An eight-member team from South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore formalised an agreement with the West Bengal government and Kolkata-based Synergy Renewable Energy Private Ltd (SREPL) here Saturday to set up a $400 million solar wafer manufacturing unit in the state.
The company, Kits Solar, will be a 100 percent export-oriented unit and will have its facility at Durgapur in Burdwan distict, around 100 km from here.
"The project will be the first in India in the renewable energy sector and will have a positive impact in the field of solar energy. We are glad to be a part of this prestigious project in West Bengal," said SREPL chairman Cecil Antony.
"The total amount will be invested in phases over the next five years. In the first year about $40 million will be spent in setting up the facility at Durgapur while the rest will be invested for installing advanced machineries at the unit," Antony said.
A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was earlier signed with Komex and Associates at Seoul when a delegation from the ministry of power & non-conventional energy led by West Bengal Power Minister Mrinal Banerjee and West Bengal Renewable Energy Development Authority (WBREDA) director S.P. Gonchaudhuri visited South Korea in September this year.
The foreign investors' team met West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya at the state secretariat Friday.
The state government will hold 10 percent equity in the project through WBREDA. The project is expected to be operational within the next 18 months.
Indo-Asian News Service
Protests were held in Chandigarh Friday after a question in the civil services main Examination, conducted by the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC), asked the students to evaluate the "revolutionary terrorism" of one of the best known martyrs of Indian freedom struggle - Bhagat Singh.
The attempt to equate Bhagat Singh's freedom struggle with terrorist acts did not go down well with students and student organisations here.
Protests were held at the Panjab University campus and elsewhere against the UPSC for allowing the question that showed martyrs like Bhagat Singh in poor light.
Protesting students also burnt an effigy of the UPSC chairman.
The question was part of the general studies part I paper which was held Friday.
"The word terrorism has negative connotations in the minds of the masses and the UPSC was trying to equate Osama bin Laden and other terrorists with Shaheed-e-Azam Bhagat Singh, and we will not allow it to happen," Indian National Students Organization (INSO) office-bearer Vikas Rathee said.
The INSO threatened to launch a countrywide agitation on this issue with support from other student organisations if the UPSC did not withdraw the question and tender an apology for hurting peoples' sentiments.
Incidentally, the birth centenary of Bhagat Singh was celebrated in Punjab and elsewhere in the country last month.
Indo-Asian News Service
A Mumbai-based blogger and columnist won the Bastiat Prize for Journalism here for his regular weekly column in an Indian business daily.
Amit Varma won the award Wednesday for his weekly column 'Thinking it through' in Mint business daily from the Hindustan Times group. He has also been blogging for the last three years.
The Bastiat Prize for Journalism, instituted six years ago, after the 19th century French philosopher and writer Frédéric Bastiat, who believed in the institutions of free society, carries a cash prize of $10,000, and is given by the International Policy Network (IPN), with offices in Britain and the US, to encourage, recognise and reward writers around the world whose published works elucidate the institutions of the free society.
Varma beat five other finalists, including first runner up Clive Crook (Atlantic Monthly) and second runner up Jonah Goldberg (National Review). There were submissions from over 280 writers in 60 countries.
"I am pleasantly surprised to win the prize given the calibre of other finalists. I felt flattered to find myself in the final list," Varma told IANS after receiving the prize.
"Bastiat," he added, "is one of my intellectual heroes, his ideas are still relevant to modern India."
Bibek Debroy of International Management Institute, New Delhi, was in the panel of five judges.
Indo-Asian News Service
It has been a historic week for the Indian stock market as it peaked to an all-time high above the 19,000 mark and managed to sustain that level. Stocks rallied after market watchdog Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) dispelled confusion on curbs on overseas investors to participate in Indian equities.
The benchmark index of the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) finally closed Friday with a gain of 472 points at 19,243 -- near its all-time high of 19,276 -- while the broader S&P CNX Nifty ended the session by adding 133 point at 5,702 on Friday.
The SEBI on Tuesday said that further Participatory Notes, or instruments used by foreign institutional investors (FIIS) to participate in the Indian market, would be issued only till the firms had registered themselves.
The SEBI move was to bring transparency into the capital market. SEBI chairman M. Damodaran also allowed overseas pension funds, charitable funds and university funds to participate in the Indian bourses as FIIs.
This good news led to a surge in the markets, which opened the new series on a robust note as the bulls took charge of the markets. The Sensex saw thumping gains of 500 points and the broader markets also notched up significantly.
Capital goods stocks led the rally after sector heavyweight Larsen and Toubro posted a whopping 73 percent rise in net profit from the previous quarter which led the stock to jump by 12.40 percent and close at Rs.3,885.
Capital goods stocks were in the limelight during the week.
Laxmi Machine Works flared up by 14.98 percent to Rs.3,171, Crompton Greaves rose by 7.44 percent to Rs.420 and Kalpataru Power scaled up by 6.81 percent to Rs.1,795.
The market breadth was looking positive as the trade volumes across the board were very impressive. Of the 2,833 stocks traded on the BSE, 1,737 stocks advanced, 1,029 declined and 67 ended unchanged.
Among the sectoral indices, the BSE capital goods index was the major gainer and rose 7.08 percent followed by the BSE PSU Index that rose 3.93 percent and the BSE Bankex Index that gained 3.52 percent.
Over 27.5 million Reliance Natural Resources shares changed hands on the index followed by Himachal Futuristic Communication (20.5 million shares), Reliance Petroleum (20.3 million shares), Tata Teleservices (15.7 million shares) and Power Grid Corporation (14.6 million shares).
Value-wise L&T clocked a turnover of Rs.4.33 billion followed by Reliance Petroleum (Rs.4.04 billion), Reliance Industries (Rs.3.63 billion), Reliance Natural Resources (Rs.2.72 billion) and Reliance Energy (Rs.2.65 billion).
Indo-Asian News Service
European exterior with a 'pahari' (mountainous) soul! That is how the historic Barnes Court, a neo-Tudor timber framed building that now serves as the Himachal Pradesh governor's residence, was described on its completion of 175 years this week.
Governor V.S. Kokje hosted the city's elite to celebrate the occasion Thursday and recalled the sprawling building's history.
Barnes Court was first occupied by the then British commander-in-chief of the Indian Army, Sir Edward Barnes, in 1832 and gets its name from him.
It is there that the historic Simla Agreement was signed between India and Pakistan in 1972. During the signing of the pact, then Pakistan prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and his family stayed in the house as state guests.
Since 1981, the sprawling Barnes Court is the official residence of the Governor of Himachal Pradesh.
Raising a toast to the beautiful building, Governor Kokje said it had "a European exterior and a 'pahari' soul".
Jan Morris, a travel writer, describes the architecture of Barnes Court in her book "Stones of Empire" as a "curiously re-constructed kind of English manor-house".
"Its gardens were landscaped in English style, its trees were cunningly disposed, and the whole house was built in nostalgic half-timbering."
"Patterned dark woodwork beneath its eaves gave it, it is true, something of the air of a Swiss hotel, a gabled veranda acknowledged that this in fact was India, but a cunning sleight of hand from some angles and the octagonal steeple, which stood at one corner of the house, looked tantalisingly like an English steeple."
Flowerbeds in the front of the building were widened in the 1990s, an elevator and a fire escape staircase were added in 1994 and the various suites and office rooms were given Hindi names in 1998.
Indo-Asian News Service
A historic 19th century painting by Raja Ravi Varma has been sold for 520,000 pounds (about $1 million) at a London auction of Indian art, but more than two dozen modern Indian paintings remained unsold.
London auctioneer Bonhams estimated Ravi Varma's 1880 painting of a meeting between Indian royals and British officials at between 50,000 and 70,000 pounds but it sold for ten times the asking price Thursday.
The painting is of the maharaja of Travancore and his younger brother welcoming the governor-general of Madras on an official visit to what is now the southern state of Kerala in 1880.
It was bought by Mumbai art dealer Neville Tuli, who told the Press Association news agency that his acquisition was significant as "it is very important to bring back to India part of its artistic cultural heritage".
The painting is set in Trivandrum, capital of the former princely state of Travancore and shows the third Duke of Buckingham and Chandos, Richard Temple-Grenville, who was governor-general of Madras from 1875 to 1880, being received by Visakham Tirunal, the younger brother of the maharaja of Travancore, who was to succeed his brother in May 1880.
The maharaja, Ayilayam Tirunal, is shown standing behind his brother.
