An open letter to Prime Minister

Please Make Media Your Friend
Hari Ram Pandey

Prime Minister Sir,
In Today’s world even the toughest government like Chinese have realised the soft power of the media and been trying to understand it, speak its language and make it a national asset. It is disquieting that your Government is reported to be thinking of setting up a small group to deal with issues concerning the accountability and regulation of media. It is feared that the government wants to punish the media. The anger is over the way the media covered the recent fast of Anna Hazare.
The Government feels that the media---particularly the electronic one--- was one-sided in its coverage creating in the minds of the people a larger-than-real-size image of Anna. Many seem to feel that the media also became an unwitting tool of the leaders of the movement for projecting the Government and the political class in negative colours that were not warranted.
It is alleaged that that the media was playing a pernicious role in providing oxygen to anti-Governmentand anti-political class elements for commercial reasons.
But it is partially correct. There are certain channels which, in my view, consciously sought to give the movement a distorted projection to the detriment of the Government and the political class, the majority of our TV news channels and print media were largely objective in their coverage.
The crowds of young people were there for all to see. Their anger against corruption were there for all to sense. Their admiration for Anna and their disgust with the political class were palpable.
Anna is not another Mahatma Gandhi, but the atmosphere that prevailed during the 12 days of his fast brought to one’s mind the atmosphere that used to prevail at the meetings and rallies of Gandhiji. The disgust of large sections of the youth with the Government and the political class for dragging their feet on the issue of action against corruption played as great a role as their admiration for Anna in galvanising them into uniting against corruption.

Large sections of the media did nothing but project this atmosphere marked by disgust for the Government and the political class and admiration for Anna. Yes, the media did use unwarranted hyperboles in its coverage instead of restricting itself to a factual, unvarnished reportage. But the use of hyperboles did not detract from the fact that the ground reality of large sections of the youth in revolt was something historic, the like of which the country had not seen for some years now.

It was an electrifying and ennobling atmosphere.Anna and his team of media advisers---many of them whiz kids from the world of the IITs and IT companies--- rose to the occasion and took advantage of the new soft power of the media for giving their movement an extra boost.

The Government, its spokespersons and Government- controlled media such as All India Radio and the Doordarshan totally failed to harness the new soft power of the private media outlets to correct an one-sided projection of the movement. If the Government’s version remained untold, the fault is not that of the media. Its commercial machinations alone cannot be blamed for the negative colours in which the Government and the political class appeared.
The Government and the various political parties have shown a total disinterest in learning and mastering the various dimensions of the new soft power--- the print media, the private TV news channels, the social media world and the expanding community of netizens--- and harnessing them for correcting the projections to the people--- either of the Anna movement or of the Government and the political class.
The fast-expanding soft power of modern media came out loud and clear during the movement. This power needs to be understood, appreciated and suitably harnessed. Instead of learning the right lessons from the role of the media during the 12 days that electrified large sections of India and its youth, the Government’s ill-advised focus seems to be on how to regulate the new soft power of the media. This will be a retrograde step, which needs to be strongly discouraged and deplored.

Mr. Prime Minister, instead of remaining confined to an inaccessible shell, get out of it, plunge into the world and sea of the media, learn to speak their language and idiom, interact with them vigorously and encourage them to interact with you and your spokespersons. Media interaction is no longer a one-way street. It is a multi-lane road.Learn to use that road with self-confidence and without complexes.

Start today, Mr. Prime Minister. Don’t wait for tomorrow.

Anti-Corruption Crusade : What I Thougt about

Hari Ram Pandey
In military lingo, a retreat is a temporary withdrawal from a confrontation in order to give oneself time to recoup losses and plan a new strategy.

In the olden, pre-modern days, battles used to be fought from sun rise to sun set. At sun set a Retreat used to be sounded, signalling an end to the day’s fighting. The two sides will withdraw in order to rest, attend to the injured, repair the damaged weapons and plan the fight for the next day.

. A Retreat has been sounded in the epic anti-corruption battle between the followers of Anna Hazare and the Government. The two sides have staged a momentary withdrawal from the confrontation and are now busy assessing their gains and losses thus far and planning the next phase of the battle.

The public perception at this stage of the battle is that the victory thus far belongs to Anna and his followers, but in reality it may turn out to be a victory of mixed proportions.

. It is also the public perception that the Government stands humiliated because of its mishandling of the crusade, but in reality, after having badly mishandled the beginning of the battle due, partly, to the lack of a political finesse, the Government has retrieved some of the lost ground towards the end through its manoeuvring skills in the Parliament and by exploiting the confusion in the BJP leadership caused by the diktat for a volte-face from the RSS headquarters in Nagpur.

. The flow of youth power to Anna’s side caused an alarm in the Congress (I) as well as the BJP/RSS. The two sides reacted to the alarm in different ways. The Congress realised that by failing to bring its Generation Next headed by Rahul Gandhi into the battle, it has totally failed to mobilise its youth power in its support. The RSS realised that the flow of the youth power to the Anna team might weaken the future flow of youth to the ranks of the RSS.

There was a similar alarm in Anna’s camp due to his failure to make an impact on the minds of the Muslim and Dalit youth, who looked askance at Anna and his team.They looked upon Anna’s youth army as largely drawn from the English-educated new middle class of the mega cities consisting of passionate recruits belonging to the so-called upper castes. The participation of Muslim and Dalit youth was minimal notwithstanding the electrifying support of Amir Khan, the Hollywood actor, to Anna and his Jan Lok Pal Bill.

It was at this stage that the Crusaders on the one side and the mainstream political class on the other started searching for a temporary compromise to persuade Anna to end his fast in terms, that would be mutually acceptable and mutually exploitable as victory.

The initiative for a compromise came from Anna who tactically gave up his demand for a time-bound primacy to the consideration and eventual adoption of his Jan Lok Pal Bill by the Parliament. Instead, he offered to accept a face-saving, mid-term formula under which the Parliament would unanimously endorse three of his suggestions for covering the entire bureaucracy through the proposed anti-corruption mechanism, the setting up of similar mechanisms in the States and a citizen’s charter for good governance.

Both the Congress (I) and the BJP pounced on his offer because it enabled them to end Anna’s fast, which was becoming increasingly worrisome and gave them time to examine new strategies to reverse the increasing flow of the youth power to the Anna side. The result: the sense of the House resolution endorsing Anna’s three suggestions, its communication to Anna by the Prime Minister and the end of his fast.

Anna himself has conceded that it was only a partial victory for his side. The fast has ended, but the battle for the Jan Lok Pal Bill continues. The Government is not in a position to celebrate any victory because there is none, but it is heaving a sigh of relief over the way it managed to retrieve at least partially the lost ground before the Retreat was sounded.

The two sides now have a better measure of each other’s strengths and weaknesses. The Government had under-estimated the strengths and intelligence of the Anna side. Many of its initial blunders like arresting Anna on the basis of a police report and not a medical report and sending him to Tihar were due to this under-estimation aggravated by political crudity.

. The Anna side had over-estimated its ability to prevail by using the weapon of the fast in order to sharpen the confrontation. The mainstream political class came out strongly against its rhetoric and methods.The spectacular impact of the Anna campaign was largely confined to Delhi and Mumbai.In the rest of India, the impact was much less spectacular.

. Two lessons clearly stand out from the battle so far. First, the Government can no longer afford to drag its feet on the question of the creation of a Lok Pal mechanism. Second, the Anna Team will not be able to have its diktat for the adoption of its Bill enforced on the political class.

