THE VOICE OF WORDS

 By M H Ahssan

The city could be hosting a trillion New Year bashes but Hyderabadis have opted for novel ways to ring in the new year. From attending meditation sessions at the stroke of midnight for a “peaceful’’ 2009, to hosting parties at home to beat the recession, denizens have no regrets giving high profile dos a miss this year.HNN reports

At the stroke of midnight on December 31, various pockets in the city would wake up to the lilting notes of not some Bollywood chartbusters but those of bhajans as many in the city are choosing to usher in the New Year on a sombre spiritual note. And, hold your breath, most of the participants are the young and the restless finding peace in a session of meditation for a “mental bath’’ they say they so badly need. Madhavi is one of them.

This Hyderabadi who swore by her rocking night life and the uber-cool new year bashes has turned a new leaf. Until last year, she went pub-hopping across the city, drowned herself in alcohol and danced to deafening music till she dropped. This year, she is giving it a miss. Not that she now sits on a moral high ground, but says she has chosen a more peaceful way of ringing in the new year. This year, she is accompanying her mother for a quiet midnight satsang and meditation session, being organised by a spiritual centre Dhayanapeetham.

Madhavi says she is aware that bhajans would replace hip-hop and a modest cake would greet its members instead of a toast at the New Year celebrations but she doesn’t mind. She is looking forward to this party like never before. Tried of waking up with a hangover on the first day of every year, several youngsters like Madhavi are now opting for such forms of celebration that they feel will help them begin their year with a fresh mind and positive energy.”It does not feel great to start the year on a drowsy note. You feel drained and even more stressful.

Meditation not only makes you feel more energetic but also decreases your level of stress,’’ says Anil Gowra a young businessman who has also decided to be meditating at midnight while his friends treat themselves to wine and shake a leg at a New Year bash. Deepika Bhogadhi, an engineer, too believes that starting the first day of the year rejuvenated after a meditation session makes much more sense than on a tired note. Call it a case of a new form of adventure that the young wish to try out this December 31 or a real need for ‘man ki shanti’, but these collective chants of ‘hari oms’ would indeed give the December 31 night a different feel altogether.

While some feel that such midnight workshops would help them cope with their stressful lives, there are others who decided to enroll for these sessions post the Mumbai terror strikes. With 2008 ending on a not so happy note, they feel that spending the last few minutes of the year calling for peace and harmony would perhaps help in assuring better times in 2009. “With so much disturbance around me, I do not feel like partying this year. Also, I wish to begin my year with a calm and relaxed mind,’’ says first year student Monica Sethi, who plans to attend the Art of Living workshop on New Year’s eve where members would chant shlokas, sing bhajans and meditate before they greet each other at the stroke of midnight.

Like Art of Living, several other organisations in the city are conducting such meditation programmes to usher in the New Year. While Dhyanahita has a prayer meeting followed by a “healing’’ session lined up for its members, Anand Aishwarya, another spiritual centre, plans to conduct a satsang wherein people would chant mantras and sing bhajans apart from meditating for peace of mind. Apart from the urge of beginning the year on a more sober note, people also cite health reasons and new year resolutions to stay away from booze and “polluting’’ thoughts to opt for such courses over cocktails. But the hope that ‘asanas’ bring peace, seems to have drawn most people.

“The whole idea of such sessions is to spread peace and harmony. People are fed up with the violence around and, therefore, are doing what they can to spread this message,’’ says Santosh Rao of Art of Living. “There is a bliss layer within everybody and once you touch it, you wish to reconnect with it all the time since it provides a deep degree of peace and happiness. This is what that drives these young people to such sessions,’’ says Vijaya Reddy, coordinator of Dhyanapeetham.

That the idea of ushering the New Year on a more spiritual note, post 26/11, is catching up is also evident from the multi-faith prayer meeting that is being organised by Apollo Hospital for the first time this year. Chaitanya and Awakening will be held between 11 pm and 12 midnight at Apollo hospitals for the staff and even outsiders. The sessions will include singing of hymns and bhajans, followed by an aarti and reading from various religious books.

“We decided to usher in the new year differently this time,’’ says Dr Hari Prasad, CEO, Apollo Hospitals, clearly reflecting the mood of a large number of people in the city.

By Swati Reddy

Come 2009, police will just be an SMS away. Citizens can send a short message service (SMS) to 9010100100 to beckon the men in khaki in case of an emergency.

Briefing the media, Hyderabad police commissioner B Prasada Rao said: “People are finding it difficult to access ‘100’. Though the caller hears the ring when he/she dials the number, the call was not landing at the control room, possibly due to technical problems,” Prasada Rao said.

“To avoid that, the SMS facility will be introduced. The moment the message is sent, operators at the control room will alert the concerned police station,” he added.

To a query on techie Mohammed Talha of Nadeem Colony, who was picked up by Maharashtra’s Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS), Prasada Rao said the case was investigated by the Maharastra police and they do not share investigation details.

