Jihadi attacks sabotage Indo-Pak-Afghan talks

Jihadi attacks sabotage Indo-Pak-Afghan talks By Subhash Chopra The killing of five Indian soldiers in Kashmir by state or non-state jihadis and the Taliban attack targeting the Indian Consulate in Jalalabad, east of Kabul, within the first week of this month ( August 2013) are a triple Samjhota sabotage – aimed at destroying peace prospects among India , Pakistan and Afghanistan. The Pakistani authorities, as expected, have denied any hand in the deadly skirmish in the Poonch sector. The Taliban too have routinely denied any part in the Jalalabad attack that missed the Indian target but killed 12 Afghans, including eight children in a nearby school. The brazen attacks are clearly timed to torpedo current efforts of the leaders of the three countries trying to give a new push for peace in the region following the emergence of the new government of Pakistan led by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. Just days earlier Pakistan Prime Minister had sent special envoys to Afghanistan and India to renew the peace process. He had sent senior diplomat and civil servant Sartaj Aziiz to Kabul as a personal envoy to President Hamid Karzai to douse the fires of suspicion and mutual recrimination that have become the norm between the two countries over the past several years. It was and is a timely gesture to reduce the immense distrust that has developed between the two neighbours. In a parallel move towards India, the eastern neighbour, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif sent Mr Shahriyar Khan, a senior and seasoned diplomat and uncle of the late cricketer Tiger Pataudi, to New Delhi with special greetings for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and other leaders to kick start closer relations on which both leaders are already agreed. Nawaz Sharif’s public declarations for stronger ties with India before and after Pakistan’s recent elections have gravely discomfited pro-Taliban elements in several quarters in Pakistan. The attacks are clearly designed to cast a big shadow over the meetings of the Indian , Pakistani and Afghan leaders on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly session next month in New York. Nawaz Sharif’s repeated declarations to improve trade relations with India, including possible purchase of electric power, have sorely disturbed fanatical elements, many of whom are in quite high places within the Pakistan establishment. His refusal to mention the thorny issue of Kashmir during his election campaign has not been forgotten by the militant elements. In fact, his search for peace with India goes long back to his earlier stint as Prime Minister when he invited former inidian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in what is fondly remembered in both countries as the halcyon days of bus diplomacy of 1998. That was before he was toppled from power and exiled. This time he has returned with a solid mandate but he still needs to be wary of saboteurs who regard India as eternal enemy and consider Afghanistan as a protectorate providing ‘strategic depth’ to Pakistan. Another key element of this sabotage was the easy movement of people between India and Pakistan following the new implementation of the facility of no prior visas for senior citizens above 60 years crossing the borders. All that hassle of travelling long distances and endlessly waiting at the mercy of babus and clerks could hopefully become a thing of the past. Coming back to the Jalalabad attackers who have fired this warning shot at the peace makers in the three countries, it is safe to presume that they are a Taliban faction, whether supported by rogue elements in Pakistan’s ISI or acting independently. Whether they are the Haqqani faction or some other group is immaterial. It is equally certain that the attackers find Jalalabad an easy target as it is a short drive from the Afghanistan – Pakistan border behind which they have safe sanctuary ,indeed militarised power houses. ..........................................................................................................

Indo-Pak dialogue must resume after the wobble

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Time running out for India’s help to secular Bangladesh

 By Subhash Chopra

Bangladesh is at a crossroads once again. Barely four years ago when Prime minister Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League government came to power it faced its baptism of fire (agni priksha) with the mutiny among ranks  of its elite security force Bangladesh Rifles (BDR). The government survived, but had to pay a heavy price. Over 50 BDR officers,  including BDRchief..and his wife,  were murdered by the mutineers.

This time when the Hasina government enters the last ten (10) months of  its current term, the country is facing another agni priksha with an open revolt by  powerful elements led by the  Jamaat-i-Islami forces who never accepted Bangladesh’s independence  from Pakistan. In fact the Jamaatis  collaborated with the Pakistani forces in the  ‘genocide’ committed against the people of Bangladesh.Yet taking advantage of the democratic system the Jamaat lives on and continues to spread its fundamentalist message. Unable to accept the death verdict for two of its leaders and life imprisonment for a third for their war crimes in the country’s  liberation struggle they have launched yet another terror campaign of forced hartals and protests bringing the country to a virtual halt. But this time the Hasina government is well prepared and determined to put the Jamaatis in their place.

