wireless yogi
Last chance to fix flawed torture Bill SIDDHARTH VARADARAJAN
The draft law excludes many scenarios and forms of torture rampant in India. The Rajya Sabha must insist on amendments.
The Prevention of Torture Bill, 2010, which the Rajya Sabha will take up for consideration on Friday, is a deeply flawed piece of legislation that will weaken, rather than strengthen, existing legal sanctions against a crime that is widely acknowledged to be rampant across India.
Though the Lok Sabha approved the Bill without changes on May 6, it is essential that the upper house remedies the flaws it contains before it is too late.
The stated purpose of the law is to fulfil the country's obligations under the United Nations Convention Against Torture (CAT). India signed the Convention in 1997 but i s perhaps the only democracy yet to ratify it. But if this belated push for ratification is a welcome development, the weak provisions of the proposed law bear little resemblance to the contents of the CAT.
The definition
Let us start with the definition of torture. This is how the Convention defines it. Article I says "torture" means any act done by or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official "by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind."
The Indian draft borrows some of this language but arbitrarily narrows the scope of this Article. According to Section 3 of the Bill, torture will said to have been inflicted only when "(i) grievous hurt to any person; or (ii) danger to life, limb or health (whether mental or physical) of any person" is caused by public servants for the purposes of "obtain[ing] … information or a confession from him or a third person".
In other words, torture that is in inflicted by the police or a public servant as a form of punishment, inti midation or coercion will not be considered "torture" under the new law. Nor will any torture visited on an individual solely on account of her or his religion, caste, gender or economic status.
The omission of such situations — as envisaged by an international convention to which India is a party — is unforgivable given the prevalence of torture for these very reasons.
What makes this definitional narrowing even more problematic is the high threshold set for torture itself. The CAT speaks of "severe pain or suffering" rather than "grievous hurt" or "danger to life, limb or health" because it is the infliction of severe pain which is common to all forms of torture, even those which do not h ave long-term consequences for the health of the victim. Electric shocks, water boarding and the insertion of chilli powder in the sensitive parts of an individual's body will cause severe pain or suffering without necessarily endangering her or his health or even causing "grievous hurt". Why has the Manmohan Singh government chosen such a narrow definition, excluding both motives for, and forms of, torture that are widely prevalent in India?
Having defined torture in such a restrictive way, the Bill goes on to narrow it even further in Section 4, which deals with punishment. It says a public servant shall be punishable for up to 10 years if he tortures any person "(a) for the purposes of extorting from him or from any other person interested in him, any confession or any information which may lead to the detection of an offence or misc onduct; and (b) on the ground of his religion, race, place of birth, residence, language, caste or community or any ground whatsoever".
Here, it would seem that even the class of persons who are tortured in order to extract a confession or some information from them must fulfil another condition before they can be considered torture victims: they must also have been targeted on account of some ascriptive identity. When Section 3 defines what constitutes torture, it is strange that the section on punishment should confine itself to torture done on specific grounds.
Cruel irony
Another major flaw with the Bill is the six-month time limit a torture victim is given under Section 5 to file a complaint. This is especially problematic for cases of custodial torture, which, unfortunately, are the norm in India. Most victims of torture may not feel confident about filing a complaint when the policemen or public servants who tortured them continue to have the capacity to inflict bodily harm. And, in a cruel irony, any act of violence inflicted upon a complainant — since the aim is not to make them confess or provide information but simply to coerce them into withdrawing their charges — would actually be excluded from the Prevention of Torture Bill's definition of torture.
Despite the gravity of the offence — which cannot be considere d part of the legitimate discharge of duty by a public servant — the Bill has a section which says that "previous sanction" of the Central or relevant State government is needed in order for a court to take cognisance of an offence. In other words, after arbitrarily narrowing the scope and definition of torture and making it extremely difficult for a victim to file a complaint, the government gives the torturers within its ranks yet another layer of protection. Across India, there are dozens of cases in which sanction to prosecute is never given despite public officials being accused of heinous crimes. The inclusion of "previous sanction" in the torture Bill does not speak well of the government's intentions.
Even at this late stage, it is essential that the Rajya Sabha insist on four changes.
