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EDITORIAL NOIDA/DELHI 10 THE HINDU WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 21, 2015 Ideology and the rise of terror WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 21, 2015 Short of stalwarts A prize catch or a liability, a master stroke or a mistake? In projecting new entrant Kiran Bedi as its chief ministerial candidate in the Delhi Assembly election, the Bharatiya Janata Party must have entertained visions of beating the principal rival Aam Aadmi Party at its own game. Ms. Bedi, whose post-retirement political activism was centred on Anna Hazare’s anti-corruption movement, was seen as the ideal counter to Arvind Kejriwal, who too was a prominent member of Team Anna before forming the AAP. The saffron party’s strategy was to cut into the freshly built vote bank of the AAP: the aspiring middle class that had tired of the political class, perceived as corrupt and inefficient. But in leaning too heavily on a newcomer to lead the campaign, the BJP showed itself up as a party that was short of stalwarts in Delhi. After Harsh Vardhan, who was propped up as the clean, incorruptible face of the party in Delhi in the last election, moved to the Lok Sabha and then the Union Cabinet, the BJP was left without a widely acceptable leader. Whether Ms. Bedi can unite the warring factions of the BJP, or whether she would end up adding one more faction to the mix, is the big question. What is certain is that Ms. Bedi’s entry will not be smooth; she was earlier a strident critic of the BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Already there are murmurs of protest at the manner in which she was made the chief ministerial candidate without broad consultations within the party. Like Mr. Kejriwal before her, Ms. Bedi failed to win the support of Mr. Hazare for her political ambitions. Mr. Hazare has stayed away from all political parties, but for a brief spike in interest in the Trinamool Congress. Although she was a prominent face in Team Anna, Ms. Bedi is unlikely to win the backing of all those who had joined the anti-corruption crusade behind the Gandhian at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar in 2011. She might match Mr. Kejriwal’s crusading spirit, but whether she will be able to capture the popular imagination remains to be seen. At one level, her entry — just days before the election — comes across as politically opportunist. For the Narendra Modi-Amit Shah team, Delhi is of a different order from the Assembly polls held after the Lok Sabha election. Here the BJP has no ally to shed, and there can be no excuse for falling short of an absolute majority. Anything short of a majority will likely be seen as a failure, and not as the success of a bold experiment of going it alone. In that sense, Delhi will be a greater test than Maharashtra or Haryana or Jharkhand. How far Ms. Bedi, who is expected to turn the campaign into a direct contest between her and Mr. Kejriwal, will help the BJP in this endeavour, remains to be seen. Focus on public investment T he idea that the government should lead investment revival by spending from its purse seems to be gaining ground quickly. The thought was first expressed by Chief Economic Adviser Arvind Subramanian a month ago while releasing the government’s mid-year review of the economy. Mr. Subramanian was of the opinion that public investment may have to play a greater role to complement and “crowd-in” private investment. Of course, this had to be done within the constraints of the fiscal situation. In an interaction with industrialists in Chennai on Monday, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley endorsed this view, saying that the government would take some “special steps” to increase public investment while pointing out that it would be a challenge to do so within the constraint of the fiscal deficit. Mr. Jaitley expressed the government’s predicament well. It is a fact that private investment in infrastructure is in a comatose state thanks to over-leveraged balance sheets and excess capacities that may take a long time to be absorbed. The banking system is groaning under the collective weight of the overdues of private borrowers, and banks are clearly unwilling to lend for new projects. Of course, some companies have already started to repair their balance sheets by shedding assets through mergers and acquisitions and using the proceeds to settle their dues with banks. Clearly, though the deleveraging process has begun, it will be a while before the private sector cleans up its act and goes for fresh investment. The onus to stimulate a revival is, therefore, clearly on the government now. The Centre has been appropriating a part of the bounty from falling global oil prices in the form of higher excise duties, and the Finance Minister is on record as saying that this money will go directly towards building new roads and highways and not into the Consolidated Fund of India. This will give an impetus to the highways expansion programme that has been struggling for want of adequate interest from private developers. But then, the scale and quantum of public investment required is much bigger, and this is where the government will run into the fiscal wall. With 99 per cent of the projected deficit for this year already accounted for in the first eight months, headroom for additional spending is nonexistent this fiscal, even if one were to account for bountiful proceeds from the spectrum auction that is due next month. The focus is therefore on the coming fiscal, and the Budget will provide an insight into the government’s plans on this front. Clearly, some tightrope walking will be required as the Centre seeks to increase spending on infrastructure projects to compensate for private