Ankara Should Learn from Pakistan (Pakistan Observer)

M D Nalapat

Friday, December 19, 2014 - General Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq was a pious soldier, very different from the whiskey-swilling Yahya Khan, who ran Pakistan before Z A Bhutto took over following the war with India. Certainly such piety is to be applauded, but when a similar mindset is sought to be imposed by the use of state power on the whole of population, problems erupt. The reality is that we are human beings and are therefore far from perfect. Each of us, even those regarded as “good” or “very good” have character flaws. When the Day of Judgment arrives, each of us will be judged as what we are, human beings, and it will not be expected that any of us will be perfect. The good and the bad will be judged not in accordance with criteria enunciated by those claiming to understand and interpret divine but by standards unknown to human beings and indeed not understood by them.

Those people are wrong who believe that human beings can be made perfect, or that personal piety as defined by scholars is sufficient to enable entry into the heavenly space. Even the “imperfect” may qualify, if they have enough good qualities inside themselves, enough faith and devotion, and good deeds done without a selfish motive. Faith and devotion can be shown even by those who do not follow the rules of piety laid out by scholars, for after all, the measures used on Judgment Day are unknown to the human mind. Some of the most productive individuals in the world - including poets and writers - have followed the example of Yahya Khan rather than Zia where alchohol is concerned. As for dress, it is not the outer wear but the inner self which defines purity or otherwise. Even if a young lady wears denims, she may be innocent while a lady wearing a dress approved by some scholars as suitable for women to wear may be less than innocent in reality. An individual who abstains from temptations considered negative may yet do harm to humanity, while an individual with a more liberated lifestyle (such as a scientist) may do much good.

It is no accident that those countries with a high degree of personal freedom are usually those countries where much intellectual progress is made. The more laws get passed to restrict activity, the less room there will be for innovation and enterprise. While laws should certainly be passed and enforced for acts such as violence or trickery, personal behaviour that does not negatively impact others ought to be left to the personal choice of the individual. Few of the societies with highly restrictive laws have much success in ensuring that citizens obey their dictates.

The war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan added fuel to General Zia’s efforts to convert the population of Pakistan into models of what he regarded as piety. These days, there is much condemnation from NATO member-states of the activities of armed religious extremists in locations across the world, but in the 1980s,President Ronald Reagan gave speeches backing armed struggle of the sort that was being waged in Afghanistan. Religious passions were whipped up by skilful use of school curricula as well as lirerature created for the purpose. Hundreds of thousands of youths were sent to war in Afghanistan, where finally the Soviet Union had to admit defeat and retreat.

However, afterwards, many such individuals and the groups they had joined took on a more fanatic hue, and the results are obvious. While the example of Yahya Khan is an unsuitable precedent to follow, there is little doubt that rule under the more modern and moderate Ayub Khan was ultimately better for Pakistan than several of the changes introduced by General Zia. Had millions of young minds in Pakistan been taught modern education,the country would have been in the lead of the knowledge revolution. Violence is evil, and needs to be condemned. Only a state where there is security of life and freedom of the individual makes the progress needed to ensure that its citizens constantly improve their lives. In the GCC, it is no accident that Dubai is a much more attractive investment destination than Riyadh or Teheran, or that ordinary citizens in Kuwait have a better quality of life than their counterparts in Saudi Arabia.

This has been said more than a decade ago and bears repetition: “Sabahism” (moderate rule) is better than “Wahabbism”. The people of a country should have the freedom to choose rather than be dictated to Interestingly, while the first took over power via the military and the second has been elected to office, the example of General Zia is being followed by Recip Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, who too is seeking to make the people of his country more piouis, of course based on his own ideas of what piety entails. Just as Zia made Pakistan the reliable partner of those fighters battling the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, Erdogan has made Turkey the most important backer of the armed groups fighting against Bashar Assad in Syria. Ankara gives various kinds of assistance to such groups and does so openly. The problem is that a fighter who is “moderate” this month may sign up with “extremists” the next month, after he has been given cash and weapons. Days ago in Aleppo, ISIS got control of a huge stockpile of weapons that had been given by NATO and its regional partners to the “moderate opposition” to Assad.

The fact is that much of this “moderate” force switched sides to ISIS as soon as they entered the environs of Aleppo from Turkey. The US-UK policy of arming the “moderate opposition” is ensuring that a plentiful supply of advanced weapons falls into the hands of ISIS soon after such weapons get distributed by the anti-Assad coalition. Indeed, several fighters active in beheadings and enslavement in Syria and Iraq are sending their families across the border into Turkey and Jordan to be looked after in refugee camps, while they themselves fight. Those who get wounded cross over to Turkey, get medical attention and return to the battlefield as soon as they are fit.