First, the definition of torture should be harmonised with CAT, to which India is a signatory. Second, Section 4 dealing with punishment should be harmonised with the updated definition of torture. Third, there should be no time limit for a victim to file a torture complaint. Torture is a crime and if other crimes are not subject to an arbitrary 'statute of limitations', why should this? Fourth, the Section on previous sanction should be deleted or altered to say that where the government is of the view that a public servant should not be prosecuted for the crime of torture, it must state the reasons in writing.
A new world map and Brazil's foreign policy
It has a role in a new framework as the world may no longer be an exclusive club.
Seven years ago, when talk emerged about the need to make changes in the world economic geography and it was said that Brazil and other countries were ready to play a more significant role in the World Trade Organisation (WTO) or to become permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, many reacted with scepticism. Both the world and Brazil have changed quite rapidly. What was considered to be "truths" in the past have yielded to factual evidence. Greater economic growth rates in relation to those of the developed world have made the developing countries central actors in the world economy.
Greater South-South coordination — at the WTO, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the U.N., and new coalitions, such as BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India and China) — has ra ised the voices of countries that were once relegated to a secondary position. The more the developing countries discuss and cooperate among themselves, the greater their voices will be heard by the rich countries. The recent financial crisis has made it even more clear that the world can no longer be governed by a club made up of just a few.
Brazil has decisively sought to play its role in this new framework. Seven-and-a-half years into President Lula's administration, the perception of Brazil abroad is quite different. It is undeniable that, today, Brazil — as well as a new group of countries — has increasingly earned influence in the discussions about some of the main topics in the international agenda, from climate change to trade, from finance to peace and security.
These countries bring about new perspectives to world problems and have contributed towards a new international balance.
In the case of Brazil, this change in perception was due primarily to transformations that took place in our economic, social and political realities. Progress achieved on many fronts — from macroeconomic stability to redeeming our social debt — has made Brazil more stable and less unfair. President Lula's personal traits, as well as his direct involvement in international issues have helped take Brazil's contributions to major debates in the international agenda.
It was in this context that Brazil developed its comprehen sive and proactive foreign policy. We sought to build coalitions that have gone beyond traditional alliances and relations — which we strove to maintain and enhance, such as in the establishment of a Strategic Partnership with the European Union and a Global Partnership Dialogue with the United States.
Significant growth in our exports to other developing countries and the creation of mechanisms for dialogue and coordination, such as the Union of South American Nations (UNASUL), the G-20 within the WTO, the IBSA Dialogue Forum (India, Brazil and South Africa), and BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India and China) reflect this trend towards a global foreign policy that excludes narrow notions of what the international role of countries with the characteristics of Brazil could and should be.
The basis for this new foreign policy was the increased integration of South America. One of the great assets Brazil has on the international arena is its harmonious relations with its neighbours, starting with our intense relationship with Argentina. From day one, President Lula's administration has undertaken efforts towards integrating the South-American continent, through trade, infrastructure and political dialogue.
In practice, the Mercosul-Andean Community agreement created a free trade zone encompassing the entire South America. The physical integration of the continent has seen remarkable progress, linking the Atlantic and the Pacific. Our efforts to create a South-American community resulted in the establishment of a new entity, the UNASUL.
Building on a more integrated South America, Brazil engaged in creating mechanisms for dialogue and cooperation with countries in other regions, based on the perception that international realities could no longer afford the alienation of the developing world. The creation of the G-20 within the WTO, at the Cancun Ministerial Meeting in 2003, marked the coming of age of countries from the South, transforming, once and for all, the decision-making process in trade negotiations.
IBSA
The IBSA, in its turn, met the aspirations for coordination among three major multiethnic and multicultural democracies, which have much to say to the world about upholding tolerance and reconciling development with democracy. In addition to political coordination and cooperation among the three countries, the IBSA has become a model for projects benefiting poorer nations, thus demonstrating in practice that solidarity is not an attribute of the rich.
We have also held summits between South-American and African countries (ASA), as well as with Arab countries (ASPA). Taking into account their specific compl ementary natures, we have designed policies and built bridges connecting regions that were far apart. This political move resulted in remarkable progress in economic relations. Brazilian trade with Arab countries grew four-fold in seven years. Trade with Africa increased five-fold, to more than $26 billion, surpassing trade with traditional partners such as Germany and Japan.
These new coalitions are helping to change the world. In the economic arena, the replacement of the G-7 with the G-20 as the main international body setting the course of production and international finance constitutes evidence that decisions regarding the world economy lack legitimacy and effectiveness in the absence of emerging countries.