“We only gave the requested assistance to ATS. Hyderabad police too questioned some people, but since Talha was working at Hi-Tec City, we transferred the investigation to Cyberabad police,” Prasada Rao said. He also said there was not much headway in the sensational Vikar Ahmed case. Ahmed fired on police personnel near a phone booth at IS Sadan and fled from the place. “We are still investigating the matter,” he added.

Though they could not nab a terror suspect, the Hyderabad police chief claimed the city police was capable of thwarting a Mumbai-style terrorist attack.

“A Greyhound team is already in the city and procurement of sophisticated weapons is also not a problem. Weapons will be procured under Megapolis,” Prasada Rao said.

He also reeled out achievements of the police force in 2008. Fatal accidents came down in 2008 when compared to previous year. According to him, 453 fatal accidents were recorded compared to 533 in the previous year. Similarly, 22 history-sheeters, 68 robbers and decoits were nabbed.

However, there was a consistent decrease in property recoveries.
In 2008, of Rs 21,64,44,137 property lost, they could recover property worth Rs 3,49,76,151 (16.15%). In 2007, property lost was Rs 13,93,97,961, recovered was Rs 4,57,50,080 (32.81%), while in 2006, the property lost was Rs 23,96,84,192 and recovery was Rs 11,70,92,995 (48.85%).

He said 99 surveillance cameras had been installed at various locations.

By Pratap Bhanu Mehta The most corrosive crisis a society faces is often not manifested as a dramatic political episode. It rather reveals itself in periodic outbreaks of senseless violence or grim reminders of a society losing its moral compass. Just the random perusal of news for a couple of days, rioting in Agra, violence in Dohna, inhumane torture of a petty offender in Bhagalpur, road rage, a child dead because of petty street clashes, increasing crime, the sordid goings-on in a Delhi school, were all reminders of just how fragile social order can be. Given the dramatic character of political violence in India — terrorism, Naxalism, communalism — should we really worry about outbursts of violence that traffic accidents occasion? And in each instance don’t we have a ready structural explanation for violence, a master narrative that explains it all? When the state has no outlet for legitimate grievances, violence will erupt. The surprise is not that we often have senseless violence without an object; the surprise is that we don’t have more of it. After the now already forgotten Nithari, can any news of an insidious sickness creeping on Indian society really surprise us? But we focus on side issues: the morality of sting operations, the failures of the state, but side-step the fundamental question: why is India becoming a society with a reputation of preying on its own children in the most appalling ways one can imagine? There is an unspoken dread enveloping urban India: a new freedom producing new vulnerability, a new sophistication accompanied by a loss of innocence, a new sense of aspiration accompanied by a greater sense of danger. Different types of violence have their own psychology and sociology. But there is a thread that connects seemingly disparate forms of violence that lurk under the surface of our existence. The first is our attitudes to them. The minute we encounter such violence a kind of containment strategy sets in. We control the meaning of these events, by explaining them in terms of some master narrative: the omissions of the state, the inherited inequalities of society or the depravations of tradition. There is some truth to these attributions. But the ease and frequency with which these are invoked suggests not so much a diagnosis but an avoidance strategy. We oscillate between thinking that this is a violence that always happens elsewhere on the one hand, and it is over-determined and inevitable on the other. Either way this violence becomes something that does not demand our intervention. The second thing this violence draws our attention to is just how attenuated our conceptions of social order have become. Societies are complex entities, held together not so much by a state but by an amalgam of attributes: mores, traditions, sensibilities, sympathies, taboos, reciprocities, even an aesthetic. In a society that is rapidly changing, these are all coming under immense stress. Violent crime is a topic of great discussion. But the sum total of public discourse on this focuses on three lines of inquiry: lament for an age when the lower classes were supposedly more obedient than violent, poor law enforcement by the state, or a generalised explosion of greed. Indian cities have had, by comparative standards, relatively lower rates of crime. The reasons for this are not entirely clear. Was it the spatial layout of Indian cities? Was it the relatively intact authority of the family? Was it the relative lack of conspicuous consumption? Was it a certain civic culture that gave cities a distinctive hue? Or was it a form of living that made our outlook on life less edgy? In libidinal matters we are, across small towns, becoming a society moving from a society premised on secrecy, repression and control to a society where knowledge, publicity and individual experimentation are going to increase. But will this new age of freedom and access, of knowledge and individuality simply produce a culture of selfishness, crudeness and fatuity or a culture of integrity, sophistication and discrimination? The pathologies of social convention cannot be a defence of the pathologies of freedom. If the traditional moral anchors for relationships are not tenable, what will be the new foundations for those relationships? Will these changes combine with a cult of instrumentalism to always make Eros a dangerous and poisoned chalice? It is fatuous to assume that the state can be rationalised and made powerful enough to protect us from the depredations that large-scale social transformation might bring. The reason these acts of violence are significant is that they are early warnings of many things: of the increasing alienation of urban existence, of the fact that without stronger moral barriers the line between pathology and liberation can be very thin, of unchanelled rage that does not quite know how to articulate itself, and that creates the possibility of violence waiting to be mobilised. A little bit more pressure, an economic downturn or even greater increases in inequality, could snap the fragile sense of self that makes cities hold on. We rightly take solace in the fact that India has been resilient, in the face of terrorist violence, material deprivation. But this faith in resilience is also a form of avoidance: it prevents us from asking what the great transformation of our times means for social relationships and a sense of the self. The focus on the state and economy is crucial. But they seldom on their own determine what the security or character of life and self is going to be like in any society. Despite the explosion of aspirations, and feverish activity, will we escape the charge that Muktibodh levelled against urbanising India decades ago: that it was a font of meaninglessness, disguised by divertissements? It would be premature to engage in pessimism. But the striking absence of self-reflection on emerging pathologies in society should worry us. Broken states can be fixed through collective action, economies can be energised through policy, but sick societies are harder to cure.

