhelming evidence without even investigating the same. On October 10, during the hearing of the 2G case before the Supreme Court, both the CBI and the government opposed the CPILs and Subramanian Swamys pleas for a probe into Chidambarams omissions and commissions. Their reasons were that the facts cited by the CPIL and Swamy were incomplete and investigation on the basis of such facts might destabilise the system. The government criticised the Supreme Courts so-called power to continue monitoring the case as it is the Special Judge who has to examine the evidence against a person not named as an accused in the nal charge sheet (in this case Chidambaram). The CBI also opposed the CPILs plea to appoint two independent persons to assist the court to monitor the CBI investigation. The Benchs nal orders will show how the court resolves the seemingly intractable positions of the parties before it.

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Cover Story

Yatra politics
Advanis rath yatra against corruption turns out to be an exercise to project him as the BJPs prime ministerial candidate. B Y V E N K I T E S H R A M A K R I S H N A N

That Nitish Kumar agged off the yatra sent out the message that it is Advani, and not Narendra Modi, who is acceptable to the Janata Dal (United), a major ally of the BJP in the National Democratic Alliance.
THE 40-day Jan Chetna Yatra led by former Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishna Advani must rank as one of the most unique political campaigns in contemporary Indian politics. The principal message of the campaign has nothing to do with the

professed central theme or subsidiary slogans of the yatra. According to the formal pronouncements of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the objective of the Jan Chetna Yatra is to mobilise public opinion against corruption of present [United Progressive Alliance] government and put the BJP agenda of good governance and clean politics before the people. While this theme is aired at all the events relating to the campaign, the yatras larger political message came out loud and clear at its very commencement when Bihar Chief Minister and Janata Dal (United) leader Nitish Kumar agged it off. The choice of Nitish Kumar as the inaugurator impacted both the larger polity and the internal dynamics of the BJP in multiple ways. Primarily, at the level of the larger polity it stated that Advani was the most acceptable leader from the saffron party to

L .K. A DV A N I ,

Sushma Swaraj, Arun Jaitley and other BJP leaders with Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar at a public meeting before the start of the Jan Chetna Yatra at Chapra in Bihar on October 11.
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Yatra to highlight corruption and

Interview with BJP spokesperson Nirmala Sitharaman. B Y P U R N I M A S . T R I P A T H I
EVEN as L.K. Advanis yatra rattles on, the Bharatiya Janata Party is besieged by reports of differences between him and Narendra Modi, both of whom are said to be contenders for the Prime Ministers post. BJP spokesperson Nirmala Sitharaman dismisses these reports as media speculation and claims that the yatra is only aimed at highlighting corruption and the United Progressive Alliances inaction on the issue of black money. Excerpts from a conversation with Frontline: There have been reports in the media about Advanis yatra being an effort to project himself as the BJPs prime ministerial candidate. That too, without the partys concurrence. How far is this impression true? It is absolutely wrong to say that the purpose of the yatra is to project either Advani, or anybody else for that matter, as the prime ministerial candidate. The one and only purpose of the yatra is to highlight the issue of corruption and the UPA governments inaction on the issue of black money and to focus attention on clean governance. As far as the projection of anybody as the BJPs prime ministerial candidate is concerned, it is the partys call solely, and the party will decide closer to the election who is to be projected, whether anybody should be projected at all and so forth. that person would turn around and say, why should I rule myself out? But if you black out the other 99 times and just project that one-time reply, that does not become the party line. This issue is to be decided by the party, at the right time.

How far are the reports about N I R M ALA S I THA R AM A N : differences between Advani and Modi true? W HAT has the UPA Advani was to start his done about black yatra from Gujarat, money? but he shifted it to But Advani, while speaking to a news Bihar. Now even as Advanis yatra is on, Modi has announced yet another channel, has asked why should he fast. Is competitive politics played rule himself out of the race. Does between the two? that not mean that he considers himself in the race? All these reports of differences beFrankly speaking, if you keep ask- tween the two leaders are totally false; ing someone the same question day in there is no truth in them at all. This and day out, maybe once in 100 times, has been made clear by both of them

its biggest and long-standing ally in the National Democratic Alliance (NDA). Consequently, it also sent out a message to the hierarchy of the BJP as well as the larger Hindutva combine, the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS)-led Sangh Parivar, that Advanis candidature for the Prime Ministers position could not be negated against the background of such acceptance with the principal ally. More specically, the message targeted Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, who, too, had indicated his desire to build up a national prole through a sadbhavna (goodwill) fast in September. This not-so-subtle political-organisational message has greater significance because, in many ways, the professed central theme of the yatra is

not sustainable. The BJP was compelled to remove, in the last three months, two of its Chief Ministers B.S. Yeddyurappa in Karnataka and Ramesh Pokhriyal in Uttarakhand amidst corruption charges raised by different segments of society, including probity-watch institutions. Many other BJP leaders, including those not in ofces of power, are facing one criminal allegation or the other. Indeed, in this context there is a stream of public opinion which holds that the yatra is incongruous. Frontline raised this point with Advani on the second day of the yatra and he responded by stating that Yeddyurappa was removed as Chief Minister as soon as the Lokayukta report indicting him was led and that the Jan Chetna Yatra was against
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corruption as a whole and not against any political party. The ultimate aim of this movement is to transform society, not just change government, he said in response to the Frontline query. Despite such assertions, what Frontline could see in the yatras course was that the so-called anti-corruption message was not really garnering support or gathering momentum. In fact, at many places people even questioned the opulence of the yatras arrangements. At Koilwar in Bhojpur district of Bihar, Frontline came across a group of self-professed supporters of the NDA who questioned the lavishness associated with the yatra. Why should a peoples leader travel in a state-of-the-art rath escorted by nearly 100 vehicles in his cavalcade? If he

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UPA inaction
in no uncertain terms. There is no rivalry between them either. As for Modis fast, it was announced on September 19, the day he broke his threeday fast, that as part of his forthcoming sadbhavna mission, he would observe a days fast in each district of Gujarat, and the fast which was declared yesterday [on October 13] is part of the sadbhavna mission programme. His rst fast will be in Dwaraka, so it is not as if Modi announced his fast only yesterday. Advani is undertaking the yatra to highlight the issue of corruption. Is it not true that BJP governments in several States are facing corruption charges and not enough is being done about it? Is this not taking away from the credibility of his yatra? If you are referring to Karnataka, immediately after the Lokayukta report, the party took action, removed those found guilty; even the Chief Minister had to go. We even put Ministers in jail. BJP president Nitin Gadkari is on record as having said that if there is more evidence, more action will be taken. So why should it really wants to give out the message of probity in public life, should it also not encompass austerity in politics? Should he not be travelling in a normal vehicle and without all this show? Advani is talking about the billions of rupees of black money stashed away in foreign banks. He has even demanded a White Paper from the Central government on this. But why is he not explaining the expenses incurred on such a huge show of vehicles? asked Rajiv Pratap Singh, a dhaba owner, who sat among this group. Interestingly, Singh and friends were part of a group consisting of both BJP and JD(U) workers who had turned out to cheer the yatra. Across the two-day trip in Bihar, the yatra attracted large crowds. In most places, in-

Reports of differences between Advani and Modi are not true.

take away from the credibility of the yatra? The Congress party says that before Advani starts pointing ngers at the Congress government, he should tell the nation what his government did to get this money back during the seven years that it was in power. The Congress starts talking like this when it is cornered. Congress leaders should know, and that is a matter of record for anyone to check, that until 2006 the international environment was not conducive to taking action on this issue. The United Nations Convention against Corruption and measures like Tax Information Exchange Agreements or Double

Taxation Avoidance Agreements, which can facilitate action, have come post-NDA, specically after 2006. So it is wrong to say that we did nothing. Besides, the global meltdown created an international environment where it became easier for governments to put pressure on tax haven countries or foreign banks to part with information. In 2009, by when these tools had become available to us, we made this a part of our national election campaign and we also set up a task force to study the quantum of this black money. Many recommendations of this task force are being used by the UPA government as well. So it is wrong to say that the NDA government did not do anything to get the black money back. But what has the UPA government done despite all these resources that are available to it? Instead of disclosing the names of those who have black money in foreign banks, the Finance Minister addressed a press conference in late January and only talked about procedures. Where is the action?

cluding its starting point at Sitap Diara, the birthplace of the late socialist leader Jayaprakash Narayan, the crowd had greater praise for Nitish Kumar. The success of almost all the meetings in terms of crowds has been analysed by a number of observers as having to do with a Nitish Kumar effect rather than the slogans of the yatra. In a sense, this analysis was borne out in the rst few meetings in Uttar Pradesh, which paled in comparison with the meetings in Bihar. While the last meeting at Ramgarh in Bihar drew a 30,000-strong crowd, the next mornings meeting, at Varanasi, hardly had an attendance of 5,000 people. Former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Uma Bharati, accompanied
F R O N T L I N E 2 1

by BJP supporters, received Advanis rath as it entered the temple town of Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh on the third day of the yatra. Once again, the intended projection of Advani as the prime ministerial candidate was quite clear in the rhetoric. Uma Bharati asserted that whoever had taken a yatra through the holy town of Varanasi would certainly become Prime Minister and lead the nation. The sloganeering of the crowds also underwent a change here. Unlike in the previous two days in Bihar, there were now shrill shouts of Jai Shri Ram and Har Har Mahadeo. Indeed, Uma Bharati insisted that the Jai Shri Ram chants were not loud enough and exhorted the cadre to shout with greater vigour. Senior BJP

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

Did we not accept Advani in 2009?

Interview with Janata Dal (United) president Sharad Yadav. B Y P U R N I M A S . T R I P A T H I
NATIONAL Democratic Alliance (NDA) convener and Janata Dal(U) president Sharad Yadav rules out projecting Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar as the prime ministerial candidate of the alliance. He also rubbishes media speculation about a tussle in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) over this issue, saying the NDAs prime ministerial candidate is chosen by consensus, and no single party can impose its choice on the alliance. Excerpts from a conversation with Frontline: In the wake of L.K. Advanis rath yatra, there is speculation in the media that he is projecting himself as the BJPs prime ministerial candidate against the majority view in the party, which favours Narendra Modi. What is your take on this? Where has the BJP said that Advani should not be the prime ministerial candidate, or where has it said that Narendra Modi is its choice? Just because the media are speculating, it cannot be dubbed as the partys viewpoint. We will comment when the BJP ofcially makes its choice known. But would you accept either Advani or Modi as the prime ministerial nominee? During the Bihar Assembly elections, Nitish Kumar did not allow Modi to campaign in Bihar. Nitish Kumar never said he would not allow Narendra Modi to campaign. As for accepting either Advani or Modi, did we not ac- S HA R AD YAD AV: W E cept Advani in 2009? are ready for midterm But Nitish Kumar spoke openly against the use of his photo with Modi during the campaign. Yes, but his objection was only about the use of the photo and the publicity for the aid being given to Bihar. Why should the BJP always project its candidate as the prime ministerial candidate? Dont you think other NDA partners, like your party, should also have that privilege? Why can you or Nitish Kumar not be the NDAs prime ministerial candidate? Is our party big enough to aspire for the Prime Ministers post? We dont have the strength. As for Nitish Kumar, it is wrong to project him as the Prime Minister. He himself has ruled it out, so that question does not even arise. It is immaterial what the media speculate.

elections.

Why is it that the NDA has not been able to corner the UPA government on the issue of corruption? Why has that role been usurped by Anna Hazare? It is wrong to say that the NDA has not cornered the UPA government on the issue of corruption. Even before Anna Hazare started his campaign, we had organised a complete Bharat bandh. Twenty-seven people are still in jail. Both inside Parliament and outside, the entire opposition has been raising the issue forcefully. It

leaders Kalraj Mishra and Murli Manohar Joshi asserted that one should never forget Mahadev [Siva], Ram and Bharat Mata in battles, personal or political. Clearly, there was an effort to underscore the Hindutva dimension of the BJPs larger political ideology. In fact, this ts in with the common formula used in long-distance campaign shows such as rath yatras. The common formula is fundamentally twofold. The central theme of the campaign needs to be highlighted constantly, but mere repetition leads to a waning of interest among the public,

so the lead campaigner and his associates have to keep on generating new headlines to sustain public and media attention. In the Jan Chetna Yatras case, the rst days spin was on the contrast between the political and individual personalities of Nitish Kumar and Rashtriya Janata Dal leader Lalu Prasad Yadav: how one Bihar Chief Minister (Lalu) had arrested Advani and how the other was agging him off on an important political mission. The second day witnessed Advanis presentation on the ight of Indian capital through the black money route and the demand for a White Paper
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from the government. On the third day came the assertion of the partys Hindutva credentials, though the rhetoric came not from Advani but from his party colleagues. As the yatra progresses, more such themes and subsidiary slogans will emerge steadily. There is, however, little doubt that the principal message of the yatra is focussed on the greater acceptance Advani enjoys, compared with Modi, with the BJPs principal ally. According to Sangh Parivar insiders, this message has accentuated the problems of the Hindutva combine in several ways.

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was because of our forceful intervention that people became aware of the scams. The issue had already gripped peoples imagination when Anna Hazare came on the scene and got the benet. Do you think that with Anna hijacking the corruption agenda, your ght against corruption has been weakened? No, not at all. Peoples movements actually complement political movements. Any campaign keeps the issue alive, it keeps people aware. So there is nothing wrong with such movements. Do you agree with the perception that the government is doddering under its own weight and midterm elections are imminent? Looks like it. We are ready for that. But the NDA does not look as strong as it was a few years ago? Yes, the NDA has got weakened. Many parties have left us. Our number has gone down substantially. But we are talking to many people and in a months time, some things will become clear. At this moment I cannot disclose whom we are talking to as this might create problems for them.

To start with, it has signicantly set back Modis plans to emerge at the national level. The move also causes problems for the RSS larger plans in relation to the BJP. Modis name has been popping in and out of the headlines for the last eight years as a potential Prime Minister. And, of course, he knows that if he does not make an effort for 2014, he will fall way back in the race for the top post. Advani has not made it to the top in all these years. In fact, after the 2009 electoral drubbing it was generally believed that the veteran would not come into the arena again. In fact, the RSS top brass had

even sent him a clear message prohibiting his re-entry into this sphere. Advani has thrown a challenge to the RSS top brass, too, said a senior Sangh Parivar activist from Bihar. The central plank of Modi and his supporters has been to project the Gujarat Chief Minister as a leader who created a new, progress-oriented State, creating a model that is waiting to be replicated at the national level. This group has tried to underplay Modis association with the 2002 antiMuslim carnage. Yet, the ghosts of that pogrom keep coming back to haunt Modi. The unambiguous message from each of these episodes has been that Modi and his party will nd it impossible to live down the carnage, however much they may try. References to the carnage have come up most forcefully when Modi and his supporters have sought to advance the development man image. The BJPs National Executive in Patna in June 2010 is a case in point. A number of his close supporters had earmarked this conclave as the starting point of an aggressive campaign to project him as the prime ministerial candidate of the NDA. Advertisements were placed in several newspapers in Bihar extolling Modis governance skills and personal virtues. These hailed him as a model administrator whose record in Gujarat was worthy of emulation in Bihar and the rest of the country. The message was: here is your future Prime Minister. But Nitish Kumar objected to this and even cancelled a dinner he had arranged for BJP leaders. Clearly, Modis candidature will not be endorsed by the JD(U). Potential BJP allies such as N. Chandrababu Naidu of the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) may also not like it because of the Muslim support base they have. However, the potential ally All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) seems inclined to give him wholehearted support. AIADMK leader and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa had sent emissaries to Modis fast with her best wishes. Still the net balance of support versus opF R O N T L I N E 2 3

position from the BJPs allies and potential allies weighs against Modi. These factors are not unknown to the RSS. Still, when Advani announced his yatra, the RSS leadership called him over to its headquarters in Nagpur, apparently to give the message that he should not aim for the Prime Ministers post. For the record, Advani said after this meeting, on September 21, that he was not in the race for the Prime Ministers position. I have got so much from the party and the country ever since I started working in politics after being inspired by Shyama Prasad Mookerjee and it is much more than the Prime Ministers post, he said. However, through the rst leg of the yatra he has more or less refused to engage with questions on the subject. In Patna, he said at a press conference that a decision on the Prime Minister was taken by the parliamentary party after the Lok Sabha elections. According to a senior leader from Bihar, the RSS top brass was clear that Advanis candidature should not get primacy. This despite the fact that many in the RSS leadership do not like Modis style of functioning. In fact, the RSS view was that Advani should at best play the role of a mentor to some younger leader, not necessarily Narendra Modi. But that is not how Advani himself perceives the contemporary political situation. Many in the Sangh Parivar are apprehensive as to what turn the tussle between Advani and Modi will take in the days to come. The leader from Bihar jocularly added that in a sense the partys leadership had even maligned the Indian tradition that the party proudly speaks of: According to Indian tradition, fasting and pilgrimage yatras are pious activities that denote sacrice of material allurements leading to a higher spiritual life. But in our party, which claims to be the political force in India with the greatest adherence to Indian tradition and even the spiritual way of life, fasting and yatras have literally become tools for capturing the highest material allurement of all, namely power.

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NOVEMBER 4, 2011

Modi makeover
Narendra Modi tries to appease Muslims by trying to dissociate himself from the 2002 riots, with an eye on the 2012 Assembly elections. B Y A N U P A M A K A T A K A M

AJIT SOLANKI/AP

C H IE F M I N I S T E R N AREN D RA

Modi interacts with Muslims during the rst day of his "sadbhavna" fast in
THIS year marks a decade of Narendra Modis rule in Gujarat. Many people consider him the most successful Chief Minister the State has seen, but there are others who say that he is also the most dangerous one. The year 2012 looms large for the Chief Minister as the State will go to the polls then to elect a new Assembly. Modi will have to win this election to play a bigger role in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) at the national level. Analysts believe a victory will give him the ticket to the national stage when the general election takes place in 2014. In all likelihood, Modi

Ahmedabad on September 17.

The sadbhavna fast and the open letter to the six crore people of Gujarat, in which he talked about the curse of communalism, appear to be a move to erase the brash image he once seemed to have.
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will pull off another victory in the State election, but it will be important to see whether his magic will work for the BJP in the general election. Modi has already launched his election campaign. His strategy appears a little unclear and even confused at present. However, political analysts say he will do whatever it takes to win the election. For instance, he has distanced himself from his trusted weapon communal politics. But the wily politician, they say, will denitely have an ace up his sleeve. The sadbhavna (goodwill) fast he undertook recently was just one of his masterful poll tactics. Modi is in a tough spot and knows his future will be bleak unless he sorts out the mess he nds himself in. To begin with, the various cases relating to the 2002 Gujarat pogrom, which implicate him, are in their nal stages of resolution. The judgments in these cases could make or break his career. Modi has made a valiant attempt to distance himself from the riots but is unable to shake off the responsibility for them. Additionally, he had a run-in with the Governor, Kamla Beniwal, when she decided to constitute a State Lokayukta (ombudsman). Modi claimed that the Governor was executing the plans set by the Congress. The Justice Nanavati-Shah Commission report on the riots is still to come out, and Modi fears his complicity in the riots may be exposed once it is submitted. Furthermore, the voice of dissent in Gujarat, which had been suppressed for many years, seems to be rising. It is not just the minorities or Modi-bashers who are speaking out, but even communities that have been faithful to him are voicing their concern about whether his brand of politics and administration is good for the State. But Modi is a skilled and seasoned politician. If anyone can get out of a hole, it is him, said an academic from a well-known institute in Ahmedabad. Another case that is beginning to take political overtones is the arrest of the suspended Indian Police Service (IPS) ofcer Sanjeev Bhatt on Septem-

ber 30 on some imsy charges. Modi had probably not anticipated its reverberations. A few months ago, the ghosts of 2002 came back to haunt Modi when Bhatt and another IPS ofcer, Rahul Sharma, implicated several important Gujarat politicians, including Modi, in the 2002 riots, which resulted in the death of hundreds of Muslims. In April, Bhatt led an afdavit in the Supreme Court stating that at an ofcial meeting on February 27, 2002, that is, the day before the communal carnage began, the Chief Minister had ordered ofcials to go slow on the riot-

ers or, in other words, to be indifferent to the violence that would unfold. Bhatt claimed he was personally present when Modi issued these orders. According to Bhatt, he directed senior police ofcers to allow Hindus to vent their ire on Muslims in the aftermath of the burning of the Sabarmati Express at Godhra. Three days before his arrest, Bhatt filed an afdavit in the Gujarat High Court stating that he had documentary evidence of the role of top government functionaries in the killing of former Home Minister Haren Pandya in 2003. Rahul Sharma, who was in charge

T H E S U S P EN D ED I P S ofcer Sanjeev Bhatt being produced in a court in Ahmedabad on October 1. He was arrested on September 30.
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NOVEMBER 4, 2011

of the control room during the riots, claimed that he had plausible evidence indicating that every senior BJP leader and some police ofcials knew exactly where the violence was taking place but had orders not to interfere with the rioters. The data he has collected apparently shatter the theory that the riots were a spontaneous reaction to the Godhra train burning incident. The data could provide clinching evidence to nail the perpetrators of the 2002 riots, sources say. The Gandhinagar police arrested Bhatt on charges that he forced a police constable, K.D. Panth, to sign a false afdavit that corroborated the formers claim that he had attended a high-level meeting called by Modi in 2002. The arrest of the senior IPS ofcer with an unblemished record raised eyebrows. There is an outpouring of support for Bhatt in the State. In an unprecedented move, 35 police ofcers associated with the Gujarat IPS Ofcers Association challenged the arrest, calling it a witch-hunt. They claimed that the ofcer was being victimised an accusation that Modi should be quite used to by now. Bhatt has not yet been granted bail. Activists, including the dancer Mallika Sarabhai (also a victim of Modis vindictiveness), have been ghting for his release. They say the cases of Bhatt and Sharma may prove to be Modis nemesis. He may not be able to get out of these unscarred. Modis script is now well known. But we have to challenge these witch-hunts. This is a democratic country. He cannot be permitted to operate like this. Try as he might, he cannot suppress the truth, says Mallika Sarabhai. Another person who has taken on Modi is Zakia Jafri, the widow of Ehsan Jafri, the slain Congress Member of Parliament. She has been ghting a relentless battle to nail the culprits behind the massacre of her husband by a mob that attacked the Gulberg Housing Society on February 28, 2002. Sixty-eight others were killed along with Jafri. The Jafri family, along with the Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP)

Modis public relations have been successful as Gujarat has acquired an image of progress.
led by Teesta Setalvad, have been demanding that Modi be charged and held culpable for the riots. They wanted a first information report (FIR) led against the Chief Minister. On September 13, the Supreme Court, which is monitoring 10 post-Godhra riots cases, referred the Gulberg Society case back to the trial court in Ahmedabad for a decision. The court passed the order on a petition by Zakia Jafri alleging that Modi and 62 government ofcials had refused to take action to contain the State-wide riots. In March 2010, Modi was summoned for questioning by the Special Investigation Team (SIT), appointed by the Supreme Court to probe the riots, in connection with a complaint by Zakia Jafri. It was the rst time in the history of the country that a Chief Minister was questioned on a crime of this nature. Zakia Jafri is ready for a long legal battle, and if the case goes in her favour, it could effectively ruin the Chief Ministers political career.
UNCHARACTERISTIC

Political observers feel Modi is on a mission to change his image. While it is obvious that he is desperately trying to distance himself from the 2002 riots, it is becoming more and more clear that the Chief Minister wants to appease the minority community. Recently, Modi made two uncharacteristic moves. Soon after the Supreme Courts ruling in the Jafri case, he undertook the sadbhavna fast to show his gratitude towards the people of the
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State and promised more such fasts across the State. An observer said, Modi is trying to unveil a new Modi. He wants to be seen as compassionate, moderate, liberal, democratic and secular. The fast was supposed to do that. Unfortunately for him, it came across as a farce. On the rst day of the fast, he wrote an open letter to the six crore people of Gujarat. He published this as a fullpage advertisement in local newspapers. In the letter, he said: As Chief Minister of the State, the pain of each and every citizen is my own pain. Ensuring justice to all is the duty of the State. He also talked about the curse of communalism, which hindered peace and progress. Finally, he thanked those who pointed out his mistakes, adding that just like anybody he too was not perfect. What he hoped to achieve with the fast and the letter is not clear, but he is a master strategist. The Chief Minister realises that he has to appease sections he once despised openly. Yet, he also needs to keep the fundamentalists on his side. Clearly, he has a plan. The fast and the letter appear to be a move to erase the brash, aggressive, macho image he once seemed to enjoy. Whether his loyal constituents will be convinced with his new look is denitely a risk he is taking. Is he trying to win the hearts of secularists and fundamentalists? He will win the election but perhaps not with the margin he did the last time, says Achyut Yagnik of the Centre for Social Knowledge and Action in Ahmedabad. Modi has denitely begun his propaganda. The sadbhavna fast, the letter, the efforts to appease the minority, are all focussed on next years election. Signicant changes have taken place in Gujarat, and so he may not be able to sweep the election, says Yagnik, who is a well-known commentator on Gujarat. Modi has serious contenders with Congress leaders Arun Modhwadia, Shaktisinh Gohil and Shankersinh Vaghela coming together on a common platform. The State Congress, which was an apology for an opposition until recently, was a fractured

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

Z AKIA JA F R I , T H E widow of former Congress Member of Parliament Ehsan Jafri, who was killed in the Gulberg Society massacre in 2002. She has been ghting a relentless battle to nail the culprits.

unit. These leaders seem to be making an effort at a cohesiveness that will threaten Modis future. Moreover, Modis supporters and foot soldiers from the Sangh Parivar afliates the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, the Bajrang Dal, the Durga Vahini and even the Bharatiya Kisan Sangh are distancing themselves from him. Actually, this is part of Modis image makeover. He is making it clear that the Hindutva agenda is not the only thing about him. He is trying to pose as a different person than he was 10 years ago. This is not going down well with the saffron brigade, says Yagnik. Another signicant development in recent months, which is not going well for Modi, Yagnik says, is that the Gujarati media, particularly the language newspapers Sandesh and Gujarat Samachar, which were once his supporters, have become critical of him. Essentially this has created cracks in his image.

Yagnik says that nonetheless the BJP has realised they need him. Gujarat sends 25 seats to the Lok Sabha, and Modi is their prime fund-raiser due to his popularity with industrialists. Although he is positioning himself as prime ministerial material, it is unlikely that he can pip stalwarts such as Sushma Swaraj to the post. Additionally, Yagnik says, while the Gujarati middle class has accepted him, he is not sure whether the larger Indian middle class is ready for him.
MODIS TRUMP CARD

Modis trump card in recent years has been his determined effort to make Gujarat an industrial hub. He has laid out the red carpet for Indian conglomerates such as the Tatas and Reliance. Reportedly, the auto major Suzuki is also setting up a massive plant in the State. He claims that the entire State is electried and connectivity and infrastructure have improved. His public relations efforts have been quite
F R O N T L I N E 2 7

successful as Gujarat has denitely acquired an image of progress. Whether Modi is really responsible for Gujarats success is debatable, says Dipankar Gupta, an eminent sociologist who has written extensively on Gujarat. In a recent report, Gupta says the Congress has let Modi take all the credit for Gujarats progress. He says the Congress strategy is all wrong. Instead of showcasing its past achievements, the party is trying to nail him as a communalist and fundamentalist. And it is getting nowhere with that line. Dipankar Gupta says, In 1991, a full 10 years before Modi arrived, as many as 17,940 out of 18,028 villages had already been electried. The Ukai plant, which uses washed coal to generate power, was set up before Modi came to power. The asphalting of 87.5 per cent of Gujarats roads also had happened before his tenure began. In 1980-81, Gujarats share in manufacturing at the national level was only 16.29 per cent, but by 2000-01 it rose to an impressive percentage. Not surprising then that between 1994 and 2001, well before Modis tenure, the State domestic product grew at 10-13 per cent, way higher than the all-India average. In addition, Gujarat, since the 1990s, has been producing 78 per cent of the countrys salt, 98 per cent of soda ash and 26 per cent of pharmaceutical products. Following Chief Minister Chimanbhai Patels intervention in 1993, port trafc in the State jumped from a mere 3.18 million tonnes in 1981 to 86.17 million tonnes in 2001. In the same period, Gujarats share of national port trafc increased from 45.36 per cent to above 76 per cent and has stayed at that point ever since. Modis 10-year rule has not made that percentage grow. If there was ever a person who reaped what somebody else had sown, then that was Modi, the sociologist said. So, where is the Modi magic? The coming months will certainly show whether the BJP leader will be able to cast a spell on voters.

PTI

Cover Story

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

Power and pelf

The BJPs image has taken a beating in Karnataka, with many of its senior leaders facing corruption charges. B Y R A V I S H A R M A
IN BANGALORE

The partys woes began after the May 2008 Assembly elections when it fell tantalisingly short of a simple majority and had to lure legislators from the opposition to rustle up a working majority.
IN power for over 40 months and surviving more on a wing and a prayer, rather than because of political astuteness, good governance or administrative acumen. This could very well sum up the status of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Karnataka. The factor that helped the party hold on to its only government in the south is its victory in all but one of the byelections to the State Assembly held over the past three years, aided by the non-functional, disjointed and sterile performance of the opposition parties. A senior Minister said: Lady Luck has certainly smiled on us every time we came up against a problem and it looked like we might be losing our government. Political victory in the south had always been an avowed goal of the BJP ever since it was carved out of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh. That wish came true in May 2008 when the Karnataka electorate catapulted the saffron party to power, relegating both the Congress and the Janata Dal (Secular) to the status of minor players. But victory at the hustings and the rise to power brought with it a fair share of troubles for the BJP. Its administration has been lacklustre and its handling of key issues such as the power crisis and development of infrastructure poor. Faction ghts, jockeying for political positions and, worse, the ignominy of being forced to jettison its Chief Minister B.S. Yeddyurappa in July after he was indicted by the Karnataka Lokayukta in the illegal mining scam, have upset the party with a difference. The Lokayukta, N. Santhosh Hegde, indicted several seasoned and inuential BJP politicians on charges ranging
2 8

from corruption, nepotism and misuse of ofce for personal gain to criminal trespass and misconduct causing loss to the exchequer, forgery and stashing away of black money in tax havens abroad. In August, a Bangalore city court issued summons to Yeddyurappa in connection with 16 cases of corruption. His two sons, one of whom is a BJP Member of Parliament, have been asked to appear before the court in connection with illegal land deals. The same court sent former Minister Katta Subramanya Naidu to judicial custody on charges of irregularities in the payment of compensation for land acquired by the Karnataka Industrial Areas Development Board. His son, Katta Jagadish, a Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike councillor, was also sent to judicial custody after his bail plea was rejected. Jagadish had been arrested in October last year for allegedly bribing a witness in the case, but was later bailed out. Another BJP Minister, C.P. Yogeshwar, is in trouble with the Serious Fraud Investigation Ofce (SIFO) of the Union Ministry of Corporate Affairs, which has accused him of corporate fraud, criminal conspiracy, forgery and cheating. It has recommended criminal prosecution. The SIFO had been investigating complaints against Megacity (Bangalore) Developers and Builders Limited, of which Yogeshwar is the managing director. Calls for his resignation are getting louder. The rst week of September saw the partys already badly dented image take another beating, with the arrest by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) of former Tourism Minister Gali Janardhana Reddy, one of the three inuential Reddy brothers of Bellary. The mining businesses of the brothers Janardhana Reddy, G. Karunakara Reddy and G. Somashekhara Reddy and their condant, B. Sriramulu, who have wielded considerable inuence in the State party ever since they became part of BJP leader Sushma Swarajs campaign team when she contested the Lok Sabha byelection from Bellary against Congress president Sonia Gandhi in 1999, are all under scrutiny by the CBI. Recent investigations have revealed that a number of politicians (including some senior BJP lead-

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(FR OM RI G H T ) MI N I S T E R for Panchayati Raj Jagadish Shettar, Chief Minister D.V. Sadananda Gowda, BJP State president K.S. Eshwarappa and former Chief Minister B.S. Yeddyurappa at the party ofce on September 14.

ers) in cahoots with private builders and housing societies outed rules, acquired prime land including agricultural land, and defrauded genuine members of residential sites, all for personal considerations. The housing sites imbroglio has already taken its toll, with the BJP governments nominee for the post of Lokayukta, Justice Shivraj Patil (who faced allegations that he and his wife owned three sites in Bangalore in violation of rules), stepping down from his post hardly a month after assuming charge. The BJPs woes can be traced to the May 2008 Assembly elections when it fell tantalisingly short of a simple majority and had to lure legislators from the opposition to rustle up a working majority. Through Operation Lotus, the BJP was able to woo members of other parties and boost its strength in the Assembly, but it found itself saddled with legislators not in tune with its ideology or hierarchy and seeking ministerial positions. Much to the irritation of party loyalists, these new entrants were obliged. This disconnect, according to many party men, resulted in unease at the grass roots. The partys tenure in power has also been marked by internal clashes. Initially it was the Bellary mining barons who, having bankrolled the elec-

tion expenses of a number of legislators, wanted to rule the roost. Yeddyurappa just about rode that storm out. But at every step of the way he had to contend with his bete noire, BJP general secretary Ananth Kumar, who, as party insiders aver, would love to lead the party. The political tug-of-war between the two was all too evident during the acrimonious run-up to the secret ballot that decided who would succeed Yeddyurappa as Chief Minister. While the Yeddyurappa camp put up D.V. Sadananda Gowda (who was elected later), the Ananth Kumar factions nominee was the Minister for Rural Development and Panchayati Raj, Jagadish Shettar. Insiders said that although the proxy skirmishes between these two leaders for control of the party were still on, reality would make them see reason and call a truce. Chief Minister Sadananda Gowda, whose style of functioning, utterances, body language and response to review meetings have been remarkably refreshing compared with that of his predecessor, is walking a tightrope between Yeddyurappa and Ananth Kumar. He has been frequently meeting Ananth Kumar in a bid to smoothen ties. Yeddyurappa, who is facing a number of court cases, is today surF R O N T L I N E 2 9

rounded more by legal experts than by party leaders. Said a senior Minister: The central leadership looked the other way when Yeddyurappa was the Chief Minister and took no action despite a number of complaints against his style of functioning. Now it has become more proactive. According to K.S. Eshwarappa, president of the BJP State unit, the high command has discussed and resolved issues between the various leaders and made it clear that there is no question of any single leader, rather all leaders are equal. Senior Ministers told Frontline that Cabinet meetings, which were hitherto ritualistic or cursory, are now more involved, lively and detailed in nature, and that the feeling among legislators was that the Chief Minister is applying his mind and taking sincere steps at restoring the image of the party in Karnataka. Leaders in private confessed that Yeddyurappas legal predicament and the Bellary mining barons tribulations were in many ways a blessing in disguise for the party. With both these groups preoccupied with these, Sadananda Gowda is allowed to chart his own course and hopefully clean up the image of the party.

V. SREENIVASA MURTHY

the states
The Maoists have set two conditions for coming to the negotiating table: withdrawal of security forces and unconditional release of all political prisoners.
IT appears that the honeymoon is nally over and the gloves are off as West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist) shed niceties in favour of harsh and threatening language. The Trinamool Congress relations with the CPI(Maoists) began to sour soon after it assumed power in May. The Maoists were clearly annoyed with Mamatas ambivalence on her pre-election promise of releasing all political prisoners and withdrawing the joint forces of the Central and State governments from the Jangalmahal region, the Maoist belt in the forested area along the borders of Pashchim Medinipur, Bankura and Purulia districts. Matters began heading for the inevitable face-off when, prompted by the killing of three Trinamool activists allegedly by the Maoists in the tribal region, Mamata Banerjee resumed operations by the joint forces against the left-wing extremists. It has become clear that neither her initiatives for social and economic uplift of the tribal people in the Maoist belt nor the rehabilitation package announced for the Maoists who wish to surrender has succeeded in curbing the extremist movement. The Maoists rejected repeated invitations by the State government for talks and set two conditions for coming to the negotiating table: withdrawal of the security forces and unconditional release of all political prisoners. As the talks with the rebels got deadlocked and a confrontation appeared imminent, the Chief Minister continued to keep her hopes pinned on the interlocutors, Sujato Bhadra and Chhoton Das (both social activists), negotiating with the Maoists to achieve a breakthrough. Just as the joint forces be3 0

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

Mamata vs Maoists
West Bengal: Mamata Banerjee and the Maoists head for a confrontation as the security forces resume operations in Jangalmahal. B Y S U H R I D S A N K A R C H A T T O P A D H Y A Y
gan operations for area domination in Pashchim Medinipur district, the CPI(Maoist) State secretary, Akash, issued a statement, signed jointly with the two interlocutors, on October 4 offering a monthlong ceasere provided the State government suspended all operations and disarmed political groups allegedly organising violent resistance against the rebels. The Maoists also indicated that they would form their own group of interlocutors to talk to the government. As of October 10, there was no ofcial response to this from the State government. As the State government geared up to intensify the anti-Maoist operations, the rebels lobbed the ball back into the governments court, issuing a statement saying that joint forces operations and peace talks were incompatible. After about ve months of peace in Jangalmahal, during which period the Trinamool Congress assumed power after defeating the Communist Party of India (Marxist)-led Left Front in the Assembly elections, the Maoists announced their return to armed rebellion by resuming their programme of killing. The rst victim was a CPI(M) worker of Pashchim Medinipur who was shot dead on August 22. Three days later, a Trinamool Congress worker from the same district was killed, as if to remind Mamata Banerjee that she had not kept her election promise. The killing of the Trinamool activist prompted Mamata to respond with strong words. The Maoists are killing civilians. This politics of murder has to stop. No one has the right to murder, she said. Her tone became stiffer following the killing on September 20 and 21 of two more Trinamool workers who were apparently encouraging the local people to resist the Maoists. Killings and negotiations cannot take place together. You will have to decide your way out, she said. Likening the Maoists to thieves, robbers and cowards, she challenged them to try and stop the development process in Jangalmahal. For Mamata, the latest Maoist action was an awakening to a reality that she had found convenient to deny while in the opposition. When her party was in the opposition, and the Maoist movement in the

F R O N T L I N E

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

JOINT FO R C E S PE R S O N N EL and local residents stand near the body of a Trinamool Congress activist who was allegedly killed by Maoists at Jhargram in Pashchim Medinipur district on September 20.

State was at its peak and Left supporters and workers were its main targets, she refused to acknowledge the Maoist violence in Jangalmahal. In fact, she dismissed the deaths occurring then as factional killings. Today the Chief Minister turns a deaf ear to the Maoists demand and has forgotten her assurance to them that the joint operations in the region would be called off. But she had staged a rally in Jangalmahal in August 2010 to demand the withdrawal of the joint forces. As Mamata Banerjees political fortunes started soaring following her resounding victory in the Lok Sabha elections in 2009, she started to dissociate herself gradually from Maoist politics and from the Peoples Committee against Police Atrocities (PCPA), a Maoist front organisation that claims to be democratic but maintains an armed militia. In February 2009, she even shared the dais with Chhatradhar Mahato, the then convener of the PCPA, and extended unequivocal support to his cause, but after his arrest in September that year she made no mention of him either at press conferences or at rallies. Even if

she may denounce them now, the Maoists will not let Mamata forget that it is because of them that she got the political upper hand in Jangalmahal. Now her people will experience what we have been going through since 2008, a Left source in Pashchim Medinipur told Frontline. In fact, before the April-May Assembly elections, the extremists sway in the Jangalmahal area had diminished considerably chiey because of the stiff resistance put up by the local population and the operations conducted by the police and the security forces. Although they did occasionally strike at various places in the region, the activities of the Maoists were mainly conned to the hills of Purulia district. However, police sources said that the Maoists had been making use of the period since the elections, when peace prevailed in the area, to regroup and strengthen their organisational base, particularly in places where they had lost ground. In fact, since early August, Statelevel Maoist leaders have been seen to be mingling with the local population. We have denite information that the Maoists are trying to regroup, recruit
F R O N T L I N E 3 1

young people and re-establish their control in the region, as they did during the pre-election days, before they were driven out of their strongholds, Praveen Tripathi, Superintendent of Police, Pashchim Medinipur, told Frontline. According to police and political sources in the region, the Maoists have not yet come close to regaining the ground they had lost before the Assembly elections, and with the joint forces intensifying their operations, they are bound to lose whatever little they may have gained in the past few months. Our past experience shows that this [the ceasere offer] is a typical Maoist strategy to gain time. One month of ceasere will be further extended, if they agree for talks, to another couple of months. In this period, even if they keep their militant activities in suspension, they will undoubtedly continue with their revolutionary politics, which involves meeting the masses and recruiting people, which is an integral part of protracted peoples war, a senior intelligence source told Frontline. It is signicant that the Maoists did not mention their two demands in the signed statement. According to political observers, this may indicate the possibility of a dialogue in the near future when these demands can be brought up. Another point that remains unclear regarding the ceasere offer is whether it had the approval of the groups central leadership. The silence of the top Maoist leaders on this issue also casts doubt on its genuineness, said a senior police source. But the main reason why there is so much scepticism about the offer of ceasere is that if the Maoists actually believe that the issues can be settled through the socially accepted channels of negotiations, then it can only mean that they have started discarding their ideology. Their recent activities in West Bengal and other affected States clearly indicate to the contrary. So it would be an unwise decision to suspend the operations against them, as it is evidently a tactical ploy, a police source said.

