Sunday, 12 December 2010

You will win Julian !!


Julian Assange has been the hero of journalism all over the world. Nobody is there in every corner of the globe who has not listened and read him in at least single time. But, the brevery and courageous functions of a Australlian citizen has been critisized by some segment of anti media freedom elements and he has been arrested for his involvement in rape case. But charge against him is not limited for only that case right now. Britain has filed the case against him and he is facing the cases. But, Wikileaks has not stopped disclosing the secret files yet. New informations are coming out and its consequences have also shown its effectiveness. As the evergreen supporter and activists for media freedom, we journalist of all over the world- particularly south Asian journalists- should denounce such hateful attempt of cutting the neck of press freedom by western powerful countries. Anyway, Jukian, you will win one day, that is not far !!! you are getting solideraty and wishes from all over the world!!!!

Some news about Julian-

Julian Mother Says-
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s mother has said that she is worried about her son as “massive forces” are working against him and insisted that there is “no way” he is guilty of rape, which he is charged with in Sweden.
“These massive forces have decided they’re going to stop him and they’re not going to play by the rules,” Christine Assange was quoted as saying by the media here.
On charges of sexual assaults against her 39-year-old son in Sweden, she said: “Julian, rape, straight out of my guts - no way.”

“Julian would not rape,” she said.
“It’s a worry of course. I’m no different to any other mother,” Christine said. “Every time the news goes on, I’m glued to it. Is he OK?”
She also expressed her anger at the Australian government, particularly Prime Minister Julia Gillard who, she said, had just “gone in there full bore and accused him of being a criminal.”
“I just think, well hang on a minute, this is one of your citizens here,” she said. “You shouldn’t be leading the charge.”
Christine called her son a “brave” person and said “a lot of people would not be able to withstand the pressure he is under.”
Asked if she thought her son had been betrayed, she replied “At the moment, yes.”
Commenting on several rallies being organised in support of Assange, she said “he is very heartened by the worldwide response from just ordinary people“.
Assange, an Australian national, is currently in custody in London, facing extradition to Sweden. The assault charges against him relate to two separate incidents during his visit to Sweden in August.
He denies the charges and has vowed to fight the extradition.
link
http://www.thehindu.com/news/international/article948075.ece?homepage=true

Friday, 26 November 2010

Three hours with Uday Prakash-III


My friend Nabin Bibhas was enthusiastic to ask more questions he had noted down in a diary. The interesting discussion made us enjoy. How he did feel, we couldn't know. But he appreciated us for seeking him at Delhi. But,real cost of meeting with him was more meaningful for us. But he was frequently saying that he was very happy to talk with Nepalis. Of course, he has won the mind of Nepali readers . He again went out of the tract of Nabin's question. He entered into revolution. 'Taking over the power is the beginning of revolution. It should be continued to transfer the system.' he said. I think, this may be the lesson of our Nepali Maoist.
He further said, "Ruler is not victimized after resolution but people who were serving them are victimized."
In his view, exploitation during the time of Lenin and now is not same. Method of exploitation has been transformed into industrial exploitation. Now we have been victimized.
He changed the topics and entered in to the issue of corporate products in India. '42 commodities should be banned in India. Only one and half rupees of its total price goes into company, remaining goes to kill the people of Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and others' He was focusing on the trade of Coca -cola, Pepsi and so on. This is an example of exploitation in the modern world according to Uday.
Uday, entered into the Indian society and ongoing movement except Naxalism. He has already mentioned about naxalism and I have posted in the previous parts.
'Look at the previous commonwealth game, what happened, he said, ' Out of 12 million people in Delhi, less than one hundred thousand people went. How do you evaluate the game where even one hundred thausand of 12 million people of Delhi didn't look at games? But at the same time 250 thousands family were made displaced and forcefully made them banned to stay at Delhi. Wasn't it shameful to destroy 17 schools where people of low income level were studying?'
He said, this type of politics is not going to survive. Said,'the parameter of every system is justice. Desire for justice in humanity is immortal. Justice never dies. People are struggling for getting justice.'

His perception about political India seemed interesting. 'I have been saying that Indian constitution is a singular text. But we have plural texts like Mahabharata, Ramayana, Gandhi and so on. India was never a nation and will not be in future. Hindu of Manipur state and Tamilnadu can't be singular. Same things like partition of pakistan and Bangladesh will happen in India in future. Likewise Hindi is also the created language based on Hinduism. Hindi was created in Kolkata and developed in Banaras. It has been created as RAJBHASHA of republic India.'
Nabin asked about contemporary Hindi literature. Uday entered in to the history of it and started from 1925 when the communist party in India was established. He has given interesting examples to answer Nabin's question. Please wait me for next segment.(To be contd....................)

Three Hours with Uday Prakash- II



At first part, I inaugurated the discussion with Uday Prakash. He was talking about the contemporary Indian society with examples of eastern mythological stories.
While answering to us, he went into the deep well of everything and came out.He seemed to be an encyclopedia about everything what we asked. While telling about Indian society, he diverted from the issue and said, ' today I am very happy by getting you Nepalese guys in my home. My readers are not only Hindi-speaking people, but also the people of different language all over the world.'
He showed a magazine which had published from Kolkata about the popular youth personality of South Asia. The magazine had carried his story also. I forgot the name of the magazine but Nepalese youth leaders like Gagan Thapa, Sunil Babu Pant, were also included as the dynamics of South Asia.Uday Prakash had been influded as the youth which he didn't forget to tell us. We laughed with respect.
He was out of the track of Nabin's question but we were getting more things. If he was fully concentrated with literature, my role would not be more than sleeping. His way of telling stopped me from sleeping.
He again entered into his personal life while telling about Indian society, literature as well as politics.


' I don't have job. I am always jobless. Youth collect royalties of my books and give me. I am living for youths because they are saving me. Because of them, I have car. I have home. ' He repeated again. I have already mentioned this part at the first segment of this story.
Then, he entered into the world of democracy. Uday has separate view of democracy. In his view, democracy has been unsuccessful and anti-people all over the world. 'People are unrest but state is defying the people in the name of democracy. After French revolution, there is no existence of democracy like the model of France. I think, there is people's participation in capitalist country where as socialist countries are far from this. Some limited persons are rounding the power. Democracy has been changed into protocracy. But now, Protocracy has been transformed into cleptocracy', he said quoting Nom Chomsky. Similarly, he claimed that Indian people are in the same position who were in before 1947.
Mentioning about civilization, he emphasized that democracy has been gone out. We have been divided but the people of India, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Pakistan are same. If you taste DNA, blood will not be different.
I asked question about his view on the future of Naxalite movement. He gavelong answer about that with background.