Moreover, in the field of international peace and security, Brazil and Turkey were able to persuade Iran to take on the commitments provided for in the Teheran Declaration. This makes clear that new perspectives and approaches are necessary to tackle issues previously dealt with by the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council exclusively. Despite initial resistance to an initiative nurtured outside the closed circle of nuclear powers, we are certain that the course of the dialogue indicated therein will serve as the basis for future negotiations and a final solution for that issue.
Good foreign policy requires prudence. But it also requires boldness. It should not be shy or based on an inferiority complex. It is usual to hear that countries should act in accordance with their means, which is almost too obvious, but the greatest mist ake one could make is to underestimate them.
For almost eight years now, Brazil has acted with boldness and, like other developing countries, has changed its place in the world. Today, such countries are regarded, even by occasional critics, as actors bearing increasing responsibilities, entitled to play a role that is ever more central to the decisions that affect the destiny of the planet.
(Celso Amorim is the Minister of External Relations of Brazil.)
Hacker’s Arrest Offers Peek Into Crime in Russia
ANDREW E. KRAMER
MOSCOW — On the Internet, he was known as BadB, a disembodied criminal flitting from one server to another selling stolen credit card numbers despite being pursued by theUnited States Secret Service.
And in real life, he was nearly as untouchable — because he lived in Russia.
BadB’s real name is Vladislav A. Horohorin, according to a statement released last week by the United States Justice Department, and he was a resident of Moscow before his arrest by the police in France during a trip to that country earlier this month.
He is expected to appear soon before a French court that will decide on his potential extradition to the United States, where Mr. Horohorin could face up to 12 years in prison and a fine of $500,000 if he is convicted on charges of fraud and identity theft. For at least nine months, however, he lived openly in Moscow as one of the world’s most wanted computer criminals.
The seizing of BadB provides a lens onto the shadowy world of Russian hackers, the often well-educated and sometimes darkly ingenious programmers who pose a recognized security threat to online commerce — besides being global spam nuisances — who often seem to operate with relative impunity.
Law enforcement groups in Russia have been reluctant to pursue these talented authors of Internet fraud, for reasons, security experts say, of incompetence, corruption or national pride. In this environment, BadB’s network arose as “one of the most sophisticated organizations of online financial criminals in the world,” according to a statement issued by Michael P. Merritt, the assistant director of investigations for the Secret Service, which pursues counterfeiting and some electronic financial fraud.
As long ago as November 2009, the United States attorney’s office in Washington, in a sealed indictment, identified BadB as Mr. Horohorin, a 27-year-old residing in Moscow with dual Ukrainian and Israeli citizenship.
But it was not until Aug. 7 this year that Mr. Horohorin, who was traveling from Russia to France, was detained on a warrant from the United States as he boarded a plane to return to Russia at an airport in Nice, in southern France.
The Secret Service released a statement on Aug. 11, when the indictment was unsealed. Max Milien, a Secret Service spokesman in Washington, said the agency could not comment about the decision to arrest Mr. Horohorin in France.
Olga K. Shklyarova, spokeswoman for the Russian bureau of Interpol, said no American law enforcement agency had requested Mr. Horohorin’s arrest in her country. “We never received such a request,” she said by telephone.
According to the Secret Service statement, Mr. Horohorin managed Web sites for hackers who were able to steal large numbers of credit card numbers that were sold online anonymously around the globe. Those buyers would do the more dangerous work of running up fraudulent bills.
The numbers were exchanged on Web sites called CarderPlanet carder.su and badb.biz — according to the Secret Service, and payment was made indirectly through accounts at a Russian online settlement system known as Webmoney, an analogue to PayPal.
Underscoring the nationalistic tone of much of Russian computer crime, one site featured a cartoon of the Russian prime minister, Vladimir V. Putin, awarding medals to Russian hackers. “We awaiting you to fight the imperialism of the U.S.A.” the site said, in approximate English.
Mr. Horohorin lived openly in Moscow. As a foreign citizen, he registered with the police, according to Dmitri Zakharov, a spokesman for the Russian Association of Electronic Communication, an industry lobby for legitimate Russian Internet businesses, who cited a database of such registries.
A phone number for Mr. Horohorin was out of service Thursday.
Arrests in Russia for computer crimes are rare, even when hackers living in Russia have been publicly identified by outside groups, like Spamhaus, a nonprofit group in Geneva and in London that tracks sources of spam.
