By Syed Saleem Shahzad & M H Ahssan
Pakistan might recently have signed peace deals with miltants in its tribal areas, including with vehment anti-establishment Pakistan Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud, but miltants on Tuesday staged a brazen attack in Lahore, the capital of Punjab province and the second-largest city in the country.
The attack by 12 heavily armed gunmen on a convoy escorted by police transporting Sri Lankan cricketers to a match against Pakistan has set off alarm bells in the capital Islamabad that miltants are now taking their battle into major urban centers.
At least five people died and six of the cricketers were injured in a 25-minute battle in which militants wearing backpacks and carrying AK-47s, rockets and grenades fought police. The assailants then all fled. The Sri Lankan cricketers have called off their tour and are heading home immediately.
The attack bore some similarity to that of 10 well-armed gunmen, also with backpacks, who rampaged through Mumbai in India last November, killing 140 people. They were later found to have connections to the banned Pakistani group Lashkar-e-Taiba.
"This was a planned terrorist attack. They had heavy weapons," Salman Taseer, who heads the provincial government as governor of Punjab, was reported as saying. "These were the same methods and the same sort of people as hit Mumbai."
Numerous Pakistani analysts have been quick to point a finger at India's Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) for staging what they say is a tit-for-tat attack on Tuesday, although there is been no official announcement in this connection.
A press attache at the Sri Lankan Embassy in Islamabad thought it highly unlikely that the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, who a waging a bloody separatist war in Sri Lanka, had anything to do with Tuesday's events.
Rather, judging by what was shown on Pakistani television, the attack is the hallmark of those that were waged by militants (many of them Punjabi) against Indian security forces in Indian-administered Kashmir up until a few years ago. They were trained by the Indian cell of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).
In 2005-06, these militants joined forces with the Pakistani Taliban and the Afghan resistance after Pakistan closed down their training camps in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, a move that changed the dynamics of the war theater in the region.
Beside the Mumbai attack, Tuesday's assault was similar to the storming of the Serena Hotel in the Afghan capital of Kabul in January 2008 and the unsuccessful July 2008 attack on Afghan President Hamid Karzai in Kabul. In all of these incidents, the attackers abandoned their weapons and quickly melted into a thickly populated area of the city where, apparently, they were whisked away by waiting colleagues.
Retired Lieutenant General Hamid Nawaz, a former interim minister the Interior and a close aide of former president General Pervez Musharraf, commented to Asia Times Online, "This proves that striking peace deals [with militants] will not serve any purpose and there is a need to handle them with iron hands. I blame the government for negligence.
"Providing a single elite police commondo bus was not enough. They should have been provided VIP [very important people] security like the state provides for governors and chief ministers. Traffic should have been blocked on their route," Nawaz said.
Former Pakistani cricketer Zaheer Abbas said, "I am not a politician to comment on who was behind it, but it has damaged Pakistani cricket very badly. I don't understand why anybody would target Sri Lankans because they don't have any role in the region. There might be some forces who want to damage the cause of Pakistan and Pakistani cricket."
Possible attackers
Pakistani analysts, including retired General Hamid Gul, who is a former head of the ISI, blame India's RAW.
However, there is no precedence for RAW having the capability to carry out such attacks in Pakistan. Its operations in Pakistan have been of two kinds, according to the records of Pakistani security agencies, documented in files and books narrated by their retired officials:
- Small bomb blasts in urban centers.
- The use of Indophile political parties such as the Awami League in 1970, the Pashtun sub-nationalist Awami National Party, the Baloch separatist group the Baloch Libration Army and the Muttehida Quami Movement.
However, these parties were always used in a limited political context. For creating a law-and-order situation in the country, RAW has always used bomb blasts and other small-level sabotage activities. It has never had the capacity, like the ISI had in India, to use armed groups to carry out guerrilla activities in Pakistan.
More pertinent is to view Tuesday's attack in the context of the peace deals in the Swat Valley and the tribal areas which have stopped the fighting between ethnic Pashtun-dominated militants and the Pakistani army.
Prior to the signing of the deals, the matter of the release of militants who did not belong to the Swat area was raised, that is, non-Pashtun militants. These included Maulana Abdul Aziz, who was apprehended while trying to flee the radical Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) in Islamabad in July 2007.
However, after deciding on the level of compensation packages for the families of militants killed or injured by the security forces and other matters related to Swat and the tribal areas, the matter of non-Pashtun militants was deferred and the peace agreements were signed.
In effect, non-Pashtun militants have been ignored and the attack in Lahore could be a bloody message to the government that the "Punjabi militants" have the capacity to cripple urban centers at any time and place of their choosing.
Indian Scenario
Six policemen were killed and at least six Sri Lankan cricketers injured on Tuesday when heavily armed gunmen attacked the team cavalcade when it was on its way to the Gaddafi stadium in Lahore. The cricketers were evacuated by an army helicopter as Sri Lanka cancelled its Pakistan tour.
Salman Taseer, governor of Pakistan's Punjab province, said the attack in the heart of lahore was the handiwork of the same terrorists who struck in Mumbai in November last year.
"It was a planned terrorist act on the pattern of the attack on Mumbai. I believe the same terrorists are involved in both the incidents," Taseer told reporters.
Pakistani authorities have announced the formation of a special investigation team to probe the attack.
The team bus, which came under attack at about 8.45 a.m. at the Liberty Market crossing close to the stadium where the squad was going for the third day's play in the second Test from their hotel, was riddled with bullets.
Pakistan Cricket Board sources said the van carrying the match umpires also came under attack, leaving the umpires' liaison officer Abdul Sami injured. One of the umpires Ahsan Raza was reported to be critically injured.
The driver of the Sri Lankan team's bus claimed that a grenade had been thrown under the bus, but did not explode.
Lahore police chief Habibur Rehman said 12 terrorists armed with rocket launchers and hand grenades carried out the attack and the exchange of fire lasted for about 25 minutes.
"The attackers had come by rickshaws," he told reporters, confirming that five security personnel escorting the team had been killed - including two commandos.
All the attackers made good their escape, leaving behind a huge quantity of weapons and ammunition. A car suspected to have been used by the attackers was impounded.
The Sri Lankan High Commission said in a statement: "Members of the Sri Lankan Cricket Team have received minor injuries including Kumar Sangakkara, Ajantha Mendis, Suranga Lakmal and Thilina Thushara and Assistant Coach Paul Farbrace. Thilan Samaraweera and Tharanga Paranavitana have been admitted to the Lahore Hospital."
Later, Samaraweera and Paranavitana were brought back to the stadium and flown to the airport on a Pakistan Air Force helicopter for their return journey to Colombo.
Most of the other players had already been flown to Allama Iqbal International Airport in Lahore to be flown back home.
Pakistan Cricket Board's Director Operation Zakir Khan and one of the doctors working with the board are accompanying the returning players.
Pakistan Television (PTV) televised live the departure of the Sri Lanka cricketers from the stadium. They were seen off by Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) chairman Ijaz Butt.
In Colombo, there was concern and worry.
Sri Lankan Foreign Secretary P. Kohona said he had spoken to the Pakistani authorities and had been assured of all help.
"It is appalling that anybody should have targeted a sporting team in such a brutal manner. The attitude of targeting sportsmen must change," he said.
Father of the outgoing team skipper Mahela Jayawardene said his son had called his wife from Lahore to say that he too had suffered minor injuries in his leg during the attack that had shocked the nation.
The Sri Lankan team was in Pakistan to play in place of India that had pulled out of the series after the Nov 26-29 Mumbai carnage that was blamed on Pakistani terrorists.
Sri Lankan Embassy's Third Secretary Chamara Ranaweera expressed concern about the future of cricket in Pakistan after the attack.
He said it was courageous of Sri Lanka to agree to play in Pakistan in the present circumstances, but the incident carries serious implications for cricket in Pakistan.
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Punjab. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Punjab. Sort by date Show all posts
Tuesday, March 03, 2009
Thursday, March 20, 2014
OpEd: Can 'Aam Aadmi Party' Become A National Force?
PRESPECTIVE When the Delhi assembly, amidst the expected uproar, voted 42 to 27 to block the introduction of the Jan Lokpal Bill on 14 February, it signalled the end of the Aam Aadmi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal’s volatile seven weeks as chief minister.
In a characteristic act of showmanship, Kejriwal tried to project the failure as the result of a united effort by the Congress and the BJP to scuttle the AAP’s cherished anti-corruption legislation, and not of his government’s attempt to sidestep constitutional procedure by bringing the bill to the floor without the approval of the central government.
Saturday, April 04, 2015
OpEd: Now, Time Has Come To Write 'An Obituary' For AAP
There are many of us who have been to the protest spot, Jantar Mantar a number of times and love that square for allowing voices of protest against establishment and governments. We have also laid bare before scrutiny, our love for such protest places and the way State and law and order agencies attempt to ritualise dissent, and on occasions we have even tried to spontaneously protest elsewhere, for example India Gate.
Monday, March 16, 2009
“We are old friends of the Left. Our views are similar”
By M H Ahssan
Even before Orissa happened, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) hadn’t got the traction it needed, with alliances tottering in the south, east and west. NDA Convenor Sharad Yadav, 61, is not too happy with the ways things are in the alliance.
In an interview with HNN, Yadav speaks of friendships outside the NDA and how the alliance still hopes to regroup. Excerpts from the interview:
How badly has Orissa hurt the NDA?
The NDA has been weakened in Orissa by what happened, but I don’t think there will be damage in other states.
Why could you not anticipate the Orissa developments?
The BJP never involved us in it. The negotiations were going on between the BJP and the Biju Janata Dal (BJD). BJP President Rajnath Singh called me when it was over. That’s when I spoke to him. I was taken aback by the turn of events. I was under the impression that things would turn out fine. The BJP was dealing with this.
Does this affect the chances of your Prime Ministerial nominee?
The NDA has split in Orissa, but I don’t consider Naveen Patnaik as being out of the NDA. He will need us in the future. He has taken a big risk by choosing to fight the election on his own. His principal opponent is the Congress. The BJP-BJD combine would have got the anti-Congress vote. Now, the anti-Congress vote will be split. I am not updated about Orissa, but I know that the BJP had 18 percent of the vote there. The BJP-BJD combine was winning because the anti-Congress vote was consolidated in their favour. I can’t say if it will stay that way in the future.
Is the Janata Dal (United), the party you belong to, comfortable with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) choice of LK Advani as the prime ministerial nominee?
The announcement of Advani’s name as the prime ministerial nominee is not limited to the BJP. The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) had made a unanimous decision on this. First, the BJP arrived at the decision. Then, we were consulted and the final decision was taken to project Advani prime ministerial candidate.
The JD(U) is fine with it then?
I am telling you as the NDA Convenor. All NDA members have decided to support him (Advani).
Has the NDA lost momentum from the time it chose to project Advani for the top post?
The NDA hasn’t lost momentum. The NDA has won in big states in the recent assembly elections to five states. We won in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. Before that, we won in Bihar, Punjab, Gujarat and Karnataka. The NDA has nine state governments. In Bihar, Punjab and Orissa, NDA constituents are running the governments. We also won in Jharkhand but the Congress manipulated its fall. The Congress has lost virtually all elections over five years, barring this time in Rajasthan and Delhi. In Rajasthan, the Congress managed to cobble a government. We have 82 MLAs there.
Are you in touch with parties that were once your friends, like Jayalalithaa’s AIADMK, for instance?
The alliances are not in shape in Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, be it the NDA or the UPA. As far as the NDA is concerned, I can say that we discussed with some parties but the talks did not materialise into alliances. Barring these two states, there is an alliance everywhere. Recently, we have brought the Indian National Lok Dal (INLD), headed by Om Prakash Chautala, the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) and the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD), headed by Ajit Singh, into our fold.
What about Babulal Marandi’s party in Jharkhand?
We are talking to him as well but it hasn’t materialised.
Are you still talking to Jayalalithaa?
No. I wouldn’t like to say anything more on this.
Is it possible that the JD(U) will have a prime ministerial nominee, given that things could change rapidly after the numbers are out?
JD(U) is in alliance with the BJP in Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan. The JD(U) has no alliances in the other states. We will contest together in these four states and fight separately in Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat, for instance.
Have you made an assessment of the impact that Advani could have on the Muslim vote?
Ours is not a one-day alliance. And in Bihar, we are partners in the government. The BJP has not had a negative impact. We have conducted many pro-Muslim programmes in Bihar. No state government has done as much for Muslims in 60 years, be it for the madrasas or the teachers in madrasas. We punished the guilty in the Bhagalpur riots of 1998. We got life-long compensation for the victims. How could we have done all this without the cooperation of the BJP? They didn’t stop us. We do politics of the masses, not politics of religion.
Does the JD(U) consider itself bound to the NDA? Could this change after the election?
This is an era of coalition politics. There are two fronts. The NDA is 11 years old. We have contested four elections together. We are not in a position to form a government by ourselves. The BJP is not in a position to form its own government. No party can do it. So, we have the UPA on one side and the NDA on the other. The JD(U) and the BJP are separate parties. We have differences of thought. There are many issues on which we differ. We have various kinds of disagreements with many parties. But we are united under our common minimum programme, which we call the national agenda. The issues were settled in the time of Atal Bihari Vajpayee. We ran a government for six years after that.
There are contradictions between the BJP and the JD(U). But the people of this country are not giving a majority to any single party. So, we have to keep our differences and contradictions aside. The JD(U) has demanded, for instance, reservation for dalit Muslims and dalit Christians. The BJP has not demanded it. It is not part of the national agenda. The JD(U) wants a quota within quota for women. The BJP doesn’t. They want a temple in Ayodhya. The JD(U) says that the Ayodhya dispute has to be resolved either by the courts or by a negotiated settlement. The BJP functions according to its ideology and issues. The JD(U) has its own issues. The JD(U) and the BJP are distinct parties, just as the JD(U) is distinct from the Akali Dal and the Biju Janata Dal (BJD).
Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi is a part of the NDA as well.
The JD(U) deals with the BJP as a party. The JD(U) doesn’t deal with individuals.
I’m talking of a situation where the BJP fields Modi in the election campaign, say, in Bihar. What impact would that have?