But the Jamaatis are not alone. They  are old allies of the opposition Bangladesh National Party of former Prime Minister Begum Khaleda Zia. Begum Zia is  seen in India  to have played  the Jamaat game  by delivering a tactical snub to India during the just finished visit of President Pranab Mukherjee. She cancelled a pre-arranged meeting with Mukherjee on account of the situation in the country arising out of the hartal. But India must not take it to heart and continue its efforts to engage with the Begum’s party,  and with other opposition groups like that of  General Ershad’s Jatiya Party.  It  is  important not to forget her condemnation of  reported attacks on Hindu properties and temples during the recent turmoil in Bangladesh. Her alliance with the  Jamaat should be seen as an electoral or political compulsion but not as an ideological  togertherness.

Quite  rightly President Mukherjee’s  message at the end of his three-day visit  was to tackle the current crisis in  Bangladesh through talks and protection for all citizens, not just of  government’s own supporters and minorities.  Dhaka’s Shabagh Square’s movement may be voicing people’s demand for death sentence to Jamaat leader Delwar Hossain Sayedee  instead of mere life  imprisonment for  his part in the 1971 Liberation war  but it must not be allowed to get of hand and turn into mob hysteria. The Hasina government in its years of  complete control must show some magnanimity to the rest of the opposition even if it is considering to ban the Jamaat-e-Islami party.

Meanwhile India must step up delivery of its promises of help to Bangladesh to shore  up the country’s secular democracy. The revival of Kokata –Dhaka train(Moitree Express) over  two years ago and delivery of some railway engines and equipment during President Mukherjee’s visit  have been positive developments. But they could be seen as too little and too late  by the people of Bangladesh. India needs to speed up and  implement the 1974  land  border  accord and push forward  Teesta river water sharing arrangement.

India’s  slow pace to implement the 1974 Land Boundary Agreement, protocols for which were signed last September during Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to Dhaka are still hanging in the air as they require  Constitution amendment in India. They need New Delhi’s  ratification as these involve exchange of land in 111 Indian enclaves in Bangladesh and 51 Bangladeshi enclaves on Indian soil.

Bangladesh has already ratified the pact. But some of the Indian political parties for sheer opposition are blocking the peace process Only last week BJP president Rajnath Singh  cast doubt on his party’s  support for the Constitution amendment. 

 The BJP chief said that under the government’s  ‘Enclaves,’ pact India could lose  13,000 acres of land while Bangladesh would lose only  3,000 acres, causing a net loss  10,000 acres of land to India.

Even if this  calculation is true , the net gain to India and the people entrapped in the enclaves far outweighs any physical territorial loss. The improvement in the quality of life for the people entrapped in the enclaves cannot be measured in rupees and square yards of land. The saving on the reduction of  Border Security Force could run into thousands of crores annually. The reduction of  people smuggling, drug smuggling, cattle smuggling and cross border corruption cannot be measured in rupees and land acres.

Even more India needs to rise above petty calculations and show magnanimity and generosity of  Indira Gandhi’s days , Instead of  indulging in any short term reactions India should also remember the remarkable restraint and magnanimity shown by former Prime Minister  Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s  government in the face of  highly provocative murder of 16 Indian soldiers and dragging  their bodies like animals dangling on bamboo sticks by Jamaat mentality Bangladesh Border Rifles men during  April 2001cashes near Padua post on Meghalaya-Bangladesh border..

 Hopefully, the multi-party delegation,  including BJP’s Chandan Mitra, Mukul Roy of  Trinamool Congress, Sitaram Yechury of CPI-M and others who accompanied President Mukherjee to Dhaka, will impress on their parties to clear the hurdles in the way of  long lasting peace , prosperity and friendship with Bangladesh.

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Hyderabad Intelligence Disaster

Hyderabad intelligence disaster

By Subhash Chopra

The combined failure of national and state intelligence agencies in preventing Hyderabad blasts that cost  16 lives besides injuries to over 90 people is not just a one-off  example . It is a  clear pointer to a systemic  failure which  leaves  ordinary citizens exposed to danger again and again. Hyderabad has  not been targeted for the first time. It has suffered several  times earlier. The hanging  of Afzal Guru, the parliament  attack convict,  had clearly  made cities like  Hyderabad  vulnerable  targets of attack by  anti-national elements ,both home grown and foreign aided. 

