Nuke deal – an unconditional waiver for India?

Some of the features of the Indo – US nuke deal -

1.The Nuclear Suppliers' Group (NSG) has to change rules to accommodate India, and for this the Hyde's act asks for a permanent ban on nuclear tests.

2.Access to uranium would be tightly regulated (by whom, we know).

3.All civil nuclear fuel-cycle technologies would be prohibited (including spent fuel reprocessing. Reprocessed fuel may be used in weapons - as suggested by the Bush administration in the Iran imbroglio).

4.The NSG has the right to demand the return of transferred items and material (including fuel, which the deal promises India to have).

5.Forced shutdown of Cirus, one of the two research reactors in India, producing weapons grade plutonium.

6.India is to be barred from ever halting international inspection of its entire civil nuclear program, even if the US unilaterally terminated cooperation.

My hugely pessimistic views on these clauses -

1.Being opposed to having and developing nuclear arms, I would not mind India stopping the development of nuclear weapons. But that decision should be taken by India alone and not be imposed by any other nation in the world. It is easy for one to ask the other to stop smoking, when the first one himself has a cigar between his lips.

2.This looks like a way through which the countries (read the US) can pull the strings on India's foreign policy. We saw India vote against Iran in the IAEA just as the deal was being discussed. What would be the scene once the deal is operational?

3.One of the reasons environment groups like the Greenpeace opposed nuclear energy is the matter of spent fuel. No full proof method is available to dispose spent fuel. People may say they have methods, but can they say this with complete conviction? Fuel reprocessing is one way by which we could reduce the harms of the spent fuel. In the sense, the spent fuel after one cycle of energy generation may be reprocessed, and used again as fuel for energy generation. This would mean that the final spent fuel, is much less radioactive when compared to the spent fuel after the first stage of generation. By imposing a ban on fuel reprocessing we have a question to answer – what to do with the spent fuel? Can we just send the spent fuel to these developing countries who themselves are worried about the amounts of spent fuel being generated in their own lands?

* The six points of the deal have been taken from the article Emulate America's bipartisan handling, written by Brahma Chellaney, published as the leader page article in the Hindu dated 28 June 2008.

Read the article here - http://www.hindu.com/2008/06/28/stories/2008062853981000.htm

Indo-US nuke deal - hidden fact?

I had always been perplexed on the contentious issue of the Indo-US nuclear deal ever since Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to the US in 2005. I read editorials, articles, and interviews discussing both sides of the matter, but could not come to a reasoned conclusion myself.

India has to look into herself for the uranium required for her existing plants and also for the plants under development according to an article (read here ) by Associated Press journalist Neelesh Misra published in the Hindustan Times.

I am still no where close to finding a stance on the Indo-US nuke deal. But I have one question – why has this information been kept as a loosely guarded secret for 3-4years now?

My thanks to M J Akbar for his leader page article, in the Khaleej Times dated 22 June 2008, that brought this news out (read article here).

Is Globalization the cause of it all?

Yesterday, I received the second serious response to something I had written in this blog. I loved the effort Selva took to jot down his thoughts on the lecture by Sainath. I have put the first part of his thought for discussion. It seems he doesn't want to be Nero's guest anymore. This is the change we need to see in today's world.

Selva : Ok. Coming to the point. First, the title. Globalizing inequality. As Mr. Sainath points out, globalization indeed makes rich people richer. That is, if they are able to cope up with the changing winds. But we cannot claim that globalization makes poor people poorer. Globalization was neither meant to bring up inequality nor to abolish it. Inequality existed before globalization. It exists now, when there is globalization. It'll exist in the future, whether there is globalization or not. This claim is based on the books I read and on my social, economical and mainly psychological observations.

>> I do not know whether I can confidently say that the poor are not getting any poorer due to globalization. Before I start with this, proponents of globalization - the likes of Thomas Freidman and Jeffrey Sachs - speak of globalization as being a panacea for all world problems (Sachs in his book The End of Poverty, keeps repeating the globalization mantra!) Even if globalization is not making people poorer, it is not in any way improving the conditions of the poor in societies as these people say it will. How much longer can the poor wait? There is this disparity that has crept in. Accumulation of feelings of unfairness and resentment against the rich, which the disparity brings in the poor, may break the dam any time (as it has in many parts of the world).