As the most sought-after academic painter of colonial India who was an aristocrat himself, Ravi Varma was often invited to state occasions by British high officials and the Indian nobility, and recorded their activities on his canvases - notably the investiture ceremony of the Gaekwad of Baroda in 1881, and the elephant kheda operation in Mysore on the occasion of the visit of the Prince of Wales in 1906, the year of Ravi Varma's death.
Despite the massive interest shown in the Ravi Varma painting, 25 out of about 57 modern Indian paintings on offer remained unsold, according to Bonhams.
Reputed modern Indian painters who could not find a buyer included Jamini Roy, K. Laxma Gouda, Madhvi Parekh, K.H. Ara, Badri Narayan.
While one of Jamini Roy's paintings, titled "Horse", sold for 2,400 pounds, three others - "Female Dancer", "Seated Man with Hookah" and "Krishna and Yashodha" were ignored.
The top sellers of the day were Amrita Sher Gill, whose "Seated Girl" went for 32,000 pounds, Ganesh Haloi, Francis Newton Souza and M.F. Husain. They were among 32 modern Indian paintings that sold under the hammer.
Modern Indian art has been a regular feature at London auctioneers for over a decade, with Tagore, Husain, Haloi, Roy and Syed Haidar Raza figuring among the favourites. But at Thursday's auction a painting by Raza had no takers.
A unique feature of Thursday's auction was a group of Sikh paintings from the 19th century, including portraits of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, Duleep Singh, his mother Rani Jindan and some religious manuscripts.
Indo-Asian News Service
The United Kingdom has emerged as a major market for Indian films, thanks to the presence of over two million people of south Asian origin who ensure that at least one Bollywood film figures in the UK top ten chart regularly.
Indian film producers have woven into story lines themes that touch upon the life and times of the Indian diaspora here. Thus, films such as "Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge" have proved hits not only in India but also in the UK. On any given day, Indian films are being shot on several locations across the country.
Five Indian films figure in the ongoing 51st London Film Festival (Oct 17 to Nov 1). They are: "Four Women" directed by Adoor Gopalakrishnan, "Frozen" directed by Shivajee Chandrabhushan, "The Last Lear" by Rituparno Ghosh, "Mahek" directed by K. Kanade, and "The Voyeurs" directed by Budhadev Dasgupta.
During the last year, Indian films generated 16 million pounds (about $33 million) at the UK box office. The strength of the UK market for Indian films has forced producers and directors to either shoot here or incorporate British Asian themes and idioms.
This month, two Indian films - "Bhool Bhulaiya" and "Laga Chunari Mein Daag" - entered the UK Top Ten Chart. The situation has reached such a pass that it is considered normal for an Indian film to collect a million pounds from the box office.
Pervaiz Alam, editor of India-EU Film Initiative, told IANS: "Now Indian film distributors have also become conscious of the fact that that they have to join the mainstream of the film distribution network in the UK.
"India's giant entertainment company, Adlabs, became the 21st member of the Film Distributors Association (FDA) in October 2007 - only the second Indian company to do so after Eros."
Three major film companies from India - Eros, Film India Company and UTV - are listed on the Alternative Investment Market of the London Stock Exchange.
Mark Batey, chief executive of FDA, said: "The strength of our association is reflected by the fact that 97 percent of the 800 million pounds box office collections in the UK last year came from the FDA members. Two percent of this amount, 16 million pounds, was generated by the Indian films.
"The year 2006 saw 500 film releases from 33 countries in the UK, including 200 films from the US. The UK was next with about 65 productions, followed by India and France with 53 and 30 films, respectively.
"It is a regular feature now to see Indian films featuring in the weekly top ten chart of the UK. In a year, the top 20 films tend to be UK or US films with very wide, cross-market appeal whereas Bollywood is inevitably a niche market in the UK, albeit an important and growing one."
There have been instances when more Indian than local films were released in the UK. A record 74 Indian films were released here in 2005, compared to 61 UK productions.
Upbeat about India's presence in the UK film sphere, Batey said: "The Indian film market is huge and offers amazing opportunities to all. This is the reason more and more international companies are looking for partners in India to take advantage of the developing situation."
Earlier this year, the India International Film Awards (IIFA) were staged in Yorkshire. Several regional developments agencies in the UK have been sending teams to Mumbai to court Indian film producers and offer incentives to shoot films in their region. Tourism figures suggest that tourist traffic from India is higher to places in UK that figure in films. Tourist officials have also brought out a 'Bollywood map' of Britain.
However, as in India, UK film authorities have also had to grapple with piracy. According to the Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT), piracy is a business that generates over 270 million pounds a year for criminals.
In 2006, FACT seized over 1.5 million pirated DVDs and its in-house forensic services team assisted the police, trading standards, and revenue and customs in examining close to one million DVDs.
Batey said: "From the seized products we understand that Indian films are equally affected by piracy. FDA is constantly working with distributors to evolve ways and means to stop piracy."
Indo-Asian News Service
Major threats to the world such as climate change, the rate of extinction of species, and the challenge of feeding a growing population are among the many that remain unresolved, and all of them put humanity at risk, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has warned.
The warning comes in UNEP's Global Environment Outlook: environment for development (GEO-4) report released Friday.
GEO-4 salutes the world's progress in tackling some relatively straightforward problems, with the environment now much closer to mainstream politics everywhere. But despite these advances, there remain the harder-to-manage issues, the "persistent" problems.
Here, GEO-4 says: "There are no major issues for which the foreseeable trends are favourable."
On the urgent issue of climate change, the report says the threat is now so urgent that large cuts in greenhouse gases by mid-century are needed. Negotiations are due to start in December on a treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol, the international climate agreement that obligates countries to control anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.
Although the protocol exempts all developing countries from emission reduction commitments, there is growing pressure on some rapidly industrialising countries -- now substantial emitters themselves -- to agree to emission reductions.
GEO-4 says the world faces an overall crisis that includes climate change, extinction rates, hunger, problems driven by growing human numbers, the rising consumption of the rich and the desperation of the poor. The effects of this crisis are shown in decline of fish stocks, loss of fertile land through degradation or dwindling amount of fresh water available, for example.
The report says climate change is a "global priority", and the response to it demands political will and leadership. Yet UNEP finds "a remarkable lack of urgency", and a "woefully inadequate" global response.
Several highly polluting countries have refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol. GEO-4 says: "Some industrial sectors that were unfavourable to the Protocol managed successfully to undermine the political will to ratify it."
"Fundamental changes in social and economic structures, including lifestyle changes, are crucial if rapid progress is to be achieved," the report points out.
On the issue of water supply, GEO-4 warns that irrigation already takes about 70 percent of available water, yet the world will have to double food production by 2050. "The escalating burden of water demand will become intolerable in water-scarce countries."
Water quality is declining too, polluted by microbial pathogens and excessive nutrients. Globally, contaminated water remains the greatest single cause of human disease and death.
In developing countries some three million people die annually from water-borne diseases, most of them under-five-year-olds.
GEO-4 says current biodiversity changes are the fastest in human history. Species are becoming extinct a hundred times faster than the rate shown in the fossil record. Of the major vertebrate groups that have been assessed comprehensively, over 30 percent of amphibians, 23 percent of mammals and 12 percent of birds are threatened.
Yet meeting humanity's growing demand for food will mean either intensified agriculture -- using more chemicals, energy and water, and more efficient breeds and crops -- or cultivating more land. Either way, biodiversity suffers.
The report says environmental exposure causes almost a quarter of all diseases. More than two million people worldwide are estimated to die prematurely every year from indoor and outdoor air pollution. It points out that some of the progress achieved in reducing pollution in developed countries has been at the expense of the developing world, where industrial production and its impacts are now being exported.
According to GEO-4, unsustainable land use is causing degradation, a threat as serious as climate change and biodiversity loss. It affects up to a third of the world's people, through pollution, soil erosion, nutrient depletion, water scarcity, salinity, and disruption of biological cycles.
GEO-4 was prepared by about 390 experts and reviewed by more than 1,000 others across the world.
Decisions that individuals and society make now will largely determine the future of humanity and of the planet, the report says. "Our common future depends on our actions today, not tomorrow or some time in the future."
Indo-Asian News Service
Once shunned by investors, economically backward Bihar is metamorphosing into an investment-friendly state, attracting funds worth Rs. 370 billion (over $9 billion) in the past two years.
Bihar Industries Minister Gautam Singh said that big industrialists have been showing keen interest after Chief Minister Nitish Kumar initiated some measures to develop the state's infrastructure.
