Prabhu Chawla
Last Updated : 26 Jun 2011 03:16:12 PM IST
Who is in such a hurry to make Rahul Gandhi the prime minister? His mother, Sonia Gandhi? The Congress Party? Or those who conduct opinion polls? Constitutionally, there is no bar on Rahul from becoming prime minister. He is an elected Lok Sabha member. His party has 206-odd MPs who will be too willing to elect him as their leader. UPA’s allies can write to the President extending their unconditional support to Rahul. But in Congress culture, such constitutional niceties are often ignored or forgotten. No decision has been taken to topple Prime Minister Manmohan Singh through press statements. The allies haven’t met to express their non-confidence in him. But last week, Digvijaya Singh, known best for his destabilising acumen, unnerved the Government when he said that Rahul had matured and acquired all the necessary qualities to become prime minister. Diggy forgot that there is no vacancy. Manmohan Singh has no plans to quit in favour of the prime minister-in-waiting either. Both Sonia and Rahul have expressed their full confidence in Manmohan Singh’s ability to lead the Government. Since she herself gave up the top job, Sonia can’t be faulted for inspiring the sudden sycophantic swing in Rahul’s favour.
Then, why is it that some Congress leaders associated with the Gandhi Parivar miss no opportunity to remind people that Manmohan Singh is a night watchman and Rahul will soon replace him? That too, at a time when the Government and the party are struggling to defend themselves from an aggressive opposition and an agitated civil society over corruption and non-governance? When in power, Congressmen enjoy the present, but they always plot and conspire to secure their future too. For majority of them, Manmohan Singh is a soon-to-be-past prime minister. Digvijaya and his clones are emboldened by opinion poll results on Rahul’s rising popularity—barely a seven-year-old in politics, Rahul has become the most sought after youth icon in the country. With little administrative experience or ideological conviction, he is surprisingly perceived as India’s best prime ministerial candidate, leaving the incumbent prime minister far behind. More Congress leaders, chief ministers, Union ministers and even civil servants are seen hovering around 12 Tughlak Lane, Rahul’s official address, than at 7 Race Course Road.
The stark reality is that Congress leaders can’t think beyond the Gandhis as none have ever been able to acquire national acceptability on their own. If the Gandhis are their past, they will also ensure the rootless netas a prosperous future. Barring an accidental interregnum of five years between 1991 and 1996—when P V Narasimha Rao ruled both the country and the Congress—only a Nehru-Gandhi has dictated, directed and decided the fate of the party. As long as a member of The Family was in power, no Congressman dared to name an outsider as a successor to the throne. Even when Jawahar Lal Nehru was around, the question “Who after Nehru?” was raised only when he fell ill. Once Indira took over in 1966, the Nehru-Gandhi-Congress merger was complete; at one stage the breakaway faction was even known as Congress (Indira). With Mrs G began dynastic succession in Indian politics. All the powerful regional satraps who could have challenged her plans were either marginalised or thrown out of the party. Pushed to the wall during the Emergency, Indira inducted her younger son Sanjay Gandhi into politics, who virtually ran the government for two years.
From 1975 to 1980, Congressmen saw in him a natural inheritor. After his untimely death, Indira opted for son Rajiv Gandhi rather than any other senior Congress leader. Her message was clear: only a Gandhi may succeed her—which is what happened after her assassination. Even before death, she had astutely made sure that key people were in place to ensure that only a Gandhi would be an acceptable alternative.
The reason the Congress slipped away from its First Family after Rajiv’s death in 1991 was Sonia’s refusal to head the party. In 1996, once Narsimha Rao was defeated and defamed, Rajiv loyalists struck and also ejected AICC president Sitaram Kesari from his office, and handed the party over to Sonia Gandhi. Since she wasn’t interested in becoming the prime minister, Sonia predictably chose Rahul in 2004 to contest the elections from Amethi—Rajiv’s former constituency. Three years later, in 2007, he was appointed an AICC general secretary with a clear mandate to create a new Congress of young leaders and set the tone for future politics.
In fact, Congress leaders were all set to anoint Rahul as the prime minister had the party got an absolute majority in 2009. According to a senior Congress leader, no Gandhi would ever agree to be head a coalition in which he or she will have to deal with leaders like Mamata Banerjee, Lalu Prasad Yadav or Mulayam Singh Yadav. Obviously, Rahul is in no tearing hurry. He was candid enough to admit at his first press conference that “my position gives me certain advantages to do certain things. I am the outcome of the system (but) that doesn’t mean I can’t change the system”.
His occasional forays into tribal hills and Dalit hamlets have yielded little political dividends. His policy of ‘Ekla chalo’ in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh hasn’t bettered the party’s fortunes. His genuine attempts to democratise the Congress through elections have only brought the children of senior politicians into power. His core team of young MPs hasn’t been given significant any government or party responsibility. As the countdown to 2014 elections begins, it is not Rahul who is in a hurry. For he knows, he can grab the prime ministership if his party has the requisite support. But his promoters are keen to protect their own present and future even if it means killing the goose which may lay golden eggs in the long run, but not just now.
prabhuchawla@newindianexpress.com
Why blame police for fake encounters?
