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8 The Bengal Post Kolkata Monday November 29, 2010 EDITORIAL TheBengalPost “A government, for protecting business only, is but a carcass, and soon falls by its own corruption and decay.” —Amos Bronson Alcott (1799-1888) Vol: 1, Issue: 152 Chairman Modi? Congress General Secretary Rahul Gandhi may have been stretching the historical record in drawing a parallel between Chairman Mao and Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi to the former’s eminent disadvantage, but he was making an entirely valid point about the latter. It has become routine for the media and the middle classes, not to mention, of course, the capitalist class, to sing paeans to Mr Modi and gush about how development-friendly he is. He is even held aloft by many as an exemplar of governance, with both the powerful and glamorous pitching for his candidacy as prime minister. It is in this context that we would be quite correct in seeking to address Mr Gandhi’s concern, which fundamentally is: can development-friendliness completely erase Mr Modi’s association with the killings that took place in post-Godhra Gujarat? The answer is without a doubt a resounding no. However hard Mr Modi labours for the development of his state, there can be little doubt that by the logic of the constitutional democracy that we claim to celebrate, Mr Modi must be much more seriously investigated and penalized for his links with the riots. Further, a man with his record should never become prime minister as, indeed, he never will, given the political configurations that exist at the national level. There is another issue here. The celebration of Mr Modi as some kind of development-friendly exemplar without either parallel or precedent ignores a number of points. One is that India has seen many politicians who have promoted development in their jurisdictions, whatever their other failings may or may not be. Ms Jayalalithaa comes to mind, for instance. Second, the media seems to bruit the impression that Mr Modi took under his wing an impoverished and underdeveloped state and turned it into a shining paragon of development. That is obviously not the case, for Gujarat has been a development-friendly state since its inception, despite all the communal and caste violence that it has experienced. When Mr Modi became chief minister, Gujarat was already one of India’s most developed states. Mr Modi has built on that; he has done nothing outstanding or unparalleled. In fact, a comparison with Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar would be instructive. Mr Kumar runs the most underdeveloped state in India. He has taken on the challenge of bringing to its political culture an agenda of development and governance. No one would argue that he has turned Bihar around. But he has made a beginning worthy of respect. And he has done so keeping in mind the great necessity of promoting a culture of inclusion. His concern for the minorities has, in fact, paid handsome electoral dividend. Clearly, Mr Kumar, not Mr Modi, is the politician of the future. Rotten state The Supreme Court’s strictures against the Allahabad High Court, the biggest among all high courts, once again focus attention on the issue of judicial corruptibility. There can be very little doubt that the credibility of the judiciary has taken a beating over the years in the public estimation. Not many people will be convinced that abstractions like justice mean anything, especially when the common perception is that the law and its functioning is somehow tilted in favour of the rich and powerful and against the poor and disempowered. That is, however, a larger point about how liberal regimes function by their very logic and that of political economy. The more specific point about the judiciary, corruption and the abuse of power can be seen at several levels. The lower reaches of the judiciary have for long functioned in appalling conditions, being underpaid and understaffed and often subject to physical intimidation by powerful interests. Some of these conditions continue to exist, though the matter of remuneration has now been addressed. Appalling conditions do not, of course, condone corruption and the abuse of office, but they make them explicable and provide clues about how a better functioning of the judicial apparatus can be brought about. What is true of the lower reaches of the judiciary is not applicable to the high courts and the Supreme Court, however. The judges who man these are now well remunerated and, more- Back in Time Modi must be hauled up for his role in the Gujarat riots Judiciary must exhibit the highest standards of probity over, enjoy great prestige and security. It is not so easy to intimidate a high court or Supreme Court judge. The conditions of work, too, are