With the advent of Manmohanics (in the early 90s) the inequality in India has only become larger. It has made the poor poorer, symbolically at least. The policies adopted by the various governments since then have undermined the traditionally strong sectors in India (eg. the agricultural sector). The opening of the markets has done some good to the affluent, but has caused misery to the poor, scaled much more than earlier times(exemplified by the ever increasing number of farmer suicides).. The priorities of the government have changed – not for the good of all. Something that strengthens some sections of the society while undermining the poorer sections can not be a solution in any sense.

Leaving the discussion of one country, and taking the world as a bigger market, we can find evidence that the farm policies of the ‘globalized’ world is pitted against the poor farmers in the developing world, while the subsidies rich farmers in the rich countries are not affected as much. In many countries the food produced by the local farmers are being sold at prices higher than the food being imported from the rich world. Since most of the people living in these countries are farmers themselves, the decrease in food prices (due to imports) does more harm than good. Moreover, when the rich farming corporations mint money when the farmers are suffering, the poor farmers feel they are being stolen from.

The global markets are under the control of a few very powerful people (read as governments, MNCs). They would go any way to twist the arms of the poorer countries for their good. Take the case of the high price of the anti-retroviral drugs being sold in Africa. Diseases like AIDS that are in epidemic proportions in some African nations can be the reason why these countries fail to make it up the economic ladder. When the medication against this disease is not sold cheaply in the poor countries, the realization of this unfairness causes much more than merely making the poor poorer. Many of the world issues revolve around relatively new terms like terrorism, which can be attributed to such feelings of hostility against the few who wield all the power.

Taking the bigger picture, the world is becoming poorer – the poor as well as the rich.

Globalizing Inequality

P Sainath is a rural journalist and has written about people and places we do not hear much about in today’s ‘flat’ world. He spends 270 days a year living in households in rural India - with villagers in Vidharba, Wayanad, Andhra, Orissa and elsewhere - who have been struck most by government non-intervention. The number of farmer suicides at these places corroborates this.

This lecture ‘Globalizing Inequality’, which he gave at the State University of Washington, Vancouver in 2005, is a real eye-opener. He gives accounts of events that took place in the developing as well as in the economically rich world, which justifies his stand against the kind of globalization plaguing us today, with a few men wielding all the power and controlling the masses.

Through these cases he takes up during the lecture, he convinced me that today’s world does not take up matters that are of no consequence to the few in the driving seat. Today, when we measure economic success of a nation based on its stock exchange value, we are moving further away from the ground reality – from the masses - which do not have an influence on the stock exchanges.

There is a historical text by Tacitus (from his annals), which speaks about Nero burning down Rome. It was during a party that he had organized which had guests that included intellects, columnists, and political figures, when the fire started. And how? He had used the poor from Rome and had put them on fire as a source of light for the guests at night. Rome’s poor then and today’s poor are no different. They are being burnt by the various policies pursued by governments in their home countries as well as by international organizations and nations. We know who today’s Nero is. We are Nero’s guests in today’s world. Sainath asks us to stop being his guest, and watching this lecture would be the most appropriate way to make a start in this direction.


Watch the lecture here.

Read the citation for Sainath read at the Ramon Magsaysay award presentation ceremony here.

Read all his editorials, op-ed articles, reports here.

Myself

I am in my Sunday evening walk.
This is the time I get to be myself,
This is the time I get to sing out loud.

When with people, I have to be
what they see in me.
When alone, I am myself.
I do not have to consider people’s
plight at having to hear me sing.

Today the only ones present,
are the trees;
and the cold that pokes firmly at my sinews.
Then, there is the wide empty road
lying ahead, and the star-filled sky and me.

The greener other side

I watch you crawl
across the muddy path, in large numbers.
Looking for the never
reachable ‘greener’ other side.

I have seen many before you
being trampled by men,
who have lost touch with nature.
There will be a similar stampede
in a few minutes today.
Cross quickly!!

It’s all about the man!

