The Hindu Imp. News Feb. 13th 2012

8/3/2019 The Hindu Imp. News Feb. 13th 2012

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THE HINDU

Imp. News

Feb.13th

2012

Page 1

New Maldivian Cabinet sworn in:

Former President Mohamed Nasheed displayed admirable restraint as the new President

Waheed Hassan finally got his act together, named a new Cabinet, and embarked on a

Himalayan task of making the national unit government work. Even as the unity mantra

began reverberating in the corridors of power in Male, it was very clear that the country has

been divided: there is now a pro-Nasheed population and an anti-Nasheed population (which is

being seen, by some quarters, as people who are pro-Gayoom).

A diva dies:

In the 1980s and '90s, every schoolgirl who ever ascended a competition stage to showcase her

vocal chops sought refuge in the Whitney Houston oeuvre. Houston, the 48-year-old American

R&B star who regularly stormed the pop charts and who died on Saturday from undisclosed

causes, was to the Michael Jackson generation what Aretha Franklin was to the Elvis Presley era

a melismatic counterpoint to the syllabic, staccato intonations of dance-ready pop. Has any

single alphabet crested over as many notes as the one that inaugurated I Will Always Love You?

That smash from The Bodyguard the 1992 feature film that was Houston's first;it was

originally a Dolly Parton ballad, written and recorded in the 1970s. It became Houston'ssignature song. Houston's death came just before the Grammy Awards were to celebrate the

best of last year's music. At least, they won't have to search very hard for a number to honour

her with. They just have to look towards her signature song.

Three Indian nationals charged with attempt to murder Praveen:

Three Indian nationals in their twenties have been charged with the attempted murder of

Praveen Reddy, the 26-year-old university student from Hyderabad, who was stabbed on

Friday, and is battling for his life in a London hospital. Identified as Mareshwar Arava, 25, Sai

Kishore Balguri, 25, and Nishanth Puttapaka, 23, all the three were arrested from the same East

London address where Praveen lived and where the police believe he was stabbed. They willbe produced in a magistrates' court on Monday. Police sources sought to highlight their

nationality to scotch speculation in the Indian media that Praveen was a victim of a racist

attack. We are not treating the attack as racially motivated, a Scotland Yard spokesman said.





EDITORIAL

T is for trade in India-Pakistan ties:

Commerce Minister Anand Sharma is leading an 80-strong business delegation to Pakistan this

week to advance what has been a remarkable turnaround in bilateral economic ties over thelast year. In April 2011, both governments agreed on a structured process to promote trade.

They intensified senior official contact, consulted experts and chambers of commerce on ways

to address sector-specific and non-tariff barriers, encouraged greater business-to-business

interaction and set to work on improving the trading infrastructure at Wagah (due to be

complete in a couple of months time). A liberal visa regime for businesspersons is reportedly in

the works and there have been discussions on petroleum and power trade.

The Indian middle class acquired a greater familiarity with Pakistan's internal crises, owing to

increasing media coverage of the series of terrorist attacks on markets, shrines and Pakistan

Army targets. And sections of the Indian strategic community discerned changes in the Pakistan

Army calculus as its relations with Washington deteriorated rapidly after Osama bin Laden's

killing in May. Sceptics in Delhi began coming round to the view that Rawalpindi may, out of

self-interest, back improvements in relations with India, at least on the trade front. All of this

incrementally helped Dr. Singh win the domestic debate on the merits of continuing dialogue

despite the lack of movement on the Mumbai trials in Rawalpindi.

Islamabad is wary about India training an increasing number of Afghan National Army troops, as

agreed under the Strategic Partnership Agreement with Kabul. There are concerns in Islamabad

that New Delhi will develop an Afghan army with an Indian mindset. India fears that Pakistan

will ultimately succeed in securing a place for its Taliban and Haqqani network clients in the

dispensation that will ultimately emerge at Kabul or push those actors towards confrontationwith India's traditional non-Pashtun allies if peace talks fail. India and Pakistan will thus wait for

the fog of war (and peacemaking) in Afghanistan to clear before deciding to address other

contested issues of Kashmir and Siachen.

