Ranaghat atrocity part of ISI’s Operation Equal Blame (Sunday Guardian)

MADHAV NALAPAT  New Delhi | 21st Mar 2015

The Ranaghat atrocity, where a 72-year-old Catholic nun was violated by three young men, was carried out through an extremist organisation based in Khulna in Bangladesh, say analysts based within the territories of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). The organisation "used recruits from two different faiths for the operation, and arranged their return to Bangladesh within hours of the atrocity", thereby making it problematic that the actual perpetrators would ever get apprehended. More disturbingly, these sources allege that a section of the local police in the vicinity of the seminary "was aware of the planned operation, and agreed to ensure safe passage" to the perpetrators. They, however, denied that any political party had a role to play in the heinous crime, which has traumatised the peaceful and progressive Christian community throughout India. "Elements in the local police ensured that the follow-up action (after the rape) was first delayed and then taken in such a fashion that evidence got destroyed" and that "even though the extremist youth shown on the CCTV cameras were moving around in the neighbourhood for six days before the assault, the local police failed to bring in residents of the area who could have identified them". They claim that after such a botch-up of the initial leads in the case, "only the usual suspects will get rounded up by the CBI, which is relying on the local police for assistance in solving a crime that the latter allowed to take place", and hence that "the actual planners and facilitators of the attack will escape". The speedy finger-pointing over the Ranaghat atrocity has to be seen in the context of efforts by numerous international organisations to characterise the Narendra Modi-led NDA government as a fanatic band of majoritarians dedicated to the submission of the minorities to their will. GCC-based analysts say that since the Narendra Modi-led NDA government came to power at the Centre on 26 May 2014, Pakistan's ISI has increased its budget by six times for "operation equal blame", designed to ensure that India and Pakistan share the same brackets on issues of human rights highlighted by the "international community" (the usual shorthand for NATO member-states). According to these GCC-based analysts, who track the activities in Bangladesh and Nepal of the ISI and its associated groups internationally, the organisation has since 2011 set up a budget to fund attacks on Christian organisations and priests in India, so as to ensure that the international media report India in the same way as they do Pakistan, a country where the Christian community has been discriminated against since the 1980s and where members of the community are routinely killed or converted through threats. Such activity has been sharply stepped up since the middle of last year. "There is a perception that the ISI recruits only Muslims, when the fact is that in India, more than a third of active and dupe recruits (i.e. those unaware that they are working for the Pakistan-based espionage agency) are Hindus and even a few from other communities", an analyst based in an Abu Dhabi agency revealed, adding that "it does not take much money or persuasion to ensure that acts of violence get committed in a country where poverty is rife". Over the past four years, the ISI has liaised through its associates with NGOs and individuals worldwide to "facilitate the preparation of reports which seek to show that India is a country where Christians and Muslims are grossly discriminated against", said a US-based analyst, who pointed out that the effort is to ensure that the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) succeeds in lobbying the US government to place India in the same bracket