investment. CM YK Vasundhara Sirnate The first two weeks of 2015 have not helped moderate Muslims anywhere in the world. Between the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Syria) [ISIS/ISIL and now IS], the Tehreeke-Taliban Pakistan, Boko Haram and the renegade gunmen claiming allegiance to the al- Qaeda in Yemen that shot the cartoonists of Charlie Hebdo, the world seems to have exploded in a frenzy of Islamic ideology-fuelled killing. Reactions to Islamic radicals conducting acts of terror have been varied. Between the Moroccan-born Mayor of Rotterdam, Ahmed Aboutaleb, rudely telling Muslims to get out of his country, the thousands of people in Germany marching in an anti-Islam demonstration, anchor Jeanine Pirro on Fox News saying “we need to kill them” and Rupert Murdoch tweeting about holding Muslims collectively responsible for terrorism, common Muslims everywhere are being forced to apologise and take responsibility for the dangerous actions of less than one per cent of the world’s total Muslim population. CARTOONSCAPE LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Words of advice Even though President Pranab Mukherjee’s words of advice to the political class to ensure the passage of laws is timely, Article 108 of the Constitution, which deals with joint sittings of Parliament, does not stipulate any limit regarding the number and frequency of joint sittings (“‘Joint session no solution to end Rajya Sabha logjam,” Jan. 20). To conclude that a joint session could be called whenever a Bill does not get through would be based on a narrow reading of Article 108. The Opposition in the Rajya Sabha appears to be looking out for issues each day in order to stall the functioning of the House. There should be ways and means to explore how there can be healthy debates. Arulur N. Balasubramanian, Chennai There have been a number of incidents obstructing and stalling the passage of important Bills. On many an occasion, there has been no spirit of cooperation, harmony and purpose as both ruling party and Opposition MPs have been adamant and selfish without giving any thought to how the taxpayer’s money is being wasted. Each tries to avoid finding a solution citing previous cycles of disturbances. The honourable President himself was a parliamentarian not very long ago and should note that the party to which he belonged, the Congress, has hardly functioned with a spirit of cooperation and harmony in the House. The need now is for every political party to think about the aspirations of the people. A parliamentarian must think of himself/herself as a student who attends school regularly, fearing and respecting the school head and Militant ‘Islamic’ movements are organisations born out of particular configurations of geopolitics and superpower interventions. Beginning as resistance movements and later moving on by aiming to create new states, their strategies have been ideological and violent with scant regard for human rights Insurgents as global terrorists People that believe such things seem to have missed some key pieces of information pertaining to the rise of some of these movements. In this piece, I will attempt to historicise the rise of some militant “Islamic” movements so that in our public debate we may have balance and some context. This is important because the rationalisations that are coming our way use Islam as the driving force behind all recent acts of terror. I believe that we need to shift this debate onto more logical terrain, i.e., we need to understand the conditions which beget certain types of insurgent and terrorist organisations. I assert here that Islamic ideology alone is not the driving force behind these organisations. Islamic ideology is merely the fabric in which an articulation of inequality, marginalisation, and alienation is embedded or stitched. Islamic ideology is deployed to get new recruits to particular terrorist groups. Think of such ideology as an advertising strategy or a marketing campaign to get people to adhere to the political causes being championed by these groups at the barrel of a gun. Let’s start with the usual suspect, the Taliban. Raised by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to fight the Soviet invasion in Afghanistan in 1979, the Taliban went on to capture power in Afghanistan after its western handlers left and the Cold War ended. What followed in Afghanistan was brutal fighting between several Taliban leaders; some of whom under Mullah Omar were able to consolidate a new Afghan state. Common Afghans suffered during this period of civil war and deal brokering. Osama bin Laden, initially a Taliban recruit, floated al-Qaeda, which, after 9/11, was forced into a partnership with the Taliban in a resistance against the American invasion of Afghanistan. The war with the U.S. destroyed whatever state the Taliban had created and fragmented both organisations — the Taliban and al-Qaeda — leading to different splinters of the same groups in West Asia and South Asia, each practising deadlier violence to distinguish itself from its competitors. Similarly, IS was once known as Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) led by the Jordanian terrorist Al Zarqawi, who was killed in 2006 in a targeted attack by the U.S. Air Force. In 2003, AQI began fighting the American occupation of Iraq. Later it merged with other small resistance groups and turned into the Mujahideen Shura Council, before emerging as the ISIS under the leadership of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Again, IS also emerged as a reaction to western intervention in West Asia and gradually broadened its scope to Syria during the protests against President Bashar al-Assad. Boko Haram (western education is forbidden) arose in Nigeria in the mid-1990s as a moderate Islamic