We need to take a hard look at the climate change issue

In the late 1960s, the developed world discovered non-proliferation. Suddenly, it became the issue of issues, signing the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty became the yardstick of good conduct among nations. The new climate deal being negotiated in Copenhagen has now assumed a similar status. For decades, the developed world spewed greenhouse gases. Suddenly they have discovered religion, and they want everyone to convert to their new faith.
Despite being reviled and punished for it, India stayed out of the NPT which has become a universal treaty. Perhaps that experience should guide our stance at the Climate Change Conference Copenhagen (COP 15) as well: India should agree to only that agreement that relentlessly serves its national interests, and not one that panders to the latest whim of the developed world.
This could be our new NPT moment, when we may have to decide to walk alone. India is no outlaw, but it does have some unique requirements. This writer is an agnostic on the issue of climate change. Not on whether the climate is changing; we have a great deal of anecdotal evidence for that, but whether human activity is what is leading to this change.

Intensity
The science associated with climate change, as we have seen in the case of the recent email leaks, is in contention. There are something like 450 peer-reviewed journal articles skeptical of man-made climate change listed on populartechnology.net. Some 30,000 American scientists have put their names to a petition that notes that “There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate.”
The 1997 Kyoto protocol was not ratified by the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, the US. COP15 looked dead too, but President Barack Obama’s announcement in late November that the US would move for 17 per cent cuts removed the final obstacle and opened the way for a deal. Within a day or so, China announced that it would cut carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP (carbon intensity) by 40-45 per cent by 2020, from 2005 levels. There is a bit of jugglery here. China’s carbon intensity is already quite high; in 2006 it emitted 2.85 tonnes of CO2 for every $1,000 of GDP, compared to 0.54 tonnes for the US, with some European countries achieving far lower rates. (India is about 1.82 according to 2005 figures).
This has generated pressure on India to do its bit. Indeed, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh who was not planning to go to the Copenhagen conference had to change his plans after a call from the US president. An informal new grouping has arisen, BASIC — Brazil, South Africa, India, China and New Delhi, too, has announced that it would be game for a 20-25 per cent cut in its carbon intensity by 2020 and 37 per cent by 2030.
Looked at either through the filter of carbon intensity or per capita emission, India is in a class of its own when it comes to the issue. The other three countries are actually developed in comparison to India. Perhaps the best indicator of this is the electricity consumption per capita. India’s is a pathetic 503 kwh, compared to China which is 2040, Brazil is 2060, South Africa is 4810. Going by the present trends, India could reach the Chinese/ Brazilian figures by 2030.
On paper 80 per cent of our population has access to electricity, but its quality is marred by poor supply, voltage fluctuation and is it a severe constraint on the country’s economy. The problems are not only with generation, which suffers because of regulatory delays in approving new plants, but with its transmission and supply. Many of the state electricity boards are insolvent because power is supplied at subsidised rates. While the government has eased rules relating to foreign investment in the sector, the financial infirmity of the state boards has prevented foreign investment from flowing in easily.
The fact of the matter is that India needs power, lots of it and from all possible sources that it can tap. This is not an automatic invocation for stepping up carbon emissions in a mindless way. Coal currently meets more than half of India’s energy demand —the electric power sector consumes 76 per cent of the country’s coal.
Though India has 7 per cent of the world’s total reserves, the quality of its coal is poor and its coal mines are unable to meet domestic demand which is climbing steeply as India races to meet its energy needs.

Opportunity
Coal and its resultant pollution is not where India’s future lies. But, this is not the moment for us to take the lead in showing the alternate path. As a Mint report of a World Bank study revealed on Thursday, India would have to pay a substantial price for increasing generation of environment friendly energy. India needs to work on its own time and pace and with some help from the world community to get on to the low carbon path. Part of the help is forthcoming through the path-breaking Indo-US nuclear deal, but more would be needed to take to a carbon neutral path.
The years 1990-2010 have been China's years of historical opportunity, the period 2005-2030 are India's. Unfortunately, they are now coinciding with the developed world’s new received religion — the need to curb greenhouse gases. We have already tarried too long and too far from the high growth path and now there are indicators that we are on it. This is not an opportunity that will come our way again, in this century at least. These are the years of our demographic dividend, the years that will decide whether India will be a future world power or a failed state.
As Kaushik Basu has explained: In the year 2004 India had a population of 1,080 million, of whom 670 million people were in the age-group 15 to 64 years which is considered as the “working age population.” The rest, comprising the very young and the old, some 400 million, were seen as the dependent population. So the dependency ratio, or the proportion of the dependent population to the working age population works out to 0.6. Today, India is not different from other developing countries like Bangladesh which is 0.7, Pakistan’s 0.8 or Brazil’s 0.5.