Tajender Singh Luthra
Last Updated : 25 Jun 2011 06:04:50 PM IST
Last month, the Supreme Court, while dismissing the bail appeal of five policemen who allegedly killed a businessman in a fake encounter, said: “In cases, where fake encounter is proved against policemen in a trial, they must be given death sentence, treating it as the rarest of the rare cases.”
We, the police, are a divided lot on this issue. Many of us have raised eyebrows and heckle. Our most important plea is that the laws are insufficient to deal with the new dimensions of crime, particularly terrorism, naxalism and organised crime. The legal system does not give us enough time to examine and interrogate the accused. It does not trust the policeman’s testimony and thus compels him to evade the due legal process. We also complain that the courts are tardy and uncooperative. We moan that witnesses don’t come forward to depose. Our bellyache is that forensic and related infrastructure to secure even apparently available evidence is almost non-existent.
Another plea is that public exhorts (read expect) us to lynch the “guilty”. However, the issue is: will the public support us when we face the doomsday? Never. If we commit an illegal act on somebody else’s behest, then at the best it is a private contractual arrangement between the two parties that lacks legal sanction.
Also, how do we justify an encounter? Let’s assume the District Superintendent of Police is a district judge. How would he conclude that an alleged criminal is guilty? Would he do it by sketchy historysheets and ill-prepared crime records?
In the police, crime record maintenance is perceived as a trivial job. Would he do it by over-used and unreliable stock witnesses? Or by biased wisdom of his juniors who are eager to hoodwink him to please a rival don? How would he, even for his personal satisfaction, assess and verify that the situation warrants compromising liberties of life and principles of natural justice?
Now the question is why we do it, if at all we do it. Is it because a rival gang has tipped us to eliminate its enemy with the help of “legal system”? And if we do it on our own, we must be ready to bear the brunt of the future. In fact, we should not expect any support from any quarter. We “think” society and victims of crime look up to us for justice. Do they really look up to us or we don’t allow them to go beyond us? Or we do it for personal glory, faster promotions, medals and appreciation letters? Or, we want to be the “poster boy” of the criminal justice system?
When laws do not give us enough rope to interrogate the accused, courts are allegedly slow, and forensic and other basic infrastructure is missing, then why should we take the “self-defined” high moral ground of being the saviour of society and stage a fake encounter?
Most of us are naive enough to not know that a part of us creates Frankenstein and another part destroys it. Ironically, very often, both parts are unaware of who created and destroyed the Frankenstein. Blissfully, willingly, blindfolded, ostrich-like.
The idea is not to ridicule and belittle the committed efforts of those who have fought and are still fighting terrorism, naxalism and organised crime. Be it Punjab terrorism, North-eastern insurgency, Naxalite movement, Kashmir terrorism or Mumbai 26/11, Indian police have proved its mettle while working with severe legal, infrastructure and mindset handicaps. But we need to bring systemic changes in laws that suit our working environment. We must capitalise on our big victories in Punjab and North-East to bring changes in our penal, procedural and evidence laws. We did think of innovative changes but not as much as necessary that promotes collaborations among different parts of the criminal justice system to fight terrorism and organised crime.
In 1970’s and 80’s, Bollywood used to portray police inspectors as honest, enterprising and committed protagonists. But of late, its diction and metaphor has changed to our detriment. Therefore, it is not just enough to be good police officers; we need to go out in all those areas that affect our profession—be it polity, media, cine world, judiciary or bureaucracy. We need to initiate a dialogue with civil society, the executive, the polity and the judiciary to make them realise that police face unique challenges. We need to take new wings to touch new highs of professionalism, supported by laws and infrastructure. Yes, it is utopia. But even if it is so, let’s wait for it. Let the law give us sanction and specify due process to kill somebody (innocent or not innocent). The idea is to be an accountable and professional police force of a civilised society.
The writer is Joint Commissioner, Delhi Police. E-mail him at tajendraluthra@rediffmail.co
US is courting the devil
Anuradha Chenoy
Last Updated : 25 Jun 2011 01:47:32 AM IST
You can tell that the US presidential election season has begun by the kind of foreign policy moves President Barack Obama is making. The most cynical one is initiating talks with the Taliban in Afghanistan in order to facilitate US troop withdrawal. This move will take South Asia into another phase and India will have to calibrate its regional strategy and foreign policy accordingly.
The US has spent $7.6 trillion in ongoing wars. The numbers of civilians routinely killed in drone and jihadi attacks continue to mount with almost 9,000 killed in the past four years. The Taliban remains a force on both the Afghanistan and Pakistan sides. The International Council on Security and Development showed that the Taliban was present in 54 per cent of the country in 2007. This increased to 71 per cent in 2008 and 80 per cent in 2009. Now the US says that their surge operation in 2010-11 has crippled al-Qaeda and beaten the Taliban back. But what makes them so sure that this will not increase once again, now that they know that the US is reaching the end of this phase?
The Afghans believe that peace can only come if the US occupation ends and regional troublemakers stay clear and allow Afghans to build their own peace. The fight against terror is not in their borders, they argue and the killing of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan surely proved this. But this is not what the US, the NATO and their most preferred ally Pakistan are willing to do. They would like the Afghan people to be the object of deals that suit their own geopolitical interests and thus will settle for reconciliation with the Taliban rather than peace in Afghanistan.