The F.B.I. in 2002 resorted to luring a Russian suspect, Vasily Gorshkov, to the United States with a fake offer of a job interview (with a fictitious Internet company called Invita), rather than ask the Russian police for help. To obtain evidence in the case, F.B.I. computer experts had hacked into Mr. Gorshkov’s computer in Russia. When this was revealed, Russian authorities expressed anger that the F.B.I. had resorted to a cross-border tactic.
Online fraud is not a high priority for the Russian police, Mr. Zakharov said, because most of it is aimed at computer users in Europe or the United States. “This is a main reason why spammers are not arrested,” he said.
Politics may also play a role. Vladimir Sokolov, deputy director of the Institute of Information Security, a Russian research organization, said the United States and Russia were still at odds on basic issues of computer security, although the differences were narrowing.
The United States tends to view computer security as a law enforcement matter. Russia has pushed for an international treaty that would regulate the use of online weapons by military or espionage agencies. Last year the United States opened talks on a treaty, but it has continued to press for closer law enforcement cooperation, Mr. Sokolov said.
Computer security researchers have raised a more sinister prospect: that criminal spamming gangs have been co-opted by the intelligence agencies in Russia, which provide cover for their activities in exchange for the criminals’ expertise or for allowing their networks of virus-infected computers to be used for political purposes — to crash dissident Web sites, perhaps.
Sometimes, the collateral damage for online business is immediate. A year ago, for example, hackers used a network of infected computers to direct huge amounts of junk trafficat the social networking accounts of a 34-year-old political blogger in Georgia, a country that fought a war with Russia in 2008. The attack, though, spun out of control and briefly crashed the global service of Twitter and slowed Facebook and LiveJournal, affecting tens of millions of computer users worldwide.
The Russian authorities have repeatedly denied that the state has any connection to such attacks.
Spamhaus says 7 of the top 10 spammers in the world are based in the former Soviet Union, in Ukraine, Russia and Estonia.
More ominously, Western law enforcement agencies have traced a code intended for breaking into banking sites to Russian programming.
In 2007, Swedish experts identified a Russian hacker known only by his colorful sobriquet — the Corpse — as the author of a virus that logged keystrokes on personal computers to capture passwords for Nordea, a Swedish bank, and the accounts were drained of about $1 million.
For a time, these rogue programs were openly for sale on a Russian Web site. The home page displayed an illustration of Lenin making a rude gesture.
Since Mr. Horohorin’s arrest, the badb.biz Web site has gone dark. But through Monday, at least, its CarderPlanet counterpart, the Russian site carder.su, was still open for business.
The importance of Kumble
To deal with fame, complacency and laziness, young cricketers need to be willing themselves, and the BCCI proactive. The likes of Anil Kumble can help, and corporate India may have solutions to offer
August 20, 2010
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Related Links Players/Officials: Anil Kumble Teams: India | |||
Anil Kumble wants to work with India's young talent and help in grooming and preparing them for life as cricketers. A better person could not be found, and a more crying need could not have been identified in Indian cricket. While it is a cricketer with skills who takes the field, the person within the athlete walks along too; sometimes as a shadow, sometimes even as a cloak. In the long run, while skill is important, attitude is supreme.
Kumble was a man possessed of considerable skill himself, but as a competitor he was awesome. His skill made him a very good cricketer, and his attitude propelled that skill towards making him a legend in Indian cricket. It is such qualities that Indian cricket and the young men who symbolise it need a dose of, because currently there is an epidemic going around.
Fine young cricketers are dropping off the radar, either unable to cope with fame and its attendant pressures or being satiated too soon. Kumble doesn't possess a wand, he is not an alchemist. And anyway, work ethic cannot be enforced or injected. It has to grow within. But hopefully Kumble can remind them of the path they need to be on. In truth they know of it, or at any rate they should, but a little nudge wouldn't be a bad idea.
Once the bosses of Indian cricket take time off from looking into finances - important but not the core aspect of the game - maybe they can start looking at players. It is not identifying talented players that is the main issue, it is what to do with them once they are identified that seems a little more difficult and will require sensitive handling. India's problem, then, lies not so much in unearthing talent as in maintaining it.