"Bihar will attract investors in large numbers. The state is poised for development," Singh told IANS.
"In less than two years, the state government led by Nitish Kumar had cleared 76 proposals for projects worth Rs. 370 billion," state industries department principal secretary Vijay Raghavan said here Friday.
Most of the investments are in the power, sugar and cement sectors. Raghavan said proposals cleared by the state government include setting up of 14 ethanol plants, four each for maize processing and cement manufacture and three power plants.
Last week, Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani visited Patna and made it clear he was keen to invest in Bihar, which he said must develop for India as a whole to prosper.
"Bihar has a big potential for investment," Ambani said here Friday after a meeting with the chief minister. "We will to do something for the state's development."
In the past one year, he is the fourth big industrialist to explore investment possibilities in the state.
Tata group chairman Ratan Tata, Mahindra & Mahindra group vice-chairman Anand Mahindra and Bharti group chairman and managing director Sunil Bharti Mittal have carried out investment reconnaissance in the state.
Raghavan admitted the value of investment proposals might be small for developed states, but it was an achievement for Bihar.
"This is the indication of a positive beginning. We hope more investments will flow into the state in the coming months," he said.
"The state government has already given the go-ahead to a number of projects and is in the process of acquiring lands for the purpose. If these industries come up, they would provide direct employment to 90,000 people and indirect employment to nearly 500,000 people across the state."
After coming to power in November 2005, the Nitish Kumar-led government had initiated measures to build the state's infrastructure, including roads, bridges and power, to attract investors. But more has to be done to develop infrastructure in rural areas.
The government has also prepared a land bank to make land available to investors.
Indo-Asian News Service
Six decades after its birth, the global IT industry has grown into a trillion-dollar behemoth. But while India has played a stellar role in shaping the sector, its share in the pie is a minuscule three percent, say the authors of a new book.
"India showed that the characteristic of on-time and within-budget delivery is something that can be expected as the norm," said Priya Kurien, who has co-authored "Blind Men and The Elephant: Demystifying the Global IT Services Industry" with Was Rahman.
"More importantly, it has also been bringing in a much better success rate for the quality of project work delivered," said the Bangalore-based Kurien.
Yet at $18 billion (Rs.711 billion), the total revenue of India's IT services exports is still less than three percent of the total IT services pie.
"Therefore, while in India there is considerable hype and excitement about the role of the Indian IT industry, just from a contribution to the global pie, there is plenty more to be done," Kurien told IANS in an interview.
Tracing the six decades of global IT services, their Sage-India published book looks at the state of three giant global IT service organisations - IBM, EDS and Accenture - and the Indian challengers TCS, Infosys and Wipro.
Unable to find "books that gave us enough insights into the past of the IT services industry," the authors got the idea to write a book covering past, present and future of the sector.
"We certainly don't offer any predictions on where the industry will go, only possible scenarios that can play out and other factors that will have a major impact on the industry," they added.
India needs to learn some lessons in a hurry, they suggested. "Given India's fascination with the IT industry, we do think this will have more readers in India," said London-based Rahman.
Rahman is CEO and co-founder of Dolphin Advisory. He has spent a career advising business and technology executives on how to leverage the potential of IT. He has been involved with many corporate big names and a charter member of TiE UK.
Kurien is managing director of Dolphin Advisory. While at Insosys Technologies for a decade, she co-developed the firm's European Strategy and its Solutions Programme.
The authors say in terms of executive customer relationships, the largest IT services companies globally have expanded because they have very strong relationships at senior executive levels of their customers.
"Acquiring and managing such relationships is quite effort intensive and challenging. The top Indian players are doing this but the rest of the industry probably has things to learn on this aspect," Kurien pointed out.
Likewise, most Indian IT services firms have been riding on "Brand India" that seems to denote low-cost and high quality IT services to Western customers.
"The need for differentiation and uniqueness for each Indian player is something that will become the need of the hour as Indian firms begin to compete much more against each other than 'in-house' IT teams or Western competitors, as was the case in the past," said Rahman.
Large global players also know the value of a consortium to win the really big deals, for instance, with the US government or the UK National Health Service.
"Indian IT service providers have been growing so rapidly and since the market seems to be growing, collaboration and partnerships have not really been important thus far but will become increasingly so to win the larger deals," suggest the writers.
They argue that Nasscom (National Association of Software and Service Companies) numbers peg the Indian IT and ITeS industry to be employing over a million people. Even as a percentage of the total employment by the IT industry globally, this is a fairly high percentage.
"This number continues to rise year on year right now. As many people are part of this industry and aspire to be part of it, and are investing in building careers in it, we think it is useful and relevant for them to understand the past, present and the scenarios for the future of the industry," said Kurien.
According to Nasscom, last year the domestic spending in India was $8.2 billion. As a fraction of the global IT spending, this is still very small.
But it is beginning to grow with both large and SME businesses beginning to utilise IT. Not having constraints of legacy infrastructure, both types of businesses are leapfrogging generations of technology to begin with the latest available today, the authors say.
Indo-Asian News Service
The Nazis believed in the differences in men, and believed in the extermination of these differences. The imagination can never fully get around the horror of Auschwitz — and adjoining Birkenau — where in less than three years the Nazis gassed and incinerated nearly one-and-a-half million men, women and children, many no more than a few years old. In a world full of memorials to our creativity and genius, this is a memorial to the darkness that ever lurks in the heart of men.
As you walk through those surreally peaceful double-storey blocks, you will invariably find yourself tailed or led by a crocodile of teenagers — scrubbed shining, brightly attired, speaking in hushed voices — winding their way through a byway of history to which they — and each one of us — are deeply connected. Round the year, ceaselessly, the Jews ship out their children from all over the world to show them the beast that resides in us all. By their own long suffering they understand that the battle of life against death is the battle of memory against forgetting. That to not look the beast in the face is to have the beast on your back all the time.
There is nowhere in India that you can take your daughter if you wish to level her with the beast of Partition, the beast of the 1984 Sikh riots, the beast of a hundred communal and caste massacres, or the beast of Gujarat 2002. Because we do not remember, we repeat; because we do not look the evil in the eye, it dogs us all the time.
There is nowhere in India that we enshrine our cruelty so that we can look at it and be dismayed and be afraid.
Well, read this special issue of TEHELKA and be dismayed and be afraid. Ashish Khetan’s extraordinary six-month investigation — one of the finest in the history of Indian journalism — peels off all kinds of masks, and shows us the beast in us. For five years since the carnage, we have heard charges and counter-charges. We have heard the victims, the government, the police, the judiciary, and the civil rights groups. Now for the first time hear the story of the killings from the men who did it. Put to rest your doubts about the foetus that was pulled out from its womb; about the systematic slicing of Ehsan Jafri’s limbs and torso; of the raping and chopping and burning of women and children; of law officers who turned on the victims; of the collusion of the police and the government.
Read it and be afraid.
One problem is we live in an age of spiralling hype and sensation.An age of cheap spectacle in which the indulgences of sports and cinema can be so easily deemed landmark and historic. An age in which words like chilling, appalling, inhuman, outrageous, have all lost their charge. We are all desensitised viewers set upon by a turbofuelled media. Image is chasing image at such blistering speed that we dare not hold on to anything — lest we burst. This issue of TEHELKA, perhaps, can be a kind of litmus test. Read the following pages and see if you rediscover the meaning of some words — barbaric for one; for another, heartbreaking.
Read it and see if you can still be made afraid.
Of the many things that are uniquely appalling about Gujarat 2002, three are particularly disturbing. The first that the genocidal killings took place in the heart of urban India in an era of saturation media coverage — television, print, web — and not under the cloak of secrecy in an unreachable place. The second that the men who presided over the carnage were soon after elected to power not despite their crimes but seemingly precisely because of them (making a mockery of the idea of the inevitable morality of the collective). And finally — as TEHELKA’s investigation shows — the fact that there continues to be no trace of remorse, no sign of penitence for the blood-on-the-hands that — if Shakespeare and Dostoyevsky are to be believed — is supposed to haunt men to their very graves.
Like Germany and Italy once, Gujarat begs many questions. How do a non-militant people suddenly acquire a bloodthirsty instinct? Does affluence not diminish the impulse to savagery? Does education not diminish the impulse to bigotry? Do the much-vaunted tenets of classical Hinduism not diminish the impulse to cruelty? If tolerance and wisdom will not flourish in a garden of well-being and learning, in the very land of Mahatma Gandhi, then is there any hope for these things at all?
