cmyk

cmyk

New Delhi Saturday 10 July 2010

AGE
Within yourself deliverance must be searched for, because each man makes his own prison. Edwin Arnold

THE

MIND POWER

The object of education is to prepare the young to educate themselves throughout their lives. Robert M. Hutchins

Editorial
letters
SOCCER FANS SHOULD TAKE CUE FROM ARGIES
Sir, My respect for Argentinas soccer fans increased manifold seeing the way they received their national football team. Coach Diego Maradona and his team received a warm welcome from thousands of fans who turned out to greet them despite the sides World Cup quarter-final elimination. Fans, dressed in the blue and white shirts of the national team, held up banners proclaiming Argentina! and Diego, Diego. In the quarter-finals, while Germany dominated every sector of the field, Argentina paled in comparison and Messi left the tournament without a single goal. In spite of facing a 0-4 loss against Germany, the people of Argentina still support their team and coach Maradona. Soccer fans of other countries should take a cue from this. SUBHASH MITTAL Via email

10 JULY 2010

Dont let food rot, improve granaries

THE RAIN gods bounty could turn catastrophic in states like Punjab, Haryana and Himachal which are the nations granaries. We have seen earlier how even in good weather tonnes of foodgrain lying in the open have been destroyed by natural elements, as well as rats and insects; thus one need not be surprised at the devastation caused by a few days of heavy monsoon showers. Statistics about the extent of crops destroyed vary, but some months ago, according to one estimate obtained through the Right to Information Act, improper storage and negligence had led to 14,000 tonnes of rice, wheat and paddy becoming totally unfit for the distribution system. It is also evident that the government had failed to take any action to fix responsibility for such largescale destruction despite an assurance given to Parliament by the agriculture minister in August last year. The minister had then told Parliament that a team would be constituted to probe the matter and corrective action taken. But nothing was done, and there was not even a hint of an apology from the minister for not delivering on a promise made to Parliament. According to another estimate, foodgrain stocks worth a mind-boggling Rs 50,000 crores have been destroyed over the past few years due to negligence and the absence of proper storage facilities. It is nothing less than a shame that in spite of its impressive technological and scientific advancement, India has still not been able to devise a scientific way to store foodgrain or to handle its distribution in all kinds of weather. There is talk now of sending a delegation to China to examine how that country, which too is plagued by the problem of floods and overflowing rivers, handles this problem. The Food Corporation of India is mandated to maintain a satisfactory level of operational and buffer stocks of foodgrain to ensure national food security. Should it not be held responsible for such wanton destruction of the countrys food wealth? How can any democracy, or any country which considers itself civilised, condone destruction of Rs 50,000 crores of food in a few years? And what kind of food security are we talking about when India ranks 66th out of 88 countries in global hunger index: a country where one child in four goes to bed hungry? The FCIs efforts, such as they are, appear grossly inadequate, even in the much-heralded public-private partnership initiative to build storage capacity for which the government, inexplicably, reduced funds in the 11th Five-Year Plan. There is talk of a Food Security Bill being introduced in the coming Monsoon Session of Parliament. This will work only if the implementing authority is made accountable for ensuring that food reaches every Indian at a reasonable price. It is disheartening that till now both the Government of India as well as its agriculture minister have shown a dog-in-the-manger attitude when it comes to providing the poor with food. Do they really prefer to see the grain rot rather than give it away to starving people in their own country? Punjabs agriculture minister had requested the Centre, specifically agriculture minister Sharad Pawar, to distribute the rotting grain lying in the open free to the poor, but he was totally ignored. There is a lot that the government can do if it is really interested in not letting the grain that cannot be stored for want of capacity simply rot in the open for one, it can still introduce a food-for-work programme under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme.

