'Andhra Pradesh Assembly On The Horns Of A Dilemma!'

By M H Ahssan | INN Live

EDITORIAL If any more evidence is needed to prove that the regional divide in Andhra Pradesh is complete and irreversible, it is the latest episode which forced the Congress legislators from Coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema to propose the names of rebel candidates in the biennial elections to the Rajya Sabha. The Bill which is responsible for the ruckus in legislatures is only a formality. 

The bifurcation would be formalising the emotional division that has taken place over a period of time.  What we have been witnessing in the Assembly and the Council throughout February was the manifestation of a prolonged disconnect and disharmony that had set in the lives of Telugu-speaking people. The root cause for the malady is mutual distrust and lack of the spirit of accommodation.

Editorial: No work and no play ...

By M H Ahssan

All work and no play has made Indians among the dullest people on Earth with whom to have a conversation, while no work and all play has pushed Americans to the most terrifying economic crisis of our time. What then do we do about countries that neither work nor play, as Pakistan seems in the danger of becoming, if one were to go by the most recent terrorist outrage?

Granted that both parts of the first statement are more than a trifle exaggerated, it is likely that readers will sympathize with the view on a broader scale. Any conversation with an Indian inevitably leads to politics, religion - or worse, Bollywood. If Indians manage at all to make any observations about sports, expect to talk about cricket, that ancient English game invented for people to play on lazy summer afternoons after a large beer-laden lunch. Generally one dreads these conversations if one has nothing to say about the most recent Intel chip, and especially if you have not a clue what a quad-core chip is.

Having conversations with Americans is generally a pleasure if for nothing else because serious topics such as religion and geopolitics are almost never broached; but most folks from Asia are usually left wondering how Americans manage to follow such a dizzying array of sports. Usually the next observation is along the lines of why do people with such strong sporting passions fail so miserably in their jobs?

All these though pale in comparison to the dangers of the third bunch of people who are progressively denied, as a religious tool, access to entertainment, eventually culminating in stunted social development that creates its own cycle of poverty. Afghanistan is the foremost example of this in the Islamic world.

After the Taliban takeover of the country in the early 1990s, sporting activities were progressively banned (perhaps that should be "regressively") or else merged with the ruling party's socio-economic ethic, which led to the chilling images filmed secretly by a British television channel that showed a veiled woman being stoned to death in the middle of a football pitch watched by some 30,000 spectators.

Americans have half-time entertainment too during their football games, although it takes more than a simple leap of imagination from having a couple of nubile, half-naked singers performing the latest pop hits to a crowd stoning a woman to death. To ensure full attention, the Taliban also suspended the actual football games on the pitch; perhaps they were worried about safety of players encountering difficulties playing football on a pitch littered with stones and pools of blood.

Given that the perpetrators of the most recent outrage in Pakistan this week involving the attacks on a visiting Sri Lankan cricket team had similar motivations, the question does arise if the first shots have been fired in the ultimate Talibanization of the country; a scenario that I have explained more than once on these pages.

Sporting prestige
Harking back to George Clemenceau's quote that war is too important to be left to generals, sport has become a new focus in a world where full-scale bilateral conflicts have been replaced with guerrilla warfare and random attacks on civilians.

Beginning in 776 BC, the Greeks certainly knew the importance of sports as the various city-states vied for honors in the Olympic games. The reputation of many a nation was forged not so much in the theatres of war as the sandpits of Olympia. The Roman emperor Nero took the games seriously enough to bribe officials for the express purpose of disqualifying all other competitors in his category.