Survival
What is different about India is that the dependency ratio will see a sharp decline over the next 30 years or so. India's fertility rate — that is, the average number of children a woman expects to have in her life time — used to be 3.8 in 1990. This has fallen to 2.9 and is expected to fall further. Since women had higher fertility earlier, we now have a sizeable number of people in the age-group 0-15 years. And since fertility is falling, some 10 or 15 years down the road, this bulge of young people would have moved into the working-age category. And, since, at that time, the relative number of children will be small (thanks to the lowered fertility), India's dependency ratio would be lower. It is expected that, in 2020, the average age of an Indian will be 29 years, compared to 37 for China and 48 for Japan; and, by 2030, India's dependency ratio should be just over 0.4.
This huge bulge of young people is both an opportunity and a threat. An opportunity if we are able to shift them to productive jobs; a threat otherwise. And for this we need all the electric power we can generate. This is not the time for us to save the world, but to save ourselves. We are not talking about the rich, but some of the poorest people in the world.
This appeared in Mail Today December 11, 2001

Pakistan first, and only then Afghanistan

New Delhi needs to ensure that any new initiative in Afghanistan is calibrated to deliver positive outcomes in Pakistan

In 2005, during the visit of former External Affairs Minister Natwar Singh to Kabul this writer had occasion to ask an American general whether the US would welcome Indian involvement in training Afghan forces. The American officer visibly recoiled. “At the moment,” he said, “that would not be a good idea at all.” This was the occasion when India formally presented the first batch of 300 light trucks it had promised for the Afghan National Army (ANA).
The US general at the time was reflecting the Pakistani unease with the growing Indian presence in Afghanistan. Since then, India has made a mark with its purposeful and effective foreign aid programme. But it has also been the target of Pakistani rage, manifested in various statements made by its leaders complaining about the alleged activities of Indian personnel posted in Afghanistan, and also in a deadlier form by two bomb attacks on the Indian embassy in Kabul.


So the US decision to seek Indian assistance to train Afghan forces, even if it is couched as a kind of regional initiative, is significant. It is clearly the linchpin of a larger strategy of getting the ANA to take care of the security responsibilities and enable the United States to exit gracefully beginning 2011, significantly, the year in which Obama is also likely to begin his re-election campaign.

Policy
The direct application of force never works against insurgencies and political movements. Stamina and subtlety are things that can and do work. India needs to work with the US and other regional powers to break the thralldom of the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan. It can do this through economic and social development programmes, which will, of course, require the protection of armed units to be able to establish themselves. This is broadly the McChrystal strategy. But the American general is likely to be short-changed by his political masters in terms of available manpower. The European allies of the Americans are unlikely to commit any new forces.
As for the American call for Indian participation in training the ANA, it is both a bit too late, and too early.
It is late because a significant Indian commitment in the wake of 9/11 could have arguably helped stem the return of the Taliban. It is early because at this point it would be imprudent for New Delhi to commit itself. It would, first, stoke Pakistani paranoia and aggravate the already difficult India-Pakistan relations. Second, it could conceivably land us in a losing enterprise. India needs to work out its entry strategy, just as carefully the Americans are thinking through their exit one.
Obama has been right to put forward an exit strategy even while committing forces. History is littered with examples of states that entered into war without knowing or planning the way out. However, put as baldly as it has been done, it also tells us about the thinness of the American commitment in Afghanistan. The US won’t say so, but they must also be hoping that the Hand of God plays a role by delivering Osama bin Laden, dead or alive, by 2011. Should this happen, it could be passed off as a victory and set the stage for a quick American pullout from what is already a Vietnam-like quagmire.
There should be no illusions about the ability of the additional troops to change things in Afghanistan. What they will do is to provide space and time for the Americans to Afghanise the war. Vietnamisation, in contrast, began too late to affect the outcome of the Vietnam war.
In these circumstances, it is important for India to keep its powder dry. It must first ensure that it does not become part of the problem, and remains a part of the solution in Afghanistan. It can help the American enterprise by carrying on its civilian aid programme and perhaps intensifying it and be involved in regional diplomacy with Iran and Russia to assist the process of stabilising Afghanistan. And it can come forward with a programme that could take large number of Afghan personnel and train them here in India. In this way it can avoid the stigma of associating with what could turn out to be a lost war, or of being part of the foreign occupation of the country.