By M H AHSAN

About a fortnight before two blasts rocked Hyderabad on August 25, 2007, Lashkar-e-Tayeba (LeT) chief Hafiz Saeed told a gathering at Lahore that he has started a movement to occupy Muslim populated regions in India.

He said Pakistan must reclaim Muslim areas like J&K, Hyderabad, Junagarh, Munabao and West Bengal which, he said, was forcibly occupied by India in 1947. Saeed even released a new map of Pakistan incorporating these areas. A week before Saeed spoke, an al Qaeda video footage warned India of renewed terrorist attacks.

These two statements are not mere jihadi rhetoric, but a clear indication of how terrorists, now increasingly grouping under the overarching umbrella of al Qaeda across the world, are stepping up operations against India. The objective is not merely to create terror or create communal disturbances but generate a stronger support for the Islamist agenda of establishing a pan-Islamic arc of influence in Asia. 

There are quite a few other dots which need to be connected to see this bigger picture. The first dot is the growing alliance between jihadi groups operating from Pakistan and Bangladesh with ideologically extreme groups in India as investigations  into recent terrorist attacks and the chain of arrests and seizures in different parts of India, particularly rural Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka, have revealed.

This development signals a new phase of terrorism within India where international terrorist groups like LeT and Harkat-ul Jihadi-e-Islami (HuJI)-and through them al Qaeda-are likely to exert influence over a small and diffused group of individuals to take up arms against the State in the name of religion.

These groups are small and work fairly independently of their patron groups by networking among themselves, tapping into each other’s resources and outsourcing logistics to criminal syndicates. These factors help such groups, rooted in local communities as sleeper cells or agents to escape police scrutiny.

What has changed over the years is the profile of terror recruits-the second dot-who are no longer the bearded, madrassa-type jihadis. A considerable number of them are well educated-doctors and engineers, and adept in exploiting latest communication technologies.

This means these groups which can tap into the world wide web of terror which has not only become a virtual university of jihad but also an overarching umbrella of faith, bringing all the faithful together on a single cyber platform dominated by al Qaeda and its ideology. 

There are other equally significant changes in the objectives of these groups which form the third crucial dot. The year long-series of bomb blasts and attacks in Delhi, Varanasi, Ayodhya, Bangalore and Mumbai beginning October 2005 were carried out with the objectives of creating communal violence in Delhi and communally-volatile Uttar Pradesh and target economic centres like Mumbai and Bangalore. The overall agenda was to create a climate of fear at a time when India was being seen as an emerging economic power. 

Add the fourth dot-the Islamist agenda of driving the Indian Muslims towards the al Qaeda ideology by targeting Muslims as witnessed in attacks in Hyderabad (twice), Malegaon  and the Samjhauta Express in Haryana.

There is a widespread suspicion among the Muslim community that at least the Malegaon and Samjhauta Express bombing were carried out by Hindu extremist organisations. Since these cases remain unsolved, the terror attacks in Hyderabad have only fuelled such suspicions.

The fifth dot is Hyderabad’s history as the launching pad of jihad. The first set of jihadis, post-Babri Masjid demolition, had set up their operational centre at Hyderabad under the banner of the Indian Muslim Mohammedi Mujahideen (IMMM), an Indian branch of the Muslim Defence Force, an fundamentalist outfit, founded in Saudi Arabia by Abu Hamsa alias Abdul Bari Hamsa of Hyderabad.

The outfit was led by Azam Ghauri, who along with Abdul Karim Tunda and Dr Jalees Ansari, carried out a series of train blasts in north India to take revenge for the demolition of Babri Majid. All three were the first operatives of LeT in India.

The sixth dot is the changes that took place in the jihadi groups after 9/11. Under intense pressure from the US, many of these groups, operating from Pakistan, were either shut down or cut to size, or forced to change their operational plans. Many of these groups changed their operational bases and began outsourcing their activities to smaller groups which were not under the global scanner.

One such group is Harkat-ul-Jihad-e-Islami (HuJI) and its various clones which operate from Bangladesh. These groups are now working together, in small, diffused groups to target India. The Hyderabad attack is only a part of this renewed attempt to further the Islamist agenda of a Muslim conclave in Asia.