In an alliance, it doesn’t matter where an individual goes to campaign. We sit among ourselves and find solutions to such things. Politics differs from state to state. The JD(U) and the BJP are aware of this. Campaigns schedules are drawn up after consultations. For instance, the JD(U) had decided not to involve celebrities in the 2004 campaign. We know where to draw the line. We know who will help us and who will harm us.
Is it likely that the JD(U) responds to a Congress or UPA invitation to join a secular front?
We are in the NDA since 11 years. The UPA is four-and-a-half years old. Are they more secular than us?
Are you in touch with the Communists?
We are old friends of the Left parties. We are constantly in touch with them. We formed a government with the Left on two occasions. We have been with the Communists for 60 years. At times we have been together, and at others we have been separate. For some time now, we have been going our ways. Our views are similar to those of the Left on many issues. On other issues, our opinion is the same as that of the BJP. Our main issues are economic, the state of the farmers, unemployment, inflation, SEZs. The SEZs they created for real estate are now defunct. We opposed the creation of SEZs. The difference is in degree of opposition. We opposed SEZs seriously. The BJP did it mildly.
Should the NDA come to power, how will it deal with terrorism and Pakistan?
The JD(U) thinks that there must be people’s involvement in these issues. Let’s take the blasts in trains, for instance. At the top, we need to strengthen the bureaucracy and the intelligence. But it is the vendors and the coolies whose lives are entwined with trains. We have to take them into confidence and mobilise them. We must give licences to vendors and tell them: look we gave you the licence. You are responsible for this much area. Your licence will be cancelled if there’s any extremist or untoward activity in your area. We must offer incentives to the coolies and food vendors in the railways stations in Delhi and Mumbai.
For instance, recent blasts in Delhi and Guwahati have been in garbage bins. There are lakhs of safai karamcharis in India. Let’s take them into confidence. People like us are not going to peep into garbage bins. The karamcharis do it. Similarly, there are 50 lakh fishermen on our coasts. In the Mumbai attack, the terrorists came by sea from Karachi. So, we need to beef up the intelligence at the top and take the people on the streets into confidence. We have to create a network of informants on the ground. We can’t deal with terrorism unless we have the people who sweat it out on our side.
Should Afzal Guru be hanged, then?
This is a stupid issue. It is of concern only to the media. I don’t want to say anything on this. There are lakhs of people going to the gallows anyway in India. The Arjun Sengupta Committee report has said that 78 percent of Indians live on Rs 20 a day. This means that a person who ought to have lived to the age of 90, is dying at 60. Those who should have lived till 60 are dying at 30. These people are on the gallows because of hunger, poverty and unemployment. That is our big worry.
What will the NDA manifesto say on this? Will you have a common manifesto this time?
We haven’t made a decision yet on our manifesto. We haven’t talked yet. Though in the past in Bihar, the JD(U) and the BJP have had separate manifestos.
Joblessness has become a vast problem now. What would you do about it?
The people who went to English schools had jobs when the market expanded. If you hadn’t known English, you wouldn’t have got a job in Tehelka. Now, the global crisis has hit the English-speaking jobholders who are being sacked. Ninety-eight percent of Indians study in regional language schools, in Hindi, Urdu, Telugu, Marathi, or Gujarati for instance. They had no jobs anyway.
What will the NDA do about it?
We must put big money into agriculture. And, instead of erecting barriers, let a representative of the union government go to backward states and directly give money for, say, a thousand roads, a thousand bridges. Cement and steel factories will function. People in the backward states will get employed. If we are able to form a government, my party will focus totally on the construction sector. You can’t imagine what a boost it would give to employment. This is what we would do.
What are the other NDA priorities, should it gain power?
The next most important thing is agriculture and irrigation. The condition of our farmers and our villages has improved where water has reached. Daily wages have risen to Rs 150-Rs 200. Where the farmer is dependent on rain, there is hunger, unemployment and poverty. We must shut out everything else and see that water reaches the farms, from the small lakes, big lakes, the land and the sky. We will see how the condition of our villages and our farmers will improve with water. Let’s take the Bhakra Nangal Dam in Punjab. Water came first to the farms, and then came the schools and the roads.
Where is the water now?
There’s no shortage of water in this country. Bihar has more water than it needs, which is going into the sea. Why can’t we tap and store the water we get from the monsoon?
The JD(U) is a regional party. Many regional parties say Article 356, which imposes Centre’s rule in a state, is misused. Has the time come to repeal Article 356?
No. Article 356 must not be done away with. Circumstances force the use of Article 356 many times. In Jharkhand, they had to implement President’s Rule recently, didn’t they? Anything can happen in the states, like in Punjab in the past. Everything can be sacrificed for the unity of the nation. Article 356 is necessary. People have begun debating it because of its misuse. Now, the Centre has to think many times before imposing President’s Rule.
The sensitivity of Centre-State relations has caused India’s structure to change periodically. The BJP has now promised to create the next state, Telangana, within 100 days of coming to power. Do you think India needs more states?
States like Uttar Pradesh are unmanageable. We must divide them scientifically. We must have a national commission to look into the issue of viable states.
Will this be in your manifesto?
There is no consensus on our manifesto yet. We don’t know whether we will have a common manifesto, or individual ones.
You’ve been in public life long enough to know the corrosive effect of corruption. What do you intend to do?
India would have progressed far more were it not for corruption in every field. People are looting all the way from Delhi to the villages. Take Satyam, for instance. It’s like a man has committed a murder and gone to the police station to confess. Ramalinga Raju was about to be arrested in the US. He knew he would be gone for life. Therefore, he chose to be in an Indian prison. He would never have confessed if he hadn’t been exposed in the US. Raju thought he would suffer like the Enron chiefs. We have the intelligence wing of the finance ministry, the sales tax and income tax wings, the SEBI, and the ministry of company affairs. Have all of them become useless?
The NDA has been in government as well. How come it didn’t look into these things?
We lost. If we were strong and perfect, we wouldn’t have been blamed forever. Why did people vote for the UPA? Because we made mistakes and they taught us a lesson. We have been punished. But is accountability only for the politicians? No one else is accountable in this country. Not the judiciary, not the bureaucracy. Not one bureaucrat has been punished for the Mumbai attack, for instance. Only the political system is accountable in this country. The media is free to do what it wants. They call themselves news channels and run fiction programmes on superstition the whole day. You should call them entertainment channels. Technology has given the media such a big tool, but it is not creating a scientific outlook. Nobody is censoring the Balika Badhu serial (on child marriage).
What about judicial accountability?
Is there any system in the world where the judges decide on themselves. The judges in our country recruit their own relatives and near and dear.
Why hasn’t the JD(U) raised this?
Sharad Yadav raised the issue of former chief justice YK Sabharwal and his sons. He got Delhi demolished. We make the laws in Parliament and we find that the judiciary is making 10 laws a day over what we say in Parliament.
Are you contesting this time?
The party will take a decision on that. There is democracy only in three parties in India: the Left parties, the BJP and the JD(U). Individual writ doesn’t run here.
Even before Orissa happened, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) hadn’t got the traction it needed, with alliances tottering in the south, east and west. NDA Convenor Sharad Yadav, 61, is not too happy with the ways things are in the alliance.
In an interview with HNN, Yadav speaks of friendships outside the NDA and how the alliance still hopes to regroup. Excerpts from the interview:
How badly has Orissa hurt the NDA?
The NDA has been weakened in Orissa by what happened, but I don’t think there will be damage in other states.
Why could you not anticipate the Orissa developments?
The BJP never involved us in it. The negotiations were going on between the BJP and the Biju Janata Dal (BJD). BJP President Rajnath Singh called me when it was over. That’s when I spoke to him. I was taken aback by the turn of events. I was under the impression that things would turn out fine. The BJP was dealing with this.
Does this affect the chances of your Prime Ministerial nominee?
The NDA has split in Orissa, but I don’t consider Naveen Patnaik as being out of the NDA. He will need us in the future. He has taken a big risk by choosing to fight the election on his own. His principal opponent is the Congress. The BJP-BJD combine would have got the anti-Congress vote. Now, the anti-Congress vote will be split. I am not updated about Orissa, but I know that the BJP had 18 percent of the vote there. The BJP-BJD combine was winning because the anti-Congress vote was consolidated in their favour. I can’t say if it will stay that way in the future.
Is the Janata Dal (United), the party you belong to, comfortable with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) choice of LK Advani as the prime ministerial nominee?
The announcement of Advani’s name as the prime ministerial nominee is not limited to the BJP. The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) had made a unanimous decision on this. First, the BJP arrived at the decision. Then, we were consulted and the final decision was taken to project Advani prime ministerial candidate.
The JD(U) is fine with it then?
I am telling you as the NDA Convenor. All NDA members have decided to support him (Advani).
Has the NDA lost momentum from the time it chose to project Advani for the top post?
The NDA hasn’t lost momentum. The NDA has won in big states in the recent assembly elections to five states. We won in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. Before that, we won in Bihar, Punjab, Gujarat and Karnataka. The NDA has nine state governments. In Bihar, Punjab and Orissa, NDA constituents are running the governments. We also won in Jharkhand but the Congress manipulated its fall. The Congress has lost virtually all elections over five years, barring this time in Rajasthan and Delhi. In Rajasthan, the Congress managed to cobble a government. We have 82 MLAs there.
Are you in touch with parties that were once your friends, like Jayalalithaa’s AIADMK, for instance?
The alliances are not in shape in Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, be it the NDA or the UPA. As far as the NDA is concerned, I can say that we discussed with some parties but the talks did not materialise into alliances. Barring these two states, there is an alliance everywhere. Recently, we have brought the Indian National Lok Dal (INLD), headed by Om Prakash Chautala, the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) and the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD), headed by Ajit Singh, into our fold.
What about Babulal Marandi’s party in Jharkhand?
We are talking to him as well but it hasn’t materialised.
Are you still talking to Jayalalithaa?
No. I wouldn’t like to say anything more on this.
Is it possible that the JD(U) will have a prime ministerial nominee, given that things could change rapidly after the numbers are out?
JD(U) is in alliance with the BJP in Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan. The JD(U) has no alliances in the other states. We will contest together in these four states and fight separately in Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat, for instance.
Have you made an assessment of the impact that Advani could have on the Muslim vote?
Ours is not a one-day alliance. And in Bihar, we are partners in the government. The BJP has not had a negative impact. We have conducted many pro-Muslim programmes in Bihar. No state government has done as much for Muslims in 60 years, be it for the madrasas or the teachers in madrasas. We punished the guilty in the Bhagalpur riots of 1998. We got life-long compensation for the victims. How could we have done all this without the cooperation of the BJP? They didn’t stop us. We do politics of the masses, not politics of religion.
Does the JD(U) consider itself bound to the NDA? Could this change after the election?
This is an era of coalition politics. There are two fronts. The NDA is 11 years old. We have contested four elections together. We are not in a position to form a government by ourselves. The BJP is not in a position to form its own government. No party can do it. So, we have the UPA on one side and the NDA on the other. The JD(U) and the BJP are separate parties. We have differences of thought. There are many issues on which we differ. We have various kinds of disagreements with many parties. But we are united under our common minimum programme, which we call the national agenda. The issues were settled in the time of Atal Bihari Vajpayee. We ran a government for six years after that.
There are contradictions between the BJP and the JD(U). But the people of this country are not giving a majority to any single party. So, we have to keep our differences and contradictions aside. The JD(U) has demanded, for instance, reservation for dalit Muslims and dalit Christians. The BJP has not demanded it. It is not part of the national agenda. The JD(U) wants a quota within quota for women. The BJP doesn’t. They want a temple in Ayodhya. The JD(U) says that the Ayodhya dispute has to be resolved either by the courts or by a negotiated settlement. The BJP functions according to its ideology and issues. The JD(U) has its own issues. The JD(U) and the BJP are distinct parties, just as the JD(U) is distinct from the Akali Dal and the Biju Janata Dal (BJD).
Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi is a part of the NDA as well.
The JD(U) deals with the BJP as a party. The JD(U) doesn’t deal with individuals.
I’m talking of a situation where the BJP fields Modi in the election campaign, say, in Bihar. What impact would that have?
In an alliance, it doesn’t matter where an individual goes to campaign. We sit among ourselves and find solutions to such things. Politics differs from state to state. The JD(U) and the BJP are aware of this. Campaigns schedules are drawn up after consultations. For instance, the JD(U) had decided not to involve celebrities in the 2004 campaign. We know where to draw the line. We know who will help us and who will harm us.
Is it likely that the JD(U) responds to a Congress or UPA invitation to join a secular front?
We are in the NDA since 11 years. The UPA is four-and-a-half years old. Are they more secular than us?
Are you in touch with the Communists?
We are old friends of the Left parties. We are constantly in touch with them. We formed a government with the Left on two occasions. We have been with the Communists for 60 years. At times we have been together, and at others we have been separate. For some time now, we have been going our ways. Our views are similar to those of the Left on many issues. On other issues, our opinion is the same as that of the BJP. Our main issues are economic, the state of the farmers, unemployment, inflation, SEZs. The SEZs they created for real estate are now defunct. We opposed the creation of SEZs. The difference is in degree of opposition. We opposed SEZs seriously. The BJP did it mildly.
Should the NDA come to power, how will it deal with terrorism and Pakistan?
The JD(U) thinks that there must be people’s involvement in these issues. Let’s take the blasts in trains, for instance. At the top, we need to strengthen the bureaucracy and the intelligence. But it is the vendors and the coolies whose lives are entwined with trains. We have to take them into confidence and mobilise them. We must give licences to vendors and tell them: look we gave you the licence. You are responsible for this much area. Your licence will be cancelled if there’s any extremist or untoward activity in your area. We must offer incentives to the coolies and food vendors in the railways stations in Delhi and Mumbai.
For instance, recent blasts in Delhi and Guwahati have been in garbage bins. There are lakhs of safai karamcharis in India. Let’s take them into confidence. People like us are not going to peep into garbage bins. The karamcharis do it. Similarly, there are 50 lakh fishermen on our coasts. In the Mumbai attack, the terrorists came by sea from Karachi. So, we need to beef up the intelligence at the top and take the people on the streets into confidence. We have to create a network of informants on the ground. We can’t deal with terrorism unless we have the people who sweat it out on our side.
Should Afzal Guru be hanged, then?