Turkey has become as important for extremist fighters in Syria and Iraq as Pakistan was to the fighters battling the Red Army in Afghanistan in the 1980s. And just as there has been a deadly blowback to Pakistan from Zia’s policy, in a few years Turkey will suffer an increasingly toxic blowback from its policy of assisting extremists against regimes regarded with hostility by Erdogan. And just as the US backed Zia, Washington is now standing alongside the Turkish President. Hopefully,Ankara will realize before it is too late that empowering fanatics is a short-sighted policy for any democracy to follow. Erdogan needs to move away from General Zia’s path and return to Kemalism.

http://pakobserver.net/detailnews.asp?id=258374

Could Gandhiji have been saved from Godse? (Sunday Guardian)

ROOTS OF POWER MADHAV NALAPAT www.sunday-guardian.com/profile/madhav-nalapat

M.D Nalapat is the Editorial Director of The Sunday Guardian.

British authorities were aware of the plan by Nathuram Godse and his associates to kill the Mahatma, yet did nothing about it.

Memories long consigned to oblivion get re-ignited by stray events. The controversy following the mention of the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi by Nathuram Vinayak Godse on 30 January 1948 at Birla House, Delhi, brought back memories of a discussion with one of the finest individuals this columnist has ever met, Astad Dinshaw Gorwala. Then in his teens, the gap of half a century between this columnist and Gorwala did not prevent a friendship where the college student spent several late afternoons at the former civil servant's apartment in (what was then named) Ridge Road in Mumbai, talking about a country that seemed to be moving towards a direction undeserving of the genius and qualities of its people. White-haired, passionate about wrongs both real and perceived, Gorwala in effect held a series of lecture classes for a single student on the country's leaders and their shortcomings. His writing was fierce, so much so that Jawaharlal Nehru ensured that his column got stopped in the Times of India. Not finding — or trusting — any existing newspaper to carry his views sans censorship, Gorwala launched Opinion in 1960, a journal to which this columnist contributed a few articles before it was stopped in 1975 after the declaration of the Emergency, but not before its editor had penned a sharp rebuke of Indira Gandhi. Gorwala was impeccable in his conduct, whether in office or out of it, but saw clearly that not all his former colleagues in the ICS favoured that difficult path. One of his edits was headlined "Liengar", a commentary on then RBI Governor H.V.R. Iyengar, who had clearly been responsible for some action seen by Gorwala as indefensible. During an afternoon spent discussing the points that could be made in an article, Gorwala became silent, and disappeared into his own thoughts for many minutes. After a pause, he began speaking very slowly and deliberately of a conversation he had had in 1949 with a police officer about the murder of Mahatma Gandhi. According to this official, British authorities were aware of the plan by Nathuram Godse and his associates to kill the Mahatma, yet did nothing about it. Indeed, they were asked to ignore the developing plot, which had been reported by them to "the highest authority", which would mean Governor-General Lord Louis Mountbatten. Gorwala recounted what the police official (who was a Briton) had told him, which was that they were ordered to keep information secret (about the Godse plot) from Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and Home Minister Ballabhbhai Patel. Interestingly, Godse had come close to killing the Mahatma four years earlier, when, armed with a knife, he stalked him during a meeting, only to be pushed away by a policeman. And ten days before Gandhiji met his end, Godse's friends were caught while detonating a guncotton bomb, and had their room searched and themselves tailed. After the Mahatma was assassinated, the officer and his mates were warned by a superior not to mention the warnings or the surveillance. His presumption was that the concealment was ordered in order to avoid the obloquy that would ensue should it become known that Gandhiji could have been saved, but many years later, Gorwala had a different theory. In his view, a cold-blooded decision may have been taken that the Mahatma was now expendable and that his sudden death would weaken the position of Home Minister Patel, whom the British disliked for his post-1947 firmness in rejecting views seen as less than fair to India's interests. Was Prime Minister Nehru told of the plot? Gorwala was no admirer of India's first Prime Minister, but he was certain that Nehru had been kept in the dark. "The English knew that Panditji's emotion usually got the best of his intellect in any encounter with the facts." Nehru loved Gandhiji and would never have allowed him to die. Neither would Patel have, had he known of the plot in the detail mentioned by the police officer. But then Gorwala felt he was perhaps being unfair on the British, a race he respected, so he gave the police officer's alternative view, which was that the few in the know simply refused to believe that Nathuram Godse would actually see the plot through, and therefore did not take him seriously. However, the official claimed that Godse had been shadowed by plainclothes police on his way to Birla House, and that his procurement of a Beretta semi-automatic revolver became known to the Intelligence Bureau before 30 January. The excuse, that Mountbatten spoke off the cuff when he shouted out that "it was a Hindu who did it", has been accepted by all, so incurious are we about our history. But the Viceroy was known to have a military punctiliousness, and was not given to wild conjectures. How was the Governor-General sure that it was a Hindu who killed Gandhiji just minutes after the assassination, when nothing was certain except that a titan had fallen? Whether it be the murder of the Mahatma or the manner of the death of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, successive governments in India have refused to allow citizens to look beyond the canned explanations of sarkari historians or the official recounters of events. The death of the Mahatma at the hands of a Hindu became the excuse to make India the only democracy where discrimination against the majority community has become the norm. http://www.sunday-guardian.com/analysis/could-gandhiji-have-been-saved-from-godse

