Canadian Census Saga
Send us a comment to : feedback@southasiamail.comJeffrey Simpson
What Canadians are witnessing in the census saga is the temporary triumph of ideology over reason.
Through the collective voices of their civic, religious and political institutions, Canadians apparently understand the threat – which is why they’ve rallied so strongly against the Harper government’s decision to scrap the mandatory long-form census. Whether they’ll defeat ideology at the next election remains to be seen.
The Statistics Canada fight is not the usual clash of competing political visions, of left against right, of Conservatives against progressives. Rather, this is a fight about rational decision-making that requires the best fact-based evidence available against a reliance on ideological nostrums that scorn facts and reason when they stand in the way of those nostrums.
It’s a fight, in essence, for an old, often tattered but still powerful dream: that the best information will lead to the best informed decisions, that decisions will flow from facts, rather than facts fitted to justify decisions.
Munir Sheikh had no choice but to resign as head of Statistics Canada. His predecessor, Ivan Fellegi, had said as much, but, more important, was that Mr. Sheikh represented a fact-gathering agency whose essential mission was being compromised by ideology. Worse, the integrity of that institution – and, by extension, his own – was being sullied by a series of misrepresentations put about by a minister who, were he possessed of an ounce of honour, would have submitted his own resignation. But then honour has all but disappeared in the hyper-partisanship of federal politics, the crude attacks that now characterize so much of public debate, and the intense desire to hold high office at all costs of those for whom being in politics has become a lifelong obsession.
Industry Minister Tony Clement, to whom Statistics Canada ultimately reports, has been dancing a disgraceful jig to Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s tune. Make no mistake: This entire affair was provoked by Mr. Harper, the man who makes all the important decisions and many of the lesser ones.
Mr. Clement resorted to inventing explanations for scrapping the mandatory long-form census that contributes to the accuracy of national data. When these failed for demonstrable lack of evidence, he and the spinmeisters in the Prime Minister’s Office tried to make this into a partisan affair. When that failed, they began to infer that Statistics Canada itself, and Mr. Sheikh in particular, were at one with the government’s ideological decision.
It was this gross misstatement of fact that finally provoked Mr. Sheikh’s resignation. It was simply wrong for Mr. Clement to state that, in offering options about how to run a voluntary long-form survey, the agency and Mr. Sheikh agreed that these options were the best on offer, or that they could achieve the same results as a mandatory one.
There isn’t a statistician in Canada who accepts Mr. Clement’s assertion about voluntary equalling mandatory, because, after all, they’re trained in reason, not the narrow exigencies of partisan politics, whereby a Conservative Prime Minister, himself a deeply ideological person, seized on this issue to stir up the party’s right-wing core.
Mr. Sheikh, a protégé of Kevin Lynch, Mr. Harper’s former clerk of the Privy Council, and a career public servant, would have been trained in the art of bureaucratic discretion and, where appropriate, in bowing to political masters.
Deputy ministers, after all, sometimes disagree with the government they serve, and try to convince ministers they’re wrong. But, in the end, they must yield to ministers under our system of government, unless, of course, they’re being asked to do something unconscionable or unethical or, as in this case, their motives and positions are being publicly misrepresented.
Mr. Sheikh knew that Statistics Canada does not, as the PMO suggested, knock on people’s doors at 10 p.m. to interview them. The agency, and others who monitor the census, have heard very few complaints about the “invasion of privacy,” a justification concocted by Mr. Clement. Those who worked there presumably wished, as professionals, to serve the public interest, assuming that the best available statistical profile of Canada might lead to advancing that interest. What they didn’t understand was that they’d become the targets of an assault by ideology against reason.(The Globe and Mail)
Decision on Census has no sense
Send us a comment to : feedback@southasiamail.comBy Haroon Siddiqui
When governments want to sneak something by you, they slip the announcement in late Friday, hoping the media won’t notice. Or they print it in the Canada Gazette Saturday, especially during summer weekends.
The Stephen Harper government did the latter on Saturday, June 26 (during the G20 meeting in Toronto), conveying its decision to change the national census.
As if to rub salt in the wound, Tony Clement, the minister in charge of Statistics Canada, said: “I don’t accept that every time you make a change on every matter of government business, you have to shout it from every rooftop.”
The quinquennial census (every five years) consists of a short form sent to 80 per cent of households and a longer one that the remaining fifth must answer.
The first provides the population estimates Ottawa uses to allocate $60 billion in transfer payments to the provinces and territories.
The second helps build a national portrait, down to the neighbourhood level. The only data of its kind, it’s widely used by businesses, governments, hospitals and such agencies as the United Way to provide products and services — from daycare, schools and public transit to retail outlets and seniors care.
However, starting with the next census, due in May 2011, the Tories have decided that the longer form would no longer be compulsory.
This has upset a whole lot of people, with good reason. A voluntary survey is not a census. Its data would be skewed, some groups having responded and others not, like the super-rich at one end and the very poor on the other.
The problem won’t be solved by boosting the sample to 30 per cent, as the Tories are proposing (at an additional cost of $30 million).
“You do not compensate for selective non-response by increasing the sample at random,” Ivan Fellegi, former head of StatsCan and an internationally recognized census expert, told me Tuesday. “You do not correct for the non-responding new immigrants or aboriginals by increasing the sample of middle-class third generation Canadians.”
Worse, the results from the voluntary survey could not be overlaid on existing data, dating back decades. Even if a future government were to restore the survey, “the breaking of the chain of information in 2011 could not be repaired.” says Harvey Low of the social development department at Toronto City Hall.
The storehouse of existing analyses “will potentially be rendered useless,” said Fellegi.
Don Drummond, former chief economist of the TD Bank and a member of the National Statistical Council, which acts in a consultative capacity for StatsCan, said the planned changes to the 2011 census would leave Canada “in a fog” for years.
For example, next year’s being a decennial census (every 10 years), StatsCan will ask the religion question. But the data could not be accurately compared to the 2001 census to know the changes in the number of, say, Catholics in the country.