RP Singh and Sreesanth are wonderful vehicles that spend more time in the garage than on the road. Yuvraj Singh is a thoroughbred in danger of wandering off the track. These are not talents that a team can lose. If they hit the basement button, there has to be somebody to stop them. Hopefully Kumble can guide them. But eventually India's young cricketers must feel the need to be competitive and world-class from within, and do what it takes. In recent times I have met a couple of overseas cricketers and an Indian great, who without prompting offered the word "lazy" as a descriptor for some of our young bowlers.
| My fear is that for the first couple of years excellence stays relevant and then for some it seems to demand too much time, become too much of an effort. The low-hanging fruit seems too enticing | |||
So either the BCCI could take a laissez faire approach and say that if some of the younger brigade project the wrong attitude they are probably the wrong people for the side anyway. Or they could take a serious look at the attrition levels in Indian cricket. It has disappointed me that more hasn't been done in that regard.
The core of what Kumble will come up with will necessarily have to do with how to cope with success. It can lead to many things, some beautiful, some dangerous. It can spur you on to excellence or it can lead to complacence. My fear is that for the first couple of years, excellence stays relevant and then for some it seems to demand too much time, become too much of an effort. The low-hanging fruit seems too enticing.
It would be too difficult to expect the coach to handle such matters, which is why many have been advocating a senior person, not necessarily a cricketer, as a permanent manager; not someone who guarantees a vote and gets an expense account but a real professional, who players can open their hearts to.
People within the cricket system tend to mock those who reside outside. They often prefer the narrow confines of their world and prevent fresh thought from knocking at the door. My wife and I earn a living talking to corporate India about lessons from sport. The greater need, I am convinced, is for the best of corporate India to offer lessons in excellence to our young cricketers. Kumble's plan should be a starting point.
Harsha Bhogle is a commentator, television presenter and writer. His Twitter feed is here
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TopChina-Pak floods are a stark warning
DNA / DNA / Monday, August 23, 2010 22:56 ISTThe recent floods in Pakistan and China, which have resulted in the deaths of thousands of people and the evacuation of millions, prove once again how vulnerable we are to the fury of nature. Water has inundated villages and towns and the damage is already incalculable as rescue workers struggle, aid agencies scramble and medics try and contain epidemics.
The biggest price, of course, is the human cost and this is where the changing patterns in world weather have to be examined. So far, we have looked at global warming as a way to apportion blame — the west versus the east, the already industrialised versus the newly industrialising, the intelligently aware versus the profligate. But the planet seems to remind us again and again that we are in this together. The after-effects of natural calamities do not confine themselves within national boundaries.
Whether global warming is caused by human error and callousness or is the result of changes in weather patterns - as has happened several times over billions of years — the fact is the Earth is far more populated today than it ever has been. Humans could survive the last ice age 10,000 years ago because we hid in caves.
That option is no longer open to most of us. Instead, we need to seriously examine how best to withstand such events and the regularity at which they occur. Past industrialisation may be partially responsible, but so is destruction and tampering with the environment.
China has been forced to downscale its claims about the controversial Three Gorges Dam and the amount of water it can absorb. Environmentalists have pointed out for years how heedless manipulation of nature can be detrimental in the long run. In the past, we made mistakes because we did not know any better. It would be a shame if we went ahead with dodgy plans in spite of knowing it all.
The immediate need is to streamline rescue plans. We need better science with which to forecast severe weather changes and protocols to help the affected. The global warming debate needs to become practical.
URL of the article: http://www.dnaindia.com/opinion/report_china-pak-floods-are-a-stark-warning_1427777-all
The recent floods in Pakistan and China, which have resulted in the deaths of thousands of people and the evacuation of millions, prove once again how vulnerable we are to the fury of nature. Water has inundated villages and towns and the damage is already incalculable as rescue workers struggle, aid agencies scramble and medics try and contain epidemics.
The biggest price, of course, is the human cost and this is where the changing patterns in world weather have to be examined. So far, we have looked at global warming as a way to apportion blame — the west versus the east, the already industrialised versus the newly industrialising, the intelligently aware versus the profligate. But the planet seems to remind us again and again that we are in this together. The after-effects of natural calamities do not confine themselves within national boundaries.
Whether global warming is caused by human error and callousness or is the result of changes in weather patterns - as has happened several times over billions of years — the fact is the Earth is far more populated today than it ever has been. Humans could survive the last ice age 10,000 years ago because we hid in caves.
That option is no longer open to most of us. Instead, we need to seriously examine how best to withstand such events and the regularity at which they occur. Past industrialisation may be partially responsible, but so is destruction and tampering with the environment.