group in the aftermath of the Biafran War, which left two million people dead between 1967-1970 following the brutal suppression of the people of Biafra by the Nigerian government, supported by prominent western countries and oil companies. Boko Haram started as a movement that criticised the corrupt, oil-wealthy government of Nigeria and became a provider for the poor undertaking state-like welfare functions in northeast Nigeria. As Boko Haram receded “ With the left discredited in societies with strong ethnic and religious sentiments, the fallback ideology of rebellion is mostly religion-based. ” the teachers. The season of sermons must end. J.P. Reddy, Nalgonda, Telangana The President’s words, “a noisy minority cannot be allowed to gag a patient majority”, sums up the parliamentary logjam. The number of sittings has shrunk from 677 during the first Lok Sabha session to 357 in the 15th session. Cancellations have become the order of the day, and events no longer newsworthy. We spend crores of rupees on elections and then waste mandays in Parliament. Self-interest and self-concern have become the factors guiding parliamentary business. A.J. Rangarajan, Chennai Very often, the media focus on scenes of pandemonium that prevail in Parliament. The Speaker is often shown to be helpless. Why cannot the rules be modified? For instance, if anyone rushes to the well of the House to protest, he or she must be debarred for the whole session. All members must speak only from their designated seats. Opposition Parties must play their roles creatively. Forms of punishment and of discipline, which would be something new to our parliamentarians, must be considered. Thomas Edmunds, Chennai The electorate has given its mandate to the ruling party to rule the nation for five years and fulfil its promises. Similarly, the Opposition is expected to oppose, expose and tweak the ears of the government whenever it errs. It may sound philosophical, but the fact remains that one hand cannot clap without the other. The ruling party requires the support of the Opposition parties, and vice versa. Respecting the other is the only way out to establish comity and amity for a healthy atmosphere to prevail in Parliament. One wishes that our elected members give credence to the sermons of the President in the interest of the nation. H.P. Murali, Bengaluru Members of the Rajya Sabha must be educated on the purpose for which they are elected through an indirect process. Both Houses now function like Tweedledum and Tweedledee. This was not the intent with which the Rajya Sabha, the equivalent of the House of Lords, was created. Members of the Rajya Sabha are dignified and experienced seniors and they are expected to rise above party politics and serve the nation through effective debates. Nikhil Balan, Thiruvananthapuram U.S. & ‘Make in India’ This refers to the report, “U.S. worried at ‘Make in India’ rule” (Jan.19). As the U.S. is known to tenaciously safeguard its own interests while blithely overlooking the interests of the less powerful nations with whom it has bilateral cooperation, it is small wonder that during his visit to the ‘Vibrant Gujarat’ summit U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry voiced concern over the push for the use of indigenous capabilities. That this concerns the renewable energy policy, particularly solar energy, is a fact. If New Delhi has announced a series of 1,000 MW grid-connected solar photovoltaic (PV) power projects that has a mandatory condition that all PV cells and modules used in solar plants set up under this scheme will be made in India, it is apparently because the into the jungles of northeast Nigeria, successive governments repeatedly ignored the growing radical and militant nature of the group. The place of Islam The Taliban, Boko Haram, al-Qaeda and IS are organisations born out of particular configurations of geopolitics and superpower interventions and invasions. They started as resistance movements that were aimed at creating more ideal states and opposed foreign invasions, bad governance and despotic regimes. These groups are trying to create new states. This is why their strategies have been ideological and extremely violent with Letters emailed to letters@thehindu.co.in must carry the full postal address and the full name or the name with initials. need is to revive the ailing manufacturing sector and also address the unemployment problem. Even if it is imperative that the world’s largest democracy maintains a healthy relationship with the world’s oldest, the Indian government must ensure that bilateral cooperation with the U.S. is on an equal footing, irrespective of whether it means losing out on investments from the U.S. at the moment. As the U.S. wields immense power in the WTO, Washington will most certainly deploy its rule that prohibits measures that discriminate against imported goods in order to browbeat New Delhi into toeing its line. The U.S. needs to be reminded that as a developed nation with a historical responsibility to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, it is bound by the Copenhagen Declaration of December 2009, which calls on the rich, industrialised nations to economically and technologically help developing nations like India reduce emissions. Nalini Vijayaraghavan, Thiruvananthapuram War on tobacco The war on tobacco has to be won at any price (Editorial, Jan.20) as it eats into the vitals of our youth — and our nation’s human capital. In this, the Act is the first right step towards winning the war. In this tussle between tobacco companies (which have assured and guaranteed markets for their products) and the government (which tries to contain/eliminate the tobacco menace while attempting to stand up to the powerful tobacco lobby), the winner should be the