India is keen on picking up from informal agreements reached in the Satinder Lambah-Tariq

Aziz back channel talks during the Musharraf years, which were based on the principles of soft

borders, self-governance, demilitarisation and joint management. But in an effort to distance

itself from the Musharraf legacy, the Gilani-led PPP regime disavows the so-called four point

formula' on grounds that the former President did not secure domestic support for his ideas,

which they reckon is key for such a totemic issue in Pakistan. Perhaps wiser by the Indo-Pak

back-channel experience, India and China have recently agreed to prepare a jointly agreed

record of boundary-related talks held over the years between NSA Shivshankar Menon and

Chinese State Councillor Dai Bingguo to serve as the starting point for future talks with the

latter's successor.





The best way out:

This was a legal battle he could never have won. General V.K. Singh was determined to prove

when he was actually born a matter of fact. The Supreme Court, on the other hand, was

interested in how his age should be determined as per service matters a matter of

interpretation. As a result, the raft of documents, including a birth certificate and a schoolleaving certificate, which conclusively establish that General Singh was born on May 10, 1951 as

he insists became irrelevant in the case. What was germane was that he was shown as being

born a year earlier in the official service record an anomaly that was not set right. General

Singh had raised this issue within the Army and with the civilian authorities in 2007. But what

apparently went against him was an acknowledgement, made reluctantly and under some

pressure, that 1950 could be accepted as his year of birth before he was made GOC-in-C

(Eastern Command).

The bench observed: Wise people are those who move with the wind. We are more concerned

with the morale of the army and the right message should go from here 13 lakh army

personnel are watching this court. The Court must have been aware of the implications of

making an exception for General Singh on the age issue. In a system where promotions and

retirements are determined substantially by date of birth, doing so would have encouraged

others to seek changes in their dates of birth.

Analysts say that Facebook is aiming for a far greater offering than the $5 billion planned

initially. Its IPO could well be the largest by any company, bigger than Google's in 2004 and

Netscape's a decade earlier. Its valuation could be somewhere in the region of $75 to $100

billion, at which point Facebook would be much bigger than many long-established American

companies including Abbot Laboratories, Goldman Sachs and Ford. Mind-boggling as this scale

is, it suggests that stock markets in the U.S., though weighed down by macroeconomicconcerns, are still willing to reward exceptional players.

Facebook, started in a Harvard dormitory room less than eight years ago, says it has 845 million

users worldwide. Its prospectus sheds some light on how its meteoric run has turned it into a

formidable money making machine. Quite unlike other Silicon Valley start ups which have seen

plenty of growth but meagre revenues, Facebook recorded a revenue of $3.7 billion last year on

which it earned an amazing $1 billion. Its free cash flow rose from $190 billion in 2010 to $470

billion the next year, while its shareholders' equity increased from $2.2 billion to $4.9 billion

during the same period. The public offer will make millionaires out of its employees and existing

investors and its already wealthy CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who will retain a 28.7 per cent stake,even wealthier.





OP ED

Dumping a democrat in the Maldives:

In solitary confinement for about two years during Maumoon Abdul Gayoom's 25-year-long

dictatorship in the Maldives that ended with free and fair elections in late 2008, prisonerMohammed Nasheed was given one book to read by a considerate jailor. It turned out to be Raj

Thapar's All These Years , the story of a woman and her husband, Romesh Thapar, both very

much part of the inner power circle around Indira Gandhi, and a sensitive chronicling of the

denouement of that power structure.

Clearly, this is a moment in the history of the Maldives with a population of 3,20,000 strewn

across 1,200 islands when it matters whose side you are on. You could argue, with an

eloquent shrug of your shoulders, that the ongoing power struggle between the newly

appointed President Mohamed Waheed Hasan and former President Nasheed is purely an

internal matter of the Maldivians.

Or you could ask if India has misread the ongoing political struggle in the heart of the Indian

Ocean, for the second time in the last four years. The first time was when India's former High

Commissioner to the Maldives, A.K. Pandey, sent home reports on the eve of the 2008 elections

that Nasheed and his Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) were hardly a force and that India, a

rising regional power, must be pragmatic and continue to support the still-powerful Gayoom

and his outfit. But as the MDP grew in size and force, India swiftly changed tack and A.K. Pandey

was soon packed off and in his place was brought D.M. Mulay, who has handled the Maldives

with deft grace these last few years.

The speed with which the largest democracy in the world abandoned, by all accounts, theyoungest democracy in the world has left several people terribly bewildered. Was this the

result of an accumulated pragmatism that runs freely in the heart of New Delhi's foreign policy

establishment these days, especially as Foreign Minister S.M. Krishna is widely considered to be

an absentee figure in this part of South Block?