good, even though some amount of understaffing exists. Given all these, the public expects nothing but the highest standards of probity in the higher judiciary. Unfortunately, such standards are not prevalent. It is possible to argue that it is pointless to expect judges alone to be shining examples of incorruptibility when all institutions around them are corrupt and when corruption is socially accepted. There is some truth in this argument. Nevertheless, the judiciary, especially the Supreme Court, must make every attempt to put in place systems which will weed out corruption. One way in which this can be achieved is through the Right to Information Act. The Supreme Court has been resisting the application of the act to the judiciary; the case is pending before the court. The Supreme Court must, in fact, welcome its stringent application to the entire judiciary, as a weapon against corrupt practices. On November 29, 1947, the United Nations votes for the partition of Palestine and the creation of Israel. Despite strong Arab opposition, the UN votes for the partition of Palestine and the creation of an independent Jewish state. Corrupt credentials of national politics Amulya Ganguli The writer is a political commentator The shrinking of the “moral universe” in India because of “graft” and “greed”, as Sonia Gandhi has said, is not a new phenomenon. As a country which ranks 87th out of 178 in the Transparency International’s corruption index, it is obvious that the blight has a long history. To quote from former Union Home Secretary N.N. Vohra’s well-known report on the subject, “a network of mafias is virtually running a parallel government” through “contacts with bureaucrats, government functionaries at local levels, politicians, media persons” and others. The presumption was that the ending of the licence-permit-quota raj would reduce the level of corruption by denying politicians and bureaucrats the power to sanction or reject industrial projects. As Ratan Tata disclosed, a minister had been sitting on his application for entering the domestic aviation sector because he was “stupid” enough, as a fellow businessman told him, not to pay the man `15 crore. But if the economic reforms have cut graft and greed in the matter of industrial licensing, they have led to the burgeoning of sleaze in the field of infrastructure, including land, as the Commonwealth Games and Adarsh housing society scams show. However, the fact that the control raj has not been totally dismantled can be seen from the ministerial prerogative in the granting of 2G spectrum allocations, which are said to have cost the exchequer a gargantuan `1.7 lakh crore. In considering the sad state of the “moral universe”, it is necessary to remember that the main culprit is none other than the party of Indian independence, the Congress. It is not for nothing that the letter ‘c’ has long been associated with the Congress’s role in nurturing corruption just as in the BJP’s case, ‘c’ stands for the party’s communalism and, for the Mandal parties of the Hindi belt, ‘c’ is for casteism. The Congress’s less than glorious record in this context was noted by none other than Mahatma Gandhi, who said in 1939 that “I would go to the length of giving the whole Atri Bhattacharya The writer is a senior civil servant When we were very young, my grandfather would take my cousin and me to the British Council Library on Saturdays. It was then housed in an old colonial building on Theatre Road (now Shakespeare Sarani, a rare example of ideologues being witty) and we had to show our cards at the gate, stand in line at the counter to return our books and only then walk-fast-but-donot-run to the staircase at the back, leading up to the Children’s Section. Yes, there was a children’s section then and for some years afterwards, before Margaret Thatcher, Lady Ironpants, Attila the Hen, a pox upon her, banished it to outer darkness on the pretext of cutting costs. The keen thrill of anticipation I felt then surpasses every possible emotion … love ambition sex music food success, nothing can compare. Rushing sedately, if such an action is possible, up the two flights of the staircase to where the magic lay waiting in the shelves … And then an hour of browsing, the pangs of having to CHOOSE just four books, if only I could take just one no three more, the patient short-listing for a final selection, inveigling my younger cousin into taking one for me on her card, yes I will give you my share of chocolate tomorrow (I must confess I usually welshed on that, I was a young glutton and no Pal you will NOT comment upon the choice of tense), the final selection and the sorrow of parting with the books I left behind on the table at the head of the stairs …Refined torture on the journey (Such a long journey!) back, “you will not