government. I would suggest an online strategy involving counselling and scant regard for human rights; for state formation is a messy, bloody affair. Just think of Europe between 900 and 1900 AD. So what about Islam? I suggest here that Islam is the only commonly known ideology and script in these regions in which an articulation of resistance can be embedded, which common folk can understand, practise and stand by. Islam gives these movements legitimacy. It gives them a discourse and it attracts money. It is their USP. The movements are not initially motivated by Islam but by bad and corrupt governments, unequal power relations between countries, invasions by foreign powers and global income inequalities made persistent by the current global economic regime where the metaphorical one per cent has captured half of the world’s wealth. Let us not for one moment forget that most Muslims live in democratic countries like India, Malaysia and Indonesia and practise their religions peacefully and within the bounds of law. Let us also not forget that there are strong overlaps between Muslim countries with terrorist groups aspiring to statehood and where there has been a prolonged war with at least one great power. Similarly, the Algerians who killed 12 people in France last week lived on the margins of French society and were immigrants from a country which had been virtually socially, economically and politically destroyed by France, which many historians agree was always the worst country to get colonised by. One million Algerians died to overthrow French colonialism. This was followed by a postcolonial regime (the FLN state) that willingly killed over 1,00,000 of its own people in order to safeguard its oil interests backed by western powers. Neo-mercantilism and terror Let me be clear that historicising these groups does not mean that one condones their actions. None of these groups can find ethical support because indiscriminate violence used by IS, Boko Haram, al-Qaeda, the Taliban and their hydra-headed babies has snatched away the human rights of thousands of people. However, we absolutely must understand the current rise of religious extremism as what it really is — the only readily available response in a shrinking political discourse that can challenge, or even attempts to challenge, the current world system. The left is popularly discredited and doesn’t find purchase in societies with strong ethnic and religious sentiments, so the fallback ideology of rebellion is mostly religion-based. If we want to make sense of terrorism we need to launch a strong challenge to the current economic system that breeds and perpetuates global inequality and encourages a neo-mercantilism of sorts where western nations have encouraged and backed despots to preserve economic interests, and have undertaken military invasions to cement control over economic and natural resources. But we must not, under any circumstance, demand that Muslims all over the world take collective responsibility for the actions of a fraction. In doing so terrorism unwittingly wins, because the whole point about terrorism is to fracture communities, destroy social capital and scare people into changing how they relate to each other. The need of the hour is to think carefully and hard about the factors and variables that have led to the formation of anti-state groups, treat each case as unique and not indulge in religion blaming. Terrorism and insurgency are businesses motivated by greed and grievance as Collier and Hoeffler told us many years ago. Islam, like any other ideology like Maoism (China and India), Marxism (USSR) or Catholicism (Northern Ireland) is the glue that holds the plot together. (Vasundhara Sirnate is the Chief Coordinator of Research at The Hindu Centre for Politics and Public Policy.) awareness involving various health institutions that will help reduce or eliminate the urge to use tobacco products. There must also be compulsory pictorial warnings on even single cigarettes. As a norm, there should be fewer cigarettes/ bidis in each packet. Th Luwangamba, New Delhi Notes and coins This refers to media reports on the Prime Minister having noted the suggestion to issue a Rs.25 currency note in order to overcome a shortage of Rs.5 coins. Any such idea will be contrary to the metric spirit of measures introduced in the country back in 1957. Instead, the root cause of the shortage of five rupee coins should be analysed. It was only recently that there were reports of the government planning to reissue one-rupee notes (which have a short lifespan) to overcome the shortage of one-rupee coins caused by widespread melting of the coins. Unfortunately, the emphasis appears to be more on short-term measures. When it eliminated 10 paise and 25 paise coins, the government should have abolished 50 paise coins as well. The new onerupee coin could have been the size of the earlier 10 paise coin. But since there was abundant stock of coinblanks in the sizes of the earlier 50 paise and one rupee coins, new coins, for one and two rupees, were issued in these sizes, confusing the public. The government should drop the idea of issuing one and 25 rupee notes and instead issue more coins in the denominations of one and five rupees. The five-rupee coin should be made of stainless steel of a thicker grade to avoid melting. A huge amount of money can also be saved by reducing the size of notes. Subhash Chandra Agrawal, New Delhi ND-ND