as Pakistan when the Obama administration makes public its report on international religious freedom by end-April. NGOs such as Amnesty International have lately been bracketing India in the same category as Iraq and Nigeria, where the treatment of minorities is concerned, periodically briefing policymakers within the NATO bloc about events in India. In this context, it has relied on reports such as a "300 Days" report card of the Modi government, which claims that there have been 600 egregious attacks on minorities during this period, 450 against Muslims and the rest against Christians. What goes unmentioned is that much higher figures exist for attacks against Hindus in the same period, or that in previous 300-day periods when the UPA was in office, the figures were much higher. "From New York to Geneva to London, squads from the ISI have been active in ensuring that a stream of misinformation reaches policymakers about the situation in India", a process in which they have been aided by several well-intentioned individuals and groups who have jumped onto the "India is fascist" bandwagon being propelled by some politicians in India eager to discredit the Modi government. When President Barack Obama visited India for the 26 January Republic Day parade, he flagged five concerns of his government: religious freedom, status of Dalits, slavery, violence against women and overall human rights. Not accidentally, an international campaign is now on to show that India is deficient on all five counts, with the US House of Representatives passing for the first time a resolution on the status of Dalits in India (HR 566, 113th Congress) in a context where the EU has since 2006 passed six resolutions against India on the same subject. Recently, a documentary by a filmmaker linked to an NGO, which sought to show India as a country where rape was commonplace (when the statistics show the country to be safer than the US or several of its European allies), was shown on the BBC. The NDA government's clumsy reaction of banning the filming in India ensured global publicity for the documentary, thereby playing into the hands of the traducers of India. Not surprisingly, there have been several high-profile screenings of the "banned" BBC documentary in various NATO capitals and metropolitan centres, in a context where the US House of Representatives on 6 March and the US Senate on 11 March discussed the subject of violence against women in India in very critical language, a precursor of condemnations to come on this and the subject of "slavery", i.e. child labour in India. Interestingly, a child labour campaigner in India has won last year's Nobel Peace Prize, joining a list of winners that includes Barack Obama and Henry Kissinger, but excludes Mahatma Gandhi. Ominously, efforts are on by some NGOs and their patrons to ensure a mammoth march of farmers to Delhi in May, this time with a view towards ensuring physical clashes with law enforcement officials. Two earlier marches have taken place, the last a few days ago, on the issue of pollution in the Yamuna river. NGOs, trade unions and farmers organisations are meeting with political and other elements in order to launch a coordinated campaign against the Narendra Modi government in the coming weeks, both nationally as well as internationally. All that can be said with certainty is that those who indulge in violence which could get interpreted as a hate crime, such as the recent attacks on Christian institutions across India, are playing to a tune which promotes the ISI's "operation equal blame", thereby assisting that organisation to succeed in portraying India in international fora as being as much of a serial abuser of the rights of the minorities as Pakistan, when the reality is very different. http://www.sunday-guardian.com/news/ranaghat-atrocity-part-of-isis-operation-equal-blame

