The advantages of irrelevance

Swaminathan S Anklesaria Aiyar,

Having won over the Samajwadi Party (SP), the Manmohan Singh government can push ahead with the Indo-US nuclear deal, and hope to complete its full five-year term. If the government survives the trust vote, Congressmen will be delighted, since they are terrified of an early election, given that inflation is running at 12%.

Their delight will be tempered by the bitter knowledge that the once-mighty Congress is steadily decreasing in political relevance, in state after state. Yet, ironically, its growing irrelevance in the states has actually helped it survive in New Delhi. Even dark clouds have silver linings, sometimes very broad ones.

When the Congress won more seats than the BJP in the 2004 general election, it was far short of an absolute majority, and sought the assistance of every possible party to cobble together a ruling coalition. It sought the support of the SP too. But Mulayam Singh Yadav said absolutely no. He feared that a Congress government in New Delhi might find ways to cut him to size in Uttar Pradesh or even oust him, and then stage a comeback in India's largest state. Mulayam feared that the Congress might win back the support of UP Muslims, who had defected to him in droves after the demolition of the Babri Masjid. So, he declined firmly to support the Manmohan Singh government.

Why then has he suddenly changed tack, and saved Manmohan Singh's bacon? Because he is finally convinced that the Congress has become irreversibly irrelevant in UP, and should no longer be viewed as a threat. In the 2007 state assembly election, Rahul Gandhi, heir apparent of the Congress, himself spearheaded the party's state campaign, and aimed to win back lost ground. Alas, the Congress came a pathetic fourth in the state election, far behind the BSP, SP and BJP. Despite Rahul's efforts, the Congress tally of seats actually fell from 25 to 22. The party won just 8.4% of the popular vote, down from 12% in 2004.

Its decline in the state worsened in the five by-elections in the state in April this year. The BSP swept all five seats, and the Congress lost its deposit in four of the five. The once-hegemonic party of India had become a pathetic also-ran.

This, above all, explains why the SP has decided to support the Manmohan Singh government. It can afford to do so because the Congress has become irrelevant in UP. It is now a party to be used, not feared. The only parties that matter now in the state are Mayawati's BSP and Mulayam's SP, with the BJP and Congress playing minor roles. In this scenario, Mulayam can use the Congress to harass Mayawati, by pursuing corruption and income tax cases against her more vigorously. And he can hope to come back to power in UP in the next state election by having the Congress as a very junior ally.

This drives home the point that, in a highly fractured polity, weakness in some regions can translate into an advantage in New Delhi. In the 1990s, this factor played to the advantage of the BJP. It had some strength in the Hindi-speaking heartland, and in Gujarat. But in other parts of the country it had little or no strength. Yet, it managed to come to power in 1998 with the assistance of sundry regional parties.

For most regional parties, their main local foe was the Congress party. Hence, they were willing to support the BJP simply as their enemy's enemy. The TDP, AIADMK, BLD, Samata Party, and others joined Vajpayee's NDA government. The very fact that the BJP was so weak in their respective states meant they faced no threat from it locally, and that made it a more attractive partner in New Delhi.

The Congress was upset to see professedly secular parties like the TDP and Samata Party joining hands with the BJP. It made strong declarations at its Pachmarhi summit about spurning opportunistic regional parties, and seeking to return to power on its own. Yet, this had the practical effect of pushing regional parties further into the BJP camp.

Those delusions of grandeur have gone now. The Congress has declined in one state after another, and knows that it cannot rule without allies. It has submitted to constant humiliation by the Left Front for four years in New Delhi, knowing that this is the price for survival.

Yet, this humiliating decline is now proving to be an advantage. Lalu Yadav, who for most of his political career had viewed the Congress as his main foe in Bihar, realised in 2004 that the Congress had become so irrelevant in the state that he could afford to ally with it. That realisation was what made the current UPA government possible: Lalu could join it without jeopardising his own position in Bihar.

The same thing has now happened in UP. There, too, the Congress has become irrelevant. And so Mulayam can afford to support the Manmohan Singh government in New Delhi. Rahul Gandhi may be a pale shadow of what was once an all-powerful Gandhi family. But that actually enhances his attractions.


