India Election Results a Mature Verdict Siddarth Srivastava .. 20 May 2009 World Politics Review
NEW DELHI -- The unexpected landslide victory of the Congress Party in India's general elections has unshackled the incoming government from the tricky task of managing its earlier coalition for political survival, especially the rabidly anti-American Left parties.
There is little doubt that the team of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, all-powerful Congress party president Sonia Gandhi and her son Rahul Gandhi -- who led the election campaign -- will look to firm up some of their earlier aims, given the near-majority and stability that the party and its allies now command.
In fact, the new government can no longer offer excuses for not delivering on its promises -- whether in pushing for further economic reforms, building infrastructure, implementing security measures and diplomatic initiatives, and developing education and healthcare frameworks that benefit all.
If the election results deliver a message, it is that the people of India are looking to their political representatives for a focused national policy that promotes development and provides for stable government.
It represents a mature verdict that sidelines regional parties with limited and parochial notions about national issues, and blunts the emergence of regional satraps -- such as Mayawati of Uttar Pradesh -- who ride on caste politics. At the same time, Indian voters rewarded leaders and parties -- in states such as Bihar, Delhi and Orissa -- that have provided corruption-free, pro-growth governance.
With expectations so high, Congress cannot afford to be complacent.
Given such a mandate, India's foreign policy is likely to reflect domestic concerns and, in particular, Indians' aspirations for a better life. That means defusing conflict scenarios with Pakistan that could set back business and economic prospects, and ensuring that the derailed peace process gathers momentum -- even while security issues are not ignored.
India's experience of terror, most recently in last November's Mumbai attacks, should translate into support for U.S. efforts in Afghanistan and Pakistan -- although without direct involvement in the targeting of terror camps and cells across the border, as has been debated intensely in the aftermath of Mumbai. Ideas such as "hot pursuit" cross-border strikes and the bombing of terror camps in Pakistan will be shelved, as New Delhi will seek to instead deflect global pressure onto Islamabad to take on Pakistan-based terror groups.
In this context, the U.S. will emerge as a crucial partner, with a consensus among both the national parties -- Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party -- that India needs to engage with Washington closely.
With the exit of the political left, the U.S. presence in India's defense and nuclear energy industries, among others, will rise. For its part, New Delhi will lobby on behalf of India's powerful software sector, and try to use the big contracts it can dangle, especially in defense, as leverage against some of the anti-outsourcing rhetoric gathering steam in Washington.
On a regional level, Washington will look to further back India to dilute the growing influence of China. Given its strategic and financial muscle, the U.S. will exercise increased leverage as the vanquished left-wing parties' anti-American impact on foreign policy vanishes.
This, however, does not mean that Washington will enjoy an open field in terms of deals and contracts, given the competition from countries such as France, Russia, Israel, Britain and Sweden. In fact, India's foreign policy in the last few years has purposefully pursued a balance among bilateral partnerships.
The election's other significant storyline concerns the Indian province of Jammu and Kashmir, the site of militant violence and a separatist campaign. Elections in J&K have always been a fearful prospect, due to calls to boycott voting by militants and separatists, as well as actual attacks on voters and the voting process.
Participation in what is termed "India-held elections" by separatist parties has been a much-debated topic. Anti- India political parties have often boycotted the democratic process, and voter turnout has also been quite varied.
Currently, the J&K government is led by Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, who heads the coalition between his National Conference (NC) party and Congress. Abdullah's good personal relations with Rahul Gandhi have reaped electoral benefits for both parties. Unlike the separatists, the NC has a history of backing the Indian government for armed action against insurgency, and has been urging New Delhi to resume the peace process with Pakistan, derailed after the Mumbai terror attacks.
The separatists, meanwhile, organize themselves under the umbrella of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference. They have so far chosen to remain out of the electoral process, although major differences have been cropping up. With their calls for freedom (azaadi) for Kashmir enjoying less traction, and with a new generation of local leadership under Omar and others -- such as Mehbooba Mufti -- focusing on development, tourism and growth, the separatists increasingly fear the risk of political isolation.