Consequences
New Delhi has to play for the longer run. The contours of the US commitment are now quite clear. Even if it is not 2011, it will be 2012 or even 2015. And even this will be defined by the forces the US has at its command, which are not likely to go over the 100,000 peak that will be achieved next summer.
But Afghanistan will remain a near-neighbour of India for a longer time.
Through history, the security of India, at least its northern part, has been determined by what happens on the other side of the Khyber Pass. However, and this is also known, successive rulers of New Delhi have never quite grasped this. However, Pakistan now intervenes geographically, and that geopolitical reality has become more complex. What happens in Afghanistan is still relevant to the future of Indian security, though now somewhat indirectly. A stable and prosperous Afghanistan will have beneficial consequences for Pakistan which interfaces directly with India. On the other hand, instability, especially in eastern Afghanistan peopled by Pashtun tribes, cannot but spill over into Pakistan, with all the baleful consequences that we are witnessing at this very time.
It was in the first flush of mujahideen victory that the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate began shifting the Lashkar-e-Tayyeba training camps to Afghanistan’s Kunar province in the early 1990s. Subsequently some Harkat-ul-Mujahideen camps also came up in Khost to train terrorists for the insurgency in Jammu & Kashmir.
If the Taliban regain control of Afghanistan, India can expect a renewed surge of jihadi attacks. It could be, as in the past, as part of a triumphant ISI operation. Or, worse, run by a clutch of jihadi groups over whom no one exercises real control. The situation in western Pakistan is no longer stable and the outcomes there are difficult to predict. But one thing is certain: all the bad things that can happen to India because of Afghanistan will have to come through Pakistan.

Focus
So, India needs to focus sharply on the source of our greatest danger — Pakistan. That is the main reason why any Indian ground commitment, must be carefully thought through. Aggravating tensions with a neighbour is never a good idea, but to enhance the paranoia of an already psychotic Pakistan would be foolhardy. There are many in India who say they are past caring for what Islamabad says or does.
The luxury of ignoring Pakistan does not exist and New Delhi needs to ensure that its policy in Afghanistan is carefully calibrated to generate desired outcomes in Pakistan. India must be part of the Afghan solution, but it must avoid anything that smacks of a clumsy intervention. New Delhi must be a major player in the Afghan game. But it must play to win; the consequences of a defeat or a draw will not be too pleasant.
This piece appeared in Mail Today December 3, 2009

We lack the military that can deter terrorism

Last Friday, Defence Minister A.K. Antony reviewed the security scenario in the country at a high level meeting. According to press reports, the aim of the two-hour long meeting was to review the security scenario on the eve of the anniversary of the Mumbai attack. Among those who participated were the three chiefs and the national security adviser.
I wonder if the review looked into whether or not the three services had learnt any lessons from what happened in the wake of the Mumbai attack. Probably not. There seems to be little understanding in the armed forces as to their role in the war against terrorism. Speaking at a seminar on the changing nature of conflict on Monday, Army Chief Deepak Kapoor said that the already bad situation in the region could worsen and the lack of political and diplomatic unity made it imperative to develop new national security concepts to secure the nation.
Funny that the general has not heard of the word “deterrence.” The primary role of the armed forces in the nuclear era is to deter potential adversaries by maintaining a combat profile that will deter the enemy from any adventure. That is precisely the mission that the Indian Army failed in last year when it declared itself unready to act in the immediate aftermath of the Mumbai attack.




That the general has not understood the role the Army should have played was apparent earlier this month when speaking at a meeting of the Confederation of Indian Industry, he expressed outrage at the repeated attacks by Pakistan-based terrorists on Indian targets. According to news reports, he had declared that enough was enough. Noting that the US had not allowed a second 9/11 to happen he said that “India has allowed people to get away after the Parliament attack, Delhi blasts and finally the 26/11 incident.”