PTI

The States/Tamil Nadu

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

Justice for Vachathi

It has been a long and difcult road to justice for the tribal residents of this village in Tamil Nadus Dharmapuri district. B Y S . D O R A I R A J
IN VACHATHI

However, one major issue has escaped everyones notice: the nexus between the politically inuential sandalwood smugglers and the ofcials who are bent on shifting the blame to innocent villagers.
The injustice done to the tribal people of India is a shameful chapter in our countrys history. The tribals were called rakshas (demons), asuras, and what not. They were slaughtered in large numbers, and the survivors and their descendants were degraded, humiliated, and all kinds of atrocities inicted on them for centuries. They were deprived of their lands, and pushed into forests and hills where they eke out a miserable existence of poverty, illiteracy, disease, etc. And now efforts are being made by some people to deprive them even of their forest and hill land where they are living, and the forest produce on which they survive. Justice Markadey Katju and Justice Gyan Sudha Misra in the Supreme Court judgment of January 5, 2011, in Kailas and Others versus State of Maharashtra. VACHATHI, a remote village in the foothills of Sitheri mountain in Dharmapuri district of Tamil Nadu, about 350 kilometres from Chennai, hit national headlines weeks after a team of personnel belonging to the Forest, Police and Revenue Departments launched a savage attack on the villages Malayalee Scheduled Tribe population on the pretext of busting a sandalwood smuggling racket, on June 20, 199. (Vachathis shame, Frontline, August 28, 1992). For the residents of Vachathi, who suffered beatings, rape, molestation and other kinds of humiliation and had
3 2

their homes and livelihoods destroyed in that attack, it has been a long and difcult road to justice. (Incidentally, one of the 18 rape victims of that attack has been elded as a candidate in the village panchayat election in October.) But on September 29, there were crackers and processions and offerings to the gods at local temples as the designated trial court sentenced all the 215 surviving persons of the 269 accused in the case. Among the accused are 126 forest personnel, 84 police personnel and ve revenue personnel. The jail terms for various offences range from one year to 10 years of rigorous imprisonment. Seventeen persons, all of them belonging to the Forest Department, have been convicted of rape under Section 376 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and sentenced to seven years of rigorous imprisonment, with a ne of Rs.2,000 each. Under Section 357 (1) (b) of the Criminal Procedure Code (payment of compensation for any loss or injury), the 18 rape victims are entitled to a compensation of Rs.15,000 each from the ne after the time limit set for appeal is over. Twelve of these 17 persons have also been sentenced to rigorous imprisonment for 10 years under Section 3 (2) (v) of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989. The remaining 198 accused have been convicted under different Sections of the IPC and the SC and ST (PA) Act and sentenced to jail terms ranging from one year to three years, besides being slapped with nes. Among those found guilty by Principal District and Sessions Judge S. Kumaraguru are four Indian Forest Service (IFS) ofcers. Of them, the rst accused, M. Harikrishnan, former Principal Chief Conservator of Forests, has been awarded a three-year prison term under Section 201 of the IPC (causing disappearance of evidence or giving false information to screen the offender) and another three years of rigorous imprisonment, and ned Rs.1,000 un-

F R O N T L I N E

N. BASHKARAN

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

VIC TIM S O F T H E 1992 violence at Vachathi and their relatives with P. Dillibabu, CPI(M) MLA representing the Harur constituency, in front of the partys ofce in Dharmapuri on September 29, when the verdict was announced.

der Section 3 (2) (1) of the SC and ST (PA) Act. Additional Principal Chief Conservator of Forests P. Muthaiyan has been sentenced for a year under Section 342 of the IPC (wrongful connement). The other two IFS ofcers sentenced to jail are S. Balaji, Chief Conservator of Forests, and L. Nathan, Conservator of Forests. The Madras High Court, on October 11, ordered suspension of the sentence against Harikrishnan and Balaji. However, it asked them to appear before the trial court once in three months. The residents of Vachathi were waiting outside the court when the verdict came. They thanked the leaders and activists of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the Tamil Nadu Tribals Association and the lawyers who had stood by them through the long legal battle. It is poetic justice that the judgment has come at a time when the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam is in power. It was the ruling

party in 1992, too, and the administration then did its best to protect its ofcials involved in the case. P. Shanmugam, general secretary of the Tamil Nadu Tribals Association, pointed to the fact that the present government was maintaining a stoic silence on the verdict. The government of the time had claimed that no atrocities had been committed against the tribal population of the village. But the charge sheet and reports led by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which probed the case, and the report of the then Director of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Commission and exofcio Commissioner for SC/ST, B. Bhamathi, ripped through the claim. These reports corroborated the versions given by the residents of Vachathi.
RECAPITULATION

A Forest Department team conducted a raid in the area surrounding VaF R O N T L I N E 3 3

chathi village on the morning of June 20, 1992. Just as the Forest Protection Squad led by the then Assistant Conservator of Forests, T. Singaravelu, was in the process of recovering smuggled sandalwood buried in the riverbed of Varattar, it noticed Chinnaperumal, a farmer, working in his eld. He pleaded ignorance when the team questioned him about the buried sandalwood. One of the team members, Forester R. Selvaraj, started thrashing him. Responding to the alarm raised by Chinnaperumal, other villagers came to his rescue. A scufe followed, and Selvaraj was injured. The villagers gave him rst aid and arranged a bullock cart to take him to hospital. In the afternoon, a contingent of 300 forest and police personnel, including 80 women constables, along with a few Revenue Department ofcials, ransacked the village. Some residents ed to the hills, but the others were attacked with sticks and appre-

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

Red badge of courage

tician visited this village. When a sizable number of us, along with our children, were languishing in jails and many of the villagers were hiding in the hills, it was they who came to our rescue. They provided us food, utensils and clothes. Above all, they taught us to stand up and ght the repression let loose on the innocent persons, she said. That is why we decided to reject the relief offered by persons belonging to other parties who turned a blind eye to us when we were left in the lurch. Her daughter was one of the 18 rape victims. After the raid, the girl and her brother dropped out of school. More than the lathi blows that fell on us, the verbal abuses and humiliation heaped on us left an indelible scar on our minds, she said in a choked voice. Several other women in the tribal village expressed similar feelings. C. Alamelu, a farm worker, said her house was badly damaged in the attack, which took place when she was 10 years old. She hid in the hills with her elders. When we returned to the village, we found that our house site

VA C H A T H I R E S I D E N T S S T A GI N G a demonstration in front of the Dharmapuri Collectorate on November 5, 2007.

WHAT was the source of the courage and the iron will with which the residents of Vachathi took on such a large number of ofcials and other personnel who had the backing of the government and political bigwigs? When the question was posed to Paranthayi, a 59-year-old tribal woman of the village, pat came the reply: Sengodi (red flag). With eyes brimming with tears,

the frail woman, who has already become the role model for many of the 1,000-odd residents of the village, recalls with gratitude the support extended to Vachathi residents by the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the Tamil Nadu Tribals Association. How can we forget them? In the wake of the terrible attack launched by the uniformed personnel, no poli-

N. BASHKARAN

hended by the combined party of police and Forest Department personnel in the presence of the revenue ofcials. Residents said that men in uniform broke open locked houses and went on a looting spree. The community television set was damaged. Pumpsets and bicycles were dumped into community wells, which rendered the water unt for human consumption, local residents said. According to activists of the Tamil Nadu Tribals Association, in the evening, the raiding party herded the villagers under a banyan tree. The forest ofcials took 18 young girls towards the dry riverbed on the pretext of seeking their help to load the seized sandalwood into a truck. Neither the women

police personnel nor the elderly women from the village were allowed to accompany them. All the 18 girls were molested and raped and some of them were gang-raped by the river. Afterwards, they were forced to load the sandalwood. A total of 217 villagers, including 94 women and 28 children, were taken to the Forest Range Ofce in Harur, 16 km away from Vachathi village. All of them were illegally detained there through the night without being provided police guard. Another barbaric attack was launched there. The arrested women were subjected to the humiliation of stripping each other. They were also forced to beat the village head (Oor Gounder), Perumal, with
3 4 F R O N T L I N E

brooms. The women who refused to do so were caned by the forest personnel. Only on the next day were they remanded in judicial custody. On June 21, 1992, the combined party returned to Vachathi and resumed recovery of the smuggled sandalwood. Though it claimed that 40 tonnes of sandalwood was unearthed, no one from the village was arrested on that day. Once again, its members went about ransacking the houses, taking away valuables and goats, and mixing glass pieces with foodgrain, village residents said. The raiding party also foisted three Scheduled Timber Offences Report (STOR) cases against 76 men and 15 women. On receipt of a complaint

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

pattas were torn to pieces by the raid- some industry so that the large-scale ing party. migration of youth to other places, V. Vellaichi, an elderly farm including Tirupur, seeking jobs can worker, said she was at home when be prevented. the combined team raided the village. Welcoming the judgment, P. I was stripped and caned. P. Un- Shanmugam, general secretary of the namalai, K. Panchalam and M. Ra- Tamil Nadu Tribals Association, said mayee were among the tribal women the conviction of all the accused in the who bore the brunt of the attack. case offered tremendous hope to P. Lakshmi, sister of the village members of Scheduled Tribes all over head, Perumal, said even children the country to ght against the atrocwere not spared by the raiding forces. ities unleashed on them. The judgMy brother was beaten up so badly ment also came as a warning to the that he was thoroughly immobilised. perpetrators of such crimes against My sister-in-laws hand was frac- the voiceless. The details of the case tured. Even a six-month-old baby was would be brought out through a docnot spared by them. Two umentary lm and of her daughters were publications in differamong the rape victims, ent national languages she said. to enhance awareness Another rape victim among the tribal peosaid, It is not that easy to ple. He urged the govget out of the trauma. I ernment to take up shudder to think of the rehabilitation meaincidents that unfolded sures, including distriin our village 19 years bution of two acres of ago. We have to cope land to each of the vicwith the nightmare. As tims and disbursement an act of atonement the of enhanced compengovernment should take P A RA N T H A Y I . S H E sation to the affected immediate steps to pro- S A Y S the humiliation families. vide employment to the has left an indelible Local MLA and local people by starting scar. CPI(M) leader P. DilliN. BASHKARAN

babu said a sustained struggle by the tribal people with the backing of the Tamil Nadu Tribals Association and the CPI(M) for the past 18 years had resulted in the judicial victory. Recalling that the entire village was ransacked, livelihoods were destroyed and drinking water and electricity supply was cut for several days after the attack, he called upon the State government to send a high-level committee to Vachathi to study the situation and obtain feedback from the locals and their representatives to take up rehabilitation measures. The government has not disbursed adequate compensation to the victims. Vice-president of the State unit of the All India Lawyers Union, G. Chamki Raj, said the dilatory tactics adopted by successive governments and the accused during the last 19 years only betrayed their total disregard for the lives of tribal people. The judgment in the case was unprecedented in view of the number of the accused, all of whom had been found guilty, she pointed out. Referring to the evidence given bravely by the rape victims in court, she said that was possible as they were not under any taboo. S. Dorairaj

from Singaravelu, another case was led under Sections 147, 148, 332, 307, 325, 324, 323 and 506 of the IPC, read with Section 25 (1) (a) of the Indian Arms Act against 14 villagers. All the persons implicated in the three STOR cases were also remanded in this police case. The remand was extended periodically and they were released on bail only after August 27, 1992. The High Court has now stayed the proceedings in the case and a criminal original petition has been led praying for quashing the charge sheet, G. Chamki Raj, State vice-president of the All India Lawyers Union, recalled. Fearing further attacks, the tribal population of the village hid in the Sitheri hills for weeks together. How-

ever, news started trickling down, and the Tamil Nadu Tribals Association heard of the raids in the rst week of July. A team including Basha John, president of the association; Shanmugam, general secretary; and M. Annamalai, CPI(M) leader and twice MLA from Harur constituency, visited the area on July 14, 1992. They had to make a huge effort to gain the condence of the petried tribal population, but in the end they were able to persuade them to return home and assure them that they were not alone. On the basis of what the villagers narrated, the team submitted a memorandum to the District Collector on the same day. A. Nallasivan, secretary of the State committee of the CPI(M)
F R O N T L I N E 3 5

and Rajya Sabha member, submitted a memorandum to Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa on July 18, seeking her intervention. But the government denied that any atrocities had been committed. Forest Minister K.A. Sengottaiyan, in a strongly worded statement in the press on July 21, claimed that the forest ofcials had seized smuggled sandalwood worth Rs.1.5 crore during the raid in Vachathi. He accused the villagers of unleashing violence against government personnel. As many as 300 families residing in the village were involved in sandalwood smuggling throughout the year and earned Rs.500 a day, he said, alleging that Nallasivans statements were imma-

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

ture and baseless. Claiming that the Chief Minister was creating history by curbing sandalwood smuggling, he said, the Vachathi episode was only a step towards achieving the goal. He also made a sarcastic remark against Nallasivan, saying that the elderly leader would not have climbed the Sitheri hills to reach the inaccessible village situated in high altitude. The comment attracted ridicule since Vachathi is in the foothills of Sitheri. According to Shanmugam, the Minister visited Harur, which is hardly 16 km from Vachathi, a couple of days after the attack. Though a representation had been made by a local activist of the ruling party, he did not bother to visit the village and console the victims. When the rape victims lodged a complaint with the Harur police station on August 22, the sub-inspector refused to register a case. Though the District Collector on July 26 asked the Revenue Divisional Ofcer (RDO) to visit the village and conduct an inquiry, he went there only a month later. The objective and independent report submitted by him on August 10 claimed that the alleged rape incident cannot be believed and that the villagers themselves damaged their houses, in order to put the blame on the forest and police ofcials. The unhelpful attitude of the government made the residents of Vachathi seek legal recourse, recalls Chamki Raj. The CPI(M) set the ball rolling by ling a public interest petition before the Public Interest Litigation (PIL) cell of the Madras High Court on July 30. But it was rejected by the cell on the grounds that government ofcials would not have indulged in such acts and hence the case was not t for being taken up as a PIL. Nallasivan led a writ petition in the Supreme Court on September 3. The apex court passed an order four days later transferring the writ petition to the High Court, stating that it should be heard as early as possible. The modied writ petition came before the High Court, praying for a mandamus to the government to hold

T H I S B A N YA N TR E E at Vachathi was a mute witness to some of the horrors unleashed on the village in 1992.

an inquiry into the happenings commencing from June 20, 1992, and the consequent suffering undergone by the villagers of Vachathi. It also prayed that upon considering the inquiry report, appropriate penal action be taken against the delinquent personnel and the victims be compensated. The petition also sought a probe into the wider question of smuggling in sandalwood in that area so as to eliminate the nexus between the culprits, politicians and ofcials of the administration. On November 4, the High Court passed interim orders to restore basic amenities to the village and asked the Director of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Commission to visit Vachathi and submit a report within two weeks. The court also suggested that the Collector should ensure that the residents were provided with basic amenities. As the case was not heard on a daily basis and the government authorities adopted dilatory tactics by ling counters on every occasion denying the brutal attack, it took three years for the High Court to order a CBI inquiry into the complaints of rape of 18 women, looting of properties and illegal detention of 90 women and 28 children at the forest range ofce at Harur. The court ayed the Revenue Divisional Ofcer for the manner in which he conducted the probe and arrived at his conclusions, Chamki Raj
3 6 F R O N T L I N E

said. Justice Abdul Hadi said in the order on February 24, 1995: All these features will easily lead to the conclusion that the police is trying to burke or evade investigation of the alleged offences set out in the above said complaint of 18 women [who were raped]. This is very much to be condemned. Taking all this into consideration, I feel that this is a t case, where the Central Bureau of Investigation should step in and do investigation and do the needful in accordance with law. The State government, which had been delaying the legal process, did not lose much time to le a writ appeal against the single-judge Bench order directing a CBI inquiry into the incidents. The government argued that the CBI had no great advantage over the local police in investigating cases such as murders and riots. Investigation by the Central agency could be conducted only if there were special reasons, it argued. Rejecting the governments plea to set aside the order and for an interim stay of its operation, the Division Bench said on March 23, 1995: On the facts and circumstances of the case and having regard to the State governments stand [that no such incidents took place], it would be t and necessary to entrust the matter to an agency which would be unconnected with State and State police. The government moved the Supreme Court to stall this order of the

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

Division Bench. However, the apex court dismissed its special leave petition in this regard on March 24, 1995. The State government faced another embarrassment on July 15, 1995, when an inquiry commission headed by the then Additional District Sessions Judge, Bhanumathi, indicted the personnel of the Special Task Force (constituted to catch Veerappan, the brigand) for the rape of two tribal women and torture of seven others in Chinnampathi village in Coimbatore district. As the government realised that a CBI probe was imminent, all sorts of problems were created to delay the trial in the sessions court. Owing to non-cooperation on the part of the accused, the test identication parade was put off four times. An attempt by the accused to scuttle the identication parade was foiled by the High Court. The CBI led by DSP S. Jagannathan won the acclaim of one and all for the tremendous work he did to bring out the truth. The CBI, which did its job meticulously, submitted its report to the Madras High Court on April 25, 1996. A charge sheet was led before the Chief Judicial Magistrate in Coimbatore two days earlier against 269 forest, police and revenue ofcials for various offences, including rape. Of them, four were IFS ofcers. A total of 244 accused were remanded in custody. They were charged under Sections includ-

ing 143, 147, 149, 323, 427, 201 and 203 of the IPC and different Sections of the SC and ST (PA) Act. The case was committed to the District and Sessions Court, Dharmapuri, at Krishnagiri on October 10, 1996. As there had not been much headway in the case for nearly six years, a writ petition was led on January 30, 2002, seeking the appointment of a special court under Section 14 of the SC and ST (PA) Act, and appointment of a special public prosecutor under Section 15 of the same Act. It was only after this that the High Court directed the State government, on June 27, 2002, to appoint the CBI public prosecutor, K. Jayabalan, as special prosecutor to conduct the case in the designated court in Krishnagiri, Chamki Raj said. The hearing of the case was adjourned several times as some of the accused would not turn up before the court. On many occasions, the court pulled up Forest Department personnel for their recurrent absence. A new hall was constructed in the court complex in view of the large number of accused. The High Court had to be moved again in April 2002, when disbursement of the compensation to the victims as per the SC and ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Rules, 1995, was sought. But part of the actual compensation prescribed by the Rules was paid only in July 2007. Having failed in all their attempts to get off the hook, seven of the accused led a revision petition in the High Court seeking to arraign as accused the then RDO, Superintendent of Police and Collector in the Vachathi case. But the court, on June 24, rejected the plea as unwarranted. Pointing out that the trial was almost over, the court held that it was nothing but a delaying tactic to protract the proceedings. The High Court directed the lower court to expedite the trial. It also imposed costs of Rs.10,000 on each of the seven accused. A major issue that has escaped everyones attention is the reference made to the nexus between the politically inuential sandalwood smugF R O N T L I N E 3 7

glers and the ofcials who are bent on shifting the blame to innocent villagers. The issue was highlighted in the prayer of the writ petition led by Nallasivan, and it found a mention in the CBI investigation report and the report submitted by Bhamathi, then Director of the SC and ST Commission, in August 1992. Bhamathi pointed out that more than two-thirds of the population in Vachathi were landless farmhands and they collected minor forest produce and rewood from the forests. It may be true that some Vachathi villagers were involved in the sandalwood smuggling, but even they were used by master operators. The villagers were only a conduit for the smuggling and they were exploited by the powerful operators. Unless the master operators are brought to book, there is no point in punishing the villagers alone for the illegal trade, she said in her report. The CBIs report exposed the nexus between certain personnel of the Forest Department and the smugglers. Pointing out that Vachathi, owing to its strategic location, had been the starting point for transportation of sandalwood procured illegally from the Sitheri hill range, the report said, It appears some of the eld staff of the Forest Department were hand in glove with notorious smugglers and their agents in Vachathi and nearby villages. In fact, investigation has revealed that there was a chit/token system in vogue to ensure smooth operation of illegal felling, transportation, concealment in riverbeds, patta lands and nallahs for some time, before loading and ferrying the sandalwood to nal destinations. It added: Going by the living standards and the economic status of the tribals of Vachathi village as a whole, it does not seem that they are the main smugglers themselves. Ofcial records and discreet information collected during investigation reveal that the villagers are doing only insignicant peripheral jobs. There was also some discontentment in the matter of sharing of spoils by some of the corrupt elements in the [Forest] Department.

N. BASHKARAN

Column

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

Financial Crisis 2.0

As governments in the eurozone sink and banks move towards collapse, the nightmare of 2008 is back to haunt the world.
ELD hostage by nance, the developed world seems to be hurtling towards another nancial crisis. Banks in Europe are increasingly shaky. Dexia, the Franco-Belgian bank, has gone nearbankrupt, forcing the Belgian government to take over the banks Belgian operations and the French to organise a forced merger of its French operations, signalling a partial return to the temporary nationalisation experiment that enriched banks after the previous crisis. Meanwhile, eurozone governments and the European Central Bank (ECB) are desperately seeking funds to recapitalise banks that are likely to collapse under the combined weight of sovereign default or sovereign debt restructuring and default of debt to a recession-hit private sector. Just as the fallout for Europe was immediate, when American nance was under siege, the reverse is also likely and is already showing signs of occurring. Another nancial crisis at a time when the world has lost the will to deal with the consequences of the rst one is bound to be disastrous. Yet there is no solution in sight. Consider Greece for example, where the exposure of French and German banks to public and private debt amounts to $52.9 billion and $35.7 billion respectively out of European banks total exposure of $142.5 billion at the end of the rst quarter of 2011. A cash-strapped Greek government and a collapsing Greek economy is not good news for the banks concerned and, therefore, for the countries where they originate. When representatives of the European troika the European Com-

Economic Perspectives
C.P. CHANDRASEKHAR
mission, the ECB and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) visited Greece in mid-October to examine the countrys performance relative to tough austerity measures, all it could promise was that the next tranche of assistance would be released in November, subject to Greece redoubling its efforts to realise missed scal targets. What was ignored was that the tranche was too small to save Greece from default. What was missed was that the austerity made it impossible for Greece to even reduce its debt.
FEAR OF CONTAGION

This is not to say that governments are not worried. With clear signs that bond markets are turning the screws on Italy, and are likely to hold back on lending to its government, and that rating agencies are contemplating protecting themselves by downgrading even French debt, the fear of contagion
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that could affect the core of the eurozone is growing. When debt gets downgraded, not just governments but also banks are forced to obtain funding at a higher interest cost. They also nd it difcult to get such funding even at the higher cost. Investors fearing default on the credit given by banks to the public and private sectors want more security than the risk premium offered. Earlier, banks partly overcame this problem by buying credit default swaps (CDS) to hedge against a possible default. With risk hedged in this manner, banks books look less shaky to funders. But buying CDS is also proving too expensive. According to Financial Times (October 9), the iTraxx index, which measures the cost of buying insurance against a bond default, has risen by 257 basis points since August 1, touching levels higher than those that prevailed after the Lehman collapse. With CDS turning expensive, banks are not able to use that route to persuade funders to give them money, forcing them to rely on collateral that is limited. In the event, their ability to avoid liquidity problems despite carrying higher funding costs is under challenge. Moreover, higher CDS costs imply that banks should be writing off some of their assets. The IMFs Global Financial Stability Report team used CDS prices to estimate the market value of government bonds issued by Ireland, Greece and Portugal, besides Italy, Spain and Belgium. That exercise showed that if these bonds were marked to market (or priced at their implicit market value) the base capital of European banks (their tangible common equity) would fall by about 200 billion or around 10-12 per cent.

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

AT FR E N C H - B E L G I A N bank Dexias Belgium headquarters in Brussels on October 9. Dexia has gone near-bankrupt, forcing the Belgian government to take over the banks Belgian operations and the French to organise a forced merger of its French operations.

Stated otherwise, to remain solvent banks have to nd a lot more new equity. The higher interest cost is also leading to shrinking prot forecasts for even leading European Banks such as Deutsche Bank. Besides higher costs, the need to write down debt owed by governments such as that of Greece is affecting prot and loss accounts, leading to a ight out of banks stocks in Europe. Banks have taken a big hit in stock markets in recent weeks. What is more, the banks themselves have parked a growing volume of their funds with the ECB as they fear lending to other banks. The fear of counterparty risk that froze nancial markets in 2008 seems to be back.
GOVERNMENTS CAVE IN

As a result of all this, eurozone governments that dismissed calls for a recapitalisation of their banks, including from IMFs Managing Director Christine Lagarde, have caved in. Recapitalising banks, ensuring easy liquidity conditions and perhaps reducing in-

terest rates have become the central concern of European governments and the ECB. But that requires more than just liquidity or even government guarantees of doubtful debt, as the Dexia case illustrates. What seems to be the concern of leading eurozone governments is nding money to achieve three separate goals. One is to keep aoat the peripheral eurozone countries trapped in crisis so that the eurozone itself does not break up. The second is to nd money to fence in countries such as Italy that are now also under threat from bond markets despite the adoption of austerity measures. The third is to recapitalise the banks, besides ensuring that failure on the rst two counts does not make their funding requirements impossible to achieve. To meet these demands, the eurozone is attempting to strengthen and make effective the 440 billion European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) in the hope that it will serve as a future European Monetary Fund. But that requires agreement, and as
F R O N T L I N E 3 9

experience proves, even a small country like Slovakia can put a spoke in the wheel. While the EFSF enhancement may go through anyway, it shows that the challenges to resolving the crisis are more than economic. That challenge comes not just from small Slovakia. It comes in one form or the other from every European government, since all of them seem to be hostage to nance. Analysts often lament that governments captured by vested interests do not learn from history. But such behaviour is more than just farcical when history repeats itself within a period of less than four years and when the recessionary consequences of the earlier crisis are still being experienced. Consider the trajectory that Europe has been through in recent months. When this round of crisis intensication began, it seemed to be a problem with sovereigns that had borrowed too much, as evidenced, among others, by Portugal and Greece. Greece is the one that has gone the furthest in pushing through austerity measures to cajole Germany, France, the IMF and the ECB into providing it credit and to show its resolve to force out the surpluses to repay debt. But, as any sensible economist should have expected, the contraction in output that the austerity resulted in curtailed government revenues and widened the decit, adding to debt rather than reducing it. Soon there were signs of contagion, with nancial markets expressing fears of sovereign default by countries as important as Spain, Italy and even France. It was at this point of time that the inevitable was obvious to all except some eurozone governments: a restructuring of Greek debt was needed to begin restoring the viability of its economy. The reason this inevitability was not recognised was the power of nance over governments. Debt restructuring would require bondholders, including the banks that had lent to the Greek government, to take a haircut or a loss of part of the value of the credit they had provided governments. This nance was not willing to accept.

YVES LOGGHE/AP

Column

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

IN TH E N O R T H E R N

port city of Thessaloniki, Greece, on October 5, civil servants protest against ever-deeper
and a nancial collapse. Their intransigence was encouraged by the rating agencies that not only started downgrading debt across Europe but also threatened to declare full or selective default on Greek public debt if banks were required to take even a partial hit. Finally, the fact that European unity itself was fragile came to the fore. Though Germans beneted from their countrys export success within a unied Europe, they joined the French, the Finns, the Slovakians and others who objected to their tax euros being used to save proigate citizens from countries such as Greece. The banks were initially clever enough to even protect and enhance their share values. They manoeuvred to ensure that the stress tests of European banks undertaken in July were set up to be extremely favourable to
4 0 F R O N T L I N E

austerity measures.
When the rst round of negotiations to resolve the Greece problem was completed, the Greeks were forced to accept austerity, some European governments and the IMF offered guarantees and/or nancial support, the ECB demurred and offered some liquidity, but missing from the list of burden-sharing parties were the banks. They did not have to face up to an immediate default on their loans to Greece, nor did they have to accept a haircut or even a restructuring of debt involving new loans with extended maturities and lower interest costs. The refusal of banks to contribute to the settlement was obviously because they were in a state of denial, not recognising that sovereign default was in the realm of possibility. To bolster their no-penalties position, they referred to the possibility of bank failure their interests. Only eight of the 90 banks tested failed. Moreover, the possibility of sovereign default was ignored. As a result, most banks came through with very good results and even those that were damaged were only lightly hurt. However, things have taken a decisive turn in recent times because of pressure on the banks from different directions. An increasing number of sovereign debt downgrades, declining share values, inadequate funding access and private defaults have made it impossible to hide the truth. With the crisis imminent, the soft option everybody is choosing is to focus attention on the governments that borrowed rather than on the banks that lent. But as the governments sink and banks move towards collapse, the nightmare of 2008 is back to haunt the world.

NIKOLAS GIAKOUMIDIS/AP

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

Communalism

Khaki and saffron

Rudrapur, an industrial town in Uttarakhand, witnesses large-scale rioting and clashes of a communal nature. B Y P U R N I M A S . T R I P A T H I I N R U D R A P U R

VE H IC L E S S E T O N

re near a police station in Rudrapur town on October 2.

PTI

When a group of Muslims protesting against acts of sacrilege stoned a police station, the police reportedly sought the help of the Hindu residents of the nearby mohalla and, thereafter, clashes between members of the two communities began.
THE Garhwal and Kumaon regions, which constitute the tiny hill State of Uttarakhand, were totally free of communal disturbances even when the entire country was in the grip of tension following the demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya in 1992
F R O N T L I N E

and the Mumbai blasts in 1993. These regions had always maintained communal peace. But on October 2, the bustling industrial town of Rudrapur, located in the foothills of the Kumaon hills in Udham Singh Nagar district, became the venue of the rst communal riots in the State. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has been taking great pains to explain that the 2002 Gujarat violence was an exception, something that could not be avoided. What happened in Uttarakhand for three days from October 2 proves yet again that with the BJP at the helm of affairs, the administrative machinery does look the other way when members of the Muslim community are targeted by the majority community. Rioting went on for three days, and shops and houses of Muslims were looted and set on re. The town was brought under indenite curfew following widespread clashes between Hindus and Muslims in
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NOVEMBER 4, 2011

which three persons were killed and some 100 injured, some of them grievously. Several people are reported missing. Being an industrial hub, Rudrapur has a large population of migrant labourers; these people are now eeing the town. At the time of writing this report (October 9), night curfew was continuing and reports of sporadic incidents of violence were coming in. The mayhem could have been avoided had the administration been more vigilant. The rst provocation came on September 29 when miscreants allegedly packed beef and pages torn from the Quran in a bloodstained cloth and placed it outside a Shani temple in Bhadaipura mohalla. Members of the Muslim community, agitated over the desecration of the Quran, demanded action against the culprits, but the administration did not act. The alleged act of sacrilege was repeated in the same mohalla on the night of October 1. This time, pages from the religious book were wrapped in a sheet of paper along with pork and thrown outside the house of one Mustaq Ahmad.

The mayhem could have been avoided had the administration been more vigilant.
The following morning, over 100 Muslims gathered at the town kotwali (police station) to demand action and resorted to stone throwing, in which some policemen and the Sub-Divisional Magistrate, Vir Singh Budhiyal, sustained injuries. The police chased the crowd away by resorting to a lathicharge. However, the Muslims regrouped, and this time a thousand people gathered outside the police station at Indira Chowk, stoned the po-

lice, damaged and burnt vehicles that were parked there and threatened to set the station on re. At this stage, the police reportedly sought the help of the Hindu residents of the nearby Rampura mohalla and, thereafter, the two communities started clashing with each other. Soon the clashes spread to the entire city. Justifying the police action of calling the Hindu residents to control the Muslim crowd, the new Deputy Inspector General (DIG) of Police, Abhinav Kumar, said that it had been done to save the police station from being burnt down as the number of police personnel available was not sufcient to protect it. But why was the police force not strengthened when signs of trouble were evident on September 29 itself? Besides, two battalion headquarters of the Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC) are located within three kilometres of the trouble spot. Why were local residents enlisted to join the police action instead of calling for reinforcements from the PAC? Facing criticism for mishandling the situation, the B.C. Khanduri government removed DIG Amit Sinha and District Magistrate B.V.R. Purshottam. Nobody has answers to questions about the clashes. Abhinav Kumar, who took charge on October 4 after Amit Sinha was removed for perceived lack of efciency, only offers conjectures. The new District Magistrate, B.S. Jangpangi, only says there was some inefciency in handling the situation initially. The initial administrative apathy, however, took a toll on the town. Scores of houses and shops belonging to Muslims were burnt and looted, leaving the community with a deep sense of fear and injustice. The two communities had coexisted without any trouble, but now there is a divide and a sense of mistrust. What has compounded the feeling of insecurity among the Muslims is the fact that not a single leader from the ruling BJP or the government offered their sympathies even six days after the incident. The Chief Minister visited the town on
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October 3, but he neither met the victims nor visited the affected areas. This correspondent saw rows of burnt shops in Bhadaipura, Kicchha Road, Transit Camp, the main Durgadevi Road market and Gandhi Colony. In the Durgadevi Road market where shops owned by Hindus and Muslims stood side by side, miscreants had selectively targeted those belonging to Muslims, thrown the goods on the road and set them on re. In areas where there were rows of shops owned by Muslims, as in Bhadaipura, they were all burnt down. Asif Ali, an elderly person who had been running an electrical goods shop in Gandhi Colony since 1976, is inconsolable. He told this correspondent that he kept calling up the police helpline when the miscreants were looting and burning his shop, but he heard

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

TH E P OLI C E L A T H I C H A RGE

the protesters.
people, has suffered a loss of Rs.15 lakh. With the administration turning a blind eye to those who burnt and looted our shops, where do we go now for help? he asks. If the administration had taken action against those who were responsible for the desecration of the Quran, this trouble would not have happened in the rst place. Our grievance went unheeded, naturally there was anger among the people and they gathered at the police station to protest. But why is the government not paying attention to our grievances? a member of the Muslim community asked this correspondent. This sense of denial of justice is deepening by the day because the real culprits, who have been named by eyewitnesses, have not been questioned
F R O N T L I N E 4 3

only laughter on the other side. No police came to help him. He has incurred a loss of roughly Rs.15 lakh. Similarly, Rais Ahmad, who washes and irons clothes in the same area, had his house looted and all his belongings burnt. We ran away to save our lives, nobody came to protect us, says Ahmads wife. Now they do not know where to go, for Ahmad was born here and grew up thinking this was his home. Suddenly he is feeling insecure and vulnerable. There are others with similar harrowing experiences. Qauser Alis ironworks shop in the Transit Camp area, Mohammad Omars cycle shop, and Mohammad Sultans tailoring shop in the Durgadevi Road market area were all targeted. Sultan, who employed 15

by the police, whereas several Muslims have been rounded up. Many of the alleged attackers are said to be close to BJP and Congress leaders. Eyewitnesses claim to have seen Hindus with Congress and BJP afliations leading the mobs that set shops on re. The district administration too agrees that the role of political parties cannot be denied in this but has stopped short of taking any effective action. According to political observers, the Assembly elections scheduled for early next year is making the two political parties nervous and hence the attempt at communal polarisation. Both the BJP and the Congress are trying to sh in troubled waters, says Tejinder Singh Virk, a member of the local traders association and State secretary of the Samajwadi Party.What is shocking is that the members of the Hindu community see nothing wrong in the police seeking their help to quell the agitating Muslims. Mohit Chauhan, an educated youth working in a leading hotel in the town, said, After all, the Muslims were the ones who started it all. Why did they throw stones at the police station? If they thought there would be no retaliation for their actions, then they have surely learnt a lesson now. A Hindu shopkeeper in Gandhi Colony is also of the view that the police were right in seeking the help of the residents of the Hindu-dominated area to control the Muslims as the police station did not have sufcient personnel. The police, all young men without training in handling such a situation, were not even equipped with weapons. The trained policemen of the former Uttar Pradesh Police went back to the parent cadre when the State was bifurcated. The concept of mitra police [people-friendly] has done much harm to the morale of the forces. Had the Hindus not assisted them, the police would have been lynched by the mob, he said. But why harm innocent Muslims instead of those who started the violence? This happens in any such situation, nobody can help it, shrugs a shopkeeper at the Durgadevi Road market.

PTI

world affairs
There is no question that the occupy movement, irrespective of what eventually happens to it, has edged open a new, radical imagination.

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

Pushed to the wall

Initially, there was scepticism.... But when the park in the Wall Street area remained under occupation, as the police fumbled with violence, and as the young people organised their protest with cooperative efciency, the mood began to shift.
I was lucky enough to see with my own eyes the recent stock-market crash, where they lost several million dollars, a rabble of dead money that went sliding off into the sea. Never as then, amid suicides, hysteria, and groups of fainting people, have I felt the sensation of real death, death without hope, death that is nothing but rottenness, for the spectacle was terrifying but devoid of greatness. I felt something like a divine urge to bombard that whole canyon of shadow, where ambulances collected suicides whose hands were full of rings. Frederico Garca Lorca, 1932 INTO the canyons of shadow, in the heart of the nancial empire at lower Manhattan, rst came the youth of America, then came the many ordinary people frustrated with the insecurity that has come to dene life for what they called the 99 per cent. A Canadian website (Adbusters) had put out a call, but this echoed earlier discussions about the need to replicate the energy of the throngs that gathered in Cairos Tahrir Square and then around Madison, Wisconsins Capitol. The energy of the Arab Spring and the resilient protests in southern Europe asked a question that has resonated in the byways of American progressivism: Where is our protest to come from?
4 4
SPENCER PLATT/AFP

ZUC C OTTI P A R K,

near Wall Street, New York City.

GENEVIEVE ROSS/AP

HE N N E P I N COUN TY G OVE R N M E N T Plaza,

DAVID KOHL/AP

C I N CI N N ATI , OHI O.

Minneapolis.

Letter from America

VIJAY PRASHAD
The answer had been resoundingly negative. It cannot happen, one was told, largely because the population has been spoiled by access to commodities, by the fetishism of technology (mainly social media) and by the illusions spawned by an Obama

F R O N T L I N E

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

F REED O M P LA Z A , W AS HI N G TON , D . C.

C EN T RE S T REET , CA S P E R , W Y O M I N G. VE TE R A N S P LA ZA, I N D I AN A P OLI S .

JEWEL SAMAD/AFP

TI M E S S QUAR E , N E W YOR K.
TIM KUPSICK/AP

The protesters also marked the 10th anniversary of the war in Afghanistan.

presidency. Despite the escalation of the wars from the Atlas Mountains to the Hindu Kush, there has been only an anaemic anti-war response (but for one very strong protest in New York City on April 9 this year). The economic catastrophe, from foreclosures to the unemployment rate, had also not germinated many progressive outbursts.

The collapse of many of Obamas promises produced disappointment and disillusionment among liberals, who saw the torture regime, the wars and the Wall Street bailouts continue unabated. It was left to the right side of the spectrum (the Tea Party) to show themselves on the streets, opposing
F R O N T L I N E 4 5

Obama surely (and for all kinds of despicable reasons), but also opposing the cosy relationship between Washington and the nancial elites. While the Tea Party did emerge organically out of citizen frustration, it was rapidly seized and directed by a coterie in Washington, D.C., led by the Far Right (lubricated with money from the Koch

EMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP

MICHELLE PEMBERTON/AP

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

Brothers and their allies). It became apparent that the Tea Party ceased to be a grass-roots movement, and was more an astro-turf one. Money and the Republican Party rapidly suborned the Tea Party to operate as their Far-Right subsidiary. In the shadows, far from the canyons of nance, the American Left has incubated a series of organisations, from anarchists to environmentalists, from anti-war to anti-rape radicals. A wide spectrum of issues and grievances has poured into the open container of the American Left. From afar, it seemed as if these various campaigns were too disparate to be ever unied, and that egotism of identity and special interest put paid to ideas of solidarity and unity. But what seems from one perspective as fragmentary is from another a symptom of the myriad problems in society and a resource for a broad and powerful movement, if it ever came to that. The currents of American progressivism made their appearance, as if in a dress rehearsal, at the 1999 protests in Seattle against the World Trade Organisation meeting, at the February 2003 anti-war march in New York City and elsewhere, and then again in the thronging crowds that went out amongst the population in 2008 to elect Barack Obama President. These were indications of the Left that existed, but it had little access to the mainstream media and no political party of any heft whose standard it might lift. The United States governments response to the credit crisis was the nal straw. Taxpayer money went to the banks and the automobile industry, with nary a care it seemed to the crisis in the heartland. No schemes came to lift the terror of foreclosure and no policies came from Washington to provide income support or social support to a population seized with fear about the stagnation in the economy. In May 2011, personal debt in the U.S. stood at an astronomical $2.4 trillion, and current student debt is just under $1 trillion. These are formidable expenses, and no one seems willing to lance them to the benet of the pop-

ulation. The steps the Obama administration took were weak and had no appearance of seriousness. The DoddFrank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 tinkered with the margins of the problem. The 2,300-page Act offered some anaemic policies to strengthen capital requirements of banks, took a moral approach towards excessive Wall Street compensation, and modestly pointed a nervous nger at the conict of interest between credit rating agencies and investment banks. The Acts cautious tone regarding derivatives meant that banks could continue to do what they are now habituated to do, namely, to take enormous risks with other peoples money through nancial instruments that do nothing to engineer productive investment. There was nothing like the suggestion that came from the economist Ha-Joon Chang that all new nancial instruments should be regulated like new drugs, tested by a federal agency before being allowed to enter the body nance. The Act called for the formation of a consumer financial protection bureau, but its signicance lapsed when banks (with the connivance of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner) forced the Obama administration to back away from its nomination of Elizabeth Warren to its helm. It was not that Elizabeth Warren would necessarily have been so signicant, but the ght to block her ended up weakening the political signicance of the bureau. Before the Dodd-Frank Act was passed, a staff economist at the New York Federal Reserve Bank told me that his entire team would do what it could to block the enforcement of the Act. To them, any regulation was anathema. With the unemployment rate steady at 9.1 per cent and Obamas jobs plan trapped like an insect in amber, it is no wonder that the population was despondent. The Occupy Wall Street movement lifted the mood of sections of the country. Initially, there was scepticism from the mainstream media, who were disdainful of the
4 6 F R O N T L I N E

young people. When the park in the Wall Street area remained under occupation, as the New York Police Department fumbled with unnecessary violence, and as the young people selforganised their protest site with cooperative efciency, the mood began to shift. Even in the mainstream periodicals, serious discussions have opened up about the social imbalance occasioned by the economic inequality. The tide is at such a point that even people like the CEO of GE Capital had to admit, If I were unemployed now, Id be really angry too. There are a lot of unhappy people right now and theres not a lot going on that gives you much reason to be inspired. After the rst weeks of the occupation, many important trade unions offered their support, as did several former marines and other armed forces personnel. Intellectuals and musicians, actors and journalists came out to lend their names, including the Nobel Prize laureate Joseph Stiglitz. The stirring moved from New York to Boston, to San Francisco, to Portland, to other large cities and to small towns. The occupy movement has now spread across the country. The ofcial Democrats are largely silent. The Republicans, on the other hand, have not altered their script. Leading Republican Eric Cantor told the press on October 7, If you read the newspapers today, I for one am increasingly concerned about the growing mobs on Wall Street and the other cities across the country. The use of the word mob is curious given that there have been no acts of violence from the protesters; all the violence has come from the police. The establishment will do its best to either wait out the protesters or crack down on them (one attempt in New York was unsuccessful). Whatever eventually happens to the occupy movement, there is no question that it has edged open a new, radical imagination. As one slogan put it audaciously, We will not go back to apathy. We will see this march to its victorious end.

