A Political Meltdown in Delhi? (PO)

M D Nalapat
Both the print as well as the electronic media rely on opinion surveys to track the mood of the people, and these are proving to be depressing reading for the Congress Party, specifically for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Although he himself is still considered — correctly, in the view of this columnist - to a personally honest, yet the picture that has emerged from recent revelations of the functioning of his government is that of a man helpless in the face of the limitless greed of the party bosses for treasure. An effective presentation was made of the facts in the Rajya Sabha (Upper House of Parliament) by Leader of the Opposition and BJP leader Arun Jaitley ( who, like the BJP-appointed Lower House Leader of the Opposition Sushma Swaraj is a Punjabi). Jaitley showed that it was Manmohan Singh himself who ensured the selection of the jailed Suresh Kalmadi as Chairman of the Organising Committee (OC) of the 2010 Commonwealth Games at Delhi. Kalmadi is regarded as having favoured a clutch of companies in which leaders of the Congress Party (and a few other groups) were financially interested in. Although two Sports Ministers, Sunil Dutt and Mani Shankar Aiyar, protested, the PM went ahead with making Kalmadi all-in-all of the Games, despite the fact that almost all of the $6 billion spent on the Games came from the taxpayer.

By definition, Congress President Sonia Gandhi can do no wrong. Hence, when it was implied that Manmohan Singh acted under her pressure in giving control of the Commonwealth Games to Kalmadi, there was an uproar within Congress ranks. Any member of the party can be sacrificed - and a few more will assuredly be - to ensure that the dirt does not land at the doors of Dus Number (10 Janpath, Sonia Gandhi’s official residence). Indeed, the awesome power of India’s ruling family was vividly demonstrated in the silence of the media over her hospitalisation in the US for cancer surgery. Not even the foreign media dared to intrude on her privacy and provide details of the family members and others who have been clustering in New York in apartments and hotels to be with her in her hour of need. It would have been an easy matter for the New York Times or other large US news outlets to get full access to the hospital where she is being treated,but fear of the consequences seems to have silenced the entire foreign media from reproducing any except information beyond the skeletal handouts released by Sonia Gandhi’s Congress Party over her condition. The indian media is, of course, too aware of the baleful consequences of attracting the attention of the many agencies functioning under those two faithful loyalists of Sonia Gandhi, Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram and Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee to dare to rip apart her privacy the way US and UK media do with their own leaders. Hence the curious situation in which there is a complete news blackout (if one disregards the few lines of official press releases) about the health condition of the most powerful personality in India.

From ‘India Shining’ to ‘India Stinking’ (Org.)

By M D Nalapat
DURING 1947-92, those businesspersons in India permitted to undertake their trade by the colonial governance structure retained by 'Father of Indian Democray' Jawaharlal Nehru were unsure as to how long they would be permitted by the authorities to remain in business. At any point in time, their businesses could be taken over by the state or its agencies, their funds confiscated and even their liberty extinguished.

All this was facilitated by the British-era laws continued past “Independence” by Nehru. At the same time, neither the primitive infrastructure and communication systems that were in use during this period, nor the regulations introduced by him and his successors encouraged sufficient expansion in the size of operations to benefit from the economies of scale. Of course, while local technologies were primitive, import from outside was blocked except to a handful.

Hence the focus of the mercantile community in India’s Nehruvian democracy was to (i) make as much profit out of (ii) as few units as possible (iii) in as little time. The result was economic stagnation. The consumer suffered while the middleman flourished. Now, after seven years of what may most accurately be termed the Maino Era — which is in tone and content a close cousin of the Nehru era—a similar situation has once again descended on the Indian economy. Knowing that the prosperity—or indeed the survival—of their businesses hinge on the inclinations of The Madam and those fixers and manipulators in her confidence, businesspersons in India are being forced to return to the mindset of the first three decades of “freedom”, that places a premium on a cap on growth combined with a concentration of effort on managing the “governmental interface”, rather than tending to business operations with care and consistency so as to compete globally. Even more so than during the Nehru Era, in the Maino Era those who are favourites of The Madam and her courtiers get huge windfalls despite their rapacity and incompetence, while the others languish. Small wonder that India Shining has by now got converted to India Stinking. In just seven years, Sonia Maino has saved Europe the nightmare of competing with a tigerish India Inc just when it was losing ground to China Global.