NOIDA/DELHI THE HINDU WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 21, 2015 COMMENT 11 WORLD VIEW A portrait of modern inequality The National Gallery’s colonnaded splendour radiates across Trafalgar Square a sense of the importance of art in Britain’s national life. But the reality inside is far less glorious. The 400 gallery assistants are about to be outsourced to a private company against their will, to squeeze pay and conditions. A ballot by their union, PCS, closes this week, calling for a five-day strike in protest. All day they guard the nation’s treasures: not automata, but wellinformed, if untrained, guides who like to be asked questions, know where paintings are, are glad to advise nervous visitors unsure what to look at. Some have worked there for 40 years, some are younger, many former art students. A letter to staff from the director, Nicholas Penny, says all gallery services go out to tender in April, something no other national gallery or museum has done. As Tupe — Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) — regulations require, staff will transfer to a private company on the same terms, but that’s weak protection: they can be sent to work anywhere in that company. This is the only national museum in London not paying the living wage. A tangle of pay rates means that older staff (predominantly male) are paid more than newer (predominantly female). POLLY TOYNBEE The gallery’s grant is being cut, so it needs to make more money with extra paid evening events. Staff are willing — but expect extra pay. The only national Management says negotiations went nowhere, museum in London so they have to go nuclear: let a private company is not paying the get tough with them. That’s how private companies profit from these contracts: as old living wage staff leave, new staff can be hired at any pay rate. What happens in hard times is always the same: spreadsheets show the most crushable item is staff. Numbers are cut and squeezed hard for longer hours. It’s easier to let ruthless companies to do the dirty work, so squeamish managers can wash their hands of consequences. Both sides will now go to Acas: there is still time to pull back from this privatisation too far. The public servant This shedding of long-term employees is emblematic of low-pay Britain, where a million public jobs are being lost. Public servants are more unionised than other workforces, and so irksome to managers who eye a commercial world of 19th century employment practices — lump labour on zero hours, temp agencies, free interns, the bogus selfemployed free of national insurance. The public servants’ ethos, their attachment to the civic realm, has been systematically trashed as mere unionised self-interest. What’s afoot at the gallery explains why pay is falling as a share of GDP. Galloping inequality is the result of a million such decisions employers think prudent, mainly because everyone is doing it. The derelict Low Pay Commission has let the minimum wage itself fall £1,000 in real value since 2008. The Tory call last week for higher wages was breathtaking dishonesty, echoing the TUC’s “Britain Needs a Pay Rise” campaign. The government has huge sway over pay. If it demanded the living wage not just for its employees, but also from every contractor and supplier, then national pay norms would rise instantly. If the Low Pay Commission set higher minimums appropriate to each sector, like the old wages councils, larger companies could pay decent salaries according to profitability. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s latest report finds 40 per cent of families with children living below a minimum threshold of decency. Most are in work — but earning too little to buy what a majority of the public in focus groups consider essentials for participation in society: no drink or cigarettes, £5 a fortnight for eating out, £40 for Christmas food, one week’s U.K. holiday. That takes an income of £20,400 a year for a couple with two children — which is almost £3,000 more than National Gallery assistants earn. GDP growth is near invisible to the eight million squeezed hardest, by this government’s deliberate choice: average income loss since 2010 is £33 a week. Now the government promises full employment — but what kind? Most new jobs are low paid, precarious and part time. For all George Osborne’s hi-vis posturing about his sham “northern powerhouse”, the latest figures from the Centre for Cities show how far the gap between the south and the rest has widened. At Davos this week, central bankers will echo the fashionable view that accelerating inequality is the real economic risk, a danger to capitalism itself. Oxfam tells them one per cent of the population will next year own 99 per cent of the world’s wealth: in Britain, the top one per cent has soared away, and the bottom 10 per cent has done worst while paying the highest proportion of its income in taxes: 47 per cent. But no sign yet that the Davos set is worrying unduly: by Epiphany — January 6 — FTSE 100 chief executives had already earned more than a year of the average wage. How do you wrest back wealth from them? Restoring power to unions would help, ensuring every workplace is offered union membership. Instead, Mr. Cameron’s manifesto will make strikes near-impossible, with a 40 per cent ballot threshold unknown anywhere in the democratic west. That’s a reason to hope the ever-patient attendants at the National Gallery resist being cast out to G4S, Serco and the rest — and remain as treasured employees of us all. — © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2015 Mexico’s drone plan for porpoise conservation CORRECTIONS AND CLARIFICATIONS >>Errors in front page graphic: “Left out in the cold” (Jan. 20, 2015) said L.K. Advani – Deputy Prime Minister from 1999 to 2004 – (it should have been 2002 to 2004) and A.B. Vajpayee – Prime Minister from 1999 to 2004 – (it should have been 1998 to 2004). >>The opening paragraph of the Comment page article, “Memories of Jawaharlal Nehru” (Jan. 20, 2015), talked about Dr. Khan Sahib (Khan Abdul Jaffar Khan). It is Khan Abdul Jabbar Khan. >>“Can Barack Obama break