'In my opinion, Naxalite movemebt is because of the democratic failure in the country. Any writer should be aware about the Naxalite movement so, I am. Youth have been in politics. I see the good future of Naxalite movement.' he replied.
His perception was clear that tribe's involvement has made the Naxalite movement stronger. said, 'If you will fight to save river and natural resources, you will also fight to save tribal automatically. Natural resources and tribal are closely connected. Destroying jungle is also the enemata to the tribals.'
He came into the tract of our subject. 'Naxalite movement is to take over. Holding power is not solution of anything. Government is only the part of building infrastructure, road, energy etc. But the cause of such movements is existence of injustice.
He was giving the figure of India to complete our answer. Out of 1 billion and 200 million people of India, 11 percent are tribal. In north east, ninety nine percent people are tribal. Can the state kill 150 million people? But in India, limited Hindus are ruling by using media and power.
My friend Nabin had picked up long list of questions to ask Uday. More interesting part of our discussion will be mentioned subsequently . Pls wait me ................(To be continued on Part- III)

Thursday, 25 November 2010

Three hours with Uday Prakash - 1


Dear friends, I got chance to meet Uday Prakash, veteran figure of Hindi literature. I think, most of you know Udayprakash more than I know. This is the interpretation of the first segment of our discussion which had been taken place on November 24. I will keep on carrying more segments. I hope, you will get enjoy on it.
The rainy day didn't stop us to meet Uday Prakash, Indian prominent literary figure on November 24 because time had already been fixed for appointment. My friend Nabin Bhibas was very enthusiastic to meet and record interviews for his paper. As a literary figure, Nabin ji also used to tell me about the contemporary Hindi literature at IIMC. His interpretation about Uday Prakash dragged me to go behind him to meet Uday. I would like to stop background and go ahead what happend in that meeting.
The day was rainy and gloomy at Delhi as I mentioned in the earlier. Nabin ji, Ramesh Bhagat and I were going by Metro. We had been told to get down at Anand Bihar. Nabin ji gave Uday a call. We were told to stand in front of the Pacific. Uday himself was coming to receive us there. After ten minutes, awaited time was over. Uday came and welcomed us. The climate was cool but his trust for us made the environment warm. His home is near to the Gajiyabad, boarder of New Delhi and Uttar Pradesh. It took more than 5 minutes to reach his home by his car. Uday introduced us with Kum Kum, his wife. She welcomed us by sweet and hot tea. Then we started to discuss on several issues.
Nabin jee had already given some tips on the way about Uday Prakash who he is. I know that the common feature of literary figures is sentimental. His beginning of discussing with us made me impressive. He said at the beginning of our discussion, 'I am living for my friends-especially youths- who are funding and inspiring me by buying my books.' The mind-blowing words of Udaya Prakash made me sentimental. The veteran personality of an unemployed life was speaking his cons of life. It's better to write here that he was the gold medalist of JNU but gave up the governmental job and devoted on writing. More than three attempts to get job became unsuccessful and that cons of life dragged him into the whole-time writings. His latest novel Mohandash is also the reflection of an unemployed life itself.
He has got experiences in different segment of the life style and experiences. According to him, he has taken the facts of people of the bottom in his novels as well as other writings. 'I am from the remote village of Chhatisgarh that you cannot even imagine' he was saying.

He started to say from contemporary Indian Society. 'This time, civil rights are in danger. If Gandhi were here, he would be accused as enemy because persons who are seeking civil rights are treated as enemy.'
He said that minor persons have been treated as the god in this world. According to him, gods represent the bottom level of people. 'Budda was the voice of paddy farmer who stopped cow cutting and made people understood about the importance of cattle in farming. His father was also a farmer but not King at all. He was GANA PRAMUKH. Ram was not the King, Sita was discovered in the field. Ram fought against Lanka's king. His supporters were Sugreev, Hanuman and so on who were tribal. The war in the Ramayana was the war between two class where Ram represents bottom level people, tribal and Rawana represents as the elite. If you are fighting war against the will of people, you will never win.'

Monday, 22 November 2010

The Wind Has Followed Us


S.S. Ray saw history up close, scripting some of his own. Notes from an unwritten biography.

I met Siddhartha Shankar Ray in early October last year when I interviewed him for Outlook. Days later, on October 20, his 89th birthday, he approached me to write his biography. I agreed. However, unfortunately, the task remained incomplete since the veteran Congress leader died earlier this month. But work on the book had been in progress for the past one year. Here are some memories that Ray shared with me over several interview sessions -- Dola Mitra

Indira And I
I was two years old and Indira five when we apparently first met, or so my mother told me. She came to meet me along with her grandfather. Actually it was Indira’s grandfather, Motilal Nehru, who had come to meet my grandfather, Deshbandhu Chittaranjan Das. Indira was brought along. Evidently they couldn’t remember whether I was a boy or a girl so they brought me a doll. But as soon as it was handed to me, Indira scowled at me, grabbed the doll and tried to snatch it away. I put up a good fight. I don’t remember what happened but my mother later told me that there was a great struggle and Indira got the head and I was left holding one of the legs.

Indira and I were very close. I sometimes like to read the letters she sent me. (Starts reading from one.) This is dated December 21, 1980: “Dear Siddhartha, All your cheering words cannot stop graying hair or wrinkles. The world is in a sad state and man, in spite of all his opportunities, seems to be looking higher but slipping downwards. I have just been to Shri Krishnamoorthy. At 85, he hardly seems to have aged, but his views on humanity are depressing.” Here’s another one: “What a lovely raincoat you’ve sent. I hope it will invite the rains whenever we need them. Thank you for the gift, your good wishes and for all that you are doing for Bengal.”

Indira Gandhi And Sanjay
I had known Indira Gandhi since childhood. But our lifelong friendship came under strain over the excesses of the Emergency, which was largely due to Sanjay Gandhi’s interference and influence. Indira had confided in me a number of times about feeling helpless and how she could do nothing about it. I have seen her crying many times. She realised he (Sanjay) was going overboard and things were getting out of hand. She often told me, “Siddhartha, I’m helpless. What am I going to do with this boy?” But when it came to Sanjay she wouldn’t take my advice. She would always listen to him ultimately. I suspect Indira was afraid of Sanjay. He had a hold over her. Rajiv Gandhi was an excellent and able man, unlike his brother. It was he who asked me to become the Punjab governor. His untimely death was a big blow to me. After that the Congress party became headless. As for Sonia Gandhi, she must be intelligent enough if she is leading a party like the Congress.


1971, Pakistan Surrenders: Ray was CM of Bengal during the birth of Bangladesh. (Photograph by Corbis, From Outlook, November 29, 2010)

A Morale Booster For The Mukti Bahini

“I was taken to a jungle in East Bengal where a thousand Mukti Bahini boys sang Amar sonar Bangla. I was in tears.”


In 1971, before the Bangladesh war, Indira Gandhi told me that she felt the Bangladesh Mukti Bahini (liberation army) would get a huge morale boost if a Bengali-speaking minister from Delhi gave them a pep talk. She told me no one will ever know about this if you succeed and no one will blame you if you fail. This meant that the mission was not official. Of course, I understood. The status of the freedom movement under international law wasn’t clear then, and of course, India didn’t want to go around giving ‘morale boosts’ to separatist movements in other countries. I never asked her to tell me whether she took this decision on her own or whether she consulted anyone else. I did go to East Pakistan, which included a tense stay at the home of a friend who was clearly worried about my safety but knew better than to ask. Then, there was a two-hour jeep ride deep into an East Bengal jungle where a thousand boys greeted me by singing Amar Sonar Bangla. I was moved to tears.