The echoes of Nero were to ring 2,000 years later, when Hitler staged Aryan superiority Olympics in Berlin, only to be upstaged by the black American athlete Jesse Owens' triumphs on the field, as his pet-architect Albert Speer was to recall: "Each of the German victories, and there were a surprising number of these, made him happy, but he was highly annoyed by the series of triumphs by the marvelous colored American runner, Jesse Owens. People whose antecedents came from the jungle were primitive, Hitler said with a shrug; their physiques were stronger than those of civilized whites and hence should be excluded from future games. Hitler was also jolted by the jubilation of the Berliners when the French team filed solemnly into the Olympic Stadium ... If I am correctly interpreting Hitler's expression at the time, he was more disturbed than pleased by the Berliners' cheers."
Following from Adolf Hitler, various communist countries quickly adopted sports as a matter of national prestige starting with the Soviet Union [5], a focus not lost on its acolytes in the rest of the Warsaw Pact as well as others including China and Cuba.

All this while other countries, including the United States and those in Western Europe, broadened the commercial appeal of sports; the 1951 live telecast of a college football game in the US opened the doors for sportsmen to become idolized and increasingly successful in the financial sense. In turn, this attracted more participants to sports; a self-feeding frenzy that soon produced better sports as events became much more competitive.

Between communist pride and Western commercial interests, the frenzy in sports also led sportsmen to cheat, resorting to steroids and banned drugs with a view to performance enhancement. In communist countries, the penalty for getting caught was nothing more than a slap on the wrist, the ongoing damage to bodies was another matter altogether being the subject of basic denial. Meanwhile in the West, commercially induced cheating produced a mini-boom in demand for chemistry graduates albeit in areas far removed from their usual spots in foul-smelling school labs.

The reason any of this became relevant in the rest of the world is of course the effect that cheating had on the aspirations of the young as well as the social commentary that inevitably followed. Sportsmen who cheated lost their fan following (at least in the past they did) but also elicited broader comparisons going back to their social or ethnic groups; in some cases it became the subject of national scandals.

Virtuous non-participation
With all this cheating going on, many countries and societies have fallen by the wayside of modern sports. I wrote in the previously cited article [5] about the poor record of Indian sportsmen, concluding that the lack of economic incentives explained their lack of participation not to mention excellence. About the only sport that Indians seem to be any good in is cricket, and herein lies the rub for the most recent terrorist attacks in Pakistan.

Indian cricketers are paid substantially more than those in any other nation playing the sport; more importantly they are also reportedly in the top echelons of the country's own population when it comes to oversized pay. This puts them in the same category as American baseball and football stars, not to mention the ubiquitous basketball legends of the Michael Jordan variety.

All that wealth in an Asian sport clearly attracts attention, of the type that Islamic terrorists revel in. Far from an ideological conflict involving sports per se (although enough Wahhabi scholarship holds that sports activities are frowned upon) the issue is more subtle, involving the attention span of a people used to diversions.

In any poor country, the general time allocated to sports, leisure or entertainment activities is relatively small, which means that avid spectators are unlikely to also care about more serious topics such as religion and politics. That fear of marginalization, more than any specific political agenda, justifies the attention of Islamic terrorists who would like nothing more than keeping their support pipelines thick and strong with embedded national outrage.

In contrast, a people inured to the ups and downs of sports are unlikely to support extremism in its many forms. Good sportspeople respect their competitors, as do good spectators however fervent their support for the home team may be. People without much interest in sports - playing or watching - are more likely to indulge in violence: although ironically that observation reverses when we discuss peoples rather than the propensity of specific individuals to violence [6].

This then is the actual battleground. As Pakistanis suffer further damage on their economy due to the economic crisis, their sporting aspirations are also being dented, in turn pushing more young people into the path of the fundamentalists to recruit, train and utilize as cannon fodder.

Insight: Are Hindutva Hawks Giving Hinduism A Bad Name?

By Prakriti Shah / Delhi

Of the several identifiers Indians fall back upon to define themselves  language, caste and religion are the foremost. While  these aspects of the Indian social identity have had some association with political wrestling matches and consequent violence, religion holds the distinction of riling the most number of people in most number of ways in our country.

Religion today is a sharp knife that slices through the country’s educated classes dividing them into to either pro-Hindu or anti-Hindu. The social media version of the debate is often abrasive, offensive, ill-informed or just a bitter verbal boxing match with the parties zealously trying to be the most vengeful, mistaking that to be a moral triumph. Within this context, the concept of secularism has been reduced to Congress’ vote bank politics in India.