This is a stupid issue. It is of concern only to the media. I don’t want to say anything on this. There are lakhs of people going to the gallows anyway in India. The Arjun Sengupta Committee report has said that 78 percent of Indians live on Rs 20 a day. This means that a person who ought to have lived to the age of 90, is dying at 60. Those who should have lived till 60 are dying at 30. These people are on the gallows because of hunger, poverty and unemployment. That is our big worry.
What will the NDA manifesto say on this? Will you have a common manifesto this time?
We haven’t made a decision yet on our manifesto. We haven’t talked yet. Though in the past in Bihar, the JD(U) and the BJP have had separate manifestos.
Joblessness has become a vast problem now. What would you do about it?
The people who went to English schools had jobs when the market expanded. If you hadn’t known English, you wouldn’t have got a job in Tehelka. Now, the global crisis has hit the English-speaking jobholders who are being sacked. Ninety-eight percent of Indians study in regional language schools, in Hindi, Urdu, Telugu, Marathi, or Gujarati for instance. They had no jobs anyway.
What will the NDA do about it?
We must put big money into agriculture. And, instead of erecting barriers, let a representative of the union government go to backward states and directly give money for, say, a thousand roads, a thousand bridges. Cement and steel factories will function. People in the backward states will get employed. If we are able to form a government, my party will focus totally on the construction sector. You can’t imagine what a boost it would give to employment. This is what we would do.
What are the other NDA priorities, should it gain power?
The next most important thing is agriculture and irrigation. The condition of our farmers and our villages has improved where water has reached. Daily wages have risen to Rs 150-Rs 200. Where the farmer is dependent on rain, there is hunger, unemployment and poverty. We must shut out everything else and see that water reaches the farms, from the small lakes, big lakes, the land and the sky. We will see how the condition of our villages and our farmers will improve with water. Let’s take the Bhakra Nangal Dam in Punjab. Water came first to the farms, and then came the schools and the roads.
Where is the water now?
There’s no shortage of water in this country. Bihar has more water than it needs, which is going into the sea. Why can’t we tap and store the water we get from the monsoon?
The JD(U) is a regional party. Many regional parties say Article 356, which imposes Centre’s rule in a state, is misused. Has the time come to repeal Article 356?
No. Article 356 must not be done away with. Circumstances force the use of Article 356 many times. In Jharkhand, they had to implement President’s Rule recently, didn’t they? Anything can happen in the states, like in Punjab in the past. Everything can be sacrificed for the unity of the nation. Article 356 is necessary. People have begun debating it because of its misuse. Now, the Centre has to think many times before imposing President’s Rule.
The sensitivity of Centre-State relations has caused India’s structure to change periodically. The BJP has now promised to create the next state, Telangana, within 100 days of coming to power. Do you think India needs more states?
States like Uttar Pradesh are unmanageable. We must divide them scientifically. We must have a national commission to look into the issue of viable states.
Will this be in your manifesto?
There is no consensus on our manifesto yet. We don’t know whether we will have a common manifesto, or individual ones.
You’ve been in public life long enough to know the corrosive effect of corruption. What do you intend to do?
India would have progressed far more were it not for corruption in every field. People are looting all the way from Delhi to the villages. Take Satyam, for instance. It’s like a man has committed a murder and gone to the police station to confess. Ramalinga Raju was about to be arrested in the US. He knew he would be gone for life. Therefore, he chose to be in an Indian prison. He would never have confessed if he hadn’t been exposed in the US. Raju thought he would suffer like the Enron chiefs. We have the intelligence wing of the finance ministry, the sales tax and income tax wings, the SEBI, and the ministry of company affairs. Have all of them become useless?
The NDA has been in government as well. How come it didn’t look into these things?
We lost. If we were strong and perfect, we wouldn’t have been blamed forever. Why did people vote for the UPA? Because we made mistakes and they taught us a lesson. We have been punished. But is accountability only for the politicians? No one else is accountable in this country. Not the judiciary, not the bureaucracy. Not one bureaucrat has been punished for the Mumbai attack, for instance. Only the political system is accountable in this country. The media is free to do what it wants. They call themselves news channels and run fiction programmes on superstition the whole day. You should call them entertainment channels. Technology has given the media such a big tool, but it is not creating a scientific outlook. Nobody is censoring the Balika Badhu serial (on child marriage).
What about judicial accountability?
Is there any system in the world where the judges decide on themselves. The judges in our country recruit their own relatives and near and dear.
Why hasn’t the JD(U) raised this?
Sharad Yadav raised the issue of former chief justice YK Sabharwal and his sons. He got Delhi demolished. We make the laws in Parliament and we find that the judiciary is making 10 laws a day over what we say in Parliament.
Are you contesting this time?
The party will take a decision on that. There is democracy only in three parties in India: the Left parties, the BJP and the JD(U). Individual writ doesn’t run here.
Monday, June 29, 2009
India wilts as monsoon fears grow
By M H Ahssan
India could be staring at an imminent drought. It's not the delayed national budget, but the specter of a delayed - or, in large measure, denied - monsoon that's giving everyone sleepless nights. The Indian Meteorological Department has stopped short of baneful predictions in an economically stressful year - mindful of the political implications - but the signs are dire.
It has been a heart-breaking June, with the fabled wet wind from the southwest absent in most regions normally on its itinerary. The northern plains are bone dry, with temperatures regularly touching the mid-40s in centigrade. They are the last port of call for the complex, mobile weather system which usually arrives there in July after drenching the vast swathes of peninsular India in June. But the monsoon has not even kept this date, for a number of reasons.
The monsoon season had an ominous start. In May, a spoiler developed in the Bay of Bengal in the shape of Cyclone Aila. Its low pressure core sucked off huge volumes of moisture from the incipient monsoon system building up off the Arabian Sea coast in the southwest, pouring it down in torrential buckets over the eastern seaboard states of Orissa and West Bengal. The residual moisture was funneled up into India's northeast, which saw rains a week or so ahead of schedule.
In the southwest and over the peninsula, the delicate monsoon never really recovered. It mostly hovered around the windward areas of the Western Ghats, the Malabar and Konkan coasts proper, as if hesitating to make an ingress into the mainland because it didn't have enough wind in its sails.
By the end of June, the rains were estimated at 54% below normal levels in these parts, with the deficit reaching 75% in central India. Desperation has began to show, with the state of Andhra Pradesh readying for cloud-seeding and some analysts gloomily offering el-Nino as a possible cause. Those capable of seeing patterns beyond the rational, of course, sought refuge in prayers and rituals, the most exotic instance being the marriage of two frogs organized in Nagpur to propitiate the gods.
At this point, the government finally thought it fit to say something. In a sort pre-emptive measure, it officially downgraded the 2009 monsoon to 93% of normal. This is a "below normal" figure - a cautious trimming of the "near normal" 96% forecast in April.
According to data collected since the 1940s, "normal" is 890 millimeters for the whole season. This naturally varies in different parts of India - which allows for the co-occurrence of bounty and scarcity.
The current reading is that, since June accounts for less than one-fifth of this total, central India may recover in the latter part of the season. What is really worrisome is that India's northwestern foodgrain belt, falling in the states of Haryana and Punjab, is likely to be worst hit. The prediction is that it will get only 81% of the long-term average for the region. That is not counting the 5% to 8% error level which could bring the rainfall level down to 73% of the normal.
The fear of drought - it would be the first in seven years - looms large. With power and water scarcity setting in, tempers in the cities are soaring almost in tandem with the heat.
After the predictions were made public, the first knee-jerk reaction came from Punjab. The state banned the use of air-conditioners in government offices, boards and corporations - despite the sweltering heat - so eight hours of uninterrupted power could be supplied to the farm sector. Some states have begun advertising to persuade farmers to switch crops and are even inviting tenders for cloud-seeding. The government is trying to keep things calm. Agriculture Secretary T Nanda Kumar has acknowledged the concerns but has insisted there is no reason to panic yet. A delayed monsoon could still make up for the loss.
The monsoon, which runs from June through September, is such a big thing in India that a bad year has the potential to topple governments. Even now, 60% of Indian farmland is dependent on rains, not irrigation. It goes beyond the economic, the imprint goes into the very socio-cultural make-up of a nation. From classical culture to kitsch Bollywood romance, nothing is untouched by the the unfailingly iconic moment of the arrival of the rains.
Its failure to arrive, then, is a soul-killer. The image of the ubiquitous poor farmer scanning the skies for a sign of the first dark cloud, framed against a parched piece of land with as many cracks as there are on his face, is both a subject of cliche and a matter of all-too-mundane reality. Governments of India dread nothing more than a bad monsoon. On the scale of enormity, it is no less huge than terrorist attacks or internal turmoil. For economists, who ply a predictive trade as risk-prone as that of weathermen, it's a built-in uncertainty in their forecasts. Their permitted margin of error.
Scientific monsoon prediction in India is an old game. The Met Department was the first national weather service in the world to start operational monsoon prediction work in 1886. This was when a British officer-cum-researcher used the relationship between winter Himalayan snow cover and the monsoon to make predictions. Forecasting the quantum of rainfall for the whole season was found useful for planning purposes. For farmers now, official word on intra-seasonal phenomena such as onset and withdrawal of the monsoon cycle is crucial for planning.
In a nutshell, a truant monsoon plays havoc with the kharif (rain-dependent, summer) crops. The implications can be better understood when seen against what are otherwise mundane statistics - 60% of India's 1.1 billion population survives on agriculture. That they account for only a fifth of India's national income only underlines the peril-ridden nature of their economics.
A dry June means kharif sowing is badly affected as it needs good rains for at least 15 days of June spilling over to July. Kharif crops like paddy, sugarcane, groundnuts, maize and pulses have a significant bearing on the country's food security, while others like cotton shape rural incomes. The spate of suicides by debt-ridden farmers in the past few years was highest in peninsular India's cotton areas.
This is, still, part of the problem. As poor rains lower agricultural output, in a chain effect they will also raise food prices and dent rural demand. Not to speak of the impact it would have on corporate profitability and market sentiment. The corporate sector wants the government to take corrective measures, if there's a problem at hand, so that food prices can be kept in check. Even the prime minister's office is monitoring the reluctant march of the monsoon. The state governments have been called for a meeting on Thursday to thrash out a contingency plan. There's obviously no time to lose.
A drought would affect the central government's finances on both the revenue and expenditure sides. Reduced rural demand in turn impacts industrial demand and consequently growth. Lower collections of all major taxes ranging from personal income to corporate, excise and even customs is a natural corollary. India's relative immunity to the global meltdown was attributed to its large domestic economy - in particular its hitherto under-appreciated rural component, whose robustness, being more insulated from world trends, came to the rescue of the more glamorous cities. It is this sector that gets directly hit by a bad monsoon.
On the other side, there would also be more pressure on the government's social welfare schemes. Drought would most certainly increase demand for the rural employment guarantee scheme and other sops may also be necessary. Besides, the government has promised a National Food Security Bill that would statutorily require the supply of 25 kilograms of rice or wheat at 3 rupees (US$0.06) per kilogram to poor families - a measure that could push up the subsidy bill by millions of rupees. And all this is happening in a year when the government has little maneuverability to spend its way through the crisis.
Little wonder that Minister for Science and Technology Prithviraj Chavan has cautiously admitted, "The southwest monsoon from June to September is likely to be below normal. But we've July and August to make up for the deficit." In concrete terms, bad rains signifies trouble in states like Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, Maharashtra and Orissa, where farmers could face crop loss; in Kerala, Uttarakhand and Punjab it could result in shrinking of reservoirs that would affect power generation and release of water to irrigated tracts.
For instance, the Tehri hydroelectric power station in Uttarakhand supplies power to New Delhi and its hinterland. The water level in its reservoirs has shrunk to dangerously low levels - 741 meters against a normal level of 830 meters during monsoons. The Bhakra dam, the biggest hydroelectric project in northern India, has water flowing in from the mountains. Its reservoir levels remain lower than they were last season.
Elsewhere in the country, the situation is no better. The Central Water Commission has made it known that in 80% of the reservoirs, the water level is below the 10-year average for the season. What has compounded the problem is that there was no snow in the higher ranges and no rain in the lower Himalayan mountains. In other words, with snow-fed rivers too under stress, a grim rain scenario would only complicate matters.
Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee has the toughest job ahead. Scheduled to place a budget before parliament on July 6, he's faced with the task of producing a document that can revive an economy hemmed in by a high budget deficit and a looming food crisis. Actual gross tax revenue already fell by 3% in 2008-09, adding to Mukherjee's troubles.
All in all, it's the kind of crisis management that could require the Manmohan Singh government - voted back to power partly because of the premier's much-touted economic skills and partly because of its welfarism - to empty its coffers and stretch its talent pool.
India could be staring at an imminent drought. It's not the delayed national budget, but the specter of a delayed - or, in large measure, denied - monsoon that's giving everyone sleepless nights. The Indian Meteorological Department has stopped short of baneful predictions in an economically stressful year - mindful of the political implications - but the signs are dire. It has been a heart-breaking June, with the fabled wet wind from the southwest absent in most regions normally on its itinerary. The northern plains are bone dry, with temperatures regularly touching the mid-40s in centigrade. They are the last port of call for the complex, mobile weather system which usually arrives there in July after drenching the vast swathes of peninsular India in June. But the monsoon has not even kept this date, for a number of reasons.
The monsoon season had an ominous start. In May, a spoiler developed in the Bay of Bengal in the shape of Cyclone Aila. Its low pressure core sucked off huge volumes of moisture from the incipient monsoon system building up off the Arabian Sea coast in the southwest, pouring it down in torrential buckets over the eastern seaboard states of Orissa and West Bengal. The residual moisture was funneled up into India's northeast, which saw rains a week or so ahead of schedule.
In the southwest and over the peninsula, the delicate monsoon never really recovered. It mostly hovered around the windward areas of the Western Ghats, the Malabar and Konkan coasts proper, as if hesitating to make an ingress into the mainland because it didn't have enough wind in its sails.
By the end of June, the rains were estimated at 54% below normal levels in these parts, with the deficit reaching 75% in central India. Desperation has began to show, with the state of Andhra Pradesh readying for cloud-seeding and some analysts gloomily offering el-Nino as a possible cause. Those capable of seeing patterns beyond the rational, of course, sought refuge in prayers and rituals, the most exotic instance being the marriage of two frogs organized in Nagpur to propitiate the gods. At this point, the government finally thought it fit to say something. In a sort pre-emptive measure, it officially downgraded the 2009 monsoon to 93% of normal. This is a "below normal" figure - a cautious trimming of the "near normal" 96% forecast in April.