A Reluctant Constitutional Lawyer
My practice marked me primarily as a constitutional lawyer, but I didn’t start out with that intention. I was a law student when the Indian Constitution was being drafted and debated about, but I was not interested in the Constitution when it was being written. My aim was to not know any more than I needed to pass the law course! I was not into philosophy or economics. I loved English and Bengali literature. Rabindrasangeet thrilled me. I was very fond of cricket. It was only when my practice got under way that I realised the importance of the constitutional underpinnings of all the legal issues I would have to address in the new Republic. Even then, it was not so much the Constitution’s overarching ideals that attracted me, but rather, its potential usefulness in solving societal problems. I was always a pragmatist about the law. I believed in using the law to reach just outcomes, even if that meant applying it in a way that was not necessarily intended by the framers of the Constitution.

Jyoti Basu And Other Comrades
Though we were political opponents, we were great friends. Politically we fought. We disagreed. I could not accept Jyoti’s silence on the issue of the Chinese aggression of 1962. It was tantamount to supporting China. Jyoti enjoyed his whisky. Publicly he rarely smiled but he had a great sense of humour. We share several good memories. Once Jyoti and I were campaigning in Chandannagar when a group of beautiful girls surrounded us asking for our autographs. They were more interested in Jyoti than me and let me off with just a signature. But they insisted that Jyoti write a few lines for each of them in Bengali. But Jyoti refused. Later, while going back to Calcutta, I asked him in the car why he refused to oblige them with a few lines. He shot back: “Arrey, parley toh likhbo (I would if could write Bengali)!”

Similarly, I have had some funny interactions with former speaker Somnath Chatterjee. He was an excellent advocate who ruined his career by joining politics. I recall a case in the Calcutta High Court that I was fighting with Somnath arguing for the other side. I told the judge: “Your honour, my respected opponent’s arguments are bullish.” Somnath promptly hit back: “Your honour, my respected opponent is calling me a bull because I am ugly.”

As for the other Communists, I feel finance minister Ashim Dasgupta is a very qualified man. He is from MIT. He is just in the wrong party. And Buddhadeb Bhattacharya is a very good man. An honest man. But he doesn’t have it in him to be chief minister. He should step down from the post....

SOURCE: OUTLOOKINDIA.COM

The Ring of the Dragon




No War, No Peace
For two years, India has been grappling with a heightened threat perception on its borders with China. VK SHASHIKUMAR on the complex preparations for a war that may not happen


CHINESE PREMIER Wen Jiabao is to visit New Delhi in the middle of December. His visit would mark 60 years of a tense diplomatic relationship, one where India’s elephantine firmness is increasingly matching China’s assertive dominance. In November, India’s foreign minister SM Krishna informed Parliament that the government is keeping “a constant watch on all developments having a bearing on India’s security and is taking all necessary measures to safeguard it”.

China’s ‘peaceful rise’ is over and its new ‘assertiveness’ is bothering diplomats, politicians and military strategists. “The Chinese have incrementally taken over ground in the Western Sector near the Pangong Tso in Ladakh,” says Bhaskar Roy, accomplished China-watcher and analyst, and a recently retired RAW officer. “Indian Army cartographers have informed the government that the Chinese are claiming more territory. India will have to strengthen its defences.”
Nobody in the government will admit it, but the fact is that two years ago India’s armed forces upgraded the threat perception from China from low to medium. Officially, China’s defence budget is $70 billion, but Pentagon believes it is $150 billion. In comparison, India’s defence spending is a fifth of the Pentagon estimates. Despite such colossal spending, however, it is not likely that nuclear India and China will go to war because neither would like to lose an opportunity to lead the world in the 21st century. There is too much at stake. Yet, Beijing and New Delhi are engaging in military posturing and preparing for a war they are not likely to fight in the Eastern Sector (Arunachal Pradesh) and Western Sector (Ladakh).
The border region in Ladakh resembles an inverted palm. Over the past four decades, China has occupied three of the finger points. “They (the PLA, People’s Liberation Army of China) are advancing towards the fourth finger area, called the Trigonometric Heights or Trig Heights. Most PLA transgressions happen at Trig Heights,” says Srikanth Kondapalli, a rare Mandarin-speaking academic privy to restricted information. Kondapalli is chairman, Centre for East Asian Studies, School of International Studies, in Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University.
TRIG HEIGHTS is south of the Chipchap River, comprising Points 5495 and 5459 (called Manshen Hill by the PLA). Southeast of Trig Heights is the Depsang Ridge, which it is trying to take under its domination. What Roy and Kondapalli say is important because South Block often seeks their inputs into policy-making.
For reasons best known to it, the UPA 2 government has not come clean on the extent of Chinese incursions in Ladakh, consistently playing them down. In September 2009, New Delhi and Srinagar were alarmed by reports of Chinese incursions in Zulung La in Chumar sector in the east of Leh, located at the junction of Ladakh, Spiti in Himachal Pradesh, and Tibet. While Chinese claims on Arunachal grab news space, it is in the Western Sector that Indian and Chinese troops are endlessly trying to outwit each other.
India has deployed elements of the Vikas Regiment of the Special Frontier Force (SFF) in the Ladakh part of the Western Sector. The secretive SFF reports to the Cabinet Secretariat. This regiment was formed by recruiting and training Tibetan settlers in India. They operate in an area where “not even a blade of grass grows” as Jawaharlal Nehru famously said. There is no habitation, only nomadic shepherds. China has used this to gradually advance on the Indian side of the Line of Actual Control (LAC).

On the move Chinese forces have kept their Indian counterparts at bay in the Pangong lake

“Two-thirds of Pangong Tso is in their control. There are reports that the Chinese have brought in the artillery and fast patrol boats. They are aggressively patrolling the lake, which is believed to be 50 to 300 metres deep in most parts. There are even reports in the Chinese media about the induction of a submarine,” says Kondapalli. The Indian armed forces are outnumbered because there is no way they can effectively dominate the third of the lake under their control. “We cannot frequently go on patrols because our forces don’t have patrol boats on the lake.”
The PLA is gradually strengthening its claim over the Samar Lungpa area in the Western Sector. According to the Chinese, the LAC is south of Samar Lungpa, an area wedged between the Karakoram Pass and the Chipchap River. But it is business-as-usual when it comes to the official version. RK Bhatia, director-general of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP), addressed the media in the first week of November. “We have no report of any intrusion along the borders. The borders are peaceful,” he said. What Bhatia didn’t mention was that the ITBP sends out area domination patrols across the LAC north of Samar Lungpa, while the force is stationed south of it. This is just a minor instance of how successive governments in New Delhi have categorised even the most trivial China-related information as classified.
“None of the official documents related to China are in the public domain. Go and ask for a China-related document at the National Archives and all you get is silence,” says Kondapalli. Under Indian law, restricted official documents can be declassified after 50 years, but documents related to China have not been declassified since 1914. These documents are from the 1914 Shimla Convention when representatives of Britain, China and Tibet met to resolve Tibet’s status. During this convention, the McMahon Line was drawn delineating the India-China border. However, China does not accept this border.
Roy says the PLA’s incursions and its incremental encroachment in Ladakh are designed to show that Beijing has shifted its stance on the Kashmir issue. “In the 1980s, the Chinese described the Kashmir issue as a bilateral dispute. Jammu & Kashmir was described as Indian-held Kashmir and the area held by Pakistan was described as Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. Now they say Indian-held Kashmir is a disputed territory and that Pakistan-occupied Kashmir is Pakistan’s sovereign territory.” Kondapalli agrees there is “definitely a shift” in China’s Kashmir policy. “The critical period was 2009 October-November when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh visited Arunachal. This was followed by the Dalai Lama’s visit to Tawang. These were massive heartburns for the Chinese.”
This is a cloak-and-dagger game that requires fine understanding. “The Chinese don’t speak directly,” says Roy. But New Delhi is reading Beijing’s language intently. China’s dramatic shift on Kashmir was announced in a typically understated and indirect manner when it began issuing stapled visas on separate sheets to applicants from J&K and Arunachal. “There is no record of stapled visa to Kashmiris residing in PoK and Northern Areas. So this is a key signal of what Beijing wants India to know. That the areas of Kashmir under Pakistani control are not disputed anymore,” says Kondapalli. In a back-handed way, therefore, the Chinese leadership has conveyed to India that it considers J&K a disputed territory.