China has been forced to downscale its claims about the controversial Three Gorges Dam and the amount of water it can absorb. Environmentalists have pointed out for years how heedless manipulation of nature can be detrimental in the long run. In the past, we made mistakes because we did not know any better. It would be a shame if we went ahead with dodgy plans in spite of knowing it all.
The immediate need is to streamline rescue plans. We need better science with which to forecast severe weather changes and protocols to help the affected. The global warming debate needs to become practical.
The mobile is bringing out the worst in us
DNA / R Jagannathan / Sunday, August 22, 2010 2:51 IST
We Indians are an ill-mannered, insecure, uncivilised and uncouth lot. I know this is a sweeping generalisation, and I apologise upfront to those who feel the definition doesn’t fit. But stereotypes hold shock value and carry within them the core of a larger truth.
Exhibit A is our mobile phone behaviour.
Why mobiles phones? Well, unlike the landline, the mobile has reached more than half the population, and it is not a fringe thing. It defines us in ways we don’t care to think.
For a start, let’s leave aside the obvious. Loud share price discussions with the broker inside crowded suburban trains, and piercing shrieks from an unsilenced mobile inside a movie hall are par for the course. It testifies to our abiding unconcern for how our behaviour impacts others. How we use the mobile, both when we call someone and when someone calls us, tells us a lot about who we are. Let’s discuss some situations.
You are in the midst of a board meeting and your phone rings with that Bollywood number you’ve set for your spouse. If you’re the boss, the rule that you should keep your handset in silent mode apparently does not apply. We thus establish our status as feudal lords. Lesser minions get dirty looks if their phone rings in the conference room.
But you’re boss only at the office. If you take the call, it establishes you as a marital wimp. If you don’t, the spouse is livid. If you take it, and the voice at the other end is in attack mode (“you left the fridge door open”, or “why didn’t you call aunt Lila on her birthday?”), your colleagues will see your face redden as your side of the conversation goes limp or apologetic.
With one call we have established several things. One is the caller’s insensitivity to your position. It also tells us something about the state of your marital relationship. Whether to take the call or not in the midst of a meeting is a decision fraught with anxiety and danger potential. Quite clearly, everyone’s breaking telephone etiquette and doesn’t care a damn.
Let’s analyse another call’s hidden psychological content. Your boss calls you at an ungodly hour to discuss something that he thinks is urgent. Most Indian businessmen believe that if they pay a decent wage, they own the employee. The very fact that the call comes at an indecent hour speaks volumes about the nature of the employer-employee relationship: it’s master-servant, not a contractual one between equals. The hidden message is: if I call at midnight, you had better pick it up, even if all I want to know is whether you will take my dog out for a walk the next day when I am out of town.
To avoid this kind of anxiety, employees often switch off their phones so that they can’t be disturbed in their personal time. They pretend their phones weren’t working when the boss called. The only way to parry the boss’ unwanted call is to become a consummate liar. We have become great liars because the mobile puts us in situations which we do not want to be in, and the nature of the employer-employee relationship is wrong. In the landline days, your boss couldn’t know if you were at home just because the phone rang. When you carry your mobile on your person, everyone knows you are avoiding a call. Or at least it is assumed to be so. This knowledge, instead of spurring us to think about how to respect each others’ privacy, brings out the worst in us.
A third way of analysing our national character is to look at how we use the SMS texting facility. Next month one is sure to receive 100 SMSs wishing me a happy Ganesh Chathurthi. It makes me happy that so many people thought about me when invoking Ganesha’s blessings. But is this really true? When we send the same SMS as unchanged bulk message to 100 people, what does it tell the receiver about us? That you are one among hundreds? That you are wishing him because it is easy to do so? Either way, it doesn’t do much good to either texter or receiver. But we still do it.
How we don’t use the SMS also tells us a lot about ourselves.
Most people in most situations can’t know where the called party is when the call reaches him or her. One could be in the loo, on a train, at a shopping counter, eating dinner, or sleeping. The polite thing to do is to send an SMS asking whether this is a good time to call. The SMS is the ideal way to establish good manners and sensitivity to the other person’s situation, but this is almost unlikely to happen in Indian situations. We are like that only.
2005-2010 Diligent Media Corporation Ltd. All rights reserved.