Preparedness
India had no choice but to allow such people to get away because
neither through its doctrine, training or equipment has the army been ready to strike fast and decisively against Pakistan. In the wake of
the Parliament House attack in 2001, too, the political class wanted
the armed forces to act. But by the time the then Army chief declared he was ready, after three-and-a-half weeks, the political moment for a strike had passed.
Last year, too, in the wake of the Mumbai strike, it was the Army that said it was not quite prepared, though the other two forces were ready to go. In such circumstances, the government decided prudently, and correctly, not to order a strike.
As this paper reported at that time, the Army said they were short of key ammunition, artillery, air defence systems and other equipment. A 2007 Comptroller and Auditor General’s report provided shocking details as to the Army’s unreadiness that had built up over three previous five year plans. The acquisition of armour in the 8th Plan (1992-1997) was just 5 per cent of the planned acquisition. While this could be excused because the country and its principal supplier, Russia, were undergoing economic crises at the time, there is no explanation why in the period of the 9th Plan (1997-2002) only 10 per cent of the required acquisitions could be made. Or why in the more recent 10th Plan (2002-2007) period only 30 per cent of the tanks could be acquired.
The story was the same for other arms; in the 2002-2007 period, the infantry could only manage 48 per cent of their target for equipment purchase, the mechanised infantry 42, artillery 48, air defence 23, signals, 35 per cent. The report went on to add that, “of the 250 items planned for acquisition in the 10th Plan, only 96 items were acquired up to March 2006.” Some 46 items in the list of items that could not be acquired “were identified as capability gaps in the Army plans.”
Yet General Kapoor and the Defence Minister A.K. Antony have bravely and repeatedly declared in recent weeks that they are in a state of full preparedness. In capital acquisitions, two years is too short a
time to change things, and there is no indication whatsoever, budgetary or otherwise, to suggest that the Army has made up this shortfall. Needless to say, there are no signs that the Army has begun to restructure itself through the vaunted Cold Start doctrine.
Clearly, it is not “India” that has allowed people to get away, but the fact that we do not have the kind of military that can scare our adversaries. For this the military and civilian bureaucracy, as well as our political leaders are fully responsible.


So the military grumbles that the politicians lack the will to order a strike, and our politicians complain that the military does not have the capacity to deliver a decisive outcome. Were it not pathetic, it would seem that it is a well-scripted drama to fool the public.

Professionalism
No one doubts that the armed forces would carry out any order that they got to act, regardless of their preparedness. They displayed this bravery in 1999 when they launched frontal attacks against a well-entrenched enemy in Kargil. But the issue is not bravery, or dedication to duty. It is professionalism. Has the officer class adopted all the skills of modern warfare, have they ensured that their forces are equipped for it? Have they drilled their forces to perfection ? Since the answer is likely to be in the negative, the military option does not remain on the politician’s table for long. But the political class must shoulder the greater blame for not providing the leadership needed to set things right.
The past year has shown that the challenges to the Indian armed forces have, if anything, increased dramatically. They continue to face the bulk of the Pakistan military, even though it is seriously distracted by its Waziristan venture. But it also faces an increasingly powerful Chinese People’s Liberation Army in the north.

Procurement
Given the balance of forces, the armed forces ought to have no problem in dealing with Pakistani adventurism, even though they are not capable right now of carrying out a deterrent strike against Islamabad. However, dealing with China is another thing. India’s defence strategy in the mountains depends on a fire-power intensive force, but the ministry under Mr Antony has been unable to untangle the process of acquiring artillery for the army leave alone get on with filling the other critical gaps in our combat profile. The message in the MOD is that the Defence Minister’s main aim is to preserve his saintly reputation, and since he has not been able to find a way to staunch the corruption in the ministry, he has decided to minimise it by refusing to buy anything.
For the record, the government has announced a new procurement policy, the third announcement in as many years, and no one is clear whether or not this will fit the bill either. The problem with the 1.1 million-man Indian armed forces lies in all three areas — organisation, equipment and doctrine, and, this is the joker in the pack — higher political direction. Unless all these elements come together, India will never have the kind of forces that will make our enemies think twice, and think hard, before they undertake an adventure like the attack on Mumbai.
This appeared in Mail Today November 26, 2009

Obama's Beijing kowtow

The unspoken fears that India had of the Obama Administration seem to be coming true. President Obama’s visit to China and the various statements in relation to the South Asian region that have emerged from the visit point to the fact that the pendulum of American interests is once again shifting away from New Delhi to Beijing. As Obama noted in his joint press statement on Wednesday: “President Hu and I also discussed our mutual interest in security and stability of Afghanistan and Pakistan. And neither country can or should be used as a base for terrorism, and we agreed to cooperate more on meeting this goal, including bringing about more stable, peaceful relations in all of South Asia.”
Had the president stopped at the first sentence, it would have been acceptable, but to talk of cooperation in bringing “stable, peaceful relations in all of South Asia” is ominous.