IN AUGUST, the Chinese denied visa to Lt General BS Jaswal, Commander of the Northern Command, for an official visit. Beijing suggested that another General, presumably someone posted outside J&K and Arunachal, could be nominated in Jaswal’s place instead of cancelling the visit. New Delhi promptly rejected the offer. This was followed by a report in The New York Times in September revealing the deployment of 11,000 Chinese soldiers in Gilgit and Baltistan in PoK. Then, China’s foreign ministry recently declared that the Northern Areas, Gilgit and Baltistan are Pakistan’s sovereign territories. India says they are part of undivided J&K.
China experts and official sources, who wish to remain unnamed, point out that China is legitimising its new Kashmir policy by heavily investing in infrastructure projects in PoK and the Northern Areas. Hu Jintao, General Secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC), told Xinhua in a 2009 interview that he was very happy with the ongoing infrastructure projects China has undertaken in PoK. According to Chinese protocol, Hu is the ‘paramount’ leader and is ranked higher than Premier Wen. Hu’s statement, according to Kondapalli, was an indication that something is cooking.
Media reports in Pakistan and elsewhere peg the Chinese investment in hydro projects and road and railway construction at $30.14 billion. An important strategic project the Chinese have undertaken in PoK is the construction of a rail line between Khunjerab (4,693 metres), on the border of Xinjiang province, and the Northern Areas all the way to Havelian in Abbottabad, Pakistan. The plan is to extend this line to Gwadar port, which the Chinese are building. “The Chinese want to keep India and Pakistan permanently divided and the Pakistani Army is happy with this,” says Kondapalli.
Curiously, in the ongoing winter session of Parliament, Krishna toned it down. “The government remains vigilant to all developments having a bearing on India’s national interest and takes all necessary measures to safeguard it. The Chinese side expressed their inability to accept the visit of GOC-in-C Northern Command (Jaswal) to China as ‘he commands a sensitive area and people from that region come with a special type of visa’. The government has taken up this matter with the Chinese side and has clearly conveyed that J&K is an integral part of India and that there should be no discrimination against visa applicants of Indian nationality on grounds of domicile and ethnicity. Visas issued on a separate sheet of paper stapled to passports are not considered valid for travel out of the country.”
BUT NOTHING in this mild rebuke betrays the anger within India’s security establishment. According to Roy, China is trying to make J&K a tripartite issue. “They will keep pushing in the Western Sector.” This adds another layer to the already complex Kashmir issue. China has quietly changed the geo-political dimension, irrespective of India’s position, and in spite of US President Barack Obama describing Kashmir as a bilateral issue between Pakistan and India. China’s new online mapping service unveiled in the last week of October, and billed as a rival to Google Maps, shows Arunachal and Aksai Chin (a part of Ladakh) as Chinese territories.
Experts say China is legitimising its new Kashmir policy by heavily investing in infrastructure projects in PoK and the Northern Areas

The political landscape of the Himalayan region is unravelling in the 21st century, and the past is a good indicator in discerning patterns of change in the future. In the 19th century, there were five Himalayan Kingdoms, Tibet, Ladakh, Sikkim, Nepal and Bhutan. Things have changed in the 20th century. Ladakh and Sikkim merged with India. Bhutan and Nepal became independent. Though Bhutan chose to become a ‘protectorate’ of India, Nepal defined its relationship with India through the 1950 friendship treaty. Tibet came under Chinese control as the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR). “Twenty percent of 19th-century Kashmir land is with China and so technically it is part of the dispute. But Kashmiri separatists do not have the guts to ask Chinese to return the land because their Pakistani mentors won’t allow them to,” says Kondapalli.
In the mid-1950s, an Indian Army patrol sent to the uninhabited 38,000 sq km Aksai Chin, an area as large as Switzerland in the eastern-most part of J&K, discovered a Chinese-built road and Chinese activity in the region. This was one of the several escalatory reasons leading to the 1962 war. A year later, Pakistan ceded 5,189 sq km of the Shaksgam valley in the Northern Areas, which is part of PoK. The Chinese eventually built a 10-metre wide road linking Kashgar to Abbottabad. This road, popularly known as the Karakoram Highway (China’s National Highway 219), is of tremendous strategic importance to China because it connects the Uyghur Muslim-dominated region of Xinjiang to Tibet. Now, under a bilateral agreement, China is widening the Karakoram Highway by 30 metres. “You can move military assets much more easily and smoothly. This will facilitate even the movement of trailermounted missiles,” says Bharat Verma, strategic affairs analyst and editor of Indian Defence Review.
So, 63 years after the birth of the Kashmir problem, China has quietly nudged itself in as the ‘Third Party’ and has made it a trilateral issue. During the mid-November meeting of the foreign ministers of Russia, India and China in Wuhan, a city in central China, Krishna engaged in uncharacteristic plainspeak with his counterpart Yang Jiechi. Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao told journalists that Krishna “expressed the hope that China would be sensitive to J&K just as we have been to TAR and Taiwan”. “This is definitely a departure from the past. It is the first time it’s been said,” says former foreign minister K Natwar Singh.
But such Indian hard talk cannot gloss over Chinese diplomatic doublespeak. On the one hand, Chinese foreign minister Yang reiterated that dialogue and negotiation between Pakistan and India is the only way to resolve the Kashmir problem.
Thirteen rounds of consultations and discussions have taken place between India and China to resolve the boundary disputes. “But the Western and Eastern sector maps have not been exchanged,” says Roy. “Even in the middle sector, officially we have not exchanged maps. We have shown our version of maps. The Chinese have not,” adds Kondapalli.
“Indian governments have been reluctant to put out China-related documentation in the public domain. Why can’t we release it? I have written an insider account in my book, My China Diary 1956-88, published last year. The Chinese have always refused to share their boundary maps with us. Zhou Enlai told Nehru that the Chinese maps are old ones and of no use. Since then, the Chinese have always cited some reason or the other to avoid handing over their boundary maps,” says Natwar Singh.
China is trying to make J&K a tripartite issue. ‘They’ll keep pushing in the western sector,’ says analyst Roy. This will add another layer to the complex dispute