According to data collected since the 1940s, "normal" is 890 millimeters for the whole season. This naturally varies in different parts of India - which allows for the co-occurrence of bounty and scarcity.
The current reading is that, since June accounts for less than one-fifth of this total, central India may recover in the latter part of the season. What is really worrisome is that India's northwestern foodgrain belt, falling in the states of Haryana and Punjab, is likely to be worst hit. The prediction is that it will get only 81% of the long-term average for the region. That is not counting the 5% to 8% error level which could bring the rainfall level down to 73% of the normal.
The fear of drought - it would be the first in seven years - looms large. With power and water scarcity setting in, tempers in the cities are soaring almost in tandem with the heat.
After the predictions were made public, the first knee-jerk reaction came from Punjab. The state banned the use of air-conditioners in government offices, boards and corporations - despite the sweltering heat - so eight hours of uninterrupted power could be supplied to the farm sector. Some states have begun advertising to persuade farmers to switch crops and are even inviting tenders for cloud-seeding. The government is trying to keep things calm. Agriculture Secretary T Nanda Kumar has acknowledged the concerns but has insisted there is no reason to panic yet. A delayed monsoon could still make up for the loss. The monsoon, which runs from June through September, is such a big thing in India that a bad year has the potential to topple governments. Even now, 60% of Indian farmland is dependent on rains, not irrigation. It goes beyond the economic, the imprint goes into the very socio-cultural make-up of a nation. From classical culture to kitsch Bollywood romance, nothing is untouched by the the unfailingly iconic moment of the arrival of the rains.
Its failure to arrive, then, is a soul-killer. The image of the ubiquitous poor farmer scanning the skies for a sign of the first dark cloud, framed against a parched piece of land with as many cracks as there are on his face, is both a subject of cliche and a matter of all-too-mundane reality. Governments of India dread nothing more than a bad monsoon. On the scale of enormity, it is no less huge than terrorist attacks or internal turmoil. For economists, who ply a predictive trade as risk-prone as that of weathermen, it's a built-in uncertainty in their forecasts. Their permitted margin of error.
Scientific monsoon prediction in India is an old game. The Met Department was the first national weather service in the world to start operational monsoon prediction work in 1886. This was when a British officer-cum-researcher used the relationship between winter Himalayan snow cover and the monsoon to make predictions. Forecasting the quantum of rainfall for the whole season was found useful for planning purposes. For farmers now, official word on intra-seasonal phenomena such as onset and withdrawal of the monsoon cycle is crucial for planning.
In a nutshell, a truant monsoon plays havoc with the kharif (rain-dependent, summer) crops. The implications can be better understood when seen against what are otherwise mundane statistics - 60% of India's 1.1 billion population survives on agriculture. That they account for only a fifth of India's national income only underlines the peril-ridden nature of their economics.
A dry June means kharif sowing is badly affected as it needs good rains for at least 15 days of June spilling over to July. Kharif crops like paddy, sugarcane, groundnuts, maize and pulses have a significant bearing on the country's food security, while others like cotton shape rural incomes. The spate of suicides by debt-ridden farmers in the past few years was highest in peninsular India's cotton areas.
This is, still, part of the problem. As poor rains lower agricultural output, in a chain effect they will also raise food prices and dent rural demand. Not to speak of the impact it would have on corporate profitability and market sentiment. The corporate sector wants the government to take corrective measures, if there's a problem at hand, so that food prices can be kept in check. Even the prime minister's office is monitoring the reluctant march of the monsoon. The state governments have been called for a meeting on Thursday to thrash out a contingency plan. There's obviously no time to lose.
A drought would affect the central government's finances on both the revenue and expenditure sides. Reduced rural demand in turn impacts industrial demand and consequently growth. Lower collections of all major taxes ranging from personal income to corporate, excise and even customs is a natural corollary. India's relative immunity to the global meltdown was attributed to its large domestic economy - in particular its hitherto under-appreciated rural component, whose robustness, being more insulated from world trends, came to the rescue of the more glamorous cities. It is this sector that gets directly hit by a bad monsoon.
On the other side, there would also be more pressure on the government's social welfare schemes. Drought would most certainly increase demand for the rural employment guarantee scheme and other sops may also be necessary. Besides, the government has promised a National Food Security Bill that would statutorily require the supply of 25 kilograms of rice or wheat at 3 rupees (US$0.06) per kilogram to poor families - a measure that could push up the subsidy bill by millions of rupees. And all this is happening in a year when the government has little maneuverability to spend its way through the crisis.
Little wonder that Minister for Science and Technology Prithviraj Chavan has cautiously admitted, "The southwest monsoon from June to September is likely to be below normal. But we've July and August to make up for the deficit." In concrete terms, bad rains signifies trouble in states like Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, Maharashtra and Orissa, where farmers could face crop loss; in Kerala, Uttarakhand and Punjab it could result in shrinking of reservoirs that would affect power generation and release of water to irrigated tracts.
For instance, the Tehri hydroelectric power station in Uttarakhand supplies power to New Delhi and its hinterland. The water level in its reservoirs has shrunk to dangerously low levels - 741 meters against a normal level of 830 meters during monsoons. The Bhakra dam, the biggest hydroelectric project in northern India, has water flowing in from the mountains. Its reservoir levels remain lower than they were last season.
Elsewhere in the country, the situation is no better. The Central Water Commission has made it known that in 80% of the reservoirs, the water level is below the 10-year average for the season. What has compounded the problem is that there was no snow in the higher ranges and no rain in the lower Himalayan mountains. In other words, with snow-fed rivers too under stress, a grim rain scenario would only complicate matters.
Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee has the toughest job ahead. Scheduled to place a budget before parliament on July 6, he's faced with the task of producing a document that can revive an economy hemmed in by a high budget deficit and a looming food crisis. Actual gross tax revenue already fell by 3% in 2008-09, adding to Mukherjee's troubles.
All in all, it's the kind of crisis management that could require the Manmohan Singh government - voted back to power partly because of the premier's much-touted economic skills and partly because of its welfarism - to empty its coffers and stretch its talent pool.
Friday, June 09, 2017
India’s Diabetes Epidemic Is Making A Worrying Demographic Shift
The Indian Council of Medical Research-India Diabetes (ICMR-INDIAB) study is the largest nationally representative study of diabetes in India and includes data from 57,000 people across 15 states; glucose tolerance tests were performed on participants to diagnose diabetes and pre-diabetes. The study was published in the medical journal Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology late on Wednesday night.
Monday, February 16, 2015
IPL-8 Auction: Yuvraj, Karthik And Mathews 'Top-3' Buys
Left-hand all-rounder Yuvraj Singh and wicketkeeper-batsman Dinesh Karthik were sold for big bucks in the Indian Premier League (IPL) auction held on Monday ahead of the eighth season.
Sri Lankan captain Angelo Mathews and Indian leg-spinner Amit Mishra also fetched big money in the auction.
Friday, June 21, 2013
Why Pakistan Is Desperate For Lashkar-e-Taiba Connect?
In the weeks after the Kargil war, as hundreds of Lashkar-e-Taiba cadre massed for what would become the most murderous years of the Kashmir jihad, Hafiz Muhammad Saeed issued a hate-filled manifesto for war. “The Hindu is a mean enemy”, he said in a speech,“and the proper way to deal with him is the one adopted by our forefathers, who crushed them by force. We need to do the same”. In later speeches, he would speak of conquering India.
Tuesday, August 02, 2016
Is This The BJP-RSS Idea Of Inculcating Education And Protecting Children?'
By M H AHSSAN | INNLIVE
Congress says restore girls to parents, CPI(M)’s Brinda Karat says arrest those involved in trafficking racket.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s promise of ‘Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao’ took a beating today in the light of the Outlook cover story on RSS affiliated organisations trafficking tribal girls from Assam under the garb of educating them.
The Congress came down heavily on the Modi government today. It questioned the government, the BJP and the Sangh Parivar on whether trafficking children in the age group of three to eleven from five border districts of Assam, is the Modi government’s fulfillment of ‘Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao’.
Monday, May 11, 2009
A Legend of Lustful Lungi
By Faiz Al-Najdi
Lungis are generally worn in most parts of the Indo-Pak Subcontinent; that is in almost all parts of India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Pakistan. In Pakistan, however, it is mostly donned in the Punjab (and in some parts of Sindh), where it is generally called Dhoti. In the Indian & Pakistani parts of Punjab, unlike other places of the Subcontinent, Lungis are worn by both the genders. Men wear a vest like piece at the top, while women wear a blouse over Dhoti, which is the other name of Lungi in these regions. Men’s Lungi is normally of plain or checked cotton while the women Dhoti & blouse are usually multi-colored with some fancy embroidery on it. Now days, some trendy new fashion designs of women Dhoti & blouse, in very appealing & attractive style, are also in vogue.
Nonetheless here in Saudi Arabia conspicuously prominent amongst all, sported with Lungi, are the Bangladeshis and the Keralite Indians. For both thee people, Lungi is a National Dress sort of thing. The Keralites are from Kerala, a southern State of India on the Arabian Sea. They are also known as Malabaris or Malyalees and even Mallus, as their short title; because of Malyalam language that they speak.
Lungis are also seen clothed by both men & women folks in the South East Asian countries namely: Burma, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines. However, in these regions, Lungis are called “sarong”. They are kaleidoscopic in color & design having Batik touch; are also very attractive to look at, especially those dressed by the young women. Some special brands are even worn by the Yemenis in the Arabian peninsula.
For those of you who don’t have the slightest idea as to what really is a Lungi, it suffices to say that it is like ankle-length skirt sort of dress (stitched & enclosed or unstitched & open), that is tied & tucked around the waists. Men normally wear the same in combination with a shirt and/or a cotton vest or simply topless, especially during the summer. Women wear a blouse or a bush-shirt on top. By the way, a lungi is a very versatile attire; when worn in full it is a formal dress acceptable in the society at all places including parties, offices or alike. Nonetheless, it can be lifted & folded & tucked-in easily to convert it to a mini-Lungi or a short for use in the sports, or for any other purpose wherein shorts would be forthcoming. You can also pull/raise the ends of the Lungi around and pass them between your legs & tuck them up into the part that’s tied around waist already, making it a kind of ballooney-shorts. In short, Lungis can be worn in a number of ways & combinations as the occasion may demand.
The Malabaris are known to be immensely passionate about their Lungis. It is an old maxim that a person is known by the company that he keeps, however, a Malabari is known by the way he wears his Lungi. If a Malabari is holding the rim of his Lungi folded by raising it (to make it like a short), its time to part with him; for it is clearly a danger signal. A Pakistani drama writer/actor Umar Sharif once stirred a furor in Dubai when he picked on this issue of Malabari vis-Ã -vis Lungi. According to him, it is quite a sight seeing a Malabari with his Lungi on, especially during summer time in the Gulf.
The summer season in the Gulf & Arabia is a unique experience and is best described by a western amateur writer, Lucy Beney in her article “Sun Scream in Oman” published in Destination - the on-line magazine for Shell families. She remarks, “we know summer is on the way when the water coming out from the cold water tap is hotter than that coming from the hot water tap”. According to her (a British herself), “sun here is searing and unforgiving, from early morning until sundown”. She further continues in a candid expression, “forget the midday sun, in here; only mad dogs and Englishwomen (and ok, Dutch women too) go out in the sun after 8:00 am”. Given the narration above, it should not be difficult now to imagine what havoc is unleashed when heat plus humidity conjoin together here in Dubai; it should be one hell of experience, surely.
Coming back thence to Umar Sharif’s surmise on the Malabari & Lungi issue. According to him, as the mercury rises in the thermometer so does the lungi of a Malabari. One litmus test of heat outside is the temperature of water coming out from cold water tap (as described by Lucy Beney above) and the other, more reliable so, is the consequential raising/lifting of the Malabari Lungi. So much so, the Emirate (purportedly by Umar Sharif) issues a caution wherein it is prohibitive to look towards a Malabari during June/July. This is the time of the year when the summer heat in the region is at its peak; often crossing 50 degree Celcius. This caution is for obvious reason, as according to CNN, “the ensuing images, of a Malabari with Lungi rising above forbidden limit, could be very disturbing for some”.
Lungi is supposedly a barometer of the mood of a Malabri as well. When the mood mellows a Malabari starts to lift/raise his Lungi. Interestingly enough, he does the same thing in case of otherwise also. Nevertheless, the question remains, “how do you know what is really actuating a Malabari when you see him lifting/raising his Lungi. Is he doing this in good gesture or something turned him off”? I asked this from a Malabari friend of mine. “You got to live with them for quite sometime to understand that”, he replied. Nonetheless, he continued, “it’s a matter of speed only; if its being done out of some anger, it will be lifted in no second and incase of otherwise it will take a little while before Lungi gets lifted, its done slowly or gradually so to say”. My friend gave an example to help me understand this very delicate & sensitive issue. He said, “in a village if you scorn a child, he would immediately lift his Lungi, beyond permissible limit, show his bottom and run away”. On the other hand, he continued, “if you demonstrate some affection towards him, he will start to giggle & chuckle while simultaneously his lungi continues to be lifted slowly & gradually; to a decent level this time, of course”. The same goes for the elderly; be it a Keralite in his native Kerala or overseas. Sounds interesting, no?
There is much water in the lowlands of Kerala and many rivers pass through it coming from the mountainous western Ghats flowing into the Arabian Sea. Both hot and moist climate & water make it possible for mosquitoes to thrive in here. In the villages therefore, many use “mosquito net” to ward off the deadly mosquitoes during the nighttime sleep. Those who can not afford a “mosquito net” have a handy alternative available to them. They simply lift their lungis and cover the face for a peaceful nighttime slumber, sans company of unfriendly mosquito, of course. Moreover, it is a common sight to see a Keralite, while taking a stroll, to loosen the knot and wave the ends of the Lungi thus using it as a fan to get little breeze in the sultry environ.