By M H AHSAN 

Intelligence agencies are frantically trying to unravel their new nightmare, which goes by the name of Harkat-ul-Jihad-e-Islami

In 1998 when intelligence agencies started combing the heights of Kargil after Indian troops had reclaimed it they found several documents and letters written in Bengali. At that time the significance of their find did not sink in. 

But now, over the last two years, not only is the significance sinking in with telling effect, the hierarchy of terror outfits is also getting clearer. There are two versions of Harkat-ul-Jihad-e-Islami (HuJI) - the Pakistani version, on which the agencies have always trained their spotlight on, and the Bangladeshi one, which has emerged out of the shadows with devastating force.

“HuJI has been successful in India due to local participation,” say a senior official of Research and Analysis Wing (RAW).

Born during the Afghan Mujahideen operations, HuJI was never expected to be a threat to India. Taking a leaf out of BPOs

Ever since President Pervez Musharraf joined the US War on Terror after the 9/11 attacks, the Pakistani intelligence establishment has been under immense pressure to clean up their act. The emergence of HuJI-Bangladesh can be traced back to this pressure. Most of the actual operations being carried out by HuJI-Pakistan were siphoned off to HuJI-Bangladesh.

The transfer of operations was followed by funds.

“It was as if Pakistan had taken a leaf out of Indian BPOs. The cost of carrying out an operation from Bangladesh was significantly cheaper,” an intelligence officer told HNN. “Everything from raw materials - ammonium nitrate, triggers and RDX - to personnel (read jihadis) was cheaper.” 

But the change of base also meant a change in focus. The Pakistani intelligence establishment reduced its focus on Jammu and Kashmir. While everyone from the international community to the Indian Army rejoiced in the declining militant activity in the state, the new targets became India’s financial and economic heart - Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bangalore and Chennai.

“The Pakistani intelligence establishment has changed its strategy. It now realises that the only way to hobble India is to hit it where it hurts most - economy,” says a top intelligence official.

Local muscle is deadly
HuJI has probably the largest number of non-Kashmiri supporters from within India. HuJI’s stunning attacks have been mounted by local recruits. “HuJI changed dynamics of terrorism. They minimised the role of foreigners, recruited locals, trained them in terror tactics,” an official says.

Investigators believe among HuJI’s most significant recruits is Shahid Bilal- key suspect behind the recent Hyderabad blasts. Bilal is suspected to be involved in all three attacks in Hyderabad - suicide attack on headquarters of STF in 2005, attack on Mecca Masjid and last week’s blasts.

Cog in global terror network
A key man behind HuJI-Bangladesh was Mufti Abdul Hannan, an Afghan veteran who had education in Uttar Pradesh’s Deoband, one of the world’s largest Islamic schools imparting training in the ultra-conservative Wahabi beliefs. 

“Today HuJI seems to have internalised and successfully executed the strategy of global jihad networks of Europe, Iraq and other areas. They are making bombs out of chemicals commonly available,” says an official. “This has significantly brought down the risk of an operation.” 

The greatest success of HuJI comes from the fact that they have able to create their India cells-where the brain and the foot soldiers are all mostly Indians. “It is their success, and our biggest challenge,” says an official who has spent a long period in Kashmir through the 1990s.

By HNN Special Investigation Team

It’s a shocking tale that exposes the dark underbelly of Capital’s adoption market.

 

A HNN Special Investigation reveals how a placement agency located in Shakoorpur area of West Delhi forces minor girls into conceiving and later sells the babies for big money.

 

The Special Investigation Team (SIT) had information that the agency brought girls below 18 years of age from Jharkhand and West Bengal and made them work as domestic helps in Delhi.

 

But that’s only half the story.

 

The minor girls were forced to conceive and their babies were sold off through agents.

Following a tip-off, two decoys of HNN Special Investigation team followed up on the case and went to the placement agency - Adivasi Seva Samiti Service - posing as a couple wanting to buy an infant.

 

The agency is run by one Vinod and his wife Preeti. HNN spoke with Preeti first. Here’s an excerpt from the conversation

 

HNN: How much do you take per baby?

Preeti: We sold the last baby for Rs 10000

 

While trying to fix a price for a baby, with Preeti, the team met Sukhmui, a young girl who had delivered a baby 20 days ago. Basanti, the midwife who helped deliver the baby, was also present. She and Preeti had differing takes on Sukhmui’s age.

 

Here’s an excerpt of a conversation with them, shot on a hidden cam.

 

Basanti: She must be 16-17 years old

Preeti: No, i think she’s older.

Basanti: I’ve delivered her baby. I know she’s a minor

 

The girl herself was unclear about when exactly she conceived the child. “It happened in my village,” is all that she recalls.

By M H Ahsan

Confronted with stiff opposition to the US-India nuclear-cooperation deal from the supporting parties of the left, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s minority government has initiated talks with communist leaders to create a “mechanism” to resolve mutual differences.

However, the talks have not yet produced agreement on the mechanism, other than acceptance that it should be a committee of political leaders that can invite scientists and other experts for consultations. Nor is it clear that the government will put on hold further steps for completing and implementing the deal, as the left demands.