IN BORDER disputes, exchange of maps is crucial to determine ownership. “If maps are exchanged, it is understood that India and China have placed their versions on record. For easier understanding, let us suppose that there is a property dispute between us. Both have property deeds. The judge decides the ownership by studying the property deeds and finding whose claim is stronger,” says Kondapalli. Military Intelligence (MI) sources have confirmed to TEHELKA that India might be taken by surprise if China decides to officially exchange maps during Wen’s visit.
“The MI says they are surprised at developments since the 1980s. One way of demonstrating proof of property ownership and legal entitlement is to show payment of land taxes. If one can show collections of land tax and revenue tax from remote areas, then it can be established that whosoever is collecting taxes is legally entitled to ownership of that land,” says Kondapalli.
“There are reports that MI has indeed told the government that since the 1980s the PLA has been collecting such documents from areas around the LAC. There are reports that people have migrated to the Chinese side taking with them their land documents. Even indirect tax is being collected and recorded by the PLA from nomadic shepherds,” he adds.
This could explain the repeated incursions by small PLA teams in the Western and Eastern sectors over the past two decades, to collect land-related documents, and collect land and revenue tax. This also explains why the Chinese have been reluctant to display maps showing their version of the LAC. Over 20 years, China has been gradually building a convincing case for its claim over Aksai Chin and Arunachal Pradesh. “Reports suggest the PLA has marched 11 km beyond the 1962 occupation. They have been collecting land records,” says Kondapalli.
As China and Pakistan gang up against India on Kashmir, new layers will be added to the issue of unsettled borders left by the British colonial rulers. Chinese and Indian understanding of the border along Uttarakhand and Sikkim is settled and is aligned with the McMahon Line. The British colonial government drew the McMahon Line with a margin of error of 10 km on either side of the thick blob of ink delineating the border between Britishruled India and Tibet.
Historically the Chinese have refused to accept the McMahon Line. Their claim on the approximately 90,000 sq km Arunachal (called Zangnan by the Chinese) has been unwavering. If India and China go to war, it will be over Chinese land grab in Ladakh and Arunachal. A face-off between two of the largest military forces in the world, like the 1987 build-up in the Sumdorong Chu river valley (called Sangduoluo in Chinese), could spark a war. The then Indian Army Chief, General Krishnaswamy Sundarji, planned Operation Falcon in 1986-87 to thwart a PLA incursion.
Roy agrees with several Indian foreign policy experts that “Chinese aggression will not cross the border because there is too much at stake.” In fact, Army Chief General VK Singh stressed “there is going to be no 1962.” He was referring to the capitulation of the Indian Army as the Chinese army marched deep into Arunachal Pradesh in 1962, eight years after signing ‘The Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence’ drafted by Nehru.
Says Bharat Verma, “China would attack India between now and 2012. After that the window of opportunity will start closing and after 2015 it will be almost impossible for any Chinese military adventure. Three imperatives for China to attack India are: a) Pakistan is descending into chaos, disintegrating and imploding. The Chinese have made heavy investments in Pakistan and PoK. To save Pakistan and unite the forces tearing it apart, China will attack India. b) From the Chinese point of view, the annexation of Tibet cannot be complete without taking over Arunachal. As long as Tawang (in Arunachal) is detached from Tibet, it will always keep Chinese insecure. c) India’s defence forces are rapidly modernising under a five-year plan. By 2015 the Indian military machine would be state-of-the-art and would force China to think several times before contemplating an attack.”

China is upgrading its military infrastructure along the 4,000 km LAC, by building roads and rail lines for fast and efficient mobilisation of troops. The Lhasa rail line is being extended to Xigaze on the China-Nepal border and would eventually link up with Kathmandu. More importantly, the Chinese are linking Lhasa to Nyingchi close to the Arunachal border. Beijing claims Arunachal is part of the Nyingchi prefecture. It is here on the Great Bend, where the mighty Brahmaputra turns its course into India, that the Chinese are building the world’s largest dam.
Commenting on the flurry on building activities on the Chinese side of the LAC, General Singh said: “China is doing a great amount of infrastructure development, which it says is for locals of the area. But our problem is we are not very sure about the intentions.” Taking a cue from the statement, former defence minister and Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav raised the issue of an impending Chinese attack on India in Parliament.
“China is an unreliable country and its design has always been to usurp territories from Ladakh to Himachal Pradesh and Sikkim to Arunachal. China is fully prepared but here in India, no instructions have been given to the army. I have been a defence minister and I know their intentions. I know their state of preparedness and that is why I ordered building of roads in the border areas. Our borders are not secure,” Yadav told TEHELKA.
In Arunachal, while the Chinese side of the LAC offers relatively easier access, the Indian side is densely forested and mountainous. The Himalayan ranges along the northern borders are criss-crossed with mountain ranges running north-south. The state’s topographical features have imposed geographical isolation by splitting it into five river valleys — Kameng, Subansiri, Siang, Lohit and Tirap. India’s official strategy, though no one will admit, was to preserve this isolation.
Officials who want to remain anonymous have told TEHELKA that “till 2008 the strategic wisdom in North and South Block was that border areas in the East must not be developed. The Army shared this perception”. Haunted by the humiliating withdrawal of 1962, India’s military stalled plans for developing infrastructure fearing the Chinese would use the facilities in the event of war.
If India finds itself vulnerable now, successive governments and their military planners must be blamed for lack of foresight and strategic planning. Highly placed security officials say PLA patrols are regularly moving in and out of “areas beyond the McMahon Line”. Three Chinese spies have been arrested in the past six months in Arunachal.
Only two years ago, the government finally decided to reverse its policy of geographical isolation of border areas. In 2008, the government began ground surveys for construction of high-altitude strategic border roads. Detailed Project Reports and statutory environmental clearances were obtained. Finally, it seems the government would begin connecting India’s border areas along the LAC.
A 10 November press release issued by Minister of State for Home Affairs Mullappally Ramachandran stated the “government has decided to undertake phasewise construction of 27 roads totalling 804 km in the border areas along the India-China border in the states of J&K, Himachal, Uttarakhand, Sikkim and Arunachal to be constructed by the ministry for operational purposes of the ITBP.” In the past two years, the government has spent Rs. 384 crore on road building near the LAC.
India has also increased its troop levels in the Northeast to more than 1,00,000 by raising two additional army mountain divisions. The Indian Air Force is stationing two squadrons of the newly acquired Sukhoi-30 MKI fighters in Tezpur. Three Airborne Warning and Control Systems complement this new deployment. India’s Strategic Forces Command has deployed Agni-III missiles in the Northeast with a range of 3,500 km. Early next year, the highly road-mobile Agni-V, capable of striking Harbin, China’s northernmost city, will be test fired.
The IAF has re-operationalised three forward landing airstrips on the LAC, including the world’s highest airfield Daulat Beg Oldie (16,200 ft) on the easternmost point of the Karakoram Range just 9 km northwest of Aksai Chin, Fuk Che and Nyoma. The US is providing India strategic airlift capability by supplying C-130J Hercules transport aircraft. According to the aircraft manufacturer Lockheed Martin, the IAF requirement is for “special mission roles, precision low-level flying, airdrops, and landing in blackout conditions”.
PLA patrols are regularly moving out of areas beyond the McMahon Line. Three Chinese spies were arrested in the past six months in Arunachal