Editorial: What 2013 Results Mean For Poll 2014 Scenario?

By M H Ahssan | INN Live

The results of the 2013 assembly elections in Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan are out but those looking for clear pointers towards how the next general election will play out are likely to be left scratching their heads.

The Bharatiya Janata Party turned in a spectacular performance in Rajasthan and wrested the state from the Congress. It has retained Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh, the latter with a significant increase in its seat share. But in Delhi, the BJP failed to properly ride the wave of anti-Congress sentiment, yielding crucial political space to the Aam Aadmi Party and falling short of a clear-cut majority.

EDITORIAL: Trouble On The LoC

The need of the hour is a multilevel engagement between India and Pakistan

The gravity of the two incidents that took place along the Line of Control earlier this week must neither be seen as a localised affair of trivial significance nor blown out of proportion as a prelude to a major escalation of tensions between the two countries. True to form, both sides have given contradictory versions of what happened on January 6 – when a Pakistani soldier was killed during an alleged Indian raid on a Pakistani army post in the Uri sector – and on January 8 – when two Indian soldiers were killed and two others injured as Indian and Pakistani troops exchanged fire at an Indian army post located near Mendhar on the Indian side of the LoC. Such incidents do occur every now and then but both sides take care not to allow matters to spin out of control. 
    
That would have been the case this time too except that the incident at Mendhar had a macabre twist to it: the body of one of the Indian soldiers killed had been decapitated. The Pakistanis have of course promptly denied that this was their handiwork. But their troops and the terrorists some elements of the Pakistani establishment support have committed similar gruesome acts in the past. Provocations of this nature naturally inflame Indian public opinion. The defence ministry has, quite appropriately, condemned the latest violation of the ceasefire line. But the need of the hour is clearly to go beyond the blame game to explore ways and means to avoid such incidents in the future. 
    
In this regard, it is imperative for both to engage with one another at various levels: political and diplomatic, military and intelligence. At present, a hotline exists between the DGMOs of the two countries. But that is clearly not enough. A wider dialogue can, at the very least, check avoidable misunderstandings. It could of course achieve much more. New Delhi would surely want to know, for example, if the much-advertised shift in the Pakistani army’s strategic thinking – one that focusses on internal threats to that country’s security and not on India – is for real. A litmus test would be the swift conviction of alleged plotters of the terror attacks in Mumbai. 
    
Meanwhile, exchange visits by scholars and artistes, businessmen and pilgrims can help create, as the Aman Ki Asha experience attests, an atmosphere that is conducive to the resolution of some of the less intractable issues bedevilling India-Pakistan ties and, in the bargain, expand the peace constituency in both countries.

Defiant Bharti On AAP: First Sign Of Political Suicide?

By Newscop | INN Live

Somnath Bharti has every reason to be a worried man. His midnight shenanigans in Khirki extension, when he led a mob into the home of four Ugandan women, accusing them of being part of a 'drugs and sex' racket and then barging into a police station demanding their arrest without a warrant, have caused outrage across the spectrum, uniting disparate elements who usually agree to disagree on everything. 

Is Regulating Social Media Campaigns Overreach To ECI?

By Saurav Datta (Guest Writer)

Robust scepticism, that indispensable tool for informed, intelligent navigation through a world increasingly embracing polarisation, remains conspicuous by its absence in the current political discourse in India. The tidal wave of unstinted, blind support is emblematic of not only political parties and their ideologies, but also characterises the polity’s susceptibility to fads. This susceptibility gets manifested into gigantic follies when policy prescriptions and elaborate political strategies are drawn up on the basis of supposed trends which are mostly nothing but hot air.

Congress Will Stand Exposed If Withdraws Support To AAP

By Kajol Singh | INN Live

As the Aam Aadmi Party was preparing to from the government, the Congress has dropped a bomb, with sources saying that the party may withdraw support to the AAP. Congress leader Janardan Dwivedi said there were differences of opinion within the Congress about supporting AAP, and the party was seriously considering withdrawing support.