Clement’s rationale for the change — that the long form is “coercive and too intrusive” of privacy — is not to be taken at face value. (Many Canadians object to paying taxes or doing jury duty or even wearing seat belts, so why not do away with those?)
StatsCan has not violated anyone’s privacy, ever.
Clement also offered no evidence that a substantial number of Canadians had objected to the long form. But there is evidence from past censuses that laggards — those slow or reluctant to respond — were laggards, whether given the short form or the long form.
So, it’s hard to believe that the government is merely mollycoddling the yahoos who find the census intrusive. They are too few to matter, while those upset by the decision are too many to offend.
No, the real reason lies elsewhere.
“Harper does not like StatsCan, that’s what we kept hearing,” according to a longtime employee of the agency. “In particular, he does not like the analytical work we’ve done for years.” The Prime Minister thinks of it as fodder for critics.
Sure enough, it’s the analytical work that he has been decimating. Gone, truncated or privatized are surveys that kept track of pensions and benefits at our places of work; the proportion of our incomes going to housing, vacation, medical expenses to see how well or badly we all were doing; the level of inequality among Canadians; the economic integration of immigrants; and how people with physical and mental disabilities were coping.
“When these surveys were being cut back, the concerned federal departments were told not to comment on how that might muck up their work,” said the source. “They were told to shut up. The message had come from the top.”
Another source said that Clement had, in fact, advised against the decision, as had Finance Minister Jim Flaherty. Both were overruled. “It was a one-man decision,” Harper’s.
“The PMO thought nobody would care,” added the source. But now, it’s said to be stunned by the range and depth of the backlash, from right across the political spectrum.
Even the conservative C.D. Howe Institute is upset. So also the Canadian Society for Epidemiology and Biostatistics (health scientists who make extensive use of census data in the research and practice areas of public health). So also academics who, besides being upset at losing the continuity of data, worry that they — and Canadian textbooks on economics, statistics, sociology, etc. — would end up using American data for classroom teaching.
Look at who else is calling on Harper to reverse himself:
Federation of Canadian Municipalities; Atlantic Provinces Economics Council; Canadian Association for Business Economics (bankers, applied economists, etc.); Canadian Institute of Planners; Canadian Economics Association (academics who teach economics); Canadian Council of Social Development; Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives; Canadian Statistical Society; Canadian Marketing Association; Canadian Research Data Centre Network; Canadian Census Committee; Canadian Association of University Teachers; Caledon Institute; Information and Communications Technology Council; Institute for Research on Public Policy (whose president Mel Cappe is Canada’s former top public servant as clerk of the Privy Council); City of Toronto; Toronto Public Health; United Way Toronto; and Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants.
Some of them have said they are “flabbergasted” and “profoundly concerned” by Harper’s “appalling,” “misguided” decision, which, besides being more expensive, would produce “degraded data” of “unpublishable quality” and “have disastrous consequences.”
Good. Harper might reverse his decision. Or he might dig in, which is what’s happening — for which he will pay a political price.
Digging the government deeper, Clement said Tuesday that “the government does not think it is necessary for Canadians to provide Statistics Canada with the number of bedrooms in their home, or at what time of the day they left for work and how long it takes them to get there.”
Actually, they do — so that businesses and governments would know how much lumber to order and gasoline to keep in stock, and what time to get the subways and buses rolling, and stop construction on the roads and highways to allow for a smoother flow of the daily commuter traffic.
Haroon Siddiqui writes on Thursday and Sunday. hsiddiqui@thestar.ca
Canada’s Auditor General’s “flack jacket”
Send us a comment to : feedback@southasiamail.comBy Bob Hughes
As the racial discrimination case of Dr. Chander Grover, a Canadian scientist of South Asian ancestry, drags on into it’s 23rd year, questions often arise, “How can such torture and abuse of an esteemed scientist by Canadian officials, on Canadian soil, be allowed to happen?”, and “Why would Canada’s financial watchdog, the Auditor General secretly become involved in investigating and working to thwart a Human Rights case?”
“Those are questions that I wrestle with all the time when working on Dr. Grover’s case”, states Bob Hughes (see picture) of the Saskatchewan Coalition Against Racism (SCAR), an advocacy group that continues to push for justice in this case. “It is as if there is a ‘conspiracy of silence’ in regard to this shameful case of abuse.” SCAR has contacted the Prime Minister and many MP’s from all of the Federal Political parties to ask for their help to push for a settlement in the case and for a Public Inquiry into the way the case has been dealt with, including the secret involvement of the Auditor General. “So far, there have been no takers,” said Hughes, noting that Auditor General Sheila Fraser has built a “flack jacket” of trust around her that seems to make MP’s wary of being seen as questioning any of her actions. “We have also called on groups such as the Canadian Taxpayers’ Federation to get involved in relation to this tremendous waste of taxpayers’ money, estimated at over 60 million dollars so far,” Hughes said, “They too, seem to be either uninterested in such financial abuse or possibly concerned that exposing the misconduct of such an establishment figure may also threaten their own ‘comfortable’ positions in society.”
“The fact that the abuse of Dr. Grover has been allowed to continue unabated for so long must surely be, in great part, because of the racism that permeates the very fabric of this country,” says Hughes. “But the secret involvement of the Auditor general; what is that about? Article 18.2(1) of the Auditor General’s Act may hold at least part of that answer.
This Article, at first glance, appears to provide the OAG with immunity for almost any normal auditing function that they may perform. However, in the Grover case, auditing was not the Auditor General’s focus. The Auditor General was clearly ‘investigating” the Grover case and assisting the National Research Council to usurp the authority of the Canadian Human Rights Tribunals and other Canadian courts………which brings up some further questions, ‘Are these the duties that the Auditor General is authorized to carry out, and if so, why is she carrying them out in secret?’ ”
The Saskatchewan Coalition Against Racism is calling on all of Canada’s fair-minded citizens to join us in calling for an immediate resumption of settlement negotiations with Dr. Grover and for the setting up of a Public Inquiry into the way this case has been handled, with specific focus on the role of Canada’s Auditor General.