read in the car, it’s bad for your eyes” (edict writ in words of stone, he was a disciplinarian), the furtive peeks into the first few pages if I managed to get into the front seat before my cousin, further torture during tea-time (no Congress’s record of corruption can be traced back to pre-1947 days and not many of its leaders are untainted by the scourge Congress a decent burial rather than put up with the corruption that is rampant”. It is noteworthy that the malaise affected the Congress soon after it assumed ministerial responsibilities in 1937. As the Mahatma noted, the vice became “rampant” within two years and would have undoubtedly grown exponentially if the Congress governments had not resigned at the start of World War II. However, the party did not lose much time to pick up the threads of corruption after independence when one of its stalwarts of the time, V.K. Krishna Menon, became involved in the socalled jeep scandal in 1948. Afterthought Personally honest politicians of India often turn a blind eye to the corruption of colleagues and party members After that, the cases of sleaze surfaced at regular intervals, the most notable of which were the Haridas Mundhra scandal (1957-58), the Malaviya-Sirajuddin affair (1963) and the Pratap Singh Kairon controversy (1963). The Mundhra affair has a special place in the history of corruption since the issue was The real joy of living … reading at the table!) till AT LAST at last at last I could rush to our room and disappear into the words upon the page, the pictures in my mind, the feel of the paper the binding the smell the sheer bliss of BOOKS. The saddest part of growing older is that I can no longer quite recapture that ecstasy, the exquisite thrill of worlds laid in store for me. “Fled is that music .. ?” Though even today, nothing quite compares to the feeling of walking down from the BCL with a bundle of books under my arm, knowing that the reading light in the car promises immediate consummation of the truest deepest longest lasting most rewarding love affair. Which brings us to the point of this reverie, if a reverie can have a point at all. The pleasure of finding kindred spirits who visit, inhabit, know the same constellations of magic worlds. And, if one is very fortunate, of visiting in the flesh the places I have inhabited myself in these waking dreams. From a 4-week vacation across four countries, ten airports, six railway stations, fifteen reels of film, my fondest take-aways are five photographs. One of them shows a wall with “VR” upon it in pock-marks (a fit of patriotism in the Jubilee year, right, James?) and one is of me in an armchair, with a table in front upon which lie a bowler hat, a meerschaum pipe and a deer-stalker. A cigar for the one who can spot the one that doesn’t belong there (think Basil Reuters Rathbone). The tobacco was in a Persian slipper, the letters were pinned to the mantelpiece with a stiletto. The ‘VR’ was a nice touch, but sadly enough there was no Bradshaw in the bookshelf and the Burke’s Peerage was from 1902. An aberration, since he left those rooms in 1898 and retired to the Sussex Downs, where he penned his second recorded publication (“with some notes upon the Segregation of the Queen”). Or that perfect opening line, credited to a marginal scribble in a student’s tutorial at Oxford, the door to a perfect make-believe long before J.K. Rowling … “In a hole in the ground there lived a Hobbit”. On my top ten any day. “Is it the perfume from a dress/ that makes me so digress?” No, it is the fragrance of “that other world whose margin fades/ forever and forever when I move” … The self-assured, sometimes self-important roll of the Beetle’s lines … “he trod the ling like a buck in spring/ And he looked like a lance in rest”. If I ever visit Pakistan, it will be to see the cannon in front of the Jadoo Ghar and look for that old horse trader who appears in more stories than young Kimball’s alone. A digression for the enthusiast of the Great Game … Frederick Bailey, traveller, adventurer and secret agent for Her Majesty, spent years on the North-West Frontier and in Central Asia under assumed identities and often in disguise. The culmination of his Reuters raised in parliament by Feroze Gandhi, the Congress MP from Rae Bareli, one of the party’s pocket boroughs, who was Indira Gandhi’s husband and Jawaharlal Nehru’s son-in-law. Feroze’s stridency was resented by Nehru and was believed to have been responsible for the rift between him and Indira. On the political front, however, it led to the resignation of Finance Minister T.T. Krishnamachari, the first head to roll in India for the suspected offence. The other VIP who also had to resign following the levelling of corruption charges was Punjab Chief Minister Pratap Singh Kairon although the S.R. Das