While the AAP had never wanted support from the party, it decided to take support after Congress said the support was 'unconditional'. However, the Congress had later denied offering unconditional support. So, will it work against the grand old party's interest if it withdraws support? 

NaMo, A Model Of Ruthlessly Ambitious 'King Aurangzeb'

By Zamir Kamil | Delhi

Who could imagine that Aurangzeb and Narendra Modi would have some things in common? But life surprises. To begin with, both are Gujaratis at least by birth. Aurangzeb was born in the town of Dahod, 200 km from Ahmedabad. Modi's birthplace is Vadnagar, 100-odd km away. Aurangzeb loved the town of his birth and three years before his death, instructed his son, the governor of Gujarat, to take special care of it.

Editorial: Will it be different this time?

By M H Ahssan

Should we believe the promises politicians make to us this time around? Whatever it is you want the government to do about terrorism, begin by asking who will do it, and how.

The terrorist attacks on Mumbai, resulting in tragic loss of lives among innocents and bravehearts, have thrown up some very predictable emotions. There is an outpouring of determination among some sections of the public that terrorism shall be defeated at all costs. There is despair at continuing government indifference. There is opportunism among opposition parties to point fingers at an evidently failing government. There is worry that our security agencies are just not up to the job of defending this country pre-emptively. There are also 'solutions' being proposed by analytical Indians outside the government -- from common citizens to corporates to retired officials and more. And, there is also rising anger at Muslims.

If India remains true to its model so far, a few days from now these emotions will be diluted, and on the way to being forgotten along with many others. But, we hear, there is some reason to think that this time, 'things will be different'.

The argument goes thus: Too many people got to witness this terrorism live, in ways that were simply not possible in earlier attacks. They were, in some sense, witness to the heroism and martyrdom of those who served, and equally to the absenteeism and opportunism of those who hid. This high 'involvement' (if one can use such a word to describe bystanders, that too on television, computer and mobile screens) is what makes 26/11 different, say some of our opinion-makers. For the first time, India had a chance to look deep inside itself, and really see how unprepared we are to face down such challenges. And therefore we will react.

Perhaps. But that's easier said than done.

Intelligence without systems
Our systems of governance, especially the way we find, staff and train positions within government are so broken that it would be wishful to believe that we can construct a rapid and robust response to terror in the way that some Western countries have done during the last decade.

Without systematic response mechanisms, intelligence can only be of limited value. Indeed, in the current case itself, 24 hours after the seige ended, the clearest evidence emerged that the Mumbai attacks could have been foiled by Indian security forces. ATS chief Hemant Karkare, who was killed in the seige had reportedly already warned city hotels that an attack was likely - in part because intelligence reports had recorded a reconnaissance operation of the hotels to be targeted. Even though some security arrangements at the Oberoi and Taj had been tightened recently, one report in The Hindu revealed security was lifted on complaints of 'inconveniences'. Mumbai Police have also been quoted as saying they were already stretched and did not have the specialised man-power to provide the security needed to hotels to defend against an attack.

Here's worse. RAW had reportedly intercepted a satellite phone call on 18 November indicating that planned movement along the sea route from Karachi to Mumbai. RAW had alerted the Indian Coast Guard and the Navy. And even as they mounted a search in the seas between Karachi and Mumbai, the terrorists, apparently noticing this, had hijacked an Indian fishing vessel, dumping their own boat. It isn't clear why the failure to find the vessel did not result in Indian authorities assuming that terrorists could still have landed in on the coast.

All of this indicates one thing. This siege and it's protracted 60-hour battle was not the result of a substantial failure of intelligence itself. It is the failure of governmental-response to knowledge of threats and continuing evidence of a casual attitude within state-governments in the handling of threats. One law enforcement official has been quoted in the DNA, without being named, that there are no methods to grade and prioritise action on threat advisories received from intelligence agencies. And since local officials receive such advisories regularly, they do not have a way to determine which ones to act on.