A new twist in this election was thus Sajjad Lone, a prominent 42-year-old separatist leader who contested the polls. Though Lone lost, the symbolism of his political participation will not be overlooked in a hurry.
With India on the threshold of global power status, the Congress party has been given a mandate to perform. The new government has its task cut out for it. How it addresses the challenges that lie ahead will determine the course of India's polity, its economy and its role in the global arena.
Siddharth Srivastava is a New Delhi-based journalist covering foreign and strategic affairs, security, politics, defense, business and lifestyle issues. He has been a correspondent for the Times of India and is widely published in newspapers and magazines in Asia, Europe and America. His Web site can be found here. http://siddharthsrivastava.spaces.live.com/
Photo: Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh (Agência Brasil photo by Ricardo Stuckert, licensed under the Creative Commons License Attribution 2.5 Brazil).
Swat offensive 'over in days' .. UPDATED ON: Sunday, May 31, 2009 08:10 Mecca time, 05:10 GMT
Syed Athar Ali told delegates that Pakistan's offensive in Swat would be over in days [EPA]
Pakistan has said it expects its military offensive against Taliban fighters in the country's northwestern Swat valley will be over in two or three days.
Syed Athar Ali, Pakistan's secretary of defence, made the comments at a defence conference in Singapore on Sunday.
"Only five to 10 per cent of the job is remaining and hopefully within two to three days, the pockets of resistance will be cleared," he said.
His comments came a day after the military said it had regained full control of Mingora, the Swat valley's main city.
Despite the military's self-proclaimed success in Mingora, Imran Khan, Al Jazeera's correspondent reporting from Islamabad, the capital, said the military would probably find it difficult to meet its deadline for victory.
"Two to three days is an optimistic statement," he said. ............................................................... In depth: YES, Al Jazeera does have the best videos .. Aside: not one of us has a valid reason for bitching all the time. Video: Swat's fleeing Sikhs http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2009/05/200953083958224845.html ............................................................... Pictures: slide .. refuge for Swat's Sikhs .. MUST SEE .. sharp .. short .. sadly poignant .. no you don't HAVE to, butt.. http://www.flickr.com/photos/aljazeeraenglish/sets/72157619002321156/show/with/3578723860/ ............................................................... 300000+ fled Swat Valley .. 3 week curfew, food scarce .. 286 (note) fighters killed, only 25 wounded, "ferocious" .. how many of the poverty-ridden mercenary from war-torn Afghanistan are 100% committed Taliban/AQ .. 100% NOT ALL .. Do you feel any empathy for the prisoner? .. many of us do .. Video: Inside the war zone in Mingora city http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2009/05/2009528191531335919.html ............................................................... Pictures: Lahore bombing At least 30 people were killed and scores wounded in a car-bomb attack that destroyed a police building in Lahore on Wednesday [AFP] http://english.aljazeera.net/Services/Gallery/?GalleryId=200952718227388769 ............................................................... SHOULD SEE 13+ .. 50% Pakistan Pashtun, makes deep rooted, sticky situation .. Pakistan army key to stability so more pragmatic than urban civilian 'transient' governments .. Riz Khan: Obama's 'AfPak' strategy http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/rizkhan/2009/05/20095684148133996.html
ps: imo acknowledgment of responsibility for civilian casualties should be acceptable and in itself should not a target of scorn by even the most desolate anti-Obama people. ............................................................... 1000000+ fled homes Riz Khan: The battle for the soul of Pakistan .. 3 videos .. http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/frostovertheworld/2009/05/200951785340858681.html Interview: Asif Ali Zardari .. in above .. ............................................................... Q&A: The struggle for Swat The hundreds of thousands of people fleeing the conflict are helping to form a picture of the dire situation inside Swat, Dir and Buner [Gallo/Getty] http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2009/05/200956154619727525.html ............................................................... Your views: Crisis in Swat Pakistan's major cities are on high alert following a series of explosions and shootings that killed at least 12 people in the North West Frontier Province on Thursday. http://english.aljazeera.net/your_views/centrals.asia/200933074743137615.html ............................................................... The fight for northwest Pakistan http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/2009/05/2009512124821393383.html ............................................................... Talking to the Taliban .. EVERY organization has moderates .. http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/2009/03/200939102529353355.html ............................................................... Pakistan's war .. + MUST SEE video .. yes, hyperbole .. if you don't well you are not interested in justice .. CONSIDER .. Rageh Omaar speaks to those who say Pakistan is paying the ultimate price in the so-called 'war on terror' [GALLO/GETTY]
the government assault on the Islamabad Red Mosque, 2007 turning point .. "100's of young girls took direct action against popular video shops and prostitution" .. BAD MEN .. (SEE extreme Christians bombing US abortion clinics) .. QUOTES from different people .. man cleric i think .. "we want peaceful change" .. repression breeds violence .. woman head of girls school .. "hat does God want from us?" .. much voiced by Christians all over the world? YES "We do this to please our God," .. SOUND FAMILIAR? .. "But the government has not fulfilled it's duty .. when it doesn't according to the prophet the responsibility should fall on religious leaders ... we only had 14 Kalashnikovs" .. read relative .... mainly slogans ..