An economy depends on its future on those who are efficient and innovative. However, such people are swept aside in the Nehru-Maino Eras by those whose only expertise is in greasing the palms of the powerful. Most of such operators are asset strippers. An example is coal, which was nationalised by Indira Gandhi in the 1970s so as to serve as a cornucopia for politicians and officials. While all subsequent governnents have given away this precious natural resource for a song, none had done so on the scale of the UPA. During the NDA period, an allottee of a coal block had to be running a power plant, or some other unit requiring large amounts of coal. Under the direction of their political masters in Congress HQ, the Manmohan Singh ministry did away with this requirement, instead alloting coal to favourites who had merely to “promise to set up a power plant” later. None of the Maino favourites who were given coal blocks during the years just before the 2009 elections have thus far generated even a kilowatt of power. However, they have since been allowed to sell the coal in their possession on the market, thereby getting a return of several thousand per cent on their investment. As most orders were conveyed orally, the official then within the PMO who ensured that the AICC core was kept satisfied on the issue of coal blocks has little reason to fear that he will be held accountable for placing the interests of the party leadership over that of national needs.

While Andimuthu Raja is now in jail—and hopefully will remain there for a long time, unlike other well-heeled folk who usually escape after a few days or weeks of incarceration — it needs to be remembered that Spectrum was given away almost free of cost by previous Telecom Ministers to a handful of companies, who enjoyed a monopoly for more than a decade. During this time—and despite the free Spectrum—they imposed a high cost regime on the consumer, and blocked efforts at reducing call charges. Even such everyday advantages as Mobile Number Portability were blocked. The TRAI functioned more as a PR instrument for the telecom operators than as a consumer protection agency. It was in the disgraced Raja’s time that more players were permitted into the telecom market, and of course, they must have paid for the privilege. For reasons that are obvious, even the new players initially paid very low sums for Spectrum, although more than the piffle they parted with in the past, at least on record.

What needs to be done by the JPC is to investigate the gift of Spectrum since 2001, and to ensure that those who gained this advantage finally pass on the bulk of this benefit to the consumer. Both the JPC as well as the Supreme Court-monitored CBI need to investigate the functioning of TRAI as well, as there are credible reports that the agency has often been suborned by those it is supposed to oversee, just as ONGC has been regarded as being since the 1970s, sabotaging crude oil production rather than boosting it.

In a system where the only rules of the game are decided by the few who rule, there is a deliberate absence of direction. There is drift, because only such ad-hocism can create the massive bribes that are these days flowing in unprecedented profusion to offshore banking accounts. There is confusion in both policy formulation as well as in its implementation, and the Maino Era is marked by the withdrawal of those mandated by the Constitution of India to administer from any pretension to leadership. The resultant vacuum in policy and implementation has got filled by decisions taken in an ad-hoc manner by officials and politicians close to the ruling establishment. Each such action has been designed to favour select beneficiaries. 

Who is right about Rahul? (Sunday Guardian)