The Central government  had  sounded  four alerts to Hyderabad included one eight hours before the explosions which turned Dilsukhnagar locality into “Dlidukhnagar”  on Thursday February 21. Hyderabd  did not need any Central alerts, it should have been wide awake  on its own. What were its police and intelligence officers doing  all along?  What were  the officers from the local thana policeman  to  SP and Inspector General doing?  Sleeping or enjoying the perks of their  posts?

For  Andhra Chief Minister Kiran Kumar  Reddy to claim , even after this disaster, that his state police was a ‘’role model’’ for others  defies all  sense and belief!

Unfortunately  it is not just Hyderabad  alone that suffers from this insomnia.  It is a systemic failure of epidemic  proportions from  which the entire  country  suffers. For instance only last week, the national capital region (NCR)of Delhi itself witnessed  a massive breakdown of law and order in NOIDA when hooligans infiltrated the trade unions during their bandh and set fire to cars and smashed factories and shops  The police ,as usual, arrived after the event  by which time  18 people had been injured, and 65 cars  had been damaged. Sixty  five people were arrested later but the damage was done.

 Wonder of wonders, the next day similar mob rule and destruction was witnessed in nearby  Okhla area?  Again the police and intelligence authorities were caught napping?

Mumbai 26/11,  the biggest  event of our national shame  in recent years, besides the attack on Parliament  itself,  betrays the same systemic slumber  of our intelligence officers. Instead of searching  our souls, we were too quick to blame the Americans for not  sharing  intelligence information on rogues like  David Coleman Headley ( Daood Gilani) and Taha wwur  Hussain Rana, who were jailed recently  by a US court on terror related charges  concerning  26/11 events in India and Denmark. Highly charged Indian media and political players have been crying hoarse over the betrayal by the US for not cooperating with India by holding back on information about Headley and Rana  and then adding  insult to injury by refusing to extradite  the pair of  them.

But what   about the ‘akal’ or intelligence of various Indian intelligence agencies and their functioning over the recent years leading up to the Mumbai carnage of 2008? What were these  highly paid, rarely questioned , far less answerable  than any other set of officers, doing  all this time? Enjoying all the perks and taking it easy at the poor citizen’s  cost ? Expecting America’s CIA and other agencies to do their work in the name of cooperation?

Headley(Gilani),  son of a Pakistani and an American woman and a self-confessed India -hater , visited India several times  for three years from September 2006 to July 2008. After spending his impressionable years in Pakistan following his parents’ divorce,  he joined his mother in America when he was 17.He himself is said to be thrice married and divorced, the latest from his Moroccan wife with whom he spent their honeymoon at the Taj hotel in Mumbai !

Headley(Gilani), an old school friend of  Pakistani army deserter Rana , was running  an immigration facilitation agency  (racket)  for US and Canada visa seekers  in Mumbai’s AC Market in Tardeo for all these years as a cover for  his anti-Indian activities in collusion with Lashkar-e-Tayyeba(LeT) and  his other masters  in Pakistan who unleashed the 26/11 assault on Mumbai. He set up his  dummy immigration office on a so-called licence  from Rana’s  Immigration Law Centre in Chicago. He even visited cities like Agra, Ahmedabad  and Kochi, ostensibly  to interview visa hopefuls or potential recruits for  his grand plan.

All this while he not only carried out  reconnaissance  of all the targets, including  hotels like the Taj on several  occasions, but also videographed  the places providing details to his handlers in Pakistan for  attacks on individual buildings.

Headley(Gilani) moved in and out of India all those years without raising the slightest of suspicion among the Indian intelligence operatives. Even after 26/11 he paid another visit in 2009, probably to gloat over his mission’s success!

Indian agencies bungled the intelligence supplied by the US agencies who had given  two specific tip-offs. In September 2008 the US agencies warned of a possible attack on targets in Mumbai , followed days later by another tip-off about a possible  coastal or maritime attack  India took up the second tip-off and strengthened coastline security but called off the patrols on November 20, just six days before 26/11, according to one report

Could there be a bigger bungle? What about the intelligence of these bunglers?