Article Link

Right for good governance

A day after I wrote on the SP’s ulterior objective, I was pleasantly surprised to see an article (Let us not lose sight of good governance ) that raised this issue in the newsprint. Surprising because it’s rare to see such open opinions in my usual read The ToI. But this was from The Hindu, who I feel are usually more outspoken about their political opinions (though sometimes criticised as one-sided).

Here the writer (Harish Khare) has been able to put a better perspective to the issue of the murky Ambanis’ feud getting into Governmental issues. The article gives more data and history to the story. But at one place the article fails. Towards the end of his argument Khare goes on to state “If the ruling alliance’s new ally wants to use its status to correct a perceived tilt, we would all be better off. Even in this age of market reforms, the corporate houses are totally beyond the government’s reach; nor are they above wanting to suborn the law and the loyalties; therefore, if the new political alignments in New Delhi are used to bring about a healthy balance, so be it. Irrespective of the dramatis personae, it would provide the much-needed corrective to our public discourse if we are able to debate on the economics and ethics of allowing windfall profits in a country of vast poverty.”

Well, after all this argument he simply states that “two wrongs make a right” or rather “it is the end and not the means”. I do not subscribe to that policy. If we are letting the Government run according to the individual agendas of its coalition parties who walk in and out like people in a mall, then where is the reason for a political manifesto. In the future elections let’s not invest in anyway-a-farce-statement called Manifesto or now the Common Minimum Programme. Next time on we are into a two party system like the US, albeit with a difference. The political parties will state whether their mandate is to protect Anil or Mukesh. The rest will fall in line. Given that the Ambanis’ are increasingly getting into the nerve of every Indian, this policy should suffice. So if your worry today is that the communication industry is not functioning properly, then vote for the Anil party. The ensuing Government will roll out subsidies for upgrading the CDMA services, slap hefty licenses on GSM providers and bingo.

We have a right to demand ideal political conditions. Mr. Khare, I agree that sometimes these cannot be helped. But as a think tank on a leading newsreel, your duty bound to suggest, to fight for the better and not succumb to the present.

Last head: PM, govt top guns may broker Ambani peace deal. That's nice job for a change.

Challenging the basis of Kyoto Protocol

Vladimir Radyuhin

Russian scientists deny that the Kyoto Protocol reflects a consensus view of the world scientific community.

As western nations step up pressure on India and China to curb the emission of greenhouse gases, Russian scientists reject the very idea that carbon dioxide may be responsible for global warming.

Russian critics of the Kyoto Protocol, which calls for cuts in CO2 emissions, say that the theory underlying the pact lacks scientific basis. Under the Theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming, it is human-generated greenhouse gases, and mainly CO2, that cause climate change. “The Kyoto theorists have put the cart before the horse,” says renowned Russian geographer Andrei Kapitsa. “It is global warming that triggers higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, not the other way round.”

Russian researchers made this discovery while studying ice cores recovered from the depth of 3.5 kilometres in Antarctica. Analysis of ancient ice and air bubbles trapped inside revealed the composition of the atmosphere and air temperature going back as far as 400,000 years.

“We found that the level of CO2 had fluctuated greatly over the period but at any given time increases in air temperature preceded higher concentrations of CO2,” says academician Kapitsa, who worked in Antarctica for many years. Russian studies showed that throughout history, CO2 levels in the air rose 500 to 600 years after the climate warmed up. Therefore, higher concentrations of greenhouse gases registered today are the result, not the cause, of global warming.

Critics of the CO2 role in climate change point out that water vapours are a far more potent factor in creating the greenhouse effect as their concentration in the atmosphere is five to 10 times higher than that of CO2. “Even if all CO2 were removed from the earth atmosphere, global climate would not become any cooler,” says solar physicist Vladimir Bashkirtsev.