Bob Hughes is Advocate / Spokesperson, Saskatchewan Coalition Against Racism (SCAR), PO Box 33022, Cathedral PO, Regina, Sask. S4T 7X2; Telephone: 306-352-4698; E-mail: hughes.scar28@hotmail.com
The reluctant giant
Send us a comment to : feedback@southasiamail.comEven China doesn’t know how it will play its unaccustomed role as world power This is the second in a four-part series examining how the world will manage a shift in power and influence from west to east.
By Ramesh Thakur
The China-U.S. relationship will be the pivot of the post-unipolar world order. Western perceptions of China tend to oscillate between confrontation and fascination, either inflating or downsizing its importance. The benign view sees China taking its rightful place as a responsible stakeholder in the management of regional and world order; the pessimistic assessment worries about its potential for mischief across a broad range of issues around the world.
Driven by strategic narcissism, the three-trillion-dollar wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have helped to bankrupt the United States and, by outsourcing manufacturing to China and services to India, enfeeble its capacity to produce enough goods and services to pay its bills.
The U.S. economy used to be the biggest, best-balanced and most productive and innovative. Now it is saddled with debts, deficits and distortions. The U.S. deficit, projected at around 11 per cent of economic output for the next year, will still be around five per cent of GDP in 2020. A seemingly dysfunctional political system neuters all efforts to address structural problems. If by the end of the decade the U.S. is still the world’s biggest borrower — 10-year economic forecasts lack credibility — will it still be the world’s biggest power?
China is the world’s largest auto market by unit volume, the biggest exporter of merchandise and will account for the largest growth in world trade for some time. The U.S. remains the finance and consumption capital of the world but the new production capital is China. It is dependent no longer on U.S. markets, managerial know-how and technology, nor on U.S. power as a counterweight to a Soviet threat. A dominant player in setting energy, mineral and other commodity prices, China is the world’s major net (but not per capita) emitter of greenhouse gases and determinant of climate change.
U.S. columnist Thomas Friedman argues that the loss of faith in western prescriptions is leading to the discredited Washington Consensus of free-market, pro-trade and globalization policies being replaced by a Beijing Consensus: state-guided, strictly controlled capital markets and an authoritarian decision-making process that can make tough strategic choices and long-term investments without being distracted by daily polls.
The Chinese save as stubbornly as the Americans spend. President Barack Obama’s China visit in November was of a supplicant paying tribute to his chief creditor. His refusal to meet the Dalai Lama before the trip reinforced the symbolism. Their subsequent White House meeting drew fresh warnings from Beijing.
Yet, while the U.S. needs China to finance its mounting debt, a collapse of the U.S. economy would mean drastic cutbacks to sales of made-in China products in the world’s biggest consumer market and also erode the value of China’s currency reserves.
China used to believe that the world order of one superpower and several great powers would continue. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars hastened the military, financial and moral decline of America. To protect their interests, some Chinese debated how they could arrest the pace of America’s descent from heaven. Since the financial crisis, which proved China’s remarkable resilience, there has been a flood of declinist commentary about the U.S. by Chinese analysts.
For the first time in 200 years, the world must engage with a united and powerful China that has become more aggressive on several issues, including climate change, Internet freedom and the border dispute with India. But so too must China come to terms with its new status: The Middle Kingdom has no historical, philosophical or literary tradition of diplomatic intercourse as a great power in a system of great powers. This will become especially relevant as China’s footprint becomes increasingly global and its interests, presence and activities mushroom around the world.
Treating China as an enemy could turn it into one. But should the U.S. underwrite the rise of a one-party state that is its only plausible geopolitical rival? The Clinton and Bush administrations’ China policies had rested on the assumption that exposure to free trade and the information age would release and strengthen the forces of liberalization and political change. What if the assumptions are false? The evidence to date is mostly in the opposite direction.
Washington approved arms sales to Taiwan worth $6 billion, calculating that, with more than 1,300 Chinese missiles pointed at Taiwan, bolstering the latter’s military preparedness may be a prudent hedge against having to defend it from attack. It simultaneously raises the risks of failure and the costs of success should Beijing choose to go to war. Beijing retaliated immediately, suspending bilateral military exchanges and imposing sanctions on companies selling arms to Taiwan.
Yet calculations of relative U.S. decline are more likely to nudge Beijing toward exerting leverage over U.S. international policy than outright confrontation. It will want to recalibrate the multilateral order on its terms, setting aside questions of human rights and political values to focus instead on solving common problems. It will be more willing and able than before to shape the international environment and world order proactively rather than react passively to it.
China’s rise has been welcomed by many as a counterweight to U.S. military muscle and political arrogance. China could also be the world’s engine of growth. If it’s not careful, though, it could encounter a grating wall of resistance as countries, multinationals and NGOs begin to push back against heavy-handed assertiveness.
Is China prepared to shed Deng Xiaoping’s anachronistic adage to keep a low profile and not take the lead? Will it use growing wealth, power and influence for narrow mercantilism or the common good? How long can it question the dollar’s status as the global reserve currency without loosening its iron grip on the yuan?
Google’s threat to leave rather than become more complicit in Internet censorship may be a harbinger of a changing international mood. Google’s fight with China is more likely to be motivated by commercial calculation than concerns about freedom of information.
As most foreign companies have discovered, it is not easy to move from China’s massive potential to massive profits. Google’s one-third share of China’s search engine market provides just five per cent of its global revenue. On a level playing field, Google could potentially wrest a much larger market share from Baidu, its government-connected chief competitor in China. The risk assessment of the strategy of standing up to Beijing may reflect this cost-benefit analysis.