Obama has already announced his plans for troop withdrawal. Meanwhile President Hamid Karzai has said that the US is negotiating with the Taliban. Getting the Taliban on board in not new in US strategy. Washington has had contradictory relations with them since the beginning. In this recent phase, the US started distinguishing between ‘bad Taliban’ — who targeted NATO forces — and ‘good Taliban’ — who were ideologically committed (and presumably targeted others, including women). Then, NATO tried to pay ‘autonomous’ Taliban fighters, in return for giving up arms. Taliban ranks swelled to get cash for arms. Once the US dug itself in a hole, various partners started to approach the Taliban. The US prodded the UN Security Council to amend its resolution on sanctions and terrorist lists in order to separate the Taliban from al-Qaeda to facilitate talks. Will the talks make terrorists into allies?
These moves raise many questions and many people are worried. Why did the US have to wage war at such a cost for 10 years to separate the Taliban from al-Qaeda and then call for reconciliation? This strategy could have been worked out in 2001 itself.
The Taliban have the same ideology, asymmetry of forces, tactic and hunger for complete power as they did 10 years back. Reconciliation will give the Taliban a triumphal victory and aspirations for linkages and control over the North Western and tribal areas of Pakistan, besides strengthening the Pakistani Taliban.
As outgoing US defence secretary Robert Gates said, the US does not intend to ever completely withdraw from the region. Large US bases will remain even after 2014. Just as US forces remain in Iraq and large US bases manage states that they demolish and re-create as clients.
What is even more worrying is that decisions regarding Afghanistan have been the exclusive business of the US, NATO and Pakistan as the last London conference showed. Only a small Afghan elite around Karzai is involved. Other stakeholders and investors like India, Russia, Central Asian states, Iran, China, are excluded even as they support re-building Afghanistan and suffer the impact of its instability.
India has many reasons to worry. The war in the Af-Pak region spills over and bleeds the surrounding region, especially India, as the many terror attacks here have shown. Besides, narcotics, small arms and illicit trade flow into India and other neighbours like Russia and Central Asia. Afghanistan is thus a regional (in)security complex and cannot be solved without regional support and consensus.
Much of the discord in Afghanistan is because of continuous geostrategic intervention. Pakistan has continuously added fuel to this fire by using Afghanistan as strategic depth. They have used the Taliban for extracting aid and military assistance from the US and for shadow wars against India. Now, it is linking the resolution of Afghanistan to the solution of Kashmir. This is not acceptable to India and should not be acceptable to the international community either.
It has occurred to some policy-makers of Pakistan that militant ideology is impacting and hurting Pakistan. It is increasing terror, destroying the few shades of liberal opinion, bitterly dividing and confusing the country. They are no longer sure who their real enemy is. But there is no change in their stance and this means that instability in Pakistan is bound to increase, which again is dangerous for India.
India has invested heavily in re-building Afghanistan and the $2.5 billion aid will be directed for infrastructure and human development. India agreed to be part of the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India pipeline on US bidding and this has held them in good stead.
The Taliban is no friend of India, and in any power-sharing or political control, the instability that follows will deeply impact India. India must make it clear to the US and the international community that there should be no compromise with the Taliban in its current fundamentalist militant form; that talk with the Taliban must be at several levels, both within Afghanistan and with different ethnic groups, civil and political society. The talks should have a regional level where India, amongst others, is present regardless of the US or Pakistan’s preferences. The Taliban must adhere to the Afghan constitution and political process. Outside intervention in Afghanistan should be minimised and the UN should be mediator as the US is a party to the conflict. If India accepts anything less than this, it will only lead to more de-stabilisation of India and the entire region.
Anuradha Chenoy is director, Centre for Russian and Central Asian Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University. E-mail: chenoy@gmail.com
India must break out of its China syndrome
Manvendra Singh
Express News Service
Last Updated : 19 Jun 2011 02:04:41 PM IST
China manages to do to India what it can’t to any of its neighbours. All that China has to do is play the whispering game, and India and its analysts will go apoplectic. From print space to hyperbole on television, there is no shortage of goose-stepping patriotism on display. Storm troopers of Mother India react in decibels that could destroy enough brain cells for a ballistic victory. And just as it began, it suddenly dies, much like a mid-Western tornado, short in duration and big in impact. For this is exactly how the Chinese would want India to react. And that reflects on a serious Indian failing. Denying it a rational choice of words, expressions, tactics and strategies.
This is precisely what has transpired over a week of China letting it be leaked that some dam or head works were in the offing on the Brahmaputra while it made its way through Han-occupied Tibet. It was a testing story, and the Chinese game players succeeded in their game of collecting data on Indian paranoia, helplessness, verbosity, and an extreme lack of imagination. While the Chinese may have laughed to their last tipple, this is something that India and its policy makers must think about more seriously.
Forget for a moment all the statistics that the economists and their camp followers like to produce, only to twist and turn them according to the moods. Forget also the vast disparities in the defence budgets between the two Asian neighbours. And forget that Jawahar Lal Nehru’s egos and fears cost India the 1962 war along the Himalayas. Think for a moment where India is headed, socially, economically and politically. And then think where China is headed in the same fields. And then ask the soul as to who is on the right side of history, which is sought to be made by the vast energies released by a new form of globalisation. Also ask the soul who features on the good or the bad pages of global perceptions.