The committee will discuss objections to the nuclear deal raised by the left on the ground that it will draw India into the US strategic orbit. It will also examine to what extent a law on nuclear cooperation with India, passed last December by the US Congress, called the Henry J Hyde Act, meets India’s concerns about sovereign control over its nuclear activities.

Unless agreement is reached on these thorny issues, the left has warned of “serious political consequences” if Manmohan’s United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government goes ahead with deal. The left-wing parties’ 59 members of Parliament are crucial for the government’s survival in the 543-member Lower House.

It is not clear whether the left will go to the extent of withdrawing support from the UPA, let alone vote against it and topple it. Under India’s constitution, an international treaty or agreement does not need Parliament’s approval for ratification. A cabinet resolution is enough.

But withdrawal of support by the left would seriously weaken the Congress Party-led UPA and possibly lead to elections well before the Manmohan Singh government completes its five-year term in May 2009.

Talks on setting up the “mechanism”, being conducted between the government and each of the four main left-wing parties, are expected to be completed in the next few days. Whatever their outcome, it is plain that the fate of the nuclear deal in India hangs on its domestic politics.

Meanwhile, indications of qualified support for the deal have come from an unexpected quarter: the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the main opposition group.

On Sunday, BJP veteran and leader of the opposition L K Advani told the influential Indian Express newspaper that his party would have no objection to the nuclear deal if the government amends domestic laws to ensure India’s strategic autonomy and continuity in supplies of nuclear fuel for Indian reactors. Advani has been keen to distance the traditionally pro-US BJP from the left, which opposes a “strategic partnership” between the United States and India.

He criticized the left for its “anti-Americanism” and said: “So far as the BJP is concerned, we have no objection to a strategic partnership with the US. This includes the forthcoming joint naval exercises.”

Starting on Tuesday, the Indian Navy is to participate in large-scale exercises off India’s east coast, involving 20 ships from the US, Australia, Japan, Singapore and India. The US alone is sending in 13 warships, and the left has decided to protest against them strongly.

Ironically, what might get the BJP to support the deal is a formula proposed by a Communist Party (Marxist - CPM) leader. Under this formula, the Indian government would insure itself against a sudden termination of nuclear cooperation by the US or other countries by enacting a “domestic Hyde Act”. This would prohibit the transfer of imported nuclear equipment or material out of India if such transfer affects the continuous operation of Indian reactors.

Such an arrangement would take care of the Indian concern that the US might suddenly stop nuclear supplies if India conducts a nuclear test, and that Washington would have the right to demand the return of nuclear equipment and material exported to India. This is mandated by domestic US laws, including the Hyde Act.

“This is nuclear nationalism, which links national sovereignty with the possession of mass-destruction weapons and one’s unhampered ability to amass them,” said M V Ramana, an independent nuclear expert based in Bangalore. “This is an unhealthy, even dangerous, doctrine. But unfortunately, it has become the dominant public discourse in India. Even the left does not demarcate itself sharply from it.”

India’s left-wing parties criticize the nuclear deal primarily on two grounds: it will undermine independence in the making of foreign and security policy through India’s strategic embrace of the US, and it will erode India’s autonomy in running its nuclear program, including the freedom to test nuclear weapons.

It is only peripherally or in passing that the Indian left mentions the nuclear deal for its likely negative regional and global impact on disarmament and peace, and for its promotion of nuclear power, a highly controversial form of energy generation.

“This is a deeply contradictory position,” said Ramana. “The left alone among India’s political parties condemned the 1998 nuclear blasts and demanded that India and Pakistan roll back their weapons programs. The left parties also oppose further nuclear testing. So it’s sad that they should now pander to nuclear nationalism by criticizing the nuclear deal on grounds of sovereignty.”

However, it is not clear that the left-wing parties will carry out the implicit threat to withdraw support from the UPA if the alliance pushes ahead with the deal. Collectively, the left’s leadership is under twin pressures. The smaller leftist parties, including the Communist Party of India, the Forward Bloc and the Revolutionary Socialist Party, pull in the direction of ending support to the UPA on grounds of foreign and economic policy.

There is pressure from the opposite direction from the left’s dominant party, the CPM, in particular its West Bengal unit, which is turning conservative through its embrace of neo-liberal economics.

“The Bengal leadership enjoys a cozy relationship with the UPA and does not want to upset the apple cart,” said Rajat Roy, a Kolkata-based political analyst and keen observer of the left, which has ruled the state for fully 30 years.

“The Left Front did brilliantly in the 2006 state legislature elections, winning 235 of 294 seats. It knows that its tally of votes and seats is likely to decline in a mid-term election. It wants to avert such an eventuality right now,” Roy said.

If national elections were held now, opinion polls have forecast a decline in the number of leftist members of Parliament, from the current 59 to between 39 and 43. This is likely to have a sobering impact on the left-wing leadership.

Equally important, the UPA has quietly, if temporarily, shelved its plans to negotiate a special safeguards (inspections) protocol with the International Atomic Energy Agency in September, when its plenary meets in Vienna. Instead, the government will take up the issue in November, thus giving itself more time to work out a compromise with the left.