By Sudhir Tailang HERE AND NOW

Endgame in Kabul
Indranil Banerjie
THESE ARE testing times in Afghanistan: Both for the United States and for India, although for entirely different reasons. The war, as every Afghan watcher knows, is going badly for the US and North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) forces. June was the worst month for foreign troops in that country with 102 combat deaths, which is the highest level of monthly casualties since the beginning of the war. Also, the Afghan war by end June had officially become Americas longest war in history, longer than even Vietnam. General Petraeus takes charge at a bad time. His predecessor, General Stanley McChrystal, was sacked unceremoniously at a time when it is believed that Washington bigwigs are looking to political solutions that would exclude Afghan President Hamid Karzai and make dodgy deals with the enemy to forge peace. If anybody is exulting, it is Pakistans military establishment. The Afghanistan endgame is going their way and the hope is that the summer of 2010 will demonstrate this conclusively. If that happens, they would have effected a remarkable turnaround. For, nine years ago, the Pakistani military establishment was in the dog house. It had been threatened with extinction, humiliated and told to get lost from Afghanistan. Today, the jihadi protgs of the Pakistan Army, the Taliban as well as fighters led by the elusive Jalaluddin Haqqani, are calling the shots. The Pathan tribes of Pakistans frontier agencies are also back in action. Fighters from Waziristan in the south to Bajaur and Swat in the north regularly cross over to give battle to Nato troops in Afghanistan. This is like the old times of the Soviet jihad. Today, Pakistani security experts and retired military officers are openly saying that the US has lost the war in Afghanistan. One commentator on a Pakistani television programme gleefully proclaimed: We will bury India and the US in Afghanistan. American intelligence agencies and its military are fully aware of the Pakistan Armys close links with the Afghan Taliban and fighters like Jalaluddin Haqqani. New York Times correspondent David Sanger, in his book The Inheritance, has written how US military intelligence overheard General Ashfaq Kayani referring to Maulavi Jalaluddin Haqqani as a strategic asset. Two weeks later, Indias embassy in Kabul was bombed by Haqqanis men acting in collusion with the Inter-Services Intelligence. All this is old hat by now. Yet, Gen. Kayani refuses to attack north Waziristan where Haqqani and his men are based. The US with all its cash incentives and drone disincentives can do little about it. The problem is that with Gen. McChrystals exit and the entry of Gen. Petraeus, the US might be on the verge of making a deal with Pakistans generals on Afghanistan. Gen. Petraeus is somewhat of a political general and had turned the military tide in Iraq not through any new war fighting strategy but through political manipulations. Gen. Petraeus is fully aware of the Pakistan Armys links with the Taliban and people like Haqqani. Only, thus far he has chosen to be diplomatic about the whole thing. Gen. Petraeus knows that today, it is Gen. Kayani who has them in a meat grinder and only he can stop the fighters shooting at US soldiers in Afghanistan. A deal with the enemy would have many supporters in Washington, who believe the Afghan war is a lost cause. This leaves India in a difficult position. For, any such deal would have to address the Pakistan Armys main demand of being allowed to dominate Afghanistan. Gen. Kayani was the first Pakistan Army Chief to openly declare that their legitimate aim was to secure strategic depth in Afghanistan. We want a strategic depth in Afghanistan but do not want to control it, he had declared at a press conference in February this year. He was clearly addressing the Americans and had added that Pakistans strategic paradigm needs to be fully realised, meaning that India had to be kept out or restrained in Afghanistan. He had warned that an environment hostile to Pakistan could strain its battle against militancy and extremism. In other words, Kayani wants to regain what his Army had lost in 2001: dominance in Afghanistan. Such a denouement is completely unacceptable to India. Indias new ambassador to Kabul, Gautam Mukhopadhaya, who must have had an inkling of what is brewing in Af-Pak, had warned of preciselt such a scenario in a recent paper published by the Washington thinktank Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. India, he wrote, does not see the Afghan problem as a derivative of India-Pakistan problems that has to be addressed from that angle (as Pakistan tries to project it). It considers it a serious violation of the norms of inter-state conduct that Afghanistan should be made to pay the price for Pakistans bilateral problems with India in the form of destabilisation and a desire for strategic depth, or that Pakistani state institutions should use terrorism to fight a proxy war against India in India or a third country. Nor does it believe that the Pakistani military will sever its links with or fully cooperate with the coalition over the Afghan Taliban, even if India were to reduce troops across Pakistans eastern border, and views any cooperation by Pakistan in this regard as selective and aimed only at securing concessions from India. India also does not accept that Pakistan should be rewarded for its cooperation with the coalition by political concessions from India, when it is, in fact, the Talibans prime backer. Given these almost diametrically opposed impulses, interests, strategies, and positions, it is difficult to see how Indian and Pakistani positions on Afghanistan can be reconciled. Now that Mr Mukhopadhaya is in Kabul, he will have to face considerable pressure to reconcile the very contradictions he has written about. His success or failure will not only determine the history of Indias relations with Afghanistan but also that of the Afghan people, who have experienced the Pakistani scourge once before. INDRANIL BANERJIE is a defence and security analyst based in New Delhi