China is playing a mind game with India, and the vast amounts of tea and spices consumed by this country do not enable it to understand and counter the psychological aspects of the struggle. Instead there is a reaction, so overexcited in nature that all lucidity is lost on the tongue, and in the mind. China is playing games on the field prepared by the military defeat of 1962. They know that a memory obsessed country like India hasn’t yet dealt with the causes and consequences of the debacle in the snows. And so the Government of India clings to the official report on the war, and declares that ‘releasing is not in the interests of India’s relationship with China’. Missing for a moment that
the war made the Indo-Chinese relationship unequal, so what else can the Henderson-Brooks report do? Political and military ineptitude caused the defeat that has gotten under India’s skin. And it doesn’t allow a sound set of options to appear vis-à-vis Sino-Indian relations.
China is not a benign dictatorship, and is not heading for a democratic political order. The fixation with the emperor is too deeply ingrained in the Chinese psychology to allow a multiplicity of political options. It still believes it is the middle kingdom, and that the world owes it for all the decades lost to war and servitude to foreigners. Which then also makes it a xenophobic society. Sounds politically incorrect but these are the drivers of Chinese society. India has a vastly different worldview, and follows a very different route to actualise that vision. What it needs is a realisation that there is a lot going for it, if only it kept its back straight, and options open. There are a number of options available to India should China, hypothetically, make a dam along the Brahmaputra, and none of them involve hype, or conflict. But for that India first needs to believe in itself.
The writer is a security expert and political analyst
China’s water war with India
June 25, 2011 9:06:17 PM
Claude Arpi
June 25, 2011 9:06:17 PM
Claude Arpi
Is China trying to divert the Brahmaputra waters to its dry north and north-western regions? Or, is it merely trying to build small dams along the river? The Government of India seems clueless if SM Krishna’s recent remarks are any indication. Can the country afford to ignore such a momentous issue?
Sometimes news found in the mainstream Indian media can be flabbergasting. Take the case of the purported ‘diversion’ of the Yarlung Tsangpo. A ‘serious’ national newspaper spoke of the “Yarlang Tsangpo, it is what the Brahmaputra river is called in Mandarin”. Yarlung (not Yarlang) Tsangpo is the Tibetan name for the river originating near Mt Kailash. It has nothing to do with Mandarin.
The article further states that the Ministry of Water Resources has asked the Hyderabad-based National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC) for a report on the Chinese activities near the Great Bend of the Yarlung Tsangpo, as it enters Indian territory: “Sources do not rule out the possibility that the ‘new’ images could be of existing structures, since the resolution of India’s satellite images has increased substantially in recent months... This means structures, which have been there, are now visible in much greater detail.”
Great news, but the NRSC scientists are wasting their time looking for structures near the Grand Bend of the Brahmaputra. In reality, the diversion is planned a few hundred kilometres upstream, near the city of Tsetang in Central Tibet.
It seems the Ministry hasn’t done its homework before sending a request to NRSC. Also, External Affairs Minister SM Krishna is not a good student. He mixes the ‘diversion scheme’ with the dams being built on the Brahmaputra. While answering a question on the diversion, he affirms that Zangmu Dam “is no cause of concern to India as it is a ‘run off the river’ dam”.
In fact, Beijing is planning a string of six dams in this area — Lengda, Zhongda, Langzhen, Jiexu, Jiacha and Zangmu.
There’s no need to mention here the utopian dream of a 38 GW power station (nearly twice the size of the Three Gorges Dam) in the Great Bend, near the Indian border. There are too many geological and technical issues involved to be taken seriously in the decades to come.
The smaller dams (about 500 MW each) are not directly linked with the diversion scheme, which is proposed to be built a few hundred km upstream. It would make no technical sense to have such a project at a relatively lower altitude near the Great Bend, when the waters can be pushed up towards the north from a much higher altitude, near Tsetang.
Headlines Today mentioned a confidential report prepared by the Cabinet Secretariat in Delhi on June 13. “Beijing is not responding to India’s concerns on the Brahmaputra dam. There is an urgent need to take up this issue with China as these dams will ‘severely impact’ the flow of water into India,” the report says. According to the same source, Krishna would assure Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi that “ISRO satellite maps showed no construction”.
But that’s not true. On November 15, 2010, The People’s Daily had announced: “The Brahmaputra river, which has long been praised as a ‘heavenly river’, was dammed for the first time on November 12... the Zangmu Hydropower Station, the first large hydropower station in Tibet, will soon begin its main construction.” In fact, the construction began several months earlier.
Let us, however, go back to the source of the ‘diversion’ story. A couple of weeks ago, Prof Wang Guangqian, a senior scientist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, was quoted as saying: “Chinese experts have raised a new proposal to divert water from the upper reaches of the Brahmaputra river to the country’s north-western province of Xinjiang”.
Prof Wang’s project is a variant of a scheme prepared some 10 years ago by two Chinese engineers — Guo Kai, a retired PLA General, considered by many as the father of the mega scheme, and his colleague Li Ling, who wrote a book, Tibet’s Water Will Save China. The project was then called the Shuomatan Canal (from Suma Tan in Central Tibet to Tanjing in China).
Interestingly, Wang seems to have the backing of Li Ruihuan, a former member of the Standing Committee of the CCP’s Politburo and former chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. Many in the PLA as well as the mega dam companies are said to be supporting the project.