Are we all, finally, only making a reckoning of differences and numbers? Would we all, given the advantage of numbers, and protection from the law, gleefully brutalise anyone who is different, or in disagreement? Today it is the overwhelming question in the mirror. Each of us needs to see it and to answer it. For the violence that bloomed so bloodily amid the Gujarati is also all around us. Every day brings news of a fresh mob attack, a fresh case of vigilante justice. The strong will tame the weak — if only law and order will look the other way for a moment.
Is it possible that contrary to all the hoopla we may have already lived out the high tide of our democracy? Many Indians may get richer and richer but as a people — a deep civilisation — we will now only get poorer and poorer? Is it possible that a country sprung from the vision of giants can now only sustain small men with small concerns? Once a few good men shaped a modern egalitarian nation out of a devastated colony; are there none now to staunch the rot?
FOR MORE than three years there has been a government at the centre that claims a legacy of the founding vision. Amazingly it has not once lifted a finger to alleviate the grief of Gujarat. There has neither been a display of the impartial steel of law and order, nor the soothing balm of any efforts of peace and reconciliation. Shining names like Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh present abject report cards — full of the desperate calculus of votes and seats; fully bare of any act of courageous morality. On the other hand, there is the bravery of the bigot: with élan Narendra Modi walks the talk and flings the gauntlet. And the idea of India dulls by the day.
Great leadership — power — is a complex duet of control and vision. India lives with a generation of politicians who at any given time only possess one of the two. The resulting catastrophes erupt around us like rash on an allergy.
Today India has a thousand mutinies awaiting an opportunity to violence, but this is the most important story of our time because the schism in Gujarat is the biggest slap in the face of the idea of India. We would do well to remember that there were once other contesting ideas to that of the liberal secular democracy. We would do well to remember nothing is forever. We could still become other things, the beast within us could still tear us apart — as has happened in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar — if we do not do what we need to do, if we do not look into the mirror and fix our face.
The face can neither be an angry snarl nor a glassy-eyed indifference. And it certainly cannot be the vacuous grin of the shining Indian. In equal parts it must reflect concern and memory and compassion. Read the following pages and know why. Read the following pages and be afraid.
The Tehelka newsmagazine Thursday released sensational footage made by an undercover journalist, in which leaders of Hindu groups alleged that Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi had sanctioned the communal violence of 2002.
Tehelka editor Tarun Tejpal said the investigation was carried out over six months beginning May during which the journalist, Ashish Khetan, went around talking to Hindu activists with a hidden camera.
He said prominent representatives of the Vishwa Hidnu Parishad (VHP) and the Bajrang Dal admitted in their conversations that Modi sanctioned the killings in the wake of the Feb 27, 2002 train burning in Godhra in which 59 Hindu passengers were killed.
Replying to a query on Modi's alleged involvement in the violence, Tejpal told reporters here: "There was a strong and tacit approval of what was happening. His sanction was there."
Reacting to the Tehelka revelations, Gujarat's ruling Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) termed it as "a political stunt on the eve of assembly elections in the state". The opposition Congress said there was nothing new in the findings but expressed concern that they could polarise the Hindus and Muslims ahead of the December polls.
The communal violence left more than 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, dead and thousands injured and homeless.
Tehelka's investigative report, telecast on private television channel Aaj Tak and to be published in the magazine Friday, shows Haresh Bhatt, the BJP legislator from Godhra, saying that Modi had given rioters a free hand for three days.
"He had given us three days time...to do whatever we could. He said he would not give us time after that. He said this openly. After three days he asked (us) to stop and everything came to a halt," Bhatt, a senior VHP functionary then, was quoted as telling the tehelka reporter.
An accused in the Naroda Patiya massacre - in which more than 80 people were killed on the outskirts of Ahmedabad - told the journalist that Modi had come to the locality and had thanked the rioters saying "Aap dhanya ho" (you have done a great job).
Describing the expose as the "most important story of our time", Tejpal said the investigation has brought out irrefutable evidence in several horrific incidents that have remained contested so far.
These include piercing out of a foetus from the womb of a woman with a sword and killing of Muslims hiding in a gutter.
Tejpal said that Tehelka also had a first-hand account from an accused in the Gulbarga Society massacre in Ahmedabad, explaining how former MP Ehsan Jaffri of the Congress was hacked limb-by-limb and burnt.
The expose also contains details based on the "confessions" of how dozens of Muslims hiding in a pit and clinging together in fear in Naroda Patiya were doused with kerosene and burnt alive.
Tejpal said: "For the first time, this investigation brings confirmation that the murder of Muslims was not a spontaneous swelling of anger but a planned genocide strategised and executed by top functionaries of the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh), the VHP, the Bajrang Dal and state authorities, with the knowledge and sanction of Modi."
He claimed the investigation revealed that the train bogey burning incident at Godhra was the result of a spontaneous mob fury by some Muslims in that town and not a pre-planned conspiracy as held by the state government.
"Two BJP members, who claim to be eyewitnesses and have identified many of the 'accused', admit that they were not even at the Godhra station that day. They say the police filed statements on their behalf and they colluded to further the cause of Hindutva," said Tejpal in a statement.
The Tehelka footage also points to the manufacturing of bombs in factories owned by senior Bajrang Dal and VHP activists.
"Arms were smuggled from Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Punjab and then distributed to execution squads led by MLAs and senior members of the Sangh Parivar," said Tejpal.
The expose also claims to reveal "the elaborate legal subversion" executed to save those accused for their role in the communal violence.
"There were the cool strategists - leaders, officials, ideologues. And there were the foot soldiers who actually raped, killed and looted. To help these foot soldiers escape the law, the strategists had constituted a panel of lawyers sympathetic to the 'Hindu cause'," said Tejpal.
He said two public prosecutors admitted to the Tehelka reporter how, contrary to their public office, they were secretly defending the "Hindu accused" and how they try and settle deals between the accused and the survivors.
Asked about the timing of the revelations before the Gujarat elections and whether they would lead to communal polarisation, Tejpal said: "We are not politicians. It has been a journalist's work and his duty was to bring forward the truth."
Indo-Asian News Service Tahelka Reports
NARENDRA MODI visited Godhra on the day of the burning of coach S-6 of the Sabarmati Express. His outburst provided the first sign to Sangh workers that the time to corner the Muslims had come
THAT VERY NIGHT, top BJP and Sangh leaders met at Ahmedabad, Vadodara and Godhra, and gave the green signal for an all-out assault on Muslims across the state
A STRATEGY was devised on how to shield the attackers from the law after the riots. Prominent lawyers were briefed and senior police officers taken into confidence. The cadres were told Modi was squarely behind them
THE MOBILISATION of the under castes, something the Sangh had been engaged in for years, dovetailed into the deep penetration Hindutva already had among Gujarat’s higher castes. Godhra provided the perfect spark to fuse them together
FROM THE very outset, the police played partisan, often joining the mobs. Officers who tried to do their duty found their hands tied. The complicity was led by then Ahmedabad Commissioner PC Pandey, who ensured compliance by a swathe of junior officers
WEAPONS, FROM BOMBS to guns to trishuls, were either manufactured and distributed by Sangh workers themselves, or smuggled through Sangh channels from all over India. The Bajrang Dal and the VHP already had a large cache of firearms and daggers
BJP AND SANGH LEADERS led the bloodthirsty mobs through Ahmedabad’s bylanes, Sabarkantha’s villages, Vadodara’s localities. The police stood guard to the mayhem
BJP MLA MAYABEN KODNANI drove around Ahmedabad’s Naroda locality all day, directing the mobs. VHP leaders Atul Vaid and Bharat Teli did the same at the Gulbarg Housing Society. None of them ever went to jail
FIRE WAS THE MOST FAVOURED weapon in the rioters’ hands. That cremation is considered un-Islamic fuelled their frenzy to burn. Petrol and kerosene were lavishly used, as were the victims’ own gas cylinders
BABU BAJRANGI reveals he collected 23 revolvers from Hindus in Naroda Patiya. He called VHP general secretary Jaideep Patel 11 times and informed Gordhan Zadaphia, the then minister of state for home, about the death toll
GOVERNMENT COUNSEL before the Nanavati-Shah Commission, Arvind Pandya, himself worships Modi and describes Justice Shah as “our man”. Nanavati’s own report on the 1984 anti-Sikh riots is gathering dust till today
A Cold Eclipse
THERE WAS no spontaneity to what happened in Gujarat post- Godhra. This was no uncontrived, unplanned, unprompted communal violence. This was a pogrom. This was genocide.