. A new substantive compromise has to be found which will accommodate some more of the provisions of the Jan Lok Pal Bill and at the same time take into account some of the reservations and concerns of the Government and the rest of the political class. If the search for a new compromise has to be successful, there is need for a sustained multi-partisan engagement with new dramatis personae on both sides.

Shri P. Chidambaram, the Home Minister, and Shri Kapil Sibal, the Minister for Human Resources, have damaged their credibility by the way they handled the Anna Camp and forced it to take up arms against the Government in a battle that the Government was not in a position to win.

Kiran Bedi, the former IPS officer, has damaged her credibility by her antics on the stage which looked like what in Hindi we call sadak chhap and by her fulminations against the political class and the Parliamentarians. Taking advantage of the hospitality offered by Barkha Dutt in her We The People Programme on the NDTV on August 28, Kiran Bedi tried to rationalise her antics by projecting them as a game-changer. She would not have carried conviction to many people. The time and the importance of the occasion of the fast called for dignity and restraint in conduct on the part of the leaders of the movement. Ms. Bedi failed to exhibit both.

Shri Arvind Kejriwal, the other member of the brains-trust of the Anna Team, conducted himself with greater dignity and restraint than Kiran Bedi, but he came out rightly or wrongly as an uncompromising individual with whom it is difficult to negotiate.

The Government as well as Team Anna need a new team of advisers. The entrance on to the stage of the Generation Next of the Congress was a welcome development. Generation Next of the Congress projected a better image of themselves than Generation Next of the BJP, but unfortunately, Shri Rahul Gandhi failed to rise to the occasion. He could have utilised the opportunity to project himself as a new statesman on the horizon, by confining his initial intervention in the LokSabha to making a statesmanlike appeal to Anna to end his fast and to sending a message to the youth of the country that their cry of anger and anguish for a corruption-free India has been heard by him and the Congress and they will act accordingly.

He failed to do so. He came out as a thoughtless and not a thoughtful leader. The ultimate victory in the crusade against corruption is going to be decided by the youth of the mega cities. It is a badly alienated lot todayTeam Anna has made some progress in winning many of them over to its side. The BJP has not been able to because of its forced penchant to look at the scene and the events through RSS eyes.

The Congress has many promising youth leaders and cadres, but there is none in the party capable of galvanising them and using them to catch the imagination of the youth of the country.

An uncertain and unpredictable next phase of the battle lies ahead. As the Reveille is sounded, the Anna Team will resume the battle with greater energy and greater sense of reality. One cannot say the same thing of the Govt and the Congress.

If the Congress has to win over the youth of the country it has to convince them that it is sincere in its determination to end corruption. It is the perceived lack of sincerity in the Congress that is driving more and more youth into the arms of Anna. The days of dragging the feet are over.The youth demands action against corruption here and now. The Congress is unable to hear and understand the message. It continues to nurse illusions that it can finally prevail with patchwork ideas and solutions through its manoeuvring skills. It will not be able to.

Impasse Lingers Between Indian Hunger Striker and Government

Hari Ram Pandey
For much of the last month, India has been gripped by a raging public debate about how to tackle corruption, which is seen by many here as the country’s most important challenge. But a slowing economy may soon overtake corruption as a more pressing problem.
On Thursday, for instance, as the Indian government negotiated with a fasting anticorruption crusader, the country’s central bank issued a blunt warning: economic growth could soon fall below 8 percent.
Most countries would be thrilled to have a growth rate of more than 7 percent, but for India, which strode at a 9 percent pace before the financial crisis of 2008 and hit 8.5 percent last year, it would be a significant letdown. Slower growth would mean fewer Indians climbing out of poverty and could help spur greater social unrest.
And it would pose yet another challenge to the global economy, which is increasingly depending on emerging markets like India and China to make up for stagnation in the West.
The Indian slowdown was in the making long before most analysts were concerned about a double-dip recession in industrialized nations. Private investment has been sliding since late last year and once-robust car sales have decreased in recent months. Indian stocks began falling in November and are now down more than 24 percent from their high. Moreover, inflation has been hovering at nearly 10 percent even after the Reserve Bank of India raised interest rates 11 times in less than two years.
“Today, the economy is running on the engine speed achieved some time ago,” said R. Gopalakrishnan, an executive director at the Tata Group, India’s largest business conglomerate. Stressing that he was speaking for himself and not his company, he added, “It’s not sputtering to an end, but it’s slowing down.”
The new economic worries are occurring while the Indian government has been preoccupied with the biggest protests the country has seen in nearly two decades.
The demonstrations are led by an activist, Anna Hazare, who has been on a hunger strike since Aug. 16. He says he will not eat until the Indian Parliament creates a powerful anticorruption agency known as a Lokpal. His movement has gained a large following in big cities like New Delhi and Mumbai, especially among the middle class and the young.
While corruption, especially in day-to-day dealings between public officials and ordinary citizens, is the primary focus of most protesters, many of Mr. Hazare’s supporters have also complained about high inflation and a lack of job opportunities. Some of them say corrupt practices have driven up the price of goods and services and distorted the economy.
“If the Lokpal bill passes, the economic issue will be good,” said Sagar Bekal, a 25-year-old construction manager in Mumbai who has organized protest rallies for Mr. Hazare’s group, India Against Corruption. “There will be a change — good social life, things getting much cheaper with corruption being curbed.”
Such sentiments, analysts say, reflect the middle class’s growing conviction that Indian leaders seem more concerned about reaping the rewards of economic growth for themselves than about improving the country. India has endured a series of large corruption scandals in the last year, involving the auctioning of wireless licenses, the Commonwealth Games of last year and various real estate deals.
“People are so dissatisfied that they want a change,” said Harsh Goenka, chairman of RPG Enterprises, a Mumbai-based conglomerate involved in several businesses. “They want a change in governance.”
Still, he and others say that the broader economic problems are unlikely to dissipate even if lawmakers agree to create a new anticorruption agency, which is not expected to become an active watchdog for a couple of years. Rather, these people say, the government needs to move quickly to put in place changes to enhance growth, create jobs, tame inflation and improve public services.
That task, of course, has become more urgent and difficult in recent weeks because of rising fears of a double-dip recession in the United States and Europe. But because it is not a big exporter, India is more insulated from global shocks than other developing countries. Still, it relies significantly on foreign capital to meet investment needs.
In a report published on Friday, analysts at Deutsche Bank said India’s growth rate could even slip below 7 percent if the United States and European Union fell into a recession.
Some economists worry that the movement to establish a corruption watchdog, which has been fueled by disgruntled youth, may ironically hamper the chances for the kind of changes that would help bolster the economy and the prospects of young Indians. The protests could make the government reluctant or unable to take on politically difficult reforms because it will fear opposition from activists and other political “What I fear is that this will eat up whatever energy they have,” said Ila Patnaik, a senior fellow at the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy in New Delhi.
Even before the protests, many analysts had complained that the government, which has been in power for seven years, was doing little to address India’s entrenched problems: low agricultural productivity, poor infrastructure, a weak education system that produces graduates with few skills and real estate laws that shortchange farmers and other landowners.
But some business executives and analysts had become more hopeful in recent weeks because policy makers had introduced a bill to give farmers more bargaining power in land deals and suggested that foreign retailers might soon be allowed to open stores in India to help improve farm-to-market logistics. Earlier this month, citing policy changes under way, Goldman Sachs upgraded its rating for India.
Now, analysts said, the government is unlikely to act on the land and retail measures for several months, if not longer. Even as markets elsewhere were relatively stable, India’s benchmark Nifty stock index fell 1.9 percent on Friday, to its lowest level in 14 months.
Furthermore, many analysts say the government is unlikely to push big reforms next year because India’s largest and one of its poorest states, Uttar Pradesh, will go to the polls in 2012. Federal elections are due in 2014.
Still, some business leaders say the corruption movement has demonstrated that the government, which is run by a coalition led by the Congress Party, may no longer be able to postpone difficult policy decisions. Many of the most vocal protesters at Mr. Hazare’s rallies have been people 25 or younger — a group that makes up about half India’s population.
“The middle class has been created; it wasn’t there 30 years ago,” said Mr. Gopalakrishnan, the Tata executive. “And their aspirations have been created. There is an energy there that has come out of human passion. Being standstill and letting this putter out is not an option.”