In India, most public systems tend to break down at the local level, even if 'national' systems are relatively well-run by otherwise competent officials. The first line of counter-attack against a terror strike, as we saw in Mumbai in first few hours of 26 November, was a weak, stretched, and unprepared local police force. By the time the NSG landed, 10 hours of precious time had be lost. Central governments have not bothered to work with state governments to setup elite tactical squads that can be rapidly mounted and deployed to prevent attacks, especially with evidence of something imminent.

In intelligence itself, there is more work to do. By the government's own account, we need to improve our intelligence gathering and this is not one of those things that can be done in weeks. We need to develop technological sophistication to gather, understand, grade and manage mountains of data - an exercise that has barely begun in most state governments. Don't forget that state governments, not the Centre, must carry much of the load for whatever is promised now.

Election promises won't work too
Another answer to the question 'why will it be different this time?' has been making the rounds: any government that does not act even in the face of such grave provocation and danger to its citizens will surely lose votes.

This 'votes will be lost' theory is a cruel joke constructed by our chattering class, mostly upon itself. It is the promised vengeance of a lot of people who don't themselves vote, but claim to understand the motivations and biases that bring others to the voting booth every few years. Pause for a minute and think through all the things that need to be done now, and imagine the various points along the way where governments could falter or - as is more likely - lose interest.

Even without the much-needed comprehensive reform to the police force, here's a small sample of the things needed - pass tougher laws, post elite forces such as the NSG in major cities, locate state government decision-making in acting on terror warnings in a single office that is held accountable and has to explain each warning that is ignored, bring in skilled persons at market pay into the departments, remove cronyism in career management within government, and assess progress using independent bodies.

The actual development of pre-emption and response strategies, and the ability to train and deploy forces repeatedly and reliably is the real work. Much of that is yet to be done, despite the continuing terror strikes of the past few years. As we write this, analyses and comparisons are already emerging about how the J&K police had to create a counter-force to pushback on Fidayeen attacks, with some success. Still, anyone who has seen the inside of our state governments -- both people and processes -- would know the huge gulf we have to cross to thwart - not just put down once the firing has begun - acts of terrorism.

Still, let us say on some of these matters, politicians, sensing the mood in the country, make promises. You tell me - how much of this change will happen merely because the UPA-Congress government today promises to do something, or the BJP promises something different?

Momentary seriousness or real change?
Fighting terrorism with a strong hand has become a necessary response to the reality of our lives. But actually doing so will take time, and great diligence.

Secure cities are not merely about keeping terrorists down, although that is hard enough. They're also about keep citizens moving up - socially, economically, culturally. Socio-economic divides and tensions in India are such that pools of exploitable minds are everywhere, with the evidence of their disenfranchisement all around them. It will require building bridges across communities, strengthening roles within government, and most importantly, subjecting public promises to real accountability.

However, the political system we have neither promotes nor rewards such work. Ask yourself this? When was the last time in any public meeting government officials (bureaucrats and politicians alike) were made to admit to failures that were avoidable, to explain why they failed and were not allowed to get away with a 'Chaltha hai?' or a 'We are looking into it' or a 'We have appointed an inquiry committee'?

Given that, what should we reasonably believe? That we are about to show the gravitas to invest in this? That the public will reward statesmanly promises with the coming months with faithfulness at the voting booth? No. Neither the current spurts of seriousness amidst citizens nor statesmanship amongst politicians will do.

Patriotism, nationalism and determination -- which are now at a visible high in the country after 26/11, and rightfully so -- will only take us so far. If you're looking for signs of real change in government, keep an eye on processes, not events and pronouncements. Look for accountability on responding to terror vested in one office or even one person, as opposed to being fragmented. Whatever it is you want the government to do to the terrorists, begin by asking who will do it, and how. And keep telling yourself that we can never have great success in isolated areas.