Netanyahu returns, committed to conflict (Pakistan Observer, 20 March 2015)

http://epaper.pakobserver.net/201503/20/comments-1.php

For Modi, ‘gradual’ means 150, ‘normal’ 350 (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.

The Modi reforms will begin to manifest themselves in earnest in 2015, reach reasonable maturity in 2017 and ensure double digit growth from around 2019.

Why did the inhabitants of a small island off the coast of France conquer three-fourths of the globe, ensuring that English became the international link language, now spoken in some form or the other by over a billion people? It was not the Monarchy, which was responsible for such success so much as the lack of control of that institution over so great a part of the life of the ordinary citizen. A millennium ago, the people of what is now known as the United Kingdom clawed back from their rulers a significant slice of liberty from the control of the aristocracy, so much so that since the 15th century, individuals regarded themselves as free to explore the globe and more often than not, ensure their control over diverse parts of it, always in the name of the Sovereign. More than any other characteristic of governance in the UK, it was the personal liberty and initiative enjoyed by its citizens which propelled them to individual acts of scientific, literary and geographical discovery. What a contrast to the European Union, where the eurocrats in Brussels seek to codify and to control. But for the fact that potential competitors such as China and India have regimes even more restrictive of initiative than the EU, that grouping would be heading down the growth ladder even faster than is the case at present. The people of Gujarat are among the most entrepreneurial in Asia, and in Chief Minister Narendra Damodardas Modi they found a CEO, who allowed them to be, and who sought to facilitate rather than to control. A recent issue of a well regarded magazine carries several lengthy essays on why the expected "Modi Revolution" will take place in slow motion, if at all, by arguing that sloth, rather than speed, is in the nature and chemistry of the Indian people. Among the essays was a debunking of perceptions of Modi as a downsizer of governmental power, arguing instead that what was needed were still greater powers to the state. As for changes in the mechanics of governance, these should be at the periphery and never at the core. Should the magazine be correct in its assessment of Prime Minister Modi's system of governance, it will be safe to predict that the BJP would be lucky to get 150 Lok Sabha seats in 2019, besides losing in both Bihar in 2015 and UP in 2017. The reason is that the type of society which the authors of the magazine's essayists claim is in India, no longer exists. Both young and old wish to see substantial changes, and rapidly rather than over decades, the way the gradualist school assumes. The BJP secured a majority on the promise of substantial change effected with despatch, and voters warmed to Modi on the premise that he could deliver on both. This columnist regards himself as having a viewpoint independent of party fixations, but from 2006 has seen Modi as the individual best suited to overcome and indeed remove the disabilities of the colonial system of governance in India. The Gujarat politician gives every sign of appreciating the fact that not simply the people of Gujarat but the population of the entire country has within it the genes of entrepreneurship and imagination needed to transform India, if only the dead hand of the bureaucracy were removed from their backs. Unlike the essayists in the magazine cited, he took seriously Narendra Modi's promise of "Minimum Government and Maximum Governance", and sees the 365-day period till 25 May 2015 as a learning experience for the Prime Minister, before he finally begins to turn his energies towards the dismantling of the colonial system of governance, which reduced the share of the subcontinent from 24% of global GDP to 1% within 150 years of 1820. If this view be correct, then the Modi reforms will begin to manifest themselves in earnest in 2015, reach reasonable maturity in 2017 and ensure double digit growth from around 2019, the year when the BJP should get 350 Lok Sabha seats (if Modi runs the government as Modi). In contrast, were the gradualist and incrementalist school to have its way, the tally would fall to the vicinity of 150. Those who fail to understand the magnitude of the change in attitudes of the Indian people over the past two decades continue to talk and act in a gradualist manner may unwittingly be setting the stage for an electoral meltdown. In contrast, most are confident that PM Modi will function in the same innovative and brisk way as CM Modi did, because he understands that the times call for transparency in governance and for a ruthless pruning of the powers of the national capital over state projects, and that of the state capitals over district projects. Why should every power plant or even institution of excellence, not to mention environment approvals, necessitate frequent visits to Delhi? Why should those elected to zilla parishads have to come to state capitals to get sanctioned projects that they are best equipped to understand and to handle? And why should there be 10,001 ways of sending a citizen to jail rather than just 101? Why should only those who were once or who are still in government be given positions of responsibility rather than the broader society, which in contrast to government is registering success rather than failure? Let it be admitted that this columnist is firmly in the company of those who believe that in the months and years ahead, the tribune of change, Narendra Modi rather than the predicted gradualist will emerge, a Prime Minister who through the changes he effects will free the people from the coils of red tape so that this country can once again be by 2024 at the latest what it was in 1980, the equal of China in GDP. http://www.sunday-guardian.com/analysis/for-modi-gradual-means-150-normal-350

Germany the big loser in Ukraine (Pakistan Observer, 13.3.2015)

http://epaper.pakobserver.net/201503/13/comments-1.php

Will AAP go the Delhi Durbar way? (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.