"WE DID NOT THINK OUR GOVERNMENT WOULD COME AND KILL US"
YES. THE 2007 GOVERNMENT ATTACK ON THE RED MOSQUE IN ISLAMABAD FUELED THE VIOLENCE JUST AS SURELY AS THE INVASION OF IRAQ POURED GASOLINE ONTO THE FIRE.
Almost forgot. In the video a good man asks "How did you get out of the mosque?" .. HOW? .. the mother left because those who chose to be martyrs pleaded with her to leave. She told her son, i think it was, to be brave and to die with a bullet in his chest, so she would not be ashamed in front of the prophet. Or was it in front of her God?
"The army has said it's going to take two to three weeks to get gas, to get energy, to get electricity to the Swat valley.
"It depends in part on what your indicator is - whether you think it is routing the Taliban that means victory or whether its repatriating 3.4 million refugees and giving them back their homes and their land."
About 2.4 million people have fled in the wake of the military's campaign against the Taliban, joining people displaced by earlier fighting.
There are no figures of civilian casualties, but some of the displaced have told of innocent relatives being killed.
Around 300,000 people lived in Mingora until the Taliban occupied the town in early May when the army first launched an offensive in Swat.
Also on Sunday, there were reports that 50 fighters and two soldiers were killed in clashes in South Waziristan, in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province.
Fighting there has intensified in recent days amid the offensive in the nearby Swat valley and there is an expectation that the military will turn its focus on the area, which borders Afghanistan, once its Swat operation is over.
Soooooooooooooooooooo, that leads to conclusion here.
Please tell me here if i gave away too much with my notes on the videos. You know the different learning types? Visual, auditory, kinetic etc. It helps to incorporate them all. hang on i'll get up stretch and jump about a bit. Ok. LOL, head is clearer now.
All helps to get through the blue-blacker wonder sadness.
Must say this now. Whatever your GOD is shehe would not condone this war if it had anything to do with it.
Please consider HOW could you expect your God have EMPATHY with you if you don't have even an ounce of empathy for your so called 'enemies' here. Yes some are, but not all and many of the ones that are which they didn't feel the need.
THEY HAVE TO BE FAITHFUL TO THEIR GOD TOO. DON'T THEY?
Mutter mutter.. if only some magic dust in an invisible plane so i could coat the globe with it .. authoritarian yes .. however the deal would be it would only effect on settling .. a microsecondo .. the secret the feeling would be sooooo good free choice would never let it go .. call it Sod Dust .. SD for short .. absolutely no disrespect meant .. mostly ever .. certainly not here.
Finally, apologies for any mistakes made and a heartfelt thank you to Al Jazeera.
Feel free to make comment here. ps have to put this in ..
LOLlololololol on tv NOW .. FILTH. THE MARY WHITEHOUSE STORY. hahahahahah .. falling off chair .. she was speaking and a couple of men interjected .. WE WANT SEX! WE WHAT SEX! LOLOL .. oops ..