The hypothesis of anthropogenic greenhouse gases was born out of computer modelling of climate changes. Russian scientists say climate models are inaccurate since scientific understanding of many natural climate factors is still poor and cannot be properly modelled. Oleg Sorokhtin of the Russian Academy of Sciences Institute of Ocean Studies, and many other Russian scientists maintain that global climate depends predominantly on natural factors, such as solar activity, precession (wobbling) of the Earth’s axis, changes in ocean currents, fluctuations in saltiness of ocean surface water, and some other factors, whereas industrial emissions do not play any significant role. Moreover, greater concentrations of CO2 are good for life on Earth, Dr. Sorokhtin argues, as they make for higher crop yields and faster regeneration of forests.

“There were periods in the history of the Earth when CO2 levels were a million times higher than today, and life continued to evolve quite successfully,” agrees Vladimir Arutyunov of the Russian Academy of Sciences Institute of Chemical Physics.

When four years ago, then President Vladimir Putin was weighing his options on the Kyoto Protocol the Russian Academy of Sciences strongly advised him to reject it as having “no scientific foundation.” He ignored the advice and sent the Kyoto pact to Parliament for purely political reasons: Moscow traded its approval of the Kyoto Protocol for the European Union’s support for Russia’s bid to join the World Trade Organisation. Russian endorsement was critical, as without it the Kyoto Protocol would have fallen through due to a shortage of signatories. It did not cost much for Russia to join the Kyoto Protocol since its emission target was set at the level of 1990, that is, before the Russian economy crashed following the break-up of the Soviet Union. According to some projections, Russia will not exceed its target before 2017. Notwithstanding this, the Russian scientific community is vocal in its opposition to the Kyoto process.

“The Kyoto Protocol is a huge waste of money,” says Dr. Sorokhtin. “The Earth’s atmosphere has built-in regulatory mechanisms that moderate climate changes. When temperatures rise, ocean water evaporation increases, denser clouds stop solar rays and surface temperatures decline.”

Academician Kapitsa denounced the Kyoto Protocol as “the biggest ever scientific fraud.” The pact was lobbied by European politicians and industrialists, critics say, in order to improve the competitiveness of European products and slow down economic growth in emerging economies. “The European Union pushed through the Kyoto Protocol in order to reduce the competitive edge of the U.S. and other countries where ecological standards are less stringent than in Europe,” says ecologist Sergei Golubchikov.

Russian scientists deny that the Kyoto Protocol reflects a consensus view of the world scientific community. Academician Kapitsa complains that opponents of the man-caused global warming are routinely denied the floor at international climate forums.

“A large number of critical documents submitted at the 1995 U.N. conference in Madrid vanished without a trace,” the scientist says. “As a result, the discussion was one-sided and heavily biased, and the U.N. declared global warming to be a scientific fact.”

Critics concede that the thrust of the Kyoto Protocol is towards promoting energy-saving technologies, but then, they argue, it should have been just that — a protocol on energy efficiency and energy conservation. The problem with the Kyoto process, critics say, is that it shifts the emphasis away from genuine ecological problems, such as industrial, air and water pollution, to the wasteful fight against harmless gases.

“Ecological treaties should seek to curb emissions of sulpher dioxide, nitrogen oxides, heavy metals and other highly-toxic pollutants instead of targeting carbon dioxide, which is a non-toxic gas whose impact on global warming has not been proved,” says Dr. Golubchikov.

Russian researchers compare the Kyoto Protocol to the 1987 Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, which called for phasing out Freon-12 as a preferred refrigerant. It has since been proved, says Dr. Golubchikov, that chlorine-containing Freon-12 destroys ozone only in laboratory conditions whereas in the atmosphere, it interacts with hydrogen and falls back to Earth as acid rain before it can harm ozone.

The Montreal Protocol brought billions of dollars in profits for U.S. DePont, which held global patent rights for Freon-134, an alternative refrigerant that does not interact with ozone. “Within 10 years of the Montreal Protocol the output of refrigeration compressors in the U.S. increased by 60 per cent, whereas in Europe it declined by a similar proportion. In Russia, which accounted for a quarter of the global market of refrigerants, the industry ground to a complete stop,” says Yevgeny Utkin, Secretary of Russia’s Inter-Agency Commission for Climate Change.