India is a country where human icons get venerated and those questioning them despised. Among the traditions bequeathed by the Congress party of the freedom struggle days was the reality of decisions being centralised in a single individual, Mahatma Gandhi. As Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose or Sardar Vallabbhai Patel discovered, if any steps were taken contrary to the "inner voice" of the Mahatma, he would quickly move to get that rescinded, the way in which Netaji was forced to surrender the presidentship of the Congress or the Sardar had to step aside to allow Jawaharlal Nehru to take over as the first Prime Minister of independent India, despite the former's overwhelming backing for the post within the party. Later, Nehru behaved in a similar manner, for example, in the matter of Purushottam Das Tandon, whom he disliked and reduced to a nullity within the Congress leadership. In such a situation, it would have been foolhardy to challenge the Mahatma or later Nehru, and few did, although there were situations when the Mahatma's or Panditji's decisions may not have been optimal. Clearly, the Aam Aadmi Party's most powerful leader, Arvind Kejriwal, has steeped himself in the history of the Congress during the days of the Mahatma, for he appears to seek to create for his party a model similar to that in the Congress even in recent times, of having an "infallible" leader whom to question would be an act of heresy and base treachery. This columnist has run into Kejriwal only twice, once in a seminar organised by Transparency, and the other at a function held in the Vivekananda International Foundation, and hence cannot claim expertise on the ideology or competence of the Chief Minister of Delhi. However, it would be safe to say that both Kejriwal as well as his party would be the beneficiaries were there to be a culture within which views contrary to those of his and those who think like him get expressed, especially in a context where a few course corrections may indeed be needed. From the outside at least, Kejriwal's Man Friday, Manish Sisodia, seems to be in the Ram Manohar Lohia mode, admirable in some ways but not a perfect fit for the 21st century. Sisodia seems to believe, for example, that lapsing into the English language would be an act of betrayal of the "aam aadmi", never mind that almost all such individuals — including in UP and Bihar — would like their children to learn and to speak perfect English, if only politicians would ensure that state-run educational institutions assure such a result. Those unfortunates (from the South or the Northeast) who do not know Hindi would have to rely on sign language to communicate with Sisodia, given his reluctance to ever speak English despite knowing it well, despite the fact that Delhi is as much their city (being the national capital) as it is Deputy CM Sisodia's. A 21st century vision would have among its centrepieces fluency in the international link language, and rather than seek to snuff it out the way Karpoori Thakur managed to do in Bihar in the 1960s (with consequences which are apparent to this day), what is needed is to shun the prejudices of the past and accept the imperatives of the present, by ensuring that government schools are facilitated to give the same level and quality of education as private schools do. That there has been such blowback from the way in which Prashant Bhushan and Yogendra Yadav have been turfed out of the highest deliberative body of the AAP is a sign of health, no matter what it does to the blood pressure readings of Kejriwal loyalists. Across the country, there are millions —mostly young, but others older — who see in the AAP a future ruling party for the country. However, for such a vision to get actualised, what needs to be avoided is for Arvind Kejriwal to create an aura of infallibility for himself and his group within the AAP. Thus far, and it is certainly early days, it must be admitted that Chief Minister Kejriwal has been acquitting himself well in his current job. The AAP ministry is handling its responsibilities without fuss and with efficiency. What it needs is to avoid adopting the models of the past, whether they be that of the Congress or the erstwhile Socialist Party. The collective leadership of the AAP needs to create a paradigm which fits the needs of the present. The voter is watching as Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeks to fulfil his promise of breaking down the colonial governance structure inherited from the past and replacing it with one where the government is (like oxygen) invisible and invigorating rather than intrusive and enervating ( like smog). Should Modi fail to do so, and should the AAP remain true to its first principles, across the country this fledgling force could in 2019 script as big a shock nationally as it did in the Delhi Assembly polls on 10 February this year. What the AAP needs is for a nationwide and open election of office-bearers, so that the will of its cadres prevails rather than the wishes of what seems from media reports to be a Delhi-centric collection of confidants of "Big Boss" Kejriwal. Such a concentration of power within the Lutyens' zone rather than getting dispersed across the country at large has been the bane of the BJP as well as the Congress. If it infects the AAP as well, that party will lose the ability to ensure hope for change across the country, leaving the next Lok Sabha to be a mosaic of regional groups, should the BJP not succeed in transforming the country during the coming four years more effectively than it has succeeded in doing since 26 May 2014. http://www.sunday-guardian.com/analysis/will-aap-go-the-delhi-durbar-way

Corrupt officers block PM Modi’s transparency drive (Sunday Guardian)