com- career came when he was recruited in Tashkent by the agents of the Czar. His mission? To find and kill “a notorious British agent named Bailey”!! And, of course, that most idyllic world whose pleasures can never stale, where young men in spats descend upon a castle that “has impostors the way other houses have mice”, where no page passes without a smile broadening into a totally delighted laugh, where long after “the Rudyards cease from kipling/ and the Haggards ride no more”, the stentorian voices of “aunt calling to aunt like mastodons in a primeval swamp” can still cause a frisson of unease to dance down the spine and yet all cares can be wiped away and the loose ends tied up by a Presence who “appears upon the scene” with a respectful cough and a perfect solution. My favourite in the oeuvre, however (couldn’t resist that one!), is the long languid person modelled upon Rupert D’Oyly Carte who can “take your dog for a walk” or “assassinate your aunt, crime not objected to”, as long as it has nothing to do with fish! Worlds worlds worlds … “if we had world enough and time ...” “Would we not shatter it to bits, and then/ remould it nearer to the heart’s desire?” Which brings me to another craftsman of a different genre, who led me to the pleasures of Old Omar through by-roads trod by whistling tramps and melancholic cow-punchers, who made it magic for me to walk the streets west of Broadway between 23rd and 42nd (known as? Hint — a culinary connection, so named because at the turn of the previous century it promised the juiciest cuts of graft) and who perfected the “twist in the tale” long before Bollywood and Channel V chanced upon it. Bollywood reminds me of that master of the formula, author of over a hundred stories with essentially the same characters, “six feet two in (their) stockinged feet” and “most times, when they caught a-hold of something, it moved”. mission had exonerated him in its report. Since then, not many ministerial heads may have rolled, but the alleged offenders have had occasionally to resign, as in Andimuthu Raja’s case in the spectrum scam, and governments have paid a political price. Perhaps the heaviest price was paid by Rajiv Gandhi over the Bofors scam, for he lost his two-thirds majority in parliament and paved the way for the Congress’s loss of power for nearly a decade. The shrinking of the moral universe, which ended Rajiv’s political career, had accelerated during his mother’s reign. While Nehru was perceived as being indifferent to the allegations of corruption, especially about Congressmen like Kairon, Indira took shelter under the excuse that corruption was a “global phenomenon”. Her major sin, of course, was to try to undermine democracy along with her younger son, Sanjay, but it is the cynicism which she fostered about the system which is partly responsible for the fog of the “global phenomenon” enveloping India. As a result, it isn’t only the Congress which is saddled with the Ashok Chavans and Suresh Kalmadis, but even the party with a difference, the BJP, is unable to act against its Karnataka chief minister B.S. Yeddyurappa and the family of the so-called Bellary brothers, the tycoons who stand behind him, lest they set up a ‘parallel’ government with the help of fellow cynics in H.D. Deve Gowda’s family. The BJP’s fall from grace in Karnataka is mirrored by the DMK in Tamil Nadu, which has turned the state into the fiefdom of a family run by an aging bigamist with his two squabbling sons, who are waiting to pounce on each other once their father passes from the scene. As their support for Raja shows, eliminating corruption is the least of their concerns. Across the length and breadth of the country, therefore, there is not a single politician who can be said to be determined to end the scourge. Manmohan Singh, for instance, may be personally honest, like Mamata Banerjee and Naveen Patnaik, but his ineffectuality is there for all to see. One reason for this apparently is that Sonia herself is not totally free of the Bofors stain in view of the Ottavio Quottrocchi affair. World Window T he country’s intelligence agencies have a reputation for being unwieldy. Recently, the Supreme Court proceedings regarding the missing prisoners’ case have added to this perception. The bench was hearing the case of the alleged abduction of 11 individuals from Adiyala Jail who had been acquitted of terrorism charges. The ISI and military intelligence declared through the attorney general that the ‘missing’ prisoners were not in their custody. It did not appear to be the denial that irked the chief justice, but the fact that the respective heads of the agencies had failed to sign their written statement of denial. “Do they consider themselves above the constitution and the law?” the CJ asked. The judiciary deserves kudos for