Srinivasan To Dalmiya: BCCI Done Nothing To 'Fix The Rot'

By M H Ahssan / Hyderabad

At Sunday’s meeting of the BCCI in Chennai, when it seemed that N Srinivasan would have to bow to the inevitable and resign as board president, he pulled out the oldest trick in the book: a pose of injured innocence. “I have been under terrible pressure,” Srinivasan evidently told the meeting, which had been convened in the context of allegations that his son-in-law and Chennai Super Kings principal Gurunath Meiyappan had been involved in the betting and spot-fixing scandal that has enveloped the IPL.

Makeover Experts 'Mirrors Salons', In A Class Of Its Own!

From 3Marks PR Services, Hyderabad

Celeb stylist Vipul Chudasama and Dr.Vijayalakshmi Goodapati, Owner of Mirrors Salons and Academy are coming together to give Hyderabad a glam and glitz makeover. 

According to a press statement, Vipul Chudasama will be available at Mirrors from today onwards. This is a remarkable opportunity for the style-conscious Hyderabadis who travel all the way to Mumbai, London Paris or New York for that perfect haircut-they just have to walk into 'Mirrors Salons' at Jubilee Hills and Madhapur in Hyderabad and get a makeover befitting a Hollywood star. Get ready to become the cynosure of all eyes!

Editorial: Is Arvind Kejriwal Dangerous For Indian Politics?

By M H Ahssan | INNLIVE

Who is more dangerous for India – Arvind Kejriwal or Narendra Modi? This is a question that India needs to answer. But a recent article titled ‘Arvind Kejriwal: The Most Dangerous Man In Indian Politics’ has ventured to supply a one-sided answer to this question. The title is as catchy as it is misleading if not subversive. 

The ensuing ‘analysis’ is sadly not borne out by facts but relies on obfuscation and rhetoric. The tragic outcome is that many pertinent facts have been buried beneath the rubble of unsubstantiated allegations and sinister accusations. On the whole the article is an anti-Kejriwal diatribe disguised as an intellectual treatise.

While conferring on Modi the respectable halo of a “firebrand Hindu nationalist”, the writer goes on to indulge in pure speculation and sweeping generalizations about Kejriwal and other AAP leaders.

Tribute: Legendary Editor 'Vinod Mehta' Passes Away At 74

In November, the veteran journalist spoke to INNLIVE about his life and work. 

This was probably his last interview. Veteran editor Vinod Mehta passed away after a lingering illness at the age of 74. Over his long career, he had been editor of The Sunday Observer, The Indian Post, The Independent, The Pioneer and Outlook magazine.

In 2012, he was promoted to the ceremonial post of editorial chairman of the Outlook group. That was two years after he published the Radia tapes story in Outlook magazine.

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Editorial: Telangana Conundrum

Devolution of powers and second States Reorganisation Commission needed at this hour.

With Union home minister Sushilkumar Shinde’s month-long deadline for a decision on Telangana expiring, the separate statehood demand has reached a critical point. Having previously promised a Telangana state – to be carved out of Andhra Pradesh – the Congress-led dispensation at the Centre is caught between a rock and a hard place. There is no denying that the Congress’s electoral success over the last two general elections was in large part bolstered by its performance in Andhra. Hence, splitting up the state was never going to be an easy decision. Even the Justice Srikrishna committee set up to study the statehood demand listed six options to deal with the vexed issue. 
    
The Congress’s current political arithmetic in Andhra is tricky. If it doesn’t grant Telangana, it could be politically wiped out in this region. On the other hand, the rise of Jaganmohan Reddy and his YSR Congress will anyway hit the party in the other Andhra regions – Rayalaseema and coastal Andhra. It is not surprising then that the Congress leadership is slowly moving towards the statehood option. The logic being that granting Telangana would at least hold the party in good stead here. However, the creation of a Telangana state would also embolden other statehood demands across the country. From Gorkhaland in West Bengal to Vidarbha in Maharashtra the call for smaller states will only grow louder, stoking Telangana-like agitations elsewhere. 
    