Manmohan has also declined a special invitation by US President George W Bush to a meeting at his ranch in Crawford, Texas. This is meant to signal that his government is prepared to make some distance from Washington.

However, uncertainties remain. Will the left be satisfied with a “domestic Hyde Act” or insist on other assurances? Will the UPA suspend further steps in completing the deal, and for how long? What is clear is that the primary determinants of the deal’s fate will be domestic.

By Siddharth Srivastava

It is a market expected to grow to US$100 billion in the near future, and Indian firms want to reap some of the benefits. The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) under the Kyoto Protocol allows richer countries to trade their emission-reduction targets with developing countries by buying carbon credits earned by the latter for projects reducing emission of greenhouse gases, those suspected of accumulating in the Earth’s atmosphere and trapping the sun’s heat, contributing to global warming.

Recent estimates predict that uncontrolled carbon emissions could cost the global economy more than $200 billion annually by 2030 unless the pollution levels are controlled. Environmental group Greenpeace has said that shifting to renewable energy and reducing carbon emissions could save Southeast Asia $80 billion annually.

Indeed, with the Western world (read Europe and Canada, not the United States yet) looking at the CDM seriously, Indian firms do not want to lose out on the business opportunity due to investments in clean technology.

Recently, an Indian firm won the single largest issuance of carbon credits by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which awarded 5.4 million carbon credits to two projects owned by India’s JSW Steel. One project was issued 4 million carbon credits, the single biggest credit.

The Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry has said that Indian companies may earn almost $4 billion through carbon-credit sales in the near future.

Institutional mechanism
Indeed, an institutional mechanism is quickly emerging in India to take advantage of CDM. This is critical. Given the vast country that is India, it is essential that an organized framework reaches the grassroots level where numerous green projects could be eligible under CDM.

This month, the country’s largest lender and oldest bank, the State Bank of India (SBI), tied up with three entities to provide a comprehensive framework for industries to take advantage of CDM projects. State-owned SBI has the largest rural network in the world and exists in places where no private Indian or foreign bank will reach for some time to come. The entities that the bank has tied up with are Pune-based MITCON Consultancy Services, Ecosecurities India Pvt Ltd, and Cantor CO2E India Pvt Ltd.

“SBI proposes to provide a single-point delivery of services related to carbon credits/CDM under the Kyoto Protocol to its customers,” SBI chairman O P Bhatt said. These would include advisory services and value-added products such as securitization of carbon-credit receivables, delivery guarantees and escrow mechanism for carbon credits, apart from finance to implement CDM projects, he said.

“With so many potential buyers and sellers in this market, counter-party risk can become a key area in carbon-credits trading, and SBI, with its wide Indian and international presence, can play a major role here,” he said.

London-based EcoSecurities is a global leader in developing and trading carbon credits and has been expanding its presence in India. It structures and guides projects for reduction of greenhouse-gas emission, acting as the principal intermediary between the projects and the buyers of carbon credits.

CDM consultancy is already a big business in India, with revenues rising substantially over the past couple of years. Following in the footsteps of SBI, India’s largest private-sector bank, ICICI Bank Ltd, too announced that it has signed a memorandum of understanding with MITCON to service firms engaged in the CDM business.

“With global warming becoming a concern worldwide and the industry sensing the need to move on to CDM and green projects, this memorandum will be our platform to facilitate SMEs [small and medium-sized enterprises] to make this movement toward such projects,” Sanjeev Mantri, general manager of ICICI Bank, said in a statement.

Last December, the Industrial Development Bank of India Ltd (IDBI) entered a non-exclusive memorandum with Washington-headquartered International Finance Corp, the private-sector arm of the World Bank, to assist Indian companies jointly in CDM projects.

The two financial intermediaries have also been seeking to help companies realize the value of the carbon credits by selling them in global markets.

IDBI has a pool of industrial clients that can seek advice. However, it does not have the kind of exhaustive bridge SBI could be capable of extending. Last October, IDBI entered a similar non-exclusive memo with MITCON and later Germany-based KfW Bankengruppe.

Apart from the banking system, other forums are likely to emerge to help the growth of CDM projects in India.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has spoken about the need for India to tap the CDM potential. The federal government has constituted the National CDM Authority to evaluate, review and encourage projects. Many government projects such as the Delhi Metro are looking at the green option to earn carbon revenues.

India’s federal Parliament should be looking to legislate within this year whether to permit the Multi-Commodities Exchange (MCX) to trade carbon credits, the bourse’s joint managing director Lamon Rutten said in an interview recently. “We hope to get the approval,” Rutten said.

The permission to trade carbon credits would enable Mumbai-based MCX to proceed with establishing a platform to buy and sell certified emission reductions (CERs). Countries such as China, Australia, Singapore and New Zealand are looking at various options related to a carbon exchange. Trade in voluntary emission-reduction credits is spreading with new exchange-based initiatives in these countries.

Expectations high
Since carbon trading took off in India two years ago, domestic companies have earned about $500 million from carbon-credit sales, according to consulting firm Ernst & Young. India has cornered nearly 43% of CERs issued so far by the CDM executive board, the highest under the Kyoto Protocol. Seventeen percent of the CERs have been issued to China.