Incidentally in his portion of the remarks, his Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao spoke of the need to uphold “peace and stability” and “to respect and accommodate each other’s core interests and major concerns.” As he spelt them out, they related to the Korean peninsula, the Middle East and Gulf region, Iran. Impliedly, they were linked to Taiwan, Tibet and Xinjiang. There was no hint of any concern with South Asia.
So what has persuaded the US that China can play a role in promoting South Asian peace? Are they not aware of the history, and indeed the contemporary dynamics of the region?
In early 1992, the George HW Bush Administration proposed a five-power system to control nuclear proliferation in South Asia — the US, China and Russia would oversee a non-nuclear pact between India and Pakistan. That proposal, too foundered on the realities of the regional dynamics whose major element was Beijing’s policy of checking New Delhi.

Compulsions
It would appear that Obama is keen to draw out Beijing to play a larger role in global affairs. His aim is to seek Beijing’s increasing heft in world affairs — and its special ties with Pakistan — to get quick resolutions into the emerging quagmire of Afghanistan and Pakistan, as well as the potential one in Iran. So, Mr Obama seems to have offered up South Asia as a bait of sorts to Beijing.
This is significant because the Chinese believe that it was only in the administration of his predecessor George W Bush that India was brought out as a kind of potential trump to check China’s rise. What Mr Obama seems to be telling Beijing is that the US does not consider South Asia (read India) as any kind of a counter-weight to China, and is willing to calibrate its own policies in the region with Beijing.
The background of Obama’s compulsions are obvious. In a recent appearance on the Jim Lehrer show, Niall Fergusson put it this way: Chimerica had now become a single economy. The driver of the world economy in the period 1998-2007, was Chinese exports to the US and the US imports from China. The Chinese intervention in international currency markets by keeping the Chinese currency weak has actually helped finance a part of the US deficit. “China has become the banker to the United States. And its policy of reserve accumulation has provided nearly $2 trillion worth of effectively cheap, if not free, credit to the United States.”
The New York Times recently elucidated the consequences of this somewhat more bluntly. The American-Chinese relations offered a a 10:10 deal where China gets 10 per cent growth and the US gets 10 per cent unemployment. In other words, the seemingly symbiotic relationship is actually a parasitical one — China is using the US to ride to world power status.
Instead of altering these adverse terms of trade, or even attempting to do so, Mr Obama seems to be actually encouraging China. And why? Either he does not care, or he feels that in the short time that he needs results — in Afghanistan and Iran — Beijing’s cooperation or neutrality towards US is more important than putting the US economy and its security policy on a sustainable and stable path.
It is true that the US and China have a number of common interests — stability in North-east Asia, Persian Gulf and the need for a peaceful resolution of the Taiwan issue. But there is no indication that they trust each other enough to evolve a common policy to move forward in any of those areas deemed important by them. Yet, Obama seems to be convinced that the enormity of the economic links that the two countries have with each other can translate into common political goals.
In the case of South Asia, he is thinking for the short term and in the process ignoring our interests. Chinese policy in the region is based on the single aim of checking India. This goes back to the early 1960s when it began to cultivate Pakistan and teach India a lesson. In pursuit of this policy, Beijing has done a lot, including the unthinkable: It actually provided Pakistan the design and material to make atom bombs, and actually tested one for them in 1990. The Chinese efforts to befriend Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Myanmar have had a similar goal. And the one country that it has been systematically hostile to is India.

Balance
The reason for this is that, like it or not, the only country in Asia which can offer a counter-weight to China is India. As of today Indian economic growth and military power cannot match that of China, yet both are proceeding at a respectable rate.
Indian economic growth which has been around 7-8 per cent recently has come despite its hopeless infrastructure and lack of reforms. With more focused efforts, and a little help from its demographic profile, India could well match, and even exceed China in the 2020s.
United States policy had a trajectory similar to the Chinese in the region. In its own way, it, too, sought to check New Delhi’s desire to be an independent actor on the world stage. So, its policy was to maintain good relations with India, even while cultivating Pakistan as its primary strategic partner. The DNA of that policy is still evident. It was only with the Bush Administration that US policy shifted decisively towards befriending India.
But with the Obama Administration veering towards Beijing, this policy is going to remain a work in progress for a little bit longer.