West Should Not Interfere in Bangladesh

Hari Ram Pandey
Are the growing warm relations and co-operation between India and Bangladesh making some outside interests uncomfortable? If so, why? To some a strong India with an independent foreign policy should be prevented from growing, and India should be kept surrounded by inimical neighbours. At the same time, a Bangladesh growing at 7% and struggling to establish a truly secular and democratic state living in harmony with its large neighbour could be alarming for interests who prefer to feed on instability connected with India.

One cannot help but come to this conclusion after reading two issues of the otherwise reputable UK Weekly, The Economist. The issues of the weekly, July 30 – August 05 and August 13-19, carried two articles each slamming the two governments with a kind of vengeance mixed with petulance and frustration that was unbecoming of serious journalism. In fact, the articles reeked of cold war propaganda, and ignorance to boot. The following would illustrate the ‘poisonous west wind’.

The report under the ‘Leaders’ section of the issue dated July 30, starts with these words: “No one loves a large neighbours. For all that, India’s relations with countries that ring it are abysmal”. The same paragraph adds “Among its South Asian neighbours, the world’s largest democracy is incredible mainly because of its amazing ability to generate wariness and resentment”. The next paragraph castigates India for its “shoot-to-kill policy towards Bangladesh’s migrant workers” and “cattle rustlers”, and of “snuggling up to Myanmar’s thuggish dictators”, of prosecuting conflicting relations with Sri Lanka and meddling “madly” in Nepal’s internal affairs.

The words used so emphatically to berate India is a remarkable effort by the writer, to denigrate India’s foreign policy as much as possible. The tour de force on India’s relations painted India as a hegemon trying to bully its neighbours, and declining to share its economic development with its neighbours, remarking “India lacks any kind of vision”.

In the ‘Asia’ section of the same issue, The Economist charged that the Awami League won a landslide election in 2008 with the help of “bags of Indian money and advice”. A fabulous assessment. If this is believable then the Awami League should have won all the previous elections with “Indian money and advice” since the Indian government has enjoyed a good relationship with the Awami League since 1971.

Following strong protests from the Bangladesh government, The Economist issue dated August 13 made some self-correction, admitting that the 2008 election seemed to mark a water-shed in Bangladesh, and it was the fairest poll in the country’s history. It would seem an admission by the weekly that in its over enthusiastic agenda to damage the credibility of India and the Awami League, facts accepted and endorsed internationally were missed. The 2008 Bangladesh election was monitored and certified by international observers.

Relentless in its agenda, this weekly even attempted to ridicule Indian Congress Party’s president, Ms. Sonia Gandhi’s one-day visit to Dhaka (July 25) when she received Bangladesh’s highest civilian honour awarded posthumously to India’s Prime Minister during the 1971 liberation war, Ms. Indira Gandhi for her contribution to Bangladesh’s independence.

The Economist repeated almost verbatim Bangladesh’s main opposition party BNP’s misgivings on India’s approach for a land corridor facility through Bangladesh to India’s north-eastern states. The refrain was that it would facilitate (i) Indian military mobilization to the north-east to contain militancy and this could exact reprisals by Indian insurgents on Bangladesh, and (ii) China may retaliate against Bangladesh if it allowed India to transport troops through the corridor to buttress its disputed borders with China in Arunachal Pradesh. Such obtuse arguments are baffling, to say the least. While The Economist accuses India of not taking its neighbours along with its own development, it is blind to the fact that this corridor is a win-win infrastructure for all concerned. It will create a sub-regional trade and transport infrastructure for Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and India. Bangladesh’s Sea Ports in Chittagong and Mongla will be further activated and the infrastructure will create jobs for many Bangladeshis. The transit corridor can be extended to Pakistan, and to Myanmar and South East Asia as and when political relations and trust evolve.

That only 5 percent trade of South Asia is generated within the region has reasons outside India. Pakistan’s position against the SAARC Free Trade Area will provide the answer.

The two issues of The Economist scream out many other negatives. For example, consider the following. It projects vengeance politics from Sheikh Hasina in terms of the 1971 war crimes trial; dynastic retribution against former Prime Minister and leader of the opposition, Khaleda Zia; attempts to decimate the Islamic political party the Jamaat-e-Islami (JEI); and the Awami League government’s politics of vengeance against Khaleda Zia’s sons, Tareque Rahman and Arafat Rahman among many other allegations. Each of these issues needs to be addressed, and are brought to interface in the following.

The 1971 liberation war has its genesis in the linguistic and cultural differences between West Pakistan (now Pakistan) and East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) and the economic exploitation of the latter by West Pakistan. In 1948, a year after the partition of India, East Pakistan’s dissatisfaction at being the “underdog”, took a leap in the (Bangalee) language movement of February 21, 1952, and culminated with West Pakistan refusing to accept Sheikh Mujibur Rahman as Prime Minister of Pakistan when his party won the Pakistan elections in 1970. To disfranchise Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, West Pakistan unleashed military terror in its eastern wing in March 1971.

What occurred in East Pakistan was nothing short of genocide, next only to Adolf Hitler’s horrific attempted extermination of Jews in Germany. Short of using gas chambers the Pakistani army did everything to annihilate Bengalee leaders, intellectuals, students and innocent men, women and children. Bangladeshis who are with the JEI and parties like the Islamic Oikyo Jote (Amini group) were active collaborators in the genocide. The editors of The Economist should read the book “Witness to Surrender”, written by a Pakistani military officer, Maj. (Retd.) Sadiq Salik. He was in Bangladesh in 1971 and recounted the horrors committed by the Pakistani army and its Bengalee collaborators. More than three million Bangladeshis died and around three thousand women raped, not so much by the Pakistani army as by the collaborators.

The BNP government (2001-2006), in alliance with the JEI and two other Islamic parties was a regime of kleptocracy and a sponsor of terrorism. The regime was led de facto by Khaleda Zia’s elder son Tareque, a college dropout and a former drug addict. He and his henchmen not only looted and murdered, but also reared and exported terrorism. Three attempts were made to assassinate Sheikh Hasina, and in the third attempt (August 21, 2004) 24 Awami League members and leaders including Mrs. Ivy Rahman who was a member of the Awami League Presidium and wife of present President Zillur Rahman were killed; Sheikh Hasina escaped but with serious injuries. Apart from this, several other Awami League leaders were assassinated during the BNP JEI alliance regime. The main actors of these incidents have confessed, and have implicated Tareque Rahman and others.