But the expected average annual income from registered projects through 2012 has China (44%) far ahead of India (15%), although India, with 259 projects, leads China (101) in the number of registered projects.

Indian expectations continue to be high. Recently, New Delhi has asked industry to bunch up CDM projects that can be traded in the current $30 billion global carbon-credit market. Because of the small size of CDM projects, Indian companies are unable to cash in the carbon credits, because of procedural costs.

SBI has said analysts peg the global carbon-trading market at $100 billion by 2010, and the Indian carbon market has the potential to supply 30-50% of the projected global market of 700 million CERs by 2012.

According to the director of the Environment and Forest Planning Commission, S K Panigrahi, Orissa, West Bengal and Jharkhand together can earn CERs of Rs10 billion ($244 million) by 2012 if they take to CDM. Orissa alone is capable of earning Rs2.5 billion in the way of CERs, he said. A number of coal-based as well as steel and aluminum units are being set up in eastern India.

By Mahima Kaul

It may not be fashionable to say it, but the Hindi soap operas — Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi, for instance — actually might be doing us some good. Now if you are like me and flip through channels, hear overly dramatic music and change — don’t. Cable TV might be succeeding where government policy didn’t. Changing the way Indian women see their world. How exactly does that happen? First off, this isn’t new. Back in the days when the public service broadcaster — Doordarshan (DD) — was launched, one of the guiding thoughts behind it was that the media can actually be used as a tool for development. It’s a simple premise. The visual image leaves a lasting imprint in our minds. And especially for those who cannot read, television is an effective tool for communication. Wilbur Schramm, author of Mass Media and National Development, was the proponent of this — what we now term ‘development communication’. Instead of the government forcing changes in lifestyle, the population would become aware of a need that was not satisfied by their present behaviour.

And then they would borrow behaviour that would come closer to meeting those needs. And so based on soaps in Latin America, Hum Log was the first Indian soap to try out this concept, with a good measure of success. Post-liberalisation, TV channels have been flourishing. Some 112 million households in India own a television. Of those, 61 per cent have cable or satellite service, according to the National Readership Studies Council, 2006. And the casual observer may think that the role of educating through entertainment has been relegated to DD alone. To its credit, DD is living up to its mandate. Health shows like Kalyani, and their positive effects on rural populations, have been documented by external agencies. And now, it appears, cable TV is not too far behind. A new study by Robert Jensen of Brown University and Emily Oster of the University of Chicago has revealed that cable TV has had a distinctively helpful effect on women in rural India. Among their findings, conducted over a three-year period in five states (Bihar, Goa, Haryana, Tamil Nadu and Delhi), is that gender attitudes have been positively affected. Women don’t think their husband beating them is as acceptable now, son preference has gone down, female school enrolment has gone up, and birth spacing has increased. Now, there may be other factors contributing to these changes, no doubt, but one thing is for certain. Soap operas are changing the way women see their role in society and in families, and TV has a part to play in it. And changing expectations is the first step to changing reality. Examples. When Tulsi (of Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi) finds out her son raped a woman, she sides with the victim. In the end, she shoots her son. It may be a tad dramatic (we are talking about a soap opera, after all), but she stands up for what is right.

In Saloni Ka Safar, a girl’s complexion is symbolic of the Indian bias against dark skin. You are allowed to raise your eyebrow at this point. Really, you say, are those overdressed women in the prime-time Hindi soap opera world are changing rural India? Yes. And you know why? Because, for the majority of the country, television is the window to the world. And while the city folk may want to ape the lavish lifestyles of their on-screen heroes — some people partly blame the big fat Indian wedding phenomenon on these serials — rural women admire their independence. Think about it. At their basest levels, studies have shown that exposure to television in rural areas have had an effect on latrine building and fan usage. And even more amazing is a mother welcoming a girl child because she learnt on television that she too can grow up to be a powerful, independent woman. And that education is key, so she sends her daughter to school with her brothers. But what is it about chiffon-clad city women in particular that appeals? Because underneath the make-up and diamonds, the problems are common. Rich yes, but the women of Indian soaps are deeply traditional. Some work, but many are full-time homemakers. The problems — inner wheelings and dealings of joint families — strike a chord. They go to the temple, hold havans, they even observe Karva Chauth. And millions all over the country cheer them on as they fight for a place of respect within the family. That’s just it. A click of a button and they take a walk around the world to ease their troubled minds.

By M H Ahsan

For nations, it matters what happens to them; but the course of their history is often determined less by what happened and more by how they reacted. What is happening to India on the terrorist front is bad, but what is worse is the way we are reacting to it. The worst reaction of a government to such a serious national challenge would be to underplay it, divert the discourse from core issues to the peripherals. Asserting that all is well and nothing needs to be changed, emphasising maintenance of social harmony as the core concern, complimenting people for bravely suffering losses and returning to normal lives, talking about human rights and protection of minorities — these are all laudable objectives. No one disputes them, but they do not address the core issues.