the nuclear logjam?” (Jan. 20, 2015) – in the second and penultimate paragraphs – erroneously referred to Mr. Obama’s visit to India in 2008. It should have been 2010. CM YK Mexico is planning to use drones to patrol the upper Sea of Cortez to combat illegal fishing and save the critically endangered vaquita marina, the world’s smallest porpoise. Assistant environmental prosecutor Alejandro del Mazo said his agency has conducted tests of unmanned aircraft flights in cooperation with the Mexican Navy. Mr. Del Mazo says he hopes to have three drones patrolling the vaquita’s habitat in coming months. Also known as the Gulf of California, it is the only place vaquitas are found.Fewer than 100 of the shy, elusive porpoises remain. The vaquita is threatened by illegal gillnet fishing for totoaba, a large fish whose swim bladder is prized by chefs in China. Authorities are proposing a $37 million plan to ban gillnets in the upper Gulf. — AP It is the policy of The Hindu to correct significant errors as soon as possible. Please specify the edition (place of publication), date and page. The Readers’ Editor’s office can be contacted by Telephone: +91-44-28418297/28576300 (11 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday to Friday); E-mail: readerseditor@thehindu.co.in Mail: Readers’ Editor, The Hindu, Kasturi Buildings, 859 & 860 Anna Salai, Chennai 600 002, India. All communication must carry the full postal address and telephone number. No personal visits. The Terms of Reference for the Readers’ Editor are on www.thehindu.com For prudent crisis planning on terror Barack Obama and Narendra Modi should reaffirm their commitment to better cooperation on counter-terrorism and intelligence Bruce Riedel U.S. President Barack Obama’s visit to India, an unprecedented second trip in one Presidency, comes as the terrorist threat environment in the subcontinent is in transition and turmoil. Multiple massacres in Pakistan and the transition in Afghanistan are challenging the counter terrorist infrastructures built over the last couple of decades. It is a fluid situation that Mr. Obama and Prime Minister Narendra Modi need to compare notes on and develop strategies. Sponsor and victim Pakistan has long been both a sponsor of terrorism and a victim of terrorism but the balance seems to be shifting toward victimhood. Pakistan still sponsors the most dangerous terror group in South Asia, Lashkar-e-Taiba, which last May tried to disrupt Mr. Modi’s inauguration by attacking the Indian consulate in Herat, Afghanistan, just hours before his swearing-in ceremony. The Pakistani intelligence service, the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) Directorate, continues to provide support to LeT and its leader Hafiz Mohammad Saeed lives freely in Lahore, Pakistan, with the ISI’s protection. The ISI also remains the primary patron of the Afghan Taliban in its war with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). But Pakistan has been shaken profoundly by a series of mass casualty terror attacks on its own citizens. On November 2, 2014, a suicide bomber killed sixty Pakistanis at the Wagah border crossing with India close to the border ceremony site. The Pakistan Taliban claimed responsibility and said it was retaliation for the army’s Zarb-e-Azb counter terrorist operation. On December 16, 2014, seven members of the Pakistan Taliban attacked an armyrun school in Peshawar and killed 145 people including 132 schoolchildren. The attack prompted an unprecedented public outcry for the government and army to take concerted action to defeat the Taliban and to stop all terror attacks in the country. Not since the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in December 2007 has there been so much public outcry against terrorism. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Chief of Army Staff (COAS) General Raheel Sharif promised collective action to destroy the Taliban and the army said it would no longer differentiate good Taliban from bad Taliban. Even al-Qaeda’s new franchise in the Indian subcontinent distanced itself from the school massacre, saying “our hearts are bursting with pain,” and urging its Shiv Visvanathan How does one talk of a man who defined a subject, determined its directions, was its dominating presence without a shade of pomposity or status. Rajni Kothari was clear about some of the subjects of his studies, irreverently and pragmatically certain that the Indian elite was knowledge-proof, that the only changes it would accept were pressures from below or by mimicking its colonial masters. Here was a man far ahead of his times, a futurist in perspective. Today the tributes will flow and embalm the man. Dissenting imaginations are best sanitised lest they destroy the hypocrisy and the current clichés of the establishment. The obituaries will recite how he started election studies, how he set up the institute of Chinese Studies, founded journals like the Alternatives and the Lokayan Bulletin. They will dub him the author of Indian Political Science’s only durable classic — Politics in India. Oddly, Kothari was embarrassed by the longevity of the book and even tried to stall further publications but the book like many of Rajni’s inventions had a wonderful life of its own. To me it was not just the inventiveness of the man that is important. It was the vision he brought to his work. Rajni’s enduring passion was his commitment to democracy, its sustainability, its creativity and its vulnerability. The sense of democracy was not an abstract one of formal definitions. He saw democracy as a way of life and wanted people to live it out and celebrate its everydayness. As founder of CSDS This is what impelled him to create that wonderful institution the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS). CSDS