raising this question, as very few within the establishment are willing to publicly critique the intelligence agencies. But it is a question many right-thinking citizens have been asking for a long time. The agencies, especially the ISI, have often been accused of running a state within a state, of meddling in domestic politics and of playing the regional Great Game. Clearly, many of these activities are perceived to be way beyond their brief. The agencies must be more transparent in their conduct. Obviously, they are not expected to blow their cover, but they must work according to the agenda set by an elected government. If we want to be seen as a country that respects due process, we must fight the war on terror through legal methods. Offline “Let me assure you it’s better, reliable and good for us. The country needs only our brand of corruption.” © globalcartoonist.com No reproduction without permission
It is quite symbolical that Chinese high-tech trains became the first effective international transport solution to have helped Saudi Arabia manage pilgrim movement in the Arabian Kingdom during the just-completed Hajj season. Citizens and visitors marvelled at the Chinese-built trains that moved tens of thousands of devout Muslims across the holy sites of Mina, Muzdalifah and Arafat for the first time. The successful and accident-free run of the trains through the holy city of Mecca was a perception-changer about China for many in the Middle East. The well-respected English daily Arab News quoted an Arab journalist saying that China has overnight become a nation to respect and emulate, summing up the mood of the Arabs and the region’s Muslims vis-à-vis the Middle King - dom. The rise of the emerging markets continues to fascinate the Middle East’s policy makers. The emergence of India and China has also seen increased international dialogue and trade between the two regions. However, China has clearly dominated this space compared to other emerging markets, including India, by securing not only a larger share of trade and commerce, but also in terms of political clout and influence. The total trade between the Middle East and the Middle Kingdom tripled in the last five years to nearly US$110 billion by the end of 2009. Infrastructure, Reuters The Bengal Post Kolkata Monday November 29, 2010 OP-ED China’s rising influence in the Middle East The Middle Kingdom’s aspirations for global hegemony increasingly find expressions in its friendly overtures to the oil-rich nations Utpal Bhattacharya The writer is a senior journalist based in Dubai View from Dubai By 2015, seventy per cent of China’s oil imports will come from the Middle East engineering and oil and gas have constituted the bulk of this trade. In fact, China is increasingly dependent on the Middle East for its oil, with the latter accounting for 58 per cent of the total oil import to the Middle Kingdom. By 2015, the share of Middle East in total Chinese oil imports will rise to 70 per cent. The People’s Republic has, today, got specific oil interests in Saudi Arabia, Iran and Iraq, and, one can understand why China is so eager to entrench itself in the region for a long haul in matters of both security and politics apart from trade. Significantly, China’s growing military muscle and economic might have already caught the imagination of the common Arabs and Muslims; there is also a feeling in certain quarters that the vacuum left by US’ disengaging from the region, albeit in phases, could lead to instability, and that China has an opportunity to play an important role in balancing regional power centres. It will be wrong to assume that the US is in danger of losing its dominance in the Middle East to China, but it certainly is true that the latter is acquiring the space from where the former is creeping out. China has emerged as the only global power after the US that looks capable of taking up a credible role for itself in the Middle East, and countries from Syria to Turkey and Saudi Arabia to Iran are increasingly engaging with the Middle Kingdom. China’s strong relations with Iran and Syria go quite a long time back. But some western commentators are quite alarmed at the increasing intimacy between NATO partner Turkey and the Middle Kingdom, especially the growing military exchanges. The most recent example was the inclusion of Chinese war planes in the Turkish military exercise Anatolian Eagle in October — manoeuvres that previously had included the US and Israel. In addition, the joint announcement, in the same month, that China and Turkey have upgraded their bilateral relationship to that of a strategic partnership, is a clear indication that the Middle Kingdom has made strong inroads into what has been always considered a strong western ally. It has to be also noted that Ankara has been