In a planned, coldly strategic manner, Muslim neighbourhoods across both urban and rural Gujarat were targeted. Large sections of Hindus were united under a single objective: to kill Muslims, wherever and by whatever means, preferably by first stabbing and mutilating them, and then by setting on fire what remained, whether dead or alive. During the course of the TEHELKA sting, many accused said they preferred burning Muslims alive over other forms of death since cremation is considered unacceptable in Islam.
For three days after the February 27 fire on the Sabarmati Express at Godhra, Gujarat’s BJP government receded from public view and let the armed mercenaries of Hindu organisations take over. For three days, absolute anarchy reigned. Execution squads were formed, composed of the dedicated cadre of Hindu organisations — the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the Bajrang Dal, the Kisan Sangh, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad and the Bharatiya Janata Party. Masjids and dargahs were destroyed across the state. Seventy-three Muslim religious places were torched in Ahmedabad alone, 55 in Sabarkantha, 22 in Vadodara.
The architects of Gujarat’s greatest shame were of two sorts. There were the coolheaded strategists, the conspirators, who plotted the carnage from behind the scenes. And there were the foot soldiers, the members of the saffron army, drugged on the vicious agenda of so-called Hindutva, who went out and looted, raped and killed. On occasion, the planners were also sometimes emboldened to go out and participate in the massacres.
Ahmedabad: Carnage Capital
THE MOST horrifying massacre of the Gujarat riots was the one at Naroda Gaon and Naroda Patiya localities in Ahmedabad. A local Bajrang Dal leader, Babu Bajrangi, was one of the main conspirators. He started planning the massacre soon after the news of the Sabarmati incident broke. Starting in the evening of February 27, firearms and inflammable material were collected; Bajrangi also formed a select team, drawn from the cadre of the VHP and the Bajrang Dal. Members of the Chhara community, a denotified criminal tribe, were also roped in. TEHELKA spoke to two of them, Suresh Richard and Prakash Rathod. Both believed, and were made to believe, that by killing Muslims they were doing a great service to Hinduism.
On February 28, 2002, Bajrangi marshalled a murderous mob through the narrow bylanes of Naroda Patiya and Naroda Gaon. Egging the mob on was also local BJP MLA Mayaben Kodnani, who is also a doctor. Both Richard and Rathod have been recorded on TEHELKA’s spycam saying that Kodnani drove around Naroda all through the day, urging the mob to hunt Muslims down and kill them. Kodnani’s trusted lieutenant, BJP member Bipin Panchal, was also present with his own small band of followers, armed to the teeth. All through the massacre, Bajrangi and VHP state general secretary Jaideep Patel were on the phone with each other. Bajrangi did not reveal whether Patel was also involved in the planning. However, he did say that the death toll was being communicated to Patel at regular intervals. Several survivors from Naroda Gaon have identified Patel as the leader of the Naroda mob.
At the end of the day the total “score” — as Bajrangi chose to term estimates of the number of Muslims killed — in Naroda was well over at least 200. This figure has not been acknowledged by the state government; officially, 105 people were killed at Naroda Patiya and Naroda Gaon. Naroda, however, was far from the only Ahmedabad locality to be turned into a mass incinerator. A few kilometres away, VHP leaders were leading a frenzied mob at Meghaninagar. The target was a housing society called Gulbarg, a building inhabited by Muslims.
TEHELKA stung three participants in the carnage — Mangilal Jain, Prahlad Raju and Madan Chawal — all three local petty traders and all three with cases against them for their part in the riots. They said they and other members of the mob had been led by VHP leaders Atul Vaid and Bharat Teli, both of whom were named as accused in the FIR but were subsequently cleared of all charges when the police filed the chargesheet. Chawal gave a graphic description of how he and his accomplices first hacked former Congress MP Ehsan Jafri apart limb from limb, and then made a heap of his body parts, which they set on fire.
The official death toll of the Gulbarg massacre stood at 39, but the accused told TEHELKA that the actual number of those killed was much higher. Apart from the housing society’s residents, the dead also included Muslims who lived in nearby slums who had taken shelter in the building. TEHELKA also spoke to VHP leaders Rajendra Vyas and Ramesh Dave, who planned attacks on Muslims in Kalupur and Dariyapur, among Ahmedabad’s most communally sensitive areas. Ahmedabad city VHP president Rajendra Vyas, who was also in charge of the ill-fated Sabarmati Express, said that on the day of the fire on the train that killed 59 karsevaks, he had told the VHP cadre that “the Muslims had played a one-day match and given us a target of 60 runs. We shall now have to play a test match and we won’t stop until we score 600.”
Vyas, who lives in Kalupur, was recorded on the TEHELKA camera stating that he himself had shot dead five Muslims and had burned down nine Muslim houses. Ramesh Dave was the VHP’s point man in Dariyapur. He said he and his fellow planners had targeted and killed Muslims who had been in their sights for over 20 years — “chun-chun ke maara is baar (we specifically hunted them down)”. Dave also claimed that along with a friend, he had arranged for about 10 small firearms.
Tehelka fallout: clamour for Modi's ouster, BJP on defensive
The Tehelka exposИ into the Gujarat 2002 communal violence Friday saw strong demands for the ouster of Gujarat chief minister and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)'s poster boy Narendra Modi as well as for his arrest and a fresh Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe into the carnage.
The Congress party, which was cautious in its initial reaction fearing a Hindu polarisation in the election-bound Gujarat, Friday demanded Modi's resignation for his alleged role in "sanctioning" the communal violence in the state.
"If the constitution of India is to be upheld, if we still call ourselves a civilised society, if the right to life has any meaning at all, if human rights are to be upheld, Narendra Modi should immediately step down from public office," Congress spokesperson Jayanti Natarajan said.
An undercover operation conducted by Tehelka weekly caught Hindu activists, accused in the sectarian violence, as alleging that Modi "sanctioned" the 2002 riots, in which more than 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, were killed.
"The BJP needs to come clean on this issue and explain its position to the nation," the Congress party said.
The BJP put up a brave face to the charges, and declared that the exposИ would in no way affect its prospects in the state assembly elections due in December.
BJP spokesperson Ravi Shankar Prasad told reporters in the national capital that the BJP has asked the Election Commission to check the attempts at aggravating communal polarisation in the state through the exposИ.
Among others who attacked Modi was Congress ally and Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) chief Lalu Prasad. He demanded immediate arrest of Narendra Modi and BJP leader L.K. Advani for "orchestrating the mass murder" in the state after the Godhra train inferno.
"The sting operation by Tehelka aptly christened 'Operation Kalank' (disgrace) has exposed Modi's deep involvement in the post-Godhra Gujarat riots. People now know the real faces involved in the crime against humanity," Lalu Prasad told reporters in Patna.
He added: "Since Modi enjoys the patronage Advani, the opposition leader in the Lok Sabha, the latter cannot escape culpability for the mass murder."
However, the railway minister echoed the apprehensions of the Congress leaders, who said Modi might use the sting operation and its fallout to polarise the voters. He said the BJP could utilise the sting operation to once again whip up passions in the state with an eye to the elections.
Communist Party of India (CPI) general secretary A.B. Bardhan wanted the Election Commission to stop Modi from contesting the state elections. "The Election Commission should ensure that all those involved in the incidents should not be allowed to contest the elections," he said.
The state goes to elections on Dec 11 and 16.
Both the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) and the Congress pleaded to the Supreme Court to expedite the cases pending against the culprits in the Gujarat genocide.
"The Tehelka tapes should be taken as prime facie evidence and the Supreme Court and the central government should move expeditiously to see that all those guilty are brought to justice.
"The central government and the law enforcement agencies have a special responsibility in this regard," the CPI-M politburo stressed.
In a statement, Congress leader and Science and Technology Minister Kapil Sibal said: "We hope and pray that the Supreme Court will decide on the long pending requests before it expeditiously, to meet the ends of justice and to uphold the majesty and supremacy of law."
Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati wrote a letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, asking him to order a fresh Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe into the Gujarat violence.
"The manner in which the direct involvement of the Gujarat government and some close allies of the ruling BJP has been brought to light in the sting operation ... clearly shows how the massacre of members of a particular minority was undertaken with evident state patronage," the chief minister noted.