was a community, a perpetual adda built around the gossip of democracy. Without this passion for democracy his many projects would have made little sense. They were mere pretexts for sustaining the texts of democracy which in a holistic sense went beyond elections, data analysis, governance and grassroots studies. Two things must be stated clearly, CSDS was a collage of friendships and Rajni invented many of his ideas along with his friends. He had an acute sense of the inventive and followed it up creatively. In that sense the idea often originally belonged to the others. Rajni’s idea of the Congress as a coalition of competing confusions was Gopal Krishna’s. The idea of Lokayan as a grass INTERNAL DYNAMICS: Pakistan has witnessed a series of mass casualty terror attacks on its own citizens, one being the November 2014 suicide bomber attack near the Wagah border crossing. Picture shows the Indian side of the Wagah border crossing. — PHOTO: AFP Taliban allies to target soldiers in the future. Hafiz Saeed took the tack of blaming India for the attack, claiming it was a conspiracy orchestrated by Modi and vowing revenge on India. Former dictator Pervez Musharraf also blamed India and Afghanistan for supporting the Pakistan Taliban. It remains to be seen whether the Peshawar massacre and other atrocities will actually change the army’s behaviour toward terrorism. It is more likely than not that the ISI and COAS will remain patrons of some terror groups for the foreseeable future even as they fight others. The civilian politicians may be more determined to end Pakistan’s double policy but they have consistently failed to do so in the last decade. The ISI is particularly determined to see if its Afghan proxies, the Quetta Shura and the Haqqani network, can exploit the end of NATO’s combat presence in Afghanistan to gain control of significant parts of the country. Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader based in Karachi, has shown no interest in a political settlement and seems determined to try to resurrect his Islamic Emirate. New players Two new players in the terror game emerged in 2014. First is the al-Qaeda Another LeT attack on India is probably only a matter of time. Washington and New Delhi should have some idea of what the potential consequences of such an attack might be franchise for the Indian subcontinent. Al- Qaeda’s leader Ayman al-Zawahiri announced its formation which was immediately followed by an attempt to hijack a Pakistani frigate with the intention of using it to attack U.S. Navy ships in the Arabian Sea. The plot included an unknown number of Pakistani naval officers recruited to help al-Qaeda. Zawahiri remains hidden somewhere in Pakistan and continues to give lengthy audio messages to his followers. Al-Qaeda’s franchise in Yemen claims Zawahiri ordered the attack on the office of Charlie Hebdo this month, what it called the “blessed battle of Paris.” The other newcomer is the Islamic State, the heir to al-Qaeda in Iraq that proclaimed the creation of a caliphate this summer. Led by Abu Bakr al-Quraishi al- Hashemi al-Baghdadi, also known as Caliph Ibrahim, the Islamic State has attracted fighters from across the Islamic world to come and join it in Iraq and Syria. Several Indian Muslims have joined the IS and pro-IS propaganda has been distributed in India and Pakistan. Parts of the Pakistan Taliban have voiced support for Baghdadi. An Islamic State cell has been captured in Bangladesh. Al-Qaeda has denounced the caliphate as illegitimate and renounced any connection to Baghdadi roots experiment belonged more to Ramashray Roy and D.L. Sheth. Rajni took it and transformed it. As a commons of ideas, CSDS was extraordinary. For me, CSDS is that wonderful pack of quirky incorrigible scholars like Ashis Nandy, Basheer Ahmed, Sudhir Kakkar, Giri Deshingkar quarrelling over ideas at every lunch as if democracy was a hypothesis that had to be digested every day. No group had a greater passion for politics, its myths, its facts and its folklore. The style, the theory, was as important as the substance. Neither CSDS nor Rajni will rest in peace if I do not resort to a few anecdotes. I remember how he recruited me. Rajni was chairman of ICSSR and he had heard rumours about me as a rebellious and even problematic PhD student at the Delhi School of Economics. He dropped in one day for a casual chat and asked me to join CSDS. Some of my teachers warned him against it. And one of them even complained that I was a goonda, a gangster. Rajni smiled and said, “I need a few intellectual gangsters for my new project.” He had an easy charm that soothed opponents and part of it came from his acute ability to listen. If you insulted him, he listened intently almost as if you were wooing him. Role during the Emergency CSDS and Rajni became institutional legends during the Emergency. It was during that monstrous period that Centre became home for every dissenting imagination: George Fernandes, Romesh Thapar, Arun Shourie and Kuldip Nayar were frequent visitors. This hospitality to dissent seeded the creative style of the future where the Centre became home to critical studies, social movements and the search for alternative imaginations. The Centre, which glorified the Nehruvian era and the initial creativity of the Congress, now became Indira Gandhi’s fiercest and most obsessive critic. It became the hub of human rights movements, environmental struggles, and development battles that insisted that democracy had to reinvent itself beyond its electoral form. Civil society became the creative subject of study: a counter to the elitist preoccupation with the state and its development project. The Left was the dominant intellectual imagination of the period. Rajni had no quarrel with the left, only with leftists who