Interests
Obama’s Beijing kowtow is unlikely to succeed. Given the depth of its commitment to Pakistan, China is incapable of playing an honest broker in the South Asian region, even assuming that it wants to. More important, New Delhi is not entirely without options or friends who are thinking for the longer term.
Countries in the periphery of China are worrying about the consequences of the Sino-American love fest. As of today, China’s military modernisation does not offer a threat to the US. But it does pose a potential threat to Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, India, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia. Their real worry is not so much with China's military modernisation, or even its pace or scale, but the opacity of Chinese strategic thinking.
So next week when Manmohan Singh visits the US, don't be taken in by the verbiage that comes out of Washington, or the glitter of the state banquet billed as a singular honour for the Indian prime minister.
The US is in hock to China and it has a leader who has shown that he does not quite know how to deal with it. While it is in our interest to have good, and even close, relations with the US, we need to be clear that a country of India’s size and varied interests has no option but to have strategic autonomy in matters of security and foreign policy.
This appeared first in Mail Today November 20, 2009

In pardoning criminals, you betray their victims

At the time of the national and state assembly elections, earlier this year, an NGO provided considerable detail to show that our legislative assemblies and parliament had come to be populated by a disproportionately large number of millionaires. The implication is that the legislatures are now skewed towards the interests of the well off.
Coincidence or not, it now seems apparent from the revelations of the Manu Sharma episode that our criminal justice system, too, favours the the rich and powerful. Even if you are convicted of rape and murder, if you have the right connections, not only can you manage the occasional parole, but actually receive a signed and certified pardon from the state.

Pardons
It is true, of course, that with access to good (read expensive) lawyers the rich do have an advantage when it comes to facing the criminal justice system. But they face the same procedures, judges and the law as do the poor. Indeed, the rich and the powerful, too, get convicted, despite their best, and often questionable, efforts to get off.
The conviction of Sharma himself, the son of an influential and rich politician, Vikas Yadav, the son of a powerful West Uttar Pradesh politician, Sanjeev Nanda, former police officer R.K. Sharma have been pointers towards this. But this is where the script changes. Even though they are convicted and liable for the same punishment, the rich, even those guilty of heinous crimes, manage to systematically cheat punishment through paroles, sentence remissions and, worse, outright pardons. The blame for this shameful and amoral situation rests squarely on our bureaucratic and political class.

Why not pardon him as well ? Mohammed Afzal, convicted in the Parliament House attack case

On January 15, 1999, Sriyans Kumar Jain, a Bharatiya Janata Party activist whose life sentence for murder had been upheld by the Supreme Court, put in a mercy petition to the Haryana state government which on January 20, recommended the case to the governor of Haryana, Mahabir Prasad. By January 25th, Jain had gotten his pardon. At the time the government in the state was run by Bansi Lal and the Haryana Vikas Party which was allied to the BJP. Jain had been convicted for the murder of Krishan Kant Khandewala, a Congress municipal councillor of a small town called Hansi in 1987. He was an aide of BJP MLA P.K. Chaudhry who wanted to defeat Khandewala in the elections for the chairmanship of the town’s municipality.pardon shocked Khandewala’s family. This was not a mere commutation of a sentence. It was an actual pardon, under Section 161 of the Constitution and Section 432 of the Criminal Procedure Code, nullifying the original sentence. Subsequently the hapless family was pressured to avoid pressing an appeal in the case.
In July 1999, the successor Om Prakash Chautala government outdid the Bansi Lal largesse. By 2001 it had already pardoned ten convicted criminals. Among them were the killers of Jasbir Singh, a student leader. A sessions court initially acquitted the accused — Sat Parkash, Satbir, Himat and Devinder Singh, but a Supreme Court Bench comprising Justices K.T. Thomas and M.K. Mukherjee set aside the order and sentenced the first two to life imprisonment and the others to lesser terms. All of them were party activists belonging to Chautala’s Indian National Lok Dal and three months after assuming office, Sat Parkash and Satbir were pardoned and the others a short while later.
Neighbouring Punjab’s record is no better. Six years after their son was shot, Bathinda farmer Jagroop Singh and his wife Kartar Kaur thought that justice had been delivered when three accused were given a life sentence by a sessions judge. So confident was Sandeep Singh, the main accused, that his family did not bother to file an appeal; it merely petitioned the governor S.F. Rodrigues who granted a pardon to him. Singh is the son of former Akali minister Teja Singh, who later joined the ruling Congress.