Hyderabad  is just one more chapter  in the long story  of  systemic failures of our disaster management.  Grandiose  authorities  with grand ranks keep sitting in headquarters and local thanas pushing  pens   but not  stirring outside where the  trouble  brews.

Shouldn’t   some  top heads roll  after all the tragedy and shameful  incompetence?

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Indo-Pak dialogue must go on for the sake of silent majority on both sides

Indo-Pak  dialogue  must go on for the sake  of silent majority on both sides

By Subhash Chopra

The  Indo-Pak dialogue  which seemed to open in the New Year with promises of redeeming hopes of easy  visa regime and expanding trade  relations suddenly suffered a wobble when it got caught in the LOC crossfire  in Kashmir. The new visa regime came to a swift end moments after coming into operation. The hanging of Afzal Guru, the Indian parliament attack convict, dealt the dialogue another  blow before it had time to recover from the LOC shock. Hopes of trade and sports  ties fell by the side.

Going by the hysterical media coverage in both countries, the Indo –Pak dialogue  looked like a dead-cert  casualty. Not just  a severe jolt , the events of the  new year  had  the potential of a massive interruption of the dialogue , even a. breaking  point if one were to be led by the ‘Breaking  News’ flashes on the television channels of both countries.

Tensions erupted towards the end of the first week of the new year as five soldiers were killed in quick tit-for-tat  skirmishes  on the LOC  in Kashmir – first a Pakistani soldier shot dead, then two Indian soldiers killed with one of them beheaded and his head carried away as a ‘trophy’ , followed by two Pakistani soldiers  losing their lives.

Pakistan’s straight denial of any of their soldiers involved in the beheading  didn’t help matters, leaving the  impression that some non-state actor or elements could have done it in pursuit of their avowed aim of ‘helping their brethren across the LOC.’ On the Indian side of the LOC such acts are viewed as plain terrorist attacks, with defence chiefs openly  reserving their right to take appropriate action in defending the national interest.

Far from cooling the situation, the utterances of Pakistani foreign minister Hina Rabbani Khar in television interviews  and elsewhere in the US accusing India of ‘war-mongering’ stoked further suspicions in India.

Pakistan’s call for a reference  to UN observers was met with  swift rejection by India which instead called for a bilateral flag meeting of commanders on the LOC.  Pakistan’s delayed acceptance of  holding the flag meeting prolonged the pain on both sides. But once held, the flag meeting paved the way for talks between the two  Directors  General of  Military Operations  on their ‘hot line’ – a procedure  specifically established to cool such situations. And it worked.

The situation became so bad at one stage that that the normally taciturn Indian Prime Minister  Manmohan  Singh felt  compelled to pronounce  that as long as such circumstances  prevailed “there can be no business as usual” with Pakistan. His comment was followed by President Pranab Mukherjee’s  even  tougher message  to Pakistan that  India’s hand of friendship must not be taken for granted.’’

The dialogue has taken a sever hit  but  has not been abandoned , and  it may take some time  to pick up the momentum it has lost  in this round.   It is not the first time that it has suffered such a backward pull. There have been plenty earlier  setbacks but  they have not been able to snuff it out.  The so-called trust deficit between the two countries is essentially  a bogey created by the establishment that rules Pakistan, and that too by only half of it  as the establishment itself is a divided house. There is no trust deficit between the people of India and Pakistan. And at the civil/ political  level too there is not  much of that trust deficit. Quite the contrary, there is plenty of   two-way public trust. There is  a huge peace constituency of silent majority in both countries which must  be respected and further supported. The stakes are too high to be left to saboteurs.

In fact over the last two decades political parties in the two countries have pursued the peace dialogue despite Kargil war and the 2008 Mumbai  carnage. Unfortunately  time has not been on the peacemakers’ side.

What is often forgotten is that the political leadership across major parties in both countries has from time undertaken successive initiatives to push the peace dialogue though time has not been on their side so far. The 1990 dialogue between young Prime Ministers Benazir Bhutto and Rajiv Gandhi had created all the positive wibes but Bhutto lost power  before the dialogue  could have the chance to mature. In 1999 Indian  Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee accepted the invitation of Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz  Sharif and took the peace bus to Lahore. But Pakistan army chief , General Pervez Musharraf, had other plans which resulted in the Kargil  war between the two countries. Yet in 2001 the same  General Musharraf  who engineered the Kargil war( as  revenge—by his own admission --  for India’s role in Bangladesh independence war) became a convert  to peace and came to Agra for a peace summit with Indian Prime Minister Vajpayee. But time was not on their side and the summit collapsed. Nearly five years later in 2006 Gen Musharraf   met the Indian  Prime Minister Manmohan.Singh. But time was not on the General’s  side and he got toppled from power  in 2008.