China's Water Grab
In recent weeks, the United States has taken some assertive steps in the South China Sea -- and Beijing is watching anxiously. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made an explicit move away from the administration's usually conciliatory tone when she declared in late July that it would be in America's "national interest" to help mediate the disputes among China and several other Asian countries over islands and maritime rights in the sea. Then, on July 22, Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced that the United States would resume ties with Indonesian special forces after a 12-year hiatus, with the aim of eventually restoring full military-to-military relations. He also confirmed other collaboration with China's maritime rivals, including a series of multilateral military training exercises in Cambodia, joint U.S.-Vietnam naval exercises, and serious discussions with Hanoi on sharing nuclear fuel.
It's clear that the United States is truly "back in Asia," as Clinton promised in January. But another, subtler regional push, one that's flown under the radar in Washington, has an even greater capacity to upset Beijing: America's interference in the Mekong River region. Clinton recently met with the foreign ministers of Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam and pledged $187 million to support the Lower Mekong Initiative, which has the stated aim of improving education, health, infrastructure, and the environment in the region. It doesn't have the same firepower as military training exercises -- but privately, several Chinese Ministry of National Defense officials have told me that they believe this new, softer approach in the Mekong has the potential to achieve something that all the naval partnerships in the world cannot.
The 2,700-mile-long Mekong River begins on the Tibetan plateau and runs from Yunnan province in China through Burma, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam. China has built three hydroelectric dams on its stretch of the Mekong (called Lancang in China) and will complete a fourth dam in 2012. At the moment, water levels of the lower Mekong are at record lows, threatening the livelihood of an estimated 70 million people in the countries south of China, where subsistence agriculture supports a large majority of the population. These countries blame Beijing for damming up water to benefit Chinese citizens while people downstream are starving.
There is no conclusive proof that the Chinese dams and water policies are responsible for the low water levels downstream, but Beijing's refusal to allow extensive inspection of its activities in the Lancang -- as well as its disdainful attitude toward the smaller complainants -- hasn't reassured the smaller countries that they're being treated fairly. They fear a future in which their access to water will be controlled by China's Ministry of Water Resources.
Beijing can be disdainful and bullying toward smaller countries when it comes to its own interests, as observers of Mekong River politics will confirm. But China's approach in much of Asia is basically a hearts-and-minds one. It is a major distributor of cheap, no-strings-attached loans to other Asian governments, especially to those countries, such as the Philippines and Thailand, that are occasionally drifting away from Washington's embrace. Its diplomats are the most numerous and hardworking in all of Asia, spreading a form of regionalist "Asian values" that is specifically designed to exclude American influence. Political officials and strategists in Beijing increasingly talk about a bottom-up approach to regional supremacy, using economic and cultural arguments to persuade Asian elites that Chinese leadership is the sure and benign path to regional prosperity in the future -- not American partnership.
Because of this, Washington's willingness to get involved in the Mekong River dispute could create an almost perfect counterweight to China's strategy among the tens of millions of people dependent on the river for sustenance. Political elites in almost every Asian country (exceptions include North Korea and Burma) are predisposed to prefer American power over China. However, these days people are increasingly wondering what's in it for them. While there have been over 40 bilateral and multilateral free trade agreements signed between Asian states, including a China-ASEAN pact that was activated this year, America has concluded and ratified only one, with Singapore. This is why America's ability to keep Beijing in check over the Mekong River could remind millions of ordinary Asians that U.S. primacy in the region still matters, that American diplomatic clout and military presence has maintained the peace in Asia and kept vital sea lanes safe and open for commerce for decades.
Former U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage often counseled that "getting China right means getting Asia right." Strengthening alliances with countries such as Japan, South Korea, and Australia is still the most important part of this strategy. Establishing new security partnerships with countries such as India, Vietnam, and Indonesia is also critical. But economic development and future prosperity is the region's top priority. For the tens of millions of Asians in these countries that depend on the Mekong River for their survival and livelihood, nothing matters more than a policy that addresses water rights.
It is still too early to say whether Barack Obama's administration will pursue wholeheartedly its newfound interests in the Mekong. But lending America's weight to local "bread and butter" issues is a clever way for Washington to win millions of new friends in the region -- and keep one very eager competitor at bay.
TANG CHHIN SOTHY/AFP/Getty Images
John Lee is a foreign-policy research fellow at the Australia-based think tank Centre for Independent Studies and a visiting fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C. He is the author of Will China Fail?