AICC general secretary Rahul Gandhi is accompanied by Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit at a function in New Delhi last month. PTI By M D Nalapat ike most national capitals, Delhi too abounds in those influentials who fib for a living. In the presumed secrecy of their homes or in pricey restaurants, these denizens of Zone Raisina serve out "facts" dressed as attractively as the dishes have been by the chef. Small wonder that much of such fare gets gobbled up and regurgitated as straight reportage or "informed" analyses. The veil of secrecy that covers up even the ordinary activities of India's very powerful helps generate credibility to such reports, especially if these get repeated on television by carefully chosen guests. And when an unexpected newsbreak occurs, such as the hospitalisation of Sonia Gandhi and the revamp of the Congress Core Committee, fact and fiction mesh. What is obvious, however, is that the Core Committee of the Congress Party is the equivalent of the Standing Committee of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, the apex of responsibility in the organisation. Given that every member of the All-India Congress Committee as well as its Working Committee bear complete fealty to the Congress president (CP), it was no surprise that changing its composition was the work solely of Sonia Gandhi and presumably took all of a few minutes. This came in the form of a terse paragraph typed on the AICC letterhead to the effect that Manmohan Singh, Pranab Mukherjee, P. Chidambaram and (most unexpected of cuts) Digvijay Singh were history. The new politburo on which the CP would depend comprises of A.K. Antony, Rahul Gandhi, Ahmed Patel and Janardan Dwivedi, although not necessarily in that order of importance. Indeed, given the adulation felt by the other three towards The Family, it seems clear that Rahul Gandhi will be the Primus inter Pares. This is welcome. Given the dynastic nature of the Congress Party since Motilal Nehru suggested his son Jawaharlal to the Mahatma as the Congress president, it is clear that the Prime Ministership of the country is Rahul's for the asking. This being the case, it was an act of either folly or sly sabotage for Rahul to have anchored his fate to the Congress performance in Uttar Pradesh, a state known since the 1977 polls to be less than a family bastion. Rahul's taking up the cause of a Jat village in a Gujjar sea was another indication that he is willing to lose the support of numerically larger groups (such as the Backward Classes and the Gujjars) to save the land of the Jat villagers of Bhatta Parsaul. The Congress went further, claiming that not simply their lands but their lives had been snatched away. Judging by the declamations made on television by some leaders, especially UPCC president R. Bahuguna, this act of wanton cruelty was almost certainly committed by Chief Minister Mayawati herself. Unfortunately for Rahul, soon afterwards, the criminally cremated villagers of Bhatta Parsaul got reincarnated and returned to their homes. Hopefully, this will be lesson learnt by the Heir Apparent. Becoming the effective head of the Core Committee means that Rahul Gandhi will finally have abandoned the fringe of the policymaking matrix of the Congress Party, to enter the mainstream. It is conventional wisdom in Zone Raisina to cast the Heir Apparent of Sonia Gandhi's political wealth as a mindspace lightweight. The sceptics may be right. But it is possible that they may be wrong, and that Rahul may turn out to be an effective chief. This columnist has met a few of Rahul Gandhi's close acolytes, and these strike his somewhat cynical self as being far superior in both intellect and integrity to the Vilasrao Deshmukh-Y.S. Rajashekhar Reddy "fund collector" type patronised by Sonia Gandhi. He is therefore not ready to write off Rahul as a certain disappointment, unless that be proved by events that will unfold over the next year.

ahul Gandhi takes charge at a time when the Congress Party is stinking even more than it did during the Bofors and JMM scams. He arrives when economic policy is a shambles, holding back Indian corporates through high interest rates and regulation, while allowing recklessly high expenditures on imported baubles. When the people are seething, even as the political class goes about converting what is defined as "public service" into private enrichment. Before a year passes, it will be clear as to just who is correct about Rahul Gandhi, his detractors or his admirers. That he has given the voters of this country such a chance to judge his on-the-job performance is welcome.

Starving India gifts $2b to EU (PO)

By M D Nalapat
Although India’s ruling politicians ignore the fact, especially during their frequent travels abroad, the reality is that more citizens of the world’s most populous democracy go to bed hungry each night than do in Sub-Saharan Africa. More than 300 million Indians are malnourished, a testamant to the fact that nearly seven decades in power has not been enough for the country’s leaders to wipe away the poverty that descended on the country during British rule. While several Mughal emperors were cruel, and more than a few of them rapacious, yet in 1820 the Indian sub-continent accounted for 23% of global output. Indeed, the very battleship in which Lord Nelson defeated the French at Trafalgar was made in India. However, colonial policy was designed to choke off local manufactures so as to encourage the import of goods from the UK. Hence by the time the Union Jack was lowered from Delhi for the last time on August 14,1947, the sub-continent was contributing less than 1% to global output. Churchill had further succeeded in ensuring the death of 9 million in famines that rolled across North India during the 1939-45 war with Germany and Japan.