Plant Underway Could Generate Plutonium for 40 to 50 Bombs a Year, Analysts Say
By Joby Warrick Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, July 24, 2006; Page A01
Pakistan has begun building what independent analysts say is a powerful new reactor for producing plutonium, a move that, if verified, would signal a major expansion of the country's nuclear weapons capabilities and a potential new escalation in the region's arms race.
Satellite photos of Pakistan's Khushab nuclear site show what appears to be a partially completed heavy-water reactor capable of producing enough plutonium for 40 to 50 nuclear weapons a year, a 20-fold increase from Pakistan's current capabilities, according to a technical assessment by Washington-based nuclear experts.
Pakistan's Foreign ministry spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam speaks during a news conference at foreign ministry in Islamabad July 24, 2006. (Mian Khursheed - Reuters)
The construction site is adjacent to Pakistan's only plutonium production reactor, a modest, 50-megawatt unit that began operating in 1998. By contrast, the dimensions of the new reactor suggest a capacity of 1,000 megawatts or more, according to the analysis by the Institute for Science and International Security. Pakistan is believed to have 30 to 50 uranium warheads, which tend to be heavier and more difficult than plutonium warheads to mount on missiles.
"South Asia may be heading for a nuclear arms race that could lead to arsenals growing into the hundreds of nuclear weapons, or at minimum, vastly expanded stockpiles of military fissile material," the institute's David Albright and Paul Brannan concluded in the technical assessment, a copy of which was provided to The Washington Post.
The assessment's key judgments were endorsed by two other independent nuclear experts who reviewed the commercially available satellite images, provided by Digital Globe, and supporting data. In Pakistan, officials would not confirm or deny the report, but a senior Pakistani official, speaking on condition of anonymity, acknowledged that a nuclear expansion was underway.
"Pakistan's nuclear program has matured. We're now consolidating the program with further expansions," the official said. The expanded program includes "some civilian nuclear power and some military components," he said.
The development raises fresh concerns about a decades-old rivalry between Pakistan and India. Both countries already possess dozens of nuclear warheads and a variety of missiles and other means for delivering them.
Pakistan, like India, has never signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. One of its pioneering nuclear scientists, Abdul Qadeer Khan, who confessed two years ago to operating a network that supplied nuclear materials and know-how to Libya, Iran and North Korea.
The evidence of a possible escalation also comes as Congress prepares to debate a controversial nuclear cooperation agreement between the Bush administration and India. The agreement would grant India access to sensitive U.S. nuclear technology in return for placing its civilian nuclear reactors under tighter safeguards.
No such restrictions were placed on India's military nuclear facilities. India currently has an estimated 30 to 35 nuclear warheads based on a sophisticated plutonium design. Pakistan, which uses a simpler, uranium-based warhead design, has sought for years to modernize its arsenal, and a new heavy-water reactor could allow it to do so, weapons experts say.
"With plutonium bombs, Pakistan can fully join the nuclear club," said a Europe-based diplomat and nuclear expert, speaking on condition that he not be identified by name, after reviewing the satellite evidence. He concurred with the Institute for Science and International Security assessment but offered a somewhat lower estimate -- "up to tenfold" -- for the increase in Pakistan's plutonium production. A third, U.S.-based expert concurred fully with the institute's estimates.
Pakistan launched its nuclear program in the early 1970s and conducted its first successful nuclear test in 1998.
F6, lol, glad I said 'all' .. (see other reply) .. i saw a doco on Bangladesh last night. A lady every day had to carry her baby from her fragile looking stilted house across a narrow, rickety, bamboo i think, walkway, bamboo to the shore. The comment was precarious and dangerous and it looked it.
January/February 2008 Atlantic With rising Islamic fundamentalism, weak government, and not enough dry land for its 150 million people, Bangladesh could use a break. Instead, it must face the catastrophic threat of climate change.
by Robert D. Kaplan .. Waterworld
The monsoon arrived while I was in a shallow-draft boat traveling over a village that was now underwater. In its place was a mile-wide channel, created by erosion over the years, separating the mainland of Bangladesh from a char—a temporary delta island that would someday dissolve just as easily as it had formed.