The name Lance Armstrong always brought in my mind the image of a superhuman. I had heard about his painful meet with illness (testicular cancer) and the strength with which he came back from it. When the whole world questioned his ability to return to competitive cycling, he answered – with seven straight wins of the Tour de France, which is considered to the most grueling of all cycle races in a cycling calendar year. Such a feat surely brought him to the ranks of a superhuman, I thought.

When I picked up his book “It’s Not About the Bike – My Journey Back to Life” (read reviews at Amazon.com), I never thought I would be seeing facets of his life, which I had never seen, nor had imagined him to have. He takes us through his childhood days, from the first time he starts riding his bicycle, to the difficulties he and his single mother faced then. When I say he takes us, I literally mean it. I could feel my heart beat faster and sometimes even skip a beat, reading about his cycle races. Spending almost all the time after school, either in the pool, or on his bicycle, he was trained to be a sportsman from a very young age. He had everything what a high school kid of his age, with so much success would have – insecurity, along with the habit of seeing only in black or white – in terms of victory or defeat.

Then came the battle – the battle which he says transformed him to be a better competitor, father, son and a human being - the battle against cancer. He was 25, with money in his hand, a supportive mother, a loving fiancée and a very promising career in cycling. He was diagnosed with testicular cancer with a large metastasis to his lungs and his brain. After a brain operation to remove his lesions, removal of one of his testicles, and a cycle of extremely strong chemotherapy, with his future very hazy, he returns. He speaks at length of his fear, the medication, and its side effects – which do not make a very good reading for the faint- hearted. But he wanted to beat the disease, and he had his mother’s, fiancée’s and friends' support during that period. He met angels, in the form of doctors, nurses, family and friends who helped him get through.

Once the chemotherapy succeeded in getting his lungs cleared, he lived his next one year in fear – fear of a reoccurrence of cancer. He had lost his physical strength and never thought he would be involving himself in competitive cycling. He had some money and a good wife by then - he still is very grateful to her. This period saw his loose aim in life. Spending hours on the golf course, and not thinking of cycling anymore, he started losing interest in life. With some prodding from his wife and friend cum coach, he begins riding again. While on one of his rides, he discovers his destiny – in cycling. There has been no looking back from then. He started a cancer awareness and help organization LIVESTRONG with which he is involved in fully after his retirement from cycling in 2005.

In the book’s last chapter, he says the win over cancer stands much higher than his victories at the Tour de France. He says he stands for giving hope to others with cancer. He says that he still doesn’t know whether it were the drugs, or his family, or his doctors, or his will, that saved him from succumbing to the disease . If he knew, that would be the cure for cancer he adds.

Reading this book, I unearthed that Lance is very human. Like you, me and anyone around. He found a cause to work for, and never looked back since. Nonetheless, his story is rightfully the stuff of legends (as quoted by Independence). And we all could become legends in our own little ways.

The ride downhill

I took a bicycle for the small trek to my swimming pool one evening. After my usual swim of a few laps, exhausted, I dressed and wore my running shoes. I checked my mobile phone for any calls or messages I had received during those forty minutes. Sometimes I feel the mobile is such an annoyance. It keeps you chained to your past, and to your future, when all your heart wants, is to be in the now – carefree - enjoying the surrounding - the cold touching your skin, the freshness of the air entering your lungs, the ruckus of the birds nesting for the night. There are other times I love being connected to my past and my future, along with my present, because they were created by people who made life worth living.

The short ride back to my room was down a hill. Without the least of efforts from my side I went down, full throttle. Even with my mobile phone jumping about in my pocket, I felt I was living in the truest sense. I had to slow down soon when I entered a road with some traffic on and began wondering. I thought of how much I had struggled to get on top of the hill, just an hour back, on the way to the pool. I remember, I had given up some twenty meters before I had reached the pool. My thigh muscles could not carry me any further. And since I was going for a nice workout in the pool, I had to conserve some energy.

That evening, I decided to take my bicycle to the pool more often - to remind myself of the ride downhill that follows my effort to the top.