Wealth was drained from India to Europe - principally the UK – for many generations. And now, once again, a similar process is unfolding. While there has been some comment on the Commonwealth Games scam, the reality is that for years, practically every major procurement has been a scam. In the case of the “modernisation” of large airports, for instance, equipment has been sourced mainly from suppliers in Europe, and there is talk within the bureaucracy that a particular political family with close links to a European country was behind several of the contracts. While Home Minister Chidambaram has forbidden the security agencies from monitoring the activities of this family and its relatives abroad, concerned officials say that the latter are acting as middlepersons in facilitating mega-deals between Indian government and private agencies and suppliers based in the EU. Altogether, the volume of such transactions is reported to have crossed $ 6 billion in as many years. Only in the case of the Commonwealth Games procurements has there been any official enquiry into such purchases, and even here, the Central Bureau of Investigation is more concerned about protecting those higher up than the jailed MP, Suresh Kalmadi, from exposure than it is in finding out the truth. Small wonder, as selection to the CBI is made from among those officials most pliable to political and other pressure.

If only Advani were a Sonia (Sunday Guardian)

BJP leaders L.K. Advani, Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley during an NDA meeting in New Delhi earlier this month.PTI espite its occasionalposturing — usually only after sustained prodding from the permanent residents of the RSS HQ at Nagpur — the BJP leadership admires Congress president Sonia Gandhi. Given the retirement of A.B. Vajpayee, L.K. Advani can be cast as the "CP" (Congress President), while Arun Jaitley would — aspirationally at least — fit the role of UPA Heir Apparent Rahul Gandhi, leaving Sushma Swaraj to play the role of the attractive Priyanka Vadra. Informal briefings to friendly newspersons invariably refer to the troika in the regal tradition of the Third Person, and to their being the "BJP High Command". We all know that despite the frequent sightings of a Digvijay Singh or the invisible presence of an Ahmed Patel, it is Sonia, Rahul and Priyanka who alone comprise the "Congress High Command". The rest are, in the words of satirist Aubrey Menen as applied to the Indira Gandhi period, "either clerks or peons". While clerks have the right to make notings and even to proffer advice when asked, peons are there only to carry out orders made from On High. Even in the 1950s, a period when Jawaharlal Nehru was making mincemeat of the RSS and its philosophy of Hindu primacy, Atal Behari Vajpayee was an admirer of the then Prime Minister, modelling himself on him in a manner that was obvious. This feeling of awe towards the Nehrus was extended to Indira Gandhi, who too was treated with deference and attention by Vajpayee. Although the current father figure of the BJP did not evince much reverence for Rajiv Gandhi, like many others who were turned off by Rajiv, he has become an admirer of his widow. Vajpayee has not hidden his regard and respect for Sonia Gandhi, neither to this columnist nor to others. Not surprisingly, during his time, the effort by Murli Manohar Joshi to enquire into the functioning of the "cultural trusts" headed by Sonia Gandhi resulted in Joshi losing the Culture portfolio. The protective hand of Vajpayee, reinforced by the ministrations of the formidable National Security Advisor, Brajesh Mishra, and the charming son-in-law Ranjan Bhattacharya, extended over the Congress president for each day of Vajpayee's term as PM. If L.K. Advani objected to such solicitude shown to an individual who has never deigned to hide her antipathy to saffron, he would have done so in silence or in his sleep. The record shows that Advani and Heir Apparent Arun Jaitley were as attentive to the concerns of the formidable occupant of 10 Janpath as was Vajpayee. As for Sushma Swaraj, although she once threatened to make a fashion statement by trimming her locks, while in office (even as I&B Minister), nothing was done that could disturb the sleep of the Congress supremo and her progeny. Indeed, cosy personal links were formed between the "BJP High Command" and the "Congress High Command", although the intensity of feeling on the