Wang spoke about the proposed route: “Brahmaputra waters are expected to be re-routed to Xinjiang along the Qinghai-Tibet Railway and the Hexi Corridor — part of the Northern Silk Road located in Gansu Province.” He admitted, “We thought this would be a plan 50 years later,” adding that Chinese experts and officials are still studying the possible impacts — technical and political — of the proposal.
Chinese engineers are clearly conducting a ‘feasibility study’, and no construction has started. But the project, planned to be undertaken in 50 years, might start much earlier. “Faced with severe challenges brought by reduced water resources and a severe drought that has affected a large portion of the country, China has started to consider diverting water from the Brahmaputra river,” said Wang.
One can reasonably think that it would begin in 10 years at the earliest, keeping in mind the fact that it is a political decision which could only be taken at the highest level of the Chinese state.
Wang admitted that his proposal, also called the Major Western Route, had been inspired by the work of Guo Kai.
Fast developing China has less and less water and Beijing has to locate possible sources of water to survive. Scientists are looking in the only two possible directions — the sea (the Bohai Sea) or the mountains (the Tibetan plateau).
Wang quoted a survey by the Chinese Academy of Sciences showing that “rivers on the Qinghai-Tibet and Yunnan-Guizhou plateaus, including the Yarlung Tsangpo, Salween and Mekong, carry between 637 billion cubic metres and 810 billion cubic metres of water out of China each year”. What disturbs some Chinese engineers is that most of these rivers flow down to India and Southeast Asia, becoming the Brahmaputra, Salween and Mekong; in other words, the waters are ‘wasted’ for China.
The diversion project envisaged by Wang (and Guo Kai) could move some 200 billion cubic metres of water a year up to north-western China — the equivalent of four Yellow Rivers.
According to Li Ling, the Institute of Advanced Technology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences is using supercomputers to simulate the project and evaluate the feasibility of the diversion project. Wang himself works with the South-North Water Transfer office to prepare a ‘scientific’ report.
In 2006, the Chinese Government pretended that “a few mad men” were thinking of this pharaonic project. But if these few ‘mad men’ — supported by a former Politburo Standing Committee member — are able to use the supercomputers of the Chinese Academy of Sciences for their calculations, they may not be as mad as painted by the Government.
Three important factors need to be understood. One, China’s hydropower lobbies have a financial interest in ‘concretising’ the project as soon as possible. Last week, an article in The Financial Times affirmed: “China’s Three Gorges Project Corporation has proposed a $15 billion hydropower scheme to Pakistan to dam the Indus river valley at several points, in a project aimed at controlling floods and tackling electricity shortages.” Dams, whether in Pakistan or Tibet, mean big business and the large Chinese corporations will continue to lobby hard to get these projects through.
The second crucial factor is the cost-benefit perspective. The Chinese leadership has mostly been pragmatic. A friend who worked on the issue told me: “If the price of transferring water is cheaper than conservation or getting water from the sea, China will go ahead.” Why to divert the Yarlung Tsangpo and risk a conflict with India, if there is a possibility to avoid it?
Three, China badly needs water and can’t import it. The diversion of the Brahmaputra is in competition with another diversion: From the Bohai Sea, the innermost gulf of the Yellow Sea on the coast of northeastern China and push it up to Xinjiang.
But, why does China need water?
It’s due to three reasons:
Sometimes news found in the mainstream Indian media can be flabbergasting. Take the case of the purported ‘diversion’ of the Yarlung Tsangpo. A ‘serious’ national newspaper spoke of the “Yarlang Tsangpo, it is what the Brahmaputra river is called in Mandarin”. Yarlung (not Yarlang) Tsangpo is the Tibetan name for the river originating near Mt Kailash. It has nothing to do with Mandarin.
The article further states that the Ministry of Water Resources has asked the Hyderabad-based National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC) for a report on the Chinese activities near the Great Bend of the Yarlung Tsangpo, as it enters Indian territory: “Sources do not rule out the possibility that the ‘new’ images could be of existing structures, since the resolution of India’s satellite images has increased substantially in recent months... This means structures, which have been there, are now visible in much greater detail.”
Great news, but the NRSC scientists are wasting their time looking for structures near the Grand Bend of the Brahmaputra. In reality, the diversion is planned a few hundred kilometres upstream, near the city of Tsetang in Central Tibet.
It seems the Ministry hasn’t done its homework before sending a request to NRSC. Also, External Affairs Minister SM Krishna is not a good student. He mixes the ‘diversion scheme’ with the dams being built on the Brahmaputra. While answering a question on the diversion, he affirms that Zangmu Dam “is no cause of concern to India as it is a ‘run off the river’ dam”.
In fact, Beijing is planning a string of six dams in this area — Lengda, Zhongda, Langzhen, Jiexu, Jiacha and Zangmu.
There’s no need to mention here the utopian dream of a 38 GW power station (nearly twice the size of the Three Gorges Dam) in the Great Bend, near the Indian border. There are too many geological and technical issues involved to be taken seriously in the decades to come.
The smaller dams (about 500 MW each) are not directly linked with the diversion scheme, which is proposed to be built a few hundred km upstream. It would make no technical sense to have such a project at a relatively lower altitude near the Great Bend, when the waters can be pushed up towards the north from a much higher altitude, near Tsetang.