In the face of a threat as serious as this, the national focus should be on: how serious is the threat; its long and short-term implications; our capacities to counter the threat, both in policy formulation and policy execution; and how to address the deficiencies. This would involve considering ways to leverage civil society, media, the scientific community, religious leaders to the best national advantage; ways to neutralise the fast-growing domestic base of terrorism, including availability of hardware and human resource, collaborative linkages of the terrorists with organised crime, gun runners, drug syndicates, hawala operators, subversive radical groups, and how to break the nexus. Debate on the adequacy of the country’s laws, judicial administration, security systems and doctrines, etc, in the light of assessed threats is also important.

The right discourse should also centre on our policy options vis-à-vis countries and groups involved in terrorist incidents in India. This is not happening, and that’s the tragedy. It is not happening because a basic requirement is missing: a political culture that can subordinate electoral and other political considerations to the nation’s supreme sovereign interests. This requires the political will and ability to carry the whole country together. If the nation fails to do so, it may face many Hyderabads, and worse. That Hyderabad is on the terrorist radar has been well known for quite some time. Here are a few illustrative events that could have served as alerts to undertake surgical operations, covert and overt, to sanitise the city, whatever the cost.

On April 1, 2007, an ISI agent, Maqsood Ahmed, was arrested while recruiting youths for sabotage and espionage activities. Neither was he thoroughly interrogated nor was follow-up action taken. On May 20, 2007, Mohamed Sayeed was arrested by the West Bengal police from Jharkhand’s Jantara district. He gave copious details of his links with terrorist modules in Hyderabad. On May 25, 2007, Shoaib Faqruddin Jagirdar, muttawali (custodian) of a local dargah, was arrested for sending RDX and youths from Jalna in Maharashtra to Hyderabad for terrorist actions. He was reportedly released under political pressure.

On June 15, 2007, Mohamed Abdul Sattar, an ISI agent, confessed he had received armed training in Pakistan along with Shahid who was responsible for the May 18 Hyderabad blasts. On August 12, 2007, the Aurangabad police seized 29 kg of ammonium nitrate explosive, abandoned by a man who came from Secunderabad (near Hyderabad). If we have to win the battle against terror, political considerations, communal pressures, administrative and police lethargy, and a weak legal-judicial regime will have to be negated. Let us not sugarcoat our response, like announcing that India and Pakistan as victims of terrorism are in the same league, lest we sent ambiguous signals to India’s enemies. It is a myth that terrorists strike anywhere, any time and against any target. Had that been so, they would have caused havoc not just in India.

Terrorists strike where their intentions and capabilities meet the opportunities. The success of counter-terrorism lies in degrading their capabilities, forcing them to change their intentions and denying them opportunities to strike. We appear to be failing on all three counts. Their extended capabilities are obvious by their spreading the arc of violence to cover almost the entire country. The fact that masterminds and critical perpetrators of all the recent terrorist depredations remain by and large unidentified is a matter of concern. This brings the deterrence threshold down. There is no change in the intentions of those within and outside the country who seek to bleed India, appeasement within and peace parleys outside notwithstanding.

We have also not been able to deny them the opportunities. All these infirmities can be corrected only through an integrated strategic and tactical action plan aimed at empowering and enabling security agencies, strengthening our legal-judicial response regime, upgrading intelligence, and complementing our defensive regime with defensive offence capabilities. Besides the government and its security agencies, civil society has a seminal role in this. The nation has not been able to produce a powerful ideological movement within the Muslim community to counter the radicals and deprive them of religious legitimacy within the community.

The last few years have witnessed alarming growth of Salafism and Wahabism at the cost of the indigenous variant of Islam, which is more tolerant and accommodative. Funding to such organisations from outside the country also has to be stopped, if need be, by further strengthening our laws on the subject and their implementation. India’s neighbourhood, particularly Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan, must be understood. Fundamentalist forces have acquired strengths, resources and capabilities to survive and strike on their own strength. They have global collaborative linkages, sustainable channels of funding, access to modern technology and an unending stream of jihadis keen to kill and die.

The global growth of Islamic radicalism, proximity of jihadi epicentres close to Indian borders and the tilting of some sections of Muslims within the country pose real problems. The imported variety of terrorism whose planning, infrastructure and resources are of foreign origin will continue to haunt us for quite some time. The current phase of terrorism has a marked Bangladeshi dimension, closely linked to illegal immigration. Most of the recent cases are linked to Harkat-ul-Jihad-e Islami, which operates from Bangladesh, where it has an extensive network. Al-Qaeda’s linkages with HUJI are old and intimate with total ideological convergence. Al-Qaeda is out-sourcing terror through franchised groups, who enjoy local advantages and can raise their own resources and operate as stand-alone entities. A special action plan needs to be formulated to contain HUJI’s entrenchment.

All this will happen if we bring the discourse on the right track and set priorities right. We need to do a quick VED analysis focusing on the vitals, keeping a watch on the essentials and leaving the desirables till the vitals have been achieved and essentials addressed. For those who govern, let political interests, at best, fall in the category of desirables.