MADHAV NALAPAT  New Delhi | 7th Mar 2015

Senior officials say that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has called for a review by the Cabinet Secretariat of the indiscriminate way in which documents have been classified as secret. The intention behind the exercise is "to ensure greater transparency in the functioning of government offices, in order to promote disclosure and probity". Although as yet the Modi government has succeeded in bringing to justice only a small handful of corrupt officials during the UPA period, the rest of the tainted flock are nervous at a possible intensification of Prime Minister Modi's quest for transparency and accountability. They are therefore working to ensure that the opaque governance system that is a relic of the British colonial era, continues into the foreseeable future. In particular, they are working to ensure through appropriate notings and interventions that the 2011-13 efforts by the Manmohan Singh government to water down the impact of the Right to Information Act get revived rather than rolled back. Acting on the overall directions of the Prime Minister, units of the Delhi police have uncovered several "corporate espionage rings" operating within key economic and other ministries. Senior officials in sync with PM Modi's desire for clean and transparent government say that relevant agencies have since 2011 had knowledge of these networks, but that the corporate spies were allowed to continue unimpeded "because of protection from the highest political quarters". Interestingly, some of these espionage networks ensured the flow (to selected media channels) of information stolen from ministry files, so as to generate negative (albeit factual) stories about rival groups and hostile individuals, including senior officials as well as ministers. Some of the rings "functioned also as the private detective agencies of friendly officials and politicians, securing for them dirt on their opponents, which could be leaked to friendly journalists or used for purposes of blackmail". For the media, accuracy and public interest trump the motivation of sources in revealing information, hence their case for publishing material stolen from government files by corporate espionage networks. Interestingly, police and other agencies have yet to question more than a third of the individuals known (from preliminary investigations) to have guided such spy rings, or who regularly accessed information gathered by them. However, an official said that these individuals have not been excused, but will be questioned later, after the huge volume of information secured during the raids gets processed by the police. Interestingly, an official privy to the documents said that "more than three-fourths of them should not have been classified as secret". According to him, such documents ought to have been placed on the websites of the concerned ministries, and that to do so would have been in the public interest. "Keeping information secret, which ought to have been in the public domain, ensures that bribes get paid to reveal such data, and also serves to protect corrupt officials", a senior official warned, adding that "more than 90% of classified information is such as to serve the public interest better by disclosure rather than by secrecy". A senior official said that specific measures to increase transparency have been suggested, which include: (a) the placing of draft bills intended for introduction in Parliament on ministry websites, in order to generate the views of civil society on such prospective legislation; (b) televising or live streaming of the discussions held by Parliamentary committees on important issues and the placing of minutes of proceedings in the public domain; (c) placing on relevant official websites all decisions of the Union Cabinet as well as the notes relied upon in the taking of such decisions; (d) making public the assets of officials, and making them fill out a declaration of assets each year for themselves and their family members, with penalties for non-disclosure. In particular, several officials claim that their offspring win scholarships to expensive international institutions of higher learning. Full details of how costs of stay and study abroad of dependents of decision-makers are being met would assist in accountability, officials unhappy at the non-disclosure of such information say; (e) making public via ministry websites the file movements both within each ministry as well as between ministries, so as to keep a check on inefficiency or possible collateral motives; (f) placing information given in public tenders on relevant websites, after technical and financial bids have been opened, so as to keep a check on possible scams based on "fixing" of criteria; (g) strengthening the ambit of the Right to Information Act and set mandatory punishments for ignoring timelines for the handing over of information, as well as ensure that only those committed to transparency would be considered for the posts of Information Commissioners. Senior officials say that except for a coterie of corrupt officials and their accessories, others in the government would welcome greater transparency. Owing to the widespread prevalence of graft in India, disclosure of information has much less of a downside than a continuation of the British colonial era fetish of official secrecy, one of the many features of colonial rule embraced in totality by Jawaharlal Nehru and his successors. These officials say that they are hopeful that Prime Minister Modi will succeed in his mission of ensuring transparent government. They would also like the Cabinet Secretariat to initiate workshops and courses on "open government" for officials at all levels, so as to rid them of the cult of secrecy and a mistrust in the good sense of the general public, both of which are holdovers from the British colonial era, but which still remain embedded within the governance system in India. "Prime Minister Modi can rely on the 'honest majority' of officials to ensure that he succeeds in his efforts at bringing the governance system in India on par with those in other major democracies, rather than resemble those of authoritarian states," according to a senior official. http://www.sunday-guardian.com/news/corrupt-officers-block-pm-modis-transparency-drive

Netanyahu is wrong on Barack Obama (Pakistan Observer 6 March 2015)

http://epaper.pakobserver.net/201503/06/comments-1.php

‘National secrecy’ is against national security (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.

PM Modi needs to fling away secrecy from the portals of government, so much so that secrecy becomes the rarest of rare exceptions to the norm of transparency.