Lungis are also used to express jubilant emotions during a football match. Elsewhere, when a goal is scored the players & the fans alike remove their jersey/T-shirt as an expression of joy. The Keralites simply lift their Lungis (some times beyond the permissible limit) and start hopping out of jubilation at the same. In addition, occasionally a streaker takes to the ground by lifting his Lungi (right up to his head) to the joy & applause of the crowd, some of whom are also seen skipping with their Lungis lifted already, beyond the permissible limits. I have seen this striking display of emotions in Bangladesh also during the Agha Khan Gold Cup football match in Dhaka. In Arabia, however, they lift their Thob (a long one-piece shirt) for the same purpose; this is characterized, as “within permissible limit” for luckily, unlike the Lungi, there happens to be a Pyjama under the same. So guys, luxuriate in the lust of a lustful Lungi!
Lungis are generally worn in most parts of the Indo-Pak Subcontinent; that is in almost all parts of India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Pakistan. In Pakistan, however, it is mostly donned in the Punjab (and in some parts of Sindh), where it is generally called Dhoti. In the Indian & Pakistani parts of Punjab, unlike other places of the Subcontinent, Lungis are worn by both the genders. Men wear a vest like piece at the top, while women wear a blouse over Dhoti, which is the other name of Lungi in these regions. Men’s Lungi is normally of plain or checked cotton while the women Dhoti & blouse are usually multi-colored with some fancy embroidery on it. Now days, some trendy new fashion designs of women Dhoti & blouse, in very appealing & attractive style, are also in vogue.Nonetheless here in Saudi Arabia conspicuously prominent amongst all, sported with Lungi, are the Bangladeshis and the Keralite Indians. For both thee people, Lungi is a National Dress sort of thing. The Keralites are from Kerala, a southern State of India on the Arabian Sea. They are also known as Malabaris or Malyalees and even Mallus, as their short title; because of Malyalam language that they speak.
Lungis are also seen clothed by both men & women folks in the South East Asian countries namely: Burma, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines. However, in these regions, Lungis are called “sarong”. They are kaleidoscopic in color & design having Batik touch; are also very attractive to look at, especially those dressed by the young women. Some special brands are even worn by the Yemenis in the Arabian peninsula.
For those of you who don’t have the slightest idea as to what really is a Lungi, it suffices to say that it is like ankle-length skirt sort of dress (stitched & enclosed or unstitched & open), that is tied & tucked around the waists. Men normally wear the same in combination with a shirt and/or a cotton vest or simply topless, especially during the summer. Women wear a blouse or a bush-shirt on top. By the way, a lungi is a very versatile attire; when worn in full it is a formal dress acceptable in the society at all places including parties, offices or alike. Nonetheless, it can be lifted & folded & tucked-in easily to convert it to a mini-Lungi or a short for use in the sports, or for any other purpose wherein shorts would be forthcoming. You can also pull/raise the ends of the Lungi around and pass them between your legs & tuck them up into the part that’s tied around waist already, making it a kind of ballooney-shorts. In short, Lungis can be worn in a number of ways & combinations as the occasion may demand.
The Malabaris are known to be immensely passionate about their Lungis. It is an old maxim that a person is known by the company that he keeps, however, a Malabari is known by the way he wears his Lungi. If a Malabari is holding the rim of his Lungi folded by raising it (to make it like a short), its time to part with him; for it is clearly a danger signal. A Pakistani drama writer/actor Umar Sharif once stirred a furor in Dubai when he picked on this issue of Malabari vis-Ã -vis Lungi. According to him, it is quite a sight seeing a Malabari with his Lungi on, especially during summer time in the Gulf.
The summer season in the Gulf & Arabia is a unique experience and is best described by a western amateur writer, Lucy Beney in her article “Sun Scream in Oman” published in Destination - the on-line magazine for Shell families. She remarks, “we know summer is on the way when the water coming out from the cold water tap is hotter than that coming from the hot water tap”. According to her (a British herself), “sun here is searing and unforgiving, from early morning until sundown”. She further continues in a candid expression, “forget the midday sun, in here; only mad dogs and Englishwomen (and ok, Dutch women too) go out in the sun after 8:00 am”. Given the narration above, it should not be difficult now to imagine what havoc is unleashed when heat plus humidity conjoin together here in Dubai; it should be one hell of experience, surely.
Coming back thence to Umar Sharif’s surmise on the Malabari & Lungi issue. According to him, as the mercury rises in the thermometer so does the lungi of a Malabari. One litmus test of heat outside is the temperature of water coming out from cold water tap (as described by Lucy Beney above) and the other, more reliable so, is the consequential raising/lifting of the Malabari Lungi. So much so, the Emirate (purportedly by Umar Sharif) issues a caution wherein it is prohibitive to look towards a Malabari during June/July. This is the time of the year when the summer heat in the region is at its peak; often crossing 50 degree Celcius. This caution is for obvious reason, as according to CNN, “the ensuing images, of a Malabari with Lungi rising above forbidden limit, could be very disturbing for some”.
Lungi is supposedly a barometer of the mood of a Malabri as well. When the mood mellows a Malabari starts to lift/raise his Lungi. Interestingly enough, he does the same thing in case of otherwise also. Nevertheless, the question remains, “how do you know what is really actuating a Malabari when you see him lifting/raising his Lungi. Is he doing this in good gesture or something turned him off”? I asked this from a Malabari friend of mine. “You got to live with them for quite sometime to understand that”, he replied. Nonetheless, he continued, “it’s a matter of speed only; if its being done out of some anger, it will be lifted in no second and incase of otherwise it will take a little while before Lungi gets lifted, its done slowly or gradually so to say”. My friend gave an example to help me understand this very delicate & sensitive issue. He said, “in a village if you scorn a child, he would immediately lift his Lungi, beyond permissible limit, show his bottom and run away”. On the other hand, he continued, “if you demonstrate some affection towards him, he will start to giggle & chuckle while simultaneously his lungi continues to be lifted slowly & gradually; to a decent level this time, of course”. The same goes for the elderly; be it a Keralite in his native Kerala or overseas. Sounds interesting, no?
There is much water in the lowlands of Kerala and many rivers pass through it coming from the mountainous western Ghats flowing into the Arabian Sea. Both hot and moist climate & water make it possible for mosquitoes to thrive in here. In the villages therefore, many use “mosquito net” to ward off the deadly mosquitoes during the nighttime sleep. Those who can not afford a “mosquito net” have a handy alternative available to them. They simply lift their lungis and cover the face for a peaceful nighttime slumber, sans company of unfriendly mosquito, of course. Moreover, it is a common sight to see a Keralite, while taking a stroll, to loosen the knot and wave the ends of the Lungi thus using it as a fan to get little breeze in the sultry environ.
Lungis are also used to express jubilant emotions during a football match. Elsewhere, when a goal is scored the players & the fans alike remove their jersey/T-shirt as an expression of joy. The Keralites simply lift their Lungis (some times beyond the permissible limit) and start hopping out of jubilation at the same. In addition, occasionally a streaker takes to the ground by lifting his Lungi (right up to his head) to the joy & applause of the crowd, some of whom are also seen skipping with their Lungis lifted already, beyond the permissible limits. I have seen this striking display of emotions in Bangladesh also during the Agha Khan Gold Cup football match in Dhaka. In Arabia, however, they lift their Thob (a long one-piece shirt) for the same purpose; this is characterized, as “within permissible limit” for luckily, unlike the Lungi, there happens to be a Pyjama under the same. So guys, luxuriate in the lust of a lustful Lungi!
Sunday, May 19, 2013
INDIAN RAPES HIGHLIGHT 'COLONIAL' POLICE PRACTICES
Harsh police handling of public protests erupting across India over a spate of sensational rapes since December has resulted in renewed demands to reform a force that retains the repressive features of its colonial origins.
Last month a bench of the Supreme Court, angered by police brutality on women protesting against rapes in the capital, New Delhi, and other north Indian states, demanded to know the status of compliance with rulings the apex court had made on police reforms six years ago.
Monday, February 02, 2009
Five newborns die in Patiala incubator fire
By Suhasi Khanna
In a horrible tragedy that smacked of tragic medical negligence, five newborns, not even a week old, were killed and another five severely burned after a short-circuit sparked a blaze in a hospital nursery in Patiala on Saturday. One infant was rushed to the PGI hospital in Chandigarh with 40% burns.
The fire at the state-run Rajendra hospital was apparently caused by the overloading of a lone plug from which power was sourced to photo-therapy unit used to treat babies for jaundice.
Heaters and other electrical gadgets were also connected to the plug in the room where the infants, seven boys and three girls, were undergoing treatment. Authorities said five babies died instantaneously as the glasstopped unit came crushing down on them. Soon after, fire engulfed the section. A blast was heard moments before the section plunged into darkness.
Minister quits over incubator blaze
A day after five newborns were killed in a fire that raged through a hospital nursery in Patiala, Punjab medical education and research minister Tikshan Sud resigned on Sunday taking responsibility for the tragedy. The government also suspended three employees, including a lady doctor, of the Rajindra Hospital where the incident took place.
Sud sent his resignation to Balbir Punj, in-charge of BJP in Punjab, triggering a row within the ruling SAD-BJP coalition in the state, with some saying that the minister should have submitted his letter to CM Parkash Singh Badal.
Punj, however, said, “It wasn’t Parkash Singh Badal who made him minister. It was BJP which had recommended his name. We are looking into the details of the incident after which the party will take a decision whether to forward the resignation to the CM.’’
Badal’s media adviser Harcharan Bains said the CM’s office hadn’t received any communication either from Sud or BJP yet.
After the suspension orders of Dr Neha Sharma, nurse Sheela and sweeper Satya reached the hospital, an angry medical staff went on strike, demanding action against the medical superintendent, instead of the three employees who claimed to have battled the flames to rescue five infants. Interestingly, SAD leader and party candidate for the Patiala Lok Sabha election Prem Singh Chandumajra had announced awards for the three suspended employees for their efforts to save the newborns. Sud, however, said they were suspended on the basis of a probe by the director, research and medical education.
In a horrible tragedy that smacked of tragic medical negligence, five newborns, not even a week old, were killed and another five severely burned after a short-circuit sparked a blaze in a hospital nursery in Patiala on Saturday. One infant was rushed to the PGI hospital in Chandigarh with 40% burns.
The fire at the state-run Rajendra hospital was apparently caused by the overloading of a lone plug from which power was sourced to photo-therapy unit used to treat babies for jaundice.
Heaters and other electrical gadgets were also connected to the plug in the room where the infants, seven boys and three girls, were undergoing treatment. Authorities said five babies died instantaneously as the glasstopped unit came crushing down on them. Soon after, fire engulfed the section. A blast was heard moments before the section plunged into darkness.
Minister quits over incubator blaze
A day after five newborns were killed in a fire that raged through a hospital nursery in Patiala, Punjab medical education and research minister Tikshan Sud resigned on Sunday taking responsibility for the tragedy. The government also suspended three employees, including a lady doctor, of the Rajindra Hospital where the incident took place.
Sud sent his resignation to Balbir Punj, in-charge of BJP in Punjab, triggering a row within the ruling SAD-BJP coalition in the state, with some saying that the minister should have submitted his letter to CM Parkash Singh Badal.
Punj, however, said, “It wasn’t Parkash Singh Badal who made him minister. It was BJP which had recommended his name. We are looking into the details of the incident after which the party will take a decision whether to forward the resignation to the CM.’’
Badal’s media adviser Harcharan Bains said the CM’s office hadn’t received any communication either from Sud or BJP yet.
After the suspension orders of Dr Neha Sharma, nurse Sheela and sweeper Satya reached the hospital, an angry medical staff went on strike, demanding action against the medical superintendent, instead of the three employees who claimed to have battled the flames to rescue five infants. Interestingly, SAD leader and party candidate for the Patiala Lok Sabha election Prem Singh Chandumajra had announced awards for the three suspended employees for their efforts to save the newborns. Sud, however, said they were suspended on the basis of a probe by the director, research and medical education.
Friday, September 18, 2015
Special Report: Another Meat Debate - Poor Pakistani's Are being Sold 'Horse And Donkey' Flesh?
In a country where class mobility is inaccessible to most, questionable approximations of all sorts burgeon. The Pakistani love affair with meat has been a long and enduring one. In decades past, every neighbourhood, rich or poor, featured a butcher shop, whose front prominently featured a fresh carcass swinging from a hook. Housewives would debate quality with the butcher or argue over the price or the freshness or the cut.
Friday, January 09, 2009
Feature: Delicious Street Food
By Golden Reejsinghani
Food sold in these great metropolitans streets has gained more popularity then some of the swanky restaurants doting the city because the street food is not only irresistibly delicious but also affordable.
Whole Mumbai is dotted with people making food in the make shift stalls dotting the streets. On reaching hill road bandra your olfactory senses take control of your legs and lead you inexorably towards the aromatic aromas coming from the Elko arcade the famous shopping arcade of Bandra.Here you can taste the mind blowing Pani puri which is famous for its tangy taste which just explodes in your mouth with all its glory?
Other eats available here are dahi wadas, ragda patties, samosas, Pani Puri with tikhi mithi chutneys and tikis which you can wash down with cold and namkeen lassi. Or spiced sugar cane juice iced to perfection.
A little ahead is the Dahipuri wala who sells out of this world Dahi puri combined with sweet and sour chutneys and garnished with coriander leaves. There are also piping hot medu wadas, dosas and idlis sold here.
These stalls not only get page 3 people visiting the shopping arcades but people from all walks of life come to eat here. From lowly to the richest, from ordinary people to the businessmen to the filmstars.For everyone this is a Mecca of fine eating. From here you can walk up to linking road Bandra a road running close to M.M.K College is full of yummy street food. Here you get fantastic sandwiches. Which are dear to every young collegians heart? Every college student is seen converging on the stalls either munching sandwiches or piping hot vada pavs served with fiery hot chutney which can bring tears to your eyes and fire to your mouth.
From here you can go down to Bade Miyan behind Taj Mahal hotel whose kebabs are famous throughout Mumbai all the glitterati of Mumbai park their cars outside the stall and savor scrumptious kebabs and baida roti.