Revert back to 2004 again. Ten truck loads of arms illegally imported from China were accidentally intercepted at the Chittagong port on April 01, 2004 by a couple of police officers. The arms were meant for the ULFA terrorist/separatists of India’s north-east state of Assam. Those involved in the plan included Tareque Rahman, other ministers of the BNP-JEI government including the Amir of JEI, Motiur Rehman Nizami, Pakistan’s ISI and international criminal Dawood Ibrahim (of Indian origin but under ISI’s protection in Pakistan). Tareque’s association with other terrorist organizations in Bangladesh are now officially recorded. All these cases are in Bangladesh courts. About the charge that Sheikh Hasina is trying to create a personality cult around her late father Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, popularly known as Bangabandhu (friend of Bangladesh) as the Father of the Nation, there is nothing nefarious or inconsistent. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was a few days away from execution in a Pakistani jail, when the Pakistani army in Bangladesh surrendered to the Indian army. His was the voice that rallied the Bangalee people.

Different countries have placed leaders who led their independence struggle on a high pedestal. In India, Mahatma Gandhi is known as the Father of the Nation. So is Nelson Mandela in South Africa. America has its own icons. China has Mao Zedong.

The criticism over the Awami League government’s constitutional reforms is not understood. Sheikh Hasina has a majority in a fairly elected government to push through such amendments. She is trying to revert the post – Mujib constitution with the amendments to the Islamic constitution to the 1972 secular Bangladesh constitution, a platform on which the liberation war was fought. Is there any disagreement on this? Of course, there is the question of the removal of the “Care taker Government” system for 90 days before a new election. It is true that Sheikh Hasina had agreed to it when she was in the opposition. But the last caretaker government failed in every way to deliver an apolitical system. How many responsible countries have such a system?

The implied sarcasm about Indira Gandhi cannot be allowed to pass. Her contribution to Bangladesh’s liberation against all Western pressures, was a monumental act for liberty, equality and democracy. Not one, but several books can be written rebutting the views of The Economist.

There is no government in the world that is perfect. That goes for the UK, US, India and many other democratic countries. So is the case with Sheikh Hasina’s government. Democratic and pluralistic government work under several constraints including from their own parties, lawmakers and even Ministers. But that does not mean it must be trashed the way The Economist has done.

There is more to the articles than meet the general eye. It may be recalled that a highly educated writer of Indian origin, Ms. Sharmila Bose, wrote a book on the 1971 Bangladesh war. She claimed that she did empirical research in Bangladesh and found no evidence of atrocities committed by the Pakistani army and their collaborators as alleged by official records. Her immediate relatives in India distanced themselves from the book. After her exposition at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington D.C. she has not been heard of again. Her inference was that the atrocities were Awami League – Indian propaganda, though she did not use these words.

One has not seen any article in The Economist that called the hunting down of the Nazis or prosecution of the Bosnian war criminals revenge politics. This writer may be corrected if he is wrong.

What is alarming in the essence of The Economist articles and the book by Ms. Bose is that the attacks are mainly primed towards India and the Awami League of Bangladesh with the sole purpose of demolishing a vibrant India-Bangladesh relationship. In some way there appears to be an agenda to promote a corrupt and religiously inclined Bangladesh to whatever purpose.

Of course, clever media warfare also puts positives for its targets. The Economist praises Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, setting him aside from hardline detractors in his government. At the same time the article takes a jibe at him calling him “the Gandhi family retainer”. This happens in the run up to Dr. Manmohan Singh’s visit to Bangladesh (September 06-07) which is expected to build a mutually supportive relationship between India and Bangladesh. Who are the forces spinning these indefensible negatives and to what end?

It is imperative to realize the following (i) the ghosts of 1971 and 1975 can only be put to rest only if a transparent legal process brings these issues to conclusion. Otherwise, Bangladesh will be condemned to live in a festering abscess of hate, and (ii) the main opposition, the BNP, is beginning to understand that good relations with India can be beneficial for the country. One does not know if this is a tactical position. Let Bangladeshis resolve their own problems without foreign interference. Crime has to pay, howsoever, painful for the perpetrators.

No conclusions can be drawn from the events in the ‘Arab world’

Hari Ram Pandey
‘Arab Awakening’ is how the turbulent events in the Middle East collectively described by some Arab scholars and many commentators. They go on to make some bold statements such as, "Failure cannot be a prefix for Arabs", "Suggestion that Islam and democracy are incompatible are proven to be wrong".

In the wake of the ‘liberation of yet another Arab country’, Libya, the real meaning of the terms Arab world, democracy, Islam, and ownership, which are very much at the centre of "Arab Awakening" would go though serious analysis. Meanwhile, the implications of the events for the region, and those around it would also be subject to much speculation.

Brief notes on ‘Arab awakening’ (Dec 2010 – Aug 2011)

Egypt: Only procedural amendments to the constitution pushed through a referendum after "six days of debates and discussions on TV channels", in a country where for forty years no discussion on ‘politics’ was allowed. Former army friends, the military consortium running the country, wheeled Mubarak to the court on his "death bed" charged for ordering the killing of the protestors.

The "democracy now" protesters are now caught between the junta and the Islamic Brotherhood.

New rulers have ‘relaxed’ attitude towards the Gazans, which has a negative implication to the Israelis. No fundamental change in its relationship with the West.

Libya: Just as Saddam’s regime Gadaffi’s was never a strategic for the West impediment since the collapse of the ‘communist world’, even for the support he had given to global ‘terrorism’, including the support to rid the apartheid regime.

Instead, his malleability, non-ideological and ‘maverick’ nature, as a spoiler in the Arab League, and as the feudal lord of the world’s 2% oil wealth were helpful to maintain ‘stability’.

However, his ‘Africanism’ and spread of influence towards the south were irritations for the West and others, who have designs in the resources rich ‘Black Africa’.

As Saudis sent their troops into Bahrain to suppress Shia majority’s demand for democracy, the US 5th Fleet stationed there started pounding Gaddafi’s army, and his palaces. France-UK were already well placed on the ground organising some tribes and presenting military activities for the ‘rebels’. Some US leaders disaffected by the France-UK lead in the North Africa, but use provides required military support without much noise.

One time champion of Nasser’s pan-Arab Nationalism, Gaddafi is friendless in the region. Saudi Arabia, place of refuge for the like of Idi Amin Dada, conqueror of the British Empire, alleged cannibal, who deported the entire Asian population from Uganda to the UK, wouldn’t show mercy.

The changes in Egypt, and few adjustments in Tunisia and other North African nations, meant Gaddafi’s usefulness is overstated and Libya seems to be an important piece in a big puzzle.

Tunisia: Elections to a Constituent Assembly to be held on 23 Oct 2011, general election postponed. Party that ruled until now is dissolved.

Morocco: Arab Awakening has induced a reforms in Morocco, where the king has gifted the parliament with more power, and recognised the "rights" of the local tribes, but kept the control of the military, security, and executive control for himself.

Algeria: No changes, except for the removal of 19 year old emergency rule.

Bahrain: One the other side of the Red sea Saud family, owners of the oil filled peninsula in the desert was sending its troops to help its Bahrainian cousins suppress the Shia majority’s call for democracy.

Yemen: where thousands of people were on the streets daily to demand the removal of the dictator Abdallah Saleh, and had even an armed rebellion by the tribal coalition the dictator belonged there is eerie clam prevails, and Ali is still conducting business from his convalescing bed in Saudi Arabia.

Syria: In the northern corner of the ‘Arab land’ another tyrant, son of the previous tyrant, is putting up a fierce for survival killing thousands of ‘rebels’ with the support of his Iranian friends. ‘Arab brothers’ have also disowned Assad, it seems. Insult to the intelligence may be, the Kingdom actually withdrew its ambassador from Syria in protest against its treatment of the protestors.