Clearly, the Americans are encouraging India to assume the role of a countervailing power to China. Obama’s recent visit to India generated the momentum for the opening up of the Indian defence market for American companies, from artillery guns and missiles, to military transport aircrafts and fighter jets.
INDIAN STRATEGIC planners are realising they can’t merely respond to Chinese assertiveness. The Chinese naval strategy is also bothersome. On 18 November, Sri Lanka inaugurated the Chinese-built Hambantota port. China is also enhancing the capacity of the Colombo port and building the Gwadar port in Pakistan. The Chinese navy has set up listening posts in Burma’s Coco islands. It is furiously building a massive submarine fleet, which is intended to be the largest in the world. It is also setting up port facilities in Thailand, Cambodia and Bangladesh.
In response, India has announced plans to commission a fleet of aircraft carriers and submarines by 2020.
It is only in the past two decades that RAW has developed the capacity to gather electronic intelligence and monitor Chinese activities. “Now we have intelligence officers and diplomats who can speak Chinese,” says Roy. Even India’s National Security Adviser, Shiv Shankar Menon, is fluent in Mandarin. At the moment there are two scores of highly proficient Chinese speakers in RAW who are reportedly doing a fine job of sourcing information for policy-making. But until India’s economy resizes to match that of China, its security will remain imperiled.
In August this year, China ran past Japan as the second largest economy in the world after the US. China’s booming economy is dependent on exports. The Chinese consume 30 percent of what they produce and export the rest to all parts of the world through the Indian Ocean routes. Besides, 80 percent of its annual 200 million tonnes of oil requirement is brought through the Strait of Malacca. “India’s integrated command base in the Andamans controls access to the Strait of Malacca. The Chinese are worried that in the event of a war, the Indian Navy can interdict and sink Chinese oil tankers. This could impair the export-driven economy of China,” says Kondapalli.

Battle ready An IAF AN-32 at the Nyoma airfield in Ladakh, just 23 km from the LAC

THIS SCENARIO is making the Chinese deeply anxious. Its leadership is trying to find ways to maintain the economic surge to take it beyond the present $1.33 trillion economic output. The Chinese are desperate to overtake the US as the world’s largest economy. With a $2 trillion treasure trove of foreign exchange reserves, opaque and globally unknown state-owned or state-backed Chinese firms are on an acquisition spree in America, Europe, Australia and Africa.
A globalised one-world economy is finding itself unable to resist the lure of cashdown Chinese takeovers. So the iconic Swedish Volvo, owned by US company Ford Motors, is now a proud possession of Geely Automobile Holdings Limited, a Chinese carmaker backed by cheap credit lines offered by Beijing. The collapse of Detroit as the car manufacturing capital and the bankruptcy or stinging losses of car manufacturers General Motors and Toyota have enabled unknown Chinese entrepreneurs like Li Shufu straddle the global stage with giant money rescue acts.
All of this adds to the mystique and mystery of hardcore communist entrepreneurs peddling unbelievable stories of their rags-to-riches billionaire status.
The Indian government believes that ZTE and Huawei, both Chinese telecom equipment manufacturers and vendors, are a threat to national security. Mobile telephony operators in India prefer lowcost Huawei products and services. China’s low salaries, high investment in research and development, skilled, tech-savvy workforce and easy credit offered by its financial institutions have enabled firms like Huawei to edge out vendors such as Ericsson and Nokia Siemens Networks from emerging markets like India.
The Indian security establishment believes it is possible for governmentbacked firms like Huawei to embed electronic eavesdropping technology in the telecom equipment it supplies to Indian companies. Founded 22 years ago by Ren Zhengfei, a former PLA officer, the discomfiture among China watchers over Huawei is overwhelming. Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited, a public-sector unit, was instructed by the Department of Telecommunications last year to refrain from procuring Chinese equipment.
Indian suspicion of Chinese telecom firms has grown over the past three years because Beijing has pursued a strategy of electronic dominance

Indian suspicion of Chinese telecom companies has grown over the past three years because Beijing has relentlessly pursued a strategy of electronic dominance over India. Last year, heavy imports of cheap Chinese mobile handsets without International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) numbers had raised the hackles of security agencies. The fear was that terrorists could use such phones and evade electronic surveillance and tracking. Eventually the government banned the import of non-IMEI handsets. Between 2008 and 2009 Chinese cyber warriors hacked into the computers of the previous NSA (MK Narayanan), the Ministry of External Affairs and several Indian embassies. India is under a relentless 24/7 attack by Chinese hackers as they try to pry open sensitive databases. During the recent Commonwealth Games, they tried to immobilise ticketing operations, which could have led to a serious breach of security.
Irrespective of security anxieties, China’s technological and manufacturing leap has numbed India. Its “call centre” low-tech economy, despite the inspiring charge towards 9 percent economic growth, appears doomed. It is already showing up in the trade imbalance figures. This year, the bilateral trade may zoom past Rs. 2.71 lakh crore from Rs. 1.63 lakh crore in 2008-2009. But what is worrying is the Rs. 72,288 crore trade deficit India has with China.
Wen will visit India riding on the confidence of his country’s phenomenal economic growth. But it will be very un-Chinese for Wen to miss one fine detail. A month ahead of his visit, the Indian Army has inducted its first ‘sons of the soil’ Arunachal Scouts battalion. “The raising of Arunachal Scouts will help the country in defending its border,” said Arunachal CM Dorjeee Khandu.
This 5,000-strong battalion drawn from ethnic Arunachalis will be trained for high-altitude combat. But will Wen checkmate India’s grand counter-strategy by producing land records and taxation documents to justify Chinese claims over Aksai Chin and Arunachal? That’s a surprise Delhi would not be looking forward to.

Sunday, 21 November 2010

Congratulations Anuradha ! You are Our Pride !



Los Angeles, California (CNN) -- A woman whose group has rescued more than 12,000 women and girls from sex slavery has been named the 2010 CNN Hero of the Year.

Anuradha Koirala was chosen by the public in an online poll that ran for eight weeks on CNN.com. CNN's Anderson Cooper revealed the result at the conclusion of the fourth annual "CNN Heroes: An All-Star Tribute."

"Human trafficking is a crime, a heinous crime, a shame to humanity," Koirala said earlier in the evening after being introduced as one of the top 10 CNN Heroes of 2010. "I ask everyone to join me to create a society free of trafficking. We need to do this for all our daughters."

Koirala was introduced by actress Demi Moore, who along with her husband, Ashton Kutcher, created DNA, The Demi and Ashton Foundation, which aims to eliminate child sex slavery worldwide.

"Every day this woman confronts the worst of what humanity has to offer," Moore said of Koirala. "She says, 'Stop. Stop selling our girls.' By raiding brothels and patrolling the India-Nepal border, she saves girls from being sold into the sex trade, where they are being repeatedly raped for profit, tortured and enslaved.



CNN's Hero of the Year

'CNN Heroes' salutes Chilean miners

Gallery: CNN Heroes red carpet

Gallery: The Top 10 CNN Heroes of 2010 "Since 1993, she has helped rescue more than 12,000 women and girls. Through her organization Maiti Nepal, she has provided more than a shelter for these girls and young women, she has created a home. It is a place for them to heal, go to school, learn a skill, and for some who are infected with HIV/AIDS, it is the place where they can spend their days surrounded by love."