The ultimate irony of the Montreal Protocol is that the new refrigerant is the most potent among greenhouse gases blacklisted under the Kyoto Protocol, and moreover is explosion-prone. The Freon bubble burst when, in 1989, the ozone layer suddenly jumped to the pre-Montreal Protocol level and has since continued to rise. Russian critics of the Kyoto Protocol are convinced that the greenhouse gases bubble will likewise prove short-lived.
Global cooling

Who remembers today, they query, that in the 1970s, when global temperatures began to dip, many warned that we faced a new ice age? An editorial in The Time magazine on June 24, 1974, quoted concerned scientists as voicing alarm over the atmosphere “growing gradually cooler for the past three decades”, “the unexpected persistence and thickness of pack ice in the waters around Iceland,” and other harbingers of an ice age that could prove “catastrophic.” Man was blamed for global cooling as he is blamed today for global warming. “Climatologists suggest that dust and other particles released into the atmosphere as a result of farming and fuel burning may be blocking more and more sunlight from reaching and heating the surface of the earth,” The Time lamented.

Russian scientists say that today’s alarmism over greenhouse gases is as baseless as concerns about man-raised dust were 30 years ago. Solar physicists claim that the Earth has entered a 30-year period of global cooling predicated upon a cyclic decline in solar activity. They cite U.S. global weather reports as indicating that global temperatures have stopped rising since the turn of the century. “The global warming in 1970-1998 was merely a phase in the 60-year cycles of natural warming and cooling,” Dr. Bashkirtsev says.

Russian climate researchers working in Antarctica confirm that temperatures on the sixth continent have been declining in recent years. According to geographer Nikolai Osokin, the ice cover in Antarctica, which accounts for 90 per cent of the global ice stock, has overall been growing.

This year global temperatures have been showing a distinct downward trend, and according to the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, in May “the globe was cooler than at any time since January 2000.”

This is good news for Dr. Bashkirtsev, who together with another Russian solar physicist three years ago, bet climate scientist James Annan $10,000 that the Earth would cool down over the next decade. It is more than a wage; it is a contest between two concepts of climate change. The Russian scientists believe in sun-driven climate changes, while the British researcher creates man-caused climate-warming models on the Earth Simulator supercomputer in Japan’s Yokohama.

SP's ulterior objective

Not even a day into supporting the Government, the SP has already shown its ugly head of self fulfilling reasons why it decided to back the Government. Amar Singh is demanding why Petroleum Minister Deora "continues to favour only one well-known private operator". Well it is an open secret that he is talking of none but Mukesh Ambani controlled RIL and nobody needs extra thoughts to infer that he is talking at the behest of his close buddy and fund provider, Anil Ambani. Look at his other concern –GSM operators should be charged higher fee to get 3G licences (again a favour for Anil Ambani who controls CDMA based RCom). Agreed these may be genuine concerns that the Government should look into. But at the time of rising inflation, impeding food crisis, growing internal insurgency and a fractured foreign policy, Amar Singh believes that the first thing he has to review when in Government is to abet his friend Anil Ambani in his personal rivalries.

We have seen Railway Ministers use their position to push more railway lines/development in their constituencies or State. We have also seen kith and kin of Defence Ministers winning defence contracts. But it is appalling to see an inconsequential personal rivalry between two corporate conglomerates to be brought into the day to day affairs of the Central Government. Gone are those days when being in power meant some extra benefits. Today that is the ulterior objective. I just pray that nobody in SP take any ministerial position. You never know where the sights of the leeches are.

And how does Amar Singh quote his words - "If I take the Prime Minister's suggestion on nuclear deal seriously, I hope Prime Minister will take cognizance of what I raised." Last heard, the officials of the Finance, Petroleum and PMO were busy explaining Amar Singh on issues raised by him.

---Vj

ET: SP targets pvt oil firms; wants PM to take cognizance

Sam Manekshaw

Jul 3rd 2008

From The Economist print edition

Sam Manekshaw, soldier, died on June 27th, aged 94

EPA

HIS most famous remark was not, strictly speaking, true. On the eve of the war with Pakistan in December 1971 that led to the creation of Bangladesh, India’s prime minister, Indira Gandhi, asked her army chief, Sam Hormusji Framji Jamshedji Manekshaw, if he was ready for the fight. He replied with the gallantry, flirtatiousness and sheer cheek for which he was famous: “I am always ready, sweetie.” (He said he could not bring himself to call Mrs Gandhi “Madame”, because it reminded him of a bawdy-house.)