‘Swiss club’ delays Modi’s reform drive (Sunday Guardian)

11 politicians, 16 serving and retired senior officials, four lawyers and six business executives form the core of the ‘Club’. MADHAV NALAPAT  New Delhi | 13th Dec 2014 Key officials and others are working overtime to block, or at a minimum, delay, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's reform agenda. These individuals are part of the "Swiss Club" whose core consists of 11 politicians, 16 serving and retired senior officials, four lawyers and six business executives, each having substantial illicit accounts in offshore havens, and who have for decades acted as agents for foreign entities eager to dump overpriced products in India. The existence of the club was first revealed in the 2 November 2014 issue of this newspaper (Officials confident PM Modi will prevail over 'Swiss Club'). While honest officials committed to Prime Minister Modi's reform agenda are seeking to undo the attempted sabotage of the Modi reforms by the "Swiss Club", the latter are concentrating on tarnishing the reputation for probity and efficiency of Prime Minister Modi. "The political base of the NDA government rests on a single brick, which is public faith in the integrity and commitment of Modi, and it is this that is planned to come under attack. " To generate scandals about the Modi government, selective leaks are being planned of those instances where the "Swiss Club", taking advantage of the lack of administrative experience of several ministers, is conniving at short-circuiting of procedures, which then could be subject to adverse interpretation in the courts. An official gave the example of some coal allocations (including that made through a government trading entity), which has reportedly "dispensed with the earlier policy of allocating coal to the first three bidders, with L1 getting 60%, L2 25% and L3 the balance 15%". This, officials say, has been altered to give the top bidder (L1) the entire allocation, a change in policy which has angered entities left out of the allocations. Although such decisions may have been based on merit, yet "it would be easy to levy charges of favouritism in Parliament and the media", these officials warn. Another claim is that "there has been a delay in filing FIRs against some of those named in the HSBC list of account holders". The real purpose behind such leaks would be to "slow down decision-making once again to the crawl that was present during the UPA decade", said a senior official, who pointed out that there was a much higher level of efficiency shown by the Modi PMO as compared to the Manmohan Singh PMO. Another attempted scandal-in-the-making concerns a senior opposition politician, who has been reported by officials as trying to ensure that a Mumbai-based construction mogul escapes from legal difficulties connected to the 2G scam. The ex-minister has reportedly warned that he would expose individuals in the present dispensation if the construction mogul as well as two reputed hawala operators now under arrest were not let off. Officials committed to the PM's programme say that they are confident that "PM Modi will reject any pressure" and that he would allow the law and the facts to dictate the decisions of the government, no matter who gets affected, even if they be from his own party. The "Swiss Club" is busy seeking a season of scandal commencing early next year to recreate the Commonwealth scam period, this time with the NDA government in the dock. It may be noted that members of the "Swiss Club" abuse each other in public, but work jointly in private to protect each other and their friends. They are also active in tarnishing the reputations of those opposed to them, often by using their influence in the Income-Tax Department, CBI and other agencies for the purpose, besides of course the media. An official claimed that the club began its work of sabotaging the Modi government immediately after the 16 May 2014 poll victory of the BJP, "when information about individuals being considered for top posts was deliberately doctored, so that those close to the 'Swiss Club' had their records expunged of misdemeanours, while those opposed to the club were accused of wrongdoing of which they were innocent". Naturally, as such assessments were secret, those against whom false allegations were made were unable to defend themselves, especially as such charges made in secret were usually followed by false information fed to media channels to publicly blacken the names and records of those opposed to the Swiss Club. Officials warn that the influence of the club on tainted elements in the government's investigating and reporting machinery gets used to try and ensure that only those regarded as favourable to the Swiss Club get into key positions after vetting, with those outside the club's influence excluded by untruths and innuendo retailed in secret. Those officials eager to assist Prime Minister Modi to succeed in his reforms claim that PM Modi is aware of the efforts at sabotaging his quest for the best and the cleanest to serve in his team, and has been keeping a watch on all key officials to ensure that "bad apples" get replaced with honest officials. However, the "Swiss Club" has ensured that the hunt for black money has thus far yielded dismal results, while the "big fish" outed by the BJP as corrupt during the 2014 campaign still enjoy immunity. The club is seeking to divert official attention away from the estimated $1 trillion illegally held abroad to black money in India. The SIT, filled as it is by officials familiar only with the present system rather than outside experts of integrity, is reported to be in the process of recommending yet more regulations and curbs, most of which are likely to do little to curb black money, but will further