side of the Congress troika seems to have dimmed after the party came to power in 2004, and their factotums entered South and North Blocks in a triumph that seems these days to be fated to end in tragedy. Practically the entire effective leadership of the BJP has followed the hallowed example of the Congress Party in making Delhi their home (in the case of the national leaders) and respective state capitals where regional satraps are concerned. When the BJP's own versions of the Sonia-Rahul-Priyanka trio travel outside the National Capital Region, they do so in the stately way of the three who form the Congress High Command. Admirers wait at airports, and at each event, adulatory speeches are the norm. Given the heady nature of such a brew, is it any wonder that Advani, Jaitley and Swaraj have fallen into the trap of believing that they actually are saffron versions of Sonia, Rahul and Priyanka? In the Congress Party, even the most adhesive of satraps get prised from their perches at a nod from The Family. Why should the BJP, that party which has been modelled by Vajpayee to approximate the Nehru-era Congress, be any different? Once he heard a click of the fingers of his High Command, it was expected that Karnataka's inimitable Chief Minister, B.S. Yeddyurappa, would follow the Congress — sorry, BJP — script and lay down his post in the manner of Aubrey Menen's clerks. Or was it peons? Sadly for the BJP High Command, BSY too fancies himself the clone of a noble child of Indian politics. Not Ashok Chavan or Shashi Tharoor, both of whom quit without a murmur when commanded to fall on their talwars, but Laloo Prasad Yadav, the beloved "Lalua" who was clear in his mind that the only replacement for him as Chief Minister was Rabri Devi. In Yeddyurappa's view, that position has been filled completely and delightfully by Shobha Karandlaje, a minister in his Cabinet who is well known to him. It needs to be said that although Ms Karandlaje has her detractors, those aware of her work as Minister for Mysore say that the lady is effective and hard-working, and when not raising funds for the BJP, can actually do some good to her voters. eddyurappa knows that he has enemies in the BJP, including a close confidant of L.K. Advani, Ananth Kumar, not to speak of the Reddy brothers. It is an irony of fate that the Chief Minister, who was specifically prevented two years ago from going after the Reddy brothers the way he badly wanted to, has been asked to quit by precisely the same BJP leadership who then protected the Reddy brothers and their Bellary empire from Yeddyurappa's wrath. It is equally strange that Justice Santosh Hegde, who was asked to examine irregularities in the mining trade for the past decade, focused almost entirely on Yeddyyurappa and only very tangentially on his predecessor, H.D. Kumaraswamy. He has totally ignored previous Chief Ministers, presumably because he regards them as Simon Pure. If the Karnataka episode carries any lesson for the BJP, it is not only that the party needs to ensure that people other than expert fund collectors get rewarded with positions of power. It is that Advani, Jaitley and Swaraj — despite their considerable finesse and charm — are a far cry from Sonia, Rahul and Priyanka. Maybe now the BJP will move away from the Vajpayeean fascination for the system of governance found in the Congress Party. Maybe. http://www.sunday-guardian.com/analysis/if-only-advani-were-a-sonia

Hina charms India (PO)

By M D Nalapat
Why would an attractive 34-year old ever be made a Cabinet minister, that too in the crucial Foreign Affairs portfolio? Conventional wisdom opines that Hina Rabbani Khar has been appointed Foreign Minister of Pakistan merely because the generals in Islamabad and their civilian advisors saw the need for a fresh, moderate and attractive face to represent Pakistan to the world. As a consequence, there were low expectations of the minister, who was seen as a foreign policy neophyte closely guided by the military establishment. After two days, this view has been replaced with genuine respect for a tough negotiator who sticks to her stand, albeit in a civilised manner, rather than in the table-thumping tradition of Nikita Khruschev. Hina Rabbani Khar has been dominating television space in India, giving interview after interview to various channels, in each of which her sincerity in seeking a durable peace between India and Pakistan has been conveyed.