overt in its support of Iran’s nuclear interests, while engaging Syria Digging the grave for TV Reshmi Chakraborty The writer is a freelance journalist based in Bangalore The Information and Broadcasting Ministry (I&B) has announced that television programming in India would be shifted to the late-night adult slot. The only exception, according to a ministry spokesperson, would be channels like Cartoon Network or Disney that focus exclusively on content for children. The decision was taken after the I&B ministry’s initial pronouncement to move shows like Bigg Boss and Rakhi ka Insaaf to late-night slots. Given the content, it was felt that the shows weren’t suitable for universal viewing though many would say they aren’t suitable for any kind of viewership at all. Speaking to the media at a press conference, ministry spokesperson Moral Mashi said the decision was taken after a long and intense period of introspection, during which officials and media experts reviewed the kind of content that is regularly broadcast in our country and reached the conclusion that most were not suitable for unrestricted public viewing. Mashi said that it wasn’t just Rakhi ka Insaaf and Bigg Boss, Indian television had unsuitable content everywhere. She pointed out ads where girls in the shortest of tops had to lusciously lick ice-cream just to tell the audiences how wonderful it was, or magically got jobs right after becoming fairer, lovelier and catching the eye of the company’s CEO. She also pointed out unsuitable content on news channels, which air nothing else but scams. “What is it teaching our family audiences?” asked an irate Moral Mashi. “The No.1 lesson everyone gets is that scams, no matter how big they are, could be totally manageable. That you can cost the country’s exchequer billions of dollars, con the aam junta into believing you’ve purchased the world’s most expensive toilet paper and still retain your ministerial berth. At least long enough to make some serious money out of it. Oh and while you’re at it, the Prime Minister will turn a blind eye to your shenanigans until goaded to answerability. What’s more, you can even bare all 32 teeth in an oily smile with great nonchalance after getting the sack, implying it’s nothing but a tiny hiatus in your illustriously corrupt career.” An expert on I&B panel clarified how news channels also taught us how to make your family rich by all means possible. “You could do a B.S. Yeddyurappa and allot residential and commercial ‘Since everything is replete with unsuitable ads, scandals, scams, rapes, molestations and building collapses, we have decided to move all programmes to the late-night slot’ land allegedly worth several crores to your sons and daughters, show absolute insouciance when the media and the (equally corrupt) opposition question you and refuse to get off your plum post,” he added. “Many children watch primetime television which is when these shows and news programmes are aired. Since everything is simply replete with unsuitable ads, scandals, scams, rapes, molestations and building collapses, we have decided to move it to the latenight slot,” Moral Mashi reiterated. The ministry officials and experts reserved their harshest criticism for the current lot of television serials and said that most deserved to be shifted to the graveyard slot. Day after day of watching one set of overdressed housewives plotting against another cannot be healthy for any audience, whether family or non-family, they added. It was also pointed out that in the name of progressive serials trying to change social customs, girls on the telly were married off early, dark-skinned women were discriminated against and evil thakur boys were shown to be preying upon hapless farmer’s daughters. In other words, not exactly suited for unrestricted viewership. While the exact date for the new move is yet to be finalised, not everybody is happy with the ministry’s decision, which met with varied reactions across the country. Television journalists understandably staged a walkout at the press conference and some housewives did a dharna outside parliament saying that morning and afternoon slots were their best TV-watching time. Some ministers too expressed concern that they would now fade from public memory given that several people go to bed much earlier than I&B’s late night slot. The BPO industry however reacted to the news with great joy given the late hours they keep. The implication of the I&B ministry’s move will be huge, both in terms of revenue and leisure. However, it remains to be seen whether it achieves the farreaching changes that the ministry hopes it will bring. in military ties. Middle East experts are already pointing to an alliance of Iran, Syria and Turkey that has a tacit approval of the Chinese leadership; so much so that