romanced with the state, infiltrating government committees as if they were party cells. Oddly, both the Left and the Right were obsessed with being legitimised by the state. During the infamous controversy involving History text books when ideologists went hysterical, Rajni observed quietly: “That both sides wanted the state to approve of their version of history”. This intellectual dependency on state approval of scholarship worried Rajni. and his group. Zawahiri and Baghdadi are rivals for leadership of the global jihad and competing for the loyalty of jihadists around the world including in south Asia. Mr. Obama and Mr. Modi should reaffirm their commitment to close counterterrorism and intelligence cooperation. Much has improved since 2008 when the U.S. and the U.K. had intelligence on the Mumbai plot but failed to share it with India and failed to analyse it properly themselves. LeT is now a priority for both Washington and London. Mr. Obama should send his Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director to New Delhi to further improve cooperation. Mr. Obama and Mr. Modi should also upgrade efforts to stabilise Afghanistan after the withdrawal of most NATO forces. India should consider sending military field hospitals and personnel to help the Afghan Army as it did in the Korean War in the 1950s to support the United Nations forces. It should also help train and equip the Afghan Air Force, an area that NATO has been remiss in addressing robustly. Mr. Obama should rescind his decision to withdraw all U.S. forces by 2017 and commit to long term advisory role. No tolerance policy Pakistan remains the heart of the issue. Late last year the U.S. hosted a visit by Gen. Raheel Sharif and Indians will be interested in hearing American impressions of him. Mr. Obama and Mr. Modi should compare notes on Pakistan’s support for terrorism. They should also address the blow back in Pakistan to the Peshawar massacre. They should encourage a no-tolerance policy by Prime Minister Sharif while recognising his limitations. They should look for opportunity to encourage Pakistan to take action against all groups, especially LeT. But they should also plan for the worst. Another LeT attack on India is probably only a matter of time. Washington and New Delhi should have some idea of what the potential consequences of such an attack might be. This is not a matter of ganging up on Pakistan or trying to pressure it in advance, rather it is prudent crisis planning and coordination. It might be wise to involve others like the United Kingdom in such discussions. If all this seems too sensitive for public officials, then it can be put in the hands of think tanks and former officials to study with a mandate to report to their governments. (Bruce Riedel is Director, The Intelligence Project, The Brookings Institution. This article is excerpted from a paper for The Brookings report on: The Second Modi-Obama Summit: Building the India-U.S. Partnership.) A prophet abandoned by his own community A tribute to political scientist extraordinaire and teacher, Rajni Kothari (1928 – 2015) FUTURIST: “Rajni Kothari had an acute sense of the inventive and followed it up creatively.” — FILE PHOTO: S. ARNEJA Rajni’s enduring passion was his commitment to democracy, its sustainability, its creativity and its vulnerability Did truth need to be approved by power? Rajni had a playful response to criticism. I remember when a Serbic Marxist wrote a critique of his work claiming that Kothari had forgotten to mention the word class. With easy equanimity Rajni replied that he had not mentioned cucumbers either. This ease was important because the period of the 1960s and the 1970s was dominated by a pompous left which treated Marxism with a form of idolatry. Rajni felt that Marxist critiques dealt more with the formal economy and had little place for marginal groups and the informal economy. Little protests did not acquire the officialdom of trade union struggles. The movements alone in the era, Chipko, Narmada, Balliapal and fishermen struggle in Kerala had to struggle with the official radicalism which refused to go beyond conventional categories. CSDS became an archive and a sounding board for many of these struggles which linked ecology, livelihood and empowerment to the still life of electoral democracy. Rajni had an easy way of pushing younger colleagues to stretch beyond themselves. I remember when the Bhopal gas disaster occurred. He looked at me and said, “Let’s see if your work on science helps. Pack up. You are leaving for Bhopal tomorrow.” When I began my work on science and violence, he sent me to Hiroshima requesting the Mayor to take me around the city. He believed that projects should begin as pilgrimages; he was always nudging us to see linkages and connectivities. He never lectured, and wanted us to discover and internalise and share our insights. For him mistakes were something precious one owned up to. He was a great teacher but always taught by anecdote and example. I must confess that in the final decade, many of us moved away from the Centre and Rajni. Quarrels are important because they mark the contours of a relationship. One felt that the Centre was now imitating itself rather than inventing ideas. In spite of having moved on and all the distance I realised how much the Centre had taught me. In his final years, Rajni Kothari was a lonely man — ill and broken by the death of his wife Hansa and son Smithu. In the meanwhile, political science had lost its flavour of dissent. It had become a game of think tanks and Rajni must have watched it with wry sadness, a prophet abandoned by his own community. But the future will no doubt celebrate the man. (Shiv Visvanathan is a social scientist.) ND-ND
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