But New Delhi has already decided that Waheed's government is a legitimate one and that

Nasheed's crisis is largely one of his own making. Government sources say that Nasheed was

repeatedly asked by High Commissioner Mulay, even a few hours before he resigned, whether

he needed any assistance from India, and Nasheed said no. As delegations from the U.S., the

Commonwealth and the European Union set up camp in Male to figure a way out of the crisis,

the world is looking to India to lead. It has all the credentials to do so in fact, some parts of

Lakshadweep even speak Dhivehi , the national language of the Maldives especially if it

believes that the Maldives is a part of its South Asian sphere of influence.





Will Brazil follow India's Rafale bet?-

In a country where defence policy has traditionally not been a key aspect of overall foreign

policy, seeing a former powerful Foreign Minister assume the Ministry of Defence is certain to

raise some eyebrows. And so it happened when, in August 2011, President Dilma Rousseff

chose Celso Amorim, the architect of Brazil's foreign policy under the Lula administration, toreplace Nelson Jobim after the latter had openly questioned the capacity of several of his fellow

cabinet members.

This may partly explain why Amorim's recent trip to India six weeks prior to the BRICS Summit

in New Delhi has gained more media attention in both Brazil and India than Jobim's India trip a

year earlier. Military ties between India and Brazil are growing, and India uses Brazilian Embraer

aircraft for indigenous airborne early warning and control systems. Yet, for several other

reasons, the timing made the trip special: only days before, India had announced that it would

buy 126 French-made Rafale combat aircraft in a $11-billion deal.

Brazil would like to buy 36 fighter jets, and the Rafale, F-18 and Gripen-NG are still in the race.

Just as in India, the process was mired in controversy given its large size and the significant

political implications. After President Lula seemed to favour the Rafale in 2009, the Dilma

administration put the deal on hold in an effort to reduce public spending. A decision to follow

India's would not only boost ties between Brazil and France, but it would make India and Brazil

the only two countries other than France to boast the Rafale jet, thus creating further potential

for stronger ties in the area of military technology.

The year of the princeling:

Vice-President Xi Jinping, who is set to succeed President and Communist Party of China (CPC)General Secretary Hu Jintao later this year, has dominated the front pages of newspapers. The

lead-up to his U.S. visit, seen as a grand announcement of the heir apparent's arrival on the

world stage, has however been overshadowed by two high-profile corruption cases. First,

People's Liberation Army (PLA) Lieutenant General Gu Junshan was removed from his post on

corruption charges, becoming the highest-ranked PLA officer to lose his position in many years.

He is thought to be the first casualty of a corruption crackdown within the military, led by a

rising general Liu Yuan, who is the Political Commissar of the influential and vast Logistics

Department. As with most corruption crackdowns in China, Lt. Gen. Gu's fall has been seen as

the latest sign of an ongoing power struggle ahead of this year's leadership transition.

Bo Xilai, who succeeded in launching himself as a front-runner for a prized seat on the nine-

member Politburo Standing Committee that comes into power next year. Mr. Wang was first

transferred out of his position as police chief to the education department as a Vice Mayor. He

was subsequently found to have spent one day at the U.S. Consulate in Chengdu, on February

6, with suggestions that he was seeking political asylum. Rumours of a corruption investigation

by central authorities targeting him and his associates swirled in Beijing, with the Chinese





government saying on Thursday that it was investigating his day-long stay at the U.S. Consulate.

The fall of Mr. Wang has cast doubts on Mr. Bo's own political future.

Mr. Bo, Mr. Xi and Gen. Liu all share strikingly similar personal histories. They are all children of

once powerful and high-ranking Communist Party leaders. Bo Yibo and Xi Zhongxun were

among the first generation of party revolutionaries, part of a group known as the eightimmortals. Xi Zhongxun later became a Vice-Premier and a close ally of the liberal leader, Hu

Yaobang. Xi and Hu were subsequently purged by hard-line factions in the party. Gen. Liu's

father was the popular former President Liu Shaoqi, who, like Xi Zhongxun and Bo Yibo, was

persecuted by Mao during the Cultural Revolution (1966-76).

Following Mao's death, the three leaders' legacies were rehabilitated. Their sons have since

taken their place among a group of rising political figures in China dubbed as the party of

princelings. They are the children of the revolution the second generation of newly

emerging political dynasties. Their presence in the party's highest positions has grown over the

past decade. According to Bo Zhiyue, an expert on elite Chinese politics at the National

University of Singapore, there were at least nine princelings in the 25-member Politburo

between 2002 and 2007.