Turkey has been insisting that the NATO’s missile shield planned for Europe should not identify Iran and Syria as potential threats. While it is unlikely that Turkey will withdraw from NATO, but what is written on the wall is for everyone to see: that neither the NATO nor the US can take some of its erstwhile partners for granted. Post-9/11, US-Middle East relations have posed some tough challenges for the Americans, and China, backed by its economic might, found a convenient entry in strategic areas in the region. Over a period of time, and, as leadership changed in the US, it became obvious that the world’s number one power was finding it difficult to sustain its military campaign in the region, while its experiment with the Iraqi democracy had almost gone awry. Iranian President Mohmoud Ahmadinejad’s aggressive overtures in Lebanon while engaging in telephonic diplomacy with King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and interfering in Iraq’s government formation, under the very nose of a helpless US administration, is not just a coincidence of that happening at a time when the Americans are withdrawing from Iraq. President Ahmadinejad chose the right moment to assert Iran’s influence in the Middle East. And not surprisingly, the event had many US-baiters clapping their hands in glee in the region. In fact, the very double speak in US’s Iran policy of reaching out on one hand and sanctions on the other, has been seen by some quarters, including in Saudi Arabia, as the Americans losing the plot and one giving confused signals, primarily due to lack of ideas to deal with Iran. Clearly, there is a perception of a weakening of the US’ Middle East hold, under the Obama administration. Beijing has played its card pretty well until now, balancing its US relations and yet, lending its shoulder to Iran and Syria, and enhancing its trade and friendship with Saudi Arabia. But what might start irking the west and the US is the Chinese’s getting closer to Iraq and too close to Saudi Arabia, although the Arabian Kingdom has, until now, rebuffed all overtures for an arms deal Iran’s offshore oil platform on Caspian Sea near Neka from Beijing. But who knows what can happen next, especially after the standing ovation the Chinese have got in the Saudi press with the launch of the Chinese trains to ferry pilgrims in Makkah? One thing is for sure, though, that the Middle East is not smooth waters. The Americans that discovered oil in Saudi Arabia know it, and so do the British. The west has had a bias against Iran in the last three decades, favouring Saudi Arabia all these years. It will be interesting to watch what China does, as it tries to balance between the two regional powers of Iran and Saudi Arabia to keep itself endeared to both the parties, while also keeping a furtive lookout to the west. 9 Reuters There are clear signs of geopolitical tectonic plates shifting globally, as Russia work closely with the NATO to build the European missile defence system and offer logistical support in the fight against the Taliban and their ilk in Afghanistan. With trade and currency issues among others (dogging China) likely to become even hotter in the coming months, the Middle Kingdom might as well secure true allies in the Middle East and elsewhere. For, unless there is a course correction on a number of issues, China could find itself quite isolated in its quest to reach the top of the global economy, and thus politics, in the next few decades. The dragon hates dissent Phelim Kine Last month’s announcement of a Nobel peace prize for the Chinese writer Liu Xiaobo, together with the approaching award ceremony on December 10, have driven official tolerance for peaceful dissent in China to a new low. Just ask Zhao Lianhai. On November 10, a Beijing court sentenced Zhao to a two-and-a-half-year prison term on charges of ‘provoking disorder’ for exposing the government failure to assist the thousands of child victims of China’s melamine-tainted milk scandal of 2008. Zhao’s crime? Helping to establish a grassroots advocacy group, Kidney Stones Babies, which rallied parents of victims to demand compensation and the designation of an official day of remembrance for the six deaths and approximately 300,000 children sickened by tainted dairy products. Zhao isn’t alone. The nongovernmental organization Chinese Human Rights Defenders has documented at least 100 incidents since October 2010 in which Chinese citizens have been harassed, interrogated or detained in connection with their support for Liu’s Nobel victory. They include Liu Xiaobo’s wife, Liu Xia, who has been silenced since November 18, when the government cut her internet and phone links. On November 9, Beijing police prevented China’s leading human rights lawyer Mo Shaoping and legal scholar He Weifang from