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

World Affairs

Feuding allies
Disengaging with Pakistan is not an option for the U.S., which is trying to nd a way out of the Afghan quagmire and the war on terror. B Y A N I T A J O S H U A I N I S L A M A B A D

Both countries overplay their indispensability to the other: the U.S. the aid it gives and the leverage it has with the international community, including many of the Arab governments, and Pakistan its geographical location.

SINCE the beginning of this year, the United States and Pakistan have seemingly worked overtime at living up to the reputation of being in a bad marriage. Probably it is the realisation that the two countries are in this relationship for better or for A P C R E S O L U T I O N worse, as the marital vow goes, that makes both test Though the government has not yet gone as far as to the limits of each others patience and tolerance time disown the war, the APC resolution was telling. and again. There was not one mention of the words terrorism After all, what did the U.S. gain from the public and militancy, which are the preferred words used to rap on the knuckles that both its civil and military describe acts of terror except when security personmachinery delivered Pakistan in the second fort- nel are killed. John Lennons anthem of the antinight of September? If it was to name and shame Vietnam war movement, Give peace a chance, bePakistan, what can be more morcame the clarion call of the APC, tifying than to have a foreign with the political class deciding force kill and take away the body to offer talks rst to terrorist outof the worlds most wanted man, ts willing to decommission and Osama bin Laden, from the heart take action only in case the diaof the country practically the logue option fails. backyard of the military academy This has been received with a of a country where the military fair amount of scepticism. While still calls the shots? Farhat Taj, author of Taliban Moreover, has not the U.S. and Anti-Taliban, wrote in Daiparroted the Pakistan-must-doly Times that this implies that more line way too often with there will be no fundamental little effect to know by now that shift in the foreign policy or nasuch public arm-twisting does tional interests as perceived by not get the desired results. If anythe security establishment, the thing, it works to the contrary. dominant apprehension has For the second time in ve been that that this may go the months, Pakistans political class A T A N A NTI - U. S . rally in Multan, way of past deals. In the past, rallied behind the security estab- Pakistan, on September 23. when the state pursued peace
F R O N T L I N E 4 7
KHALID TANVEER/AP

lishment and even those who posed tough questions to the Chief of Army Staff and the Director General of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) at the All Parties Conference (APC) ultimately signed on the dotted line when a resolution was drafted in response to the most severe indictment by Washington. According to a Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) ofcial privy to the thinking that went into the resolution, what the U.S. managed to do with its allegations regarding Pakistans institutional links with terrorist outts was to force the government to reconsider its ownership of the war on terror. Former President Pervez Musharraf made Pakistan a frontline ally of the U.S. in its war on terror, but it was the PPP that took ownership of this war and asserted that it is our war also, the ofcial pointed out.

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

deals, the militants took advantage of the space offered to them and strengthened their networks and extended their area of control, leaving a much ercer ght to be fought later, said The Dawns editorial. So, on balance, what the U.S. got in hand for its diatribe against Pakistan was a politically backed decision to accommodate those who have been killing people on both sides of the Durand Line and pushing for the Talibanisation of Afghanistan and Pakistan. The rst to welcome the offer was Maulvi Faqir Muhammad, the deputy commander of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, but on the condition that the Islamic Shariat be imposed in Pakistan, and Islamabad reconsider its links with Washington. This conrmed the apprehensions of those sceptical of the Give peace a chance line. Moreover, with Washington marginally toning down its rhetoric in a bid to assuage frayed Pakistani nerves while still playing the goodcop-bad-cop routine, the powers that be in Islamabad began claiming victory in what was billed by some sections of the media as a make-or-break situation. So much so that these media networks seemed to be baying for blood in anticipation of a war with the U.S., though security experts on both ends of the spectrum were unanimous that a direct confrontation was something neither country could afford. And that was no secret.
BEREFT OF CHOICES

tack on September 10 despite a sizable troop presence all along the way. Pakistans Ambassador to the U.S., Hussain Haqqani, has been quoted as saying to the American media that the problem is of two competing narratives both simplistic and one-sided. He said: The Pakistani narrative is American betrayals. The American narrative is Pakistans untrustworthiness. One has to see what one can do to reconcile the narratives. This is because while Pakistan is part of the problem in the region, it must also be part of the solution. A awed and strained engagement with Pakistan is better than disengagement. We have completely disengaged in the past. That disengagement failed and brings us where we are today, Mullen said after naming the Haqqani network as the veritable arm of the ISI. In the past, Washington only referred to elements in the security establishment as being supportive of terrorists, but this time it named the ISI in no uncertain terms. Smarting over the accusations, Prime Minister Syed Yusuf Raza Gilani threw back the do-more phrase at the U.S.; he pointed out that Pakistan had done a lot in the war on terror and it was now the turn of the U.S. to make sacrices. His Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar she was in the U.S. through the week of high rhetoric to attend the United Nations General Assembly sessions sought to remind Washington that it was partly responsible for the creation of the Haqqani network. The sum and substance of the Pakistani response to the U.S. accusations was that Islamabad could not be held responsible for the American failure to bring a semblance of normalcy in Afghanistan. Referring to the terrorist attacks on its border posts from Afghanistan, Islamabad argued that even if the U.S. accusations regarding safe havens in Pakistan were true, that still did not explain how terrorists managed to get right up to Kabul or Wardak, where ve Afghans were killed and 77 U.S. soldiers wounded in a truck bomb at4 8 F R O N T L I N E

POROUS BORDER

What became clear as the American recriminations peaked was that Washington was not exactly spoilt for choice. Moreover, former Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen who was the sharpest critic of Pakistan from the American side made it clear in his damning testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Afghanistan and Iraq that disengaging with Islamabad was not an option for Washington. Despite deep personal disappointments in the decisions of the Pakistani military and government, I still believe that we must stay engaged.

Both sides also overplay their indispensability to the other: Washington the aid it gives to Pakistan plus the leverage it has with the international community, including many of the Arab governments, and Islamabad the geographical location of Pakistan. The porous nature of the Durand Line through which divided tribes and their families have been allowed the right to move back and forth under the legal rubric of easement rights means that there is always the lurking fear in the U.S. mindscape of a non-cooperative Pakistan pushing terrorists into Afghanistan through the 2,640-kilometre-long border that divides the two countries. A card that Pakistan tends to overplay is the land route it offers to nonmilitary supplies for the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan. In the summer of 2010, nearly 70 per cent of such supplies used to be ferried over land in trucks from Karachi to the Durand Line. But a series of attacks by militants on these trucks during repeated stand-offs between Islamabad and Washington forced the U.S. and its allies to look for alternative routes. Today, the bulk of the supplies is being moved in to Afghanistan through the Northern Distribution Network a series of commercially based logistical arrangements connecting the Baltic and Caspian ports with Afghanistan through Russia, Central Asia and the Caucasus. Now only 35 per cent of supplies to U.S. troops in Afghanistan go through Pakistan and this is expected to be scaled down further by the year-end.

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

SAEED ALI ACHAKZAI /REUTERS

AT CH A MA N , O N

the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, on October 3. Families divided by the Durand Line have the right of free movement across the border.
while helping out in the reconciliation process. Islamabads stated contention is that the Haqqani network has never trained its guns on Pakistan and so it would rather not open up another front. Besides, Islamabads fear is that the U.S. by wanting to eliminate the Haqqani network is actually trying to elbow Pakistan out of the negotiations to decide on the governance equation in Kabul after 2014.
INVOLVING THE TALIBAN

If Pakistan has been found wanting in taking action against the Haqqani network and can be accused of speaking with a forked tongue on terrorism, Washingtons policy also shows no clarity. That comes out not just in what former U.S. special envoy and Ambassador to Afghanistan Peter Tomsen referred to as the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations soft policy of persuasion mixed with bountiful aid but also in the failure to place the three main Afghan Taliban groups Quetta Shura, Haqqani network and Gulbuddin Hekmatyars Hezb-i-Islami on the U.S. State Departments ofcial list of foreign terrorist organisations. As of now only Mullah Omar of Quetta Shura and Sirajuddin Haqqani of the Haqqani network have been placed on the Departments Rewards for Justice list, with the former carrying a prize of up to $10 million on his head and the latter up to $5 million. Now, in the wake of the recent spate of high optics attacks in Afghanistan including the 20-hour-long siege of the U.S. Embassy and headquarters of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation in Kabul on September 13 the U.S. has set in motion the process of listing the Haqqani network. Pakistan also questions the U.S. policy of wanting it to go after the Haqqani network

The opinion of the foreign policy elite of Pakistan is that only a truly inclusive government in Kabul can usher in an era of relatively efcient and stable governance in Afghanistan. This was articulated in a recent joint study titled Pakistan, the United States and the End Game in Afghanistan conducted by the Jinnah Institute and the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) on the perceptions of Pakistans foreign policy elite. According to this study, some in the foreign policy elite were of the view that a sustainable arrangement in Kabul would necessarily require the main Taliban factions particularly Quetta Shura and the Haqqani network to be part of the new political arrangement. The preference for an inclusive government in Kabul, they pointed out, was reective of the fact that the
F R O N T L I N E 4 9

Pakistani security establishment had given up its policy of the late 1990s when it saw the Taliban as an instrument of Pakistans regional agenda. While the two governments spar, analysts in both countries agree that the reconciliation process is going to be a long haul; not only because the Taliban is yet to reveal its hand but because the prolonged military operations in Afghanistan have resulted in the splintering of the Taliban to the extent that there is no one voice representing all the factions. It has become all the more difcult to negotiate because no one is clear on whom to talk to. This is going to require us to keep our wits about us, said Brian Katulis, a senior fellow at the Centre for American Progress. Given the ground realities and the political compulsions on the domestic front in each country, the USIPs Moeed Yusuf is of the view that it is time both governments acknowledged that they are operating in an environment marked by duplicity for all and then work their way together through the quagmire that is Afghanistan. Presenting an either-or situation in The Dawn, he wrote: A breakdown in ties will be followed by inevitable proxy conicts among the interested regional actors a perfect recipe to send Afghanistan into the abyss.

World Affairs

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

Strategic visit
Afghan President Hamid Karzai, while visiting Delhi, avoids making any statement linking Pakistan with the recent terror attacks. B Y J O H N C H E R I A N

Ten years after the American invasion, the war in Afghanistan is nowhere near an end. A U.S. withdrawal in 2014 would leave the gates of Kabul open for the Taliban to march in. India seems to be supporting the U.S. move to stay on.
A FEW days before the tenth anniversary of the American invasion of Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai paid an ofcial visit to India. October 8, 2001, was the day the United States military ousted the Taliban government in Kabul and began its occupation, the longest so far in Americas recent history. Though Karzais visit had been planned much in advance, it came in the wake of the assassination of Burhannudin Rabbani and the worsening of Afghanistan-Pakistan relations, and hence elicited a lot of international attention. Rabbani, a former President of Afghanistan, was heading the Afghan High Peace Council which was trying to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table. The killing of Rabbani by a suicide bomber in Kabul in the last week of September had triggered a war of words between Kabul and Islamabad. The Afghan government has said that the murder plan was hatched in Pakistan and the suicide bombing was carried out by a Pakistani national. The Barack Obama administration has used the suicide attack on Rabbani to pressure Islamabad to take military action against the Taliban forces operating along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, especially in northern Waziristan. President Obama said in early October that the Pakistan Army was not doing enough to support the war effort in Afghanistan. Obama said that there were some connections between the Pakistani security agencies and the Taliban. His remarks were not as strongly worded as those of the former Chairman of the U.S. Joint
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Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen. Mullen had described the Haqqani network as a veritable arm of the Pakistani intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). The White House and the U.S. State Department had tried to distance itself a little from the harsh statement Mullen made to the U.S. Congress. A White House spokesman said in the rst week of October that though Pakistan had been a strong partner in counterterrorism, the two countries shared a complex relationship. Since the Rabbani assassination, the Afghan President has on several occasions demanded that Washington increase its pressure on Islamabad to act against the Haqqani group, which, he alleged, operated from Pakistani territory. Islamabad has strenuously denied any links between its intelligence services and the Haqqani group. However, President Karzai, during his two-day trip to India, carefully avoided making statements that directly implicated Islamabad in the recent spate of terror attacks. This was his second trip to the Indian capital this year. He said that after the assassination of Rabbani his government would rather talk to the Pakistani government directly rather than trying to talk to the Taliban. The peace process will now be focussed on bilateral relations, he said on October 5. Karzai added that he hoped the proposed talks with Islamabad would focus on the need to end the menace of terrorism and could help in clarifying certain dark areas in the bilateral ties between the two countries. Karzai conceded that in recent years Pakistan had suffered more casualties from terror attacks than Afghanistan. He emphasised that ending terror attacks, especially suicide bombing, was a priority so that future generations in the region could live in peace. However, soon after departing from New Delhi, Karzai took the gloves off and accused Islamabad of being complicit in the recent terror attacks. On the overall policy of Pakistan towards Afghanistan and towards the Taliban denitely, the Taliban will not be able to move a nger without Pakistans support, Karzai told the BBC. The Pakistani side has been wary for some time

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U .S. SOLD I E R S

in Kunar province in eastern Afghanistan, near the border with Pakistan, on August 26.
gic agreement with India is not directed against any country, the Afghan President emphasised. All the same, this is the rst strategic agreement that Afghanistan has inked with any country. Though the military component in the agreement may be minimal, Pakistan continues to be suspicious of the deepening of bilateral relations between Kabul and New Delhi, especially in the context of the projected withdrawal of all American troops from Afghanistan by 2014. Pakistani ofcials and strategic thinkers have said that while they have no objection to India providing developmental aid to Afghanistan, they are against any tie-up between the two governments if the cooperation extends to the military domain and intelligence sharing. The threat of strategic encirclement by Pakistans traditional enemy is a fear that continues to haunt the corridors of power in Islamabad. PaF R O N T L I N E 5 1

about the growing strategic and security ties between Kabul and New Delhi. In Delhi, Karzai tried to allay the fears of the Pakistani establishment by declaring that Pakistan was a twin brother while India was a great friend. He added that there was nothing new or signicant about the strategic partnership agreements the two countries had signed during his visit. He pointed out that India had helped his country in building strategic roads, hospitals and other important infrastructure projects. India has already disbursed more than $2 billion in aid to the war-ravaged country. The agreements signed during Karzais latest visit also talks of India providing military training and arms to the Afghan security forces, which will number more than 3,00,000 when the Americans leave the country. The agreements that we signed with our friend will not affect our brother. The signing of the strate-

kistani ofcials claim that the Afghan army is under the inuence of the former leaders of the non-Pashtun Northern Alliance. The group, supported by an assortment of powers that included Russia, India and Iran, had waged a war against the Pakistanisupported Taliban government that was in power in Kabul in the mid-1990s. The Pakistan government may be under severe pressure from Washington for its alleged sympathies with the Afghan Taliban, but those in charge of policy in Islamabad may have calculated that time is on their side. And they may not be far off the mark. Reports coming in from the Afghan battleeld all tell the same story. Ten years after the American invasion of Afghanistan, the Taliban is far from being defeated. It seems to have reasserted its inuence over many towns in half of the countrys provinces though it is not physically holding much territory. The

NIKOLA SOLIC /REUTERS

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

P R E S I D E N T H A M I D K A RZ A I with U.S. President Barack Obama in New York on September 20. The American intention to hold on to the military bases in the country has won the approval of the Karzai government.

Taliban has been avoiding frontal conicts with the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) forces and is instead focussing on dramatic assaults such as the September 13 attack on the U.S. Embassy in Kabul. A recent report in The New York Times has highlighted its resilience. On the Talibans orders, cellphone services are discontinued every day at 8 p.m. in many cities and towns. A Taliban spokesman said that this was being done to prevent NATO forces from intercepting calls and nding the locations of Taliban ghters. Ten years after the George W. Bush administration launched its Operation Enduring Freedom to show the oppressed people of Afghanistan the generosity of America, the country still bears all the hallmarks of a failed state. The United Nations has said that more than 10,000 civilians were killed in the past ve years alone. More than 2,500 soldiers, most of them Americans, have also perished in Afghanistan in the past 10 years. The U.S. is estimated to have spent more than $500 billion so far on its war effort in Afghanistan. Every day, Washington spends $2 billion for the upkeep of its soldiers in Afghanistan at a time when

the American public has got deeply disillusioned about the war. A recent opinion poll showed that a clear majority of the American people thought that the war in Afghanistan was not worth ghting. President Karzai himself has admitted that 10 years after the Taliban government was overthrown, his government together with NATO have failed to provide security to the Afghan people. In an interview to the BBC, he blamed the NATO forces for allowing the Taliban to nd sanctuary in the tribal areas of Pakistan. Writing on the 10th anniversary of the American invasion, Malalai Joya, the courageous Afghan activist, said that the U.S. and NATO had invaded her country under the fake banners of womens rights, human rights and democracy. But after a decade, Afghanistan still remains the most uncivil, the most corrupt, and the most war-torn country in the world. The consequences of the so-called war on terror have only been more bloodshed, crimes, barbarism, human rights and womens rights violations, which have doubled the miseries and sorrows of our people. Malalai Joya observed that more misery was heaped on the Afghan people after Obama took over. She wrote
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that the civilian toll in the past three years had risen by 24 per cent. She blamed the troop surge ordered by Obama for this. Malalai Joya, like many wellmeaning Afghans, feels that it is the continuing U.S. troop presence in her country that is strengthening the Taliban resistance. She also shares the widespread suspicion that the U.S. has no intentions of withdrawing completely from Afghanistan. General John Allen, the commander of the U.S. forces in Afghanistan, recently told an American television channel that the troops would not be leaving Afghanistan any time soon. He said that the news about complete troop withdrawal by 2014 was not accurate. Were actually going to be here for a long time, he asserted. According to reports, the American intention to hold on to the military bases has won the approval of the Karzai government. Not that Karzai had much of a choice in the matter, though he claimed while in New Delhi that Afghanistan would be entirely responsible for its own security after 2014. An American withdrawal on the scheduled date would leave the gates of Kabul open for the Taliban to march in. The Indian government also seems to be tacitly supporting the American move to stay on, hoping that it will forestall the installation of a pro-Pakistan government in Kabul. The continuing U.S. military presence in Afghanistan has got more to do with the securing of the oil and gas pipeline routes from Central Asia and surrounding Iran and China with bases than with ghting terror. Al Qaeda had ceased to be a serious threat, with its numbers reduced to double digits within Afghanistan. Both Washington and New Delhi are still betting heavily on the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas pipeline. There are credible reports of huge oil and gas deposits in northern Afghanistan. The Karzai government has privatised the hydrocarbon sector and has called for tenders from foreign companies to exploit the untapped resources.

PABLO MARTINEZ MONSIVAISAP

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

World Affairs/Bangladesh

Day of reckoning
Trial begins in the 40-year-old cases of crimes against humanity, and a Jamaat leader becomes the rst to be charged. B Y H A R O O N H A B I B I N D H A K A

For Bangladesh, the war crimes trial answers the innermost urge of an aggrieved nation and addresses the travails of countless bereaved families, widows and orphans, and the wounded and the immobilised.
ON October 3, Delwar Hossain Sayedee, a rebrand leader of the fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami, became the rst suspect to be formally charged by the International Crimes Tribunal (ICT), which is probing the charges of rape, genocide and other crimes against humanity committed during the liberation war of 1971. The tribunal was constituted by the Sheikh Hasina government on March 25, 2010, to try those Bangladeshis (then East Pakistanis) accused of collaborating with the Pakistan army and committing atrocities. With the opening of the war crimes trial, 18 months after the formation of the tribunal and four decades after the historic war, the Hasina government has virtually reopened the countrys independence history. Horrendous crimes were committed during the nine-month-long war, which resulted in the secession of East Pakistan from Pakistan. Some three million people were killed, nearly half a million women were raped and over 10 million people were forced to ee to India to escape brutal persecution at home. The perpetrators of the crimes were not G E N. Y A H YA K H A N had "planned to brought to book, and murder Bengali intellectuals". (Right) this left a deep scar on Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the founding the countrys political father of Bangladesh. psyche. The impunity
THE HINDU ARCHIVES THE HINDU ARCHIVES AFP

J A M AA T- E - I S LAM I leader Delwar Hossain Sayedee, escorted by security personnel, emerges from the Bangladesh International Crimes Tribunal in Dhaka on October 3.

they enjoyed hampered political stability, saw the rise of militancy, and destroyed the nations Constitution. So, the commencement of the trial is a landmark event in Bangladesh, which will be celebrating 40 years of independence in December. The nation has been waiting for the judicial process against war crimes to take place not only to seek a remedy for past wounds but also to remove a national stigma. Seventy-one-year-old Sayedee, who is one of the key leaders of the countrys largest Islamist party, was present in the ICT dock when the charges were framed. He described the 4,000-page charge sheet against him as untrue and denied all the allegations. The three-member tribunal chaired by Justice Nizamul Huq has xed October 30 for the next hearing when the prosecution will make an opening statement. The charges against Sayedee include involvement in the killing of more than 3,000 unarmed people, rape, arson and loot, abduction, forcible conversion of Hindus and collaboration with the Pakistan army. The charges carry a maximum sentence of the death penalty. The prosecution said Sayedee was an active member of the Peace Committee and the
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THE HINDU ARCHIVES

Razakar Bahini, which were formed by Pakistans military authorities to suppress the Bengalis quest for freedom. While framing the charges, the tribunal specically pointed out 20 incidents, including those of genocide, after narrating the circumstances of the liberation war and its history, and said the report described Sayedee as a member of the Razakar Bahini. The tribunals chief prosecutor, Golam Arif Tipu, said: The ofcial trial has kicked off, this in itself is big news for which we had been avidly waiting for long. Apart from Sayedee, Jamaat-e-Islami chief Matiur Rahman Nizami, secretary-general Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mojaheed and two assistant secretariesgeneral, Mohammad Kamaruzzaman and Abdul Quader Molla, have been detained on similar charges. A senior leader of the opposition Bangladesh National Party (BNP) Salahuddin Quader Chowdhury, who was parliamentary affairs adviser to former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, and a former Minister in the BNP government, Abdul Alim, have also been arrested on similar charges. The trial of war criminals is not just

a fullment of the Hasina governments electoral pledge but a step towards meeting a national obligation to the judicial process. It is going to be an acid test for Hasina in view of the strong resistance to the trial by the BNP and its ally, the Jamaat, as also the fundamentalist lobby. The challenge to the trial may be massive if the political opposition manages to convince the people of the administrations failure to meet their needs and expectations. Khaleda Zia has already thrown a direct challenge to the trial by calling the tribunal a partisan body. She demanded the release of the Jamaat leaders and described the legal process as a mockery of trial. Khaledas latest stand vis-a-vis the Jamaat-e-Islami, the most organised fundamentalist party, has made analysts conclude that she is determined to be with political Islamists in her future political course, ignoring the implications of such an association. Many observers feel this was expected because the BNPs founder, General Ziaur Rahman, rehabilitated the war criminals in politics and Khaleda, his widow, completed the process when she was in power twice. The ICT is a domestic tribunal un-

P R IME M I N I S T E R I N D I RA Gandhi during a visit on May 15, 1971, to a refugee camp at Udarband, Silchar, where women and children from East Pakistan were sheltered.
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der a domestic law. Law Minister Shaque Ahmed assured the people that the trial would be fair and transparent and that the victims would get all legal facilities on a par with international standards so that no questions could be raised about its competency. To make the law, enacted in 1973, more acceptable, a recent amendment allowed the accused all opportunities to defend themselves, including the option to select lawyers of their own choice. Shahinur Islam, registrar of the ICT, said that although the tribunal was a domestic one, it maintained international standards. The Hasina government, which has sought international support for the trial, said it would be an open trial in a place where international observers could watch. Public pressure in favour of the long-delayed trial has been mounting. The Hasina government recently faced

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ME M B E R S O F T H E

Razakar Bahini surrendering before the Indian Army in Noakhali district of Bangladesh.
ened younger generation. The irony is that although the process of trial of the Pakistani collaborators was initiated soon after Bangladesh got independence, the attempt got frustrated following the assassination of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the founding father, in 1975. The 195 Pakistani war criminals were allowed to go back to their country along with over 90,000 prisoners of war who had surrendered to the India-Bangladesh Joint Command in Dhaka on December 16, 1971. Beginning with Operation Searchlight on March 25, 1971, the Pakistan army perpetrated widespread violations of human rights with support from local Islamist militias. While India and the former Soviet Union strongly opposed the atrocities and supported East Pakistans cause to seF R O N T L I N E 5 5

huge criticism from the pro-liberation political parties, civil society and freedom ghters organisations for the delay in framing charges against the accused persons and not arresting others, such as Golam Azam, whose names are synonymous with genocide, rape and torture. However, the rst formal charge made by the tribunal has removed the doubts to some extent. In the face of the alarming rise of religious extremism over the years, the overwhelming majority in Bangladesh want to see the war criminals tried and religious extremism checked at all cost. They link the growth of Islamist militancy with the failure to try the war criminals. In 2008, when Bangladesh held its last general election, this mood was visible, mainly among the reawak-

cede, the United States, China and Saudi Arabia virtually reinforced the Pakistani position on varying grounds. Against the background of this international polarisation, the birth of Bangladesh, despite being a bloody one, remained the least discussed topic. A well-known researcher on genocide, R.J. Rummel, in his book Statistics of Democide: Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1900, states: In East Pakistan [General Agha Mohammed Yahya Khan and his top generals] also planned to murder its Bengali intellectual, cultural, and political elite. They also planned to indiscriminately murder hundreds of thousands of its Hindus and drive the rest into India. And they planned to destroy its economic base to insure that it would be subordinate to West Pakistan for at least a

World Affairs/Bangladesh
generation to come. Women were wars I covered in Korea, Congo, Egypt, tortured, raped and killed. With the Vietnam and Biafra. Stanley Buke, help of its local collaborators, the Pa- another Western journalist, lamented: kistan military kept numerous Bengali It is thought-provoking to realise that women as sex slaves inside their camps in the First World War people were and cantonments. Susan Brownmiller, horried by the sinking of Lusitania who conducted a detailed study, has with the loss of a few hundred lives. In estimated the number of raped women the Second World War people were shocked by the bombing of Hiroshima at over 400,000. Virtually every Bangladeshi house- at a cost of 150,000 lives. Today the hold has its own horror story to tell world is indifferent to a tragedy affectfrom 1971, but it is somewhat difcult ing millions. Peter Dunn, photographer of The to gather direct proof after so many decades, particularly when much of Sunday Times, wrote: A press phothe evidence may have been lost. De- tographer can usually tell himself that spite the difculties, the investigators he is doing some good no matter how and the prosecution say that they have gruesome the photograph he is taking. But in Bengal the panacollected enough evicea was denied to me. I dence to prove their felt completely and uttercases. The prosecutors ly inadequate. have reportedly completAfter a visit to refugee ed investigations in the camps in West Bengal case of some other promand Tripura, the late U.S. inent accused, including Senator Edward KenneBNP leader Salahuddin dy, said in a report: I can Quader Chowdhury, and tell you that not until you are set to submit the forsee it rst-hand can you mal charge sheets in begin to understand the November. plight of the people, and Almost every housethe forces of violence hold in Bangladesh still P RI M E M I N I S T ER which continue to create bears the scar of the trag- S H EI K H Hasina. refugees and increase the edy. When the Pakistan military and its local supporters ran toll of civilian casualties. The Govamok, the Indian media were full of ernment of India, as it rst saw this traumatic tales of horrifying persecu- tide of human misery begin to ow tion of unarmed civilians. Even West- across its borders, could have corern journalists led vivid reports. Alan doned off its land and refused entry. Hart of BBC Panorama, reporting on But, to its everlasting credit, India the horror, said: Theyd been hacked chose the way of compassion. While to death with knife and clubs. From the magnitude of the problem staggers some of their wounds blood was still the imagination, the individual acgushing. And when you thought they counts of the people who have ed East were dead and nished they werent. Bengal tear at your heart. Sydney Schanberg, at that time a They went on twitching, some of these bodies, for several minutes. These are New York Times reporter, described the images that I captured for my rst the Pakistani crackdown in March 1971 as a pogrom on a vast scale in a lm report from inside. John Drewey of the Canadian land where vultures grow fat. Oxfam, Broadcasting Corporation said: I an international relief organisation, found it impossible to shut away the submitted a document, The Testimomemories of what I saw, in the refugee ny of Sixty, to many Western governcamps of West Bengal and along the ments and the United Nations on trails leading out of East Pakistan, in October 21, 1971, seeking urgent inthat corner of my mind reserved for ternational assistance to end the bruother horrors I witnessed during the talities and help the millions of
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ATUL YADAV /PTI

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

refugees in the Indian States contiguous with Bangladesh. Among the 60 prominent people and Western eyewitnesses who narrated the harrowing tales was Mother Teresa. She said: I have been working among the refugees for ve or six months. I have seen these children, and the adults, dying. That is why I can assure the world how grave the situation is and how urgently it must help. The appeal is to the world and the world must answer. Leading civil society groups and human rights activists in Pakistan have condemned their militarys brutality in the former East Pakistan and have been demanding a formal apology to Bangladeshis. After the rst charge was accepted by the ICT, one of the leading Pakistani dailies, Daily Times, commented in an editorial, Closing old wounds, on October 5: In a landmark move, Bangladesh is nally seeking closure for the atrocities it suffered during the 1971 war for the liberation of East Pakistan. About the Jamaat-e-Islami, the newspaper remarked: What was the Jamaats role in the 1971 war? To aid the Pakistan armys crackdown, it formed paramilitary wings called AlBadr and Al-Shams to ght the Bangladesh Liberation Army (Mukti Bahini). These wings contributed immensely to the killing spree against intellectuals and activists. As if the Pakistan army were not vicious enough, these haywire groups added more fuel to the bloodshed and carnage. The newspaper also commented: Pakistan could learn a thing or two from Bangladesh. The atrocities perpetrated against East Pakistan are a blot on our national conscience. Not only did they result in the obliteration of united Pakistan, Pakistan has seen history repeating itself within its own borders in Balochistan. For Bangladesh, the war crimes trial is no ordinary trial but one that answers the innermost urge of an aggrieved nation and addresses the travails of countless bereaved families, widows and orphans, and the wounded and the immobilised.

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World Affairs

Drone on target
Al Qaedas Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born Islamic cleric, is killed in Yemen in a drone attack authorised by President Obama. B Y J O H N C H E R I A N

The United States tried to portray the killing as its biggest success in the war against terror since the extermination of Osama bin Laden. But questions were raised in the U.S. about the legality of the decision to kill a U.S. citizen on foreign soil.
ANWAR AL-AWLAKI, an American citizen of Yemeni origin, knew that he was living on borrowed time after the worlds most powerful man, the President of the United States, put him on the hit list last year. President Barack Obama had approved his killing in April 2010. The 40year-old Islamic cleric is said to have escaped two previous attempts to tar- S A M I R K H A N , S E E N in get him, but his luck ran video footage taken in out when an unmanned North Carolina in 2008. Predator drone armed He was killed with with Hellre missiles Awlaki. caught up with his convoy in a remote mountainous region in Yemen on September 30. Awlaki and another U.S. citizen, Samir Khan, a computer specialist and co-editor of Al Qaedas online magazine Inspire, were killed in the attack. Obama was quick to claim that Awlakis death constituted a major blow to Al Qaedas most active afliate Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). The Obama administration has tried to portray Awlakis killing as its biggest success in the war against terror since the extermination of Osama
AP

bin Laden in the middle of this year. The operation that killed Awlaki was supervised by the same unit that raided Osamas hideout in Abbottabad in Pakistan. The President has offered no apologies for the killing of the two U.S. citizens in cold blood but insisted that Awlaki was the AQAPs leader of external operations. Legal opinion in the U.S. is sharply divided on the extrajudicial killing of its own citizens. Many other nationalities have become can-

MUHAMMAD-UD-DEEN/AP

AN W A R A L- AW LA KI , who the U.S. says was the leader of external operations of Al Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).
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non fodder in the 10-year-old war on terror. The Israeli Defence Forces had been targeting Palestinian and other leaders opposed to them for assassination with impunity even before the war on terror began. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has been critical of the U.S. governments decision to impose the death penalty without a trial. The U.S. Justice Department has refused to provide any legal justication for the killing. Obama, however, has said that his administration will be resolute in its commitment to destroy terrorist networks that aim to kill Americans.
WIDE FAN FOLLOWING

who tried to detonate a car bomb in Manhattan told the U.S. authorities that he was inspired by Awlakis sermons. In one of his sermons recorded in early 2010, Awlaki urged American Muslims to stage attacks. Jehad against America is binding upon myself just as it is binding on every other able Muslim.

After the events of September 11, 2001, Awlaki was among the small group of radicalised American Muslims who threw in their lot with Al Qaeda. His sermons in English with an American accent urging Muslims to wage jehad against the West reputedly had a wide fan following on YouTube and other websites. After a U.S. Army ofcer of Palestinian origin, Major Nidal Mallik Hassan, went on a killing spree in a military base at Fort Hood in November 2009, Awlakis name hit the headlines. It was reported that the U.S. Army veteran was in touch with Awlaki before he went on the rampage in which 13 people were killed. Awlaki had denied having encouraged Hassan in any way but later praised his act saying that it had prevented the U.S. soldiers who were killed from being deployed in Afghanistan or Iraq where they would have killed Muslims. Awlaki was also blamed for attempts to blow up American passenger planes, though the claims have not been substantiated. The Obama administration linked Awlaki with the failed Christmas 2009 attempt of Umar Farrouk Abdulmutallib, the underwear bomber, to bring down a Detroit-bound plane. Awlaki was also accused of playing a key role in the October 2010 mail bomb plot. Packets containing bombs, originating from Yemen and bound for the U.S., were intercepted in Dubai and Europe. In May 2010, a Pakistani-American

Dick Cheney, who has been otherwise critical of Obama, called it a very good strike.
But if reports in the Arab media are anything to go by, Awlaki was only a minor cog, used mainly for propaganda purposes, in Al Qaedas major network. His uency in both English and Arabic coupled with his knowledge of the Quran helped him gather a big fan following, especially among the youth. Experts on Yemen have said that he had no operational role in Al Qaeda. The top commanders are Yemenis and Saudis who have been leading the ght against the U.S. presence in the region for many years. The AQAPs main leadership continues to be intact and is no doubt busy hatching new terror plans. Awlaki was forced to ee into the desolate mountain region where his tribe is located and where Al Qaeda has a presence in order to escape from the Americans, who had put a bounty on his head. Awlakis father, who was once Minister of Agriculture in the central government in Yemen, had issued a public appeal to the U.S. administration to drop the death warrant. The senior Awlaki went to the extent of describing his son as an all-American boy who had studied at some of the
5 8 F R O N T L I N E

nest universities, including doing doctoral work at George Washington University. U.S. media reports say that Awlaki had actually worked for the Pentagon for a few years, helping it to counter the view that the U.S. was against the Islamic world. In the U.S., the Centre for Constitutional Rights and the ACLU, along with Awlakis father, had led a case in the federal court to prevent the assassination of a U.S. citizen outside a war zone. District Judge John Bates, who presided over the hearing, pertinently raised a question on the justication of the executive branch of the government ordering the assassination of a U.S. citizen without rst affording him any form of judicial process whatsoever, based on the mere assertion that he is a member of a terrorist organisation. Ron Paul, a U.S. Congressman from Texas and a candidate in Republican presidential primaries, has described Awlakis killing as an unlawful assassination. To start assassinating American citizens without charges we must think very seriously about this, Paul said. The Fifth Amendment in the U.S. Constitution states: No person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without the due process of law. Eventually, in an 83-page judgment in December last year, Bates dismissed the petition to block Awlakis assassination by executive at. There are circumstances which the [Presidents] unilateral decision to kill a U.S. citizen overseas is constitutionally committed to the political branches and is judicially unreviewable, the judge concluded. He, however, did admit that many stark and perplexing questions remained to be answered following Obamas decision to put Awlaki on the kill list. The Obama administration claims the right for targeted killings from the Bill signed by George W. Bush immediately after the events of September 11. The Bill authorised action against those who planned, authorised, committed or aided the 9/11 terrorist attacks. White House ofcials have conrmed the existence of a secret

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

A P R E DA T O R D R O N E ,

called the weapon of choice of the Obama administration, ies over Kandahar aireld in
tration was using the same techniques favoured by the previous administration. The killing of Awlaki occurred a few days after President Abdullah Saleh returned to Yemen after months of treatment in Saudi Arabia. Saleh had narrowly escaped death but suffered serious burn injuries when his palace was attacked by forces loyal to the opposition. His return was unexpected as talks for a peaceful settlement of the political crisis were poised delicately. After the announcement of Awlakis death, Saleh was quick to highlight the close security cooperation between forces loyal to him and the U.S. military. In fact, the rst news about Awlakis killing came through Yemeni government sources. In all probability, the drones used in the attack came from a base in Yemen. WikiLeaks documents have revealed the close security links between the two governments. Saleh had ofF R O N T L I N E 5 9

southern Afghanistan.
panel that can order the execution of American citizens without judicial oversight. Former Vice-President Dick Cheney was among those who praised the Obama administration for ordering the drone strike against Awlaki. Cheney, who has been otherwise critical of Obama, called it a very good strike and a justied one. But he was also quick to demand an apology from Obama for criticising earlier the harsh interrogation measures the Bush administration had used to extract information from terror suspects incarcerated in Guantanamo Bay and secret prisons of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) all over the world. The thing I am waiting for is for the administration to go back and correct something they said two years ago when they criticised us for overreacting to the events of 9/11, Cheney said on television. He said recent events had shown that the Obama adminisfered the U.S. unfettered access to carry out hits against Al Qaeda from Yemeni soil. The cables also reveal that Saleh outsourced Yemens counterterrorism efforts to the U.S. In the second week of October, U.S. drone attacks killed ve Yemeni militants near the town of Zinjibar, which has been under Al Qaeda inuence since May. U.S. ofcials are only conrming that the drones took off from a base in the Arabian Peninsula that became operational only recently. U.S. drones also y into the region from known bases in Ethiopia, Djibouti and the Seychelles. White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan said recently that counterterrorism cooperation with Yemen is better than its been during my whole tenure. Saleh, no doubt, expects the Obama administration to back him in his efforts to cling to power. The anti-government protests in Yemen have been far bloodier than the ones occurring in Syria.

AP

update
Putins Eurasia plan
P RI M E M I N I S TE R V LAD I M I R P UTI N .