BJP spokesperson Prasad questioned the timing of the operation, saying: "Has Tehelka done any sting operation against any Congress government, whether at the state or central levels?"
He charged Tehelka with acquiring benefits during the Congress regime and said one of Tehelka's investors, Shankar Sharma, had got heavy tax relief.
He said a judicial process was already underway in Gujarat to punish those guilty of violence. "Court trials are on and a commission of inquiry is trying to come out with the truth about what happened there."
In Ahmedabad, the BJP maintained a cool faГade with state party chief Purushottam Rupala saying the expose would not impact on the party during the elections.
"These issues were the same as those raised during the 2002 elections. The outcome of that poll showed that they did not cut any ice with the electorate. If they did not have any impact then, it can hardly have any effect five years later," Rupala told IANS.
He said the sting had no "evidentiary value" under the Indian laws. "The various matters raised were already before different courts. The allegations now will certainly have no impact," he said.
Read other articles for full report...
Indo-Asian News Service
Cast: Angelina Jolie, Irrfan Khan, Archie Punjabi and Dan Futterman; Ratings: ** 1/2
It's the easiest thing in the world to make a reasonably moving movie out of a real-life story of a young pregnant widow's struggle to overcome the immense tragedy that strikes her well-ordered life.
Angelina Jolie playing the bereaved wife of Wall Street journalist Daniel Pearl, who was captured and beheaded by extremists in Karachi, didn't strike me as particularly poignant. For one, she doesn't play her part for tears. That's both good and bad in a film that aims to tear the veil that separates separatism from extremism and bring us real up close and personal to domestic tragedy.
God, I wanted to see Jolie break down in a cathartic swoop of anguish.
Director Michael Winterbottom gives a sweaty, urgent but finally dispassionate spin to the story. He captures the bustle of 'Karachi' (actually shot in Pune, India) with the overriding tensions of the political strife in Pakistan leading us into the domestic tragedy of a wife whose husband doesn't return home one evening.
What does she do? She forces her rising panic back, takes a deep breath and looks at the situation of crisis with credible calm. Hats off to Jolie for holding back where overstatement would have served the narrative's purpose with far more directness.
"A Mighty Heart" appeals more to the genteel sensibilities than the melodramatic. The film succeeds in capturing the savage poignancy of the crisis without getting violent, aggressive and unnecessarily political in tone.
There are undercurrents of violence throughout the tautly told tale of tragic loss.
However, the big breakdown scene disappoints. After the news of her husband's slaying, Jolie is left to her own devices with all the sympathetic characters standing outside her door as she bawls in her bedroom.
The director chooses to keep her face mostly in the dark, or half-lit with the frisson of the moment emanating not so much from internal but external tensions. That, I feel, isn't quite what this brave and brittle film's theme demanded.
Flashbacks of happy times between the couple intersperse the grim and vital narrative, colouring the enormity of the tragedy with sounds of distant joy.
There are cloudbursts of brilliance in the otherwise-placid narration. In one sequence Jolie runs out of the house trying to suppress her anxiety and rage while her maid's scared infant child watches on.
In the end, she departs from her husband's official residence with images from their wedding playing in her mind.
It's a deeply moving moment. And one wanted more such moments to come through. What does emerge with a reasonable amount of force is the detached empathy of Marianne Pearl's friends and well-wishers. Everyone looks concerned about the immensity of the wife's loss. But no one finally shares her grief.
At the end it's just the bitterly grieving wife and her solitude.
Tabu, I felt, expressed that untold bitterness of bereavement far more fluently in Mira Nair's "The Namesake". Jolie too has Irrfan Khan for company, though in a different capacity.
Playing the Pakistani investigating officer Irrfan manages sizeable space for himself. Much more than we've seen some of his colleagues from Bollywood corner in recent times.
Irrfan makes telling use of that space. The rest of the cast are looking at filling the space rather than expanding it.
Indo-Asian News Service
Posters of a rosy, puffy cheeked newborn baby have provoked controversy in Italy because the infant is shown wearing a wristband nametag with the word "homosexual" written on it.
The photograph of the baby is part of an anti-discrimination campaign launched by Tuscany's regional government and is accompanied by the slogan: "Sexual orientation is not a choice."
"Homosexuality is not a vice and hence should not be condemned nor marginalized, or worse still persecuted," the Tuscany region's civil rights councillor Agostino Fragai told Milan-daily Corriere della Sera in a interview published Wednesday.
Thousands of copies of the poster have been printed and will go up on city walls and public offices around Tuscany with the sponsorship of Italy's centre-left government's Equal Opportunities Ministry.
But while Italy's main gay rights group Arcigay said the campaign proved "Tuscany is at the forefront, and the rest of Italy should follow it," conservative politicians have condemned it.
"Exploiting newborns to suggest that homosexual tendencies are innate is a misleading and shameful act," said Lucio Volonte a leading parliamentarian for the Union of Christian Democrats.
Some gay groups are also dismayed with the campaign.
Gianni Vattimo, an Italian philosopher, gay rights activist and European Parliament member described the campaign "excessive."
The slogan "is too biology-centric. Of course for a homosexual it is natural to be gay, but I'm not too sure it is determined by genetics", Vattimo said.
DPA
President Pervez Musharraf has won the much-criticised presidential election with part of the opposition (Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal and some smaller parties) resigning from the federal parliament and provincial assemblies and the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) abstaining from voting.
However, there is general expectation that the Supreme Court is likely to uphold the validity of the election despite the diminution in legitimacy caused by the dying assemblies and significant non-participation in the Electoral College.
Just the day before the election Musharraf issued an ordinance quashing and withdrawing all corruption cases against all politicians filed during 1988-1999 period. This was called a national reconciliation measure and that cleared all cases against self-exiled former prime minister Benazir Bhutto. With this ordinance, Bhutto will be able to return to Pakistan Oct 18 as announced earlier, without fear of being arrested.
The president has disclosed that a power-sharing agreement is being worked out between him and Bhutto with US mediation. His decision to shed his uniform and effect transition to democracy flowed from that. Exiled former prime minister Nawaz Sharif has not been allowed to return on the basis of the National Reconciliation Ordinance.
Under the present constitution, as modified by Musharraf, Bhutto is barred from becoming prime minister as a limitation of just two terms has been prescribed. But she has insisted that this ban should be lifted to enable her to become prime minister a third time. The US mediation should have secured this condition. Musharraf has declared that the army and intelligence will have no role in the government in future.
In Pakistan a common joke is that an army general usually stands behind or actually sits on the chair of authority irrespective of the nature of the regime. Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif as prime ministers had full experience of this and it was Sharif's attempt to assert his authority over the army that led to his overthrow.
Therefore, one wonders how the Pakistan Army, used to wielding power directly or indirectly over the last 49 years, will accept overnight a totally apolitical role.
Musharraf, after he doffs his uniform, will continue to be civilian president with most of the enhanced presidential powers and his nominee will be the army chief.
During the earlier two tenures as prime minister, Bhutto had to share power with a president who had powers to dismiss her and dissolve the National Assembly and the army chief.
The prime minister did not have much say on defence, nuclear policy, intelligence, foreign policy, especially towards India, Afghanistan and the US.
During the power-sharing negotiations Bhutto has been demanding that these subjects should come under the prime minister's jurisdiction.
Last time in 1988 when the Americans brokered a deal between the Pakistan Army and Bhutto they persuaded her to accept the limited powers and become prime minister.
This time Musharraf also has as much of their support as Bhutto. Therefore, the US should be facing a dilemma in devising a power sharing agreement that would effectively serve its interests, namely, effective counter-terrorism campaign.
The powers of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) to engage in domestic intelligence gathering were vested in it by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Benazir's father, at the height of his autocratic exercise of power. Given the history of Pakistani politics, one wonders whether Bhutto would be willing to abolish ISI's jurisdiction in this field and forgo an advantage over her political opponents.
The nuclear programme in Pakistan has been the army's sole prerogative since 1977. Even Sharif, while trying to assert his authority on the army chief, left the nuclear programme undisturbed in army control.
Bhutto had asserted that when she gained power she will allow International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) access to the notorious proliferator A. Q. Khan.
The US, which has promoted the Musharraf-Benazir rapprochement, would like to have access to Khan. Given the fact that all army chiefs from Mirza Aslam Beg to Musharraf were privy to Khan's proliferation it is a moot question whether the civilian prime minister will get jurisdiction over the nuclear programme.
In regard to command over nuclear arsenal the present nuclear command procedures vest it in a council presided over by the president. While the prime minister will be a member of the command authority, the real command chain will be the president to the army chief to the strategic force commander.