In China’s implicit social contract, the citizens acquiesce to political control in return for the government overseeing continuing prosperity that delivers the same goods and services to them as to westerners. With communism discredited, the government lacks a legitimizing ideology to economic growth. If this is put under threat by Google and other major multinational firms pulling out, the strategic loss for the Chinese government could be bigger than the lost revenues for the firms.
China basks in the growing acknowledgment of its rising status. It is happy to take the benefits flowing from it but is less keen to stop being a free rider, exercise international public leadership and accept the burdens of being a great power.
That mindset helps to explain currency manipulation to protect exports at the expense of other countries, unwillingness to commit to internationally verifiable cuts in greenhouse gas emissions and courting of pariah authoritarian regimes to gain access to raw materials and resources.
China is as unwilling as the Bush administration was to bind itself to agreed global norms. It could find itself in somewhat lonesome company with arms-length relationships of convenience rather than true friends and allies, of which the U.S. still has plenty, including Australia, Canada, the EU and Japan.
Ramesh Thakur is director of the Balsillie School of International Affairs, distinguished Fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation, and a professor of political science at the University of Waterloo. His new book on “Global Governance and the UN” will be published shortly by Indiana University Press.
Toronto G20 meetings
Send us a comment to : feedback@southasiamail.comBy Charlie Smith
The news footage of the G20 protests in Toronto made me think about a book I read a couple of years ago.
It’s called Generation Debt: How Our Future Was Sold Out for Student Loans, Credit Cards, Bad Jobs, No Benefits, and Tax Cuts for Rich Geezers—and How to Fight Back (Riverhead Books).
As the title suggests, author Anya Kamenetz delivers a comprehensive rundown of why Americans in their 20s are getting a raw deal in the globalized economy.
She demonstrates that this economic discrimination is systemic and pervasive. Moreover, the book contains a message that young people shouldn’t be too hard on themselves if they’re drowning in credit card debt.
Kamenetz also reveals how the media have failed to acknowledge the extent of the unfairness being meted out to young people.
Instead, some baby-boom journalists prefer taking cheap shots by calling people in their 20s “adultescents” or “twixters”—and then complaining about how these debt-soaked young adults “with a sense of entitlement” return to live with their parents.
Here in B.C., university tuition hikes have vastly exceeded the inflation rate since the B.C. Liberals took power in 2001.
In a submission to the House of Commons finance committee last August, the Canadian Federation of Students stated that average student debt for a four-year program averages between $21,000 to $28,000, depending on the province and the area of study.
In Canada, people cannot be discharged from bankruptcy on a student loan until at least seven years after they have completed their education.
Meanwhile, the minimum wage has not increased in B.C. since 2001. The eight-dollar minimum, which is the lowest in the country, has taken an even harder toll on young people who don’t make it to college or university because they’re more apt to take those jobs.
Vancouver housing costs are sky-high, magnifying the challenge for college- and university-age students in this region. Many juggle work and school while living in substandard housing.
Kamenetz points out in her book that as baby boomers entered the workforce in 1970, the largest private employer was General Motors. It paid an average $17.50 per hour in today’s dollars.
“The largest employer in the postindustrial economy is Wal-Mart,” Kamenetz notes in the paperback edition of her book, which was published in 2007. “Their average wage? Eight dollars an hour. The service-driven economy is also a youth-driven economy, burning young people’s energy and potential over a deep-fat fryer.”
In Toronto this weekend, we witnessed the rage of some young people during the protests against the G20 meetings. These marches had a dramatically different tone than more peaceful antiglobalization demonstrations of the 1990s.
Nowadays, the black-clad anarchists are taking matters into their own hands. We witnessed this in Vancouver last February during the 2010 Winter Games.
For anyone who has read Kamenetz’s book, the root causes are fairly obvious.
“Eighteen-to-thirty-four-year-olds may be one-quarter of the electorate, but after years of scandal and cynicism, we vote less often than any generation alive,” Kamenetz writes. “And just as we have turned our back on politics, the nation has turned its back on us.”
Provincial and national politicians know that old people are more likely to vote, which is why health care, tax cuts, and pensions usually get far more attention than postsecondary education and student debt.
Until systemic political and economic discrimination against young people is meaningfully addressed, we can expect to see more of these window-smashing, G20-style demonstrations in the future.
That’s because some members of Generation Debt have clearly concluded that they no longer have anything to lose by being arrested.
India and China on collision course?
Send us a comment to : feedback@southasiamail.comBy Ramesh Thakur
For Pakistan’s ruling elite, the arch-rival is India. But India’s arch-rival is China. The simple distinction is critical for engagement with India.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper visited China in December in part because, wanting to exploit the economic opportunities of both rising Asian giants and not offend either, he couldn’t not go to China after spending three days in India in November. But he did not visit Pakistan. This is a welcome development from India’s point of view. Analysts too need to switch their analytical frame from India-Pakistan-U.S. to the new and more consequential India-China-U.S. strategic triangle.
Part of the reason for outsiders confusing the two observations is that, while Pakistan makes no secret of its attitude, the broad train of interests guiding India’s foreign policy requires it to co-operate with China on many international issues and mute public expressions of the bilateral rivalry. The identification of China as the main object of the nuclear tests in 1998 was a rare slip.
Like others, Indians are divided on whether China’s recent muscular assertiveness is rooted in insecurity or hubris. A clash between overgoverned China and undergoverned India is less unimaginable than one between China and the U.S. Both have tried to keep the unresolved border dispute frozen while attempting to build and improve relations on other fronts.
The merits of the conflict aside, the 1962 border war was caused by a flawed sequence of statements and actions by India. For many years founding prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, his ego frequently massaged by the Chinese who were bemused at his efforts to tutor the consummate Zhou Enlai in the art of diplomacy, ignored the strategic legacies inherited from the British on how best to defend the Raj against actual and potential enemies. When Nehru did awaken to the threat to India’s territorial security by the positioning of Chinese troops on the Himalayas, his ill-advised public sabre rattling provoked Beijing into calling India’s military bluff and inflicting a humiliating defeat. A broken Nehru died within two years.