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

His proposed Eurasian Union could become one of the poles of the modern world, serving as an efcient link between Europe and the Asia-Pacic region.
IN Eric Amblers masterly interwar thriller The Mask of Dimitrios, the puppet master pulling the strings as a seedy Europe slides hopelessly into war is the shadowy Eurasian Credit Trust. The name was deliberately chosen. For most of the last century, Eurasia was scarcely a neutral term: it evoked the whiff of racial degeneration, the prospect of civilisation overrun by eastern hordes. But now comes Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, perhaps looking to lift the attention of a restive public at home to something more elevated than a peremptorily staged presidential succession, supporting the idea of creating a Eurasian union of former Soviet-bloc nations that could become one of the poles of the modern world, serving as an efcient link between Europe and the dynamic Asia-Pacic region. Putin explicitly denies that this is about rebuilding the USSR. Nevertheless, there has been a lot of talk of Eurasia since the collapse of the USSR, and there is a close connection between the Eurasia concept and Soviet history. And in a world where European Union membership is effectively barred to Russia and where the E.U. is promoting its own eastern partnership, led by Poland and Sweden, to intensify European links with other former Soviet republics, one can see the logic in Russian efforts to extend internal markets, remove barriers to labour mobility and at the same time win the ght for the hearts and minds of the inhabitants of its western gateways, above all in Ukraine. Politicians like the occasional grand vision, especially one with historical resonance. Yet will all this be worth the effort? The precedents are not reassuring. Today some historians remind us that the third world was so called precisely because of the sustained tussle for its allegiances in the 1950s and 1960s between the rst and second worlds. Yet all of this can be exaggerated. The second world was concentrated on eastern Europe, and other member states came and went. The rise of China weakened the ideological prestige of Moscow. And none of it was ever a match in purely economic terms for the astonishingly powerful global alliance system put together by Washing6 0 F R O N T L I N E
AP

ton, linking the powerhouse economies of western Europe and East Asia with the oil-producing states of the Middle East (West Asia). The rst world denitely won that particular struggle, and globalisation by which I mean the extraordinary combination of industrial productivity growth in American partners such as Japan and South Korea with the nancial ows that reshaped nance after the 1970s ultimately brought the Soviet second world to its knees, both because it simply could not compete internationally and because much of eastern Europe had become addicted to Western debt. There is a lesson here to be learned, surely, from an earlier foray into a kind of Eurasianism by Turkey. In the early 1990s, the then President Turgut Ozal imagined a coming Turkish century based on a new union among the Turkic-speaking states of the Eurasian heartlands. After his death, it became abundantly clear that the choice between orienting the Turkish economy east or west was no choice at all. Having learned that lesson, the Recep Tayyip Erdogan government is pursuing a sort of post-imperial foreign policy of its own. In short, it is no wonder Putin stresses that his new vision of deeper integration is not meant as a return to the Soviet past. The question is whether there is any alternative model that makes sense for his proposed union. If the coupling of the Russian economy to the southern stans brings with it a decoupling from the more powerful regional dynamos to its west and east, it will end up as a drag, not a spur, to growth, and Russia will pay a heavy price for an old-fashioned dream of imperial glory. Mark Mazower Mark Mazower teaches history at Columbia University, New York Guardian News & Media 2011

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

Natural Science

Bees and beetles

Asian, African and Australian Aborigine myths and folklore, unlike European ones, are generally lled with reverence for insects. B Y G E E T H A I Y E R

Bees are revered across all cultures and have been symbols of regeneration and creation. Scarab beetles were a symbol of resurrection to the ancient Egyptians. The Japanese have a special place in their culture for dragonies.
The scientist does not study nature because it is useful. He studies it because he delights in it and he delights in it because it is beautiful. Jules Henri Poincare (1845-1912) THE ecological relationships between humans and insects would not have taken long to get established. Insects were ourishing in almost every niche of the earth when the human species evolved. And insects seem to have treated humans as just another niche to ll. As a result, they now share our dwellings and eat through them; weave cocoons for our exquisite silks, which other insects feed on with relish; give us nutritious honey and a sting; recycle our waste; pollinate our plants; till the soil; feed on our blood, saliva and tears; and, in short, treat us as we do

THE CA R P E N TE R B E E (Xylocopa

Series
This is the sixth part of an eight-part series on insects.
F R O N T L I N E 6 1

species), so goes a legend, was in such a hurry to make honey that unlike the honeybee it did not wait to hear the end of this process from the Creator. So this bees honey is of no signicance.

PHOTOGRAPHS: GEETHA IYER

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

them. They have been with us at every stage of our evolution. And humans have at various stages revered and despised them with equal intensity.
SYMBOLS OF DIVINITY

Asian, African and Australian Aborigine myths, folklore and legends, unlike European ones, are generally lled with reverence for insects. The one insect that is revered across all cultures is the bee. Bees have been symbols of regeneration, relationship, creation and continuance of life. They have even been seen as messengers to the netherworld. Iyam prthivi sarvesam bhutanam madhu... (This earth is the honey of all) Ima apah sarvesam bhutanam madhu, asam apam sarvani bhutani madhu... (This water is the honey of all beings, and all beings are the honey of this water.) Ayam agnih, sarvesam bhutanam madhu..., (re...) Ayam vayuh sarvesam bhutanam madhu... (air...) Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, Chapter II1 And so on the verses extol how re, air, sun, moon, space, lightning, thunder, ether, law, truth, mankind and self are the honey of all beings. The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, composed in the rst millennium BCE, contains a chapter called Madhu Brahmana, which is devoted entirely to metaphorical references to honey (madhu). Madhu Vidya was a Vedic rite through which one could save lives. Through the description of honey, one is made aware of not only the life of bees and the medicinal nature of honey but also the web of life. It is the rst recorded association of humans with insects. The Egyptians believed that the sun god Ra created bees from his tears as is evident from this text, which also dates from the rst millennium BCE: When the Sun weeps a second time, and lets fall water from his eyes, it is changed into working bees; they work in the owers of each kind, and honey and wax are produced instead of water.

T H ES E B EA UTI FUL S CA R AB S are collected for their iridescent elytra. (Above) the ower beetle; (below, left and right) Anomala sp.; (facing page) Popillia sp.

In Lithuania, bee-keeping has been a sacred way of life for many centuries. Austeja is the Lithuanian goddess of bees. To this day, certain traditions continue, and bees are not bought or sold in certain parts of the country as it is believed that their presence and honey are sacred. The Lithuanian Museum of Ancient Bee-keeping has displays on these customs and also exhibits of the intricately carved logs that were traditionally used for bee-keeping. Let the wax raise green statues, let the honey drip in innite tongues, let the ocean be
6 2 F R O N T L I N E

A M ON G THE M OS T commonly encountered beetles are the ones from the family Chrysomelidae, also called leaf beetles.

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

a big comb and the Earth a tunic of owers, let the World be a cascade, magnicent hair, unceasing growth of Beedom. Pablo Neruda It was a custom in certain parts of Europe to inform the bees when a beekeeper died, in a ceremony called telling the bees. When Sam Rogers, a cobbler and a postman from Shropshire2 died in 1961, his children went round his 14 hives to inform the bees. When the family gathered round his grave, the bees from his hives (which were more than a mile away) came in a swarm and settled on his cofn for about half an hour and returned to their hives, ignoring the owering trees that were nearby. Bees were not the only insects to be revered by the ancient Egyptians. They believed beetles, too, were a representation of gods.
BEETLES

A group of theologians once asked the British biologist J.B.S. Haldane what he could infer about the Creator from his studies, to which he is reported to have quipped, An inordinate fondness for beetles. In evolutionary terms, beetles are an old order of insects. The oldest beetle fossils are known from the Permian Period (299350 million years ago). With nearly 400,000 identied species, beetles represent one in ve living species on earth. It may not be an exaggeration to say that they are perhaps the one group of animals that are evolving with the world rather than in it. Beetles belong to the order Coleoptera. The word derives from the Greek word koleopteros, meaning sheathwinged. The forewings of the beetles are hard and protective in function. A pair of membranous hindwings used for ight is kept folded under this hard forewing, which is generally referred to as elytra. Beetles can be found everywhere, from the stored grains in the pantry to on and within trees, in animal fur, below the soil and on decomposing matter. There are jewel beetles, lizard beetles, ea beetles, fungus beeF R O N T L I N E 6 3

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

A P L E A S I N G F UN G US

beetle. As its name indicates, it feeds on the fruiting bodies of fungi.

C OMB- C L A W E D B E E T LES F EED

on

plant and animal leftovers.

TH E HI N D L E G S

of the aquatic diving beetle are modied into paddles.

tles, leaf beetles, rhinoceros beetles, reies, ladybirds, blister beetles, tiger beetles, and so on. But the beetles that have been well studied for their frequent reference in culture are the scarab beetles of the family Scarabaeidae. The family Scarabaeidae includes a vast diversity of beetles. The Goliath beetle, the giant in the beetle world, belongs to this family. Commonly called scarabs, they are medium- to large-sized insects with lamellate antennae that open like a small fan and close to form a club. In colour, scarabs can be both brilliant, especially the June beetles and chafers, or dull and black. The dung roller is the most commonly met scarab. This scavenger feeds on dung and other decaying organic matter, playing an invaluable role in recycling waste. The dung of herbivorous mammals such as cows and elephants is mostly composed of half-digested grass and liquids. The dung rollers feed on the sap and use the semi-digested grass to line their nests, which are the dung balls. Their strong mandibular teeth and front legs are the tools to dig into the soil and the dung. This scarab rst carefully makes a ball with a hollow in the centre where the egg is laid. The ball is therefore made with a careful selection of the partly digested bres from the dung to line the innermost region of the ball. This serves as food for the larva that hatches from the egg. The scarab then adds more layers of dung to this nest, which results in a strong, compact ball. Dung balls can be small or large. In forests, elephant-dung balls are sought out by bears as they know there will be a juicy beetle grub inside them. It is fascinating to watch a dung beetle moving the ball to its burrow. The rst and last pairs of legs are used as levers and pivots, propelling the scarab forward, while the middle pair of legs is used to hold on to the ball and manoeuvre it to the burrow. The last pair of legs are lifted or held down and used to push and change direction. Not all dung beetles are rollers. Some are tunnellers that dig and bury
6 4 F R O N T L I N E

LAD YB I R D B E E TLE S , OR

coccinellids, help in controlling plant pests. They gure in childrens literature, for instance, in Roald Dahls James and the Giant Peach. (Above) Propylea japonica and (below) Micraspis sp.

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

TH E L AR G E , L O N G

mandibles of the stag beetle resemble antlers. Hence its name.

the reign of various Egyptian pharaohs, scarabs were fashioned from ivory, stone and precious metals to record events or commemorations or to serve as seals. Scarabs were also of great signicance in the rituals associated with funerals. Heart-shaped scarabs fashioned out of precious stones were placed on the chest of the deceased. A large piece of heart scarab made from Libyan glass was part of the provisions entombed with Tutankhamen. The Luxor temple has massive sculptures of scarabs. However, there is no record of esh-eating scarabs of the kind depicted in lms such as The Mummy. All ancient cultures revered these beetles, and they were not depicted as evil. An ancient Tao text says: The scarab rolls his pellet, and life is born in it as an effect of non-dispersed work of spiritual concentration. If even in manure an embryo can develop and cast his terrestrial skins, why should the

the dung, whereas some others are dwellers, residing in the dung. One would never weary of admiring the variety of tools wherewith they are supplied, whether for shifting, cutting up and shaping the stercoral matter or for excavating deep burrows in which they will seclude themselves with their booty. This equipment resembles a technical museum where every digging-implement is represented, wrote the French entomologist Jean Henri Fabre in the opening essay, The Sacred Beetle, of his classic Souvenirs Entomologiques. The rhinoceros beetle is a dung roller with a horn-like protuberance on its head. The horn is used in combat with other males to win over their favourite females. People of ancient cultures who watched the insect emerge from a ball of mud attached a deeper meaning to it. So the scarab became a symbol of resurrection to the ancient Egyptians.

A P O T A T O LA D Y B I R D beetle, Henosepilachna vigintioctapunctata.

The beetle moving its dung ball symbolised the movements of the sun. Khepri, the scarab-like god, was considered the manifestation of the sun god Ra. The beetle is named Kheper aegyptiorum. This beetle, not seen easily any more, has been replaced in symbolism with the more commonly observable Scarabaeus sacer. During
F R O N T L I N E 6 5

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

dwelling of our celestial heart not be able to generate a body too, if we concentrate our spirit on it? Flower scarabs are beetles that display vibrant, shining colours. They are variously known as ower chafers, ower beetles, June beetles, May beetles, and so on. They are diurnal in nature and feed on owers, pollinating them in the process. Some of them feed on dung too. Unlike many others in the beetle family these can y well. The ower scarab has iridescent elytra. This iridescence is retained even after death, making the beetle a sought-after item for jewellery and art. Beetles belonging to the Buprestidae and Chrysomelidae families, generally referred to as jewel beetles, are also collected for their iridescent, shiny wings. One-quarter of all beetles are weevils, which most orchard owners think of as pests. They attack anything from stored grain to cotton crop to fruit and are a farmers headache. But as a species, they stand out for their sculpted body design and Pinocchio-like nose, a cartoon created by nature. Weevils may be recognised easily by the pair of antennae that arise not from the head but from the elongated nose. The mouth parts are found at the end of the snout. These snouted beetles use their long snouts not only to feed on plant parts but also to make cavities in them to lay eggs. The developing larvae thus have ample food to feed on and grow.
DRAGONFLY

speeds. Dashing, darting, hovering, gliding, ying backwards or manoeuvring turns, it can attain speeds of more than 30 kilometres/hour and has the ability to y across oceans. Despite this, dragonies have not been able to conquer as many habitats as or proliferate as much as beetles, many of which indeed have lost the power of ight. Dragonies have not been able to move away from water sources.

There is a delightful childrens story from the Solomon Islands to explain this behaviour. Once upon a time, a rey wanted a drink but did not want to go to the water during daytime. Its friend, the dragony, agreed to accompany it at night and carried a lantern to light the way. Once the rey had quenched its thirst, the dragony gave the lantern to it and started drinking. But the selsh

A N ELEP H A N T D UN G ball prised open by a bear allows one to see its inner architecture. (Below, right) Another one, the size of a coconut.

Dragonies are among natures earliest insect creations. A cursory comparison of a dragony and a beetle would leave one with mild disbelief; how could two creatures with so many differences be classied under the single umbrella called insects? The beetles have a hard forewing, thickened to form a protective elytra, and only the membranous hindwing is tucked away. The dragonys wings are completely membranous but cannot be folded on the back of its body. The dragonys acrobatics in air are a marvel in ight engineering; the insects hang in mid-air almost stationary and suddenly dart off at lightning

GIRIDHAR MALLA

T H I S D U N G R OLLE R ,

Gymnopleurus miliaris, from the Eastern Ghats, is demonstrating how it uses its legs to manoeuvre a dung ball.
6 6 F R O N T L I N E

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

T H E A RCHI TE CT OF

the elephant dung ball, Heliocopis bucephalus.

little rey walked away with the lantern, leaving the dragony groping in the dark. So the people of this island believe that reies roam the night with the lantern, while dragonies sleep at night and wander near the water during daytime. Dragonies were amongst the earliest insects to have evolved on earth, pre-dating dinosaurs by 100 million years. Fossils indicate that giant dragonies roamed the earth at the time of the dinosaurs. These insects have survived for millions of years retaining many of the characteristics of their ancestors. Along with the damsely, their petite relative, they are classied under the order Odonata, a Greek word meaning toothed. However, dragonies do not have teeth. Rather, they have strong mandibles, which they use to crush their prey. Their antennae are small and insignicant. The dragonys entire demeanour evokes admiration and a childish wish to catch and hold them. Its large eyes, occupying most of the head, are capa ble of 360 vision and are responsible for its ability to capture prey in ight. Dragony young are aquatic and develop in water. Both adult and young are voracious carnivores, feeding on other insects. For children growing up in rural environs, catching a dragony is still a pleasurable pastime. If one were to sit still near a waterbody,
F R O N T L I N E 6 7

watching dragonies and damselies would be time well spent. The Japanese have a special place in their culture for dragonies. Two delightful stories tell of how Japan was once called Akitsushima, or the Island of the Dragony. Legend has it that the dragony ate the horse-y that bit the mythical founder of Japan, Emperor Jinmu. In gratitude, he named the island after the dragony (akitsu in Japanese). According to another tale, Emperor Jinmu climbed the highest peak to survey his country and noticed that it looked like a dragony and hence named the country after the insect. As a result, the dragony became the countrys emblem. The dragony

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

DAMS E L F L I E S A R E S LEN D ER built and share the same habitat as the dragonies. Here, Rhodischnura nursei.

THE D I TCH J E W E L, THE C O R O MA N D EL M A R S H dart (Ceriagrion THE TR I C OLOUR E D M AR S H hawk

or Brachythemis contam

coromandelianum). These damselies are not afraid of wandering into human dwellings.

(Orthetrum luzonicum). Ancient Mesopotamian literature has several references to dragonies, especially in poetry.

( FA R R I G HT) THE ground

ODON A T E S (D R A G O N F LI ES ) A RE described in the poems of Sumerians. Here, the brown-backed red marsh hawk (Orthetrum chrysis).
6 8 F R O N T L I N E

skimmer dragony (Diplacodes trivialis).

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

minata, (left, female, and right, male) is a very common dragony seen near wetlands.

F R O N T L I N E

6 9

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

A CIC A D A E M E R G I N G from its cocoon. According to Thucydides, people of Athens wore gold ornamental cicadas in their hair and were aware of the subterranean nature of its life history. Cicadas nd mention in the literature, visual arts, folklore, scientic writing, philosophy and religion of Greece. Homer refers to them in "The Iliad", comparing their sound to that of the high-pitched talk of old men.
7 0 F R O N T L I N E

SANJAY SONDHI

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

also stands for strength, courage and good luck in Japanese culture. It is referred to as Katsumushi, or the invincible, and is etched on to the swords and armour of Samurai warriors. Family crests bore symbols of dragonies. Not surprisingly, the Japanese were the rst to create a dragony nature reserve. Other cultures, too, acknowledged the dragony. While to the Navajo Indians of the south-western United States it symbolised pure water, to the Chinese it was a symbol of instability and to the Tahitians, it was a shadow of Hiro, the god of thieves. To the Zuni Indians, killing the dragony was taboo as they believed it possessed supernatural powers. These myths and beliefs illustrate how humans closely observed insects and tried to arrive at explanations for their behaviour and weird structures. The other member of the order Odonata, the damsely, is smaller, with similar looking hind- and forewings. Unlike the dragony, it can fold its wings over the body. It is a weak ier and does not nd much mention in human culture.
INSECT ENTERTAINERS

A C RI C K ET . T A M A Zoo in Tokyo holds an annual autumn show on singing Orthoptera. In 1993, visitors saw and heard 43 singing cricket and long-horned grasshopper species. Department stores in Tokyo sell electronic chirping bugs and recorded cricket music.

Crickets sounds may be perceived as irritating today and the loud call of cicadas may earn it a place in the Guinness Book of World Records, but to ancient Greeks, Chinese and Japanese, crickets and cicadas were delightful companions. Singing and ghting crickets were part of a 2,000-year Chinese culture3. Before the Tang dynasty, people listened to cricket songs for information that helped them with their agricultural activities. During the Tang dynasty, crickets were kept captive in cages as pets. Poems were written about them; glyphs were made showing cicadas and crickets; expensive and exquisite cages, sometimes in gold, were built for them; and generally, it was considered an elegant hobby to keep singing insects. Joining crickets in this exalted position were katydids, which were viewed as symbols of luck and virtue. The wings of crickets and katydids

were treated with special oils to make their music more pleasing to the ear. There are no crickets or katydids in autumn and winter, but so deep was the adoration of the Chinese for these insects that they began rearing them in captivity so that autumns would not fall silent. This obsession resulted in the proliferation of paraphernalia for insects and insect rearing, and these soon became status symbols. At the height of this fad, professionals were hired to take care of the insects so that they could be presented at important events or in the emperors court. With the beginning of the Song dynasty, cricket ghts began to ourish as a sport. Cricket ghts were taken so seriously that noblemen would never hesitate to trade a good horse for a cricket. Books were written and manuals developed to take this sport to exhilarating heights. History records a cricket king who actively encouraged the sport and a cricket minister, Cu Zhi Jin, who compiled Book of Crickets,
F R O N T L I N E 7 1

which became the Bible for cricket fans! Since then, cricket ghts have been alternately banned and raised to the status of national sport. Cricket ghting, despite its ups and downs, has survived to modern times. The concluding scene of the lm The Last Emperor in which the emperor passes on his 60-year-old cricketpot to the young boy aptly depicts the place crickets occupied in Chinese culture. Crickets and katydids were not the only insects to be valued as songsters. Grasshoppers and cicadas were also welcomed with equal fervour by the Chinese, Greek, Japanese and American Indian cultures. Whether as oracles, religious symbols, musicians or entertainers, insects benetted ancient and medieval human civilisations. What about modern humans? Will insects always remain creepy-crawlies to us? Records of anthropologists show that more than 700 species of insects are well known and used by different hunter-gatherers of the Kalahari. Yet the San, one of the central Kalahari tribes, consider insects goowaha, meaning useless things, and look upon ethno-entomologists with nothing but amusement. The San may have hit the nail on the head in describing how humans today view insects. Geetha Iyer is an author, a nature enthusiast and an independent consultant in the elds of education and environment. REFERENCES 1. Swami Krishnananda; Fifth Brahmana: Madhu-Vidya The Honey Doctrine; The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, Chapter II; http://www.swami-krishnananda. org/brdup/brhad_II-05.html 2. Schull, Bill; adapted from Life Song: In Harmony With All Creation. Excerpts available at http://innerself.com/content/articles /miscellaneous/science-atechnology/4587-communicatingwith-insects.html 3. Cultural Entomology Digest -Insect articles. www.insects.org/ced

books
Faith and reason
written with unassuming scholarliness. B Y L Y L A B A V A D A M

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

The autobiography of Asghar Ali Engineer is a perceptive commentary on society

HEN Vice-President M. Hamid Ansari released Asghar Ali Engineers autobiography, A Living Faith, he described the author as a modern-day Spinoza. Comparisons of the two thinkers march side by side. Both are radical and free thinkers, grounded in moral philosophy and steeped in democratic political thought. Like the 17th century Dutch philosopher, Engineer has offered rational critiques of formalised religion. Asked about his work, Engineer said,People have asked me why I wrote this autobiography. My only answer is that I felt like sharing my experiences, and I wanted to reach out to people who matter and who are concerned. I have three aims in life peace and communal harmony, social reform, and gender justice. Sixty-three years after Independence we are still lagging far behind in all these. Our society suffers from exploitation in the name of religion. Religion is supposed to make you humane and compassionate, but people kill in the name of religion. I discovered they kill because of vested economic interests, political interests. It is a clash of interests that causes violence not a clash of religions as is commonly believed. I have given an account of all this in my book. Born in 1939, Engineer graduated in civil engineering and worked for 20 years as a sanitation engineer in the Bombay Municipal Corporation before he retired prematurely to work for the Bohra reform movement. He has authored more than 50 books and innumerable arti-

neer has been ghting for reforms in his Bohra community and has had to pay a heavy price for it: he was excommunicated and he faced physical assaults. He believes that to be a truly religious person one has to have four qualities. A quest for truth. Humility. Compassion. Being anti-establishment. The reforms I am ghting for in the Bohra community I am up against a very powerful establishment. I have met ve Prime Ministers to try and get them to intercede in what is happening among Bohras, but they all told me they were helpless. His understanding of Islam is deep and uncomplicated and at the same time unsparing. Yet, as the historian Mushirul Hasan, who wrote the Foreword for A Living Faith, said, he argued for reforms and innovations within the inherited traditions. IN REVIEW

A Living Faith: My Quest for Peace, Harmony and Social Change by Asghar Ali Engineer; Orient BlackSwan; pages 345, Rs.525.
cles. He is the director of the Institute of Islamic Studies, the head of the Centre for Study of Society and Secularism, and the founding chairman of the Asian Muslim Action Network. He is also one of the founders of the Peoples Union for Civil Liberties. He was awarded the Communal Harmony Award in 1997 and the Right Livelihood Award (widely known as the Alternative Nobel Prize) in 2004. For the past three decades, Engi7 2 F R O N T L I N E

REFORM MOVEMENT

There is a wonderful innocence in Engineer. A complete believer and follower of his faith, he cannot fathom the authoritarian manner in which it is being applied. The majority of the community acquiesce to the absolute authority of the high priest, Syedna Burhanuddin, who controls the community with an iron hand. A handful of people do not. Engineer is one of them. His earliest experience with the diktats of the high priest was when he, as a young boy, was told that he would have to perform sajda (prostrate oneself) before the Syedna. He refused, saying it was un-Islamic since sajda is performed only before Allah. A marshal who noticed his refusal caught

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

SHASHI ASHIWAL

ASG H AR A L I E N G I N E E R . For the past three decades, he has been ghting for reforms in his Bohra community and has had to pay a heavy price for it. He was excommunicated and also assaulted.

him by the neck, called him a shaitan (devil) and forced him to prostrate himself. The haplessness of his father in that situation must have served to keep the memory alive in the young Engineer. Many years later, when he wrote an article in support of Bohras in Udaipur who had challenged the Syedna, Engineer again felt the heat of the powerful priests. A group of angry Bohras surrounded the building of The Times of India in which the article appeared and threatened to burn it down if an apology was not printed. The newspaper banned future articles by Engineer, but that was not the end of his tribulations. His relatives and friends pressured him to apologise. In all clarity and innocence of belief, he writes, I maintained that there was no question of apologising as I had not done anything wrong. I was against exploitation in the name of re-

ligion and not against religion per se. I was ghting against exploitation and restrictions on freedom of expression which is both my Islamic as well as constitutional right. But his relatives would not accept these arguments. They prefer to buy their way to peace rather than ght for any principle, much less the principle of freedom, he writes. Finally he was presented with an ultimatum. They said that if I wanted to maintain any relationship with them I would have to withdraw myself from the reform movement or they would never see my face again. I said I would prefer their absence than give up my ght for freedom. No one from my family ever met me thereafter. That last line, so powerful in its reality, is written with a moving simplicity, and is typical of Engineer, who has never dramatised his life even though there is enough material in it
F R O N T L I N E 7 3

for a thriller. His mother, torn between her loyalty to the Syedna and her love for her son, chose the former but was still taunted by the community. Engineer writes of how she would sometimes come to his ofce and weep before my colleagues. When he and other reformists launched the democratically elected Central Board of the Dawoodi Bohra Community at an all-world reformist Bohra Conference in 1977, stories of oppression began to ow from among the one lakh delegates who attended. Engineer writes: In one case in Udaipur, a father who was with the reformists died of acid burns and his son who was Shabab (an orthodox Bohra organisation) was forced to marry on the day his fathers funeral procession was held. He was even asked to curse him. Unlike the rest of his community, many of whom acknowledge that greed is the driving force behind the

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

tyranny, Engineer has refused to tolerate it. This is actually a refusal to be cynical, and to that extent he is truly a revolutionary, albeit a non-violent one. Interestingly, Engineer is himself the son of a priest and was brought up with strict and deep religious training. This makes his arguments all the more strong as he is completely capable of a serious debate on religious knowledge. The establishment recognised this and saw him as enemy number one. His work in garnering support for the reform movement was tediously slow. The Bohra establishment wielded power by fear, and this prevented many from supporting Engineer. But small things such as the gathering of 64 signatures from the staff of the Aligarh Muslim University, assistance from Jayprakash Narayan, and the overwhelming support of almost all sections of the media furthered the cause of reform. But regardless of all this and despite the fact that Engineer made the movement an international one, he feels sad that the community is still in the grip of the high priest. Social and religious reformer, linguist, intellectual, writer there is no all-encompassing label that describes the author. He is as much a student of Marx as he is of Farman Fatehpuri, the Urdu scholar who authored seminal works on the poets Mirza Ghalib and Muhammad Iqbal. Marx guided him to take an objective view of religion while he still remained grounded in the essential teachings of Islam. In his book he writes, Although I remained a believer, I too was converted to Marxism. In my opinion it is not necessary to be an atheist to be a Marxist. Taking his cue from Christian liberation theology which originated in South America, Engineer learnt to take the best of all knowledge from diverse streams. This thirst for combining faith and reason what perhaps can be called pure knowledge is something of a trademark. Being open to all inuences is particularly valuable in the current age where exists, as Kumar Ketkar, editor of Divya Marathi, says, a dangerous trend of middle

class and intellectual conviction that justies communalism. Engineers endeavours for communal harmony began in the post-Emergency days when the Janata Party was in power. Communal violence broke out in Aligarh, Varanasi and Jamshedpur. When Indira Gandhi returned to power, the dangerous trend continued, with the politicising of communal tensions. After a number of riots in Biharsharif in the early 1980s, Engineer went to investigate them. He found that the RSS machinery was well oiled in the area and it spread rumours in villages which were instrumental in spreading the violence.

It is a clash of interests that cause violence, not a clash of religions as is believed. Engineer
Then came the Shah Bano case, the conversion of Dalits to Islam in Meenakshipuram (Tamil Nadu), riots in Meerut and Bhagalpur, and the demolition of the Babri Masjid. Throughout, Engineer attempted to gather information, prepare reports and keep passions low on both sides, but the voice of moderation was not heard. He says he had the distinct feeling that Indian secularism was being shredded. His involvement with secularism and anticommunal work is a natural corollary of his reformist work. The obvious common bond is that he is committed to building an inclusive society, one in which humanity overrides all else. If there is any criticism of the book, it is that it does not reect adequately the dangers, the violence, the struggles and the tireless striving that have been a part of Engineers life. It is not that he avoids these aspects of his life he
7 4 F R O N T L I N E

cannot because they are what have made the man but he describes them with a blandness that is almost disappointing to readers, especially those who have followed his work via newspaper reports. For instance, take the case of the very rst attack on his life; an incident that most other people would describe in minute detail is dismissed in a couple of lines by Engineer. It happened in Calcutta [now Kolkata] in 1977 when Engineer had hired the Muslim Press Club for a press conference to further the reformist cause. The Syedna had heard about the press conference and paid a large amount of money to the club to cancel the reservation. Of what must have been a tensioncharged atmosphere, Engineer writes, I found the premises locked and waited with a journalist friend for someone to come and open it. Suddenly some people began gathering around us. I became suspicious but stood there. Soon a large number of Bohras and some goondas collected there and attacked me. I could not run. But my journalist friend knew some young people from the area and summoned them to help me. They lifted me bodily and ghting their way out, took me to a nearby building which was a safe place. I escaped death very narrowly. A striking quality about Engineer is his rationality and his calm approach to whatever comes his way. This equanimity is what comes across as one turns the pages of the book. On reection, even though there seems to be a disconnect with the turbulence of his life and his manner of relating it, it is actually a tting style for Engineer to tell his own story. It is difcult to write an autobiography because in our society to come out with the truth is a very challenging thing to do, said Engineer. I have tried to be honest and truthful as much as a human person can be. There is no doubt that the book is a perceptive commentary on society written with unassuming scholarliness. It is an accurate representation of the author and his life and hence a true autobiography.

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

books/review

Law in a nutshell
A comprehensive and user-friendly digest that offers a collection of the Supreme Courts judgments dealing with criminal law. B Y V . V E N K A T E S A N
his book is very popular because it follows a unique method whereby the law, as laid down by the Supreme Court on various subjects, is made available for perusal with minimum effort. Every year, the Supreme Courts judgments are printed in several volumes of recognised journals. It is almost impossible for a lay reader to understand the signicance of these judgments under every branch of law, let alone criminal law. This digest helps the reader understand the continuities and changes in any area under criminal law from 1950, when the Constitution came into force, to 2010. As the Supreme Courts judgments inuence the governance of the country in myriad ways, this book helps to make these accessible to every reader in a user-friendly manner. The rst edition of this book appeared in 1961. The author, J.K. Soonavala, then senior counsel in the Bombay High Court, died before the second edition came out in 1968. But that did not stop his relatives, friends and admirers from updating and expanding this digest by bringing out three subsequent editions in the authors name, in 1990, 2007 and 2011.For the purpose of review, one is tempted to choose entries, arranged in alphabetical order, some of which have hogged newspaper headlines in recent days, for random reading. The rst to hold ones attention is the one on capital punishment in Volume 1. Because the state nds it legitimate to take away the life of a convict sentenced to death, the Supreme Courts justication of this inhuman punishment over the years is of considerable interest. The very rst case that required the Supreme Court to pronounce on its

IN REVIEW

J.K. Soonavalas Supreme Court Criminal Digest (19502010), fifth edition, 2011, Volumes 1 to 4, edited by V.R. Manohar; LexisNexis Butterworths Wadhwa, Nagpur; Rs.6,995.
constitutionality was Jagmohan Singh vs State of Uttar Pradesh, decided in 1973. A few entries in the book give a gist of the Supreme Courts holdings in this case, and in subsequent cases. The court in this case held that deprivation of life was constitutionally permissible if it was done according to procedure established by law, and it would be very difcult to hold that capital sentence was regarded per se as unreasonable by our Constitution makers or that it was not in the public interest. Ironically, the legal challenge posed in that case by the petitioner to
F R O N T L I N E 7 5

the continuance of the death penalty in our statute books continues to be relevant even today. The court rejected his argument that the uncontrolled and unguided discretion given to judges to impose capital punishment or imprisonment for life was violative of Article 14 of the Constitution, which guarantees the right to equality. The court did so on the grounds that there were a number of safeguards to regulate the exercise of this discretion. In subsequent years, the legislature as well as the court tried to strengthen these safeguards. In the new Code for Criminal Procedure (Cr.PC) brought into effect in 1974, it became imperative for judges to write very special reasons for the award of the death penalty. In the Bachan Singh (1980) case, the Supreme Courts vejudge Constitution Bench identied seven mitigating circumstances that the court should consider in favour of the convict before awarding the death penalty. The court evolved the rarest of rare doctrine in this case, to hold that the extreme penalty of death need not be inicted except in the gravest cases of extreme culpability. The court further limited the application of this doctrine by asking the judges to ask and answer whether there was something uncommon about the crime which rendered the sentence of imprisonment for life inadequate, and whether there was no alternative to the death sentence even after according maximum weightage to the mitigating circumstances in favour of the offender. However, the frequent resort to this doctrine to justify the imposition of the death sentence by the Supreme Court in the post-Bachan Singh era showed that there was no consistency

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

TH E S UPR E M E C O UR T building. The courts judgments inuence governance in myriad ways. The book helps to make these accessible to every reader.

in the courts judgments and that the sentencing discretion of the judges continued to be unfettered. In a recent case (Ajit Singh) decided by the court, a two-judge Bench justied the imposition of the death penalty on the appellant-convict after admitting that there was not a precise denition of what constituted a rarest of rare case. For the proponents of the abolition of the death penalty, this should be reason enough for the Supreme Court to declare a moratorium on the death penalty in all pending and future cases, until the court evolves a suitable denition of the doctrine to guide its imposition by the courts. The reliance on a vague doctrine to take away the life of a human being cannot be a procedure established by law, as required under Article 21, they say. The proponents of abolition point

out that in most cases, the court appears to have inferred that rarest of rare means the brutality and severity of the offence. This was the result of losing sight of the emphasis placed in the Bachan Singh case by the court on the need to assess the feasibility of an alternative punishment to the death sentence in a given case, however brutal the offence. The Supreme Courts plea, repeated in several judgments, that it cannot abolish the death penalty, as it is not part of the legislative domain also fails to convince the proponents of abolition. After all, the same court declared Section 303 of the Indian Penal Code unconstitutional in Mithu vs State of Punjab in 1983. Section 303 imposed the death penalty on a convict if he was found to have committed murder while undergoing a life sentence for
7 6 F R O N T L I N E

another offence. In Bachan Singh, the court refused to declare the death penalty unconstitutional, not because it did not have that power but for other reasons. The entry on clemency is insightful. The power to pardon a convict, entrusted with the President or the Governor, is not an act of grace or mercy but part of the constitutional scheme (the Kehar Singh case, 1989). At a time when critics question the relevance of the President and Governors exercising this power after the Supreme Court has conrmed the death penalty, the Supreme Courts judgment in the Kehar Singh case is instructive. It is open to the President, the court said, to scrutinise the evidence on the record of the criminal case and come to a different conclusion from that recorded by the court

M. LAKSHMANAN

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

with regard to the guilt of and sentence imposed on the accused. The President, the court said, acted in a wholly different plane from that in which the court acted. More important, the court can examine whether the President considered all the relevant materials while rejecting a mercy petition from a convict. There are other entries in the book that can persuade a reader to treat criminal law as a fascinating discipline. An entry on communalism in Volume 2 refers to the Supreme Courts decision in a case that the valuable and cherished right of freedom of expression and speech may at times have to be subjected to reasonable subordination to social interests, needs and necessities to preserve the very core of democratic life (State of Karnataka vs Praveen Bhai Togadia, 2004). In an earlier case, too, the court was clear that the promotion of feelings of enmity, hatred and ill will between different religious communities could not be carried out in the name of political thesis or historical truth. Demands for the prosecution of Janata Party leader Subramanian Swamy following a recent newspaper article by him seeking disenfranchisement of Muslims who do not subscribe to their Hindu ancestry make sense in view of this clear enunciation of law. An entry on Law in Volume 3 makes for interesting reading. It refers to an early pronouncement of the Supreme Court, which has since been reversed. In A.K. Gopalan vs State of Madras, decided in 1950, the court said: To read the law as meaning rules of natural justice will land one in difculties because the rules of natural justice, as regards procedure, are nowhere dened and the Constitution cannot be read as laying down a vague standard. The word Law is equivalent to state-made Law. In the A.K. Gopalan case, the Supreme Court dismissed his challenge to the Preventive Detention Act under which he was arrested. Contrast this with what the Supreme Court said in the Bachan Singh case: What is a necessary element of the rule of law is that the law must not

be arbitrary or irrational and it must satisfy the test of reason. The Supreme Courts contribution to the evolution of law is indeed exemplary.
ON PUBLIC MEETING

The entry on public meeting in Volume 4 refers to the only case that throws light on the right to assemble peaceably and without arms (Himat Lal K. Shah vs Commissioner of Police, Ahmedabad, 1973). Recently, the ruling came to the aid of both Team Anna and the Delhi Police when the latter rst refused permission to Anna Hazare to hold an indenite fast at a public place. The Delhi Police relied on the ruling to hold that the right to assemble does not mean that the right can be exercised at any and every place. Team Anna, however, pointed to another part of the judgment which held that the right to hold public meetings ows from Article 19(1)(b) and Article 19(1) (d), and that the state cannot impose unreasonable restrictions on this right. Ultimately, Team Annas view prevailed over that of the Delhi Police.

This digest helps the reader understand the continuities and changes under criminal law from 1950.
A curious reader will nd many other entries in this four-volume digest (there are nearly 2,000 entries) a rich source of reference material on contemporary legal issues that defy easy resolution. However, a word of caution may be justied against using the book as ones only source for keeping oneself updated on the developments in law. Certain entries suggest that the book could have gained by incorporating the
F R O N T L I N E 7 7

relevant legislative developments along with the Supreme Court judgments. The entry on plea bargaining, for instance, completely ignores the fact that Parliament made it legal by amending the Cr.PC in 2005 with the objective of reducing the pendency of criminal cases. The books entry ends with the Supreme Courts judgment in 2003, wherein it deprecated the practice in cases involving serious offences. Plea bargaining refers to pre-trial negotiations between the accused and the prosecution during which the accused agrees to plead guilty in exchange for certain concessions by the prosecution. The amendment makes it necessary for certain conditions to be fullled before a court accepts plea bargaining. These conditions require, among other things, that the offence, for which plea bargaining is invoked, must be one punishable with not more than seven years imprisonment. Habitual offenders, and those charged with socio-economic offences, and those who have committed offences against women and children are ineligible to avail themselves of plea bargaining in India. The publishers would do well to make an effort to include in the next edition entries that might have been left out inadvertently. One such is about sting operations by the media and individual citizens to expose corruption and wrongdoing in public life. The use of sting by the media has been vindicated by the Supreme Court in R.K. Anand vs Registrar Delhi High Court, in 2009. Another judgment by the Delhi High Court in the Aniruddha Bahal case last year found nothing wrong with the use of stings by journalists and citizens alike to expose corruption. The issue has come to the fore with the Delhi Police after much prodding by the Supreme Court arresting the whistle-blower MPs who organised a sting operation to expose the cash-forvotes scam in Parliament in 2008. The law on stings and entrapment is still evolving in India, and it will be useful to include an entry on the subject in a digest like this.

books/in brief

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

Sangh Parivars bluff

The book ably documents evidence of saffron terror. B Y A . G . N O O R A N I
ERROR was never absent from the Sangh Parivars techniques. The Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) has been repeatedly censured by commissions of inquiry for its complicity in communal riots. The Bharatiya Janata Partys defence of recent outrages of saffron terror exposes it completely. Subhash Gatade, an engineer by training and a freelance journalist and translator as well, has written extensively on issues of communalism and Dalit emancipation. He has rendered a service by bringing within the covers of one book ably documented evidence of the saffron terror. On January 10, RSS boss Mohan Bhagwat claimed, revealingly, that of the majority of the people whom the government has accused [in various blast cases] a few had left voluntarily and a few were told by the Sangh that this extremism [sic] will not work here, so you go away. He owes a clear duty in law to name them, the ones who left as well as the ones asked to go away. We can then identify in which of the cases launched by the police these former RSS men gured. The author describes the focus of his book. A signicant part of the book discusses terror acts perpetrated in different parts of the country by Hindutva formations. It gives an idea about the expanse of the majoritarian terror modules which can strike at will at any place and also makes it evident that it is no more a regional phenomenon. Secondly, it also brings forth the commonality of tactics used by these terror modules. Thirdly, it underlines the Himalayan task which awaits the investigating agencies as they have hitherto limited themselves to apprehending the planters of the bombs or

BOOK FACTS

Godses Children: Hindutva Terror in India by Subhash Gatade; Phros Media, New Delhi; pages 400, Rs.360.
local people who provided shelter or arranged logistical or nancial support, but are yet to nab any of the masterminds, planners, nanciers or ideologues of this terror project. Barring two chapters, which discuss the global dimensions of Hindutva terror and the Mossad phenomenon, the focus of the book remains largely conned to India. Looking at the fact that different Hindutva formations have established international networks/linkages, which have facilitated their work in many ways, this aspect of the phenomenon needs greater attention. One also needs to understand that apart from the overtly political and cultural groups, the plethora of spiritual gurus have also established an international network and it is an open secret that such groups share close relations with many militant Hindutva groups. The book records the facts of the Malegaon, Mecca Masjid, Ajmer Sharif and Samjhauta Express terrorist outrages and identies the culprits as well as the roles they played. The credit for inviting peoples attention to the terror turn in Hindutva politics and highlighting the danger it posed to society goes to writers, journalists, civil society organisations and marginal secular and leftist groups and individuals. They persisted despite limited human as well as material resources in hand and in spite of a general resistance in society to broach a topic which could put the tolerant majority community on the defensive. These efforts
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did not have much impact but helped keep the issue of Hindutva terror alive. It was only when the Malegaon 2008 bomb blast took place and the ruling dispensation led by the Congress-NCP in Maharashtra asked the Anti-Terrorism Squad of the State to investigate it that the situation took a dramatic turn. ATS chief Hemant Karkare, who had been successful a few months back to nab terrorists belonging to Sanatan Sanstha for bomb blasts in Thane and Panvel (April 2008), took up the case with the same vigour. After a painstaking investigation, he brought forth the startling fact [that] members of the RSS and allied Hindutva organisations had been engaged in creating terror modules at different places in the country and had been successful in even penetrating the military. The BJP and the RSS cried witchhunt. The book exposes that falsehood and very many more. In doing so, the author makes some important points. One could say that the approach of secularists is state centric; it not only emphasises the role of the state in combating communalism but makes demands on the state, it asks the state to ban communal outts or take strict action against the violation of constitutional rights or popularise scientic temper, etc. This approach does not address the question of secularisation of polity. It is left unsaid but effectively the societal vacuum is left open to religious and communal organisations or NGOs or other status quoist formations. Clearly, the approach does not even envisage the possibility of the state being in the hands of communal forces (that would then have a free run, enacting laws, carving out statues to present Hindutva itself as another name for democracy).