One solution to the problem could be greater devolution of administrative powers to local bodies. Apart for cultural and historical factors, one of the main grievances driving the Telangana movement is the overall lack of development in this region. Granting greater autonomy and empowering local bodies is one way to ensure that the fruits of development get evenly distributed, and satiate regional aspirations. That said, given the plethora of statehood demands, there is also an urgent need to form another States Reorganisation Commission (SRC). 
    
In 1956, the first SRC had reorganised states along linguistic lines. However, more than five decades later, the idea of linguistic identity forming the basis of statehood has become outdated. Today the demand for smaller states is increasingly driven by socio-economic aspirations. A second SRC would do well to study these factors and pronounce its verdict on the viability of the statehood demands. This would also guard against fringe movements holding the Centre and the idea of India to ransom.

Editorial: Engage Pakistan

By M H Ahssan

New Delhi must not allow the hysteria of the Indian chattering classes — indulging in war-mongering against Pakistan since the Mumbai terror strikes — to overwhelm its diplomacy.

More so now after Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari has reiterated to US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice that Islamabad would take “strong action against any Pakistani elements found involved in the Mumbai attack”.

New Delhi should, however, realise such apparent show of solidarity by Washington cannot be any substitute for direct engagement with the democratically-elected leadership of Pakistan. It should share concrete evidence with Islamabad directly.

It must also check the propensity of a section of its officialdom to deliberately leak premature probe findings to the media in a bid to score a few ‘patriotic’ brownie points. Most important, the Indian government must have the patience to wait for Islamabad to act once evidence has been provided to it.

It would be dangerously delusional on New Delhi’s part to think that a sovereign state such as Pakistan would respond exactly how India wants it to. Such impatience could escalate the current crisis into a full-blown Indo-Pak military conflict.

That would give the Islamists just what they want — much-needed respite from the heat they face from Pakistani forces which would be relocated to the Indian border. Worse, it would help pro-Islamist elements within the Pakistani military-intelligence establishment to gain lost ground.

Most disturbing, an Indian attack on Pakistan would compel the liberal sections of that country’s population to close ranks with Islamists. The problem in Pakistan is that the legitimacy its legislative leadership commands is rather scarce. The stranglehold the traditional elite has had on the socio-political process and national institutions has rendered them inequitable.

Islamist fundamentalism has, in such circumstances, stepped in to give marginal sections of the country some chimera of agency. But the Indian political class would need a new vision if it is to grasp this regional predicament in its totality. This vision must, instead of making an ideological fetish out of national sovereignty, envisage fundamentalist terror as something that threatens the modern social continuum of south Asia, not just India.

Eye Opener: The Unfortunate Enduring Saga Of Organ Sales In India

By M H AHSSAN | INNLIVE

A surgeon navigates the complex social and ethical arena in which illegal organ donations thrive.

Back in 2004, in an editorial for theIndian Journal of Medical Ethics on a kidney transplant racket, I began by saying, "In our scandal-prone Indian public life, one scandal distinguishes itself by the amazing regularity with which it hits the headlines every few years.

HNN's Exclusive Print Edition on June 29, 2009

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Confronting the Downturn: How India is Reacting to Global Economic Turmoil

India is set to be the world's strongest region in 2009. But even so, the regional economy will change because of the downturn. In this special edition, HNN will provide an overview which looks at how the region's economies are coping with the economic downturn, looking at which countries are performing best, and which are being hit the hardest. It will also provide an in-depth look at how different parts of the economy are being affected and what strategies are being pursued to ensure growth in the future. Detailed synopsis attached for reference.

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Agency commission: 15%
Date of publication: 29 June 2009
Booking deadline: 15 June 2009
Material deadline: 18 June 2009

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Kind Regards,

Vicky Sharma
Team Co-ordinator - HNN

MEDIA BOSS: WHOSE 'NEWS' ARE YOU WATCHING TODAY?

By M H Ahssan / Hyderabad

Television news in the southern part of the country has largely become the preserve of the various political dynasties, with a glut of channels acting as mouthpieces of the owners rather than objective news broadcasters. INN brings us the true picture. 

A joke in Tamilnadu one has heard several times is about how Tamilians ensure they get the right news.