See Koirala's fan page on CNN Heroes

Koirala will receive $100,000 to continue her work with Maiti Nepal, in addition to the $25,000 awarded to each of the top 10 Heroes honored Saturday night.

"This is another responsibility to me to work with all your support," Koirala said to the audience after being named Hero of the Year. "We have to end this heinous crime. Please join hands with me to end this crime. ... Please try to respect the youth. They are the ones who are going to build the next generation. Thank you so much."

Koirala's speech capped the gala event, which was taped before an audience of nearly 5,000 and premieres Thanksgiving night on the global networks of CNN.

The show opened with a salute to the 33 Chilean miners and five of the people who rescued them last month after the miners spent 69 days underground.

"For 69 days we were amazed by these 33 brave miners," Cooper said in welcoming the miners onto the Shrine stage. "Their ordeal was unthinkable; their rescue, unbelievable. No one has ever been trapped underground so deep for so long and survived.

"They endured a nightmare, experienced a miracle, and in the end became each others' brothers and heroes. On behalf of CNN Heroes, we salute all 33 Chilean miners."

After the miners sang the Chilean national anthem, two of them -- speaking through a translator and holding the Chilean flag -- expressed their appreciation.

"We want to thank the world, and we want to thank God for your prayers," Luis Urzua told the audience in Spanish.

"Our families suffered. Our children suffered, too. But thanks to the prayers of the whole world, we could come out of this difficulty," Mario Sepulveda added.

"Some of our rescuers are here with us tonight," Urzua said. "Thank you for bringing us home. You are our heroes."

CNN brought the miners and their rescuers to the United States to attend the tribute show. The five rescuers were selected to represent the many thousands whose talent and effort led to the dramatic rescue.

SHOW TIMES
Watch "CNN Heroes: An All-Star Tribute":

CNN/US: Thanksgiving night, November 25, at 8 ET/5 PT

CNN International: Thursday, November 25 at 8 p.m. ET and Friday, November 26 at 5 a.m. ET, 1100/2200 Berlin and 0900/1800 Hong Kong

CNN En Espanol: Thursday, November 25 at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT; Saturday, November 27 at 7 p.m. ET/4 p.m. ET; Sunday, November 28 at 9 p.m. ET/6 p.m. ET RELATED TOPICS
Celebrity News
Entertainment
Thanksgiving
The top 10 CNN Heroes, chosen by a blue-ribbon panel from an initial pool of more than 10,000 nominations from more than 100 countries, were each honored with a documentary tribute and introduced by a celebrity presenter.

The program also featured performances by Grammy Award-winners Bon Jovi, John Legend and Sugarland.

Rock legends Bon Jovi performed "What Do You Got?," a new song from their greatest hits album, which came out earlier this month. Legend performed "Wake Up Everybody" along with hip-hop artist Common and R&B singer Melanie Fiona. Sugarland performed "Stand Up," a new song from their album "The Incredible Machine," which made its debut in October.

All three performances echoed the spirit of the CNN Heroes campaign, which salutes everyday people whose extraordinary accomplishments are making a difference in their communities and beyond.

Celebrity presenters included Halle Berry, Demi Moore, Jessica Alba, Kid Rock, LL Cool J, Renee Zellweger, Gerard Butler, Kiefer Sutherland, Marisa Tomei, Aaron Eckhart and Holly Robinson Peete.

"CNN Heroes has illustrated the best of humanity through the telling of stories of selfless acts of kindness, courage and perseverance" said Jim Walton, president of CNN Worldwide. "We are honored to bring these Heroes the recognition they so deserve. It is a program the entire CNN family is proud of and excited to share with our viewers on Thanksgiving night."

Again this year, producer/director Joel Gallen served as executive producer of "CNN Heroes: An All-Star Tribute." Among his credits, Gallen produced telethon events supporting victims of the Haiti earthquake, the 9/11 terrorist attacks and Hurricane Katrina. He won an Emmy Award and a Peabody Award for "America: A Tribute to Heroes."

Preceding the tribute broadcast, CNN and HLN will simulcast a red carpet special, "Showbiz Tonight @ CNN Heroes," at 7 p.m. ET/4 p.m. PT. Hosted by A.J. Hammer and Brooke Anderson, the special will feature exclusive coverage of celebrity arrivals and interviews, as well as a celebrity-hosted social media suite tapping into the worldwide online passion and interest in the Heroes event.

India and its neighbours



This is an exclucive article regarding India's position in neighbourhood.I hope, you will get benefit by going through it.