Bade Miyan is famous because of its kebabs. Like him Noor Mohammadi in Bhendi Bazaar is famous for the ‘ Naali Nihari’.Naali Nihari is a thick spicy soup which is made from Buffallo marrow cooked in a variety of spices and loads of ghee. It is served in the mornings with naans.People start their day in Bhendi Bazaar with Naali Nihari and Naan.
If you are a die hard egeterian then you should make a trip to church gate station here, you can savor a vast variety of omelet’s which are served here piping hot with pav or bread these will make your day once you have eaten them.
If you are the one who loves ice creams then you should head to the chow patty beach here you can get a variety of tasty ice creams available in many tasty concoctions like the berry,kachha kery, cream butter scotch etc.You ask for the flavor and you get it here
If you want hearty food then head to Sion Koliwada which can be termed as mini Punjab you get here delicious and enticingly flavored koliwada fish, prawn fry and tandoori chicken denizens from all over Mumbai flock here to get a taste of Punjab.
But the paradise of street food lovers is the Khau Galli at Kalbadevi.You get everything to eat here right from piping hot kachoris accompanied with sweet and spicy hot chutney to sizzling samosas chili hot pakodas to crunchy pattice,delicious dosas with sambar to steaming soft idlis with coconut chutney. Spiced Papads,tangy bhelpuris and many other chaats savories and sweets are available here prepared just in front of you and served to you with spicy chutneys and sauces and what is more you get all these delicacies at affordable rates.
You can wash these down with a number of flavored sherbets, juices, smoothies and ice creams. Mumbai is chockfull of street food every locality has developed its own khau galli specific to the character of population living there Street food is not only dirt cheap but also very hygienic.
These days the owners of food stalls have become very hygiene conscious because they know if they play hanky panky with the people they will loose their business besides unlike restaurants they serve freshest and best food.
They do not keep the food for the next day to serve in the buffet which mostly consists of dishes made on the previous day. I can write reams about this food but because I wanted to keep this precise I have written about the best and outstanding buys.
Food sold in these great metropolitans streets has gained more popularity then some of the swanky restaurants doting the city because the street food is not only irresistibly delicious but also affordable.
Whole Mumbai is dotted with people making food in the make shift stalls dotting the streets. On reaching hill road bandra your olfactory senses take control of your legs and lead you inexorably towards the aromatic aromas coming from the Elko arcade the famous shopping arcade of Bandra.Here you can taste the mind blowing Pani puri which is famous for its tangy taste which just explodes in your mouth with all its glory?
Other eats available here are dahi wadas, ragda patties, samosas, Pani Puri with tikhi mithi chutneys and tikis which you can wash down with cold and namkeen lassi. Or spiced sugar cane juice iced to perfection.
A little ahead is the Dahipuri wala who sells out of this world Dahi puri combined with sweet and sour chutneys and garnished with coriander leaves. There are also piping hot medu wadas, dosas and idlis sold here.
These stalls not only get page 3 people visiting the shopping arcades but people from all walks of life come to eat here. From lowly to the richest, from ordinary people to the businessmen to the filmstars.For everyone this is a Mecca of fine eating. From here you can walk up to linking road Bandra a road running close to M.M.K College is full of yummy street food. Here you get fantastic sandwiches. Which are dear to every young collegians heart? Every college student is seen converging on the stalls either munching sandwiches or piping hot vada pavs served with fiery hot chutney which can bring tears to your eyes and fire to your mouth.
From here you can go down to Bade Miyan behind Taj Mahal hotel whose kebabs are famous throughout Mumbai all the glitterati of Mumbai park their cars outside the stall and savor scrumptious kebabs and baida roti.
Bade Miyan is famous because of its kebabs. Like him Noor Mohammadi in Bhendi Bazaar is famous for the ‘ Naali Nihari’.Naali Nihari is a thick spicy soup which is made from Buffallo marrow cooked in a variety of spices and loads of ghee. It is served in the mornings with naans.People start their day in Bhendi Bazaar with Naali Nihari and Naan.
If you are a die hard egeterian then you should make a trip to church gate station here, you can savor a vast variety of omelet’s which are served here piping hot with pav or bread these will make your day once you have eaten them.
If you are the one who loves ice creams then you should head to the chow patty beach here you can get a variety of tasty ice creams available in many tasty concoctions like the berry,kachha kery, cream butter scotch etc.You ask for the flavor and you get it here
If you want hearty food then head to Sion Koliwada which can be termed as mini Punjab you get here delicious and enticingly flavored koliwada fish, prawn fry and tandoori chicken denizens from all over Mumbai flock here to get a taste of Punjab.
But the paradise of street food lovers is the Khau Galli at Kalbadevi.You get everything to eat here right from piping hot kachoris accompanied with sweet and spicy hot chutney to sizzling samosas chili hot pakodas to crunchy pattice,delicious dosas with sambar to steaming soft idlis with coconut chutney. Spiced Papads,tangy bhelpuris and many other chaats savories and sweets are available here prepared just in front of you and served to you with spicy chutneys and sauces and what is more you get all these delicacies at affordable rates.
You can wash these down with a number of flavored sherbets, juices, smoothies and ice creams. Mumbai is chockfull of street food every locality has developed its own khau galli specific to the character of population living there Street food is not only dirt cheap but also very hygienic.
These days the owners of food stalls have become very hygiene conscious because they know if they play hanky panky with the people they will loose their business besides unlike restaurants they serve freshest and best food.
They do not keep the food for the next day to serve in the buffet which mostly consists of dishes made on the previous day. I can write reams about this food but because I wanted to keep this precise I have written about the best and outstanding buys.
Thursday, May 08, 2014
Battle Of Benares: How To Decode Modi’s Poll Strategy!
ELECTION ANALYSIS It’s not new for a political leader of national stature to contest from two seats. Especially, when the leader is projected as prime ministerial candidate, then contesting from two seats should be considered a very normal phenomena, and politically it’s a wise decision. But the question that caught everybody’s attention is that why Benares was picked as contesting seat for Narendra Modi, the prime ministerial candidate of the BJP. Many people in Benares think that after winning, Modi would choose to retain his Vadodara seat from Gujarat, his home land and he would hardly come back to the city of temples to serve its people.
Friday, January 09, 2009
Feature: Delicious Street Food
By Golden Reejsinghani
Food sold in these great metropolitans streets has gained more popularity then some of the swanky restaurants doting the city because the street food is not only irresistibly delicious but also affordable.
Whole Mumbai is dotted with people making food in the make shift stalls dotting the streets. On reaching hill road bandra your olfactory senses take control of your legs and lead you inexorably towards the aromatic aromas coming from the Elko arcade the famous shopping arcade of Bandra.Here you can taste the mind blowing Pani puri which is famous for its tangy taste which just explodes in your mouth with all its glory?
Other eats available here are dahi wadas, ragda patties, samosas, Pani Puri with tikhi mithi chutneys and tikis which you can wash down with cold and namkeen lassi. Or spiced sugar cane juice iced to perfection.
A little ahead is the Dahipuri wala who sells out of this world Dahi puri combined with sweet and sour chutneys and garnished with coriander leaves. There are also piping hot medu wadas, dosas and idlis sold here.
These stalls not only get page 3 people visiting the shopping arcades but people from all walks of life come to eat here. From lowly to the richest, from ordinary people to the businessmen to the filmstars.For everyone this is a Mecca of fine eating. From here you can walk up to linking road Bandra a road running close to M.M.K College is full of yummy street food. Here you get fantastic sandwiches. Which are dear to every young collegians heart? Every college student is seen converging on the stalls either munching sandwiches or piping hot vada pavs served with fiery hot chutney which can bring tears to your eyes and fire to your mouth.
From here you can go down to Bade Miyan behind Taj Mahal hotel whose kebabs are famous throughout Mumbai all the glitterati of Mumbai park their cars outside the stall and savor scrumptious kebabs and baida roti.
Bade Miyan is famous because of its kebabs. Like him Noor Mohammadi in Bhendi Bazaar is famous for the ‘ Naali Nihari’.Naali Nihari is a thick spicy soup which is made from Buffallo marrow cooked in a variety of spices and loads of ghee. It is served in the mornings with naans.People start their day in Bhendi Bazaar with Naali Nihari and Naan.
If you are a die hard egeterian then you should make a trip to church gate station here, you can savor a vast variety of omelet’s which are served here piping hot with pav or bread these will make your day once you have eaten them.
If you are the one who loves ice creams then you should head to the chow patty beach here you can get a variety of tasty ice creams available in many tasty concoctions like the berry,kachha kery, cream butter scotch etc.You ask for the flavor and you get it here
If you want hearty food then head to Sion Koliwada which can be termed as mini Punjab you get here delicious and enticingly flavored koliwada fish, prawn fry and tandoori chicken denizens from all over Mumbai flock here to get a taste of Punjab.
But the paradise of street food lovers is the Khau Galli at Kalbadevi.You get everything to eat here right from piping hot kachoris accompanied with sweet and spicy hot chutney to sizzling samosas chili hot pakodas to crunchy pattice,delicious dosas with sambar to steaming soft idlis with coconut chutney. Spiced Papads,tangy bhelpuris and many other chaats savories and sweets are available here prepared just in front of you and served to you with spicy chutneys and sauces and what is more you get all these delicacies at affordable rates.
You can wash these down with a number of flavored sherbets, juices, smoothies and ice creams. Mumbai is chockfull of street food every locality has developed its own khau galli specific to the character of population living there Street food is not only dirt cheap but also very hygienic.
These days the owners of food stalls have become very hygiene conscious because they know if they play hanky panky with the people they will loose their business besides unlike restaurants they serve freshest and best food.
They do not keep the food for the next day to serve in the buffet which mostly consists of dishes made on the previous day. I can write reams about this food but because I wanted to keep this precise I have written about the best and outstanding buys.
Food sold in these great metropolitans streets has gained more popularity then some of the swanky restaurants doting the city because the street food is not only irresistibly delicious but also affordable.
Whole Mumbai is dotted with people making food in the make shift stalls dotting the streets. On reaching hill road bandra your olfactory senses take control of your legs and lead you inexorably towards the aromatic aromas coming from the Elko arcade the famous shopping arcade of Bandra.Here you can taste the mind blowing Pani puri which is famous for its tangy taste which just explodes in your mouth with all its glory?
Other eats available here are dahi wadas, ragda patties, samosas, Pani Puri with tikhi mithi chutneys and tikis which you can wash down with cold and namkeen lassi. Or spiced sugar cane juice iced to perfection.
A little ahead is the Dahipuri wala who sells out of this world Dahi puri combined with sweet and sour chutneys and garnished with coriander leaves. There are also piping hot medu wadas, dosas and idlis sold here.
These stalls not only get page 3 people visiting the shopping arcades but people from all walks of life come to eat here. From lowly to the richest, from ordinary people to the businessmen to the filmstars.For everyone this is a Mecca of fine eating. From here you can walk up to linking road Bandra a road running close to M.M.K College is full of yummy street food. Here you get fantastic sandwiches. Which are dear to every young collegians heart? Every college student is seen converging on the stalls either munching sandwiches or piping hot vada pavs served with fiery hot chutney which can bring tears to your eyes and fire to your mouth.
From here you can go down to Bade Miyan behind Taj Mahal hotel whose kebabs are famous throughout Mumbai all the glitterati of Mumbai park their cars outside the stall and savor scrumptious kebabs and baida roti.
Bade Miyan is famous because of its kebabs. Like him Noor Mohammadi in Bhendi Bazaar is famous for the ‘ Naali Nihari’.Naali Nihari is a thick spicy soup which is made from Buffallo marrow cooked in a variety of spices and loads of ghee. It is served in the mornings with naans.People start their day in Bhendi Bazaar with Naali Nihari and Naan.
If you are a die hard egeterian then you should make a trip to church gate station here, you can savor a vast variety of omelet’s which are served here piping hot with pav or bread these will make your day once you have eaten them.
If you are the one who loves ice creams then you should head to the chow patty beach here you can get a variety of tasty ice creams available in many tasty concoctions like the berry,kachha kery, cream butter scotch etc.You ask for the flavor and you get it here
If you want hearty food then head to Sion Koliwada which can be termed as mini Punjab you get here delicious and enticingly flavored koliwada fish, prawn fry and tandoori chicken denizens from all over Mumbai flock here to get a taste of Punjab.
But the paradise of street food lovers is the Khau Galli at Kalbadevi.You get everything to eat here right from piping hot kachoris accompanied with sweet and spicy hot chutney to sizzling samosas chili hot pakodas to crunchy pattice,delicious dosas with sambar to steaming soft idlis with coconut chutney. Spiced Papads,tangy bhelpuris and many other chaats savories and sweets are available here prepared just in front of you and served to you with spicy chutneys and sauces and what is more you get all these delicacies at affordable rates.
You can wash these down with a number of flavored sherbets, juices, smoothies and ice creams. Mumbai is chockfull of street food every locality has developed its own khau galli specific to the character of population living there Street food is not only dirt cheap but also very hygienic.
These days the owners of food stalls have become very hygiene conscious because they know if they play hanky panky with the people they will loose their business besides unlike restaurants they serve freshest and best food.
They do not keep the food for the next day to serve in the buffet which mostly consists of dishes made on the previous day. I can write reams about this food but because I wanted to keep this precise I have written about the best and outstanding buys.
Friday, May 10, 2013
PAVAN BANSAL'S 'GRAVY TRAIN' TAKES TO 'HELL'
As Pawan Bansal’s political stock rose, so did his nephew Vijay Singla’s business fortunes. INN tracks the graph.
In the Mahabharata, Shakuni, the cunning mama (maternal uncle) plants the seed of war in the mind of his bhanja (nephew) Duryodhana, which eventually leads to the downfall of the Kaurava clan. And if Railway Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal is to be believed, in the 21st century version of the epic with an uncharacteristic role-reversal played out in New Delhi’s Rail Bhavan, an unsuspecting mama has become the victim of his opportunistic bhanja, Vijay Singla. Despite his “I have nothing to do with my nephew” claim, the meteoric rise of the Bansal clan in Chandigarh leaves little to the imagination.
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
Abortion Law's Grey Zone: Retarded Mothers
In India, a disabled girl-child is usually at the receiving end of a lot of contempt and neglect. Women with disabilities have been consistently denied their rights. In a landmark decision, the Supreme Court (SC) of India recently allowed a 19-year-old mentally challenged orphan girl to carry on with a pregnancy resulting from a sexual assault. The Punjab and Haryana High Court ruling had earlier ordered medical termination of pregnancy (MTP).