Within Pakistan, there exists a significant constituency that seeks to return the country to the period under Ayub Khan, when it grew at twice the rate of India. The next shot at normalcy came during the era of Pervez Musharraf. Although he was as aware as the present Foreign Minister of Pakistan about the fact that normal relations with India are essential for speedy economic development in the country, Musharraf’s desire to play to several contradictory galleries at the same time robbed his policies of the consistency needed for a satisfactory outcome. While there were brief windows of opportunity for peace, none of these were realised, mainly because the establishment in Pakistan has thus far seemed unaware of the fact that the India of today is very different from the country ruled by Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi for the first two years (1984-86) of his rule. The three were powerful enough to impose their will over the rest of the country, unlike their successors, who are too weak to ensure a similar obedience to their wishes. Jawaharlal Nehru was able to brush aside the opposition of Deputy Prime Minister Vallabbhai Patel in ordering the Indian army to cease fire when it was moving towards the taking over of the entire territory of Kashmir. Nehru preferred to go by the views of independent India’s first Governor-General, Louis Mountabatten, and the British officers of the Indian military rather than go by the demand of General K M Cariappa that the army ought to be given a further six months to clear Kashmir of the invaders. Interestingly, around this time, Mahatma Gandhi went on a fast in order to force the government to hand over a large sum of money to Pakistan. Prime Minister Nehru secretly favoured this course, but was opposed by Patel, who pointed out that to give money to Pakistan was to assist Rawalpindi in waging its war against India. However, once the Mahatma intervened, Patel had no option but to fall in line, to the delight of Nehru. Ever since the Kashmir ceasefire and Nehru’s decision to refer the issue to the UN, Nehru functioned as the all-in-all of the Congress Party and the government, implementing his personal views as policy.

Indira Gandhi took a decision at Simla four decades ago to surrender all the gains of the 1971 war with Pakistan, in the hope that the gesture would ensure that the “peace constituency” in the neighbouring country could then be made strong enough to challenge the “conflict constituency”. This was the argument used by her closest advisor ( a Kashmiri Pandit like herself), P N Haksar. The left-leaning, brilliant Haksar was entranced by the vision of peace and cooperation between India and Pakistan, and he forgot the hurt done to the psyche of Rawalpindi by the detaching of Bangladesh. With nothing other than an oral assurance by Prime Minister Z A Bhutto that the Line of Control in Kashmir would get converted into the international boundary, Indira Gandhi forced the Indian military to relinquish the territorial and other gains of the campaign. This was possible only because of the awesome power that she had over the Congress Party and the government. 

Toward a clean, green China (China Daily)

By M.D. Nalapat 

In 1949, Chairman Mao Zedong announced the founding of the People's Republic of China, while Britain's Indian empire was divided into many parts in the years preceding it in the 1940s. Chairman Mao later unified the Chinese mainland, and for the first time in more than a century, China became fully independent of outside control and could pursue its own course in domestic and foreign affairs. This is the most precious legacy of Chairman Mao.

In the late 1970s, Deng Xiaoping reversed the old policy and opened China to the rest of the world. Deng was confident that Chinese people had the resilience and quality needed to compete with others and win the battle of economic development.

Over the last three decades, as pointed out by General Secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee Hu Jintao in his speech at the 90th anniversary of the CPC, the policy framework created by Deng led China to become the second-largest economy in the world. It is now on track to becoming the largest within a generation.

China's millennia-long culture was diluted by a century of conflict and chaos. As a result, many young Chinese were not fully immersed in their own traditions and culture. The past decade, however, has seen a renaissance of traditional culture infused with modern elements that have been adapted to Chinese ethos. Hu has gone beyond the material realm to recognize the spiritual core of the Chinese people and given it full expression in line with socialism with Chinese characteristics.

Many people in China saw the transmission of culture as one-way traffic, with China absorbing the culture of the economically advanced countries without offering anything in return (except excellent Chinese cuisine and manufactures). Now, the CPC leaders are looking deeper into Chinese history and tearing to shreds the last vestiges of prejudice against traditional Chinese culture.