BANDH WAS CALLED TO GET POLITICAL MILEAGE

Sir, The BJP is buoyed by feedback that it has succeeded in connecting with the public across the nation for the first time since 2004 after years of futile struggle to free itself from its India Shining baggage. The hefty rise in the prices of essential commodities is a source of worry for all, but a Bharat Bandh is not the solution. It only adds to the woes of the harried citizens, particularly the poor, whose cause the Opposition parties were supposedly fighting. Price rise is not at the core of the protest, which has brought together parties as disparate ideologically as the BJP and the Left. They want to derive the maximum political mileage out of the public sentiment against the rise in fuel prices. It is here that the Oppositions hypocrisy stands out. J. SESHAGIRI Mysore, Karnataka

THE ASIAN AGE

T. VENKATTRAM REDDY
Editor in Chief & Chairman of the Board of Directors Printer & Publisher: T. VENKATESWARLU THE ASIAN AGE offices are located at: New Delhi: S-7&8 Green Park, Main Market, New Delhi 110 016. Phone (011) 26530001-03, Fax (011) 26530027 Mumbai: Paragon Centre, H Wing, Second Floor, Opposite Century Mills, Pandurang Budhakar Road, Worli, Mumbai, 400 013. Phone (022) 24955825 Fax (022) 24965847 Kolkata: 7th Floor, Kankaria Estate, 6 Little Russel Street, Kolkata 700 071. Phone: (033) 2289 0676/77 Fax (033) 2289 0686 Registered as a newspaper at the Post Office in the United Kingdom Air surcharge for Kathmandu and J&K Re 1 Published and Printed on behalf of and for Deccan Chronicle Holdings Limited, S-7&8 Green Park, Main Market, New Delhi 110 016 at BFL Infotech Ltd., C-9, Sector-III, Noida -201301. Mumbai: Indian National Press, Free Press House, Free Press Journal Road, Nariman Point, Mumbai - 400 021. Kolkata: Satyajug Employees Cooperative Industrial Society Ltd, 13/A, Prafulla Sarkar Street, Kolkata 700 072. London: Newsfax International Ltd., Unit 16, Bow Industrial Park, Carpenters Road, London E15 2DZ.

OCTOPUS ORACLE & ITS UNMATCHED RECORD

Sir, Germanys now worldfamous oracle octopus has maintained his perfect record. The psychic creature has correctly predicted all six of Germanys World Cup games. Amid drama broadcast live on national television in Germany it chose Spain, causing anguish to German fans. The Germans, who have been very aggressive throughout the tournament, looked lacklustre in the semi-finals. Spain dominated Germany throughout the match and they deserved to win. The Germans will now play Uruguay for the third position. The octopus has predicted that Germany will defeat Uruguay. Now, whether Paul, the octopus, would be proven right remains to be seen. TUSHAR KANOJIA Via email

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PAWARS LOVE FOR CRICKET IS EVIDENT

Sir, After taking over as International Cricket Council president, Union food and agriculture minister Sharad Pawar is neck deep in cricket. Instead of asking Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to reduce his workload, he should quit the Union Cabinet. He should devote his entire time to cricket, which seems to be his first love. Since the government plans to bring a national food security law, the public distribution system requires effective plugging of loopholes and a full-time minister is required to implement the ambitious programme. Given the crisis in agriculture, this ministry needs a dynamic minister. J.S. ACHARYA Hyderabad