One Chinese source close to the party says behind Mr. Xi's rise has been his unique ability to

play the role of a balancing force between different interest groups. He was chosen ahead of

Mr. Hu's own protégé from the Communist Youth League, the current Vice-Premier Li Keqiang,

at the previous party congress because he had good relations with all factions, from those who

shared his princeling background and the military to even Mr. Hu. Mediating between the

various interests of these groups as they struggle for power ahead of the leadership transition

will be for Mr. Xi a pressing priority and, arguably, his biggest challenge as he assumes

office in the Year of the Dragon.

INTERNATIONAL

On return from India, Tibetan monks questioned:

Several Tibetan monks from Tibet, Sichuan and other Chinese provinces who were allowed to

attend last month's Kalachakra initiations led by the Dalai Lama in Bodhgaya have been

detained and questioned upon their return, according to informed sources in Tibet and Sichuan

and exiled groups in India. Officials at the Indian Embassy in Beijing could not immediately

confirm the number of visas issued for the Kalachakra, as applications were sent months in

advance and also to both the Indian Embassy in Beijing which issues visas to applicants from

Tibet, Qinghai and Gansu and the Indian Consulate in Guangzhou, which handles applications

from Sichuan and Yunnan.





Garzon has limited options:

Baltasar Garzon, Spanish human rights investigator disbarred as a judge on Thursday ,

announced he would appeal against his sentence, and launched a fierce attack on the Supreme

Court judges who found him guilty of illegal wiretapping. Speculation was rife about what Mr.

Garzon would do next. He can work as a lawyer in Spain, lecture or take up advisory positionslike the role he held in 2010 at the International criminal court in The Hague. He might return to

politics. Mr. Garzon was an independent parliamentary deputy on the Socialist party's benches

from 1993 to 1994, but later fell out with the party and resigned. I imagine the defence

lawyers will try to get some of the evidence struck out, but there is a lot more evidence that

would remain valid, said Mr. Urrea. Mr. Garzon said: This sentence eliminates all chances of

investigating corruption and its associated crimes, opening up an area of impunity, and

compromises, in its aim of getting rid of one particular judge, the independence of Spain's

judiciary.

Arab Ministers weigh options on Syria:

Foreign Ministers of the Arab League have met in Cairo to discuss an array of diplomatic options

to mount fresh pressure on the regime of President Bashar Al Assad, which is battling an

increasingly militant opposition whose influence is seeping into the capital Damascus and

Aleppo, Syria's largest city. Complementing diplomacy in Cairo, Saudi Arabia is set to float a

draft at the U.N. General Assembly on Monday, which would seek the backing of member

countries for an Arab peace plan seeking Syria's transition into a full-fledged democracy. Saudi

Arabia forcefully injected itself in diplomacy surrounding Syria, when on Friday, the country's

monarch King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz criticised Russia and China for their veto at the U.N. We

are going through scary days and unfortunately what happened at the United Nations is

absolutely regrettable, he said during a nationally televised address. The Syrian opposition isalso claiming fresh violence between army defectors and government forces in Doumah and

Zabadani, which are located at the edge of Damascus. A day earlier, signaling the slow ignition

of a widening crisis, car bombings in Aleppo killed 28 and wounded 235, said authorities.

Turkmenistan President's re-election almost certain:

Turkmenistan voted in a token presidential election on Sunday that is certain to extend the rule

of President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov for another five years. Mr.

Berdymukhammedov's seven rivals are all members of the Democratic Party of Turkmenistan,

the only political party. During the campaign, they called on people to vote for the incumbent.

Mr. Berdymukhammedov, a 55-year-old former dentist, assumed office after the sudden death

in December 2006 of Saparmurat Niyazov, who had ruled Turkmenistan for 30 years.

The new leader has dismantled the personality cult of his predecessor, lifted the ban on opera

and circus and allowed internet. He also restored the election of President by a popular vote





(Mr. Niyazov had been proclaimed the leader for life), but stopped short of allowing political

pluralism.

Under his leadership Turkmenistan, which holds the world's fourth largest gas reserves. Mr.

Berdymukhammedov has vigorously lobbied for building the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-

Pakististan-India pipeline presiding over the signing of a framework TAPI agreement inDecember 2010.