Bhutto was prepared to accept prime ministership with restricted powers in 1988 and the Americans encouraged her to do so.
Now Bhutto wants to get back to power and political mainstream and to get her husband freed from charges of murdering her brother. The US has much greater stake in securing the cooperation of the Pakistan Army and ISI. In these circumstances her bargaining power has severe limitations.
By the time power-sharing negotiations are to be finalized Musharraf will be the legitimate president of Pakistan still with the power to remove the bar on Bhutto becoming prime minister for the third time.
Bhutto's bargaining strength will depend upon the performance of her party in the elections. It is reasonable to expect that her party should do better than what it did in 2002. At the same time there have been fissures in her party and a number of her party men had moved over to support Musharraf.
Pakistan will have a new experience of an ex-general as a civilian president who had been in power as a military ruler for the previous eight years and who had selected and appointed all key functionaries of the state.
Yet free and fair elections in Pakistan and a prime minister even with limited powers will be an improvement over the present situation. What difference it would make to the war on terrorism and to developing Pakistan as a moderate Islamic state remains to be seen.
Not willing to talk about the Gujarat riots of 2002, an agitated Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi walked out of an interview with senior journalist Karan Thapar after just four minutes when he was asked if he had an "image problem".
Modi walked out of the interview meant for the "Devil's Advocate" programme to be aired on CNN-IBN Saturday evening.
Modi became agitated when Thapar wanted to know if he was facing an "image problem" as the Rajiv Gandhi foundation has declared Gujarat to be the best administered state and India Today magazine on two separate occasions has declared him to be the most efficient chief minister, while people still call him "a mass murderer" who is prejudiced against Muslims for the 2002 sectarian riots.
Thapar told IANS: "I can't really understand what upset him. There is nothing really rude about my voice."
Thapar said that maybe he had touched a raw nerve of the Gujarat chief minister. "I did not even talk about the Godhra incident or the killings of 2,000 people. I just asked him whether he had any image problem. The interview merely lasted four minutes."
In the Godhra incident on Feb 27, 2002, 59 Hindu train passengers were killed when the S-6 coach of the Sabarmati Express was allegedly torched by a Muslim mob. This triggered large-scale communal violence in which more than 1,000 people, mainly Muslims, were killed. The state government under Modi was criticised by various sections of society for the manner in which it handled the sectarian riots.
Elections to the state assembly are due in December. In the last five years Modi has not talked about the 2002 riots at all.
The Gujarat unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has refused to react to the incident of Modi walking out of the interview.
In the course of the interview, Modi said that there were just two or three people who were of the opinion that he was prejudiced against the Muslims. When a reference was made to the Supreme Court's observation that had compared Modi to a modern day Nero who looks the other way when helpless children and innocent women are burned, Modi said that there was nothing to this effect in writing.
When asked once again about his image problem, Modi said: "Actually, I have not spent a single minute on my image and that can also be a reason. I am busy with my work. I am committed to Gujarat. I am dedicated to Gujarat. I never talk about my image. I never spent a single minute for my image and therefore confusions may be there."
On being told that even five years after the Gujarat killings of 2002 its ghost still haunts him and why he had not done anything to allay that ghost, Modi said: "This I gave it to the media persons like Karan Thapar. Let them enjoy."
To Thapar's suggestion why Modi could not say that he regretted the killings and that maybe the government should have done more to protect the victims, Modi claimed he had already said what he wanted to and it could be found from his statements.
He said that now he wanted to talk about 2007.
Thereafter he asked for a glass of water and walked out, saying he would have talked about his change of image had Thapar come to him in 2002 or 2003.
Indo-Asian News Service
Pakistan poses a bigger threat than Afghanistan and Iraq in the US war on terror as the Taliban cannot ask for a better nation to hide in and "come and go as they please", according to Newsweek.
In a cover story titled "The Most Dangerous Nation in the World Isn't Iraq. It's Pakistan", the Oct 29 issue of the US magazine looks at how Pakistan has become a safe haven for Taliban and Al Qaeda terrorists.
After the Sep 11, 2001, terror attacks, the US successfully deposed the fundamentalist Taliban leadership in Afghanistan, it says. But in the years since then, there have been an increasing number of signs of a resurgence and the influence of Taliban has crossed the border into neighbouring Pakistan, which many now fear has become a safe haven for terrorists.
Today no other country on earth is arguably more dangerous than Pakistan, according to the magazine. Unlike countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq, Pakistan has everything Osama bin Laden could ask for: political instability, a trusted network of radical Islamists, an abundance of angry anti-Western recruits, secluded training areas, access to state-of-the-art electronic technology, regular air service to the West and security services that do not always do what they are supposed to do.
Then there is the country's large and growing nuclear programme. The conventional story about Pakistan has been that it is an unstable nuclear power with distant tribal areas in terrorist hands, the magazine says.
What is new, and more frightening, is the extent to which Taliban and Al Qaeda elements have now turned much of the country, including some cities, into a base that gives terrorists more room to manoeuvre, both in Pakistan and beyond. Taliban fighters now pretty much come and go as they please inside Pakistan, Newsweek says.
Their sick and injured get patched up in private hospitals there. "Until I return to fight, I'll feel safe and relaxed here," Abdul Majadd, a Taliban commander who was badly wounded this summer during a fire fight against British troops in Afghanistan, is quoted as telling Newsweek after he was evacuated to Karachi for emergency care.
"Pakistan is like your shoulder that supports your RPG," another Taliban commander Mullah Momin Ahmed told Newsweek, barely a month before a US air strike killed him last September in Afghanistan's eastern Ghazni province. "Without it you couldn't fight. Thank God Pakistan is not against us."
According to Newsweek, reporters in Peshawar, a strategic Pakistani border city some 80 km east of the historic Khyber Pass and the Afghan border, say it's not unusual these days to receive phone calls from visiting Taliban commanders offering interviews or asking where to find a cheap hotel, a good restaurant or a new cell phone.
Armed militants have also effectively seized control in places like the picturesque Swat Valley, where a jihadi leader named Mullah Fazlullah rides a black horse and commands hundreds of men under the noses of a nearby Pakistani Army division that seldom leaves its barracks.
Newsweek cites Bruce Riedel, the former senior director for South Asia on the US National Security Council, as suggesting that Pakistan's large and growing nuclear programme is another cause for concern.
"If you were to look around the world for where Al Qaeda is going to find its bomb, it's right in their backyard," he is quoted as saying. And despite the US government's assertion that Musharraf's government has tight control over its nuclear-weapons programme, radicals would not need to steal a whole bomb in order to create havoc.
Pervez Hoodbhoy, a noted nuclear physicist at Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad, is also quoted as saying that outside experts don't really know how much highly enriched uranium Pakistan has produced in the past and how much remains in existing stocks.
"No one has a real idea about that," he says. "That means that stuff could have gotten out. Little bits here or there. But we really don't know."
Indo-Asian News Service
Going beyond its traditional medium of radio, BBC is looking at opportunities in the new media market -- Internet, mobile phones and FM radio -- in South Asia. It is also trying to produce a majority of its regional language programmes locally.
"The South Asian media market is big and a lot will happen here in the coming days. We are looking at the future and the future is Internet, FM radio, mobile phones. We will be looking at every platform to deliver news," Nazes Afroz, BBC's executive editor for South Asia, told IANS in an interview.
It is also thinking of television channels in Hindi and Urdu, although there are no concrete plans yet.
"Just look at mobile phones. People can download news and listen to it whenever they want. There are 150 million mobile phones in India. By 2010 the number is expected to reach 300 million. It is a huge market," he said.
"This does not mean we will forsake radio. It will remain one of our focus areas. In fact we are looking at how the audio content can be provided over new platforms. Our Urdu website, for instance, provides the content of three programmes daily and this content will be increased in the coming days," he said.
News over FM radio is one of the big opportunities BBC is looking at in India.
"FM is the biggest growth area. There are already more than 200 FM stations in India. The third phase of FM radio and soon to be launched community radio will open up immense opportunities. We will enter FM news as and when the government allows it," Afroz said.
BBC has already got a foothold in FM in India with stakes in Radio One of Mid Day group. "We are providing entertainment and sports content for Radio One in Hindi and Tamil. We will soon do it in Bengali. Our Hindi content is heard in Haryana, Rajasthan, Orissa and Maharashtra," he said.