boarding a flight to an international legal conference. The reason? Fears they would attend the Nobel peace prize award ceremony in Norway. The appointments of President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao in 2003 raised hopes that a new generation of leadership would spur greater liberalization. The opposite has occurred. China’s prisons are littered with highprofile dissidents. Gao Zhisheng, a lawyer who took on some of China’s most controversial causes, including defending miners and religious minorities like the Falun Gong and underground Christians, was the victim of an enforced disappearance in February 2009. Gao reemerged in his Beijing apartment in early April 2010, but vanished again days later, apparently back into official custody. In China today, even activists who serve out prison terms on politicallymotivated charges can be denied freedom. Chen Guangcheng, convicted in December 2006 on trumped-up criminal counts after he led a campaign to stop forced abortions and sterilizations in Shandong province, completed his sentence on September 9. Chen returned home to house arrest, banned from receiving visitors and subjected to intrusive electronic surveillance. These proliferating abuses have overshadowed the cases of once-high-profile political prisoners. Take Hu Jia, a civil society activist sentenced to threeand-a-half years’ imprisonment in April 2008 for ‘incitement to subvert state power’ and for activities including cowriting a letter in September 2007 entitled The Real China and the Olympics. The letter detailed specific and wideranging government human rights violations and urged the international community to hold Beijing to the human rights commitments it made when bidding to host the Games. These cases don’t just expose the government’s empty rhetoric about its commitment to the rule of law. They are also a reminder of the narrowing space available to Chinese activists and whistleblowers who seek the rights, freedoms and protections embodied in China's laws and constitution. Why is this happening? Growing intolerance could be a sign of increasing confidence and arrogance as China’s economy continues to roar and its international status grows. The leadership is also concerned about the 100,000-odd annual public protests, the sharp criticism of government policies that go viral via the internet, and the growing urban-rural wealth gap. The relentless squeeze on civil society activists has occurred while the US, EU and others have downgraded human rights in their dealings with China. Human right issues are increasingly an afterthought, marginalized by bilateral dialogue on trade, broader economic issues, and negotiations on vexing international issues, including Iran or North Korea. But the US and others are taking the most shortsighted approach. The US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, learned this early in her tenure when she announced that the US would no longer allow human rights issues to interfere with other issues on the US-China agenda. But both the US and the EU have been unable to avoid raising difficult cases such as Liu Xiaobo and have praised Liu’s Nobel peace prize despite the Chinese government's furious insistence that routine stifling of constitutionally-guaranteed rights and freedoms are an ‘internal affair’. Such dismissals ignore the fact that Zhao Lianhai’s efforts, and those of other brave Chinese whistleblowers, aim to both protect Chinese consumers from toxic products as well as keep them out of the export chain As President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao prepare to hand the reins of power of the ruling Chinese Communist party to new leaders in 2012, they need to be pressed to recognize the wisdom of allowing citizens to speak uncomfortable truths rather than to silence them. Just days after the announcement of Liu Xiaobo’s Nobel peace prize, a group of 23 senior Communist party officials and intellectuals issued a public letter that praised the Nobel committee’s ‘splendid choice’ of Liu for a Nobel peace prize, urged his immediate release and an end to the "invisible black hand" of official censorship. The Chinese government would be wise to heed these calls. —The Guardian Reuters Liu Xiabo’s supporters outside the Chinese foreign ministry office in Hong Kong
Page 1 and 2: BRIEFLY � Actor Gina Lollobrigida
Page 3 and 4: Briefly Debate on AIDS at city hosp
Page 5 and 6: Briefly Shops gutted by fire in Sil
Page 7: Briefly � Playback singer Sukhwin
Page 11 and 12: Briefly Heavy snow hits Chinese air
Page 13 and 14: The Bengal Post Kolkata Monday Nove
Page 15 and 16: The Bengal Post Kolkata Monday Nove
Page 17 and 18: Some video games depict and glorify
Page 19 and 20: Little bundles of joy Children had

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