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books/review

Dialectics of culture
The authors embark on an appraisal of the semantics of the culture industry.
BY SHELLEY WALIA

UR history extends over a critical and crucial period of adjustments when nothing in religion, politics, society or the life of the individual is absolute and any attempt to prove the contrary is doomed to failure. Life cannot be xed and codied; the very nature of existence is that it is changing, and when one thing changes everything changes with it. Living at the crossroads of culture, one can feel the immediacy of a uctuating, unstable, dualistic, exciting and creative life. Though it has connotations of aesthetic development pertaining to works and practices of intellectual and artistic activity, in recent literary-cultural debates the term culture has been employed to come to grips with the ideological representations behind things and the hegemony of capitalist structures. With the advent of postmodernism and the rapid and radical social change in its wake, the nature of those disciplines that both reect our culture and help to shape it have inevitably undergone transformation. Modes and categories inherited in their conventional form no longer t contemporary times as there is a visible erosion of the assumptions and presuppositions that supported disciplines in the past and their unambiguous xity. The conict between cultures and ideologies is no longer a scufe of characterisations, but a worldwide clash. It is a matter of tangible conicts, not just academic ones. Culture and its value are relevant to a world in which the joint wealth of the three richest individuals is equal to the combined wealth of 600 millions of the poorest. It is just that culture wars that are of importance concern such questions as

IN REVIEW

Global Culture Industry by Scott Lash and Celia Lury; Polity Press, Cambridge; pages 240, 17.99.
ethnic cleansing, not just the relative merits of Stendhal or the detective novel. The work itself is not what matters; it is the way it is construed or used to perpetuate the dominant ideology. The content of culture is not what is important; its relevance lies in what it signies. This makes the study of culture a postmodern discipline and a focal point in debates over the impact of postmodernism on global cultural industry, including academic, publishing and media industries. Though it often seemed in the last few years that the concept of postmodernism would fade away under the painful burden of its own incoherence, the attraction for it and the clamour of debates have
F R O N T L I N E 7 9

multiplied. With its powerful congurations of new sentiments and thoughts it seemed, as David Harvey argues, set fair to play a crucial role in dening the trajectory of social and political development simply by virtue of the way it dened standards of social critique and political practice. Culture, in the modern capitalist sense, thus begins to appear both fascinating and repellent, unabashedly complex and tantalising: out of it develop stereotypes of different kinds depending on ones ideology and world view. It is a landscape which is sometimes self-questioning, and at other times rushing blindly into an unkempt confusion of the supermarket and other commonly known features of popular culture. Scott Lash and Celia Lury in their recent book Global Culture Industry focus on the different meanings of culture. The writers embark on an appraisal of post-Adorno semantics of the culture industry by employing the neo-Gramscian paradigm between the paranoid and the populist, between the belief that mass culture is an alien imposition on the people from above, and the euphoric view of it as a vital ourishing from below. Cultural meanings are seen in a permanent state of contestation, in which dominant values are indeed at work in popular culture but rarely without resistance to adaptation on the part of their audience, while meanings which emerge more organically from popular life are always at risk of being appropriated and reected by the ruling cultural order. In his essay Discourse and Discos, Terry Eagleton writes: Theory is radical and conservative together; and nowhere is this more obvious than in

books/review
postmodern thought itself. It is a striking feature of advanced capitalist societies that they are at once libertarian and authoritarian, hedonist and repressive, multiple and monolithic. The reason for this is not hard to nd. The logic of the marketplace is one of pleasure and plurality, of the ephemeral and discontinuous, of a great decentred network of desires of which individual consumers are the passing function. Capitalism is the most pluralist order history has ever known, restlessly transgressing boundaries and pitching diverse life-forms together.
DARING THESIS

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

classical culture industry was through representation, domination or hegemonic ideology. But in our emergent global culture industry, culture becomes thingied and starts to dominate both the economy and everyday life. This mediation of things has replaced the predominance of representation. Culture no longer works primarily as hegemonic ideology, as symbols, as representation but involves the emergence of things become media, of media become things.
FROM IDENTITY TO DIFFERENCE

Scott Lash and Celia Lury, therefore, at a juncture when radical texts like Adorno and Horkheimers Dialectic of Enlightenment have seen their day and are no longer theoretically adequate to dene the paradigmatic shifts in social theory, put forward a daring thesis that sets out to examine the altered view of the culture industry within the context of globalisation. The rapid rate of global ow and change has brought in a state of urgency for the writers to look beyond the Frankfurt School and examine seven cultural objects in the present times: Euro 96; Young British Art; Pixars animated movie Toy Story, Ardman Studios claymation characters Wallace and Gromit; the movie Trainspotting; Nike, and Swatch. The trajectory of their metamorphosis from their production to distribution to marketing to consumption is analysed from various perspectives betting the 21st century. Emphasising different sets of conceptual tools, the authors feel that the dynamics of the global cultural industry vary enormously from the days of Fordist or national cultural industry underlined by Adorno and Horkheimer. Though the classical culture industry has not disappeared, it does not work entirely through representation. It is so ubiquitous that it seeps out of the superstructure, and then comes to inltrate, and then take over, the infrastructure itself. Mediation in the

Scott Lash and Celia Lury give the reader seven main shifts from the classic model of culture industry to the global: from identity to difference or determinate objects with xed meanings to indeterminate objects spinning out of control in heterogeneous encounters with the reexive subjects of information capitalism; from commodity to brand or, in other words, standardised goods of the past to unique virtual entities which acquire value through particular event-experience; from representation to the thing or from culture that is interpreted to culture that is used; from the symbolic to the real; from mechanistic power to biopower; from extensity to intensity and from the actual to the virtual. Far more than giving attention to the conditions governing the material production of the objects, it is the issues of distribution and consumption that underline the authors concern. They do, however feel, that Adornos fear of culture becoming a commodity has nally come true; material objects such as watches and sportswear, Nike shoes, global football and conceptual art have become powerful cultural symbols. Production of symbols in the form of brands across the globe have now become the central concern of capitalism. Things give shape to our imaginary and we carry out our communication through objects. The argument therefore is that when culture was primarily superstructural, cultural entities were still exceptional and everyday life was the domain of material objects (goods).
8 0 F R O N T L I N E

Now, on the other hand, cultural objects are said to be everywhere. There is no denying that everyday life is now more saturated with images and cluttered with stuff than in the 1940s and 1970s. Nevertheless, as Herbert Marcuse observed in One Dimensional Man, the products indoctrinate and manipulate, the thingication of culture necessarily operates through the continuing impact of ideology, symbols and representation. I am of the rm opinion that the classical culture industry and the global coalesce in their operation and cannot be demarcated in the age of capitalism and free market economy. The thesis, though theoretically well argued by the writers, is, therefore, inherently questionable. The postmodern debate on culture is indeed a self-reexive phenomenon whose nature and form themselves reect the conditions of the postmodern and the institutional conditions along with intellectual regroupings which give shape to contemporary critical theory and critique. There is a possibility that openness and diversity in global culture, which this approach encourages, might usher in a culturalpolitical ethics in the postmodern era. The social and economic basis of this free-oating phenomenon as Terry Eagleton would call it of postmodernist culture is one important way of identifying contemporary experience with all its variants that affect individual values and social processes of the most fundamental kind. I take this observation to illustrate the reality of something being utterly wrong with our society. The pursuit of wealth has become a virtue and we are blind to the forces of social change. We never ask if our future will turn out a better civil society. Uncritical admiration for unfettered markets, the delusion of endless growth, the predatory organism of unregulated capitalism are only harbingers of a greater calamity just around the corner. The inexorable laws of economics take us by the scruff of the neck, manipulating our desires and wants.

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

books/review

Diplomats insights
This work on Indian foreign policy is built on solid research and calm reection with a unique sweep and insights that only a diplomat can provide. B Y A . G . N O O R A N I

AVID M. MALONE belongs to an aristocracy of intellect some of whose members came to reside in New Delhi as envoys of their respective countries; men like Count Stanislas Ostrorog of France, Alva Myrdal of Sweden, John Kenneth Galbraith of the United States, Octavia Paz of Mexico and Escott Reid of Canada. David Malones work reminds one of Reids books Envoy to Nehru and Hungary and Suez. His book is a product of solid research and calm reection. He had met very many Indian diplomats, especially when he was at the Centre on International Cooperation at New York University. As Canadas High Commissioner to India (2006-2008), he interacted with an amazingly wide range of Indian academics, diplomats and writers. Diligent research followed after retirement. This book has ashes of insights that only one who has served as a diplomat in India and is himself cerebral can provide. He is currently president of Canadas International Development Research Centre. The book is dedicated to his Indian friends. He writes: Regular contact with strong and curious students is a wonderful way of having ones certainties challenged. Wherever I had gone in recent years, I had either been associated with or taught at local universities, as I did in New York at Columbia Universitys School of International and Public Affairs while serving as an ambassador at the United Nations. And, naively, I had hoped to do likewise in Delhi. Reaching that great city, I thought of Indias leading graduate teaching and research institution, Jawaharlal Nehru University

BOOK REVIEW

Does the Elephant Dance? Contemporary Indian Foreign Policy by David M. Malone; Oxford University Press; pages 425, Rs.695.
(JNU). But I was rebuffed, very politely. The relevant Dean there explained to me that several faculty members feared my bias, perhaps being comfortable only with their own. It was the JNUs loss. This is a belated review; for the reviewer hesitated long on whether or not to write one. David M. Malone is a good friend; a generous mention of the writer in his book was an added inhibition. Disclosure of interest apart, what impels one to review this book is its unique sweep history, economics, domestic politics and diplomacy deF R O N T L I N E 8 1

tachment charged with empathy and rich insights. Sample this. As a university student, he travelled to Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and both parts of Kashmir. I have visited no place outside Iran closer in atmosphere, style, and inclination to Persian manners, customs, and outlook than the Kashmir valley, and I loved it on contact, as I still do. How many Indians have noticed those afnities, pronounced as they are? In May 1970, while on a visit to Srinagar, the editor of a leading periodical exclaimed to the reviewer: This place is a part of Central Asia! The compass of his book is best set out in his own words. The scope of the topic is vast and daunting. This may explain the few scholarly attempts at surveying Indian foreign policy of late. Most authors, even memoirists, tackle one or a few of the themes of Indian foreign policy of interest to them, often ones that were particularly salient during the period covered. Picking just a few angles is, in many ways, easier than attempting to order the features of Indian foreign policy as a whole. The latter allows for the inclusion of many issues and relationships but requires the exclusion of others, a painful business, particularly for an author having delved into more than can be conveyed in a book of reasonable length. Inevitably, this volume slights a number of Indias partners, in an attempt to avoid the deadening effect that a cataloguing of bilateral relationships or Indian involvement in a myriad of multilateral institutions would produce. Hence, the following chapters, in both what they include and exclude or touch upon only tangentially (for example, my own country Canada), represent a debatable set of

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

choices of the countries, forums, and diplomatic processes that have mattered the most to post-independence India, do so today, or are likely to emerge as dominant in the near future. Accordingly, Indias relations with Latin America and the Caribbean as a whole are not discussed at length (in spite of strong Diaspora links with the Commonwealth Caribbean and increasingly meaningful economic links with Brazil, Mexico and Chile). Likewise, Indias relations with much of Africa, long seen through the prism of

Indian trading communities spread around the continent, particularly along its shores, are addressed mainly through the prism of Indias growing anxiety about its access to the natural resources for which its economy will increasingly hunger. While the pages of this volume develop only a few major themes, each chapter ends with some conclusions deriving from its earlier paragraphs, a drafting device more helpful perhaps to the author than to the reader. Self-deprecating humour is an engaging trait. India has produced writers, artists, economists, scientists, historians, administrators and diplomats of world class. It has not produced a single scholar on the Cold War. The contest is always viewed through the prism of Indias foreign policy and its own national interests; perceived narrowly, almost always. Not surprisingly, there is little interest in the works of the great masters who wrote on the very fundamentals of international politics Reinhold Niebuhr, Hans Morgenthau, E.H. Carr, George Kennan, Louis Halle and Walter Lippmann. Little notice is taken of the writings of John J. Mearsheimer. This Indian self-absorption (narcissism?) accounts for touchiness; elation at praise and deep resentment at criticism, of a piece with this is a consistent refusal to acknowledge interests other than ones own, especially those of Pakistan and China. A discussion of Pakistan along with Indias other neighbours brings out several Indian pathologies when dealing with neighbours.
MYTHS AND METAPHORS

that an India-Pakistan reconciliation is like trying to treat two patients whose only disease is an allergy to each other. Malone might have done well to omit this puerile comment in a serious book. It implies that the two countries can never be friends. Not surprisingly, that envoy advocated in December 2001 stoppage of the river water ow to Pakistan; a ne testimonial to professional competence and grasp of the Indus Treaty.
INDIA-PAKISTAN TIES

DA VID M. MA L O N E . The former Canadian High Commissioner to India is now president of Canadas International Development Research Centre.

In most narratives of standard works, the specic disputes which caused estrangement in relations are either glossed over or smothered under comfortable myths and metaphors, or the record is recalled with palpable falsehoods. A former Indian High Commissioner to Pakistan returned after a brief tenure to spout hate. An American expert, whose writings are peppered with factual errors galore, quotes him with apparent approval
8 2 F R O N T L I N E

His thesis is, of course, utterly false. But it is the kind of falsehood that makes us live comfortably with our impossible positions. India-Pakistan relations were warm in 1953 (Nehru went to Karachi); were promising in 1960 (Indus Treaty); in 1962-63; in 1997-98; and from 2004-2007. In the rst three cases, Nehrus intransigence on Kashmir wrecked the dtente. He had admitted to Sheikh Abdullah privately in a Note of August 25, 1952, that as early as 1948 he had all but decided against a plebiscite. Nawaz Sharif fought the 1997 general election on a plank of friendship with India only to be deceived by Inder Kumar Gujral, who reneged on their accord on a working group on Kashmir. Incidentally he, of the bogus Gujral Doctrine, offered Nepal in 1990, as it was in the throes of an upheaval, a draft treaty worse than the one of 1950, which all Nepali parties denounce. And, from 2004-2007 India and Pakistan had drawn up the basics of an accord on Kashmir. All of 1959-60 China sought to arrive at a fair accord on the boundary, conceding the McMahon Line and asking for the Aksai-Chin area. But Nehru had decided way back in 1954 that the map of that year, which showed a rm line in Ladakh, was not negotiable. The ofcial maps of 1948 and 1960 depicted the boundary from the Sino-Indo-Afghan tri-junction in the west right up to the Sino-IndianNepal tri-junction in the east as undened that is, in both the western and middle sectors. One wishes the author had discussed this crucial as-

VARSHA YESHWANT KUMAR

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

pect of Indias self-righteous policy in greater detail. Most of the media dutifully follow up the ofcial line, TV channels especially. At the end of September, a senior anchor of a leading TV channel exclaimed: Behind one lies the McMahon Line. He was in Ladakh. The book makes a timely appearance now that both Indias economy and diplomacy are reaching what Rostow called the take-off stage. The year 1991 was a signicant turning

point in Indian politics, economic orientation, and foreign policy. It coincided with the collapse of the post-Second World War world order. Indias policies became more pragmatic and its pronouncements less doctrine. The manner in which Indias international relations evolved assisted India in creating higher levels of economic growth and earning greater global inuence. However, India still grapples with a number of impor-

AFG H AN PR E S I D E N T H A M I D Karzai and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in New Delhi in April 2006. Malone writes: "Indian consistently cultivated Prime Minister Hamid Karzai as an ally, but recently is rumoured to have opened channels of its own with the Taliban...."
F R O N T L I N E 8 3

tant security and political challenges at home, in its region, and globally. On the domestic front, while the opening up of the political space to new social groups has deepened democracy in India, it has also led to severe political fragmentation and often creates obstacles to effective policymaking. Indias region is fraught with security threats arising out of unstable, often weak states such as Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Myanmar, and Afghanistan, a near-neighbour in which India is much invested. Further aeld, India could serve as a pivot in a new triangle (much promoted by geostrategic commentators) involving the USA, China and India. Beyond the sphere of enjoyable geostrategic speculation, India has in recent times beneted from cooperation with the USA, while it grapples with perennial potential security threats emanating from China. Indias regional and global security concerns are reected in its policies relevant to military modernisation, maritime security, and nuclear policy. But domestic security concerns overwhelmingly predominate. They are just the ones which remain unaddressed not least because of a volatile public opinion shaped by unscrupulous politicians and a self-righteous, ignorant media, bar a few honourable exceptions. Comments on Afghanistan bear quotation in extenso. Aside from similar nations such as Bhutan and the Maldives, perhaps the one country in the region where Indias involvement has not played against it to the Pakistani establishments distress is Afghanistan. Indians tend to see Delhis policy as altruistic, in the words of a recent editorial: Delhis partnership with Kabul has thrived because Delhi has neither geographic access to Afghanistan nor a political agenda of its own. What India wants is a moderate and stable Afghanistan that is in harmony with its neighbours. This assessment glosses over a simple calculus in Delhis policy towards Afghanistan to prevent Kabul from tilting excessively towards Pakistan, and allowing itself to be subsumed by Islamabad

SHANKER CHAKRAVARTY

books/review
into its security space. Delhi worries that when the U.S.-led NATO forces begin to pull out, as several NATO members have signalled they wish to do soon, Kabul could submit to the combined inuence of Pakistan (supported by China) and the Taliban, leaving India as the loser in a geostrategic tug-of-war. These worries as of mid-2010 are not ill-founded: desperate for an exit strategy of its own, Washington appears to be encouraging a negotiated solution to the conict that could only strengthen Pakistans hand locally. India consistently cultivated Prime Minister Hamid Karzai as an ally, but recently is rumoured to have opened up channels of its own with the Taliban despite maintaining that there is no distinction between good and bad Taliban. A Western withdrawal from Afghanistan would leave numerous Indian assets highly vulnerable; even under present circumstances the Indian embassy was attacked twice in fteen months in 2008-9. Delhis remaining option, were that scenario to unfold, of seeking (perhaps with Moscow) to revive the Afghani Northern Alliance, would doubtless prove a disappointing and expensive consolation prize. On October 4, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President Hamid Karzai concluded in New Delhi an agreement whereunder India agrees to assist, as mutually determined, in the training, equipping and capacity building programmes of Afghan National Security Forces. Its implications will be far-reaching. The work covers the whole gamut of Indias relations with the U.S., Russia, the European Union, Japan, the Gulf States, Iran and South-east Asia, besides the neighbours. Indias policy was appreciated with much more moderate enthusiasm by the West, which, with overweening superiority, and the assumption that any democracy worthy of the concept should align on it, indulged quite frequently in bullying tactics towards Delhi (while also assisting it economically, particularly with food aid). The Western, particularly U.S., tactics viewed with hindsight today were distasteful, and, in any event, proved consistently counter productive in compelling Indias compliance. Russia was eventually able to acquire India as an ally, virtually by default, through a more relaxed projection towards India of its ideological posture, through patience with Indian rhetorical ourishes, and a realist appreciation that India mattered in the balance of power in Asia. Indian needling of the West, particularly of the USA, the fruit of its anti-imperialist sentiment, and the high-minded nature of much Indian speech-making at the U.N. and elsewhere, was congruent with its eventual alliance with Moscow, but the latter was unable to assist India much with several of its pressing needs. This is a fair assessment of the policies.

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

Indian needling of the West was congruent with its eventual alliance with Moscow.
So is this one on Indias conduct of its foreign policy, its diplomacy. Indians are mostly brilliant, hard-working, loquacious, uent, and creative. They generally cleave to engagement with others, and this works wonders at the bilateral level, where the parameters of national interests are perhaps most clearly dened on both sides. In bilateral diplomacy, India has made many friends. Multilaterally, however, while generating for itself a reputation as a country that always needs to be contended with, India has achieved less to date, with its nancial diplomacy an honourable exception. The perceived need to outank all potential or actual rivals and impress all comers some8 4 F R O N T L I N E

times leads Indian practitioners to monopolise attention through rhetorical brilliance and to spend as much time on impressing the gallery as on tending effectively to Indian interests. The cleverest person in the room may win many arguments, but still not win the game, as suggested in the previous chapter. Many of those interviewed for this book in India itself, in South Asia, and beyond have commented that Delhis negotiating style too often exhibits no give while rarely hesitating to communicate non-negotiable principles and demands. Coming as it does from a committed friend of India, these remarks must be taken to heart. This is a work of enormous worth. Its authors appraisals are balanced and sound. At the strategic level, India is not yet a particularly signicant player beyond its own neighbourhood. International experts view only the Indian navy as having developed both a strategy and the political support and resources to implement it in expanding Indias global reach. Time and history are on Indias side as it struggles to recover from several centuries of foreign domination and its consequences. Its re-emergence, particularly if it manages its signicant domestic challenges with success, will be one of the major shifts of the twenty-rst century. It will have been hard won, and should gladden both students of history and of foreign affairs the world over. Twenty or thirty years from now, the tentative, contingent nature of many of my judgments today may well seem over-cautious. I certainly hope so. Over 40 years ago, Dorothy Woodman, another friend of India, wrote: India today seems to be the victim of three traumas: Kashmir, the Aksai Chin, poverty. To try to resolve the rst two by vast military expenditure can only direct her funds and energies from the struggle against poverty. To settle for the present stalemate is to condone a militarily active frontier across Asia (Himalayan Frontiers, page 321). The situation in 2011 is not much more promising than it was in 1969.

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

Column

The basic structure

The government and the opposition together must take responsibility for the countrys growth and preserve the structure of the Constitution.
OOKING at the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) governments troubled second term, what seems to be a signicant difference from its rst term is the attitude of the two major parties or groups, the UPA and the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), to the institutions that have made India a functioning democracy. In India, we do not know what constructive criticism means, and we can accept that as an attribute of Indian democracy. Opposition means opposition, total and unrelenting. One side opposes; the other side replies in kind. Neither listens. Well, it is the way we are. But the criticism by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), its antics in Parliament, and its various postures in the public domain leave one a little curious. A good deal of it is justied, given the scams that have come tumbling out of various grotty cupboards, with the promise of more to come as time goes on. And then there has been the orchestrated confrontation between Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee and Home Minister P. Chidambaram. But nonetheless, the BJPs reactions have been slightly curious. Curious because it has been so over the top. There is a shrillness in its opposition, its criticism; the biblical rending of garments has been performed over and over again. Not allowing Parliament to function is now so much a part of opposition strategy as to have becom almost formal parliamentary practice; it is not just the BJP which does it, though; the Congress did just that when the NDA was in power. But what, one would like to ask both parties, does it do to Parliament

Point of View
BHASKAR GHOSE
as an institution? They know the answers, which is the alarming part. They know and they do not really care. But people in general must necessarily be worried, even frightened. It is one of those institutions that have made India the democracy it is, giving the lie to those who foretold its destruction within years of becoming independent. Stalling it, making it into an arena for shouting and screaming, can only weaken it and therefore the fabric of Indias democratic nature. This is one part of the issue. Another is what the Central government and State governments are doing to the other institutions that make the country work. Consider the manifest idiocy of trying to appoint someone as Central Vigilance Commissioner even when one of the members of the threemember selection committee objected to the appointment on the valid ground that there was something questionable in the ofcials record or that he was chosen when two other
F R O N T L I N E 8 5

candidates with absolutely spotless records were available. But the ruling party persisted, even got the Presidents signature to his selection, and then had to face the ignominy of having the appointment set aside by the Supreme Court and being sharply rebuked by that court for what the government had tried to do. Did the government not know that such an appointment would, had it stood, have weakened an institution that clears the highest functionaries for appointment? The answer again is, of course, it knew. But it just did not care. And it is not just the Central government. The Gujarat government has had an Indian Police Service (IPS) ofcer arrested, one who has publicly accused the Chief Minister of issuing directions to the police to look the other way when the anti-Muslim pogrom of 2002 engulfed the State; the arrest was made on some laughably stupid grounds. Did the government not know what the grounds looked like to everybody? Again the answer is it certainly did, but again, it simply did not care. So, an all-India service ofcer is put in jail, making that service less effective in the State. The other element that has come into the public exchanges between the BJP and the government spokesmen is the descent into acrimonious namecalling. The number of times that the BJP has called the Prime Minister incapable of action, incompetent, powerless, and so on, has increased remarkably, and this was something started, if one remembers correctly, by no less than senior BJP leader L.K. Advani himself. It is not that one cannot call the Prime Minister incompetent or powerless. In a democracy one can, if one

Column

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

B JP M E MB E R S D I S R U P T

proceedings in the Lok Sabha on the issue of rising prices of essential commodities, in 2010.
ing urgent decisions, the crises that a Chief Minister has to face time and again. It would be easy to say this, but then one has to marvel at the fact that no less than six States are run by the BJP, that the Chief Ministers of these States would certainly be sharing their problems and difculties with the Central leadership, and would in fact be in touch with Ministers in the UPA government, and yet the strident tone of the BJPs national leadership does not change, more curiously, that of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, whom the party fancies as a future national leader. Is it because there are so many instances of corruption emerging from the UPAs cupboards? That argument will not really hold any water because for one thing the scams involve, mainly, the Congress allies the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and, recently, the Nationalist Congress Party, which pressured the government to take the extraordinary decision to lift the ban on the export of onions when food prices were rising. The 2010 Common8 6 F R O N T L I N E

wants to. All one is saying is that descriptions of that sort could, perhaps, be limited to specic instances instead of being added to all references to him. This is one of the things that seem curious, though the reason for their repeatedly saying that Manmohan Singh is incompetent is to point, indirectly, to the fact that the real power is with Congress president Sonia Gandhi, not with the Prime Minister. While we all know that, it is the frequency with which this is declared by all leaders and members of the BJP that seems odd. One needs only to look at the attitude and behaviour of another NDA constituent, the Janata Dal(U). Has one heard Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar ever say anything offensive or crude about the Congress? He has criticised the UPA often enough, and his criticism has been at times pretty strong. But it has always been within certain unspoken limits. It would be easy to say that this is because he knows what it is to run a State, the difculties in the way of tak-

wealth Games scam is undoubtedly something that involves the Congress because the former games Organising Committee chairman Suresh Kalmadi is a Congress MP, but he has been put in jail. What, then, about the brazen behaviour of the former Chief Minister of Karnataka, a BJP stalwart, about which there has not been a squeak from any of the BJPs leaders? The short answer is that no party can claim to be, what we say in Bengali, washed tulsi leaves. But the weakening of institutions goes on unabated, inspired, perhaps by the behaviour of MPs in Parliament and MLAs in State Assemblies who have thrown mikes, chairs and even pedestal fans at each other and at the Speakers. Chief Ministers use transfers as punishment, often moving ofcers two weeks after they join a particular post. It is very unlikely that these Chief Ministers ever stop to think of what the cumulative effect of all these transfers has on the administrative machinery. One can, in this context, understand the kind of movement that social activist Anna Hazare has started, although it looks as if it will end up as another political party with its own agenda. But one can see what angers him because many ordinary people are angered by the same things. Nevertheless, even he needs to look beyond corruption, at the process by which the country is being weakened until it reaches a stage where it will, as many self-proclaimed prophets said in 1947, disintegrate into small pieces and collectively sink into greater poverty and misery. Is it so difcult for governments and opposition parties to realise that both have to shoulder a tremendous responsibility if the country is to grow or, more basically, stay together? The Keshavananda Bharati judgment by the Supreme Court laid down that the basic structure of the Constitution cannot be altered by Parliament. Apart from that is it not clear that there is a basic structure that keeps the country together, and that ought not to be altered?

PTI

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

Awards

Moral historians
Amar Kant and Srilal Shukla, joint winners of the 45th Jnanpith Award, analyse the changing sociology in post-Independence north India. B Y M A N G A L E S H D A B R A L

While Srilal Shukla is the author of celebrated novels such as Raag Darbari and Makaan, Amar Kant is best known for his short stories such as Dopahar ka Bhojan, Zindagi aur Jonk and Hatyaare.
WHEN Amar Kant, the octogenarian writer in Hindi, was informed by the Bharatiya Jnanpith that he had been selected for the 45th Jnanpith Award jointly with Srilal Shukla, another octogenarian writer, he said: Srilal is a close friend and it is a pleasure to share this award with him. It was the natural response of a writer who has always upheld the values of collectiveness and equality in life and work. Amar Kant and Srilal Shukla share many other things: both of them were born in Uttar Pradesh in 1925 and received most of their education in Allahabad, the intellectual S R IL AL S H UK L A , J O I N T winner of capital of the Hindi the Jnanpith Award for 2009. heartland in the 1950s and 1960s. Through their novels and short stories, both have dissected in a masterly manner the changing sociology and the degeneration of values in postIndependence north India. Both authors also share age-related health problems now.
F R O N T L I N E

It is remarkable that the Jnanpith has honoured a writer in Hindi like Amar Kant, who is known for his leftist leanings and has been a member of the Progressive Writers Association. Srilal Shukla has not adhered to any ideological position as such (because he was a member of the U.P. civil services) but he has always maintained a broad left-humanist prole.
SRILAL SHUKLA

Born on December 31, 1925, in Atrauli near Lucknow, Srilal Shukla is best known for his novel Raag Darbari, now a modern classic running in its 18th print. It is comprised of a series, a kaleidoscope of events encountered by the young protagonist Rangnath, a research scholar, who had gone on a trip to his native place Shivpalganj, a ctional U.P. town created by the author. Unlike the innocent ambience of R.K. Narayans Malgudi, Shivpalganj is a collage of the transformations taking place in a town, the emergence of a valueless middle-class in a feudal structure, the increasing corruption and lumpenisation of society, and the downtrodden people struggling to sail through it. When Raag Darbaari was published in 1968, after a brief face-off with the bureaucracy, many critics, who considered the genre of novel as a grand national narrative, were shocked to nd a novel with no hero or an anti-hero who nally escapes the bizarre reality that is constantly chasing him. One of them termed the novel a big volume of big boredom whose destiny is to remain unread, while others dismissed it as too much of reality, too much of satire and a bundle of humorous episodes and even as being contemptuous of rural life. But, defying predictions, Raag Darbaari went on to become one of the most read and must-read texts in Hindi, a new national metaphor deconstructing the muchcelebrated image of Bharat Mata, or Mother India, famously expressed in a poem by the Chhayavadi or romantic poet Sumitranandan Pant: Bharat mata gramvasini/ Kheton mein phaila hai shyamal/ Dhool bhara maila sa aanchal (Bharat Mata dwells in the villages /with her dark soiled sari border/ spread onto the crop elds). To Srilal Shukla, Mother Indias sari is soaked in
8 7

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

the mud of humanity which cannot produce any lotuses. It was for the rst time that the well-entrenched perception of the rural milieu as a quiet and innocuous place got problematised in such a comprehensive way. Raag Darbaari is not a tale in black and white, rather it is a huge grey area where the protagonist is just an observer, a chronicler of contemporary history, who is in the end unable to take in so much of the reality around him. Prof Raaj K. Sah, a Chicago-based economist, once told this writer that Raag Darbaari was an essential text for social scientists studying the north Indian polytheistic social structure which is full of upper-caste hypocrites who consider everything acceptable in society from the trinity of the gods and their incarnations, to corruption, nepotism and all kinds of fraudulent practices. Raag Darbaari won the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1970, making Srilal Shukla the youngest Hindi author to win the same. In another magnum opus, Bisrampur ka Sant (The Saint of Bisrampur), Srilal Shukla again deconstructed the values of the freedom movement and the Gandhian ideals in the post-Independence era through the life of a Governor, Kunwar Jayanti Prasad. He is a zamindar, an advocate, a freedom ghter and later a prominent pillar of the ruling political party. These are the characteristics that go into the making of a prototype politician in India. With feudal and aristocratic traits, Jayanti Prasad is a degenerated patriarch, a consumer of power, money and sex, but unlike most of our contemporary politicians, there is still some sense of guilt, or the fear of society, left within him. When he hears the news of the death of Sundari, an idealistic Sarvodaya activist whom he had tried to exploit physically even when she was having an intimate relationship with his leftist son Vivek, a disillusioned Jayanti Prasad retires to a Sarvodaya Ashram in Bisrampur where Sundari used to work and takes his own life. The so-called Bhoodan activist also realises that the agrarian equations in

his village have not changed even after 32 years of Bhooda, and the villagers of Bisrampur are up again in arms to get back their agricultural land. Bisrampur ka Sant, written in a style distinct from Raag Darbaari, is a narrative of the decadence of the politics that promised liberation to the people, and also provides a discourse on the unresolved question of land reforms and the suffering of peasants.

A M A R K A N T , W HO

shared the award

with Srilal Shukla.

Makaan (The House), yet another signicant novel of Srilal Shukla, remained somewhat sandwiched between the above-mentioned works. In it he chronicled the decay of our time using the realm of music. It is the tale of a sitar player, Narayan Banerjee, who is a mixture of talent, ambition and cunning. He wants to achieve greatness in his art but, at the same time, abhors the life of austerity and struggle that his musicologist father had happily led. He wants to be successful in worldly ways while retaining the purity of his music. Caught in the conict between art and business, pursuit of music and worldliness, Narayan Banerjee tries hard to get a house of his own. But when a house is ultimately allotted to him by a shrewd and cruel administrator, he loses all interest in that abode of his dreams and prefers to stay on in his old hotel room, listening to his favourite Raag Bihag, which he
8 8 F R O N T L I N E

composes again and again. His father and the woman he loved are no more, and Narayan too is destined to die in a rickshaw accident with his broken sitar and a bottle of rum thrown aside. This portrays the end of an era of the values and ideals of lofty artistic pursuits. Srilal Shukla has 10 novels to his credit besides several other books, but he has not repeated himself in any of his works. Before writing Raag Darbaari, he had established himself as a satirist, along with Harishankar Parsai and Sharad Joshi. His rst collection of humorous-satirical pieces, Angad ka Paanw (Angads Foot, 1958), exhibited his skills in dissecting the degeneration and cynicism in Indias post-Independence public sphere. Later it was to become a recurrent theme in his writing, greatly helped by his experiences as a civil servant. In almost all his works, Srilal Shuklas main concern has been to dissect in a clinical manner the feudalism that had covered itself with the garb of democracy after Independence. In a deluxe edition of Raag Darbaari released in 2007 to mark the 40th year of its publication, Srilal Shukla wrote in a new preface: Given todays pan-Indian corruption and fraudulence among the middle and upper classes, it may seem that the writer has wasted his energy on some rustic folks.
AMAR KANT

SANJAY JOSHI

Amar Kant, on the other hand, is best known for his short stories although he has published six novels until now. His short stories, such as Deputy Collectory, Dopahar ka Bhojan (The Lunch), Zindagi aur Jonk (Life and the Leech) and Hatyaare (The Assassins), are considered milestones in post-Independence ction. He started writing in a period when the Nai Kahani (New Story) movement was heralding a big thematic and structural shift, and almost overshadowed the tradition of Premchand which used to be the mainstream ction in Hindi. This movement focussed more on urban settings, individual characteristics, man-woman relationships, and so on,

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

in place of people in villages and small towns. The scene was dominated by authors such as Mohan Rakesh, Kamaleshwar and Rajendra Yadav, aggressive advocates of the movement as a new metaphor for and of modern society. Amar Kant was one of the few writers who stuck to the social realistic tradition of Premchand. Literary critics like Dr Vishwanath Tripathi consider his short stories to be in the lineage of Premchands later works, particularly his masterpiece Qafan (The Shroud), which is a compactly crafted tale of a Dalit family. The portrayal of Siddheshwari Devi in Dopahar ka Bhojan, Babu Sakaldip Singh in Deputy Collectory and Rajua in Zindagi aur Jonk are intricate and remarkable. For instance, Siddheshwari Devi in Dopahar ka Bhojan distributes a very limited quantity of food amongst her retrenched husband and unemployed children so that nobody feels half-fed, but in the end when nothing but half a roti is left for her, she cries silently. The beauty of Amar Kants writing lies in its simplicity, which the critic Pranaya Krishna described as the most difcult pursuit. Amar Kant goes deep into the sociology as well as the psychology of his characters without any cathartic drama and turns them into authentic representatives of our social margins.
URBAN BRUTALITIES

His short stories of the later period mark a shift to urban brutalities. In Hatyaare, he describes two young bullies who boast to each other about being close to leaders such as Jawaharlal Nehru and John F. Kennedy, about refusing the offer of the Prime Ministers post, and about being Presidents. They sexually exploit a poor woman, deprive her of her wages and, while running away, knife to death a man chasing them. It is a dark and cruel world proled in a tense, mocking language. During a drinking bout, one of the bullies says: Wretch! Youre a coward! I was thinking that when I become Prime Minister, Id make you the

President of the Society for the Prevention of Corruption and the Society for the Abolition of Casteism. But if you cant drink this much, then how are you going to take bribes from ofcials? How will you make forgeries? How will you tell lies? How then are you going to serve the country, scum? Amar Kants own life has been full of struggles. At a time when a journalists job was not a lucrative one, he worked most of his life in that profession with various newspapers, literary periodicals, and news magazines published by Mitra Prakashan in Allahabad. Born in Balia on July 1, 1925, he was, as a 17-year-old student, attracted to the Quit India movement headed by stalwarts such as Acharya Narendra Dev, Ram Manohar Lohia and Jayaprakash Narayan. Gandhijis Do or Die call had a historic impact on Balia, along with Satara in Maharashtra and Medinipur in West Bengal. An independent government was formed for 10 days in Balia and non-violent revolutionaries took over police stations and tehsils and freed prisoners from the jail. Later, in 2003, this history surfaced in Amar Kants voluminous novel Inheen Hathiyaron Se (With These Weapons Alone), which focusses on the people rather than the leaders involved in the movement. One of the characters in the novel says: Call it Gandhi storm, old dame storm or mega storm, it is a well-known storm in human history. Yes, this is the oldest storm. It repeats itself wherever there is slavery, atrocity, injustice, and dictatorship. Amar Kants other notable novels include Kaale Ujale Din, Sukhjeevee and Sunaar Pande ki Patohu. At present, despite his ill health, he is working on a novel based on his experiences as a journalist. If ction is the moral history of our time, Amar Kant and Srilal Shukla have chronicled it with a poignancy never seen before. Mangalesh Dabral is a Sahitya Akademi Award-winning Hindi poet and the executive editor of the Hindi fortnightly The Public Agenda.
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Awards

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

Modern myth-maker
Chandrashekar Kambar, who chose a style that was starkly different from that of his contemporaries, wins the Jnanpith for 2010. B Y S . B A G E S H R E E

He has given a mythical character to the countrys new economic policy too, equating liberalisation to Mohini, the enchantress who would lure men only to turn them into ashes.
AT a recent felicitation function, Chandrashekar Kambar joked that he owed the Jnanpith to his miserable failure in the familys traditional trade of ironmongering. His father was frustrated as the young Kambar showed no promise in the skill of softening iron and shaping it into agricultural tools and other implements. Leave alone shaping the softened metal, I could not even keep the furnace aglow! Kambar said with his signature guffaw. My father had no alternative but to put me in school. No one could have guessed that this accidental entry into mainstream education would one day bring the Jnanpith to Kambar the eighth to Kannada, a language which lays claim to bagging the largest number of Jnanpith awards.
NATIVE WISDOM

To the good fortune of Kannada and its literary tradition, formal education did not kill Kambars love for the earthy avours of his native village. Godhageri in Belgaum district, where he was born in 1937, was a vibrant place teeming with folk story tellers, singers and performers. They made an indelible impression on him, and have stayed with him through nearly 50 years of his writing career. In his speech after receiving the Kendra Sahitya Akademi Award in 1992, he said that the fact of his birth in a disadvantaged community had turned into a blessing. My people, who were illiterate and the most exploited, had preserved and nurtured their experiential learning through songs and stories. Their entire system of knowledge stemmed from their sensory memory. So it was an extraordinary
9 0

event when I, their son, became literate and capable of documenting these experiences in writing. The best in Kambars vast body of work which includes nine collections of poetry, 24 plays, ve novels and ve feature lms abound with richly sensual imagery drawn from rural life. His characters speak a raw northern Karnataka dialect, and the techniques are strongly inspired by folk performing traditions such as Bayalata. A singer too, he is the star of poetry reading sessions because he never recites his poems but sings them with the full-throated gusto of a village bard. Though this boisterous celebration of the folk in his works has sometimes led to Kambar being erroneously branded a folk writer, he is clearly a modern writer who chose a style that was starkly different from that of his contemporaries in Navya (modernist) writing. His second collection of poetry, Helatena Kela, published in 1962, marked the beginning of what was to be Kambars distinct literary path. The eponymous, long narrative poem has the musicality and rhythm of the Lavani form and uses rich earthy imagery. However, its central theme is the fragmentation of the organic community of Shivapura in its confrontation with colonial modernity. A play like Jokumaraswamy, hailed for bringing back folk forms to the urban stage and creating a new musicand-dance trend in Indian theatre, is a reection on the decline of an oppressive feudal order.
DEALING WITH TRADITION

Kambar has described himself as a modern-day myth-maker and believes that this method alone can help the writer grapple with the complex Indian reality. Kambar has given a mythical character to the countrys new economic policy too, equating liberalisation to Mohini, the enchantress who would lure men only to turn them into ashes. Several literary critics have pointed out that while many of his contemporaries rejected the past, Kambar negotiated it in a manner all of his own. He does not betray the typical modernist alienation but remains rooted in tradition even though this rootedness is fraught with complexities. His negotiations

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out taking into account the oppressive context in which the tradition was born, he said.
AS VICE-CHANCELLOR

CH A NDR A S H E K A R K A MB A R D U RI N G a felicitation function organised by the Department of Kannada and Culture at Ravindra Kalakshetra, in Bangalore on September 26.

with the ssures and contradictions of the modern world, as the poet and critic H.S. Shivaprakash puts it, are through the eye chastened by the wisdom of a rooted oral tradition. It is crucial that tradition for him is not Brahmin orthodoxy, but a Sudra native wisdom which informs his perceptions of the tussle between tradition and modernity involving questions of identity, feudal decay, colonialism or sexuality. There are times, though, when Kambar seems to get carried away by his zeal for celebrating the native, even to the extent of turning blind to some of its trappings. The feminist critic M.S. Ashadevi, for instance, points out that women characters in Kambars works, with exceptions such as in the

novel Siri Sampige, never go beyond their sexual identities. The role of a woman in a feudal society is not a serious question for Kambar. Women in his plays sing and dance with abandon, but do not stand beside men as equal partners, says Ashadevi. Kambar seems to have achieved a much more complex negotiation between the traditional past and the modern in poems such as Gangamayi or Maotsetunganige, where the hankering for the native tradition is tempered by a cuttingly satirical tone. During an interaction with the press recently, he said that nostalgia over the death of oral traditions without an understanding of the context could be dangerous. We cannot, for instance, celebrate the music of Devadasis withF R O N T L I N E 9 1

Outside the realm of literature, Kambars negotiations between tradition and the mechanisms and tools of modernity are evident in the work he did as the rst Vice-Chancellor of the Kannada University at Hampi. He laid the foundation of the institution with a vision to conduct multidisciplinary research on various aspects of Karnataka to make it a centre of Kannada knowledge. A votary of primary education in the mother tongue exclusively through state-run schools, he has often talked of the need to make all forms of knowledge available in local languages. Colonial experience, he has said, has led to a lapse of memory of a rich cultural experience and a voluntary abandonment of native creative strengths, which need to be reclaimed. He believes that the latest technological tools can aid this process. Kambar, with the late writer Poornachandra Tejaswi, lobbied for active government role in Kannada computing. Though Kambar rarely makes comments that can be read as anti-establishment or confronting political trends or political parties, he has often spoken angrily of the Karnataka governments apathy towards Kannada computing, which has left it at least 15 years behind States such as Tamil Nadu. This was one of the issues he had raised when he was nominated to the Legislative Council in 2004 by the Congress government. He recently said that he and Tejaswi had met Minister after Minister to plead for the cause, but to no avail. He joked that each Minister would put an arm each on both their shoulders, making them feel like bullocks in harness, but did little else. His next work, Kambar has announced, will be a comedy on thieves. When he was asked to comment on this rather unusual choice of theme, he replied, tongue rmly in cheek: Because there are too many around us!