Except India, all South Asian countries allow news over FM. "In Nepal, we have 33 FM stations as our partners. They all pick up our news in Nepali. We also have 4-5 FM partners in Pakistan, 12 in Sri Lanka and one in Bangladesh," Afroz said, hoping that India would also allow private FM stations to broadcast news.
It is not just the new opportunities in South Asian media that BBC is looking at. It is also shifting the majority of its production activities in six regional languages to the countries in the region where the languages are widely spoken.
"This is part of BBC's vision 2010. The slogan is for the region from the region. We would like to produce more material for the region from the region. It is a strategic policy announced two years ago," he said while admitting that it also helps in cutting down cost.
BBC has been implementing this policy for the last two years. "Our Delhi bureau now has 60 to 70 people and very soon we will be 90 to 100," Afroz said. It also has bureaus in Mumbai, Islamabad, Karachi, Colombo and Kathmandu.
"More than 50 percent Hindi content is now produced in Delhi. Urdu content is largely produced in London," he said while hinting that BBC would like to have a presence both in London and South Asia to meet any exigency.
BBC World has radio services in six languages in South Asia -- Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, Nepali, Tamil and Sinhala.
Out of 183 million listeners of BBC World radio in 33 languages all over the world, 55 million are in South Asian languages. Hindi and Bengali services have 19 million listeners each while Urdu has 13 million listeners. The rest are in Nepali, Tamil and Sinhala services.
Afroz pointed out that BBC would be launching its Arabic television channel next month. It will be the BBC's first non-English channel. It also plans to launch a Persian channel next year.
Afroz, who hails from Kolkata, is currently in India on a campaign to promote the Urdu website of BBC. "We want to connect with readers and explain how the website works and how can they navigate. We are talking directly to users," he said.
Indo-Asian News Service
On Board Flight SQ380: A Singapore Airlines Airbus A380 took off on a historic journey on Thursday — the first commercial flight by the world's largest jetliner, which boasts luxurious suites enclosed by sliding doors, double beds, a bar and the quietest interior of any plane.
With 455 passengers, some of whom paid tens of thousands of dollars for a seat in aviation history, the superjumbo left Singapore for Sydney at 8.16 am on a 7 1/2-hour flight that launches a new era in air travel. Also on board flight SQ380 are a crew of about 30 including four pilots.
Among the passengers was Swedish electronics engineer Ralf Danielsson, who took the first Concorde flight in 1979.
"Twenty-eight years later, I thought it would be fun to do something like that again," said Danielsson, 58.
The double-decker A380 ends the nearly 37-year reign of the US-made Boeing 747 jumbojet as the world's most spacious passenger plane. The A380 is also the most fuel efficient and quietest passenger jet ever built, from inside and outside, according to its European manufacturer, Airbus SAS.
It was delivered to Singapore Airlines on October 15, nearly two years behind schedule after billions of dollars in cost overruns for Airbus. Still, the wait was worth it, says Singapore Airlines, which got the exclusivity of being the plane's sole operator for 10 months.
"This is indeed a new milestone in the timeline of aviation," said Chew Choon Seng, chief executive of Singapore Airlines, or SIA, in a speech before the departure. He said the A380 is "the first totally new big aircraft to be designed and built since the Boeing 747" nearly four decades ago.
Chew, flanked by two flight attendants, greeted passengers with a smile and a nod as they boarded the aircraft, which is as tall as a seven-story building. Each wing is big enough to hold about 70 mid-sized cars.
The Boeing 747 jumbo jet generally carries about 500 passengers. But the A380 is capable of carrying 853 passengers in an all-economy class configuration.
However, Singapore Airlines, recognised as one of the best in the world, opted for 471 seats in three classes — 12 Singapore Airlines Suites, 60 business class and 399 economy class.
Each suite, enclosed by sliding doors, is fitted with a leather-upholstered seat, a table, a 23-inch flat screen TV, laptop connections and a range of office software. A separate bed folds up into the wall. Two of the suites can be joined to provide double beds.
On the upper deck, business class seats can turn into wide flat beds, while the economy class seats on both decks will enjoy more leg and knee room, the carrier says. Business class passengers also have a bar area.
SIA auctioned most of the seats on the inaugural flight on eBay, raising $1.26 million for charity. The highest bidder was Briton Julian Hayward who bought two suite seats for $100,380. He was the first passenger to board.
Officials said the aircraft carried 455 passengers including 11 in the suites. One suite was left empty for display.
Analysts say that with about 70 more seats than the 747, the A380 is set to provide much needed extra capacity and greater efficiency for SIA on the busy Singapore-Sydney route, and the Singapore-London route expected to start in February with the delivery of the second plane.
"At the moment, some passengers are having difficulty booking flights on those sectors because there isn't enough capacity," said Leithen Francis, the Singapore-based deputy Asia editor of Air Transport Intelligence, an aviation market information service.
SIA has ordered a total of 19 A380s, hoping to benefit from a recent boom in air travel that has seen global air traffic growing 5 to 10 per cent a year.
Dubai-based Emirates, Airbus' largest A380 customer with 55 on order, will take its first delivery only in August 2008.
Still, not all analysts are convinced that the plane, which has a list price of $320 million, will be a success.
"I see there's some demand for the A380, but it's an expensive way to address a small market," said Standard & Poor's Equity Research analyst Shukor Yusof.
Shukor said the market was set to be dominated by mid-sized, long haul two-engine aircraft such as the rival Boeing 787 Dreamliner, which offers greater fuel efficiency than four-engine jets of the same size.
He pointed out that orders for the 787 have exceeded 700. The A380 has received 165 orders to date.
DPA reports:
The world's biggest commercial jetliner, the Airbus A380, embarked Thursday on a history-making flight to Sydney after production setbacks caused an 18-month delay.
The Singapore Airlines (SIA) super-jumbo took to the skies at 8.16 a.m. from Changi Airport with 471 passengers from 35 countries who were the lucky bidders in an online auction that raised $1.3 million for charity.
Of Thursday's passengers Thomas Lee and his wife and daughter from California, Thomas had also been on the first Boeing 747 commercial flight from New York to London.
"I was only 17 at the time," said Lee, 55, who could not resist the opportunity to be aboard "landmark flights in different generations".
"We've over the moon," his wife added.
SIA, the first carrier to fly the jetliner, selected a configuration of 12 passengers in the all-new "beyond first class suites", 60 in business class and 399 in economy to assure that those in the least expensive section have more legroom than on other flights.
A specially created champagne brunch was whipped up for those in all classes with culinary creations from two of SIA's panel of chefs.
The suites are each equipped with a bed, 58 cm flat-panel television, working table and reclining chairs. Drinks for the maiden flight included "some of the world's finest wines", SIA said. Among them was an award-winning Dom Perignon Rose 1996.
Since the airline flew the plane on Sep 17 to Changi Airport from Airbus headquarters in Toulouse, France, tests and trials have been carried out.
"More than simply a big aeroplane, the newest industry flagship will change forever the way the industry operates," said Peter Harbison, managing director of the Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation.
Singapore's national carrier is the first to fly the jetliner, but 16 other airlines worldwide have ordered 189 A380s, which can each carry more than 500 passengers in a three-class configuration, an increase of more than 100 passengers over rival Boeing's 747.
The seven-and-a-half-hour maiden flight is scheduled to arrive at Sydney Airport to a welcoming ceremony. The plane will return Friday to Singapore and start regular service on the route.
The largest group aboard were Australians constituting 28 percent, followed by Singaporeans at 14 percent, Britons at 11 percent and US citizens at eight percent.
Australian Georg Burdicek, who paid $560 for an economy seat, held the distinction of forking over the least during the two-week auction.
Burdicek, a 25-year-old engineer, said being on the A380's first commercial flight was an "once-in-a-lifetime" opportunity.
The top bidder was Julian Hayward, 38, a Briton living in Sydney, who paid more than $100,000 for a pair of first-class suites.
The oldest passenger was Leong Lou Teck, a 91-year-old Singaporean whose son promised his father three years ago he would take him on the inaugural flight. The youngest passenger was a 10-month-old boy from the city-state.
SIA has ordered 19 of the super jumbo jets.
In an all-economy configuration, the plane could carry more than 850 passengers.
The entry of the super jumbo to the market is expected to help ease capacity constraints and meet demand for travel fuelled by a buoyant economy, aviation analysts said.
"Although many have focussed on the aircraft's delays in production for the past two years, as of today, those lost months will be irrelevant," Harbison said.
DPA