Feudal
Why blame the northern states? Last September, in a grand gesture, Tamil Nadu released nearly 1500 prisoners to celebrate the anniversary of DMK founder C.N. Annadurai’s birth. Among them were lifers who had already served seven years of their sentence. The state justified its action, though you can be sure that among those pardoned were murderers, rapists and other reprehensible people. This act of criminal generosity was followed up by the Andhra Pradesh government this year which released nearly 1000 people, mostly lifers, citing Gandhi Jayanti as a pretext. Its attempt to free G Venkata Reddy, a Congress activist was quashed by the Supreme Court in 2006 on procedural grounds.
The concept of pardon is a feudal leftover of the divine right of kings who could not only take a life, but grant one merely on whim. This system has been inherited by India through Article 72 of the Constitution which allows the President to grant a pardon, or remission of punishment of any convict. But the president cannot act on whim and must be guided by the Home Ministry and the Council of Ministers.
But while the President is so constrained, there seems to be no check on our governors who operate under the radar, as it were, to free convicted murderers or give dangerous criminals parole at will, or at the instance of our politicians.

Amoral
Given instances of wrongful conviction, it is important to have pardoning power in the constitutional system, but its gross misuse by our politicians and bureaucrats requires that it be vested in a judicial body. As a rule, there should be no pardon for violent assault, murder or rape. If an arrest or conviction was bad in law, surely our court system can set that right. Executive intervention is, more often than not, based on extraneous considerations.
The Supreme Court has generally upheld the state’s right to pardon criminals or remit their sentences. This, as various officials who have testified to counter petitions opposing the pardons, is as per the law and the Constitution. The case is often couched in the language of rehabilitation of the criminals. But what of society at large? What about the victims? Is their any consideration that a convicted rapist could rape again or a pathological killer kill? Doesn’t society deserve protection against violent criminals?
Remarkably, neither the executive nor the judiciary has ever bothered to consider the rights of the victims. A person who has been murdered can only depend on the state for judicial revenge. But the state is betraying the interest of the victims by freeing prisoners who have served only a part of their sentence.
The government is supposed to protect the life and liberty of the people of the country. When it fails to do so, it is responsible for ensuring that those guilty of depriving a citizen of his or her life is punished.
But what we are seeing is that large sections of the political and bureaucratic class have lost their moral compass. Instead of care and compassion for the victims of the crimes, they are showing sympathy and kindness to their killers.
This appeared in Mail Today November 13, 2009

The Danger Within (or how unresolved grievance can fuel terrorism)

Twenty days from now we will observe the first anniversary of one of the most diabolic acts of terrorism in the world — the seaborne assault on Mumbai by jehadis who were recruited, trained and directed by state and non-state actors in Pakistan. Just last month, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested American-Pakistani Daoud Gilani aka David Coleman Headley and Canadian-Pakistani Mohammed Tahawwur Rana for plotting with North Waziristan-based Harkat-ul-Jihad Islami leader, Ilyas Kashmiri and two unnamed Lashkar-e-Tayyeba leaders to attack the National Defence College and two residential schools in Uttarakhand.
What this development reveals is that despite the whole-hearted efforts of law enforcement authorities in India and the US, and some half-hearted ones in Pakistan, the Lashkar-e-Tayyeba is still in business. As a result of the Mumbai attack and international pressure, Pakistan had been compelled to arrest Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, and some other planners of the Mumbai carnage, but the leader of the LeT, Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, has remained free.

Violence
Coincidentally, it is also just about a year now that a group that called itself the Indian Mujahideen was neutralised. The story began in July 2006, when a radical faction of the Students Islamic Movement of India, organised in secret cells calling themselves the Indian Mujahideen (IM) struck, with seven bombs ripping through Mumbai’s suburban trains, killing 187 people and injuring 700.
The subsequent arrests and chargesheet filed by the Mumbai police’s anti-terrorism squad (ATS) noted that of the 30 accused, 18 were from India and 12 from Pakistan. However after the Delhi blasts in September 2008, the police found out that the 12 were not Pakistani, but people who belonged to the then undeclared and secret militant group called the Indian Mujahideen. They had, in an intriguing and ingenious manner, passed themselves off as Pakistanis for the benefit of the other conspirators.
It was only in the wake of the November 2007, near-simultaneous bomb blasts at court premises in Varanasi, Faizabad and Lucknow, that the Indian Mujahideen outed itself and claimed responsibility for the blasts through an email message, but the IB discounted this and said that the claim was an effort by existing organisations like the HUJI and the banned SIMI to mislead the police.
Then between May and September 2008 came rapidfire serial bomb blasts in Jaipur (May 13), Bangalore (July 25), Ahmedabad (July 26), and Delhi (September 23) killing some 150 people and wounding several times that number.