Mandela's image on S. African banknotes:

The image of 93-year-old Nelson Mandela will appear on South Africa's new currency notes to

mark the 22nd anniversary of the anti-apartheid icon's release from prison. Mr. Mandela's

release in 1990 after 27 years in prison for fighting apartheid marked the beginning of a new

era of hope for our country and the world. Reserve Bank Governor Gill Marcus said Mr.

Mandela, who does not make any public appearances since his retirement to his home village in

Qunu, had been informed and was delighted about it.

Optimistic Gilani set to appear before court:

Ahead of his appearance before the Supreme Court on Monday to be charged with contempt,

Prime Minister Syed Yusuf Raza Gilani remained optimistic maintaining that he may not be

imprisoned as is being visualised.

In an interview to Al-Jazeera, Mr. Gilani's reply to a question on whether he was prepared to go

back to prison was: I don't think it will happen as you have visualised. Asked if he would step

down if convicted, the Premier said there would be no need to step down as he would be

disqualified to hold the office.

New Maldivian Cabinet sworn in:

The first appointment done was that of the Attorney General. Uza Aishath Azima Shakooru, AG

during Mr. Gayoom's tenure is back. She took the oath office before the Supreme Court Judge

Judge Abdulla Areef. The largest Opposition party, the Dhivehi Rayyithunge Party (DRP), has

three members; Mr. Gayoom's newly-founded Progressive Party of Maldives (PPM) has two

(including the AG). One slot each has been given to the Dhivehi Qaumee Party (DQP) and the

Jumhoory Party. Two other Ministers are former officials, who have a proven track record on

their fields.

BUSINESS

Official data gives no cause for optimism:

On the face of it, the Central Statistical Organisation's (CSO) advance estimates of gross

domestic product (GDP) growth for the current year (2011-12), released last Tuesday, give little





room for optimism. For the first time after the global crisis, economic growth is forecast to go

below 7 per cent. That would be sharply lower than the 8.4 per cent of last year (2010-11).

Agriculture will grow by just 2.5 per cent (down from 7 per cent last year), industry by 3.9 per

cent (7.2 per cent) and services by 9.4 per cent (same as last year). So, the decline in the GDP

growth rate is due to a decline in industry and agriculture with services continuing to beresilient.

The industry segment comprises manufacturing, construction and mining. The trend in

manufacturing growth, as measured by the monthly index of industrial production (IIP) figures,

has been unmistakably downwards. High interest rates are behind the slow pace of

manufacturing growth. Hence, its growth this year at 3.9 per cent will be well below 7.2 per

cent of last year. Mining has been hit by the vagaries of government policies, especially relating

to environmental clearances, and is forecast to contract by over 2 per cent during this financial

year as compared to a 5 per cent growth in 2010-11.

But electricity has fared surprisingly well it has obvious strong linkages with mining

posting a growth of 8.3 per cent as compared to just 3 per cent last year. Given that the power

sector is also facing deep seated financial problems, it is doubtful whether it can sustain its

growth momentum into next year.

On the demand side, there has been a sharp fall in private consumption which is highly

susceptible to interest rate changes. Even more worrying is the fall in investment growth by a

few percentage points. That is a development that does not portend well for the next year.

For one, a projected 6.9 per cent GDP growth rate, though low by recent standards, compares

favourably with what obtains in most other countries. On the other hand, the task of fiscalconsolidation remains more daunting than ever before. A slowing economy has aggravated the

problems. Much needed reforms, even the less controversial ones such as the Direct Taxes

Code (DTC) and the Goods and Services Tax (GST), seem difficult to implement.

Page 12

Environment reports have cooked data,' says tribunal:

The National Green Tribunal is the latest to point out that consultants are including cooked

data in the key environment impact assessment (EIA) reports which determine green

clearances for industrial projects. The Tribunal has told the government to come up with a

mechanism to ensure authentic data.

With regard to water quality data, the levels of fluoride are almost identical for both ground

and surface water, which the Tribunal found unrealistic. The EIA consultant also collected its

baseline data four months before the government even issued terms of reference, defeating

the entire purpose of the exercise. Last year, Chief Justice of India S.H. Kapadia had also called





for a change in the system. If you leave report preparation to the project proponent, I am sorry

to say, the person who pays will get the answers he asks for, he said. While the Ministry had

been considering a proposal to have government-appointed panels prepare EIA reports for key

projects, no decision has been taken yet.

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The Hindu Imp. News Feb. 13th 2012