On your lap

I dream of lying down on your lap
insulated from the outside world.
Wish I were a little boy still;
crying on your lap, without attracting
stares from the others.
I would not have had to explain to the world
why I am thus;
on your lap, I feel safe being myself.

Childhood

You are sitting wide eye like a four year old,
trying to stay in synchronism
with the fast way of life today.
You give a smile from your heart;
a smile that does wonders on whom its grace falls;
feeling amused at how things are different today.
Your wrinkled face – a measure of your experience, living.
You are struggling to munch a few biscuits.
Your child-like desires still alive,
overriding the not highly armed jaw line.
Your beauty, devoutness and calmness,
remain as an etched memory.

Differentiating Responsibility in India

“Was Bali a success? Absolutely not, unless you were one of the diplomats present who could reasonably define success as the avoidance of complete failure - and by a last-minute turnaround too.” – Alun Anderson, Former editor-in-chief of the New Scientist magazine (from Open Democracy.com)

These two lines say it all about the climate change summit at Bali. But I see some hope. A recent report published on the issue of assigning responsibility of climate change (CO2 emissions) to the countries of the world, gives me hope. This report has considered the following to decide the contribution of each country in the world to the carbon present today:

1. Harmless emissions – as calculated today, the terrestrial sink can absorb 7 billion tons of CO2. This number divided by the global population gives the harmless emissions per capita allowed.

2. Subsistence allowance – the emissions required to bring people living under $1 per day, above the poverty line.

3. A part of the warming today is due to the CO2 emitted in the past. Thus, taking 1890 as a cut-off year (from this year records of the emissions are available), the contributions of the countries to carbon emissions is calculated till date.

4. The emissions which have taken place since the knowledge of its effects on global warming (late 1980s) are taxed more than the emissions that took place before the time.

Taking these factors into consideration, the report says that the responsibility on the developed world is far more than that on countries like India and Brazil. The Indian scenario was analyzed by the report and it concluded that India was the least responsible of the present predicament. Promode Kant, Director of Institute of Global Warning and Ecological Studies, has summarized the implications of the repot in India in his recent leader page article in the Hindu. But he also suggests that India should choose the lowest carbon path for development and bring more people out of the poverty loop through such means. The publishing of such a report is not an end but surely the means towards one. It will still be difficult for the countries to come to an agreement over the acceptance of this report.

The Indian scenario shows the big divide between the rich and the poor. A recent report by Greenpeace India, suggests that the Indian poor have subsidized the Indian rich with regards to carbon emissions ( see article). This would mean that the even if the world accepts the Differentiating Responsibility report and works on its basis, the Indian government must make sure that the allowances in carbon emission must trickle to the lowest rung of the society and help its development and not augment the allowed emissions for the Indian rich.

Democracy Questioned

I was amused reading about the mudslinging campaign that has marred the Gujarat elections. One particular accusation which both the parties made at their free will, initiated the thought process in me.

Both the parties completely blamed the ruling party for the terrorist strikes that have taken place in the past few years. What they tend to forget is that in our democracy, the onus of anything good or bad that happens, ought to be shared by both the party in power and the parties in opposition. Blaming the ruling party alone about the lack of security measures taken before a terrorist strike, after the harm is already inflicted on innocent citizens, shouldn’t be the way things work. Bluntly, even the opposition would have been sleeping during the pre-terrorist-strike period. If they were awake, they would have questioned the competence of the security of a particular area before the strike, which is not observed in any case.

All the finger-pointing takes place only after lives are lost. That being the time the country should be united against the common enemy and not fall prey to in-fighting. Being a democracy, every citizen is responsible for whatever happens in the country, albeit in a small way. I request the political fraternity not to forget this.

The Freedom Writers

“We are all ordinary people. But, even an ordinary secretary or a house wife or a teenager can within their own small ways turn on a small light in a dark room.”