As ink-dark, vertical cloud formations slid in from the Bay of Bengal, waves began slapping hard against the rotting wood of our small boat. Breaking days of dense, soupy heat, rain fell like nails upon us. We started bailing. The boatman, my translator, and I made it to the char before the channel water that was splashing into the hull, heavy with silt, could threaten the boat’s buoyancy. It was a lot of work just to see something that was no longer there.
On another day, in order to see a series of dam collapses that had forced the evacuation of more than a dozen villages, I rode on the back of a motorcycle along a maze of embankments framing a checkerwork of paddy fields that glinted in the steamy rain. Again, the sight that greeted me—a few crumbled earthen dams—was not dramatic, unless, that is, you were holding the “before” picture in front of you.
Yet from one end of Bangladesh to the other, I saw plenty of drama, encapsulated in this singular fact: remoteness and fragility of terrain never once corresponded with a paucity of humanity. Even on the chars, I could not get away from people cultivating every inch of alluvial soil. Human beings were everywhere on this dirty wet sponge of a landscape. Squeezed into an Iowa-sized territory—20 to 60 percent of which floods every year—is a population half the size of that in the United States and larger than the one in Russia. Indeed, Bangladesh’s Muslim population alone (83 percent of the total) is nearly twice that of either Egypt or Iran. Considered small only because it is surrounded on three sides by India, Bangladesh is actually a vast aquascape, where getting around by boat and vehicle, as I learned, can take many days.
I went through towns that had a formal reality as names on a map, but were little more than rashes of rusted-corrugated-iron and bamboo stalls under canopies of jackfruit trees, teeming with men wearing skirt-like lungis and baseball caps and women in burkas that concealed all but their eyes and noses. Between the towns were long lines of water-filled pits, topped with a green froth of hyacinths; the soil had been removed to raise the road a few feet above the unrelieved sea-level flatness. Soil is a commodity so precious in Bangladesh that people dredge riverbeds during the dry season to get more of it. When houses are dismantled, the ground on which they stand is transported through slurry pipes to the new location.
In every respect, people were squeezing the last bit of use out of the land. One day I saw a man carried by on a stretcher moments after he had been mauled by a Royal Bengal tiger. It is not an uncommon occurrence. As fishing communities crowd in on one of the tigers’ last refuges in the mangrove swamps of the western Bangladeshi-Indian border area, and as salinity from rising sea levels reduces the deer population on which the tigers feed, man and tiger have nowhere else to go.
The Earth has always been unstable. Flooding and erosion, cyclones and tsunamis are the norm rather than the exception. But never have the planet’s most environmentally frail areas been so crowded. The slowdown in the growth rate of the world’s population has not changed the fact that the number of people living in the countries most vulnerable to natural disasters continues to increase. The Indian Ocean tsunami of December 2004 was merely a curtain-raiser. Over the coming decades, Mother Nature is likely to kill or make homeless a staggering number of people.
American journalists sometimes joke that, in terms of news, thousands of people displaced by floods in Bangladesh equals a handful of people killed or displaced closer to home. But that formula is now as unimaginative and out-of-date as it is cruel.
With 150 million people packed together at sea level, Bangladesh is vulnerable to the slightest climatic variation, never mind the changes caused by global warming. The partial melting of Greenland ice over the course of the 21st century could inundate a substantial amount of Bangladesh with salt water. A 20-centimeter rise in the Bay of Bengal by 2030 could be devastating to more than 10 million people, says Atiq Rahman, executive director of the Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies.
While scholars debate the odds of such scenarios, one thing is certain: Bangladesh is the most likely spot on the planet for one of the greatest humanitarian catastrophes in history. The country’s future, however, and the fate of its impoverished millions, will be determined not necessarily by rising sea levels, but by their interaction with, among other things, the growth of religious fundamentalism, the behavior of its neighbors and other outside powers, and the evolution of democracy. So, I came to Bangladesh.
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