Headlines Today mentioned a confidential report prepared by the Cabinet Secretariat in Delhi on June 13. “Beijing is not responding to India’s concerns on the Brahmaputra dam. There is an urgent need to take up this issue with China as these dams will ‘severely impact’ the flow of water into India,” the report says. According to the same source, Krishna would assure Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi that “ISRO satellite maps showed no construction”.
But that’s not true. On November 15, 2010, The People’s Daily had announced: “The Brahmaputra river, which has long been praised as a ‘heavenly river’, was dammed for the first time on November 12... the Zangmu Hydropower Station, the first large hydropower station in Tibet, will soon begin its main construction.” In fact, the construction began several months earlier.
Let us, however, go back to the source of the ‘diversion’ story. A couple of weeks ago, Prof Wang Guangqian, a senior scientist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, was quoted as saying: “Chinese experts have raised a new proposal to divert water from the upper reaches of the Brahmaputra river to the country’s north-western province of Xinjiang”.
Prof Wang’s project is a variant of a scheme prepared some 10 years ago by two Chinese engineers — Guo Kai, a retired PLA General, considered by many as the father of the mega scheme, and his colleague Li Ling, who wrote a book, Tibet’s Water Will Save China. The project was then called the Shuomatan Canal (from Suma Tan in Central Tibet to Tanjing in China).
Interestingly, Wang seems to have the backing of Li Ruihuan, a former member of the Standing Committee of the CCP’s Politburo and former chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. Many in the PLA as well as the mega dam companies are said to be supporting the project.
Wang spoke about the proposed route: “Brahmaputra waters are expected to be re-routed to Xinjiang along the Qinghai-Tibet Railway and the Hexi Corridor — part of the Northern Silk Road located in Gansu Province.” He admitted, “We thought this would be a plan 50 years later,” adding that Chinese experts and officials are still studying the possible impacts — technical and political — of the proposal.
Chinese engineers are clearly conducting a ‘feasibility study’, and no construction has started. But the project, planned to be undertaken in 50 years, might start much earlier. “Faced with severe challenges brought by reduced water resources and a severe drought that has affected a large portion of the country, China has started to consider diverting water from the Brahmaputra river,” said Wang.
One can reasonably think that it would begin in 10 years at the earliest, keeping in mind the fact that it is a political decision which could only be taken at the highest level of the Chinese state.
Wang admitted that his proposal, also called the Major Western Route, had been inspired by the work of Guo Kai.
Fast developing China has less and less water and Beijing has to locate possible sources of water to survive. Scientists are looking in the only two possible directions — the sea (the Bohai Sea) or the mountains (the Tibetan plateau).
Wang quoted a survey by the Chinese Academy of Sciences showing that “rivers on the Qinghai-Tibet and Yunnan-Guizhou plateaus, including the Yarlung Tsangpo, Salween and Mekong, carry between 637 billion cubic metres and 810 billion cubic metres of water out of China each year”. What disturbs some Chinese engineers is that most of these rivers flow down to India and Southeast Asia, becoming the Brahmaputra, Salween and Mekong; in other words, the waters are ‘wasted’ for China.
The diversion project envisaged by Wang (and Guo Kai) could move some 200 billion cubic metres of water a year up to north-western China — the equivalent of four Yellow Rivers.
According to Li Ling, the Institute of Advanced Technology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences is using supercomputers to simulate the project and evaluate the feasibility of the diversion project. Wang himself works with the South-North Water Transfer office to prepare a ‘scientific’ report.
In 2006, the Chinese Government pretended that “a few mad men” were thinking of this pharaonic project. But if these few ‘mad men’ — supported by a former Politburo Standing Committee member — are able to use the supercomputers of the Chinese Academy of Sciences for their calculations, they may not be as mad as painted by the Government.
Three important factors need to be understood. One, China’s hydropower lobbies have a financial interest in ‘concretising’ the project as soon as possible. Last week, an article in The Financial Times affirmed: “China’s Three Gorges Project Corporation has proposed a $15 billion hydropower scheme to Pakistan to dam the Indus river valley at several points, in a project aimed at controlling floods and tackling electricity shortages.” Dams, whether in Pakistan or Tibet, mean big business and the large Chinese corporations will continue to lobby hard to get these projects through.
The second crucial factor is the cost-benefit perspective. The Chinese leadership has mostly been pragmatic. A friend who worked on the issue told me: “If the price of transferring water is cheaper than conservation or getting water from the sea, China will go ahead.” Why to divert the Yarlung Tsangpo and risk a conflict with India, if there is a possibility to avoid it?
Three, China badly needs water and can’t import it. The diversion of the Brahmaputra is in competition with another diversion: From the Bohai Sea, the innermost gulf of the Yellow Sea on the coast of northeastern China and push it up to Xinjiang.
But, why does China need water?
It’s due to three reasons:
· To stop the desertification in Xinjiang, Gansu and Inner Mongolia.
· To help the dry and polluted Yellow river flow again.
· To feed its people, for which large amounts of water are required for agriculture.
If such grandiose and seemingly unrealisable projects are even thought of, it is because the situation is quite desperate and nobody is able to foresee any ‘realisable’ solution.
So far, China has refused to collaborate with downstream states. In May 1997, when the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted a Convention on the Law of the Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses, China was one of three countries that voted against it. The rather mild convention “aimed at guiding states in negotiating agreements on specific watercourses”.