Giving the facts of the case, Advocate Colin Gonsalves who had argued for abortion in this case, said that the girl, who was kept at Nari Niketan, Chandigarh, a government institution for destitute women, was raped some time in March 2009 on the premises by the security guards. In May 2009, the pregnancy was detected.
The media widely reported the rape but no institution or individual came forward in the woman's support.
A few days later, a four-doctor Multi Disciplinary Medical Board was constituted, which included a psychiatrist. It recommended an MTP. The Punjab and Haryana High Court ultimately went on the basis of these reports. The second one concluded that: "the continuation of pregnancy in this case can be associated with certain complications considering her age, mental status and previous surgery. There are increased chances of abortion... pre-maturity... foetal distress and more chances of operative delivery including anaesthetic complications."
The committees concluded that the woman "has adequate physical capacity to bear and raise the child but that her mental health can be further affected by the stress of bearing and raising her child."
This case thus raised fundamental issues relating to consent and to the support required while assessing consent. Eventually most mentally challenged women will, if properly supported, be able to indicate whether they wish to abort the pregnancy or proceed with it, concludes Gonsalves.
Shampa Sengupta, Director of the Sruti Disability Centre in Kolkata, says that if the woman wants to keep the baby she should be allowed to do so. "We as civil society must take the responsibility of supporting her. How can we forget the UN Rights of Persons with Disabilities Convention?" she asks.
Sengupta, who has worked on disability for the last 10 years, adds, "How can we say her choice is not valid?
Because the doctors say so? If you or I do not consider the doctor's word as final, why should this young girl? Also, why is it that no one is talking about the rapists and how Nirmala Niketan came to have male employees?"
"The SC judgment has focused more on pro-life arguments and the rights of the child," states Bhargavi Davar, who heads the Bapu Trust in Pune, an organisation devoted to challenging the mindset and practices of the Indian mental health establishment. She points out that several women's organisations have responded to this judgment by focusing on women's rights and the right to abortion.
But nowhere in this dialogue between the state and civil society has the issue of reproductive rights and sexuality in the context of psychosocial and mental disability been discussed.
Many state institutions for women living with a mental disabilities, with the co-operation of families, routinely sterilise, abort or give the child away for adoption without the consent of the mother. Many women's organisations and NGOs that provide care have an equally problematic custodial outlook towards such persons. Argues Davar, "In this case, we have not heard the woman's voice anywhere, while we have several third party arbitrations and advocacy. We do not know what the woman wants. Whether the mentally challenged woman has the 'capacity' to take care of the child is another question riddled with prejudices and stereotypes."
In the 1990s at Sirur, Maharashtra, 17 mentally challenged girls below 18 years were peremptorily hysterectomised. The state chose to control the girls' reproductive rights by deploying extreme measures.
The professionals involved in that decision neither denied that hysterectomies were done, nor did they perceive them as a violation. They justified them as having been done in the best interests of the girls.
Dr Anant Phadke from Pune who filed a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) on the issue, says that case is still on. In January 2009, the state filed an affidavit stating "Mentally retarded adolescent girls or adult women have no sense of hygiene during menstruation." Shockingly, this is the prime reason given by the government for backing the controversial decision. Justifying its move, the government stated that, unlike stools or urine, menstrual flow is continuous and lasts up to at least 100 hours a month.
It added that caregivers find it difficult to deal with inmates who are uncooperative; and that poor hygiene can lead to infection and laceration on thighs and genitals and that increased flow can cause anaemia.
Behavioural problems and psychotic symptoms also cause difficulties for care-givers.
All that is needed to perform the operation is the consent of the parent/guardian and certification from a psychiatrist and gynaecologist that hysterectomy is needed.
"We are challenging these guidelines," says advocate Anand Grover adding that the hysterectomies were performed for the convenience of the institute, to prevent pregnancy in case of sexual abuse and not for the woman's welfare. The government had no authority to conduct a hysterectomy on mentally disabled women and such a move violates the fundamental rights of such women and the provisions of the Mental Health Act.
Shruti Pandey, a human rights lawyer from Delhi, admits that this is a case that is "so grey". Says Pandey, "To my mind, this case was not about abortion per se, it was about whether the law of this country recognises and protects the agency of a woman to take decisions for her life and body, especially all its nuances when the woman is a person with mental retardation (MR) or any other disability."
Legally, this case showed - which the HC also noted in detail in its first order - that the Medical Termination Of Pregnancy (MTP) Act does not deal with access to abortion of women with MR, and that it wrongly distinguishes between women with mental retardation and mental illness, leaving the former out totally. Also that the Act does not understand that both these kinds of women are more likely than not to be destitute, in which case guardianship is not that simple.
Clarifies Pandey, "If the SC has said this woman wants to go ahead with the pregnancy, in principle I would support the decision. Every woman has a right to bear children, including women with mental disabilities. But if the court says it is the right of child to be born/not to be killed, and so the pregnancy must go on, that is hugely problematic. In any case, if the SC says no MTP, I would like to see what support mechanism it relies upon, institutionally, and not merely on the assurances and hyperbole of individuals and NGOs. I would also like this decision then to lead to the state's accountability for creating and sustaining comprehensive and reliable support systems for all persons with disabilities, within a rights framework. This is definitely an obligation under Article 12 of the UN Rights of Persons with Disabilities Convention, which India is totally ill-equipped to deliver on, as this case shows."
This case indicates eloquently that the Indian legal framework has to be strengthened a great deal to bring it in line with international legislation.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
THE FIGHT FOR PAKISTAN'S POLITICAL SOUL, Part 2
By Syed Saleem Shahzad & M H Ahssan
PART 1: Deal with militants emboldens opposition
A new face for militants emerges
In the immediate aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terror attacks on the United States, Washington forced Pakistan to make a major policy reversal and break its alliance with its natural allies, Islamic forces.
Pakistan provided logistical support for the US forces that invaded Afghanistan to oust the Taliban and hunt for al-Qaeda, and Islamabad assisted in the apprehension of al-Qaeda members.
Yet Pakistan, the only Muslim country in the world to have come into being on the basis of Islamic ideology, managed to maintain its alliance with the Islamic parties, militants and the jihadi establishment and orchestrated a war theater in which Islamic forces were largely under its control.
The Pakistani military establishment nurtured an anti-Western opposition religious alliance of six parties - the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal - which was in fact friendly to the government of president General Pervez Musharraf. This allowed Musharraf to have the constitution amended to give him maximum powers. Peace agreements were also signed with militants and the leaders of the jihadi organizations, many of whom were convinced to sit back in comfortable villas until their next orders came.
Everything was under control and by 2007 the situation was heading towards the alienation of al-Qaeda elements.
A dialogue process was initiated in Kabul through a grand jirga (council) after which jirgagais (small jirgas ) were to have started a dialogue process leading to an "honorable" exit for coalition troops from Afghanistan.
However, ultra-radical forces, which were slowly nurturing a new generation of the Taliban, grew in strength, which led to Pakistan's security forces cracking down on the radical Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) in Islamabad in July 2007.
Following this operation, the radicals gained more and more ground in the tribal areas, to the point that today Pakistan has virtually lost control of North-West Frontier Province. And the Islamists, the once natural allies, have become sworn enemies.
However, in the largest province of Punjab and in urban centers such as Karachi, Rawalpindi and Lahore, the situation is still under control.
The largest jihadi network in Punjab, the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), was infiltrated by army officers after their retirement which led to an immoral relationship between the LET and the military establishment.
The premier Islamic party, the Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan (JI), was set up by its ideologue Syed Abul Ala Maududi in such a way that it could not deviate from the democratic path and it had to work within the confines of the laws of the land.
However, as the war theater in the Pakistani tribal areas and Afghanistan heated up under the influence of ultra-radical ideologues, many veteran LET commanders left the organization and joined forces with al-Qaeda. A very small number of JI members also joined forces with the Taliban in Afghanistan.
That small group then started an effective campaign within the rank and file of the JI against the status-quo policies of the party, which in essence stress loyalty towards Pakistan and its security forces.
Unprecedented pressure was mounted on the JI leadership to be vocal in favor of al-Qaeda and the Taliban, and this could have a vital influence on the selection of a new party president next month.
This is happening at a time that Chief of Army Staff General Ashfaq Parvez Kiani is visiting Washington on an extraordinary trip that could lead either to Kiani being sidelined or his empowerment and a major political change in the country.
The reason for the uncertain outcome is that the American establishment is confused over who is actually pulling the strings. In this context, the JI's elections are being closely monitored by all quarters as they could turn this powerful pro-establishment party in the other direction, eventually leading it down the path of radical Islam.
Jamaat-e-Islami at the crossroads The Jamaat-i-Islami Pakistan is the country's only party to hold genuine elections for its president, every four years. All other parties, whether religious or secular, are the personal fiefdoms of family politics.
The chief of the Jamiat-i-Ulema-i-Islam (JUI) Fazlur Rahman is the son of the previous party chief, Mufti Mehmood. The JUI's another faction is led by Maulana Samiul Haq, who is the son of the previous chief of the faction, Maulana Abdul Haq.
The Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz group is led by the Sharif family (brothers and now sons and sons-in-law). The Pakistan People's Party was led by Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, then his wife Nusrat Bhutto, then his daughter Benazir Bhutto and it is now co-chaired by Benazir's son Bilawal and her widower Asif Zardari.
The Awami National Party (ANP) has been led by Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan's family members - his son Wali Khan, then his wife Naseem Wali Khan and now his grandson, Asfandyar Wali Khan.
The incumbent president of the JI, Qazi Hussain Ahmed, has indicated that due to his age - 71 - and deteriorating health, he will not stand for re-election. Three candidates have now been nominated - no one is allowed to nomninate themselves.
The three are all former student leaders: the party's secretary general Syed Munawar Hasan, central vice president Liaquat Baloch and the president of North-West Frontier province Sirajul Haq.
Despite its current pro-establishment stance, the JI has a history of confrontation with the state. Its founder, Syed Abul Ala Maududi, was arrested only a year after Pakistan came into being, in 1948, for demanding Islamization in Pakistan.
In 1953 he was arrested again for writing an article which declared Qadyanis as non-Muslims. (Qadyanis - a movement that harbors some controversial Muslim beliefs - were declared non-Muslims in 1973 by the Pakistani parliament.) Maududi was sentenced to death, but due to nation-wide protests and extraordinary pressure from Saudi Arabia he was released.
The JI was banned by then-president General Ayub Khan in the early 1960s and its entire leadership was arrested. The party filed a case against the ban and eventually had it reversed. However, being the main opposition leader, Maududi was kept behind bars.
The JI was the main engine behind the movement of combined opposition parties in late 1960 which laid the foundation for Ayub Khan's departure from the power. But the movement was later hijacked by a young Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and his newly founded Pakistan People's Party (PPP) and its slogan of socialist revolution.
In 1969, Maududi stepped down as party president and Mian Tufail Mohammad was elected. This was the beginning of the JI's alliance with the Pakistani military establishment.
In 1970 elections, the Awami League emerged as the majority party, drawing all its support from East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). The second-largest party, by a long way, was the PPP, scoring well in West Pakistan (now Pakistan).
Neither the PPP nor the military establishment was in favor of transferring power to the Awami League, which was demanding complete provincial autonomy. This resulted in an insurgency in East Pakistan, where the Bengali population was hostile towards the state of Pakistan.
The province's administration, comprising Bengalis, rebelled and openly supported the insurgents. The Pakistan army was desperate for local support and hit on the JI, which which believed in the state of Pakistan.
The military armed the JI's student wing (which had won student union elections at Dhaka University and Rajshahi University) and pitched it against the insurgents. Pakistan lost the war and Bangladesh was born in 1971, but the JI was by now reckoned as the most trusted ally of the military establishment.
In 1977, the JI's dedicated workers changed the dynamics of street agitation and crippled Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto's government, which had just swept elections. The military intervened and General Zia ul-Haq imposed martial law.
The new cabinet comprised JI leaders such as Professor Ghaffour Ahmad (minister of Railways), Professor Khurshid Ahmad (minister for the Planning Commission) and former student leader of the JI, Javed Hashmi (minister for Youth Affairs). The latter is now the central leader of the Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz group.
The then-leader of the PPP, Kausar Niazi, has documented that Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto went to the residence of JI founder Maududi and asked him to fight against the martial law and save him (Bhutto) from court trails. Maududi did issue statements against martial law, but JI president Mian Tufail strongly supported Haq and the decision to execute Bhutto over charges of the murder of a political opponent. (Bhutto was hanged on April 4, 1979 - aged 51- in Rawalpindi jail.)
These experiences helped the military establishment understand the value of the JI, which is why it takes a special interest in its president.
When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979 an Afghan Islamic resistance sprung up. This proved to be another major turning point in relations between the Pakistan military and the JI, which at that time was the only political and religious party which supported the Afghan resistance.
All the big parties, including the PPP and the National Awami Party (NAP - now the Awami National Party), claimed to be Marxists and therefore supported the invasion. The NAP openly supported a "red revolution" in Pakistan and even wanted to welcome Soviet tanks into Pakistan.
Half of the NAP leadership fled to Russia and Afghanistan, including Afrasiab Khattak (now the provincial president of the ANP in North-West Frontier Province) and Ajmal Khattack. Two other major religious parties, the Jamiat-i-Ulema-i-Islam led by Fazlur Rahman (now pro-Taliban) and the Jamiat-i-Ulema-i-Pakistan, were close to pro-Russian Muslim countries like Iraq and Libya, therefore they declared the Afghan resistance merely a civil war.
Pakistan was concerned of a Soviet threat on its western borders, while the Soviet presence emboldened pro-Russian India against Pakistan.
The JI supported the Afghan resistance as some of its leaders, such as Ahmad Shah Massoud, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Professor Abdul Rab Rasool Sayyaf and Professor Burhanuddin Rabbani, were ideologically close to the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood.
JI leader Qazi (now the president) was sent by party founder Maududi in the mid-1960s to Kabul University to lay the foundations of an Islamist student union, which further strengthened the JI's ties to the resistance leaders.