The welcome exposure of moles within key ministries is leading to calls for a clampdown on information flow, when in fact the opposite is called for. When in difficulties about finding out a plausible excuse for concealing information, the official establishment usually reaches for the "national security in danger" argument. This is usually effective, especially when accompanied by a battery of overwhelmingly sedentary "hawks" warning on television of a correlation between release of information and terror attacks, when in fact the reverse is the truth. Where the public is given access to information, the citizenry become more conscious of the dangers facing them, and therefore better able to recognise early signs of trouble. The first defence against a terror attack is an alert citizenry on the lookout for telltale signs of troublemaking, and such a state of readiness cannot be maintained if there remains a blackout of information. Indeed, it is the opaque nature of decision-making in India, with its corollary of colonial-era discretion, that has led to both a continuation of the fetish of "official secrecy" as well as to efforts at getting access to information. Given the pervasive nature of graft in this country, it is by far the lesser evil to go in for transparency than to continue with a secrecy which only assists the dishonest to continue skewing decisions for personal gain. The argument that such a release of data is what enables terrorists and other security threats to access the same is false, for the reason that these latter usually have their own channels of information, incidentally, sources which thrive on the absence of transparency. Over the decades, and despite the stifling grip of a colonial-era governance system on the populace, education and awareness have grown, making nonsense of the conviction within the bureaucracy that "ordinary" (i.e. non-official) citizens cannot be trusted with information. Such logic runs counter to the fact that many officials have themselves fallen prey to the blandishments proffered by external and internal threats to public order and national security. Other major powers have devised a governance system where the permanent officialdom is leavened by entrants from fields outside government, such as academics or business. Given that decisions of import daily get taken about such fields, to exclude their practitioners from an inside say in the processing of decisions is to ensure that sub-optimal decisions continue to get taken, out of ignorance of the ground situation in cases where corruption is absent. Even ministries such as Home, HRD and Defence expect generalist administrators to master intricacies within days of joining, when what is needed is a mix of such personnel as well as recruits from outside the civil service. In times past, British colonial masters saw only themselves as being fit to run the higher civil service. What is needed is to introduce "natives" (i.e. outside specialists) into its ranks rather than simply relying on modern-day "Britishers" (i.e. career civil servants). Prime Minister Narendra Modi was able to attract tens of millions of youthful voters in May 2014 because of his stance that civil society would — finally — be given pre-eminence over India's colonial-era administrative apparatus. This was best exemplified in his "Minimum Government" pledge. However, it would appear that Modi's message has yet to seep through to those appointed by him, most of whom are from the same "Delhi establishment" crowd that the vote for him was a protest against. As yet, civil society hardly figures in Team Modi, barring a few. What is needed is for the Prime Minister to reconfigure the civil service into a 21st century machine by bringing into its portals specialists in place of generalists, which has already happened in departments such as Space and Atomic Energy. The consequence of conventionality in staffing is a system which is still only 20% Modi, 40% Vajpayee and 40% Manmohan Singh, whereas voters seek a 100% Modi sarkar. Whether it be the defence of Section 66A of the IT Act or the intensification of regulations and controls by ministries such as Home, HRD and Finance, what we are still seeing is a continuation of "maximum government", that seeks to dominate and micro-manage rather than step aside and give the people of India the space needed for excellence, the way they get in countries such as the US. Prime Minister Modi, now that he is nearing the close of a year in his present office, needs to create 21st century institutions in place of the 18th and 19th century constructs preserved from the British period and expanded upon by Jawaharlal Nehru and his successors, barring Narasimha Rao and to an extent Atal Behari Vajpayee. The national security team put in place by Modi needs to move away from a colonial police mindset and accept that blocking an activity both constrains overall growth, as well as results in such activity manifesting itself in clandestine — and far more toxic — ways. The Prime Minister needs to fling away the curtain of secrecy from the portals of government, so much so that secrecy becomes the rarest of rare exceptions to the norm of transparency. Those who insist on secrecy damage rather than promote national security, by perpetuating a culture in which corruption thrives.

http://www.sunday-guardian.com/analysis/national-secrecy-is-against-national-security