Notwitstanding huge  setbacks , including the current one set off by the skirmishes at the LOC in Kashmir and the hanging of Afzal Guru,  the ground for optimism and peace between the two countries remains solid. In spite of open and covert wars, the Indus Water
Treaty between the two countries has stood the test of time and
survived over the last 65 years. Even the 1947 ceasefire line, later
called Line of Control in Kashmir has survived in spite of open wars.
Both nations have also religiously exchanged information on nuclear
installations for the past 23 years on the first of  January every year.

Even in the current  dark  hour, the Indo-Pak dialogue remains on the table, however precarious it may look at present. . The upcoming  general elections in Pakistan and other developments there, including the possible  emergence of the new civilian and military policies on the same page,  holds out the inevitable promise of  peace and cooperation between the two nations."

Population and the Pill

Banking on unpaid ASHA  and prayer

It may be a truism to state that overpopulation is the mother of all problems, including corruption which so often hogs the limelight. Yet corruption is only a side effect of  the rising number of  claimants to the  national bread basket and some of the cookies in it.  The fierce competition for the available goodies at any stage sets of f  the  storm of corruption . The fruits of  India’s massive development  in various sectors are not enough to meet the needs of her growing population. Dis-equilibrium between the pace of  development and population growth  continues to be  the running source of all our maladies.    

  Since the middle of the 20^th century India along with most parts of the world has witnessed a population explosion. Our  first family planning programmes started over  60 years ago in 1952.  Globally,  2011 witnessed the  arrival of  the seventh billion baby  with India quite in the forefront . With our  current estimate of  1.2 billion population we are still expanding faster than our development rate can cope with.

 Despite a significant slowdown over the last 20 years in  almost  half  of  the country,  India is still nowhere near a reasonably early population stabilization target. At our leisurely pace we are still looking at 2060 as the stabilization target year --  more than 100 years  after  we set up our  family planning ministry. We have missed targets several times and we could miss again if we don’t act fast.

The 1983 National Health Policy target of  achieving the total fertility rate (TFR) of  2.1 children per woman , which is also considered the replacement level, by the year 2000 was missed by a long chalk. Again the  National Population Policy target set in 2000 of achieving  2.1 TFR  by 2010 has been missed. Sadly, the   2010  TFR stands  at  2.5,  as revealed by the latest  Sample Registration System figures from  the Registrar General of  India.

The long term objective of the 2000 National Population policy was to achieve a stable (zero net growth)  stable  population  by 2045.  At  the  current rate we are pushing the stabilisation target to 2060. That need not be so. We have the medical and monetary  wherewithal  and we can shorten our target rather than wait till 2045 or for  another half century till 2060.  Our family planning strategy needs to be more focused than ever before.

For the best part of   last  40  years we have been obsessed with sterilization  --  operating upon persons who have already produced three, four or more children , when the damage is done and objective of a small family already defeated.

The birth control pill,  which is the easiest and least complicated contraceptive to use  and  which has been available worldwide for more than 50 years, has been the most popular and effective contraceptive all across Europe and other parts of the developed world.  So successful indeed that desire for a smaller family and fewer children has made couples to forego cash and holiday incentives offered by certain governments.  In countries like Germany and Russia which are witnessing negative or zero population growth  there are few takers of  such incentives  offered by the state. Even in poorer countries like  Romania and  Hungary, young couples tend to go for smaller but prosperous  families,  ignoring  traditional Catholic religious   reservations.

  But  curiously  the pill  seems to have been virtually ignored by our  planners  for  almost the  first 25 years  of  its existence. Only around 1987 ,  the pill was in some strength brought into our  basket of  the attractively named  “cafeteria”  contraceptives,  leaving it to the  consumers to pick  and choose without  telling  them to opt for one or the other . Its current usage  -- nearly three crore pills or three  lakh 30-day cycles  per year -- translates to only a little over three to four  per cent acceptors out of all  other contraceptives users.