In view of these developments, how much of the claim about Arabs and, Islam and democracy in the Middle East are factual and how much is wishful thinking, is a debate that is bound to start at some point.

However, outside ‘Arab world’ watchers may have noticed a few points they really didn’t expect.

"Syria is not Libya or Saudi Arabia", means more than that meets the eyes.

Why?

The ‘all-round’ development of a society/country is reflected by the methods adopted by the protesters in each country, and the degree to which Muslims are willing to accept ‘democracy’ as part of their lives, despite the apparent arguments against it in the holy texts.

Not all Muslims societies will accommodate ‘Jihadi’ way to give oneself up for a cause. Some may have learned from its mistakes, counting the human and material costs alone. Perhaps, they realised by giving their lives up without even a thought of taking another life serves their particular situation.

Unless some stories from the regime are credible, the bravery of the Syrians is rarely seen in history. Only Indian independent, South African anti-apartheid and Palestinian Intifada struggles come to mind. Face the tanks and the snipers unarmed, knowing some amongst won’t definitely return home, but still believing in the cause and non-violent methods, one needs unimaginable amount of bravery and human quality, which can only be gifts to the humanity.

These developments alone have deeper meaning and far reaching implications for countries and people everywhere in the 3rd world.

Connection, hopes, Arab bifurcation

France and UK, the old colonial allies in the Suez campaign, now with new historic strategic and military understanding, seemed to have taken charge of the affairs in North Africa, while US paying is heed to the events beyond the Red Sea.

Growing demand for better quality of life have introduced new factors to the evolving dynamical relations within countries and the region, which will no doubt condition the local/global powers in their decisions. How they are different in different zones will eventually decide the trajectories of the individual countries and the region.

Is it then possible to find connections between characteristically different events, which apparently have sequential relationships? Lumping a few observations together with an idealised divisive line couldn’t lead anyone to anything.

"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way," observed Tolstoy. Perhaps, it is easier to find common features when analysing successes. Or we may become so preoccupied with success we may have lost our ability to understand unhappiness. May be, Syrians have seen the connection for allowing its Kurdish population stripped of citizenship and their lives under Assad clan’s emergency since 1963. Libyans perhaps, see their backwardness and tribal conditions for all the petrol money, in relation to their life under Gadaffi’s dictatorship during the same time period.

The terms ‘Arab world’ or Middle East hardly do justice to the social, economical, ‘psychological’, and ethnic differences among the Arab speaking societies.

If there are lines due to them differentiating the ‘Arab people’ into ‘regional groups’, we can note in their history, ethnicity, social advancements, and expectations the North African communities are vastly different to those in the Arabian peninsular, and the northerners are far removed from them both.

This generalisation of the political processes and history, and the strategic condition that varies, allow us to recognise two separate, but interlinked trends in the ‘Arab world’, (i) a graded process of ‘democratisation’ and (ii) a process of strategic reorganisation.

Democratisation

Democratisation of the third world is an uncomfortable proposition for any power, not only the West; corrupt, unaccountable dictatorial government is always preferred. If such process takes hold in a country all would ‘work together’ to put a break on it, and reverse it if possible, unless there are tangible advantages for pressing an issue. When a whole region affected it requires a regional strategic plan within a global program, and ‘working together’ is an impossibility. Disadvantaged powers have to ‘manage’ the ‘damage’ and wait for different factors to emerge when the "dust settle".

All are aware how imperialist West assassinated every democratic leader in the 3rd world, and destroyed the possibility of even planting a seed of democracy. Western people however have been ensured of its privileges, we would argue subsidised by the powerless in every society and, in particular the people of the 3rd world. Their middle classes in the 3rd world have always appreciated the fruits of democracy, often mistaking them for the affluence of the West, until the value of human rights are incorporated into the definitions of democracy.

The reorganisation of the global economy has made the West less dependent on the cheap raw materials, but the ‘free capital’ in its possession is always looking for cheap labour. Further, the conversion of the old ‘socialist systems’ into (i) serving, therefore, dependant and (ii) competing primarily for material resources, therefore, strategically opposing, capitalist economies. West has succeeded with its consistent effort to make the ‘security council’ irrelevant and thereby, the UN redundant. That meant only its arms on the ground such as UNHC, are considered useful by the West to any process along with NATO, and parallel global/regional strategic/economic organisations.

As a result, the West can turn the history on its head and appoint itself as the Tsar of ‘democracy’ of the world, in its new crusade, with human rights as a weapon to further its ‘interests’.

Having spent the post ww2 period supporting national and social struggles, Russia and China, have their roles reversed as new-capitalists. Always repressive and anti-democratic at home, they are now forced to fend or prop up ideologically dilapidated/ failing regimes for ‘strategic reasons’, but mostly commercial reasons.

West can take advantage of all these, and the differences in dynamics in the ‘Arab world therefore, is in a position to reshape the strategic conditions in the region; similar to the opportunity it had at the turn of the 20th Century.

Different trajectories in the ‘Arab world’

The collapse of the Euro into its natural north European zone may be a blow to the vision of a EU wide financial zone. Despite false accounting, banks collapses and printing paper money at will, the Dollar has been retained as the world currency, one of the consequences of the US invasion of Iraq. However, sluggish economy, debt, challenge from other economic powers have also weakened US’s position as the absolute power.

These offer the prospect of (i) effective leadership, taken up by the UK-France-Germany in a financial and UK-France strategic alliances, (ii) greater cooperation and flexibility with the US, and (iii) enlarging the EU zone.

Given these conditions and providing our reasoning have connection to realities we can envisage two different strategic developments in the region: (i) Extension of the EU security zone, and (ii) Arab zone in the Indian Ocean.

EU and North Africa

The North Africans have a closer relationship with Europe. In the classical times they were an integral part of the Greek and Roman empires. Many works assumed to be by Greeks or Romans were by Moorish scholars, who had adopted Greek or Latin names. The Moors built the first university in Europe and, many classics considered fundamental to European ‘renaissance’ were actually recovered from Moorish translations. The Moors ruled most of Europe, and their influence can be seen everywhere. It shouldn’t not be a surprise to see, even the Islamic parties of the region accepting European influence and embracing democracy as a means for their empowerment.

It is therefore reasonable to consider the British-French direct intervention in the context of past including the colonial time, together with the aspirations of the North Africans, a construct a path away their cousins on the other side of the Red Sea.

If so, one can speculate the events in the region as part of a process of integration, (i) to advance from the tribal conditions to integrate their aspirations through national institutions, and (ii) for increasingly closer relationship with Europe, and a ‘practical’ union within EU.

There have always been attempts, though fanciful at times, from classical to colonial times to integrate the North African landmasses with the Europe.

Eastward expansion of EU has now come to its natural end, and its real power zones and borders are properly established. Those within it have subscribed to the very basic ideal of democracy and a capitalist economy.

For the affluent communities in EU, the supply of cheap labour to maintain the services within, and for production elsewhere to maintain the ‘way of life’ have been the primary concern. With it the problem of ‘regulating’ immigration has also become an important issue, which finds expressions through the enactment of immigration laws and racialist or anti-Islamic rhetoric.

EU’s eastward expansion has helped to contain Asian immigration, as those in the ‘front line’ are now members with incentives, and with vast surplus labour pools in direct competition with non-European immigrants.

However, its Southern borders are open seas and too porous, and those at the front line have logistical difficulties and lack the resources to prevent humans and contrabands reaching the mainland. North African states are used, and the bureaucrats have the financial incentive to encourage them as transit points for the African migration into Europe, a particular problem for the UK-France and Germany.