Moments after the blast at Barakhamba Road, New Delhi

You do not have to accept all the police claims with regard to this group to believe that its emergence ought to set alarm bells ringing. Indeed, it is because of shoddy police work — which includes the extra-judicial execution of two suspects in the Batla House in New Delhi — that we have not been able to gauge the true nature and import of this most serious development.
The Indian Mujahideen was the first home-grown group of Indian Muslim radicals who carried out acts of terrorism without visible direction from Pakistan. In some ways their emergence represented the success of the Pakistani project run by the ISI and the jehadis to set up self-sustaining and autonomous groups of Indian Muslim extremists to carry out acts of terrorism in India.
The radicalisation seems to have afflicted not the stereotypical madarsah student or cleric, but educated young men, some with university degrees and others proficient in the use of computers and electronics. Most of those involved in the blasts were “normal” young men who did not dress in the traditional Muslim style or wear beards. On the surface, they led normal “secular” lives and pursued educational courses or occupations which pointed towards a desire to seek upward social and economic mobility.
According to Paul R. Brass, in the 7,000-odd communal incidents between 1954 and 1982, some five hundred Hindus were killed, but the number of Muslims killed was three times that. Another major watershed was the destruction of the Babri Masjid. Indeed, in his latest book, The Production of Hindu-Muslim Violence in Contemporary India, Brass has argued that “the whole political order in post-Independence north India and many, if not most of its leading as well as local actors… have become implicated in the persistence of Hindu-Muslim riots.”
A snapshot of the situation today can be seen from the response to an RTI query which revealed that in the period April 2004 to 2009, the state of Maharashtra witnessed 96 riots indicating that, on an average, there was one communal riot in about 20 days in the state.

Sachar
A special committee headed by retired Justice Rajinder Sachar looked into the issue of the status of Muslims in India in 2006. Among the other things that the committee found was that though Muslims constitute some 13 per cent of the national population, their presence in the top government services is abysmal. Only 3 per cent of the core IAS officials are Muslim, 1.8 per cent in the Foreign Service and 4 per cent in the central Indian Police Service.
Likewise the number of Muslims in the Army, banks, universities is much lower than their proportion in the population. In no state does the representation of Muslims in the government departments match their population share. Their share in police constables is only 6 per cent, in health services 4.4 per cent.
Clearly, what pushes young Indian Muslims towards violent religious extremism is the fact that they are second class citizens in India, people who are discriminated against when it comes to jobs and housing, and the frequent bouts of violence that their community faces.
But what transforms an angry young man into a terrorist is the activity of a small group of motivators — jihadists or agents provocateurs. Many of these latter people have links with Pakistan — its official agencies — as well as its extremist religious organisations.
The assistance they provide comes in the form of funds, training, arms and direction. The goals of Pakistani official covert agencies is to keep India off balance and check its perceived advance in world affairs. The jihadi goal is much more grandiose — it seeks to convert India into a part of the global Islamic emirate.

Extremism
The issue of violent religious extremism gripping the Indian Muslim community is truly at a cross-roads. On one hand, the period 2006-2008 provides clear evidence that young Indian Muslims — who were not found in Afghanistan or Guantanamo — have taken to terrorism.
On the other hand, it is surprising, given the enormous burden of riot and murder that the Indian Muslim community has faced, we have seen only one unambiguously Indian Muslim terrorist group —the Indian Mujahideen —emerge so far. Even in its case we are not sure as to the extent to which the young men involved were pushed into the path they have taken because of urging and motivation from external actors. Its key leaders like Riyaz Bhatkal, Amir Raza and Abdul Shubhan Qureshi remain at large and we do not yet know the full extent of its organisation.
Last year, India confronted two sets of terror attacks. There has been a flurry of activity on the part of the government to prevent another terrorist attack from abroad.
But they continue to disregard the domestic dimension of the problem. The reason for this is the “cut off my nose to spite my face” attitude of the Sangh Parivar and the pusillanimity of the ruling Congress party which prevents the country from addressing genuine Muslim grievances. We can continue to ignore the problem at our own peril.
This article was published in Mail Today November 7, 2009