K. MURALI KUMAR

Science

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

For a true picture

The use of Adaptive Optics and Robo-AO will go a long way in improving the performance of optical instruments such as telescopes. B Y R . R A M A C H A N D R A N

The Palomar P60 telescope, with the AO system fully mounted, is undergoing nal tests. After commissioning, it will have a month of science demonstration run before being used for regular observations.
NURSERY RHYMES have told us since childhood days that the stars that we see in the sky twinkle. This apparent twinkling is because of the swirling air or the turbulence in the atmosphere above us. The same thing happens when stars or planets are observed or imaged through a telescope. In addition to the twinkling, turbulence causes the light from the star to jump about in the eld of the eyepiece of the telescope. If instead of an eye there were an imaging device at the focal plane of the telescopes lens, the image would correspondingly shift around on the photographic plate or the imag-

TH E 2 - M I UC A A Girawali Observatory in Pune, the next test bed for Robo-AO.

9 2

ing plane of the detector, resulting in a smudged or blurred image, a fuzzy blob, instead of a sharply dened point or a disk. A bigger and more powerful telescope only aggravates the smudging. If two stars are very close, this makes it difcult to see or resolve them as separate objects. Astronomers quantify this ability to resolve two nearby objects as seeing, which is a measure of the optical steadiness of the atmosphere. The unsteadiness arises owing to thermal non-uniformities in the atmosphere, like layers having different temperatures and wind velocities, which are always present, causing the light from the star that passes through them to deviate constantly. Temperature uctuations in small patches of air act as many little lenses and cause light to be refracted many times by little amounts. Therefore, when light reaches the telescope, what started out as a plane wave gets distorted. Equivalently, the light rays are no longer parallel and hence cannot be focussed to a point. Figure 1 shows the distortion to the incoming light schematically. Seeing is the biggest problem in earth-based astronomy. This is why most astronomical observatories are built on mountain tops as the atmosphere closer to the ground is much more convective than at high altitudes. Though seeing does improve, it does not solve the problem completely. One of the chief reasons for launching telescopes, such as the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), into space is to overcome the blurring effect of the atmosphere and achieve a farbetter resolution. However, this option is not available to everyone since space-based observatories are expensive and difcult to maintain as the HST experience should tell us. Under ideal conditions, the theoretical limit for the optical quality, or resolving power of an imaging device including the eye, is determined by the diffraction of light waves. This is the so-called diffraction limit and is given by the Rayleigh Criterion. It gives the smallest angular separation at which two equally bright point sources can be distinguished. Images of any two objects separated by a smaller angle will merge because of diffraction effects. According to the Rayleigh Criterion, numerically, the

F R O N T L I N E

BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

resolving power of a telescope (in radians; 2 radians make an angle of 360) can be approximated by the equation R = (, the wavelength of light)/(D, diameter or aperture of the telescope). For example, this relation tells us that for a theoretically achievable angular resolution of 0.1 arcsec (1 arcsec = 1/ 3,600 of a degree) with yellow light of wavelength 580 nanometre (nm), the telescope should have a diameter of 1.2 metres. However, this theoretical limit is practically unachievable because of atmospheric distortions. Table 1 gives a comparison of the diffraction-limited resolution and actual resolution that different ground-based telescopes achieve. The 2.4-m HST, on the other hand, has a resolution better than 0.1 arcsec in the visible compared with the diffraction limit of 0.05 arcsec. (The eyes resolving power is also shown for comparison though the eyes limitations are more from the imperfections in the cornea and the eye lens.)
ADAPTIVE OPTICS

F I GU RE 1 : D I S T O R TI ON of incoming wavefront caused by intervening atmospheric turbulence. (Adapted from the lecture "AO and Its Applications" by Prof. Claire Max, University of California, Santa Cruz, U.S.)

Adaptive Optics (AO) is a technique that uses optical systems in conjunction with the telescope to correct, or compensate for, the optical aberrations introduced by the intervening medium. In 1953, Horace Babcock, an inventor of astronomical instruments then working at the Mt. Wilson and Palomar observatories in the United States, proposed this concept. However, appropriate technologies were not available in the 1950s to meet the precision required in an AO system. The rst working AO system was built in 1956 by the Caltech nuclear physicist Robert Leighton as an amateur astronomer to improve planetary images at the 60-inch telescope at Mt. Wilson. Conceptually, however, it was quite different from present-day AO systems. It was based on reducing the image drift with short exposure times and using an electronic guiding system that moved the imaging plane to cancel out the image motion on the lm. In 1992, the telescope was tted with a different early AO system called the Atmospheric Compensation Experi-

ment (ACE) developed as part of the Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI). Present-day AO systems essentially correct the wavefront received by the telescope itself by sensing its distortions in near real-time and applying the required corrections so that the image detector receives a wavefront that approximates the plane wave and gives an image resolution that is close to the diffraction limit. Because the atmosphere is constantly changing, the distortions caused are random and quite dynamic. Therefore, for the corrections to be made in near real-time, AO systems need to operate at high frequencies, typically about 1,000 Hertz (that is, correction response times of a few milliseconds). Since it is difcult to change the primary mirror of a telescope at such high speeds, AO systems use secondary wavefront correcting devices, such as a exible deformable mirror (DM) or a liquid crystal display (LCD) array. After the Cold War ended, when many of the AO technologies used by the military were declassied, rapid technological advances in AO became possible. (In active optics, as against adaptive optics, deformations in large primary mirror geometry itself are corrected by using
F R O N T L I N E 9 3

an array of segmented mirrors, and the timescale involved is much longer.) Basically, an AO system comprises the following main components: a wavefront sensor (WFS) to measure the distortion due to atmospheric turbulence; a wavefront corrector, usually a DM located behind the exit pupil of the telescope, to compensate for the distortion; and a control system to calculate the required correction and necessary shape to apply to the corrector. The basic principle is that the system takes a sample of light from a star, determines how the atmosphere is perturbing and distorting the plane wavefront, and then uses a DM to straighten it. The early techniques used a bright guide star in the sky close to the observed object such as a galaxy to serve as a reference. Light from the natural guide star (NGS) passes through the telescope optics and is sampled at about 1,000 times/sec by the WFS, which will measure how turbulence is distorting the wavefront. This information is sent to a computer which calculates the correction to be applied to the DM, and this information is fed to the DM to counteract the distortions. The light wavefront from the ob-

F I GU RE 3 : S CHE M ATI C of how a Shack-Hartmann WFS works. (Adapted from Claire Max lecture "AO and Its Applications"). FIG U R E 2: T H E cone effect and the consequent missing data due to insufcient sampling of wavefront by laser guide star. (Source: Centre for Imaging Science, Rochester Institute of Technology, U.S.)

To overcome this problem, astronomers in recent times have begun to use a laser to make an articial star in the part of the sky being observed.
LASER GUIDE STAR

served galaxy reects off the DM, and the distortions are cancelled out. The above process is actually a continuous one and is in a closed loop control system, which constantly sends small corrections to the shape of the DM. Important to this process are fast computing and modelling of the incoming wavefront. Usually, AO systems employ wavefront correction in two stages: rst, what is known as tip-tilt correction, the simplest form of distortion correction, is applied, followed by higherorder correction with the use of the DM. Tip-tilt correction corresponds to the correction of the tilts of the entire wavefront in two dimensions (relative to the plane perpendicular to the optic axis of the telescope) and is performed using a rapidly moving tip-tilt mirror which can rotate around two axes. A signicant fraction of the atmospheric distortion can be removed this way. Often it is difcult to nd an NGS that is sufciently bright to serve the purpose close to every observed object. For infrared observations, it must lie within about 30 arcsec of the object and for visible light it must be within 10 arcsec. These constraints are fairly severe and they correspondingly limit the sky coverage of the telescope. The fraction of objects in the sky that have a suitable NGS is a few per cent or less.

The idea of using laser guide star (LGS) was suggested in the early 1980s. Basically, this involves mounting a laser beam on the telescope and pointing it at the object observed. One concept uses the sodium LGS as the beacon, which uses a yellow colour laser light with wavelength 589 nm that can excite a layer of sodium atoms naturally present in the mesosphere deposited by meteorites at a height of about 90 kilometres. The sodium atoms then re-emit the laser light, resulting in a small glowing spot in the sky that serves as the articial star that can be used to measure turbulence effects on the wavefront. (The same atomic transition is used in sodium vapour street lamps.) The power of sodium beacons is typically 6-25 watt. An alternative concept is that of the Rayleigh beacon, which uses a pulsed laser light focussed at an altitude of about 10-15 km. The laser light is scattered by air molecules, and the WFS is timed so as to observe the scattered laser light at just the time when the pulse would have travelled up and back from the chosen altitude. The concept is so named because the type of scattering from air molecules is called Rayleigh scattering the scattered light intensity here is inversely proportional to the fourth power of the wavelength. This means that the
9 4 F R O N T L I N E

shorter the wavelength of the laser light, the more intense the scattered light. Therefore, Rayleigh beacons are usually in the near-ultraviolet wavelengths. (It is the Rayleigh scattering of light by the atmosphere that makes the daytime sky appear blue; blue light scatters more than the higher wavelength red or yellow light.) One of the limitations of having LGS is that it is focussed at a nite altitude. So its light does not pass through the same patches of atmosphere as light from a real star or the object being observed. This is due to the so-called cone effect (Figure 2); light from the LGS forms a cone so that some bits of the atmospheric turbulence that affect the observed object are missed. It is obvious that in the case of the Rayleigh beacon, which is at a much lower altitude compared with the sodium beacon, the missing data about the wavefront will be so much more, particularly in large aperture telescopes, that AO performance becomes quite poor. To compensate for this, it often becomes necessary to have multiple laser beams to determine the atmospheric distortions sufciently accurately using what is known as tomographic wavefront reconstruction. At present, only some telescopes around the world have implemented the LGS concept and a few with multiple beacons. The other chief limitation of AO is that the technique performs well only at higher wavelengths like infrared as compared to the visible region. This is because of a factor called Strehl ratio,

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

which is the ratio of the peak intensity of the resulting image against that of a theoretically perfect image (in the absence of the atmosphere) at the diffraction limit. It is a measure of the optical quality of telescopes. In practical situations images have a core and a halo. When an AO system performs well, there is more intensity in the core. In poor seeing conditions, the halo contains a larger fraction of the intensity and the peak at the core falls; that is, the image becomes smudgier. Now this ratio falls off rapidly at lower optical wavelengths. As compared to infrared, where ratios are in the range of 0.7, in optical wavelengths, current AO systems on large telescopes do not perform better than 0.01, according to AO specialists. So present-day AO systems are used largely only in the infrared. The two key components of an AO system are the WFS and the DM. The WFS that can measure turbulence hundred to thousand times a second is typically a fast change Charge Coupled Device (CCD), similar to those used at slower speeds in video cameras. The arrangement of optics in front of the sensor varies depending on the technique being used. There are mainly two techniques in use: curvature sensing and Shack-Hartmann sensing. The latter, which is more widely used, is shown schematically in Figure 3. In Shack-Hartmann WFSs, the circular telescope aperture is split up into a two-dimensional array of pixels using an array of small lenslets so that the shape of the incoming wavefronts can be measured as a function of position in the telescope aperture. Light from an NGS or LGS is focussed by the array of lenslets on to the fast CCD camera. In the absence of turbulence, a plane wavefront would be focussed on to an evenly spaced array of spots on the camera. In the presence of turbulence, the spots would be irregularly spaced and these spots will jump around on the detector corresponding to the rapid changes in the atmosphere. The mean wavefront perturbation in each pixel is calculated quickly and the pixelated map of the wavefronts is fed into

F I GU RE 4 : A star seen through the atmosphere with and without AO. The images were taken by James R. Graham of the University of California.

I M A GES O F 7 0

Ophiuchu, a binary star located 16.6 light years away, with and without AO, during RoboAO commissioning tests at P60.

the DM, which then corrects the wavefront distortions. DMs for astronomy are usually made of a very thin sheet of glass or membrane mirrors. Attached to the back of the membrane are actuators (pistons) which expand or contract in length in response to a voltage signal and bend the mirror locally. If the DM has a depression that is half the depth of the initial distortion in the shape of the wavefront, then as the light gets reected from the mirror in the opposite direction, since it has to travel the extra path length equal to the distortion, the rest of the wavefront would have caught up with the distorted section and the wavefront will become at. Different kinds of DMs are in use
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today: with piezoelectric actuators, with micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS) devices, with LCDs and even liquid DMs using ferrouids. A DM usually has many degrees of freedom, and this determines the number of wavefront inections that it can correct. The number of degrees of freedom in a DM can be roughly taken to be equal to the number of mechanical actuators. The DMs come in different sizes, and degrees of freedom range from a few tens to over a thousand. Technological advances have enabled new DMs that have over 5,000 actuators and WFSs that can handle this many degrees of freedom. Correspondingly innovative algorithms for computing systems too are under constant development. Figure 4 compares stellar images obtained with and without AO. Practical AO systems, however, are expensive to build and incur large operational overheads. Therefore, only a handful of large observatories can afford to implement AO. Even in these, only a relatively small fraction of the available observing time is set aside for AO-mode operation because of the large operational costs. Despite this, the focus of AO has hitherto been only on large telescopes because of their inherent capability to view faint objects and, if suitable NGSs can be located nearby, AO can be used to view these faint objects sharply. But there are a large number of small and medium telescopes (using mirrors of diameter 1-3 m). Besides their inherently limited light-gathering power, their observational capabilities are severely limited by atmospheric seeing. What has not been so clear is that if the power of AO can be combined in an efcient and affordable way, it will open up hitherto unachievable observational possibilities. It can make moderate-sized telescopes more powerful with an investment under $1 million, pointed out Shrinivas Kulkarni of Caltech, who is spearheading a collaborative project between the Pune-based Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA) and Caltech that

COURTESY: CFAO, LICK OBSERVATORY, U.S.

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

began two years ago to implement AO on small and medium-sized telescopes. This project, called Robo-AO, is currently being implemented on the fully robotic 60-inch (1.5-m) telescope hence Robo-AO at the Palomar Observatory in the U.S. The collaboration is leading innovation in astronomical adaptive optics, said Kulkarni.
ROBO-AO

Project Robo-AOs aim was to demonstrate a low-cost autonomous LGS AO system and science instrument, which works both in the visible and nearinfrared, and is specically designed to take advantage of modest aperture telescopes by improving their sensitivity. Robo-AO ushers in a new AO observing paradigm, said Christoph Baranec, who heads the Robo-AO group at Caltech and is the principal investigator of the Caltech-IUCAA collaborative project. The emphasis is on robustness, he said in his presentation on Robo-AO that he made at the recently concluded workshop on Robo-AO at the IUCAA. This demonstrator system, he hoped, would serve as the archetype for a new class of affordable systems that were deployable on 1-3 m class telescopes. Its design is modular and only small design changes are necessary to port the system to different telescope architectures, according to the project scientists. The idea then is to replicate the Robo-AO system in small and medium telescopes around the world, towards a Robo-AO network of telescopes. That, the scientists said, would bring the benet of AO to the large community of moderate-diameter telescopes. The three main components of the Robo-AO system are an LGS, an integrated AO and science camera system, and a robotic control system. The LGS is a 10-12 watt ultraviolet laser ( = 355 nm) used in the pulsed Rayleigh beacon mode focussed at an altitude of 10 km. If the telescope is reduced in size to 1.5 m, Baranec said in an e-mail message, the amount of missing data will be much smaller compared to, say, a 10-m telescope, and the AO system

will actually work as against a large telescope. A 1.5-m telescope will work a little better with a sodium beacon focussed at 90 km, but since sodium lasers are roughly $1m [million] with ongoing maintenance costs of $100,000/yr, they are very costly compared to the 10-15 km beacons which can be purchased for less than $100,000 and last for several years before needing to be serviced. The AO and camera systems are all based on components and systems that can be bought off the shelf. The WFS part of the AO system is performed with an 11x11 Shack-Hartmann sensor with a high quantum efciency of 72 per cent at the laser wavelength. While the zeroth order wavefront correction is done by a piezoelectric tiptilt mirror with a capability of up to 4 arcsec tip-tilt correction, higher order wavefront correction is done by a 12x12 actuator MEMS mirror. The pilot AO system has reportedly been working successfully at 1.5 kHz since it was mounted on the P60 telescope. For science purposes, the system

includes visible, infrared and near-IR cameras for imaging. The rst is an electron-multiplying low-noise visible CCD camera and the second an indium-gallium-arsenide (InGaAs) IR camera, both of which are readily available. It is in adapting the generally available mercury-cadmium-telluride (HgCdTe) based near-IR camera, known as Hawaii-2RG, that IUCAA has played a signicant role. The nearIR H2RG camera is, however, being planned only as a future upgrade for Robo-AO. Almost all hardware development for this upgrade (optics, electronics and a good fraction of the software) will be carried out at IUCAA. According to A.N. Ramaprakash of the IUCAA, who leads the IUCAA Robo-AO effort, these HgCdTe sensors, bonded on to a silicon circuit, are the most successful near-IR detectors and are used in a number of large telescope observatories and will also be own on the proposed James Webb Space Telescope. However, the detectors are extremely expensive; for example, a 4 megapixel detector costs about $400,000. In view of this demand, in IUCAA we have achieved the ability to handle these detectors by designing appropriate detector control and data acquisition and handling system, Ramaprakash said in an e-mail exchange. It allows the astronomers to run a simple software on a Linux platform and control the detector using a standard USB connection, he said. This has actually resulted in the technology developed for Robo-AO owing back to large telescopes. The IUCAA-designed controller called ISDEC, in fact, has been chosen for

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TH E R O B O - A O SY STE M fully

mounted on Caltechs 1.5-m Palomar telescope.

building a near-IR spectrograph for the 11-m South African Large Telescope (SALT). It will also be used by a University of Florida team for an instrument called CIRCE being built for the 10.4-m Gran Telescopio CANARIS (GTC) at La Palma, Spain. In return for its contribution, the IUCAA will get observing time on SALT and GTC, Ramaprakash said. According to him, for the current version of Robo-AO, which is being commissioned on P60, some of the other areas in which the IUCAAs labs were directly involved include development of Linux-based driver for the MEMS-based DM, tip-tilt mirror driver and its integration with the MEMS mirror driver system, laser launch system optics design, design and assembly of electrical and control system and software for integration of environment and safety sensors (temperature, humidity, and so on) and feedback. The robotic operation and control, a crucial part of the Robo-AO idea, operates on a consumer grade personal computer running on Fedora Linux, a free open access software. According to the scientists, the software operates all the subsystems as a single instrument. The system thus is able to execute fully autonomous observations, which is directed by a very efcient and intelligent (observations) queue scheduling system. It is designed to handle up to 150 targets/night, with each observation lasting two minutes. This ability to handle a large number of targets a day in an automated mode will be ideal for the following up of the large number of planned large surveys by various astronomy groups, said Kulkarni. Robo-AO on small telescopes, with its minimal observation overheads, endows them with the capability of large 1,000-plus or even 10,000-plus targets in multiple-week single campaign high-resolution surveys with its high per night observing rate, pointed out Baranec. The ability to perform observations in a science programme with Robo-AO on small telescopes, he added, is orders of magnitude more than what an astronomer would be able to realistically do at the worlds largest apertures. If one wanted to, say, to look at 10,000-odd potential lensed quasar candidates with [the 10-m] Keck [telescope], it may take a century since any given astronomer may only be able to get one or two nights a year on that telescope. However, on small telescopes, where there is typically much less demand, one could execute all of the observations necessary in a matter of months, both due to the availability of the system and because of the efciency afforded by making the system completely robotic and autonomous. Robo-AOs potential contribution to science comes from this unique ability to obtain near diffraction limited observations of a large number of targets, and the Robo-AO team is planning to
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apply this capability in three broad areas: Large Single Image Surveys, Rapid Transient Characterisation and Time-domain Astrometry, particularly high-precision astrometric characterisation of binaries and searches for planets. According to the scientists, in terms of Robo-AOs performance, in the near-IR, the observations will give small telescopes capabilities equivalent to 4-m plus aperture telescopes at a much lower cost and with greater exibility. While in the IR, Robo-AOs Strehl ratios are in the range of 0.5-0.7, in the visible it can deliver Strehl ratios of 0.1-0.2, an order of magnitude better than large telescopes with traditional AO, according to Baranec. The ability to do AO correction in the visible is the other unique capability of Robo-AO, he pointed out. We are not limited by physics to do so on larger telescopes, its just that technology is probably several decades away, he said. This, pointed out Ramaprakash, results from a combination of careful error budgeting from the design phase itself, presence of an atmospheric dispersion corrector, atmospheric characteristics of the site, etc. Robo-AOs angular resolution in the visible is 0.1-0.15 arcsec, while in the IR it is 0.2-0.25 arcsec. Table 2 gives a comparison of the characteristics of a 1.5-m telescope with a traditional AO system and with Robo-AO system. The Palomar P60 telescope, with the AO system fully mounted, is now undergoing nal tests towards being commissioned soon. After commissioning, it will have a month of science demonstration run before being used for regular observations. An identical of the rst Robo-AO system will be then deployed at the IUCAA Girawali Observatorys (Pune) 2 m telescope. A third NGS-only variant of Robo-AO is being developed for the 1 m telescope at Table Mountain of Pamona College in California. After a proprietary period, the design and software for RoboAO will be made public under a general Public Licence, according to the scientists.

BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT

Obituary

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

The genius of Apple

Steve Jobs (1955-2011) gave the world not just personal computing and related entertainment products but a digital lifestyle. B Y J O H N M A R K O F F

Apples very name reected his unconventionality. In an era when engineers and hobbyists tended to describe their machines with model numbers, he chose the name of a fruit, supposedly because of his dietary habits at the time.
STEVEN P. JOBS, the visionary co-founder of Apple who helped usher in the era of personal computers and then led a cultural transformation in the way music, movies and mobile communications were experienced in the digital age, died on October 5. He was 56. A friend of the family said that Jobs died of complications from pancreatic cancer, with which he had waged a long and public struggle. He underwent surgery in 2004, received a liver transplant in 2009 and took three medical leaves of absence as Apples chief executive before stepping down in August and turning over the helm to Timothy D. Cook, the chief operating ofcer. By then, Jobs had largely come to dene the personal computer industry and an array of digital consumer and entertainment businesses centred on the Internet. He had also become a very rich man, worth an estimated $8.3 billion. Jobs was neither a hardware engineer nor a software programmer, nor did he think of himself as a manager. He considered himself a technology leader, choosing the best people possible, encouraging and prodding them, and making the nal call on product design. He was the most passionate leader one could hope for, a motivating force without parallel, wrote Steven Levy, author of the 1994 book Insanely Great, which chronicles the creation of the Mac. Jobs was the ultimate arbiter of Apple products, and his standards were exacting. Over the course of a year he tossed out two iPhone prototypes, for example, before approving the third, and began
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shipping it in June 2007. To his understanding of technology he brought an immersion in popular culture. In his twenties, he dated Joan Baez; Ella Fitzgerald sang at his 30th birthday party. His world view was shaped by the 1960s counterculture in the San Francisco Bay Area where he had grown up. When he graduated from high school in Cupertino in 1972, he said, The very strong scent of the 1960s was still there. After dropping out of Reed College, a stronghold of liberal thought in Portland, Oregon, in 1972, Jobs led a countercultural lifestyle himself. He told a reporter that taking LSD was one of the two or three most important things he had done in his life. He said there were things about him that people who had not tried psychedelics even people who knew him well, including his wife could never understand. Decades later he ew around the world in his own corporate jet, but he maintained emotional ties to the period in which he grew up. When discussing the Silicon Valleys lasting contributions to humanity, he mentioned in the same breath the invention of the microchip and The Whole Earth Catalog, a 1960s counterculture publication. Apples very name reected his unconventionality. In an era when engineers and hobbyists tended to describe their machines with model numbers, he chose the name of a fruit, supposedly because of his dietary habits at the time. Coming on the scene just as computing began to move beyond the walls of research laboratories and corporations in the 1970s, Jobs saw that computing was becoming personal and that it could even be a force for social and economic change. And at a time when hobbyist computers were boxy wooden affairs with metal chassis, he designed the Apple II as a sleek, low-slung plastic package intended for the den or the kitchen. He was offering not just products but a digital lifestyle. He put much stock in the notion of taste, a word he used frequently. It was a sensibility that shone in products that looked like works of art and delighted users. Great products, he said, were a triumph of taste, of trying to expose yourself to the best things

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AP P L E CE O S T E V E Jobs introduces the Apple Nano in San Francisco on September 5, 2007. Jobs considered himself a technology leader, choosing the best people possible, and making the nal call on product design.

humans have done and then trying to bring those things into what you are doing. Steven Paul Jobs was born in San Francisco on February 24, 1955, and put up for adoption by his biological parents, Joanne Carole Schieble and Abdulfattah Jandali, a graduate student from Syria who became a political science professor. He was adopted by Paul and Clara Jobs. Paul Jobs, who worked in nance and real estate before returning to his original trade as a machinist, moved his family down the San Francisco Peninsula to Mountain

View and then to Los Altos in the 1960s. Jobs developed an early interest in electronics. He was mentored by a neighbour, an electronics hobbyist. As an eighth grader, after discovering that a crucial part was missing from a frequency counter he was assembling, Jobs telephoned William Hewlett, the co-founder of Hewlett-Packard (HP). Hewlett spoke with the boy for 20 minutes, prepared a bag of parts for him to pick up and offered him a job as a summer intern. Jobs met Stephen Wozniak, with whom he started Apple in 1976, while
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attending Homestead High School in neighbouring Cupertino. The two took an introductory electronics class there. The spark that ignited their partnership was provided by Wozniaks mother. Wozniak had graduated from high school and enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley, when she sent him an article from the October 1971 issue of Esquire magazine. The article, Secrets of the Little Blue Box, by Ron Rosenbaum, detailed an underground hobbyist culture of young men known as phone phreaks who were illicitly exploring the nations phone system. Wozniak shared the article with Jobs, and the two set out to track down an elusive gure identied in the article as Captain Crunch. The man had taken the name from his discovery that a whistle that came in boxes of Capn Crunch cereal was tuned to a frequency that made it possible to make free long-distance calls simply by blowing the whistle next to a phone handset. Captain Crunch was John Draper, a former Air Force electronics technician, and nding him took several weeks. Learning that the two young hobbyists were searching for him, Draper appeared one day in Wozniaks Berkeley dormitory room. On the basis of information they gleaned from Draper, Wozniak and Jobs later collaborated on building and selling blue boxes, devices that were widely used for making free and illegal phone calls. They raised a total of $6,000 from the effort. After enrolling at Reed College in 1972, Jobs left after one semester but remained in Portland for another 18 months auditing classes. In a commencement address given at Stanford in 2005, he said he had decided to leave college because it was consuming all of his parents savings. Leaving school, however, also freed his curiosity to follow his interests. I didnt have a dorm room, he said in his Stanford speech, so I slept on the oor in friends rooms, I returned Coke bottles for the ve-cent deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the seven miles across town every Sun-

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NOVEMBER 4, 2011

day night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. He returned to Silicon Valley in 1974 and took a job there as a technician at Atari, the video game manufacturer. Still searching for his calling, he left after several months and travelled to India with a college friend, Daniel Kottke, who would later become an early Apple employee. Jobs returned to Atari that Fall. In 1975, he and Wozniak, then working as an engineer at HP, began attending meetings of the Homebrew Computer Club, a hobbyist group that met at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Centre in Menlo Park, California. Personal computing had been pioneered at research laboratories adjacent to Stanford, and it was spreading to the outside world. Wozniak designed the original Ap-

ple I computer simply to show it off to his friends at the Homebrew. It was Jobs who had the inspiration that it could be a commercial product. In early 1976, he and Wozniak, using their own money, began Apple with an initial investment of $1,300; they later gained the backing of a former Intel executive, A.C. Markkula, who lent them $250,000. Wozniak would be the technical half and Jobs the marketing half of the original Apple I computer. Starting out in the Jobs family garage in Los Altos, they moved the company to a small ofce in Cupertino shortly thereafter. In April 1977, Jobs and Wozniak introduced Apple II at the West Coast Computer Faire in San Francisco. It created a sensation. Sales skyrocketed, from $2 million in 1977 to $600 million in 1981, the year the company went public. By 1983 Apple was in the Fortune 500. No company had ever joined the list so quickly.
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The Apple III, introduced in May 1980, was intended to dominate the desktop computer market. IBM would not introduce its original personal computer until 1981. But the Apple III had a host of technical problems, and Jobs shifted his focus to a new and ultimately short-lived project, an ofce workstation computer code-named Lisa. By then Jobs had made his muchchronicled 1979 visit to Xeroxs research centre in Palo Alto, where he saw the Alto, an experimental personal computer system that foreshadowed modern desktop computing. The Alto, controlled by a mouse pointing device, was one of the rst computers to employ a graphical video display, which presented the user with a view of documents and programmes, adopting the metaphor of an ofce desktop. It was one of those sort of apocalyptic moments, Jobs said of his visit in a 1995 oral history interview for the Smithsonian Institution. I remember within 10 minutes of seeing the graphical user interface stuff, just knowing that every computer would work this way someday. In 1981 he joined a small group of Apple engineers pursuing a separate project, a lower-cost system codenamed Macintosh. The machine was introduced in January 1984 and trumpeted during the Super Bowl telecast by a 60-second commercial, directed by Ridley Scott, that linked IBM, by then the dominant PC maker, with George Orwells Big Brother. A year earlier Jobs had lured Sculley to Apple to be its chief executive. A former Pepsi-Cola chief executive, Sculley was impressed by Jobs pitch: Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water, or do you want a chance to change the world? He went on to help Jobs introduce a number of new computer models, including an advanced version of the Apple II and later the Lisa and Macintosh desktop computers. Through them Jobs popularised the graphical user interface, which, based on a mouse pointing device, would become the standard way to control comput-

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JOB S INT R O D UC I N G A PP LE I I

in

Cupertino, California, in 1977.

ers. But when the Lisa failed commercially and early Macintosh sales proved disappointing, the two men became estranged and a power struggle ensued, and Jobs lost control of the Lisa project. The board ultimately stripped him of his operational role, taking control of the Lisa project, and 1,200 Apple employees were laid off. He left Apple in 1985. That September he announced a new venture, NeXT Inc. The aim was to build a workstation computer for the higher-education market. The next year, the Texas industrialist H. Ross Perot invested $20 million in the effort. But it did not achieve Jobs goals. Jobs also established a personal philanthropic foundation after leaving Apple but soon had a change of heart, deciding instead to spend much of his fortune $10 million on acquiring Pixar, a struggling graphics supercomputing company owned by the lmmaker George Lucas. There was little market at the time for computer-animated movies. But that changed in 1995, when the company, with Walt Disney Pictures, released Toy Story. That lms box-ofce receipts ultimately reached $362 million, and when Pixar went public in a record-breaking offering, Jobs emerged a billionaire. In 2006, the Walt Disney Co. agreed to purchase Pixar for $7.4 billion. The sale made Jobs Disneys largest single sharehol-

der, with about 7 per cent of the companys stock. His personal life also became more public. He had a number of well-publicised romantic relationships, including one with the folk singer Joan Baez, before marrying Laurene Powell. In 1996, his biological sister, the novelist Mona Simpson, threw a spotlight on her relationship with Jobs in the novel A Regular Guy. The two did not meet until they were adults. The novel centred on a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who bore a close resemblance to Jobs. It was not an entirely attering portrait. Jobs said about a quarter of it was accurate. His wife and Mona Simpson survive him, as do his three children with Laurene Powell, his daughters Eve Jobs and Erin Sienna Jobs and a son, Reed; another daughter, Lisa Brennan-Jobs, from a relationship with Chrisann Brennan; and another sister, Patti Jobs.
RETURN TO APPLE

Beginning in 1986, Jobs refocussed NeXT from the education to the business market and dropped the hardware part of the company, deciding to sell just an operating system. Although NeXT never became a signicant computer industry player, it had a huge impact: a young programmer, Tim Berners-Lee, used a NeXT machine to develop the rst version of the World Wide Web at the Swiss physics research centre CERN in 1990. In 1996, after unsuccessful efforts to develop next-generation operating systems, Apple, with Gilbert Amelio now in command, acquired NeXT for $430 million. The next year, Jobs returned to Apple as an adviser. He became chief executive again in 2000. Shortly after returning, Jobs publicly ended Apples long feud with its archrival Microsoft, which agreed to continue developing its Ofce software for the Macintosh and invested $150 million in Apple. Once in control of Apple again, Jobs set out to reshape the consumer electronics industry. He pushed the company into the digital music busiF R O N T L I N E 1 0 1

ness, introducing rst iTunes and then the iPod MP3 player. The music arm grew rapidly, reaching almost 50 per cent of the companys revenue by June 2008. In 2005, Jobs announced that he would end Apples business relationship with IBM and Motorola and build Macintosh computers based on Intel microprocessors. Apple began selling the iPhone in June 2007. Jobs goal was to sell 10 million of the handsets in 2008, equivalent to 1 per cent of the global cellphone market. The company sold 11.6 million. The iPhone dispensed with a stylus and pioneered a touch-screen interface that quickly set the standard for the mobile computing market. Rolled out with much anticipation and fanfare, the iPhone rocketed to popularity; by end of 2010 the company had sold almost 90 million units. Though Jobs took just a nominal $1 salary when he returned to Apple, his compensation became the source of a Silicon Valley scandal in 2006 over the backdating of millions of shares of stock options. But after a company investigation and one by the Securities and Exchange Commission, he was found not to have beneted nancially from the backdating and no charges were brought. The episode did little to taint Jobs standing in the business and technology world. As the gravity of his illness became known, and particularly after he announced he was stepping down, he was increasingly hailed for his genius and true achievement: his ability to blend product design and business market innovation by integrating consumeroriented software, microelectronic components, industrial design and new business strategies in a way that has not been matched. If he had a motto, it may have come from The Whole Earth Catalog, which he said had deeply inuenced him as a young man. The book ends with the admonition Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. I have always wished that for myself, he said. New York Times News Service

AP

Obituary

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

Timeless music
Jagjit Singh (1941-2011), with his melliuous voice, helped ghazal nd its rightful place in the hearts of the common people. B Y V I J A Y L O K A P A L L Y

G H A Z A L M A ES T RO J A GJ I T

Singh at a concert in Chennai in July this year.

of it spent bringing ghazal out of the closet. You have to understand the language. If you dont, the essence of ghazal would be lost, he once remarked. The maestro would convince himself rst and then take his offering to the masses. He did not believe in imposing a ghazal on his followers. Jagjit Singh was born into a Sikh family in Sri Ganganagar in Rajasthan on February 8, 1941. He spent his modest childhood in Bikaner where his father worked. We were a lower-middle-class family. My mother had 11 children. Seven survived, Jagjit is quoted as saying in his biography, Beyond Time. His middleclass rooting helped him embrace life, its joys and sorrows, with a realistic philosophy.

The album The Unforgettables, released in 1976, was a dening moment in his musical career. Then came the success of the songs from the lms Arth and Saath Saath.
JAGJIT SINGH was born to sing, and he rmly believed that he could have done nothing else. And when the great ghazal singer breathed his last in a Mumbai hospital on October 10, he had reached the end of a journey that lasted 70 years, the better part
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Jagjits love for singing took wing under the guidance of Pandit Chhaganlal Sharma, a blind music teacher. Jagjit did not mind missing school to catch up on lms that had good music. At a college function, he held the attention of the audience, despite a power failure, with a song from the lm Pyaasa. That day he was convinced that his future lay in singing. He pursued education in Jalandhar, Punjab, primarily because the town had a radio station. Gulzar, the versatile poet and lmmaker, described Jagjit thus: His voice is beautiful and so is his rendering. The two came together in Jagjits later years and produced some unforgettable gems. Little wonder that Gulzar affectionately referred to him as Ghazaljit. Jagjit, who had a melliuous voice, struggled initially as a singer. His brother Kartar revealed in Beyond Time how Jagjit sang at lm parties in the hope of getting a break: When he was new to Bombay (in the mid-1960s), all the big lm people would call him to their homes to sing, making false promises of giving him a chance in lms so that he would perform for them free. But Jagjit was determined to make it big on his own. A Sikh, Jagjit sacriced his hair and beard to gain a new look, the look of a ghazal singer. This act did not go down well with his family at rst. His rst playback song was in a Gujarati lm, but Jagjit confessed that the album The Unforgettables, released in 1976, was a dening moment in his musical career. His Baat niklegi to phir duur talak jayegi in the album was a big hit. The album changed the way the masses listened to ghazals. While purists and traditionalists may have preferred the Pakistani ghazal singers Mehdi Hassan and Ghulam Ali, Jagjits voice won the hearts of the youth. Ghazal became easy to understand and easier to hum thanks to him. Jagjits numbers became an essential part of social gatherings and private parties.