Therefore, extending EU’s southern borders to include North Africa, with different immigration and economical relations afforded to its recent members, would make sense on this issue alone.

There are other incentives such as fuel security, productive use of the semi-skilled human resource, etc, go without elaboration, all associate purely with commercial activities.

If oil & gas and uranium deposits are abundant in these areas, only few miles away from Europe, why should EU be held to ransom by the Russians or compete with others in the Central Asia?

‘Black Africa’ will be now on the EU border where the competition for its fertile lands and natural resources are becoming hotter. French, unlike Britain have maintained direct colonial grip outside the North African ‘Arab’ borders, especially in central Africa, which is an advantage. Their military presence in most these countries would help to strengthen EU’s new border and its control over the vast natural riches of central Africa.

On the social front, if South Africans, Filipinos and Indians can man the call centres, why waste the human resources at the doorstep, allowing them to breed Islamic extremism and anti-West sentiments?

However, encouraging the process of integration within and into EU, and creating an Extended EU Security zone have greater advantages for the West and other global powers. Perhaps, that would explain the reason for the support from all in Libya to rid of Gaddafi.

We should also note, how the Red Sea geographically& historically and Israeli-Egypt peace treaty strategically mark the bifurcation of the process in the ‘Arab world’.

It will separate the processes in the conservative Arab lands on the other side of the Red Sea, which will ‘free’ the global/regional powers to focus on the newly emerging strategic situations in the Indian Ocean.

It will also give fuel security to EU and others, by being in control of it supply side thereby, the strategic dependency on the Arab peninsular, which alone has many implications to the region and the world.

It will help to moderate the reach of the regional ambitions of Turkey and Iran.

It will allow the Israel-Palestinian-Lebanon conflict to be addressed within a NATO guaranteed EU ‘political framework’, stretching the arguments applied in Kosovo.

Arab zone in the Indian Ocean

It is the development among the North African ‘Arabs’ and Syria that separates the dynamics the rest of the ‘Arab world’ as a different entity.

The process in the Arab peninsular, other than Bahrain, is different in every aspect to that in the North Africa or Syria. Installed by the British and propped up by the West and petrol billions, the Sunni kingdoms and principalities see themselves as the bastion of Islam and Islamic culture. Unlike the situation in the North African states including Egypt, there are no moderate Islamic alternatives here; state Islamism and radical militant Islamism are the two choices.

Their opposition to Shia power of Iran and its affiliates, and commitment Sunni Islamic states against all others are a help and hindrance in the long run for the West. Nevertheless, the West will go along with these ultra conservatives until the next phase of events dictate it otherwise.

Since Indian Ocean is a vast area with numerous regions and zones, with many competing global powers, drawing any conclusions from the events in the ‘Arab world’ is almost impossible.

KOLKATA: In City’s Teeming Heart, a Place to Gaze and Graze

-Hari Ram Pandey
It is not precisely clear when, how or by whom it was decided that goats could graze in the heart of the Old City here. One local historian traces the decision back nearly three centuries, to the early days of the British East India Company. A different explanation says the goats were liberated to graze when India was liberated from Britain in 1947.
Not in dispute is the obvious fact: in the middle of this city of 15 million people, the goats are still grazing. Right beside the mules. Not far from the white dome of the memorial built to Queen Victoria during the Raj. Or from the Pakistani tank that stands as a trophy from the Indo-Pakistani war of 1971. Or from the statues of a British viceroy, a Hindu spiritualist, a Bengali social reformer and an Indian soccer star, among others.
Yet perhaps the oddest feature in this quintessentially Kolkatan tableau is what unexpectedly dominates on many mornings in one of the world’s most clamorous cities: silence. There are only the occasional shouts in Hindi or Bengali of herders driving their goats. Or, on a recent morning, of Hindu devotional songs floating out of the open windows of a gold-colored sedan weaving down an empty street as a man in the driver’s seat stretched both arms out the window, blissfully, rhythmically waving, as if in a trance.
“He comes every day,” said Mohamed Azad, a herder.
Whoever he is, he is not alone. Few cities are more synonymous with the messy crush of humanity than Kolkata, which about a decade ago changed its name, if not its identity, from the old British assignation of Calcutta. And yet Kolkata, too, needs a place for people to breathe, to run and to stare at an open blue sky. So like the goats and the mules, they come to the grassy pasture in the heart of the city known as the Maidan. To the uninitiated eye, the Maidan is just a park. To Kolkata, it is the “lungs of the city,” a recharge zone for the soul.
The problem, of course, is that there are a lot of souls in Kolkata and relatively few other open spaces for them to go. The Maidan, like the city around it, exists in a perpetual state of siege with humanity. The morning silence is quickly overwhelmed by the assault of daily life. On weekdays or weekends, thousands upon thousands of people play soccer or cricket or just walk. Or picnic or hold weddings or discussions.
Yet the people also burn garbage or encroach on the Maidan by building illegal structures. Electioneering also presents a problem. Political season is just under way, with critical state elections coming, and rallies are known to draw anywhere from 100,000 people to as many as one million. Periodic efforts to ban rallies from the Maidan have brought mixed results.
“Every big rally takes place there, every year,” said Faiyaz Ahmad Khan, who supervised the Maidan for the city government until 2009. “You can’t even see the grass. You can only see the black grass — the color of people’s hair.”
Given the pressures on the Maidan, it might seem fitting that the park’s custodian is the Indian Army, whose Eastern Command now inhabits Fort William, the former British military garrison in the heart of the park. The British built Fort William in the 1750s, after a Mughal prince overran the city’s previous fortifications. A star-shaped structure erected on the banks of the Hooghly River, Fort William dominated the city; fearing another possible assault, the British cleared a swath of jungle so soldiers would have unimpeded sight lines on approaching attackers.
Yet as the British became more confident of their position, the space was planted and public access was granted, if restricted. When India became independent, the British Army handed over the keys of Fort William, and the Maidan, to their Indian counterparts. Depending on one’s perspective, this was a mixed blessing for the Indian Army.
“It is a state of mind,” Col. Debashish Mitra said. “If you feel it is a headache, it is a headache. If you feel it is a pleasure, it is a pleasure.”
A few years ago, Colonel Mitra was stationed on the Pakistani border, one of the more sensitive military postings in India. Then he was transferred back to , Kolkata, and placed in charge of the Maidan. Asked which job was more difficult, he smiled. He spent a year learning the overlapping laws, regulations and court judgments related to the Maidan. He estimated that every day about 20 people show up with grievances, suggestions or requests to rent space for a wedding or some other event.
Inside an Army administration building, Colonel Mitra unfurled a satellite photograph of the Maidan’s 1,400 acres. Much of the land, roughly 900 acres, is dedicated to Fort William and is off limits to the public. (In military parlance, this is the Green Zone.) Then there is a small area (the Yellow Zone) that houses the state’s High Court and legislative assembly building. Seventeen acres (the Red Zone) are the ground of the Victoria Memorial. Which leaves the Blue Zone, known to civilians as the grassy pasture of the Maidan.
“The Blue Zone is open 24 hours a day,” Colonel Mitra said. “The Army is the custodian. We are here to facilitate access.”
Without saying so directly, Colonel Mitra made it clear that his biggest headaches came from people more than animals. Herders pay the city police an annual fee for grazing rights and drive the animals through the streets to reach the pasture in the early mornings. (Mr. Khan, the former city official, equated the goats with lawn maintenance.) Asked if any linguistic problems arose with the animals in a city where residents speak Bengali, Hindi, Urdu, English and other languages, one herder seemed baffled by the question.
“They are animals,” he said in Hindi. “If you speak to them in Hindi, they will understand Hindi. If you speak to them in Bengali, they understand Bengali.”
The mules and horses, about 100 in number, mostly work pulling tourist buggies at the Victoria Memorial while grazing and living inside the pasture, some tethered, some not. Some are descendants of mules that worked around the Maidan during the Raj. Occasionally, a mule wanders into the maw of traffic, but most intuitively understand to remain inside, as if an unseen boundary surrounded the park.
People have a harder time with boundaries.
“There is always encroachment of the rules,” Colonel Mitra said. “So I act as a watchman. I have people spread all over the Maidan. I have some intelligence sources.”
It is the ongoing battle of a crowded city where sometimes just an ordinary day can seem like a battle: the search for silence, for an open sky, for a day in the park.