The risk now is China may overplay its hand by under-estimating how much India has changed.
The 3,500-kilometre border is volatile on both sides, running from India’s insurgency-plagued northeast along Nepal and Tibet and on the edges of Xinjiang, home of the Uighurs. Curiously insensitive to the fact that Pakistan was created by splitting India, China is hyper-sensitive to “splittism” in relation to Taiwan, Tibet and Xinjiang. It is exasperated with the safe haven given by India to the Dalai Lama and the increasingly militant thousands of Tibetan exiles.
China was the willing source of Pakistan’s nuclearization. Thomas Reed, a former nuclear weapons designer at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and a senior official in the Ford, Carter and Reagan administrations, has claimed that Pakistan’s first nuclear weapon test was carried out for it by China. “We believe that during (Benazir) Bhutto’s term in office, China tested Pakistan’s first bomb for her in 1990. That’s why the Pakistanis were so quick to respond to the Indian nuclear tests in 1998. It only took them two weeks and three days.”
A report in the Washington Post last November concluded that the “deliberate act of proliferation” by China began in earnest in 1982 with the transfer of weapons-grade uranium and a blueprint for making a bomb that China had already tested. Thus began the chain of proliferation that extended later to Iran and Libya.
China’s (and Pakistan’s) unease at India’s rising global clout intensified with the India-U.S. civil nuclear co-operation deal and India’s growing military ties with the U.S. and Israel. China tried to block a $2.9-billion loan from the Asian Development Bank to India because some of the money was for a flood control project in the state of Arunachal Pradesh, parts of which China claims. Beijing has protested also about the Indian prime minister and president and the Dalai Lama visiting those regions.
India worries that China is trying to choke it strategically by a string of pearls strategy, including access to and development of ports in Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Pakistan, the construction of a highway from China into central Nepal and the extension of China’s controversial rail link to Tibet to the border with Nepal. The two countries are also manoeuvring for position in Afghanistan for the inevitable time when westerners pull up and out. There have also been tit-for-tat protestations about actions in relation to Indian and Pakistani administered Kashmir.
The latest U.S. Quadrennial Defence Review states that lack of transparency in military development and decision-making processes raises questions about China’s future conduct and intentions. It notes India’s rapidly improving military capabilities through increased defence acquisitions, including long-range maritime surveillance, maritime interdiction and patrolling, air interdiction and strategic airlift.
It acknowledges shared democratic values, an open political system, and commitment to global stability as demonstrated through peacekeeping, counter-piracy, humanitarian assistance and disaster relief efforts. It welcomes India’s rising profile “as a net provider of security in the Indian Ocean and beyond.”
The Indian Navy keeps a watchful eye to the east of India’s coastline from the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. It is preparing to open a base at the southern tip of the Maldives chain to the west. The surveillance aircraft, helicopters and, possibly, ships based there will be supplemented by radar installed across the Maldives and linked to India’s coastal command.
Meanwhile, bilateral trade has climbed from $3 billion in 2000 to $51 billion. Astonishingly, the annual growth in trade with China is more than India’s total trade with Japan. The two teamed up effectively in the Doha trade talks and in the Copenhagen climate change conference. They share a major interest in eradicating extremist Islamism in Central Asia, Afghanistan and Pakistan. There are low-intensity combined military exercises, a pale shadow of the land, air and sea exercises that Indian forces engage with U.S., Australian, Singaporean and Japanese militaries. (The Ottawa Citizen)
When a big tree fell 26 years ago.
Send us a comment to : feedback@southasiamail.comKanchan Gupta
Manmohan Singh and Congress suffer from selective amnesia as they rake up the 2002 Gujarat violence to malign the BJP. But even if they choose to forget the 1984 pogrom that left more than 4,000 Sikhs dead, the story remains fresh in the minds of many, among them survivors waiting for justice for 25 years
Caught on the wrong foot over the brazen manner in which it tried to absolve Jagdish Tytler and Sajjan Kumar of the serious charges that have been levelled against them by survivors of the 1984 pogrom that resulted in the slaughter of 4, 733 Sikhs, the Congress has struck back at its principal political adversary, the BJP, by once again raising the bogey of the 2002 post-Godhra violence in Gujarat.
Addressing a Press conference in Mumbai, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who would like people to believe that he was “not informed, not consulted, over the CBI’s clean chit to Jagdish Tytler” although that is an impossibility, has said, “Nor will I be found wringing my hands in frustration while one of my Chief Ministers condones a pogrom targeted at minorities.”
Ironically, even as the Prime Minister was seeking to resurrect the Gujarat ‘pogrom’ and remind people of the ‘atrocities’ committed against Muslims, the Special Investigation Team set up by the Supreme Court and headed by former CBI director RK Raghavan submitted its report, refuting the allegations that have sustained the myth-making aimed at demonising Mr Narendra Modi and tarring the BJP’s image.
The SIT’s report shows Mr Singh’s description of the Gujarat violence as a “pogrom targeted at minorities” is as fanciful as his denial of any knowledge about the CBI exonerating those who are accused of leading murderous mobs during the 1984 violence, planned and executed by Congress ‘leaders’ to avenge the assassination of Mrs Indira Gandhi. Noted writer and veteran journalist Khushwant Singh, recalling those terrible days of 1984, told the Nanavati Commission of Inquiry, set up by the BJP-led NDA Government, that the hideous bloodletting left him “feeling like a Jew in Nazi Germany”.
It is possible that Mr Manmohan Singh has no memories of that massacre; selective amnesia is a disease from which too-clever-by-half politicians tend to suffer. It is also possible that he and his patrons in the Congress believe that by pretending nothing of note happened in 1984, those born after Congress mobs ran amok on the streets of Delhi, garlanding Sikhs with burning tyres, can be persuaded to vote for a party which claims to stand against the BJP’s ‘divisive politics’.