He formed a winning partnership with his wife and fellow ghazal singer Chitra. Bohot pehle se un kadmon ki aahat pehchaan lete hain had a generation swooning. As did Sarakti jaye hai rukh se naqaab ahistaa ahistaa. Jagjit and Chitras fan following grew with each album of theirs. Ghazal had found its rightful place among the common people, but what thrilled Jagjit the most was the overwhelming response his concerts received overseas. Many singers found live concerts an uncomfortable experience. But Jagjit loved them. In fact, he was at his best during live performances. He would innovate, and regale the audience with his humour. It became part of his concerts in later years, remembered Kuldeep Desai, who conceptualised the shows. He had an amazing skill to read the audience. The jokes were his way of making them comfortable, and his constant interaction with them lit up the atmosphere. He looked forward to performing at concerts. Surprisingly, he never prepared himself for the shows. His initial interaction with the audience and its

response would decide the course of the evening, Desai recalled. He particularly liked fans who grew up listening to his lm and nonlm genre of music. The middle-aged group at his concerts struck an instant bond, Desai pointed out. This was the segment that formed the largest chunk of his ghazal-loving audience. Jagjit would joke: They must have been teenagers or in the early days of their courtship when I was just about beginning to make ghazal popular with the youth. Most of their requests would often be for my songs of 1975-85. Two lms, Arth and Saath Saath, propelled him into national reckoning. The songs from the lms captured the imagination of the young, and their success gave a llip to his non-lm renderings too. Jagjit and Chitra became household names in the 1980s, and it was considered fashionable to hum ghazals and embellish ones collection with Jagjit-Chitra albums. His evergreen solo from Prem Geet, Hoton se chhu lo tum, Mera geet amar kar do, became an anthem for the youth and continues to be one in times when

J A GJ I T A N D W I FE

Chitra. They formed a winning partnership.

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missioned him to bring out an album of four CDs containing 32 shabads (hymns) to commemorate 300 years of Gurta Gaddi of Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji Maharaj. Jagjit, in association with Dr Gurnam Singh of Punjabi University, Patiala, produced a priceless collection. The album had singers from different religions and cultures, such as Ustad Rashid Khan, Shafaqat Amanat Ali, Hariharan, Begum Parveen Sultana, Jayshri Shivram, Ashwini Deshpande, Suresh Wadkar, Sonu Nigam, Anup Jalota, Dilraj Kaur, and Shankar Mahadevan apart from Jagjit.
RELIGIOUS RENDERINGS

WITH PA K I S T A N I G HA Z A L

singer Ghulam Ali in Bangalore in August 2007.

with Lata Mangeshkar. It was a landmark effort because it brought two legends from different backgrounds together. A private person, Jagjit was polite to a fault with his friends and fans. His only anguish was with reality shows and the general decline in singing standards. They [the new singers] are in a hurry. They want to rush from being bathroom singers to studios, he told this correspondent once. The reality shows, he said, were nothing but dramas with judges as showpieces. Jagjit boosted secularism through his work. He took immense pride when Takhat Sachkhand Sri Hazur Sahib of Nanded (Maharashtra) com1 0 4 F R O N T L I N E

music, as he lamented sometimes, has been reduced to cacophony. Tragedy struck in July 1990 when Jagjit and Chitra lost Vivek, their only son, in a car accident on Marine Drive, Mumbai. Vivek was a month short of 19. Chitra never performed in public again, but Jagjit returned to win the hearts of his fans after six months. I was a broken man, wrote Jagjit, recalling how the tanpura infused life into his singing again. He sought solace in Nida Fazlis poems such as Apna gham le ke kahin aur jaaya jaye, Ghar mein bhikre hui cheezon ko sajaaya jaye. The pain was evident in Jagjits voice when he came out with Sajda, one of his nest albums, in tandem

At the launch, Jagjit said: The 32 shabads are a symbol of national integration and we have many non-Sikh singers contributing. The shabads are simple and easy to understand. His music, too, was always simple and easy to understand. The album became part of his religious renderings which also included Ram Dhun, Shiv Dhun and Krishna bhajans. Another album that Jagjit loved was Samvedna, based on the poetry of former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. The one that appealed to him the most was Duur kahin koi rota hai, which Vajpayee wrote when he was lying in a hospital bed during the Emergency. His following was worldwide and his music appealed to the people of Pakistan greatly. Mehdi Hassan and Ghulam Ali shared a special rapport with this icon from India. Jagjit and Ghulam Ali held a concert in New Delhi in September 2011. Their second performance, in Mumbai, stood cancelled as Jagjit took ill and suffered a brain haemorrhage, which led to his death. Jagjit loved the company of cricketers and was close to many. He visited Sharjah to watch the India-Pakistan matches. He was fond of racing too and owned a few horses, but music remained his priority, and as he often said, his commitment to society. Jagjit Singh, of ageless music, will sing no more. But his voice will live forever.

V.SREENIVASA MURTHY

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

Column

Question of ethics
The targeting of Al Qaedas Anwar al-Awlaki raises questions about the legality of the U.S. killing its own citizens and the ethicality of using drones for that.
HE September 30 killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, a preacher-turned-operational commander of Al Qaeda, in a remote tribal village in the desert region of Yemen, following a United States drone attack, is yet another setback to the dreaded terrorist organisation. (The last time the U.S. used a drone in Yemen was in 2002. That was to kill Abu Ali al-Harithi, a Yemeni Al Qaeda operative accused of planning the 2000 attack on USS Cole, the U.S. Navy destroyer.) Coming within months of the death of Osama bin Laden in a daring U.S. operation at Abbottabad in Pakistan, the liquidation of Awlaki in Yemen is a remarkable success for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the White House. Incidentally, another U.S. citizen, Samir Khan, of Pakistani origin, was also killed in the raid, along with two others. Samir Khan was the co-editor of Inspire, an English online propaganda magazine that was principally aimed at prospective recruits to Al Qaeda. Even the bitterest U.S. detractor would concede that superior technology and a ceaselessly penetrative intelligence outt with enormous resources were indeed making a difference, even in as difcult a terrain as rural Yemen. Incidentally, this apparently seamless operation almost similar to the one that saw the elimination of bin Laden should strengthen the Obama campaign for next years presidential election. This is, of course, only if the countrys economic situation does not worsen further and Obama retains the zeal and edge in his offensive against Al Qaeda and other organisations that have dedicated

Law and Order

R.K. RAGHAVAN
themselves to striking at the U.S. and its citizens across the globe. The Awlaki prole, like that of bin Laden, makes for interesting reading. It more than conrms that the breeding ground for terrorists is not Afghanistan or Pakistan. It could well be the American heartland itself. Awlaki was born in New Mexico in 1971, when his father (who was later to become a Minister for Agriculture in the Yemeni government) was a student there. Returning to Yemen with his father, he went to a prestigious private school. He went back to the U.S. to get an engineering degree at the Colorado State University and a Masters in Education from San Diego. Possibly because of his exposure to strong Islamic instruction while he was an adolescent in Yemen, Awlaki took a drastic decision after he completed his postgraduate studies. Much to the chagrin of his father, he preferred religious preaching to a regular
F R O N T L I N E 1 0 5

job that his U.S degrees could certainly have earned him. He became an imam, rst at Fort Collins (Colorado) and later in San Diego, where he spent ve years at the local mosque, the Arribat Al Islami. He had earlier married a cousin from his native Yemen and raised two children. Awlakis life in San Diego was comfortable, marked by good relations within the community. Ironically, alongside religious instruction there, he displayed temporal interests as well. These included exploring prospects of investment in private business, particularly in gold and minerals. It was this aspect of his personality that persuaded a visitor to the San Diego mosque to make Awlaki agree to recording his lectures and marketing them in CDs. This essentially commercial proposition (about 50 CDs were sold) was a success because of his powers of articulation, especially in English. One report tells us that the lectures were free from radicalism, with not even a tinge of hatred or exhortation to violence, something that was to mark his later rhetoric. His desire to be in the spotlight inuenced his decision to relocate to Virginia in 2000, where he became imam at the big Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Falls Church, outside Washington, D.C. This proved very signicant as it gave him exposure to a large segment of the Muslim community in the country. Then came 9/11 and the subsequent government action against terror suspects. Awlaki took a leading part in the Muslim protests that followed. Information fed to ofcial quarters had it that at least two of the hijackers involved in the 9/11 attack had attended Awlakis sermons. He

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

A PREDATOR DRONE

of the U.S. Air Force, an undated handout.

lates to Al Qaedas morale. To be specic, how far has it further weakened Al Qaeda, which is yet to recover from bin Ladens removal from the scene? Without a doubt, one more virulent campaigner against the West in general and the U.S. in particular has been got rid of. If bin Laden stood out for his organising abilities, Awlaki was formidable with his widespread appeal on the Internet for violence against the non-Islamic world. The ease with which he spoke English carried an incredible appeal to the American Muslim youth, a phenomenon that caused panic within the U.S. administration. His successful elimination highlights the American prowess in the ght against terrorism, and to this extent, it will dampen Al Qaeda and its allies for at least some time. Also, the impact of the U.S. operation should be long lasting, especially because of the use of a technology that Al Qaeda has not been able to match as yet. This is why the AQAPs threat of retaliation announced seems more symbolic than a real one backed by a capacity to inict large-scale destruction on the U.S. and its allies. Notwithstanding this, a few spectacular actions that can damage relatively minor U.S. targets are very much on the cards. The second feature of the Awlaki killing is the legality of the U.S. action. Awlaki was a U.S. citizen on whom the Constitution vested a few fundamental rights, including the Fifth Amendment right (No one shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.) Interestingly, late last
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was quizzed several times by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) during the 9/11 investigation, but it did not throw up material enough to justify his detention. Feeling the heat of scrutiny, he left the U.. abruptly and went to the United Kingdom, where he was a big draw at student gatherings. Unable to make ends meet, he returned to Yemen in 2004. It was during this phase that Awlakis outlook to life underwent a surprising transformation. He transited from being a mere ideologue to an operations man, and became pronouncedly militant in his exhortations online to Muslims, telling them that they should kill all those who did not subscribe to Islam. Under U.S. pressure, he was detained by the Yemeni government for a year. Following his release, he found it safer to operate from the remote regions of the country so as to evade continual ofcial monitoring of his activities. Keeping track of his doings as a leading light of the Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), the U.S. administration ordered his targeted killing in 2010. This move also took into account the strong evidence linking him with Nidal Malik Hasan, the U.S. Army Major who killed 13 persons in the Fort Hood camp in November 2009, and the arrest, one month later, of a Nigerian student with explosives fastened to his innerwear while on a ight from Amsterdam to Detroit.
THREE ISSUES

In my view, the Awlaki killing raises at least three major issues. The rst re-

year, a U.S. court refused to intervene in a suit led by Awlakis father questioning the constitutional validity of the order against his son. The courts view was that this was an essentially political decision falling outside the judicial ambit. The question may have raised is whether by ordering his liquidation the Obama administration had violated a citizens right enshrined in the Constitution. One view that supports the administration refers to Awlakis dual nationality and his choosing to operate from Yemen, a country over which the U.S. had no control. Even if this was so, there is the other test of imminent danger a condition prerequisite for a peremptory order of assassination against an individual that the U.S. government had to satisfy. It is difcult to say whether Awlakis assassination satised this criterion, especially when the target was operating from a remote locale and had no means himself to strike at his enemy. One school of thought accuses the Obama administration of being extremely exible while dening imminent danger. The debate will necessarily be inconclusive. Finally, there is the ethical question of the use of drones, which have become a powerful weapon in the U.S. armoury. They are lethal beyond belief and are growing fast in sophistication. Otherwise known as Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) or Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), the remotely piloted aircraft have become an accepted mode of attacking the enemy. Until now they have passed muster with the Geneva-Convention-based Law of Armed Conict despite the chorus of protest from human rights activists. The truth is, however much the U.S. may deny it, a drone attack takes more civilian lives than is admitted. In sum, the Awlaki episode deserves to be studied seriously by both defence experts and the political executive in India. The technology used and the legal issues raised here may not be relevant to us just now. At a distant point of time, however, it may not remain so.

REUTERS/HO

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

Column

Misleading picture
The theories about a major shift in global economic power from the North to the South are premature because they are derived from a awed methodology.
WO thoughts dominate in the global nancial press in these uncertain times. The rst is the growing concern, even fear, about immediate economic prospects with the almost certain possibility of another major nancial crisis. The euro area is apparently unable to resolve the problems of imbalance and debt in the peripheral countries, which now threaten the protability and even viability of major banks in the core countries. The United States is so hamstrung by its complex political process that its government is unable to take any meaningful measures to prevent the economy from falling into recession or even depression. The contagion effects in the rest of the world will probably be more pronounced than they were in 2008 and 2009 since many economies that withstood the earlier crisis are nancially more vulnerable now. The second perception, which is expressed in gloomy or resentful terms in the North and in excessively condent terms in the South, relates to the shift in global economic power, which has been occurring especially over the past decade and is widely seen to have been accelerated by the crisis. All the major global publications, whether they are from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) or the World Bank or the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) or the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), have taken note of this tendency and see it as possibly the dominant process in the future. Some further argue that the downturn in the North will be effectively counterbalanced by continued growth in emerg-

Preoccupations
JAYATI GHOSH
ing markets, particularly in countries such as Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) . In some recent publications, the impression is given that the shift has already occurred. The IMFs World Economic Outlook for September 2011, for example, suggests that developing countries now account for nearly half (48 per cent) of world output, more than double the share of two decades ago. According to their estimates, in 2010 the U.S. economy accounted for less than one-fth of global output and the euro area less than 15 per cent. Developing Asia, by contrast, accounts for 24 per cent. Described in this way, it certainly appears as if the fulcrum of global economic power is on the verge of changing or has already done so. But a closer look reveals that these estimates are all based on Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) rates instead of actual exchange rates.
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The economic theory behind the use of PPP measures is that exchange rate comparisons of less-developed economies consistently undervalue the non-traded goods sector, especially labour-intensive and relatively cheap services, and therefore underestimate real incomes in these developing economies. In some cases, this can be quite signicant. For example, according to the Penn World Tables, which provide the most widely used source of information on incomes deated by PPP, total incomes in countries with large poor populations such as India or China increased by multiples of around 2.5 with the PPP estimate, compared with the nominal exchange rate estimate in 2005. (In India, for example, the World Banks latest PPP estimate is Rs.19 a U.S. dollar, compared with the actual exchange rate of more than Rs.48 a dollar.) The use of PPP rates led to the grandiose statements of China becoming the second largest economy in the world or India even reaching sixth position on the global economic ladder. These conclusions are based on the assessment that our currencies command several times more goods and services than are reected in the actual exchange rates. However, there are some major problems with the estimates of income using exchange rates based on PPP. The most signicant is that of deriving the actual price comparisons. Obviously, PPP calculations should be based on comparing the prices of identical (or at best very similar goods) in different countries, and these should in turn be the goods that are most commonly represented in total expen-

Column
diture. But this is easier said than done. It is almost impossible to nd identical goods that dominate consumption and investment across different countries. So the rst question is how to choose comparable baskets of goods in different countries. Currently, a representative basket of U.S. consumption is taken as the norm, which is highly problematic because of enormous differences in consumption that stem not only from cultural patterns but also from per capita income itself. It is also worth noting that in recent years, the process of goods consumed in greater proportion (such as consumer durables) by the better-off have been falling, especially relative to the prices of essentials such as food. So this too would not adequately reect actual purchasing powers across different income groups. The second, and even more daunting, problem is how to nd the actual prices of such goods and services, and what to take as the representative price of each. This obviously has to use either existing price data or data from surveys that are constantly updated. But this is also very difcult especially in most developing countries, including very large ones.
UNRELIABLE DATA

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

There are real concerns about the poor and often outdated quality of the data on actual prices prevailing in different countries (including large developing countries such as China and India) that are used in such studies, which affect the reliability of such calculations. Thus, until recently, there had been no major survey or even careful estimate of prevailing prices in India and China so that the PPP estimates before 2005 have been based on very outdated evidence on prices of goods and services in these two countries. When they were nally revised on the basis of recent surveys and fresh evidence on actually prevailing prices in the two countries, the PPP estimates in these two countries changed dramatically. The 2005 PPP-adjusted per capita income for China in U.S. dollar

terms, for example, shows a 40 per cent decline compared with the 2000 estimate. This is because the new PPP for China is estimated to be around half the nominal rate, whereas the previous estimate (dating from 1993) had suggested it was only around onefourth of the nominal rate. This downward revision of per capita income in China also adds signicantly to the estimate of poverty using the standard U.S. dollar per day denition, more than doubling the estimated number of poor people in China. But then there is a further problem in using a single PPP indicator over a long period. The PPPs reect the relative costs for a pattern of consumption prevailing at only one moment in time, but this pattern is actually constantly changing. So a snapshot of relative prices across countries at a point in time can give a misleading idea of time trends. There is a less talked about but possibly even more signicant conceptual problem with using PPP estimates. In general, countries that have high PPP, that is, countries where the actual purchasing power of the currency is deemed to be much higher than the nominal value, are typically low-income countries with low average wages. It is precisely because there is a signicant section of the workforce that receives very low remuneration that goods and services are available more cheaply than in countries where the majority of workers receive higher wages. Therefore, using PPP-modied gross domestic product (GDP) data may miss the point, by seeing as an advantage the very feature that reects greater poverty of the majority of wage earners in an economy. In other words, a countrys exchange rate tends to be low or the disparity between the nominal value of the currency and its purchasing power tends to be greater because the wages of most workers are low. A lowcurrency economy is a low-wage economy, which is not something that should be celebrated. And that, in turn, gives a misleading picture of lev1 0 8 F R O N T L I N E

els of income across countries, by making countries with low per capita incomes at actual (or nominal) exchange rates suddenly appear to be much less poor in terms of PPP. Instead, if we actually look at the share of incomes across different country groupings in terms of actual exchange rates, it makes sense because of all the reasons mentioned above and also because of the fundamental point that global trade and investment ows actually take place in nominal exchange rates, not in some imaginary PPPs. So if relative economic power is to be assessed, it must be looked at in terms of the actual size of economies in terms of the rates that are used for cross-border transactions. The shift in relative economic strengths, while still visible, is nowhere near as signicant or major as is generally presented. The share of developed countries has certainly declined in the past two decades by nearly 15 percentage points but they still account for more than 70 per cent of global income. And while developing countries have more than doubled their share in the same period, they still have achieved less than 30 per cent share. This is certainly not as stark in terms of presenting an imminent handover of global power. When individual countries are considered, the U.S. still accounts for nearly a quarter of global output, and the euro area is nearly one-fth. China is still less than 10 per cent, and India is less than 3 per cent. This is not to deny the clear direction of change but simply to point out that the process still has a very long way to go before it can become really signicant. This is certainly worth pointing out to those in the North who are currently obsessed with the fear of the southern takeover. But it may be even more important to remember in the South, especially among people whose gung-ho optimism in this regard is not always tempered by reality. Especially in South Asia, our development project remains woefully incomplete but our income levels are also still really low.

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

Nobel Prizes

Immunity unravelled
The Prize for Medicine has gone to three scientists who found out the key mechanisms underlying the activation of the immune system. B Y R . R A M A C H A N D R A N

Ralph Steinman, who was awarded the prize posthumously in a break from the Nobel Foundations rule, discovered the role of dendritic cells in immune regulation, which opens up avenues for the development of new vaccines against infections.
TO defend themselves against infection by external microorganisms such as bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites, living beings possess layers of defence with increasing specicity. The rst layer is the physical block such as skin and external secretions that prevents microorganisms from entering the body. If these physical barriers are breached, the bodys immune system provides an immediate non-specic innate response. This triggers inammation one of the initial biological responses to infection or injury that can counter their attack and destroy invading pathogens. The innate immune system is present in all plants and animals. If the

innate response is unable to counter the invading organism, the second layer of the immune system, called the adaptive or acquired immune system, takes over. Adaptive immunity produces antibodies that ght the infection and killer cells that destroy infected cells. The adaptive immune system is, however, known to be present only in jawed vertebrates. Unlike the innate response, where the response is rapid on exposure to the pathogen, adaptive response is slower; there is a time lag between exposure and the maximal response that the system can mount (Figure 1). The second stage of immune response nally leads to the pathogens being cleared from the body. But, more signicantly, while innate immunity does not retain any memory of the pathogen, adaptive immunity develops an immunological memory that enables the immune system to respond faster and mount stronger responses when the same pathogen causes a subsequent infection. While these two levels of the immune system provide good protection against infections, if the activation threshold is too low, or if endogenous molecules can activate the system, it may result in inammatory diseases or autoimmune disorders. This years Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine has gone to three scientists who unravelled the key mechanisms underlying the activation of the

R A L PH S T EI N M A N .

B RU C E BE UTLE R .
F R O N T L I N E 1 0 9

J ULE S HOFFM AN N .

CARLOS BARRIA/REUTERS

AP

AP

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

immune system, both innate and adaptive. One half of the prize has gone to Jules Hoffman and Bruce Beutler for their discoveries concerning the activation of innate immunity and the other half to Ralph Steinman for his discovery of the dendritic cell and its role in adaptive immunity. By discovering how the innate and adaptive stages of immune response are triggered, the three Nobel laureates have provided new insights into disease mechanisms. Their work has opened up avenues for the development of preventive vaccines as well as therapy against various infections, cancer, inammatory diseases and even autoimmune disorders. Hoffman, 70, served last at the University of Strasbourg, France, between 1974 and 2009. It was here that he obtained his doctorate in 1969 and also did his award-winning research. Beutler, 54, has been at the Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, U.S., since 2000 though his Nobel work was carried out at the University of Texas in Dallas in the late 1990s. However, Steinman is no longer alive to receive the award. In the 110-year history of the Nobel Prize, this will be the rst time that the award is being given posthumously. The prize was announced on October 3 but Steinman had passed away on September 30. In a press release issued after the announcement of the prize, the Nobel Foundation said that the information on Steinmans death had reached the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet via the president of the Rockefeller University only at 2-30 p.m. (European Time) on October 3, while the Nobel Assembly had announced the Prize at 11-30 a.m. According to Alexis Steinman, her father had joked only the previous week with his family about hanging on until the prize announcement. Steinman had apparently said: I know I have got to hold out for that. They dont give it to you if you have passed away. I got to hold out for that. The events that have occurred, the press release stated, are unique and, to the best of our knowledge, are

unprecedented in the history of the Nobel Prize. According to the statutes of the Nobel Foundation, work produced by a person since deceased shall not be given an award. However, the statutes specify that if a person has been awarded a prize and has died before receiving it, the prize may be presented. An interpretation of the purpose of this rule leads to the conclusion that Ralph Steinman shall be awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. The purpose of the above-mentioned rule is to make it clear that the Nobel Prize shall not deliberately be awarded posthumously. However, the decision to award the Nobel Prize to Ralph Steinman was made in good faith, based on the assumption that the Nobel Laureate was alive. This was true though not at the time of the decision only a day or so previously. The Nobel Foundation thus believes that what has occurred is more reminiscent of the example in the statutes concerning a person who has been named as a Nobel Laureate and has died before the actual Nobel Prize Award Ceremony. Steinman, 68, had been at the Rockefeller University, where he had carried out the path-breaking research, since 1970.
WATCHDOG CELLS

The time line of scientic discoveries that has led to our present understanding of the immune system is not in the same order in which the two stages of the immune system work. It was the mechanism involved in the adaptive response that came to be discovered rst. In 1973, Steinman, working with Zanvil A. Cohen, discovered a new cell type that he termed dendritic cells (DCs), which he hypothesised to be important in the immune system. DCs are tree-like cells that were rst discovered in Germany in 1869 by Paul Langerhans, who thought that they were part of the nervous system. These cells are found at the interfaces between the body and the environment, like the epidermal layer of the skin, and in lymphoid or immune organs. In addition, DCs line the surfaces of the airway and the intestine. There they function as
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gatekeepers that sample substances from the environment. Interestingly, in a video interview last year, Steinman had said that he had not been exposed to biology until he passed out from school in Quebec and joined McGill University. There he took a biology course to see what it was all about and then he was smitten. He said in the interview: I wanted to understand how the immune response begins and how this immune system is driven into action. This took him to the Rockefeller University. [The] most distinctive feature of the cells that we had discovered, he added, [is that it] had many processes. They are constantly probing the environment looking for all the challenges that the immune system has to deal with and when they see the challenge they have to take it into the body and teach the immune system what to do. [T]here was one system that people had discovered before us on how immune responses were generated in a test tube. But something was missing for the immune response to work in the test tube. So we looked at the immune cells with the microscope and there we spotted something that nobody had ever seen or taken note of before these strange probing dendritic cells. By the late 1960s, it was already established that a kind of white blood cells (lymphocytes), the T-cells, and certain accessory cells, whose identity and function were unknown, played a role in cell-mediated immune response in mammals. Steinman and Cohen were studying spleen cells to understand the induction of immune responses in a major lymphoid organ of the mouse when they encountered a population of cells with unusual shapes and movements that had not been seen before. Because they had unusual tree-like or dendritic processes, Steinman named them dendritic cells. Steinman and Cohen then went on to study whether DCs were involved in activating T-cells. They were able to establish that in cell culture experiments, the presence of DCs led to a strong response of T-cells to pathogen-

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

FIGURE 1

risk of infection of all kinds. This is nothing but innate immunity. But how is this initial innate immune response triggered? What is the mechanism that alerts us? It is obvious that the immune system has a genetically programmed capacity to recognise certain molecules of microbial origin and trigger some specialised sensor or receptor molecules. But what are these receptors?
STUDY OF FRUIT FLIES
FIGURE 2

ic substances. Initially, these results were met with scepticism, but later work by Steinman established that DCs had the unique capacity to activate T-cells. DCs thus constitute a critical, and previously missing, link in the adaptive and innate branches of the immune system. As the bodys watchdogs, DCs seek out foreign invading pathogenic substances such as bacteria, viruses and toxins. One of the functions of DCs is to capture the antigens molecules characteristic of the invading pathogens and convert them to smaller pieces and display the antigenic fragments on their cell surfaces to be recognised by the T-cells to mount an immune response. DCs then travel to immune or lymphoid tissues and seek out regions rich in T-cells. In technical terms, DCs convert the antigens to peptides within the cells cytoplasm,

and these peptides then bind to products of the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) a region of the genome important for immunity and autoimmunity and then exit to the cell surface to present the antigens to the T-cells. This then signals the T-cells to mount an immune response to counter the attack, in particular by enabling white blood cells called B-cells to make antibodies to neutralise the infection and killer T-cells to destroy the infected cells (Figure 2). But the key question that still remained was how does the system know in the beginning that there is an infection? Clinicians have known for long that patients have different levels of innate immunity. For instance, if patients do not have neutrophils white blood cells that migrate into the bloodstream during the beginning phase of infection they are at grave
F R O N T L I N E 1 1 1

In 1996, Hoffman at the University of Strasbourg, and his co-workers, while investigating how Drosophila (fruit ies) fought infections, found that ies that had mutation in the gene called Toll could not mount an effective immune response when challenged with bacterial or fungal infection. Actually, Hoffman and colleagues were studying the general problem of how insects fought infections and had identied several antimicrobial peptides that the system produced to do this. The investigation culminated in identifying the important role played by the Toll gene in the promoter sequence for the antimicrobial peptide genes. The nding indicated that the molecular product of the Toll gene was involved in sensing pathogenic organisms, and Toll activation was necessary to activate the innate immune response. In 1998, Beutler, then working at the University of Texas, found that certain mutant mice, the model system that he was investigating, were resistant to high doses of a bacterial product called lipopolysaccharide (LPS), which was otherwise known to cause life-threatening septic shock by overstimulating the immune system. Beutler and his associates determined that the mutation was in a gene that was very similar to the Toll gene in the fruit y. The product of this Toll-like gene, called the Toll-Like receptor (TLR) molecule, turned out to be the receptor that was responsible for binding to LPS (receptor molecules reside on the surface of cells and signal the cells into some specic action.) When the TLR binds to LPS, signals are activated, triggering inammation (Figure 2).

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

But when the dose is excessive, it causes septic shock. The ndings of Hoffman and Beutler showed that mammals and fruit ies make use of similar molecules to activate innate immunity against infections. Of course, said Beutler in his post-prize announcement interview, we know that some things go very far back and are preserved even to the Cambrian times. And, nonetheless, it still was a surprise to me at the time that everything was so similar in the y as in the mammal. When we made our discovery, which was a [of] couple years after Jules made his, I had only a very dim awareness of the situation in ies. [He had] showed [that] a y was overwhelmed with fungal infection if it had mutation in Toll. Because it made perfect sense that in the mouse the same sort of situation applied, and there was overwhelming gram-negative sepsis if you had a mutation in Toll-like receptor 4 [TLR4]. So, I saw right away the parallelism. But this nding was the culmination of research that had begun in the 1980s when Beutler had identied tumour necrosis factor (TNF) as an inammatory protein. I realised quite early on, he said in an interview, that TNF was one of the major executors of endotoxic shock. And, it was strongly induced by LPS, and therefore, we always took it as a marker of the LPS response. It was the endpoint that we followed, just as Professor Hoffmann followed the production of antimicrobial peptides. It took a very long time to nd the Toll-like receptor for a molecule because we didnt use a genetic approach for quite a while. We used conventional approaches: cross-immunising mutant mice with wild type mice and looking proteomically to try to nd a difference between the two strains. And all of that was fruitless. It took a very long time before we were able to start positionally cloning. (Positional cloning is reverse of the traditional approach where you nd an area of interest in the genome by genetic screening and then nd out what that region does functionally with the proteins that the region makes.)

The discoveries of these sensor molecules triggered an explosion of research in innate immunity. Over a dozen different TLRs have now been identied in humans and mice. Each one of them is programmed to recognise certain types of molecules common in microorganisms. While individuals with certain mutations in these molecules carry an increased risk of infection, other genetic variations in TLRs have been linked to increased risk of chronic inammatory diseases. As mentioned earlier, if innate immunity is breached, adaptive immunity comes into play. It is clear, therefore, that the innate immune response in some way contributes to the development of an appropriate adaptive immune response. But the exact mechanism of communication between the two stages remains unclear. Beutler and his co-workers in collaboration with David Nemazees laboratory at the Scripps Institute have been able to show that TLR signalling is not required for effective antibody production, which has led them to conclude that a large number of other genes could be involved in supporting adaptive immune response. As regards the potential applications of research on innate immunity, Beutler said, I think that the most hopeful [applications] lie in the realm of inammatory and autoimmune disease because I believe now, as I believed long ago, that inammation is something that evolved to cope with infection. And when we speak of sterile inammatory diseases, like rheumatoid arthritis, and autoimmune diseases like lupus, probably some of the same pathways are utilised. And, it may very well be that by blocking TLR signalling well have very specic therapies for those kinds of diseases. Steinman, too, saw similar potential from the ongoing work on DCs. Our most recent work is to take advantage of the science of dendritic cells, Steinman said in his interview. What we are trying to do is to use, to exploit, to harness what we have learnt about dendritic cells to make vaccines in a new way. Vaccines that are com1 1 2 F R O N T L I N E

posed of very chemically dened substances and very safe, very specic and very incisive in terms of what they do. The dendritic cells help us understand the many diseases that involve the immune system. How does an autoimmune disease begin? How does allergy begin? What goes wrong? How can we ght cancer better. I think dendritic cells will bear upon the future of vaccine design, he said. The basis for this lies in the new research at Steinmans lab. It has shown that DCs, which provide the important adaptive and are also probably linked to innate immunity, are also responsible for a seemingly opposite role in health called immune tolerance, which silences dangerous immune cells and prevents them from attacking innocuous materials in the body or the bodys own tissues. In the absence of infection, DCs have been found to efciently capture and process harmless self- and environmentalantigens and silence the immune response; that is, induce immune tolerance. But during infection, it has been found that DCs undergo an intricate process of differentiation called maturation, which enable them to express additional receptors for responding effectively to microbial antigens and mount an immune response. This work has led to a new understanding of the control of tolerance and immunity and has formed the basis of a new eld of study in immunology: the role of DCs in immune regulation and their potential to help discover new vaccines and therapies for autoimmune disorders such as lupus and multiple sclerosis. During allergy, autoimmunity and organ transplantation, DCs initiate unwanted immune responses that cause inammatory diseases and autoimmune disorders. But DCs are also known to suppress these conditions. That is, depending upon the effectiveness in tolerating self-antigens, their effectiveness in orchestrating innate and adaptive immune responses, DCs, in a sense, dene the immunological self. Thus they can lead to new strategies for vaccines.

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

Nobel Prizes

Chasing supernovae
The universe is expanding faster than ever before. This is what the research of the winners of this years Nobel Prize in Physics concludes. B Y R . R A M A C H A N D R A N

They have shown how to use distant supernovae to record the history of the expansion of the universe. They have also set an example of collaboration among the community of astronomers in probing the truth about the universe and its nal fate.
WHAT if one were to throw up a ball in the air and, instead of it coming down under the force of gravity, watched it overcome the gravitational attraction and disappear into space faster and faster as if attractive gravity were being countered by a stronger repulsive force? The winners of this years Nobel Prize in Physics observed something similar happening in the large scale of the universe. Two astronomy research groups concluded around 1998, independently of each other, that the universe that we know to be expanding as a result of the Big Bang that created it now seems to be speeding up its rate of expansion instead of slowing down, as one would expect, under the gravitational pull of the matter contained in it. One was the Supernova Cosmology Project (SCP) team and the other was the High-z Supernova Search (HZSS) team. The SCP was initiated in 1988 and was headed by Saul Perlmutter, and the HZSS was launched in 1994 and was headed by Brian Schmidt, with Schmidts associate Adam Riess playing a crucial role. The 2011 physics Nobel Prize, according to the award citation, has been given for the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the Universe through observations of distant supernovae. One half of the award has gone to Perlmutter, and the other half, divided equally, to Schmidt and Riess. Perlmutter, a 52-year-old American, continues to head the SCP, which is still gathering data on supernovae, at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), and is a professor of physics at the
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University of California, Berkeley. Brian Schmidt, 44, an American-Australian, heads the HZSS team and is Distinguished Professor at Australia National University at Western Creek, Australia. Adam Riess, a 42-year-old American, is now Professor of Astronomy and Physics at Johns Hopkins University and the Space Telescope Science Institute, U.S. Just over a century ago, the universe was considered no larger than our own galaxy, the Milky Way. The many nebulae that were seen in the sky were thought of as mere gas clouds on the fringes of the Milky Way. In 1912, the American astronomer Vesto Slipher, working at the Lowell Observatory, pioneered measurements of the shifts towards the red of the light from the brightest of these nebulae that had been seen. The redshift of an object in light is akin to the Doppler Effect that one is familiar with in sound from a moving object; sound waves from a train moving away, for example, gets stretched and the pitch drops in proportion to the velocity. Similarly, light waves from a moving object, too, get stretched and shift towards longer wavelengths, or the red end of the spectrum. Slipher had found something interesting that could not be explained. The nebulae seemed to be moving faster than the escape velocity for the Milky Way! In the 1920s, the nature of these nebulae, too, got unravelled when astronomers, most importantly Edwin Hubble, using the new 100-inch telescope at Mt. Wilson, looked at the better resolved images of these nebulae and could spot individual stars within these spiral nebulae like the Andromeda nebula. Some of these stars were found to be pulsating stars, called Cepheids, which brightened and dimmed with regular periods. In 1912, the American astronomer Henrietta Swan Leavitt, analysing thousands of these Cepheids, had found an interesting characteristic of these variable stars. The brighter ones had longer pulse durations and the luminosity of Cepheids and their pulse periods were related. Using this information, she could calculate the intrinsic brightness of distant Cepheids by observing their pulsating periods. So in Cepheids astronomers had the standard candle, the yardstick to measure a stars intrinsic brightness.
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AFP

SAU L PE R L M UT T E R , B RI A N

Schmidt and Adam Riess. They shared the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics.
ical foundations for the gravity-dominated universe was also being laid by Einstein. In November 1915, he formulated the theory of General Relativity (GR), an extension of his theory of Special Relativity. This revolutionary theory is one of the greatest achievements in the history of science, a major milestone in 20th century physics. It soon became clear to the astrophysics community that the GR equations could be applied to cosmological situations, and in 1917 Einstein himself applied them to the entire universe, making the implicit assumption that the universe is homogeneous at cosmological scales when effects of local clusters of matter get averaged out.
COSMOLOGICAL CONSTANT

Now if the luminosity-period relation could be calibrated with nearby Cepheids, whose distances can be measured from parallax measurements, distances to other Cepheids can be established (to within 10 per cent) the dimmer its light, the farther away is the star in accordance with the inverse square law. The pulse period will give its intrinsic luminosity and from the apparent luminosity (brightness as observed) and the inverse square law the distance can be deduced. Hubble used Leavitts relation to estimate the distances of the spiral nebulae and concluded that they were too far away to be part of the Milky Way and hence must be galaxies themselves beyond the Milky Way. So the universe was much larger than just our Milky Way. Further, combining his own measurements of 46 galaxies and the redshifts of these that had been measured by Slipher and others, Hubble found that almost all these galaxies were moving away from us. He also found a rough proportionality of an objects distance with its redshift, which in turn is proportional to its radial recession velocity, and the proportionality factor is called the Hubble constant. The conclusion was that the galaxies were rushing away from us and each other much like raisins in a cake swelling in the oven and the farther away they are, the faster they are receding from us. This is today known as Hubbles law, which Hubble published in 1929. While observational cosmology was giving new insights about the universe we live in, the profound theoret-

Remarkably, however, the solutions of the equations suggested that the universe could not be stable it had to either expand or shrink. This conclusion, which Einstein found contrary to his view of a static universe, had been reached at least a decade before Hubbles observations of ever receding galaxies. Einstein, however, soon found a way out of it. His GR equations, in the most general form, could accommodate a cosmological constant, a constant energy component of the universe, which could cancel the instability to give a static universe. However, calculations using GR equations by the Russian mathematician-physicist Alexander Friedman during 1922-24 and the work by the Belgian priest physicist Georges Lematre in 1927 essentially showed that Einsteins
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steady-state solution was unstable and any small perturbation would render the universe non-static. Einstein, however, did not like an expanding universe and had apparently called the idea abominable. Though Hubble is credited with Hubbles Law, Lematre in his 1927 paper had derived the equations for an expanding universe and obtained a relation similar to Hubbles and found essentially the same proportionality constant from observational data on distances and radial velocities of 42 galaxies two years before Hubble did. But his results were published in a not widely circulated Belgian journal and the 1931 English translation of it in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (MNRAS) had removed the section about Hubbles law. Recently it has come to light that these omissions of Lematres results on expansion of the universe were perhaps deliberate, which have denied Lematre the due credit for such a revolutionary cosmological result. He also subsequently showed the logical consequence of his nding that the universe must have existed for a nite time only and must have emerged from an initial single quantum and thus laid the basis for the concept of the Big Bang. The discovery of the expansion of the universe by Slipher, Hubble, Lematre and others in the 1920s soon led to its widespread acceptance with which Einstein, too, later reconciled, given the growing evidence. He is supposed to have called the introduction of the cosmological constant his

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greatest mistake. From then on the idea of the cosmological constant in GR equations faded, only to gain importance once again following this years Nobel Prize-winning discoveries. The constant is now thought to represent an intrinsic energy component of spacetime that can overcome the total energy content of ordinary matter and provide the push for the observed accelerated expansion of the universe. The theoretical understanding of an expanding universe in the GR framework following Friedmans and Lematres work also gave credence to the model of a homogeneous and isotropic universe, which, too, quickly came to be accepted by the scientic community. This idea that the universe looks the same on cosmological scales to all observers, independent of the location and independent of the direction in which they look, is called the Cosmological Principle. The model of the universe that incorporates the Cosmological Principle is called the Friedman-Lematre-RobertsonWalker (FLRW) model. Since the 1930s, the evidence for the Cosmological Principle has grown stronger and stronger with the discovery in 1964 by Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson of the all pervading Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation, the relic radiation from the Big Bang that has since stretched to long wave radiation corresponding to a black body at 3 degrees Kelvin and is distributed uniformly throughout. The recent observations of CMB by WMAP satellite show that the largest temperature anisotropies (of the order of a thousandth of a degree) arise owing to the motion of the Milky Way through space. If this component is subtracted from the data, the residual anisotropies are a hundred times smaller. To understand the history of the universe, right from the Big Bang to the present and its possible evolution into the future, is the basic objective of cosmology. The paradigm that has emerged for understanding the largescale structure of the universe over the last seven decades is based on the

equations of GR with the assumption of a homogeneous and isotropic universe. In principle, the record of the expansion history of the universe can be obtained by using as a standard candle any distinguishable class of astronomical objects of known intrinsic brightness that are available to the astronomer over a wide range of distances. The recorded redshift and brightness of such objects will thus provide a measure of the total integrated expansion of the universe since the time the light was emitted. If such measurements over a sufcient range of distances can be compiled, we will have a record of the history of the universes expansion.
STANDARD CANDLES