The cafeteria approach looks good in terms of  free choice but in reality it doesn’t  play out so fair and free. The cash incentives to motivators and acceptors of  other forms of contraceptives, especially sterilisation in various forms,  act as a powerful factor  in the cafeteria.  Sterilisations can be  easily counted and monies collected by motivators and acceptors.  But pills popped in at home  can’t  be  verified and cash handouts difficult to pick.   Consequently the pill seems to have fallen off the cafeteria shelves as only about  three  percent  women in the 15-45 age group are taking to the pill,  unaware of  the advantages of the pill.

Over 90 per cent  child bearing women in India are barely aware  of  the  pill’s  benefits like regularising of  periods, bleeding control,  lesser  ovarian  problems and, above all, spacing out pregnancies for better mother and child  health.

Australian researchers at Monash  and Melbourne universities say the  pill can even cut  the risk of developing breast, ovarian and womb cancer. They even  go on to recommend the pill for nuns too for reasons of  health rather than as a conrtraceptive  because it reduces overall mortality and mortality due to ovarian and uterine cancer.

   

 In India,  medical or paramedical advice on the easy-to-use pill for controlling  family size and  better family welfare  could be most well timed and effective  after the first or second child birth.  

But where are the medical/paramedical  helpers to be found on the ground level, especially in the villages? ASHAs,  Anganwadis  and ANMs besides qualified staff at block and district hospitals make quite a nice ladder or a pyramid. But is the entire edifice adequately staffed. At the very base stands the grandly designated ASHA or  the Accredited Social Health Activist each of  whom is expected to look after 100 women in her village community. One ASHA for each village is a great idea. But what is she accredited with? Sadly in our scheme of  things under NRHM (National Rural Health Mission)  she is an unpaid worker. She is a part- time volunteer who is expected to work only two or three  hours  a day. She is our key health worker in the village. The list of her duties is a long one.  Motivating women to use contraceptives, including the pill, to help India control its runaway population growth, is only one of her myriad jobs.  All for no pay!  

The second key worker in the village is the Aanganwadi, also a part-timer with duties such as preparing mid-day school meals for school children and taking pregnant women to nearest hospitals for safe deliveries and other medical help. She at least is lucky to have some pay , a grand sum of Rs 3,000 a month announced by Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee in his  2011 budget speech over a year ago.  But there was nothing for ASHA then or now in the 2012 budget.  

   

Our long obsession  with sterilisation operations  --  vasectomy, no scalpel vasectomy, tubectomy,  IUD --  in spite of the  numerical  surges running into lakhs over  the last few  years has failed to stem the explosive growth  in the Hindi heartland  of  the country.  And it must be underlined that the success of the southern states and some northern states cannot be attributed to sterilisation programmes. Rather it is due to factors like  higher female education rate, mid-day school meals, and availability of  home  entertainment  in the evening, thanks to the distribution of  free television sets by some the ruling parties.

  Sterilisations are the biggest gimmick. Collection of cash handouts  by NGOs, individual motivators and  volunteers who undergo  such operations is the main attraction of  most participants in this elaborate game. Even the medical staff  who       

perform these operations are in this somewhat  lucrative loop. All this money would be  worth  investing  if  it could move us to nearer to the population control target.   An  overwhelming  majority of  such operations are performed on women who have already given birth to three , four or more children and have reached the menopause stage. Men, notoriously, account for a mere five percent of  total number of sterilisation operations, according to the available  surveys published in the quarterly journal of the National Institute of  Health and family Welfare .

Reports of  botched up sterilization operations at ad hoc camps run by some NGOs in Bihar (The Hindu , 23 January) , Madhya Pradesh (The Times of  India 18 and 26 February) are not  infrequent. Incentive -driven  motivators and target chasing administrators in Madhya  Pradesh  went on a sterilization spree in February this year to lure  poor  tribals even though they are  designated as “protected”  because their numbers are dwindling fast. From  aanganwadi workers to patwaris and  tehsildars and other officials everyone was out to lure tribals to sterilization  tables for a cash incentive of  Rs 1100, according to the president of the Vanwasi  Kalyan  Parishad who alleged that the Gonds and Korku  tribals in Betul district were the victims of  this drive. Stung by the protests, state chief minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan  had to step in ,  warning  unscrupulous operatives to not defeat the real objective of  celebrating 2012 as the year of family planning  in the state.