Today, Chinese people are dropping their anchors in tradition even as they take on the international community on the economic and cultural fronts. Not so long ago, the global consensus seemed to be that ancient rituals such as tea ceremony could be seen only in Taiwan and hardly on the Chinese mainland.

Today, such ancient wisdom is proliferating across the whole of China. That the international community can be won over more with soft power has been emphasized by Hu, who has taken measures to spread the knowledge of China's "soft power" across the world.

Though Chinese leaders lay stress on traditional culture, they attach great importance to modern technologies, too.

When Hu became general secretary of the CPC central committee in 2002, China had already become one of the biggest economies in the world, but its research and development (R&D) sector was weak. Chinese enterprises relied in foreign technology even for the production of basic machineries. The country had to import advanced technology and supplied less sophisticated products in return.

It was then that CPC leaders made R&D a priority. Nine years later, the results are there for all to see. China leads the world in several technologies, including renewable energy and high-speed trains. And it is highly possible that in another 10 years, it could be making aircraft to compete with Boeing and Airbus. It could even begin to catch up with the United States and Europe in innovations and improvements to existing products.

Chinese universities and research centers are evolving into world-class institutions. As Hu said in his speech, the Scientific Outlook on Development is at the core of China's future.

The CPC has not fallen into the trap of seeing corruption as the inevitable by-product of economic reform. It knows that reform and modernization are central to the well-being of the Chinese people, and that corruption is found in any system.

The extradition of fugitive Lai Changxing, accused of smuggling 53 billion yuan ($8.2 billion) of goods that implicated many senior officials, shows the "resolution" of China to uphold the law and punish corrupt officials.

But corruption cannot be fought by police alone. However harsh the punishment, people will still be tempted to steal. A better way of fighting corruption is to spread awareness of the need for overall harmony in society so that the making of money does not become the sole purpose of life.

By drawing attention to and reinforcing traditional Chinese attitudes for people to live a worthy lifestyle, the CPC is seeking to use China's history and tradition to guide people away from corruption and toward a lifestyle that serves the community, rather than just oneself.

Aware that the "head of the snake" has to be crushed instead of just leaving it injured, Hu is bringing accountability to the highest levels and not hesitating to punish those who have betrayed the trust of the CPC and the Chinese community as a whole.

Under Hu Jintao's leadership, China has rediscovered its traditions as well as marched ahead at the front of progress. As Mao Zedong said, "walking on two legs" is best. Going along the path set out by Mao and Deng, General Secretary Hu has sought to ensure that China walks briskly forward on the two legs of "tradition" and "modernity" to reclaim its global position that it enjoyed for centuries.

The author is vice-chair of Manipal Advanced Research Group, and UNESCO Peace Chair and professor of geopolitics at Manipal University, India.

(China Daily 07/27/2011 page9)

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/cndy/2011-07/27/content_12989288.htm

Fai’s guests may not have known, but we did (Sunday Guardian)