In the long run, whether it will be by adopting such a convention or by signing a bilateral treaty like the Indus Waters Treaty (1960) between India and Pakistan, Beijing has no choice but to collaborate with its downstream neighbours on a crucial issue like water on which the future of Asia depends. The current ‘imperialist’ attitude does not tally with the status of ‘responsible power’ that China is striving for.
-The writer is an India-based French expert on Tibetan and Chinese affair
PM must stand by India, not NAC
June 26, 2011 12:51:40 AM
Swapan Dasgupta
If Delhi’s political grapevine is any indication, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh did something quite unusual last Sunday: He apparently threw a minor tantrum. The reason was understandable and anyone in his position would have done the same. The Prime Minister apparently expressed his profound displeasure at Congress general secretary Digvijay Singh’s sound bite-a-day politics that culminated in the assertion that it “it is time that Rahul (Gandhi) becomes the Prime Minister.” According to those who claim to know his mind, Singh was agitated that this statement, read with Diggy Raja’s earlier sniper attacks on the Government and its senior Ministers, implied that Prime Minister didn’t enjoy the full backing of his party and was running a lame duck administration. In short, he was awaiting the day the Congress’ other general secretary deigned to get real.
True, Digvijay was subsequently made to clarify that what he really meant was that Rahul was first in the queue to succeed the good doctor but that (perhaps tragically), there was no vacancy. What Diggy’s clarification, Sonia Gandhi’s subsequent meeting with Singh to discuss the impending Ministerial reshuffle, the Congress Working Committee meeting’s disapproval of the growing incoherence in the party and the Cabinet’s approval of price hikes for diesel, kerosene and cooking gas together meant was that the Prime Minister had clawed back some lost political ground.
Manmohan Singh doesn’t still convey the impression of a man who is totally in charge. But he seems a little more in charge than he was a week ago. Although being discharged from ICU doesn’t imply that Singh is now King, it does indicate that at 41, Rahul has other, more interesting, things on his mind.
If the Prime Minister is to avoid a repetition of this summer’s turbulence in the next quarter, he has to take advantage of the small window of opportunity available to him. It is too much to expect that the controversies over how best to fight corruption will be resolved in a satisfactory way with yet another Anna Hazare fast. The issue has degenerated into an ego battle between Team Anna and Team Congress and the stalemate is likely to persist until both sides come to the realisation that neither of them can presume to speak for the nation.
However, delinked from the Lokpal battle are other growing concerns that have left the political class unmoved. The economic indicators tell two stories: First, the tale of an India that is underperforming and, second, the tragedy of attaching importance to decision-makers who know the delights of profligate spending but haven’t acquired the capacity to generate income. For nearly a decade, India had to convince both itself and the rest of the world that it had the political will, the human capital and the vision to aspire for a better quality of life than what Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi bequeathed to the country. Once the country had demonstrated it could move well beyond the self-deprecating ‘Hindu rate of growth’, the saboteurs have returned with a vengeance.
To be fair, the Prime Minister’s instincts on the way forward for an economically vibrant India are broadly correct. Unfortunately, Manmohan Singh is merely the Prime Minister, a post whose importance has been drastically devalued in the past seven years. Real decision-making vests with the UPA chairperson and her nominated kitchen Cabinet, the National Advisory Committee. The NAC has played a seminal role in blunting India’s entrepreneur-led growth and shifting the focus to welfare spending. There is nothing strikingly original about this shift: It is the hoary European-style socialism, packaged in an Indian garb and couched in the misleading slogan ‘inclusive growth’.
The grim reality that should be evident to the Prime Minister is that there is a high national cost to be paid to an economic regime centred on entitlements, giveaways and sops: they divert resources from asset-creating investments and sustainable growth. If Singh and the wise among his Cabinet colleagues actually approve the Rs 80,000 crore show of the Lady Bountiful act involved in the proposed food security legislation, India could well be entering a fiscal crisis that can only be countered by punitive taxation and rising indebtedness. Along with MNREGA that has directly contributed to food inflation, a Food Security Act will ensure that there is little money left in the kitty for investments in infrastructure, health and education. India will be compromising its tomorrow for Sonia Gandhi’s political today.
The Prime Minister doesn’t have the political wherewithal to stop the Sonia-NAC assault on India. But he has been a good economic bureaucrat who knows all the babu tricks of survival and subterfuge. He can use the limited respite he has earned — thanks to Rahul’s preoccupation with his personal wellness — to pursue an agenda set by those who see beauty in poverty. Alternatively, he can quietly subvert a disastrous agenda through old fashioned bureaucratic subterfuge and await India’s impending impatience with flawed dynastic rule.
The Prime Minister is said to be concerned about his legacy. He now has a choice of bequeathing to his successor an India that remained untrue to its potential. Or, he could still be remembered as the man who, when confronted with a choice between subverting India and defending it, chose wisely. The Prime Minister should just take a deep breath, grab the opportunity and do the right thing. He, not the lady, has the upper hand this quarter.