inhibit the investment climate in India and increase harassment. "The Swiss Club is the channel through which key politicians in all parties secrete cash abroad, so these politicians are united in protecting the members of what is the most powerful club in India, for fear that otherwise they themselves will get exposed", a senior official claimed. His colleague added that "bigwigs in previous governments who were part of the club saw to it that opposition politicians got paid off so as to get immunity even if there was a political upset, as in the 2004 or 2014 Lok Sabha polls". The obstacle facing such elements is Prime Minister Modi, which is why "the club is in overdrive seeking to tarnish the name of the PM, first by targeting a few of his ministers". During Manmohan Singh's time, there existed a cosy system in the bureaucracy, where the senior-most landed the top posts irrespective of integrity or merit, and afterwards rewarded subordinates with tribunal, commission and other posts. Prime Minister Modi has rejected a calendar-based appointments system and gone for merit instead in key appointments, thereby annoying those who did little but rose far. Such elements are seeking to scare the junior bureaucracy by floating the rumour that PM Modi wants to lower the Central retirement age to 58, just as Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar has done in Haryana. The senior official said that "bureaucrats in Delhi are being warned by the Swiss Club that Delhi state will follow Haryana's lead and lower the retirement age, should the BJP come to power after the next Assembly polls". The six-month extension given to Cabinet Secretary Ajit Seth (on grounds of need and efficacy) has resulted in some 1978 and 1979-batch IAS officers getting uncertain about their prospects. "The fact is that the PM expects performance, and protects those who work hard", an officer pointed out, adding that "for long, deadwood has clogged the system and needs to get replaced". It is precisely such "deadwood" that is working to implement the mandate of the Swiss Club, which is to damage prospects for speedy implementation of the Modi reforms. Officials say that the PM is, these days, paying significant attention to the Home and Finance Ministries together with his close colleagues, Union ministers Rajnath Singh and Arun Jaitley. Both ministries are crucial to the success of his plans for reform, and are filled with elements close to the "Swiss Club", which is why both have been expert during the UPA days in blocking growth prospects and essential changes in procedures and rules. As yet, change is still too slow for comfort, despite the PMO's efforts. This is largely because of the bureaucratic slowdown created by "Swiss Club" elements, which have, for example, caused the piling up of over 900 personnel files, with even appointments of mid-level officials now being held up for months. The sharp decline in manufacturing last month has combined with the fact that, as a top official warned, "equity investment into India has been steadily declining even after the NDA came to power, while only debt has been rising fast", adding that "high debt flows into India were caused by the RBI policy of super-high interest rates". His colleague said that "only growth in equity investment will bring long-term value. Debt just increases vulnerability to external shocks". An officer pointed out that only 20% of the target of Rs 250,000 crore of extra tax revenue budgeted for the current financial year has been met, while the deficit target was overshot last month. His colleague warned that "trying to squeeze higher taxes out of a declining production base, the way (former Finance Minister) Chidambaram did, will be toxic for the economy. The only way out is the Modi formula of extensive reforms in processes." However, this is an uphill task, given the "vested interests entrenched within the establishment, especially at senior levels, who have an interest in the present system, which enables leakages and punishes honesty". By secretly lobbying against the decisive moves made by the PM, the "Swiss Club" is generating confusion in some ministries. In the Environment Ministry for example, there have been abrupt reversals of decisions on genetically modified foods (which are considered safe in the US), and in matters as urgent as the need to generate hydropower in Uttarakhand, which has several rivers ideally suited for the purpose. The effort is to stop or at least delay Prime Minister Modi's reforms, although these are making a significant impact on the overall economic climate, notably in ensuring a lower rate of inflation in essential commodities, more transparent decision-making, the scrapping of archaic laws and cumbersome procedures, the boosting of future employment through changes in labour laws and encouragement to job creation by changing land laws passed by the UPA which make the setting up of manufacturing units impossibly difficult. "But for Modi, the Indian economy would now be in recession", an official pointed out, although adding that the present rate of growth needed to be doubled. His colleague added that "The Swiss Club is only interested in protecting their illegal wealth and in helping the foreign interests which hold them in trust, and these are being threatened by the PM". Hence the developing plan to target the PM and his government within the coming months, so that decisions slow down and changes in procedures get abandoned. "We need a few members of the Swiss Club to be made accountable, and hopefully honest officers will ensure that this takes place", an official said, adding that "the battle between the reformers backing the PM and those seeking to sabotage change is far from won". http://www.sunday-guardian.com/news/swiss-club-delays-modis-reform-drive