By M D Nalapat

	In this May 2007 photo, Syed Ghulam Nabi Fai addresses a news conference in Muzaffarabad. Pti t last, we know the truth, courtesy of the Delhi police. This superb force, which has about the same standards as their counterparts in Mumbai, have identified Suhail Hindustani as being even more passionately committed to the nuclear deal than Manmohan Singh. So committed that he somehow managed to conjure up vast sums of cash in order to entice select MPs into voting for the deal. This passion for the mysteries of the atom had been kept well hidden by Hindustani, perhaps even from himself, till 2008.That year, he outed himself spectacularly, working hard to ensure a result that gave the UPA government much relief, of course without any involvement of political planners and parliamentary Mr Fixits in the Congress party and its Sancho Panza, the Samajwadis. We have the results of the painstaking investigations done by the Delhi police to convince us that Hindustani and Saxena acted on their own, much as A.Q. Khan did when he set up an international bazaar for nuclear technology and materiel. The authorities in Pakistan carried out a detailed investigation into Khan's operations, and reached the conclusion that he had absolutely zero help from the military or civilian authorities in Pakistan. The redoubtable scientist was able to command state aircraft, diplomatic facilities and the nuclear establishment at will, clearly by resort to magic. Not that Saxena and Hindustani may, in their prison cells, feel lonely for much longer. Now that he has been denuded of the cover provided by the Samajwadi Party, it is entirely likely that the suave Amar Singh may play the part of the "lizard's tail", exactly as Suresh Kalmadi appears to have done in the Commonwealth Games scams. The decisions that cost the country hundreds of millions of euros could not have been taken by merely a Kalmadi. However, none except him has been held accountable. He seems to have acted as a cork on the bottle, preventing the genie of full disclosure from ever spilling out. If Sohail Hindustani lacks the gravitas to play that role in Nucleargate, Amar Singh will be made to step forward, and into jail. As in the case of the Commonwealth Games scams — repeat scams, plural — or the 2G depredations, first small and later medium-sized fish will get sacrificed to save the sharks who actually gave the orders for the loot. In the case of Nucleargate, it strains credulity to believe that a Hindustani or even an Amar Singh acted on his own, minus a support system provided by the beneficiaries of the outcome of the confidence vote. Of course, we have it on record from the principal functionaries of the Congress party and its allies in pushing through the nuclear deal that none of them was even remotely aware of the antics of the Saxenas and the Hindustanis. And we must take their word for it, exactly as we must the oath of the national capital's more venerable editors, that they had "absolutely no idea that Ghulam Nabi Fai worked for the ISI". If, instead, they had been open about the fact that it has been known at least from the mid-1990s that Fai was an "agent of influence" of the ISI, and that this fact did not seem weighty enough to prevent them from accepting his hospitality, his diatribes against India and his scripted resolutions on Kashmir, because they were non-official citizens of a presumed democracy, they would have been entitled to far more respect than their plea that they were ignorant of the sponsorship details of the conferences attended by them. In the interests of transparency, let it be revealed (to those unfamiliar with the internet) that this columnist himself has been writing a regular column for a Pakistani newspaper, the Pakistan Observer (pakobserver.net), which is particularly influential with that country's Punjabi constituency, including the many stalwarts from that province who serve in the Pakistan military, including in the ISI. If he were to now claim that he has been unaware of the provenance, the readership and the views of this newspaper, he would be a liar. Sadly, despite his many articles on Kashmir (some of which were a wee bit different from the perspective peddled by Mr Fai), this columnist was never invited to the many soirees graced by more illustrious compatriots. Those invited were presumably far more "reasonable" than this columnist has ever been, and favoured futures for Kashmir that approximated the views of that champion of non-elective democracy, the Hurriyat Conference. A journalist is a bit like a cabaret artiste, in that he has to bare his views, the way the cabaret star bares her body.
	ven a cursory examination of those views would show exactly why this columnist went uninvited. Ghulam Fai needed live Indian bodies that could be showcased around Washington as evidence that "Indian public opinion" favoured the surrender of Kashmir, so as to give oxygen to the many busybodies in the State Department, the Pentagon and the CIA who wanted their country to lean far more heavily on India to make unimaginable concessions on Kashmir. To entice these Indian fellow-travellers, Fai was willing to splurge on air tickets, hotel stays and much, much more. It is a pity that not one of the many distinguished names on Fai's guest list seems to have any inkling of whether Fai was a male or a female, a liberal or a conservative, or indeed a human being or a ghost. He was, in Donald Rumsfeld's words, a "Known Unknown". It is no crime to attend a conference, if one is a private citizen. It is, however, a shame when practitioners of what ought to be a profession of the brave act in a craven manner and trot out that old chestnut of an excuse, "We did not know!" Well, the rest of us do. http://www.sunday-guardian.com/analysis/fais-guests-may-not-have-known-but-we-did