Such incidents may be aberrations and the vast majority of operations – at the annual rate of  40 to 50 lakhs over the last three years and still rising – are safe and successful, according to health ministry officials. Yet the central fact remains that the vast majority of such operations are redundant as they are conducted on people who have already reached their non-reproductive age.

 Time to re-focus family planning  strategy.  And  time to relocate  existing and new Plan finances  to pay ASHA a meaningful wage commensurate with the services we expect of her.

India’s Reserve Bank fared better than US Fed, says US Nobel economist

By Subhash Chopra

India’s banks  weathered  the 2008 global financial meltdown sparked by the excessive lending  spree  by the likes of Lehman Brothers  better than US and European banks, according to Joseph Stiglitz, the US Nobel  Prize winner economist.

Excessive lending in the US housing  market and excessive freedom to investment bankers in US and Europe  led to the crash under whose impact the Western economies are still reeling. In contrast the Indian banking system did much better because  the bankers were kept under a moderately tight leash and  restrained from reckless and speculative lending deals.

India’s central bank, RBI (Reserve Bank of India) like its counterparts in China and Brazil, had done much better than the US Federal Reserve or the European Central Bank(ECB) because it had, and continues to have, less independence than its US or European counterparts which had much more independence  that lprovided excessive bailouts to  banks  which indulged in speculative deals and brought  the  entire  system  down on its knees.

Greater independence for central banks was neither desirable nor conducive to any better  economic performance, rather the reverse.  Above all it lacked accountability, said Stiglitz.

The crisis had shown that one of the central principles advocated by Western central bankers -- the desirability of central bank independence  -- was "questionable" at best. "In this crisis, countries with less independent central banks -- China, India and Brazil  -- did far, far better than countries with more independent central banks -- Europe and the United States. There is no such thing as truly independent institutions. All public institutions are accountable, and the only quetion is to whom."  

 In the run-up to the financial crisis, the US  Federal Reserve was accountable only to Wall Street, he said and singled out New York Fed President William Dudley for some especially harsh criticism.  Dudley was "a model of bad governance" because of his inherent conflict of interest: he bailed out the very banks he was supposed to regulate – the very same banks that enabled him to gain his position,.

“ The (granting of ) loans by the Fed and the ECB to banks at low interest rates was, in effect a , a gift worth tens of billions of dollars, a gift from the public, but which circumvented the usual public appropriations process. It is unconscionable that such power over the purse be given to an-elected body,” Stiglitz  asserted. America’s central bank, he believed , had been captured by the Wall Street. “It (the Fed) came to reflect the ideology and interests of the financial sector which it was supposed to regulate.” The conflicts of  interest – as unravelled in cases like the New York Fed – were “a model of bad governance.” The Fed, he said, had “turned a blind eye to practices that not only exploited the poor, but put into jeopardy the American and global financial system.”

Interestingly, the US Nobel Laureate’s  onslaught on the independence of central banks came right after RBI governor D.  Subbarao’s  address urging more independence  for central banks. They were speaking at the C.D.Deshmukh memorial lecture in Mumbai..

The RBI governor also called for greater harmony between fiscal and monetary policy to tackle the challenges of growth and unemployment  “The central banks alone cannot fix economies by themselves. Governments need to act too from the fiscal side , and monetary and fiscal policies have to act in harmony.” His remarks came a a tie when he is under pressure from industry and the government to bring down interest rates ahead of his monetary policy announcement later this month.

Continuing his Indian tour, Stiglitz  waded into another controversy about the role of FDI (foreign direct investment ) by multinationals like Walmart in India. Speaking at the Azam Premji Foundation in Bangaluru, he cautioned  over the belief that FDI was some kind of panacea. There was no shortage of cash or entrepreneurship in India  The country should look at what foreign investment  can do that Indian entrepreneurs cannot do. Walmart , he warned, could bring greater capacity in bribery as it did  in Mexico. “You don’t want to bring that in, you already have enough of it.”

He said that he had studied Walmart’s supply systems  in other countries. They had not worked there. FDI with its large buying power could control a large part of the market and drive prices down to bring in cheaper Chinese goods and increase dependence on foreign goods.

Overall Stiglitz was fairly optimistic about India weathering the global slowdown in the coming year when the US and other economies were expected to slow down. “Good thing about India is that it is less dependent on exports.”