Such sanctimonious self-righteousness is best avoided by the Congress, not least because its then president — and India’s Prime Minister — Rajiv Gandhi had no qualms about justifying the carnage. “Some riots took place in the country following the murder of Indiraji,” Rajiv Gandhi said on November 19, 1984, even as thousands of families grieved for their loved ones killed by Congress hoodlums, “We know the people were very angry and for a few days it seemed India had been shaken. But when a mighty tree falls, it is only natural that the earth around it does shake a little.” Some riots? Only natural? Shake a little?
Of course, Mr Singh would claim no knowledge of any of this. Perhaps he would even insist that he was “not informed, not consulted” by Rajiv Gandhi, or, for that matter, the mobs that bayed for blood (and feasted on it) for four days before someone called the Army in.
Twenty-five years is a long time. Public memory is notoriously short and it is unlikely those who have attained the right to vote in these 25 years would know what the protest against the Congress deciding to give party tickets to Jagdish Tytler and Sajjan Kumar is all about. It would, therefore, be in order to recall the chain of events lest we be persuaded to believe that nothing of consequence happened by a Prime Minister who spends sleepless nights worrying about a terror suspect held in distant Australia but blithely disowns responsibility for the shocking attempt to whitewash the crimes of his party and its ‘leaders’ committed against thousands at home.
So, here is the story, briefly told, of how more than 4,000 Sikh men, women and children were slaughtered; in Delhi alone, 2,733 Sikhs were burned alive, butchered or beaten to death. Women were raped while their terrified families pleaded for mercy, little or none of which was shown by the Congress goons. In one of the numerous such incidents, a woman was gang-raped in front of her 17-year-old son; before leaving, the marauders torched the boy.
For three days and four nights the killing and pillaging continued without the police, the civil administration and the Union Government, which was then in direct charge of Delhi, lifting a finger in admonishment. The Congress was in power and could have prevented the violence, but the then Prime Minister, his Home Minister, indeed the entire Council of Ministers, twiddled their thumbs.
Even as stray dogs gorged on charred corpses and wailing women, clutching children too frightened to cry, fled mobs armed with iron rods, staves and gallons of kerosene, AIR and Doordarshan kept on broadcasting blood-curdling slogans like ‘Khoon ka badla khoon se lenge’ (We shall avenge blood with blood) raised by Congress workers grieving over their dear departed leader.
In mid-morning on October 31, 1984, Mrs Indira Gandhi was assassinated by two Sikh guards posted at her home. Her death was ‘officially’ confirmed at 6 pm, after due diligence had been exercised to ensure Rajiv Gandhi’s succession. By then, reports of stray incidents of violence against Sikhs, including the stoning of President Zail Singh’s car, had started trickling in at various police stations.
By the morning of November 1, hordes of men were on the rampage in south, east and west Delhi. They were armed with iron rods and carried old tyres and jerry cans filled with kerosene and petrol. Owners of petrol pumps and kerosene stores, beneficiaries of Congress largesse, provided petrol and kerosene free of cost. Some of the men went around on scooters and motorcycles, marking Sikh houses and business establishments with chalk for easy identification. They had been provided with electoral rolls to make their task easier.
By late afternoon that day, hundreds of taxis, trucks and shops owned by Sikhs had been set ablaze. By early evening, the murder, loot and rape began in right earnest. The worst butchery took place in Block 32 of Trilokpuri, a resettlement colony in east Delhi. The police either participated in the violence or merely watched from the sidelines.
Curfew was declared in south and central Delhi at 4 pm, and in east and west Delhi at 6 pm on November 1. But there was no attempt to enforce it. PV Narasimha Rao, the then Home Minister, remained unmoved by cries for help. In his affidavit to the Nanavati Commission of Inquiry, Lt-Gen Jagjit Singh Aurora, decorated hero of the 1971 India-Pakistan war, said, “The Home Minister was grossly negligent in his approach, which clearly reflected his connivance with perpetrators of the heinous crimes being committed against the Sikhs.”
The first deployment of the Army took place around 6 pm on November 1 in south and central Delhi, which were comparatively unaffected, but in the absence of navigators, which should have been provided by the police and the civil authorities, the jawans found themselves lost in unfamiliar roads and avenues.
The Army was deployed in east and west Delhi in the afternoon of November 2, more than 24 hours after the killings began. But, here, too, the jawans were at a loss because there were no navigators to show them the way through byzantine lanes.
In any event, there was little the Army could have done: Magistrates were ‘not available’ to give permission to fire on the mobs. This mandatory requirement was kept pending till Mrs Indira Gandhi’s funeral was over. By then, 1,026 Sikhs had been killed in east Delhi. Jagdish Tytler and Sajjan Kumar were among Congress ‘leaders’ who, witnesses said, incited and led mobs. Both deny the allegation, but the evidence is overwhelming.
A report on the pogrom, jointly prepared by the PUCL and PUDR and published under the title, Who Are the Guilty? names both of them along with others. The report quotes well-known journalist Sudip Mazumdar: “The Police Commissioner, SC Tandon was briefing the Press (about 10 Indian reporters and five foreign journalists) in his office on November 6, at 5 pm. A reporter asked him to comment on the large number of complaints about local Congress MPs and lightweights trying to pressure the police to get their men released.
The Police Commissioner totally denied the allegation… Just as he finished uttering these words, Jagdish Tytler, Congress MP from Sadar constituency, barged into the Police Commissioner’s office along with three other followers and on the top of his voice demanded, ‘What is this Mr Tandon? You still have not done what I asked you to do?’ The reporters were amused, the Police Commissioner embarrassed. Tytler kept on shouting and a reporter asked the Police Commissioner to ask that ‘shouting man’ to wait outside since a Press conference was on. Tytler shouted at the reporter, ‘This is more important.’ The reporter told the Police Commissioner that if Tytler wanted to sit in the office he would be welcome, but a lot of questions regarding his involvement would also be asked and he was welcome to hear them. Tytler was fuming…”
The slaughter was not limited to Delhi, though. Sikhs were killed in Gurgaon, Kanpur, Bokaro, Indore and many other towns and cities in States ruled by the Congress. In a replay of the mayhem in Delhi, 26 Sikh soldiers were pulled out of trains and killed.