Yet General Manekshaw himself recounted a cabinet meeting in Mrs Gandhi’s office in April 1971. To forestall secession, the Pakistani government had already cracked down in what was then East Pakistan. Hundreds of thousands of refugees had crossed the border into India. Mrs Gandhi wanted the army to invade Pakistan. General Manekshaw resisted. The monsoon, he pointed out, would soon start in East Pakistan, turning rivers into oceans. His armoured division and two infantry divisions were deployed elsewhere. To shift them would need the entire railway network, so the grain harvest could not be transported and would rot, bringing famine. And of his armoured division’s 189 tanks, only 11 were fit to fight.

He was not, in other words, ready. But, as he put it, “There is a very thin line between being dismissed and becoming a field-marshal.” Mrs Gandhi rejected the resignation he offered, and acceded to the delay he wanted. His job, he told her, was to fight to win. In December he did, cutting through the Pakistani army like a knife through butter, and taking Dhaka within two weeks. Quibblers later noted that this was not one of his original war aims. He had the most important attribute of any successful general: good luck.

That was not the only time he threatened to quit. Mrs Gandhi once questioned him about rumours that he was plotting a coup. In response, he asked if she wanted his resignation on grounds of mental instability. Yet if she and other politicians were in awe of him as a professional soldier and grateful for his lack of political ambition, his men loved him for his willingness to take on their civilian bosses and stand up for the army’s interests.
He had shown this in the Indian army’s darkest hour, the abject defeat in 1962 by China. Already a general, he had the previous year quarrelled with India’s defence minister, V.K. Krishna Menon, about national security. He was vindicated when the Chinese army swatted aside Indian resistance and briefly occupied what is now the state of Arunachal Pradesh. Mr Menon resigned. General Manekshaw was rushed to the front to rally the demoralised troops. His first order was: “There will be no withdrawal without written orders and these orders shall never be issued.”

General Manekshaw was able to demand courage from his soldiers because his own was not in doubt. Known as Sam “Bahadur”, or Sam the Brave, an honorific given him by the Indian army’s Gurkhas, the first of his five wars was for the British in Burma, where he was seriously wounded. Assuming he would die, an English general pinned his own Military Cross on Captain Manekshaw’s chest, since the medal could not be awarded posthumously. Another story has it that a surgeon was going to give up on his bullet-riddled body, until he asked him what had happened and got the reply, “I was kicked by a donkey.” A joker at such a time, the surgeon reckoned, had a chance.

Stiff but hairy

There was something of British military tradition in his stiff upper lip, the lavish handlebar moustache in which he cloaked it, the dapper little embellishments to his uniform and his partiality for Scotch whisky. Yet he was born into a very particular and tight-knit community: India’ s small and dwindling Parsi minority, which has produced a disproportionate number of leading Indians, such as the members of the Tata and Godrej business dynasties. Sam Manekshaw was another Parsi overachiever. He was the first of only two field-marshals ever created in the army.

Yet his retirement since 1973 was not one long bask in glory. Former deputies felt he had monopolised the credit for various victories. Then last year his name was linked to bizarre allegations, by the son of a former Pakistani president, against an unnamed brigadier who had once sold Indian war plans to Pakistan. All nonsense, said those who knew him. Already in hospital, General Manekshaw was in part shielded from controversy.

After his death, anger at the slur, and at the lack of proper honour for one of India’s true heroes, rumbled on. The prime minister, along with the army, navy, and air-force chiefs, all missed his funeral—which was a modest one held in Tamil Nadu in the south, not a grand one in the capital. His friends grumbled that even foreigners such as Lord Mountbatten were afforded greater respect in death. Bangladesh, however, paid grateful tribute to his part in the nation’s foundation.

He too might well have been disappointed that his obsequies were not grander. His last words were “I’m OK”, though he had rehearsed a better line nearly 37 years earlier. For death at least, the brave soldier had indeed shown himself “always ready”.