Learn from Malala and Kailash (Pakistan Observer, 12 December 2014)

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Don’t diminish Lord Ram, Sadhvi Niranjan (Sunday Guardian)

ROOTS OF POWER MADHAV NALAPAT www.sunday-guardian.com/profile/madhav-nalapat M.D Nalapat is the Editorial Director of The Sunday Guardian. Union Minister of State Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti speaks in the Rajya Sabha in New Delhi on Tuesday. PTI f we regard goodwill as a bank, then it has become clear over the past months that while Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been making huge deposits into the BJP's "Goodwill Bank", several of his colleagues are busy draining its coffers through incompetence and intemperateness. On 26 May 2014, those gathered in Rashtrapati Bhawan for the unveiling of Team Modi witnessed instead a pastiche, which has been characterised as "20% Modi, 40% Vajpayee and 40% Manmohan Singh". Unless there is at least "50% Modi" in the government run in his name, it will prove difficult for the Prime Minister to achieve the level of performance which the voting public expects of him. It would be best for the BJP to focus on good administration and let the politics take care of itself, rather than make ministerial choices dependent on calculations of political advantage. The large proportion of entrants in the Council of Ministers from states such as Bihar and Uttar Pradesh could not protect the BJP from substantial losses in byelections in these two states. Empirical evidence across decades proves that there is little positive effect in giving weightage in ministerial choices to states and communities regarded as politically significant. After all, each minister is bound by his or her oath to work for the entire country, for each citizen of the country, rather than serve only a sectional interest. Those focusing on the latter usually prove to be indifferent administrators, and when this is the case, the effect on governance will be negative, as will soon be the impact on politics. { Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti has done a disservice to Lord Ram by assuming that only a segment of the population of this country has a right to him and his legacy. The reality is that Lord Ram belongs to every citizen of India. Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti has done a disservice to Lord Ram by assuming that only a segment of the population of this country has a right to him and his legacy. The reality is that Lord Ram belongs to every citizen of India, just as Julius Caesar belongs to every Italian, Napoleon to each of the citizens of France and Alexander to all the Hellenic tribes, whether they be Greeks or Macedonians. Prime Minister Modi has done what was needed, by disapproving of the remarks made by the minister, thereby signalling to his team that he would not countenance attempts at segmenting the population for political reasons. Modi was elected because of the confidence of voters across castes, regions and communities that he would ensure good governance, and certainly he has worked with speed and efficiency to clear away cobwebs and ensure that governmental services delivered to the average citizen are of a better quality than the abysmal level that they have been stuck in since the 1960s. Goodwill for Modi is still intact, despite the negative effect of some of his ministerial colleagues, who ought to know better. The Sadhvi seems to have fallen into the colonial-era trap of looking at Lord Ram in exclusively religious terms, when in fact he needs to be viewed also in historical and national terms. Just as Alexander, Napoleon and Julius Caesar get studied in textbooks across the globe, especially in their homelands, so should Lord Ram in schools across India. Study of his life would be immensely helpful in awakening in not just giving our people a pride in our composite civilisation, but teach them to emulate his example. Combined with the creation of a governance system which makes human endeavour easier rather than more difficult, such a re-discovery of India's historical roots would help in making people resident in India achieve true same levels of performance as they do in locations with more citizen-friendly governance systems, such as in the US, the UK or Singapore. It was wrong on the part of the "Nehruvian secularist" brigades (who adopt a different standard for different communities rather than a uniform scale) to consign Lord Ram into a sectarian box, when the qualities he represents are valid for the whole of humanity. Each citizen of India has the right to be called a civilisational child of Lord Ram, irrespective of his or her faith, and it is this truth that Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti needs to keep in mind when she feels the temptation to adopt the colonial view and place Lord Ram in a restricted rather than in an inclusivist way. Whether his name be Rahim, Vibhav or Lawrence, each citizen of our country has a legitimate right to be the inheritors of the legacy of Lord Ram. http://www.sunday-guardian.com/analysis/dont-diminish-lord-ram-sadhvi-niranjan