After quenching their thirst for blood, the mobs retreated to savour their ‘revenge’. The flames died and the winter air blew away the stench of death. Rajiv Gandhi’s Government issued a statement placing the death toll at 425!
Demands for a judicial inquiry were stonewalled by Rajiv Gandhi. Human rights organisations petitioned the courts; the Government said courts were not empowered to order inquiries. Meanwhile, Rajiv Gandhi dissolved the Lok Sabha and went for an early election, which the Congress swept by using the ‘sympathy card’ and launching a vitriolic hate campaign.
Once in office, Rajiv Gandhi was desperate for a breakthrough in Punjab. He mollycoddled Akali leader Sant Harchand Singh Longowal into agreeing to sign a peace accord with him. Sant Longowal listed a set of pre-conditions; one of them was the setting up of a judicial commission to inquire into the pogrom.
Thus was born the Ranganath Misra Commission of Inquiry, which took on the job of crafting a report that would suggest extra-terrestrials were to be blamed for whatever had happened. Worse, submissions and affidavits were passed on to those accused of leading the mobs; some of these documents were later recovered from the house of Sajjan Kumar. Gag orders were issued, preventing the Press from reporting in-camera proceedings of the Commission.
For full six months, Rajiv Gandhi refused to make public the Ranganath Misra Commission’s report. When it was tabled in Parliament, the report was found to be an amazing travesty of the truth; neither were the guilty men of 1984 named, now was responsibility fixed.
Subsequently, nine commissions and committees were set up to get to the truth, but they were either disbanded midway or not allowed access to documents and evidence. India had to wait for the report of the Nanavati Commission for an approximate version of the real story.
Justice Nanavati’s report said, “The Commission considers it safe to record its finding that there is credible evidence against Jagdish Tytler to the effect that very probably he had a hand in organising attacks on Sikhs.” This is not an indictment, Mr Manmohan Singh and his Government decided, so why bother about it? Four years later they remain unrepentant, their attitude remains unchanged.
Two thousand seven hundred and thirty-three men, women and children killed in Delhi, another 2,000 killed elsewhere, scores of women raped, property worth crores of rupees looted or sacked. Families devastated forever, survivors scarred for the rest of their lives.
But the Congress doesn’t care!
Dire need for gun control
Send us a comment to : feedback@southasiamail.comBy Dr. Wendy Cukier
In Canada, 85% of female homicide victims are murdered by their partners and in Ontario, possession or access to firearms is the fifth leading risk factor for femicide. These reasons are just two among many that led me to work for stronger gun control in Canada.
The Coalition for Gun Control is an alliance of more than 300 major policing, public safety and violence prevention organizations including the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, Canadian Public Health Association, and YWCA of Canada.
The Coalition was founded in the wake of the Montreal Massacre. In 1989, a twenty-five year old named Marc Lépine entered a classroom at the École Polytechnique in Montreal, armed with a legally obtained semi-automatic rifle.
Lépine moved all of the women to one side of the classroom and shot them, declaring that he hated women and that he was ‘fighting feminism’. He then roamed the corridors, entered another classroom and the cafeteria, specifically targeted women, and shot them. In total, fourteen women were killed and ten were injured.
The mission of the Coalition is to reduce gun violence, injury, and crime. Working together with the police, health care agencies, women’s groups, and victims, CGC have helped to lead the efforts to defend Canada’s Firearms Act.
Supreme Court of Canada concluded in their 2000 opinion regarding the Act’s constitutionality, it would be impossible to ensure that licensed individuals do not give their guns to others not holding a license without the registry. The registration of firearms helps to enforce the licensing provisions of the Act.
If an individual has a license and purchases firearms without a registration requirement, there is no way to hold them accountable for those firearms or to prevent them from lending or giving them to an unlicensed person. In other words, registration results in accountability
Ms. Cukier, in addition to being a Professor at Ryerson University in Toronto, is a co-founder and the current President of the Coalition for Gun Control (CGC).
New visa rules, absurd and ridiculous
Send us a comment to : feedback@southasiamail.comDr. Thomas Abraham
The retroactive enforcement of New Rules for Surrender of Indian Passport has become a major issue of the Overseas Indian community particularly in the USA, Canada, Europe, New Zealand and Australia. Since GOPIO had launched the Petition Online to the Prime Minister of India on Sunday May 23rd, over 21,000 have already signed as of Saturday, May 29th. One can see the petition and current signees at http://www.PetitionOnline.com/ip100521/petition.html. The rate of signing the petition is 200 every hour. That shows people’s anger at the new rules and the gravity of the situation.
The overseas Indian community has been supporting India related causes in America and other Western countries. This issue has suddenly become a major issue with all segments of the community actively involving in the campaign to repeal or put a moratorium for the next six months. It is even becoming bigger than the community mobilization we saw for the US-India nuclear deal.
I and a few other community activists looked at this new rule, which is based on the Citizenship Act of 1955 (http://www.mha.nic.in/pdfs/ic_act55.pdf). According to Section 9 of this act, anyone voluntarily acquiring citizenship of another country ceases to be citizen of India. In Section 8, it says, if any Indian citizen who is also a citizen of another country should renounce Indian citizenship. We found these sections from India’s Home Ministry website where Indian Citizenship Act of 1955 is provided. Therefore, if one’s citizenship is already terminated by Section 9, why does one have to renounce it? And that too when one is no more an Indian citizen for as many as 50 years.
In 2009, officials in the Home Ministry wrote the new rules (http://www.mha.nic.in/pdfs/Citi_Rule-2009.pdf) based on their interpretation of the Citizenship Act of 1955, however, they conveniently avoided the Section 9. Then, they set the fees, which are outrageous (see http://indiacgny.org/php/showHighLightDet.php?h_id=138&key=). A large number of our people are retirees. If anyone of them wants to travel to India, they have to pay as much as $175 to get permission in the name of Surrender Certificate fee and plus penalty fee for any services ($175 per service) from the Indian missions. If a family of four travels to India, the additional fee would be as much $2000.