Let Anna live to lead the movement

Hari Ram Pandey
Anna is adamant. He is not ready to give up fast unless his demands are met. Doctors around him, including famous physcian Dr. Naresh Trehan, have sugessted to break the fast as it could risk his life. Whole nation is watching with a mix of feelings.
The TV visuals from the Ramlila maidan is not the Arab spring. Nor is it a Jasmine Revolution.It is a cry of anguish and anger from large sections of the Indian people over the repeated failure of successive Governments to take sincere and meaningful steps to reduce, if not end, corruption which has besmirched public life and made us seem unworthy inheritors of the Gandhian legacy.
We are all supporters of Anna’s struggle today. We are all admirers of his team of dedicated and passionate advisers. We endorse his campaign against this evil . But I feel that this worthy campaign should not have been allowed to assume the shape of a confrontation between the State and a group of concerned citizens that could be detrimental to our democratic structure and traditions. There have been faults and lack of finesse on both sides, but this is not the time to apportion blame. This is the time to let wisdom prevail on both sides, enabling them to resume the search for a democratic compromise.
For wisdom to prevail, it is important that Anna lives. His glorious life as a perennial crusader has given strength and leadership to this movement. His death will have unpredictable consequences and may make it wither away. Death in a fast may be tactically glorious, but strategically pointless and unwise. Imagine what might have been the course of Indian history if Gandhiji had died prematurely during one of his fasts.
Team Anna and his other followers have a moral obligation to ensure that he lives to continue to lead this crusade. They should persuade him to accept drips being administered on the spot---even if he is not willing to be shifted to a hospital--- so that he can continue to lead the struggle without endangering his life.
The Government too has a moral obligation to take note of the support enjoyed by this crusade. It should have the moral courage to admit that its Lok Pal Bill has very little credibility in the eyes of large sections of the public. It should not stand on false prestige. It should discard the Bill and request a team of two eminent judges enjoying the confidence of both sides to prepare a new draft incorporating the acceptable and feasible suggestions emanating from the Government, Team Anna and others.
The Prime Minister should give a moral commitment to the people of this country that he would ensure that the entire process of re-drafting and adoption by the Parliament is completed within a reasonable time.
Let wisdom prevail. Let Anna live to lead the movement. Let the search for a compromise be resumed with sincerity on both sides.

Nitish and The Anna Effect

Hari Ram Pandey
If you are a dynast or a lawyer in the power game, you could never understand politics. Both the Congress and the BJP do not understand politics, which is why they are helpless in the face of the dramatic rise of the Anna Hazare movement. The one politician who does understand politics and has, therefore, unsurprisingly supported Anna Hazare is Nitish Kumar. Nitish Kumar is neither a dynast nor a lawyer. He will go places.

There cannot be a more privileged Indian dynast than Rahul Gandhi. Although he had no hand in the early release of Anna Hazare from detention, the slavish Congress machinery is already making him a hero, a line willingly toed by some newspapers. But that is irrelevant detail. The big story is Rahul Gandhi will never be PM, not unless he gets over the fright of the job, which he will fail anyway. You cannot get to be a bigger dynast than Rahul Gandhi. But the way to the top is still closed for you, or the summit scares. The Gandhis of today do not understand politics.

So the Gandhis hide behind lawyers, and the Congress party is chock-a-block with lawyers. There is smarmy P.Chidambaram who nobody believes any longer. His 2009 election stands challenged in court. Then Arun Shourie called the other Congress hotshot counsel, Kapil Sibal, a buccaneer in print. And there is Manish Tewari, who has no notion of political decorum. This band of dynasts and too-clever lawyers is running the Congress party -- and running it rapidly to ground.

The BJP is scarcely better. One of its prime-ministerial aspirants is Arun Jaitley. He has never fought a Lok Sabha election so you cannot say for certain he will ever win one. That nevertheless does not preclude him from getting the top job in the fashion of Manmohan Singh, but Manmohan Singh cannot be anyone's ideal today. Jaitley knows no politics, and, worse, appears not to care. This is the result of having journalists as advisers. Jaitley is part of the status-quoists in the BJP who hope to ride the Anna wave to power in 2014 or earlier.

Trouble is being status quoist (which a grounded politician never is) won't assist either Jaitley or the BJP. The Jaitley/ BJP position broadly is that the executive can push the most perverse bills through Parliament and only civil society's right to protest cannot be curbed. The party which appears increasingly to be lead by lawyers (see the fate of Pakistan, a nation brought into being by a deceitful barrister) fails to answer some obvious questions. Who elects Parliament? It is not the MPs, surely. And who backs the Anna movement? Not some foreign power, even though the Congress may expect you and me to believe that. The people are behind Anna, and the same people elect Parliament.

Therefore, like it or not, Parliament has to engage Anna and his team that have come to represent the people presently. (The fact of mid-term election upsets in the US suggests no government can claim to be solely representative for its entire term.) Public opinion manifestly is against the UPA, the most corrupt government since Independence. It cannot be trusted to fight corruption, and its version of the Lok Pal is an affront to the Indian people. The BJP cannot take refuge in narrow constitutionality. It cannot think it can leech on the Anna movement even while preserving the present order for its advantage. Only a party of lawyers would scheme so shamelessly, and fail without knowing why.

In a sentence, the BJP has to get back to basics. It has to shed its lawyers and commence learning politics all over again.

If politics had prevailed, the system would have gained by Anna Hazare. The UPA correctly made the Anna team joint drafters of the Lok Pal bill initially. The Indian state is famed for politics. Politics is the core reason for its survival despite the multitude of contradictions. Politics heals. There is no call to believe that an agreement between Anna's team and the UPA couldn't have been reached. The PM has to be under the Lok Pal. The judiciary has to have another independent oversight institution. This is what will eventually happen. It cannot be stopped. The UPA and Anna's team could have easily agreed on this, provided the UPA had honourable intentions, which it didn't.

So where does it all lead? The bare minimum that all of India expects of any Lok Pal law has been set out in the earlier paragraph. Any party that can deliver that gets India's vote. This is the clear message from the spontaneous nationwide support for Anna Hazare's mission. Any political party and any political individual that understands politics will immediately grasp this message. As this writer sees it, only Nitish Kumar today is fully alive to Anna Hazare's politics. If Nitish Kumar remains the only one to be honestly engaged with democratic politics, he will sooner than later get India's vote.