As we have seen, one well-known class of standard candles is the Cepheid variable stars. These stars can now be identied at distances up to about 10 megaparsec (1 parsec, or pc, is a distance corresponding to a parallax of 1 arc second and is used as a unit of length in astronomy. It is equal to 3.26 light years, or about 31 trillion (3.11013) km). The Milky Way has a diameter of 30 kpc. To determine the expansion history of the universe, however, we need to be able to measure distances of at least about 1,000 Mpc. Way back in 1938, Walter Baade and Fred Zwicky, working together at the Mt. Wilson Laboratory, suggested that the supernovae were highly promising candidates as distance markers. They are bright enough to be visible at large distances and can, in fact, over a few weeks, outshine an entire galaxy. However, with many supernovae being discovered over the years, it was found that their peak brightness, which had originally seemed quite uniform, had a considerable range and these objects were really not as homogeneous as standard candles should be. Fortunately, by the 1980s a class of supernovae emerged with no hydrogen emission lines in their spectra, which were called Type 1 supernovae, and among these there was a subclass, Type 1a, which in addition had silicon
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absorption line at 615 nm wavelength in their spectra. Supernovae belonging to Type 1a had an amazing degree of uniformity in their characteristics. Their spectra were found to match feature by feature as did their light curves. Light curves are plots of supernovae brightness as they wax and wane in the weeks following a supernova explosion. Type 1a supernovae became the new standard candles. Type 1a supernova results from the explosion of an extremely compact star called white dwarf, which is of the size of the earth but is as heavy as the sun, at the end of its life cycle. White dwarfs form when a star has run out of its fuel, hydrogen and helium, required to sustain its nuclear fusion reaction in its core. Only carbon and oxygen remain. But it is not at all uncommon that low-mass white dwarfs are part of binary star systems, in which case the white dwarfs strong gravity can lead to accretion of gas and matter from the companion star. However, when the white dwarf approaches the limit of 1.4 solar masses, the Chandrasekhar limit, the star cannot hold itself together and it becomes unstable. When this happens, the white dwarf becomes sufciently hot for runaway nuclear fusion and the star explodes. The nuclear fusion emits strong radiation that increases rapidly during the rst weeks after the explosion and then decreases over the following months. So, irrespective of the nature of the white dwarf and how it started out its life cycle, its nal fate is the same and this is why Type 1a supernovae are remarkably similar and can serve as ideal standard candles. About 10 Type 1a supernovae occur every minute, but given that the universe is so huge, in a typical galaxy only one or two explosions occur in a thousand years. But astronomers were lucky to spot such a supernova explosion just last month in a galaxy close to the Big Dipper (Saptarishi) constellation, which was so bright that it could be seen with a pair of binoculars. But most supernovae occur at great distances and thus are dimmer. In any case, these explosions are very brief

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and occur at random. So in their search for such supernovae, astronomers have a daunting problem at hand. How to plan an observation to be able to catch a supernova in this vast expanse of the universe? And telescope observation times are not available on demand.
SUPERNOVAE ON DEMAND

Perlmutter said in a 2003 article: This was a classic Catch-22. You couldnt preschedule telescope time to identify a supernovas type or follow it up if you couldnt guarantee one. But you couldnt prove a technique for guaranteeing Type 1a supernova discoveries without scheduling telescope time to identify them spectroscopically. Besides these problems of logistics, astronomers had to deal with technical issues as well. The light of supernovae had to be extracted from the background light in their host galaxies. To obtain the correct maximum brightness of supernovae one had to correct for the scattering and absorption of light by the intervening galactic dust. Crucial to hitting upon a technique of catching the supernovae as they brightened, which Perlmutter and Carl Pennypacker came up with in 1988, was the invention by Willard Boyle and George Smith of light-sensitive digital imaging sensors based on Charge-coupled Devices (CCDs), which allowed studying thousands of galaxies in a night on a 4-m telescope, thus increasing the chances of catching a supernova. Contemporary computing and networking advances just barely made possible the next-day analysis that would let us catch supernovae as they rst brightened, wrote Perlmutter. The Catch-22 problem was solved by Perlmutter and his associates by an ingenious idea. In retrospect, wrote Perlmutter, the solution we found seems obvious. By specic timing of the requested telescope schedules, we could guarantee that our wide-eld imager would harvest a batch of about a dozen freshly exploded supernovae, all discovered on a pre-specied observing date during the dark phase of

the moon. (A bright moon is an impediment to the follow-up observation.) We rst demonstrated this supernovae-on-demand methodology in 1994. From then on, proposals for time at major ground-based telescopes could specify delivery dates and roughly how many supernovae would be found and followed up. This approach also made it possible to use the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) for follow-up lightcurve observations. With a growing number of collaborators, the Berkeley teams project came to be called the SCP. Implementing the programme and chasing supernovae was thus as much challenging to science and technology as to logistics. First, the right type of supernova had to be found. Second, its redshift and brightness had to be measured. The light-curve had to be analysed in order to be able to compare it with other supernovae of the same type at known distances. This called for a network of scientists to decide whether a particular star was suitable for observation and follow-up. It also required switching between telescopes and having observation time at a telescope, including the HST, granted without delay, a procedure that normally takes months. All this was to be done quickly because supernovae fade quickly. The new supernovae-on-demand techniques now permitted systematic study of distant supernovae. At the end of 1994, the second collaboration HZSS led by Schmidt, which included many supernova experts, also got under way, essentially adopting the same techniques. Over the following years the two collaborations independently searched for supernovae, often but not always at the same telescopes. The two rival teams, according to Perlmutter, raced against each other over the next few years occasionally covering for each other with observations when one of us had bad weather as we all worked feverishly to nd and study the guaranteed on-demand batches of supernovae. Like the SCP, the HZSS could also demonstrate the validity of the chosen strategy. When Einstein removed the cosm1 1 6 F R O N T L I N E

ological constant from the GR equations, his obvious question was regarding the universes ultimate fate. He posed it in terms of the geometry of spacetime that the equations represented. Is the universe open or closed or is it something in between, at? An open universe is one where the gravitational force of attraction is not large enough to prevent the expansion of the universe. All matter gets diluted in an ever larger, ever colder and emptier space. In a closed universe, on the other hand, the gravitational force is strong enough to halt and even reverse the expansion. So the universe will ultimately stop expanding and fall back together in a hot and violent ending, a Big Crunch. Most cosmologists prefer a simple and mathematically elegant universe that is at. But if there is a cosmological constant, the expansion would continue to accelerate even if the universe is at. The Nobel laureates, in their attempt at measuring supernovae distances and their redshifts, expected to measure the cosmic deceleration, or how the universe was slowing, as it was expected to in the generally accepted cosmological scenario given the energy density of observed matter in the universe. In the simplest cosmological models, the expansion history of the cosmos is determined entirely by its mass density. The expansion will be slowed down more by gravity if the density is high. Therefore, in the past, a highmass-density universe would have been expanding faster than it does now. So one did not have to look too far back in time through extremely distant and faint supernovae to nd evidence for the expected deceleration. Conversely, in a low-mass-density universe one will have to look far back in time. But the mass distribution in the universe at present already determines the lower limit to the mass density. That is how far one must look to nd a given redshift. In the beginning of 1998, both groups published their results which seemed to show evidence for far less than the expected deceleration. While these seemed consistent with a low-

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mass-density universe, the high-redshift supernovae that the two groups found were fainter than would be expected even for an empty cosmos. The faintness or distance of the high-redshift supernovae was a dramatic surprise, he wrote. If the cosmic expansion had been slowing down, they should have appeared brighter. The surprising conclusion was that the expansion of the universe was not slowing down but actually accelerating. Two breakthrough papers implying the above were published later in 1998 itself. While the HZSS observations were based on 16 Type 1a supernovae analysed by Riess, then a postdoctoral researcher at Berkeley, the SCP paper by Perlmutter and others included 45 supernovae. That both the groups independently presented similar, albeit extraordinary, results was crucial to their general acceptance by the scientic community. To be sure that their conclusions are right, the scientists have investigated questions such as: Could the dimness of distant supernovae be the effect of intervening dust? Or, did the Type 1a supernovae in the early universe have different properties from the nearby, recent ones? The two groups have concluded that dust is not a major problem and the spectral properties of near and distant supernovae are very similar. Later studies of supernovae of very high redshift, from the time when the universe was much denser and energy density due to matter dominated, indicate that repulsion set in when the universe was about half its present age. The dramatic conclusion of an accelerating universe has been conrmed by precision measurements of CMB and by studies of galaxy clustering. The driving force behind the acceleration, however, is unknown. The widely held current belief is that the cause of expansion is vacuum energy called dark energy, but it is one of the biggest challenges to present-day physics to understand its exact nature. The amount of acceleration found actually implies that three-fourths of the universe is in this unknown form of

energy. If the hypothesis is correct, together with the other unknown form of matter, which has gravitational force but does not interact with light, called dark matter, this constitutes 95 per cent of the universe. Only the remaining 5 per cent is regular matter that makes up galaxies, stars, the planets and living things. The simplest way to introduce a repulsive counterforce is to put back Einsteins constant, which, being a constant, does not change with time. So dark energy began to dominate when matter got diluted to a low density because of expansion over billions of years. According to scientists, that would account for the fact that the cosmological constant entered the picture so late in the history of the universe, some ve to six billion years ago. However, with regard to the cosmological constant, vacuum energy gives rise to its own peculiar problem based on elementary particle physics and quantum theory. The latter tells us that the vacuum is never empty but is actually a bubbling soup of matter and antimatter that are constantly being created and annihilated and contribute to energy. However, the simplest estimate puts this at an astounding 10120 (1 followed by 120 zeroes) times large than the amount of dark energy required. So vacuum energy would actually raise more questions than actually solve the question of an accelerating universe.
PERTINENT QUESTION

But the more pertinent question, irrespective of whether there is dark energy or not, is whether the conclusion of an accelerating universe, for which the Nobel Prize has been awarded this year, is itself questionable. The evidence for accelerated expansion is also indirect, points out Subir Sarkar, an Oxford University cosmologist. It is based on interpreting the brightness of distant supernovae (versus their redshift) in the framework of an assumed homogeneous cosmological model whereas the real universe is manifestly not so. The very fact that this immediately implies that the universe is dominated by the cosmological conF R O N T L I N E 1 1 7

stant should ring alarm bells and force us to examine the assumptions of the standard cosmological model. Although the universe is inhomogeneous on small scales, averaging over spatial uctuations and studying time evolution is not easily done in a mathematically rigorous and consistent way. The real problem is we have very few cosmological solutions of the GR equations apart from the simplest ones based on the cosmological principle, he added. There are many scientists working to understand whether the interpretation is an artifact of the assumed idealised FLRW model. One such theorist is Syksy Rasanen of Helsinki University. The fact that the distribution of matter and geometry in the universe has large local uctuations can change the relation [between the distance and expansion rate] from the FLRW model, he said. However, he made the following signicant observation: There are also independent observations of the expansion rate, which indicate that the expansion has at least decelerated less than expected. So the expansion of the universe has also to be changed anyway, even if acceleration is not proved beyond reasonable doubt. Also, acceleration does not in itself imply the presence of dark energy or modication of gravity. The presence of structures can also lead to actual accelerating expansion of cosmological volumes. Whether the effect of structures is signicant remains an open question. Until this effect is quantied, we do not know whether the observations indicate new physics, or if they can be understood in terms of a complex realisation of the physics we already know. The major contribution of the Nobel laureates actually lies in their demonstration of how to use distant supernovae to record the history of the expansion of the universe. It is as much a demonstration of the ingenious application of science and technology in cosmological studies as it is of the successful collaboration among the global community of astronomers towards knowing the truth about the universe we live in and its ultimate fate.

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Moulding managers
Privately run B-schools make their mark in management education in the country.
PHOTOGRAPHS: BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT

INSTI T UT E O F MA N A GEM EN T ,

Nirma University, Ahmedabad.

icine, pharmacy, dentistry, arts, science, engineering and technology.
TAPMI

They boast spacious campuses, topclass faculty, well-equipped libraries, good hostel facilities, innovative course structures, industry collaboration and assured placement, and rank high in surveys of B-schools in the country.
THE medical and engineering streams no longer dene the limits of youth aspirations in India. In an economy that has many more and varied opportunities to offer, management institutions play a crucial role in moulding youngsters into professionals. The private sector now has a number of management institutions that can hold their own in a global environment. The T.A. Pai Management Institute (TAPMI) in the university town of Manipal in Karnataka is a leading institute, with a reputation for academic rigour and faculty-student interaction. It was founded by Tonse Ananth Pai, former Chairman of the Life Insurance Corporation of India, Rajya Sabha member and, at various times a Minister at the Centre having portfolios such as Railways, Heavy Industries, Steel and Mines, Industry and Civil Supplies. TAPMIs mission is to produce professional management capability. It has also played a role in strengthening the existing educational and health infrastructure of Manipal, a town that has become synonymous with institutes offering studies in med1 1 8

Since the inception of its Postgraduate Programme in Management (equivalent to MBA) in 1984, TAPMI has received recognition and respect from wellknown industrial houses and academic institutions for the quality of both its education and student talent it has produced. Continuous improvements in curriculum, academic systems and faculty resources have contributed signicantly to making TAPMI a preferred centre for management education. Today, over 1,900 TAPMI alumni hold responsible managerial positions in India and abroad. In early 2009, in its 25th year of existence, TAPMI shifted its operations to a scenic, 42-acre (one acre is 0.4 hectare) residential campus in Manipal. Perched on the slope of a hillock and overlooking a valley lled with verdant tropical greenery, the new campus provides an ideal setting for serious study and creativity, combined with entertainment and relaxation. Developed at a cost of about Rs.60 crore, the facility has a built-up area of 2,50,000 square feet and houses wi--enabled, air-conditioned classrooms, plush ofces, a knowledge centre, a computer centre, a students centre, hostels for men and women, and residences for faculty and staff. The students centre has a canteen, a gym, a yoga and meditation room, a mini open-air theatre and a convenience store. TAPMI has earned a number of awards and achievements. In August 2011, TAPMI received the AIMS-WE School Innovation Award at the 23rd AIMS Annual Management Education Convention 2011, organised by the Association of Indian Man-

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TH E T . A . PA I

Management Institute in Manipal is a leading B-school.

considered to be in the top 1 per cent of business management schools in the country. One of the highlights of the institute is its transparent and scientic selection process. He said: We have a 100 per cent placement record and 3,000 of our alumni are employed across the globe.
K.S. HEGDE INSTITUTE

agement Schools, in Bhubaneswar, Orissa. The award-winning innovation, presented by Professor R.C. Natarajan, was about experiential learning techniques in postgraduate courses in marketing management, including the experience of OMEGA, BrandScan and other simulation games. TAPMI beat 12 others for the award and was also adjudged the BSchool for Best Innovation in Management Education. TAPMI has also been conferred with the Dr J.J. Irani Award for the Best Management Institute by the Dr. P.N. Singh Foundation, Mumbai. The award will be presented at the 13th Annual Convention on Leadership in Mumbai in mid-November in the presence of over 800 delegates. In July 2011, TAPMI received the all-important approval from the All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE) for increasing its intake of students from 180 to 300. In June 2011, CRISIL Business School Grading gave TAPMI an A*** (pronounced A triple star) grading in its national as well as State-level grading of management educational institutions across the country. TAPMI is now on a par with S.P. Jain, NMIMS, XIMB, IIFT and MDI. This rating is valid up to March 23, 2012. In April 2011, TAPMI was declared the Top Management Institute by Competition Success Review. Said Professor Chowdari Prasad, Dean (Planning and Developing): We are known for our rigorous academic environment. And not for nothing are we

The Justice K.S. Hegde Institute of Management is one of the many privately run management institutes in Karnataka. Established in July 1988 by the Nitte Education Trust and situated 50 kilometres from Mangalore in Nitte, a small hamlet in the foothills of the Western Ghats in Udipi district, it has been a pioneer of sorts in imparting management studies. The institute is one of the 23 educational institutions, in engineering, medicine, dentistry and paramedical courses, run by the trust and shares the vision of its founder, the late Justice K.S. Hegde, who was Speaker of the Lok Sabha and a Supreme Court judge. The Justice K.S. Hegde Institute of Management started out with 40 students and the avowed mission of preparing globally competent managers who retain the Indian ethos of loyalty and commitment to excellence. The institute, which is afliated to the Visveswaraya Technological University, Belgaum, offers a two-year full-time MBA programme recognised by the AICTE and the Government of Karnataka. Since its inception, it has turned out more than 900 managers who
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have been well received by the industry. The curriculum consists of 28 courses spread over four semesters. Students do project work (eight weeks) in addition. A student can specialise in finance, marketing, human resource management, information systems, banking and nance or international business. Graduates in agriculture, arts, commerce, engineering, management, law, science or other disciplines with a minimum of 50 per cent marks (aggregate of three years, including languages) in the qualifying examination are eligible for the management programme. Those appearing for nal degree examinations can also apply. The institutes industry-focussed curriculum, excellent faculty and strong alumni network brought it recognition as an A++ level B-school in the Business India Survey of B-Schools 2010. These qualities have also made the institution a preferred destination for management education. It is recognised as a centre for research and is among the very few AICTE-NBA accredited institutes. It is also certied to ISO 9001:2008 standards by KEMA, Netherlands. Equipped with a spacious campus, a well-stocked library, hostel facilities and an excellent academic atmosphere, the institution provides students global exposure through conferences and exchange programmes that derive maximum benets from tie-ups with the University of Pennsylvania, United States, and Makerere University B-School, Uganda. The institutes practical approach in moulding budding managers is reected in its consulting projects, cocurricular activities, scholarly research and career development programmes. It has undertaken consultancy and research projects funded by the Ford Foundation, the Government of India, NABARD, the IIBF, and various public sector banks. The institute has been the knowledge partner for Corporation Banks MSME Excellence Awards for the last several years. The MBA programme includes student participation in social pro-

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TH E J US T I C E K . S .

Hegde Institute of Management in Nitte in Karnatakas

drawn up on the basis of industry demands. It is constantly updated in tandem with changing industry needs. We are one of the few institutes who offer enterprise resource planning and business solutions to our students. ERP business solution software is designed to equip students with practiceoriented knowledge on ERP systems. It gives the student hands-on experience that is designed to help make business decisions.
SSIM

Udipi district.
jects, whereby students are taught to recognise the importance of being socially sensitive. The institute has been recognised among the premier Bschools in Karnataka on the basis of its performance in academics, consultancy and research. The prestigious ICMR-4Ps B&M B-School Survey, 2010, ranked the Justice K.S. Hegde Institute of Management 45th in its nal ranking analysis. The survey shortlisted 529 institutes from a pool of 2,000-plus B-schools in the country. The institute has an active placement committee, with a full-time ofcer assisted by two faculty members and student representatives. The committee explores the different areas, taking care to ensure that students are aware of the latest placement situations and opportunities. It bridges the gap between the industrys demand for talent and the students search for a right career. And it all begins with the right kind of summer training they undergo, which leads to successful executive placements. The placement cell conducts lectures, seminars and demonstrations by experienced and reputed persons from different streams. Pre-placement activities focus on training students individually and in groups, improving their presentation skills and making their participation in group discussion effective. Students are also exposed to mock interviews. According to Sudhir M., Assistant Professor (Marketing Management and Planning) and the Placement Coordinator, the institutes curriculum is

A combination of theory and casebased and interactive methods of teaching makes the Siva Sivani Institute of Management (SSIM) at Kompally on the outskirts of Hyderabad one of the favoured places of learning for diversied and specialised courses in management. It has consistently been ranked among the top business schools in the country. The SSIM started out with 40 students in 1992. With seven specialised management programmes (courses), four residential and three non-residential, the institution has blossomed into one of the largest AICTE-approved autonomous business schools in the country with diversied two-year full-time courses. Student intake has gone up to 418 in the academic year 2011-12. The programmes offered by the SSIM are PGDM (Marketing Dual Specialisation); PGDM (HR); PGDM (Banking, Insurance, Finance and Allied Services, or BIFAAS); and PGDM (Triple Specialisation) in the residential stream, and PGDM (Global
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Business); PGDM (BIFAAS); and PGDM (Triple Specialisation) in the non-residential stream. Many of the 60-member full-time faculty hold doctoral qualications and have experience in industry. In tune with the latest teaching practices across the globe, the emphasis of instruction at the SSIM is on self-learning. The strong team of highly experienced faculty plays the role of facilitators, says Prof. V.G. Chari, Director (Academic) of the SSIM. Most of the faculty bring to the classroom experience gained from exposure to industry. Teaching involves a judicious mix of lectures, case studies, simulations, role plays, assignments, group work, live projects, and specialisation projects. For the past two years, students have been exposed to international practices through international study tours. Such exposure will not only benet the students in terms of overseas placements, but it will also enrich their professional knowledge, explains Prof. Chari. The SSIM aims to place at least 10 per cent of its postgraduates overseas. As part of the exercise, the students will visit countries such as Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand and hold workshops there. Global Talent Consultants conducts 3-E events every year to enhance the professional view of the students. It also evaluates the students project reports. Students are taught English and at least one foreign language Spanish, French or German. We have an English language club to ne-tune the English skills of the students, and enterprise resource planning is a part of the course, says Z. Ramesh Kumar, Controller of Examinations of the SSIM. The SSIM has innovative and indigenously planned activities such as article review sessions, company review sessions, accent neutralisation, presentations, group discussions and panel discussions to help students hone their soft skills. The institute encourages students to organise various co-curricular and extracurricular activities, management meets and cul-

FOCUS TOWARDS TOMORROW-MANAGEMENT STUDIES

tural meets to acquire practical knowledge and demonstrate their leadership and managerial capabilities. In addition, other forums such as the finance club, the marketing club and the HR club provide outlets to students creative talent. The institution has tie-ups with organisations such as HDFC Bank, Deloitte and TMI Network to facilitate placements. HDFC takes students, trains them in retail banking and absorbs some of them. The private sector Plant), BHEL, ECIL, NFCL, Power Grid Corporation and Indorama (Thailand). It has also undertaken consultancy projects from TMC, ITC, Tupperware and Orient Cements. The SSIM follows a rigorous admission procedure and conducts a selection process in all important centres in the country. Students with CAT, MAT, XAT, ATMA, JMET and ICET scores are eligible for admission and due weightage is given for work experience and academic performance.
NIRMA INSTITUTE

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

TH E S I V A S I V A N I

Institute of Management in Secunderabad.

bank has taken 65 students as its employees last year, Ramesh Kumar said. Deloitte carries out some of its corporate social responsibility activities in association with the SSIM apart from providing internships to students. The SSIM has a consistent track record of 100 per cent placements. According to the recent Business WorldSynovate B-School Survey-2010, it has been ranked rst in placements in Andhra Pradesh. The training and consultancy division at the SSIM undertakes assignments on vital issues in different sectors. The SSIM has conducted over 100 faculty development programmes (FDP) involving companies such as NTPC, RINL (Vizag Steel

The cool, grey-stone buildings dotted on the sprawling campus of the Institute of Management, Nirma University (IMNU), in Ahmedabad reinforce the popular perception about the institute as one that is progressive, efcient, modern and liberal. These qualities have also put it among the top 25 business schools in India. Located on the Sarkhej-Gandhinagar highway, the institute was established in 1996 as an autonomous body. It became a constituent Institution of Nirma University in 2003. The university was established under the leadership of Dr Karsanbhai K Patel, who is the chairman of Nirma Ltd and the president of the university. The university is recognised by the University Grants Commission (UGC) under Section 2(f) of the UGC Act and accredited by the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC). The IMNU has consistently held a position among the countrys top 15 private business schools. The Nirma Institute, as it is popularly known, has world-class infrastructure with stateof-the-art classrooms, a digital library that has 24-hour access and wi- Internet connectivity. An air-conditioned amphitheatre is the venue for conferences and cultural programmes through the academic year. Besides these, the university has facilities for indoor and outdoor games and a modern gymnasium. The IMNUs agship programme, Master of Business Administration, is a two-year residential one with specialisation in finance, marketing, OB &
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HR, information technology and operations and strategic management. The programme also offers dual specialisations. The unique features of the programme include close relationship with the corporate world, a balance between conceptual framework and industry practices in the curricula, case study method and project work as the main pedagogical tools, special emphasis on the development of soft skills, and special programmes to create a sense of social responsibility in students. The faculty is a rich blend of people with diverse academic backgrounds and industrial experience. Interactive learning and an enriching campus life create a serene milieu for students. The Master of Business Administration (Family Business & Entrepreneurship) programme aims to develop owner-managers with knowledge of family business management techniques and an entrepreneurial mindset. The institutes Corporate Interface programme is, says a statement from the institute, an important parameter for brand building and success of its students getting to be industry-ready professionals after completing the MBA programme. They thus can contribute to the companys products, operations, and growth from day one after joining. The IMNU provides an executive education programme. At the executive education centre, the participants bring with them their work experience and knowledge. The faculty brings in its knowledge of best management practices. The centre also provides a good platform for networking. The IMNU has signed memorandums of understanding with the following universities abroad: Universiti Utara Malaysia, Malaysia; Hangyang University, South Korea; Florida Atlantic University, U.S.; Minnesota State University, U.S., Coggin College of Business, North Florida University, U.S., California State University, U.S., Lake Forest Graduate School of Management, U.S.; Texas A&M University-Commerce, U.S.

FOCUS VIGYAN PRASAR

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

A W O R K S H O P F O R chemistry teachers in Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh, conducted by Vigyan Prasar to mark the International Year of Chemistry.

Science for all

Vigyan Prasar has been hugely successful in its efforts to inculcate scientic temper with humanism in Indian society. B Y A C O R R E S P O N D E N T

Its concerted efforts are slowly leading to the transformation of India. In its role as a facilitator and resource facility centre, it has helped reach millions who are least exposed to governance models and has induced them to think rationally.
HAVE you ever come across a possessed godman who performs miracles by burning a dry coconut with water? Or a saint who offers you ashes by rubbing his ngers on a coin? For a gullible devotee, the world seems to be steeped in magic and only
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those blessed with divine powers can understand it. Magic it is, but not of the kind these godmen and saints propagate. They are the magic of chemical reactions that nature itself has encoded. Dry coconut burns when water is poured over it because of the sodium kept hidden in it. Ash is produced when ngers dipped in mercuric chloride solution are rubbed against an aluminium coin. This is then passed off as divine ash, or vibhuti, to the devotee. In an underdeveloped and semi-literate society like Indias, scientic explanations of such miracles are unpopular. It is this mindset that Vigyan Prasar, under the Department of Science and Technology of the Government of India, has been trying to change for the past 22 years. This, it does, through popularising science at every level of society. The year 2011 marks the International Year of Chemistr, and therefore, Vigyan Prasar has been encouraging experiments

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PHOTOGRAPHS: BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT

FOCUS VIGYAN PRASAR Access to science

Dr T.V. Venkateswaran, Head of Audio-Visual Department, Vigyan Prasar: FOR scientic temper to percolate into society, the foremost prerequisite is to make science and its public face, technology, accessible to the public at large. Time and again, studies have shown that ordinary people seek quick remedies only when a better alternative is inaccessible or not available. We have seen people administering vaccines to their children when mass campaigns such as the pulse polio programme take the facility to their doorsteps. Secondly, rote learning in our schools hardly helps in building skills or shaping a scientic attitude. Revamping the way we teach science in schools is a paramount task before us. Until now science popularisation involved only questions such as what are we and what is the universe made of, and attempted to satisfy only peoples cultural needs. The science and technology aspects of peoples socio-economic needs for example, safe use of pesticides and rational use of fertilizers have been hitherto treated as part of simple extension work, a set of instructions to farmers, or dissemination of mere know how. If we wish to nurture scientic temper through empowerment, then we at Vigyan Prasar think it is important to communicate the know why to them. We have launched an initiative to reach the unreached. that denounce miracles. This it does by conducting workshops among chemistry teachers and through its literature and voluntary science clubs across the country. The scientic temper sought to be promoted thus is not devoid of humanism. In fact, performing plain experiments is not Vigyan Prasars only calling. It focusses on sensitising people against all forms of social evils and training people in the rural areas to work scientically. In a developing country like ours, scientic temper would not only help promote development, but would also address social concerns like literacy, superstitions, and empowerment of women and children, said T.V. Venkateswaran, a scientist at Vigyan Prasar. It is for this reason that Vigyan Prasar has adopted an approach that would seek to promote scientic temper with humanism in its Palampur declaration of 2011. The preamble to the declaration says: The spread and adoption of mankinds knowledge has been uneven due to prevalent schisms across the world and control over such knowledge by the elites. In such a bleak situation, fatalism prevails, reinforcing obscurantism, irrationalism and a retreat from reason. To advance in the scientic age, we must understand the meanings and imperatives of scientic temper which in essence is humanitys assertion of being in charge of its destiny and not a passive victim of the malevolence of stars. Scientic temper thus becomes an imperative for a brighter future for our country. The declaration says that scientic temper should be seen as the method of science that encompasses all human knowledge cutting across the natural and social sciences. Scientic temper is incompatible with theological and metaphysical beliefs. While science is universal, religions and their dogmas are divisive. Scientic temper cannot ourish in a grossly inegalitarian society where 50 per cent of the population lives below the poverty line and almost 70 per cent of our people, especially women, are functionally illiter1 2 8 F R O N T L I N E

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

ate. Social justice, widespread education and unrestricted communication are prerequisites for the spread of scientic temper and, therefore, optimising the results of science and technology.
SCIENCE CLUBS

It is for this reason that a unique programme of voluntary science clubs has been conducted across the country. Volunteers who wish to open science clubs in any residential colony, school, or village can register their names with Vigyan Prasar, which then gives them resource materials to experiment and break common myths. It also introduces club members to the world of machines and electronics. Vigyan Prasar has not been supporting the clubs

VI G YAN P R AS AR S C AM P A I G N

among children has helped them watch the solar eclipse safely.
nancially but only gives them the resource materials so that trained teachers can impart scientic knowledge. There are around 11,000 science clubs in the country dealing with subjects such as biodiversity, machines, chemical reactions, and water ltration. The experiments in the science clubs are contextual. We see what the social conditions in the area are and based on necessity, expose the people of the area to specic experiments. For example, if there are many godmen in the area, we train our volunteer to expose their magical tricks through chemical experiments in front of the

FOCUS VIGYAN PRASAR

people. In areas where there are high levels of water contamination, we impart knowledge about processes like evaporation and condensation to purify water. This is also taken up at a community level, said B.K. Tyagi, science club facilitator and scientist at Vigyan Prasar. The thrust is on taking scientic experiments out of the esoteric domain of laboratories. We try to encourage experiments with the resource materials available in our vicinity, including those with which children play all the time, said Venkateswaran. Vigyan Prasar has been organising workshops for chemistry teachers in various places so that they can motivate schoolchildren to perform small experiments outside the laboratories. That in itself has proven to be a huge challenge as the teachers rely on textbooks instead of developing a scientic attitude, say scientists at Vigyan Prasar. Scientic temper means thinking

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

Reaching out
Rintu Nath, Division Head, Information Systems & Laboratories: OUR web applications may not be able to reach every corner of the country. However, dissemination of resource materials to institutions/science communicators becomes easier if we have all the resource materials available in the public domain. Resource dissemination at the local level and feedback mechanism become very effective with the use of the Internet. In the past few years, a number of resource materials were developed for Vigyan Prasar by experts. It was required to generate materials that are locally relevant. Through the Vigyan Prasar website, user groups were created to upload and exchange materials among experts. The nal product was then made available in the public domain for free access. Another important factor is cost. Developing and disseminating e-resources is very cheap compared with conventional methods. Factors such as availability, low/zero cost, fast feedback mechanism, user interactivity, wider reach and international visibility are reasons to encourage more web applications in the days to come. Higher bandwidth, efcient communication techniques and easy availability of information technology products will ensure wider reach in the coming years. Vigyan Prasar programmes are ready to take leverage of this technology for its outreach programmes. Our website www.vigyanprasar.gov.in is one of the most comprehensive websites on S&T communication in India. Our digital library has become very popular. One can register for free and download any number of books and posters. We have an e-platform called Discussion Forum for S&T communication.

A VIG YA N PR A S A R science club where women perform experiments outside the laboratory.

scientically, innovatively. But unfortunately our education system has been one that relies on rote learning. Our struggle is against that form of education of which not only students but also teachers are a part, Venkateswaran said. So, Vigyan Prasar, in its workshops, gives chemistry teachers a scientic kit. The kits have been prepared after long consultations and are in consonance with international standards. Similarly, Vigyan Prasar has been focussing on gender-based pro-

grammes as a strategy to root out social evils. The primary areas of focus are water and health care, which depends on factors such as nutrition, livelihood, income generation, sanitation and hygiene. Technological communication is also one of its primary agendas; programmes such as technologies for rural artisans, small farmers, rural women and tribal people show that Vigyan Prasar gives top priority to welfare measures for the marginalised sections.
BIRTH OF VIGYAN PRASAR

It was the need to sort out archaic superstitions regarding astronomical phenomena such as solar and lunar eclipses that led to the birth of Vigyan Prasar. One of its biggest successes has been the increasing number of eclipse watchers, an activity that was almost
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unheard of 20 years ago. It was through sensitisation programmes on national television, the Vigyan Prasar website, and popular literature that people got over their fear of eclipses and became interested in looking at them scientically. Arwind Ranade, a scientist at Vigyan Prasar, says that it is for this reason that sensitising people about astronomy remains one of Vigyan Prasars main responsibilities. Teaching children about telescopes, and encouraging them to perform experiments at exhibitions and workshops is part of this. Vigyan Prasar has tried to address the needs of the disadvantaged groups. One of its recommendations goes thus: Vigyan Prasar, a national institute for science and technology communication under the Department of Science and Technology, is

FOCUS VIGYAN PRASAR Popularising chemistry

Subodh Mahanti, Division Head, Publications: VIGYAN PRASAR has developed a number of activities for different sections of society on the occasion of the International Year of Chemistry. They will be helpful in popularising chemistry in remote and underdeveloped regions. We have produced a series of radio programmes for telecast in all major Indian languages from all kendras of All India Radio. We are also producing a television serial. These will help people appreciate the importance of chemistry in their daily life. Vigyan Prasar has developed many low-cost teaching aids in chemistry, and workshops are being held in different parts of the country to train teachers on how to use them in classrooms. These aids will be helpful in improving the teaching of chemistry in schools, particularly in rural areas where there is a lack of resources. Vigyan Prasar has developed a series of experiments to demonstrate the chemistry behind many so-called miracles. It has planned also to develop a countrywide programme to demonstrate how chemistry helps in the purication of water. This programme will also help students undertake experimental work on their own. Students from rural areas will particularly benet.

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

Science for women

Kinkini Dasgupta Misra, scientist, Vigyan Prasar: VIGYAN PRASARS newly constituted Gender & Technology Communication division has developed a gendersensitive science communication programme to empower communities. Vigyan Prasar will join hands with identied grass-roots stakeholders and extension workers in the elds of health, agriculture, and so on, and collaborate with government and non-governmental organisations to promote womens development programmes. It will develop information, education and communication materials for various target groups and conduct awareness and training programmes for women. One of Vigyan Prasars initial efforts, jointly with the National Science Centre, Delhi, was a twoday national seminar in 2010 in New Delhi on Gender, Technology and Communication. Vigyan Prasar, in partnership with the Institute for Gender Justice and Sudinalay - Centre for Women, New Delhi, organised this year a week-long interactive programme on Womens Health and Empowerment for Prosperity and Social Change on March 8, International Womens Day. Among other efforts, a 13-episode radio serial on Women and Science was produced jointly with the All India Radio and broadcast from 119 radio stations in the country. It was produced in 19 Indian languages.

committed to add its might in preparing materials appropriate for the unreached and disadvantaged groups on themes and topics related to science, technology, environment and scientic outlook. Initially the focus of efforts would be directed at members of women self-help groups, neo-literates and semi-literates, slow learners/ rst-generation learners and school dropouts, National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGA) workers, elected members of local selfgovernments, and so on. When inclusive growth is the need of the hour, Vigyan Prasars concerted efforts are slowly leading to the transformation of India. As a facilitator and resource facility centre, it has not only helped reach millions who are the least exposed to governance models, but has also induced people to think on the basis of reason. Only a cultural revolution can result in a true transformation, and Vigyan Prasar, by encouraging scientic temper in a superstition-bound country like India, is actually doing that. And this work is done in partnership with renowned in-

stitutions such as the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, and voluntary agencies such as the Tamil Nadu Science Forum and the National Institute of Open Learning. Science programmes on Doordarshan and All India Radio have multiplied, thanks to the increased focus on audio-visual learning. Information regarding experiments can be downloaded free from the Vigyan Prasar website. Vigyan Prasar has achieved many successes, but it faces many challenges too. Reaching people in their mother tongue has been a problem. To promote scientic temper, we have to go beyond the 21 ofcial languages. We have done some programmes in the Gondi and Bhil tribal languages, but that is not enough. We need to nd good literate volunteers among these communities. This is very difcult. It is important to go beyond elementary science and popularise science in peoples thinking, said Venkateswaran. The interest in science is gradually declining as India is growing. We have to put in an organised effort to tackle this.
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letters
Twelfth Plan
THE Approach Paper to the Twelfth Five-Year Plan is yet another illustration of the obsession of our economic think tanks faulty economic policies (Cover Story, Neoliberal Plan, October 21). This shows that the consultative process with civil society was a farce. The Approach Paper is designed to placate global moneylenders like the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank and reiterate the governments commitment to neoliberalism. No doubt, the Approach Paper will aid concentration of wealth among Indias super-rich.
E. KRISHNADAS PALAKKAD, KERALA

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

derstand that the absence of proper platforms for workers to express their concerns will prompt them to strike work. Proper perks and salaries in proportion to the work done will encourage employees to work hard.
P. SENTHIL SARAVANA DURAI VAZHAVALLAN TAMIL NADU

from terror groups supported by Pakistan. Only when the U.S. wrong policy came back to haunt it through 9/ 11 did it choose to come back on the right path. It is only after 9/11 that the U.S. is supporting India in its war against terror and has come out openly against Pakistan for supporting terror.
K. STEPHEN DANIEL SECUNDERABAD

top BJP leaders should be looked into objectively.

K.S. JAYATHEERTHA BANGALORE

Teesta treaty
CHIEF Minister Mamata Banerjees eleventh hour refusal to accompany the Prime Minister to Bangladesh was undoubtedly embarrassing for the country (Sinking a deal, October 7). However, Mamata Banerjees concerns over the sharing of the Teestas waters deserve consideration as many poor peasants of northern Bengal depend solely on it for agricultural purposes. As the Chief Minister, it is her duty to safeguard the interests of her State. The issue has been pending for a long time and must be resolved through consensus and not in a hurried way.
JAYANT MUKHERJEE KOLKATA CORRECTION The rst sentence in the Cover Story (October 7) War on Terror should read: September 11 marked the tenth anniversary of the devastating terror attacks on the American mainland that dramatically changed the course of contemporary history and politics. In the article Nawab of cricket (October 21), it was wrongly mentioned that Iftikhar Ali Khan Pataudi, father of M.A.K. Pataudi, was a hockey Olympian. According to the noted statistician B.G. Joshi, Iftikhar (1917-1952) was in the Indian team of 16 players for the Amsterdam Olympics in 1928 but did not travel. He later led a British-Indian hockey teams tour of Germany in December 1930. ANNOUNCEMENT Letters, whether by surface mail or e-mail, must carry the full postal address and the full name, or the name with initials.

9/11
THE United States has ostensibly taken up the cause of exterminating terrorism from the face of the world (Cover Story, War of Terror, October 7). The complicity of the U.S. and the U.K. the current torchbearers of peace in the making of modern terrorism cannot be denied. Until the superpowers realise that they cannot weed out something that they sowed, a terror-free world will remain a myth.
ANURAG SINGH LUCKNOW

THE U.S. needs to be congratulated for not lowering its vigil and ensuring some form of justice for the victims of 9/11. What needs to be changed, though, is how the West regards the Muslim community. It must be reiterated that Islam is a peaceful religion.
SYED KHAJA NEW DELHI

Maruti strike
THE recent strike by the workers at Maruti Suzukis Manesar plant proves that a labour crisis was inevitable in the industry (Fighting for dignity, October 21). Though the Union Labour Ministrys provisional data show that the number of strikes and lockouts had fallen from 349 in 2009 to 99 in 2010, the truth is that grievances of workers both in the organised and unorganised sectors are not being addressed properly. The lack of pay parity and permanent status for contract workers are the main reasons behind the Manesar strike. Banning strikes is no way out. The management of the company should un-

The judiciary
THE resignation of Justices Soumitra Sen and P.D. Dinakaran to escape impeachment sets a bad precedent (Dodging scrutiny, October 7). The wrongs committed by them cannot be undone by resignations.
N. R. RAMACHANDRAN CHENNAI

THIS is with reference to the Cover Story articles War of terror and Go massive, go bust. The articles implied that the U.S. went broke because of its war on terror. The U.S. economic woes and its terrorrelated woes are two different things. The cause of its terror woes is its policy error in promoting terrorism for selsh gains. Osama bin Laden was once a friend of the U.S. During this time, the U.S. was Pakistans friend as well and chose to turn a blind eye to the many terrorist attacks India faced
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Scams
THANKS to men like Gali Janardhana Reddy, politicians are a despised lot today (Mine of scams, October 7). Now that action has nally been initiated against him and others, one hopes that it will be taken to its logical conclusion without fear or favour. The allegations of their long ties with

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Published on alternate Saturdays.WPP No.CPMG/AP/SD-15/WPP/11-13 & MH/MR/South-180/2009-11.Postal Regn. No.TN/ARD/22/09-11. RNI No.42591/84