The new rules are unfair to overseas Indians who have been sincerely helping India. The community feels that the new rule is just to harass NRIs and a way to extract more money from them. If Govt. of India wants the old passports, NRIs/ and PIOs will be happy to give them and there should not be any fee in taking away the passport or it should a nominal fee of $25. That is what has been charged by the Indian missions in New Zealand till last week. Generally, every government cancels the passport and gives it back to people for them to keep it as a memento or as record of their travel. What would Govt. of India do over several millions of old passports? Where are they going to store them and for what purpose?
Overseas Indian community is very much with India in all its security concerns and always supports India in its security. I agree with the Indian missions that some in our community in the past had misused Indian passport to visit India after they received the foreign country passports. However, after 26/11, the immigration departments in India are so strict that they check the entry stamp while the person is returning back from India. After becoming an American citizen, if a person misused the Indian passport to go to India and try to use an American passport to come back, they will straight away go to Jail in India since the American passport does not have an entry stamp. Therefore, that argument of naturalized citizens misusing Indian passport does not hold good anymore.
With this new rule, the govt. may get about $200 millions by way of fees, however, they will lose billions of dollars of what overseas Indians have been giving to India in terms of remittances, tourism dollars, telling our American friends to travel to India and invest in India, contribute to the education, health and other charitable causes. Govt. of India can not and should not make a problem for Overseas Indians saying that to go their Motherland, they will have to pay a hefty fee. This is absurd and ridiculous. In the final analysis, it will be Govt. of India and people of India will be the losers, if these new rules are not changed immediately. NRIs and PIOs will also be losers since a large number of them will not visit their Motherland because of the cumbersome rules and additional hefty fees.
Thomas Abraham is Founder President and Chairman Emeritus, GOPIO International
E-mail: gopio@optonline.net
Science vs. politics
Send us a comment to : feedback@southasiamail.comSumitra Rajagopalan
The problem with Canada’s new research chairs isn’t lack of women, it’s lack of open-ended vision
This week, to great fanfare, the Canadian government unveiled a dream team of top-notch scientists from around the world. Predictably enough, women’s groups cried foul, for the star recruits for the Canada Excellence Research Chairs program just happened to be all male. Cue the outrage.
This rhetoric – which, interestingly, came from women’s studies departments, not science – reveals how out of touch these critics are with today’s women scientists and their fields. Any systemic bias that might have once existed in science is finished. If anything, science and engineering departments the world over now actively seek female candidates for open positions – and many women find it patronizing. The notions of “equity” and “excellence” are simply incompatible.
In fact, some of the recent CERC appointments are a cause for real concern for a different reason: a strategy taking root that threatens to radically alter Canada’s research landscape. Let’s call it “political science.”
Since coming to power, the Conservatives have made research commercialization the cornerstone of their science strategy. Hence their focus on product-oriented “applied” research while skimping on basic research.
Since Canada has lagged behind its Western counterparts in the manufacture and sale of high-tech products, this focus has been welcomed by industry. But this government’s interest isn’t really “applied science” but a more short-sighted “utilitarian science” – technologies that can quickly solve immediate, narrowly defined problems, rather than long-term investments in building knowledge. Worse, we are beginning to see an intertwining of scientific priorities with politics.
These trends are very apparent in some of the CERC choices. The biomedical and computing research chairs are beyond reproach, but some of the other choices reflect a narrow, utilitarian focus.
Take Prof. Thomas Thundat, hired by the University of Alberta. He is renowned in the materials science world, and ought to have been given a broader mandate to develop novel nanomaterials for a range of applications, and to shape the future of nanosciences as a whole. Instead, his mandate is to find better ways of extracting oil from tar sands – and only that. This research area, which clearly fulfills a political objective, even has an absurd new title: “oil sands molecular engineering.”
Another example is an excellence chair awarded to Prof. Marcel Babin. Again, a world-renowned professor who brings wide-ranging expertise in oceanography, space science, optics and sensing. Yet, he has been tasked to narrowly focus on the remote sensing of “Canada’s new Arctic frontier” – a phrase that reeks of political propaganda.
Don’t get me wrong – governments have every right to set science priorities and invest in select areas. However, political leaders are also expected to be ahead of the curve and put forward broad, open-ended vision.
Think Bill Clinton’s National Nanotechnology Initiative, or Al Gore’s vision of an information superhighway at a time when the Internet as we know it barely existed. By contrast, Canada’s federal politicians are constantly playing catch-up and shoehorning science to fit a narrow political agenda.
Last year alone, the government cobbled together an automotive research program shortly after the GM bailout to develop new cars, a program for new forest byproducts to help boost an ailing forestry sector and a program for carbon capture technologies after the hullabaloo over Canada not meeting its Kyoto targets. All projects that can be easily sold on the campaign trail – unlike, say nanotechnology. This blinkered approach will have serious long-term consequences.
To be a true world leader, our government ought to invest in key multidisciplinary areas that will drive innovations in all sciences – such as functional materials and nanotechnology. These twin fields of research are as vital in creating disruptive technologies in medicine, electronics and communications as they are for providing fundamental insights into matter and nature themselves.
Another key area is design engineering, a visual, holistic approach to complex technological problems. There is a growing consensus among engineering professors in Canada that design, rather than traditional number-crunching, will lead to breakthrough technologies and innovations.
Our government should be commended for its CERC appointments. Now, it should reorient its science policy toward broad, multidisciplinary research that will benefit science and Canadians as a whole. (The Globe and Mail)
Sumitra Rajagopalan is an adjunct professor of biomechanics at McGill University. She is the founder and chief scientist at Bioastra Technologies Ltd., which specializes in biomedical devices.