HuJI-B: Potent Threat

Hari Ram Pandey
The July 13, 2011 Mumbai blasts (13/7) which killed 26 people has once again brought the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami Bangladesh (HuJI-B) into the radar of a frantic international security search. Indian agencies believe that the suspected mastermind of the blasts, Abdullah Khan of the Indian Mujahideen (IM), was hiding in Bangladesh, under protection of HuJI-B. Khan’s movements had been tracked over the past months by the National Investigation Agency, and he was known to have been operating the IM module which was assigned to maintain liaison with the HuJI-B. His module was known to have recruited some new jihadists in what may have been a joint venture with the HuJI-B. Another key link between the HuJI-B and IM was identified as Jalaluddin Mullah alias Babu Bhai, a resident of South-24 Parganas District of the Indian State of West Bengal, currently lodged in a prison in Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh (India), who has also been questioned by 13/7 investigators.
A July 12, 2011, media report had noted that a dossier prepared by the Indian Intelligence Bureau (IB) indicated an increase in HuJI activities in the recent past, after a significant decline since 2008. There had been a spurt in recruitment, with at least 150 youths from West Bengal going ‘missing’. Investigations suggest that these youths were picked up by HuJI-B cadres and recruiters and were presently being trained to launch operations against India. These recruits are meant to set up sleeper cells, with each of the recruits offered INR 10,000 per month. This intelligence was developed principally on communications intercepts by the IB, and which also indicated that these sleeper cells would first be set up in North India, and later would expand into the South.
Against this backdrop, Indian Minister of External Affairs, S. M. Krishna’s statement, on July 9, 2011, asserting that it was imperative for India and Bangladesh to combat terror together, gains particular significance. Krishna declared, “We face new challenges and non-traditional security threats. The rise of religious fundamentalism, extremism and terrorism are not unfamiliar to our region. Such forces sap away the strength of our societies, threaten our state systems and are an impediment to our advancement.” Though Krishna did not name specific terrorist organisation, HuJI-B is certainly a concern for both the Indian and Bangladeshi security establishment.
Amidst these rising concerns, a Bangladesh Court, on July 3, 2011, issued arrest warrants against, Tarique Rahman (46), the fugitive eldest son of former Bangladesh Prime Minister Khaleda Zia and the Senior Vice President of Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), and 17 others, over the August 21, 2004, grenade attack on an Awami League (AL) rally that killed 24 people and injured another 300, including Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed. The Criminal Investigation Department (CID) formally charged Rahman and 29 others for the attack after an "extended investigation" into the case. The Special Superintendent, CID, Abdul Kahhar Akhand, disclosed that their re-investigations indicated that operatives of HuJI-B had carried out the attack, backed by former State Minister for Home Lutfuzzaman Babar, Khaleda Zia's Political Secretary Harish Chowdhury, former minister and Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI) leader Ali Ahsan Mujaheed, and incumbent BNP lawmaker, the fugitive Mofazzal Hossain Kaikobad.
Accordingly, the charge-sheet included names of HuJI-B leaders and operatives – Maulana Sheikh Abdus Salam, who later floated a new outfit, the Islamic Democratic Party (IDP); Maulana Abdul Malek; Maulana Shawkat Osman alias Sheikh Farid; Mufti Shafiqur Rahman; Ratul Babu; and Indian national Abdul Majed Bhat associated with Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT).
The exposure of these linkages between HuJI-B and other terror based Islamist factions with the BNP have created a new dynamic in Bangladesh politics of, particularly at a time of present crisis for radical Islamist forces in the country. The ongoing War Crime trials have put these forces under tremendous pressure, in turn provoking a concerted bid on their part to enlarge their own spaces for maneuver.
HuJI-B has been implicated in a number of terrorist attacks in Bangladesh and abroad, particularly India, and had been named among 12 militant outfits in a report by the Awami League (AL) Government placed before Parliament on March 16, 2009. HuJI-B cadres had gone deep underground after this report, and none of its senior cadres have been killed since then, though at least 39 members of the outfit have been arrested. Prominent among these arrests are:
May 25, 2011: Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) arrested two HuJI-B militants, identified as Mohammad Abdus Salam (39), 'secretary' of the Sylhet District unit and Mohammad Ashraful Islam (30), 'secretary' of the Ishwardi sub-district unit of Pabna District, from Savar sub-district in Dhaka District.
April 26, 2011: RAB arrested acting chief of HuJI-B, Rahmatullah alias Sheikh Farid alias Shawkat Osman (47), from the Tongi Railway Station area of Gazipur District.
April 25, 2011: RAB arrested two HuJI-B militants, including its acting ‘Chief’ Abdul Hannan Sabbir and Ainul Haq, the recruitment and secret training coordinator, from a hideout at Keraniganj in Dhaka District.
April 15, 2010: The Detective Branch of the Police arrested the alleged UK unit ‘chief’ of HuJI-B, Golam Mostofa (55), from Osmaninagar in Sylhet District.
November 2, 2009: Police arrested Moulana Sheikh Abdus Salam, founder of the HuJI-B, for suspected links with the August 21, 2004, grenade attack on an AL rally.
These arrests have had significant impact on the organization, and there have been no attacks recorded by HuJI-B in Bangladesh since April 2009. At least 65 civilians had been killed by the outfit between March 11, 2000, and March 15, 2009. No act of violence involving the group has since been recorded within the country.
In neighboring India, however, HuJI-B continues to pose a significant threat. Apart from its suspected involvement in the 13/7 attacks, the outfit is also believed to have been behind the February 13, 2010, Pune (Maharashtra) blast, in which 17 persons were killed – the first major attack in the Indian heartland since the 26/11 attacks in Mumbai. Significantly, two days after the blast, Ilyas Kashmiri’s 313 Brigade, which controls HuJI-B, claimed responsibility for the attack. Subsequently, on July 9, 2010, intelligence agencies issued an alert about the possible penetration of 31 operatives of Bangladesh-based outfits — HuJI-B and JeI — into India, with the intention of carrying out terror strikes. Prior to the 26/11 attacks, HuJI-B had been involved in a large number of joint and independent strikes, including at least one suicide bombing, in India.
Nevertheless, the surviving leadership at large still possesses the capacity to create trouble. HuJI-B was angered following the arrest of its top leaders, including Sheikh Farid. Intelligence sources indicate that Maulana Yeahia has now taken charge of the outfit. Yeahia received training in Pakistan in 1998 and, on his return to Bangladesh, joined HuJI-B. He is known to have been involved in the fighting in Afghanistan. Despite the increasing pressure on the organization, finances do not present any significant problem. The arrested HuJI-B leader Rahmatullah alias Sheikh Farid alias Shawkat Osman, disclosed, on April 26, 2011, that the organization received financial aid from some 3,000-4,000 associates working in different countries of the Middle East.
Bangladesh has taken firm steps to quell violent Islamist extremist groupings operating on and from its soil, but it is clear that these groups have not abandoned their ideology or their objectives, and that they retain significant capacities, though pressure by intelligence and enforcement agencies has pushed them underground. Recent evidence, however, indicates some increased activity, including joint efforts with other Islamist formations such as IM, to expand capacities. The network of supporting establishments in Bangladesh, including a large number of sympathetic mosques and madrassas, as well as training establishments, has not been dismantled. Some of the Government’s recent measures, including the introduction of the 15th Amendment Bill of the Constitution on June 30,2011, which gives Islam the status of the ‘State Religion’, may well expand the spaces for radical Islamist politics in the country, legitimizing extremist formations and radical political parties such as the JeI. These are the very forces that have repeatedly jeopardized stability and development in Bangladesh in the past, and the state will have to remain extraordinarily vigilant if they are not to return to prominence in the proximate future.