June 26, 2011 12:51:40 AM
Swapan Dasgupta
If Delhi’s political grapevine is any indication, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh did something quite unusual last Sunday: He apparently threw a minor tantrum. The reason was understandable and anyone in his position would have done the same. The Prime Minister apparently expressed his profound displeasure at Congress general secretary Digvijay Singh’s sound bite-a-day politics that culminated in the assertion that it “it is time that Rahul (Gandhi) becomes the Prime Minister.” According to those who claim to know his mind, Singh was agitated that this statement, read with Diggy Raja’s earlier sniper attacks on the Government and its senior Ministers, implied that Prime Minister didn’t enjoy the full backing of his party and was running a lame duck administration. In short, he was awaiting the day the Congress’ other general secretary deigned to get real.
True, Digvijay was subsequently made to clarify that what he really meant was that Rahul was first in the queue to succeed the good doctor but that (perhaps tragically), there was no vacancy. What Diggy’s clarification, Sonia Gandhi’s subsequent meeting with Singh to discuss the impending Ministerial reshuffle, the Congress Working Committee meeting’s disapproval of the growing incoherence in the party and the Cabinet’s approval of price hikes for diesel, kerosene and cooking gas together meant was that the Prime Minister had clawed back some lost political ground.
Manmohan Singh doesn’t still convey the impression of a man who is totally in charge. But he seems a little more in charge than he was a week ago. Although being discharged from ICU doesn’t imply that Singh is now King, it does indicate that at 41, Rahul has other, more interesting, things on his mind.
If the Prime Minister is to avoid a repetition of this summer’s turbulence in the next quarter, he has to take advantage of the small window of opportunity available to him. It is too much to expect that the controversies over how best to fight corruption will be resolved in a satisfactory way with yet another Anna Hazare fast. The issue has degenerated into an ego battle between Team Anna and Team Congress and the stalemate is likely to persist until both sides come to the realisation that neither of them can presume to speak for the nation.
However, delinked from the Lokpal battle are other growing concerns that have left the political class unmoved. The economic indicators tell two stories: First, the tale of an India that is underperforming and, second, the tragedy of attaching importance to decision-makers who know the delights of profligate spending but haven’t acquired the capacity to generate income. For nearly a decade, India had to convince both itself and the rest of the world that it had the political will, the human capital and the vision to aspire for a better quality of life than what Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi bequeathed to the country. Once the country had demonstrated it could move well beyond the self-deprecating ‘Hindu rate of growth’, the saboteurs have returned with a vengeance.
To be fair, the Prime Minister’s instincts on the way forward for an economically vibrant India are broadly correct. Unfortunately, Manmohan Singh is merely the Prime Minister, a post whose importance has been drastically devalued in the past seven years. Real decision-making vests with the UPA chairperson and her nominated kitchen Cabinet, the National Advisory Committee. The NAC has played a seminal role in blunting India’s entrepreneur-led growth and shifting the focus to welfare spending. There is nothing strikingly original about this shift: It is the hoary European-style socialism, packaged in an Indian garb and couched in the misleading slogan ‘inclusive growth’.
The grim reality that should be evident to the Prime Minister is that there is a high national cost to be paid to an economic regime centred on entitlements, giveaways and sops: they divert resources from asset-creating investments and sustainable growth. If Singh and the wise among his Cabinet colleagues actually approve the Rs 80,000 crore show of the Lady Bountiful act involved in the proposed food security legislation, India could well be entering a fiscal crisis that can only be countered by punitive taxation and rising indebtedness. Along with MNREGA that has directly contributed to food inflation, a Food Security Act will ensure that there is little money left in the kitty for investments in infrastructure, health and education. India will be compromising its tomorrow for Sonia Gandhi’s political today.
The Prime Minister doesn’t have the political wherewithal to stop the Sonia-NAC assault on India. But he has been a good economic bureaucrat who knows all the babu tricks of survival and subterfuge. He can use the limited respite he has earned — thanks to Rahul’s preoccupation with his personal wellness — to pursue an agenda set by those who see beauty in poverty. Alternatively, he can quietly subvert a disastrous agenda through old fashioned bureaucratic subterfuge and await India’s impending impatience with flawed dynastic rule.
The Prime Minister is said to be concerned about his legacy. He now has a choice of bequeathing to his successor an India that remained untrue to its potential. Or, he could still be remembered as the man who, when confronted with a choice between subverting India and defending it, chose wisely. The Prime Minister should just take a deep breath, grab the opportunity and do the right thing. He, not the lady, has the upper hand this quarter.
Gujarat seeks greater punishment for Godhra accused
Manas Dasgupta
AHMEDABAD: The Gujarat government has moved an appeal in the High Court demanding greater punishment for the guilty in the Godhra train carnage and re-trial of those acquitted by the special trail court.
The government demanded that 20 persons, whom the court had awarded life imprisonment, be sentenced to death, like the 11 others who had been awarded the same. The court, it claimed, had disregarded the evidences put forth by the prosecution implicating the 63 others who were acquitted for “want of evidence”. Among them was Moulana Umerji, initially the prime accused.
In April, the special trial court judge, P.R. Patel, had held the incident to be a “pre-planned conspiracy”. He had convicted 31 persons; sentencing 11 to death and 20 to life imprisonment, while acquitting the remaining 63.
Special public prosecutor in the case J.M. Panchal said the government demanded that the life imprisonment awarded to 20 accused should be converted to the death penalty and that the acquittal of the 63 others be reconsidered.
He said the appeal would now be placed before an appropriate Bench of the High Court.
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