Washington was sponsoring the Afghan resistance through Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), and the JI was its field force. When Mian Tufail stepped down as chief of the JI, the ISI for the first time exerted influence over the JI's elections and helped have Qazi elected as president in 1986.
The ISI wanted to use the JI not only in Afghanistan but also for newly planned operations in disputed Kashmir, which started in 1988-89. The JI had to fuel these operations woth supplies and human resources.
After 2001, a personality clash between Qazi and Musharraf created some distance between the JI and the military establishment, but the JI did not turn hostile, rather remained neutral and inactive.
Qazi has written articles critical of the Taliban's policies, their vision and their brand of Islam - he was inspired by the Iranian Islamic revolution of 1979 and is against the Taliban.
When the administration of US president Bill Clinton adopted a policy of engagement with democratic forces in the Muslim world and encouraged engagement with the Muslim Brotherhood, the US State Department invited Qazi to the US under its International Visitor's leadership program. Qazi became a regular guest at an influential think-tank close to the Democrats.
However, some JI workers who had fought against the Soviets became active and hosted some of their old Arab friends, including Khalid Shiekh Mohammad of September 11 infamy and others.
At least four important al-Qaeda members were arrested from the houses of JI workers, including Khalid. Washington put intense pressure on Pakistan to ban the JI and Interior minister Syed Faisal Saleh Hayat issued a statement on the possibility of doing this.
Within days, the ISI sprang into action and Hayat was removed and the government clarified the JI's position - it would not be banned. Qazi sent out instructions for JI members to stay away from the Taliban and al-Qaeda and made it clear that any person found harboring such people would be disowned.
At this point, party secretary general Syed Munawar Hasan publicly adopted a separate line and proclaimed that the JI did not have any problem with the "Arab mujahideen".
"We don't know what al-Qaeda is all about. We heard this name from the Americans only. We know our Arab mujahideen who fought with our people against the Soviets. If today a world superpower is after them and they ask their Muslim brothers to support them, we don't have any problem helping them," Hasan said.
"Nevertheless, we would never support any sort of terrorism, neither would we allow them any operations from Pakistan."
These words stunned everybody, including the JI's leadership, but Hasan immediately became a hero figure within militant circles disgruntled with the behavior of Islamic parties. Hasan was approached by the military establishment for negotiations, but his refusal in bitter language caused alarm.
Hasan was a student leader at Karachi University and did his masters in sociology in the late 1960s, then emerging as a popular English- and Urdu-language orator.
The socialist-turned-Islamist known for his criticism of the military establishment gradually climbed up the ladder of the JI to become its powerful secretary general. The establishment is clearly concerned that he will become the JI's next president - a landslide victory is predicted.
The timing is not good for Pakistan for this to happen. The military has been forced to back off from operations against militants in the Swat Valley following the government negotiating a ceasefire and the Islamists aim to gain from this in urban centers.
Militants sitting in the mountains are convinced that Hasan will provide them with a political front to fight for their cause - something they have not had before.
PART 1: Deal with militants emboldens opposition
A new face for militants emerges
In the immediate aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terror attacks on the United States, Washington forced Pakistan to make a major policy reversal and break its alliance with its natural allies, Islamic forces.
Pakistan provided logistical support for the US forces that invaded Afghanistan to oust the Taliban and hunt for al-Qaeda, and Islamabad assisted in the apprehension of al-Qaeda members.
Yet Pakistan, the only Muslim country in the world to have come into being on the basis of Islamic ideology, managed to maintain its alliance with the Islamic parties, militants and the jihadi establishment and orchestrated a war theater in which Islamic forces were largely under its control.
The Pakistani military establishment nurtured an anti-Western opposition religious alliance of six parties - the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal - which was in fact friendly to the government of president General Pervez Musharraf. This allowed Musharraf to have the constitution amended to give him maximum powers. Peace agreements were also signed with militants and the leaders of the jihadi organizations, many of whom were convinced to sit back in comfortable villas until their next orders came.
Everything was under control and by 2007 the situation was heading towards the alienation of al-Qaeda elements.
A dialogue process was initiated in Kabul through a grand jirga (council) after which jirgagais (small jirgas ) were to have started a dialogue process leading to an "honorable" exit for coalition troops from Afghanistan.
However, ultra-radical forces, which were slowly nurturing a new generation of the Taliban, grew in strength, which led to Pakistan's security forces cracking down on the radical Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) in Islamabad in July 2007.
Following this operation, the radicals gained more and more ground in the tribal areas, to the point that today Pakistan has virtually lost control of North-West Frontier Province. And the Islamists, the once natural allies, have become sworn enemies.
However, in the largest province of Punjab and in urban centers such as Karachi, Rawalpindi and Lahore, the situation is still under control.
The largest jihadi network in Punjab, the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), was infiltrated by army officers after their retirement which led to an immoral relationship between the LET and the military establishment.
The premier Islamic party, the Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan (JI), was set up by its ideologue Syed Abul Ala Maududi in such a way that it could not deviate from the democratic path and it had to work within the confines of the laws of the land.
However, as the war theater in the Pakistani tribal areas and Afghanistan heated up under the influence of ultra-radical ideologues, many veteran LET commanders left the organization and joined forces with al-Qaeda. A very small number of JI members also joined forces with the Taliban in Afghanistan.
That small group then started an effective campaign within the rank and file of the JI against the status-quo policies of the party, which in essence stress loyalty towards Pakistan and its security forces.
Unprecedented pressure was mounted on the JI leadership to be vocal in favor of al-Qaeda and the Taliban, and this could have a vital influence on the selection of a new party president next month.
This is happening at a time that Chief of Army Staff General Ashfaq Parvez Kiani is visiting Washington on an extraordinary trip that could lead either to Kiani being sidelined or his empowerment and a major political change in the country.
The reason for the uncertain outcome is that the American establishment is confused over who is actually pulling the strings. In this context, the JI's elections are being closely monitored by all quarters as they could turn this powerful pro-establishment party in the other direction, eventually leading it down the path of radical Islam.
Jamaat-e-Islami at the crossroads The Jamaat-i-Islami Pakistan is the country's only party to hold genuine elections for its president, every four years. All other parties, whether religious or secular, are the personal fiefdoms of family politics.
The chief of the Jamiat-i-Ulema-i-Islam (JUI) Fazlur Rahman is the son of the previous party chief, Mufti Mehmood. The JUI's another faction is led by Maulana Samiul Haq, who is the son of the previous chief of the faction, Maulana Abdul Haq.
The Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz group is led by the Sharif family (brothers and now sons and sons-in-law). The Pakistan People's Party was led by Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, then his wife Nusrat Bhutto, then his daughter Benazir Bhutto and it is now co-chaired by Benazir's son Bilawal and her widower Asif Zardari.
The Awami National Party (ANP) has been led by Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan's family members - his son Wali Khan, then his wife Naseem Wali Khan and now his grandson, Asfandyar Wali Khan.
The incumbent president of the JI, Qazi Hussain Ahmed, has indicated that due to his age - 71 - and deteriorating health, he will not stand for re-election. Three candidates have now been nominated - no one is allowed to nomninate themselves.
The three are all former student leaders: the party's secretary general Syed Munawar Hasan, central vice president Liaquat Baloch and the president of North-West Frontier province Sirajul Haq.
Despite its current pro-establishment stance, the JI has a history of confrontation with the state. Its founder, Syed Abul Ala Maududi, was arrested only a year after Pakistan came into being, in 1948, for demanding Islamization in Pakistan.
In 1953 he was arrested again for writing an article which declared Qadyanis as non-Muslims. (Qadyanis - a movement that harbors some controversial Muslim beliefs - were declared non-Muslims in 1973 by the Pakistani parliament.) Maududi was sentenced to death, but due to nation-wide protests and extraordinary pressure from Saudi Arabia he was released.
The JI was banned by then-president General Ayub Khan in the early 1960s and its entire leadership was arrested. The party filed a case against the ban and eventually had it reversed. However, being the main opposition leader, Maududi was kept behind bars.
The JI was the main engine behind the movement of combined opposition parties in late 1960 which laid the foundation for Ayub Khan's departure from the power. But the movement was later hijacked by a young Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and his newly founded Pakistan People's Party (PPP) and its slogan of socialist revolution.
In 1969, Maududi stepped down as party president and Mian Tufail Mohammad was elected. This was the beginning of the JI's alliance with the Pakistani military establishment.
In 1970 elections, the Awami League emerged as the majority party, drawing all its support from East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). The second-largest party, by a long way, was the PPP, scoring well in West Pakistan (now Pakistan).
Neither the PPP nor the military establishment was in favor of transferring power to the Awami League, which was demanding complete provincial autonomy. This resulted in an insurgency in East Pakistan, where the Bengali population was hostile towards the state of Pakistan.
The province's administration, comprising Bengalis, rebelled and openly supported the insurgents. The Pakistan army was desperate for local support and hit on the JI, which which believed in the state of Pakistan.
The military armed the JI's student wing (which had won student union elections at Dhaka University and Rajshahi University) and pitched it against the insurgents. Pakistan lost the war and Bangladesh was born in 1971, but the JI was by now reckoned as the most trusted ally of the military establishment.
In 1977, the JI's dedicated workers changed the dynamics of street agitation and crippled Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto's government, which had just swept elections. The military intervened and General Zia ul-Haq imposed martial law.
The new cabinet comprised JI leaders such as Professor Ghaffour Ahmad (minister of Railways), Professor Khurshid Ahmad (minister for the Planning Commission) and former student leader of the JI, Javed Hashmi (minister for Youth Affairs). The latter is now the central leader of the Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz group.
The then-leader of the PPP, Kausar Niazi, has documented that Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto went to the residence of JI founder Maududi and asked him to fight against the martial law and save him (Bhutto) from court trails. Maududi did issue statements against martial law, but JI president Mian Tufail strongly supported Haq and the decision to execute Bhutto over charges of the murder of a political opponent. (Bhutto was hanged on April 4, 1979 - aged 51- in Rawalpindi jail.)
These experiences helped the military establishment understand the value of the JI, which is why it takes a special interest in its president.
When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979 an Afghan Islamic resistance sprung up. This proved to be another major turning point in relations between the Pakistan military and the JI, which at that time was the only political and religious party which supported the Afghan resistance.
All the big parties, including the PPP and the National Awami Party (NAP - now the Awami National Party), claimed to be Marxists and therefore supported the invasion. The NAP openly supported a "red revolution" in Pakistan and even wanted to welcome Soviet tanks into Pakistan.
Half of the NAP leadership fled to Russia and Afghanistan, including Afrasiab Khattak (now the provincial president of the ANP in North-West Frontier Province) and Ajmal Khattack. Two other major religious parties, the Jamiat-i-Ulema-i-Islam led by Fazlur Rahman (now pro-Taliban) and the Jamiat-i-Ulema-i-Pakistan, were close to pro-Russian Muslim countries like Iraq and Libya, therefore they declared the Afghan resistance merely a civil war.
Pakistan was concerned of a Soviet threat on its western borders, while the Soviet presence emboldened pro-Russian India against Pakistan.
The JI supported the Afghan resistance as some of its leaders, such as Ahmad Shah Massoud, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Professor Abdul Rab Rasool Sayyaf and Professor Burhanuddin Rabbani, were ideologically close to the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood.
JI leader Qazi (now the president) was sent by party founder Maududi in the mid-1960s to Kabul University to lay the foundations of an Islamist student union, which further strengthened the JI's ties to the resistance leaders.
Washington was sponsoring the Afghan resistance through Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), and the JI was its field force. When Mian Tufail stepped down as chief of the JI, the ISI for the first time exerted influence over the JI's elections and helped have Qazi elected as president in 1986.
The ISI wanted to use the JI not only in Afghanistan but also for newly planned operations in disputed Kashmir, which started in 1988-89. The JI had to fuel these operations woth supplies and human resources.
After 2001, a personality clash between Qazi and Musharraf created some distance between the JI and the military establishment, but the JI did not turn hostile, rather remained neutral and inactive.
Qazi has written articles critical of the Taliban's policies, their vision and their brand of Islam - he was inspired by the Iranian Islamic revolution of 1979 and is against the Taliban.
When the administration of US president Bill Clinton adopted a policy of engagement with democratic forces in the Muslim world and encouraged engagement with the Muslim Brotherhood, the US State Department invited Qazi to the US under its International Visitor's leadership program. Qazi became a regular guest at an influential think-tank close to the Democrats.
However, some JI workers who had fought against the Soviets became active and hosted some of their old Arab friends, including Khalid Shiekh Mohammad of September 11 infamy and others.
At least four important al-Qaeda members were arrested from the houses of JI workers, including Khalid. Washington put intense pressure on Pakistan to ban the JI and Interior minister Syed Faisal Saleh Hayat issued a statement on the possibility of doing this.
Within days, the ISI sprang into action and Hayat was removed and the government clarified the JI's position - it would not be banned. Qazi sent out instructions for JI members to stay away from the Taliban and al-Qaeda and made it clear that any person found harboring such people would be disowned.
At this point, party secretary general Syed Munawar Hasan publicly adopted a separate line and proclaimed that the JI did not have any problem with the "Arab mujahideen".
"We don't know what al-Qaeda is all about. We heard this name from the Americans only. We know our Arab mujahideen who fought with our people against the Soviets. If today a world superpower is after them and they ask their Muslim brothers to support them, we don't have any problem helping them," Hasan said.
"Nevertheless, we would never support any sort of terrorism, neither would we allow them any operations from Pakistan."
These words stunned everybody, including the JI's leadership, but Hasan immediately became a hero figure within militant circles disgruntled with the behavior of Islamic parties. Hasan was approached by the military establishment for negotiations, but his refusal in bitter language caused alarm.
Hasan was a student leader at Karachi University and did his masters in sociology in the late 1960s, then emerging as a popular English- and Urdu-language orator.
The socialist-turned-Islamist known for his criticism of the military establishment gradually climbed up the ladder of the JI to become its powerful secretary general. The establishment is clearly concerned that he will become the JI's next president - a landslide victory is predicted.
The timing is not good for Pakistan for this to happen. The military has been forced to back off from operations against militants in the Swat Valley following the government negotiating a ceasefire and the Islamists aim to gain from this in urban centers.
Militants sitting in the mountains are convinced that Hasan will provide them with a political front to fight for their cause - something they have not had before.
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