This is the message that Erin Gruwell, a school teacher in Long Beach, California, tries to ingrain in her students’ minds. Her task is not made any easy, with racial tension at its peak during the times after the race-driven riots in California in the early nineties. She leads her class, with students from varied backgrounds – blacks, Hispanics, Cambodians, whites – from animosity and distrust, to form a closely knit group of youngsters who had all found the meanings of their lives, through the stories and experiences of their classmates. She initiates this change with the introduction of an assignment that involved the students writing and maintaining a personal journal. In this they jotted down all their inhibitions, their harsh experiences, and all what they thought life was about. This journal was the healer for their hearts wounded by the experiences they had had. The journals of these students from Erin’s first batch, who named themselves as the ‘Freedom Writers’, were compiled and made into a book “THE FREEDOM WRITERS DIARY - How a Teacher and 150 Teens Used Writing to ChangeThemselves and the World Around Them”, which inspired the movie.

This movie helped me imbibe in myself, more strongly, the lines I had started with.

Related Links -

The site of the Freedom Writers Foundation

The official site of the movie

Reviews on the movie

Go here for the soundtrack - A dream - wonderful words

Not Just a Cricketer

I read an article yesterday, in the Magazine supplement of the Hindu on Anil Kumble being given the additional responsibility of leading the Indian test side . The title of the work rightly went – ‘Justice delayed, not denied’. The article had a photo of Anil bowling in the Antigua test in 2002 with plaster supporting his broken jaw. Seeing this, I reflected on the reasons for him being a truly great sportsman.

The very first instance that came to my mind occurred during a test match (I was too young to remember against whom or when and where it was played). I vividly remember him taking a go at a shot from the batsman that seemed to be a caught and bowled effort. As soon as he had caught hold of the ball, he turned to the umpired and gave a shake of his head, clearly conveying to the umpire that the ball had pitched on the ground before he had caught it. This scene stuck in the young child’s mind, and even today, I respect Anil for the honesty he had shown that day. I also remembered the handful of times he was kept in the sidelines, even when playing at his peak. We did not hear anything untowardly from him. He had recently spoken about his disappointment during those days, but I feel his exclusion from the team only brought out a much stronger competitor.

Many would count the ten wickets he took in one innings in the Kotla test against Pakistan, his number of test wickets or his century against England earlier this year as things that make him a great cricketer. Without devaluing these, I would add that just the ‘person’ he is, makes him a greater sportsman.

Photo courtesy of http://www.kumble.com

The reel

A reel of moments we had shared
was unwinding in the peacefulness
of my mind.
I relived the times when I
did not do what my heart told.
I lived through the times again,
when things you did justified my decision.
I saw flashes of how better it could have been.
I open my eyes, with a prayer of hope.

It's Time II

The news was the harbinger of guilt.
I always felt something
Slipping down my closed palm.
What it was I did not know.
Its value, I did not realize.

The sudden fall opened my senses to the feeling,
What I had hid so well,
to the point of suppression.
And all it took was this news,
to bring out a vortex of emotions.

I cannot explain what I am feeling.
And I know there is no point trying;
No one would understand.
It is time to be more honest to myself.
And tell what needs to be told,
And show what needs to be shown.
It’s time to make amends;
It’s time to remove the mask I have worn.

The rationale II

I have not been able to do what I love,
I have not felt like penning down thoughts.
Am I lacking thoughts? Have I lost feelings?

Things do not seem to catch my attention any more.
It is like having a cocooned mind and heart,
Unable to see outside the well that is I.

Some ask me whether it is inflicted hurt
that has made me thus; I say no.
The same people used to tell that what I write
showed an element of longing and pain.
The fact that I am not writing today
may be because I have overcome this longing.

I believe in self – talk and I hope
repeating the last line aids me really overcome it.

Expectation II

It has been some time since
I enjoyed my walk to work,
With greenery all around,
I could not ask for more.
Today, has it gone to oblivion?

Work seemed like work.
What had been fun for so long,
turned loathsome today.

My perception has changed perhaps.
I do not know what has caused this.
Could be the work of expectation.

Prayer

More than happiness,
I beseech thee, O lord,
To give every living being
The strength to bear all loss.

Only if I were

I thought of taking the easier way
to your heart.
Things that make you special to me;
These I try to express in words.

My mind’s busy thinking
about everything you do.
Everything that touches my heart,
Coming right from yours.

I try to play with words,
I try to rhyme,
I try to write one poem,
But can’t manage even one line.

If only I were a poet.