By Kanwal Sibal
Issue: Vol 25.1 Jan-Mar 2010 | Date: 16 November, 2010
Indian Defence Review
________________________________________
It is considered almost axiomatic that management of relations with neighbours should be the first priority of any country’s foreign policy. The stakes are always high as conditions in its immediate vicinity directly impact on a country. An unfriendly neighbourhood means tensions and a heightened danger of conflict. That implies more military expenditure and diversion of resources away from the economy to meet security needs. Such an environment also creates opportunities for external powers to interfere and distort local relationships. The advantages that flow from mutually beneficial trade arrangements are reduced or lost.
A country’s ability to pursue its interests beyond its neighbourhood is also impaired if it is constantly distracted by problems around it. Its political and diplomatic credibility too suffers at the international level if it is seen as being unable to settle its differences with countries at its own door step.
A stable, friendly and peaceful, neighbourhood, on the contrary, helps to reduce additional political, economic and military burdens on a country. Its capacity to act on a regional or even global platform- depending on its size, strength and resources- is enhanced if it has the support and understanding of its neighbours. At a time when regional arrangements and organisations are seen as instruments for advancing collective regional interests, a fractious neighbourhood can mean collective loss.
To examine India’s relations with its neighbours in this context, the extent of its neighbourhood would need to be defined. Should we look at India’s strategic neighbourhood or its geographical one? If it is the first then the entire region from the Straits of Hormuz to the Straits of Malacca should be considered. In actual fact, if India had not been partitioned in 1947 and Pakistan hived off it, its western frontier would have extended to the Persian Gulf. In the east, the Andaman and Nicobar islands stretch India’s frontiers to the vicinity of Indonesia. If, however, geographical neighbours alone are to be considered, then we have to confine ourselves to Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Maldives and Myanmar.
Oddly, Myanmar has not figured sufficiently in our political consciousness as our neighbour, despite the fact that it is contiguous to our troubled north-eastern states and we have vital security interests to protect in developing close ties with it. Myanmar’s membership of ASEAN has contributed to blurring its identity as our direct neighbour, but its step in May 2008 to seek full membership of SAARC should help us to focus more on that relationship. Afghanistan presents a case of India’s political frontiers not coinciding with strictly legal ones in view of Pakistan’s illegal occupation of the northern areas of Jammu and Kashmir.
However, with Afghanistan’s full membership of SAARC, it becomes in practical terms an integral part of our neighbourhood. Historically, China and India have never been contiguous, but China’s occupation of Tibet has made it as our direct neighbour.
While in theory the case for a peaceful, stable and friendly neighbourhood is quite clear, how can such objective be achieved in practice? How can such balance of interests be created that would bind neighbours in friendly ties? Is it contingent on reciprocity or is the bigger and stronger country required to make unilateral concessions? How can fears, prejudices, the weight of history, traditional animosities and such factors be overcome? Is a smaller country entitled to greater consideration simply because of its size?
The role of third countries is important as countries have relationships that go beyond their immediate neighbourhood. In today’s globalized world different pulls and pressures operate, helpful or harmful to the interest of individual countries depending on circumstances. Countries look for alliances and partnerships beyond their own region for advancing their own political, economic or security interests. Smaller countries fearful of being overwhelmed by bigger neighbours have interest in seeking ties with external countervailing powers. They, in turn, may have strategic interest in containing regionally influential powers in order to create more space for themselves.
Countries cannot act in their neighbourhood as they please purely on the basis of power equations, as more demanding norms of state conduct act as a restraining influence, international opinion reduces freedom of action, especially on humanitarian grounds, and the economic cost of conflict has become less bearable by societies aspiring for higher growth and prosperity.
There is much self-criticism in India about the state of our relations with our neighbours. It is argued that India as the biggest country in the region has the main responsibility for regional stability. India is criticized for not being sufficiently generous to its neighbours, for reluctance to make unilateral concessions to build confidence and earn trust and goodwill. Such concessions are especially advocated on the economic side in the conviction that India’s interest is served by integrating the neighbouring, much smaller economies, with its large and growing economy, and in the process contributing to rising regional prosperity and positively influencing political attitudes because of the creation of durable linkages. India is also faulted for unsatisfactory border management, failure to create proper border posts and customs infrastructure as well as poor connectivity, all manifestations of a culpable insensitivity to neighbourly needs.
Such criticism overlooks many complexities and exaggerates India’s capacity to manage its neighbourhood to meet its internal and external needs. India’s internal weaknesses that prevent it from exerting its weight decisively in its neighbourhood are disregarded. On many issues of national interest India’s internal thinking is divided and consensus is lacking. That its legal, political and administrative system hampers it from taking hard decisions clearly in its own interest is ignored. This applies to the proper management of its open or porous borders, large scale illegal immigration from Bangladesh into India etc. India’s federal structure accounts for some of the deficiencies.
A coherent centre-state level effort to deal with those countries contiguous with Indian states is yet lacking. Electoral considerations, self-absorption in our own problems that are of sub-continental dimensions are other reasons why requisite priority is not given to the need to forge an effective policy towards neighbours. India’s size and power may be intimidating, but the neighbours have experience of India’s reluctance to react to provocations, except in extreme circumstances, and believe therefore that they have considerable room for tilting against our interests for one reason or another.
India’s record in shaping developments in its neighbourhood is poor. It intervened in Sri Lanka, but its withdrawal in difficult conditions led it to abjure an intrusive role there even as the ethnic conflict persevered and other countries exhorted it to take responsibility for steering the peace process to success. It stood largely aloof from developments leading to the defeat of the LTTE, and it is doubtful that it is ready to play a decisive role in helping the triumphant Sri Lankan government to close the last chapter of the Tamil question on a equitable basis. India intervened more successfully in the Maldives at the request of its government, but that specific episode does not constitute a model for future Indian actions to ensure regional stability.
The intervention in East Pakistan fell in a different category. Apart from its immediate causes, especially the flow of millions of refugees into India, it is Pakistan’s unremitting hostility towards India, and its use of subversion, infiltration and use of armed force to assert its territorial claim on Kashmir that prompted our intervention. In Bangladesh’s case, India did not intervene when anti-Indian forces took over power there and for decades pursued unfriendly policies.
In Nepal, India cooperated in the rise to power of forces traditionally hostile to it in the interest of a stable Nepalese polity. India is loath to micromanage Nepal’s internal affairs even though developments there seriously impinge on its security. All in all, India is a benign and non-interfering neighbour, with elastic red lines because of a disinclination to resort to intimidation or seek confrontation.
India’s tolerant attitude towards its neighbours is reflected in its handling of the issue of democracy in its neighbourhood. Its basic approach is to do business with whichever government is in power. Even while being aware that a truly democratic system in Pakistan would limit the power of both the armed forces and extremist groups and would benefit India-Pakistan ties, India has remained pragmatic in its willingness to do business with Pakistan’s military regimes, especially that of General Musharraf. Likewise, India has engaged with military regimes in Bangladesh without any fuss. In the case of Myanmar, ignoring international diplomatic flak, India has sought to build functional ties with the military junta there for reasons of overriding national interest. While cherishing its own democratic system, India believes in an approach of live and let live when it comes to propagation of democracy worldwide.
India, despite its size and power, is, ironically, the biggest victim of terrorism directed against it from within its neighbourhood. Its cities, streets, religious sites, scientific institutions and economic centres have been targeted by Pakistan for years with impunity, culminating in the Mumbai terrorist carnage. It is now living under the shadow of another Mumbai like attack, which if it were to happen, could well lead to reprisals by India despite the risks involved. Pakistan’s unwillingness to deal with the perpetrators of the Mumbai mayhem, and its selective combat against the Pakistan Taliban who are causing domestic mayhem and absence of action both against the Afghan Taliban targeting the international forces in Afghanistan and the Panjab based jihadis targeting India, shows the failure of the international community to deal with the complex terrorist threat emanating from Pakistan.
It is not only India that has failed to manage its relations with Pakistan; the international community is now experiencing the truculent nature of that country. Pakistan feels no real compulsion to abjure terrorism as an instrument of state policy. India by itself lacks the capacity to coerce Pakistan to do so, especially as Pakistan now has the nuclear cover for its lawless activities. Pakistan sees the extremist religious forces that resort to terrorism as allies against India and potentially in the takeover of Afghanistan after the western forces depart.
Within the SAARC region, apart from the Karzai government castigating Pakistan’s sponsorship of terror, other countries remain reticent. All, barring Bhutan, have interest in maintaining good ties with Pakistan for motives that include leveraging Pakistan’s hostility towards India to their own advantage, countering the threat of Indian domination, constraining India’s freedom of action within the region, as well as the need to politically manage their own Muslim communities. SAARC conventions on combating terrorism remain on paper given Pakistan’s complicity with terrorist groups. Pakistan in fact uses Nepal and Bangladesh for infiltrating terrorists into India, or, in the case of Bangladesh, using local extremists for targeting India.
The debate about unilateral concessions versus reciprocity misses a basic point. A big country has no less responsibility than a small one to legitimately maximise its own interests. No country can sustain a policy of making unilateral concessions. Those who advocate such concessions overlook the conduct of the US, and far more relevant to our situation, that of China. Has China made unilateral concessions to its neighbours on core issues? It is not ready to make any such concessions to us on the border issue in the interest of forging a long term friendly relationship between the two largest countries in the world whose cooperation can radically change the existing balance in international affairs.
India has tried a policy of unilateral concessions towards neighbours in the late 1980s and the early 1990s, but with no lasting results. It is ultimately a question of pragmatism. If making a concession in one area can yield a return in another area, it should be made. Reciprocity need not be symmetrical. If Bangladesh, as is the case now, is more cooperative in dealing with anti-Indian insurgents sheltering on its territory, India would find it politically easier to meet some of its demands on the commercial side even if some domestic lobbies are opposed.
The problem of unilateralism or reciprocity can be addressed more easily through the framework of SAARC. Unfortunately, Pakistan has from the start worked to limit progress within SAARC so that its own policy of linking improvement of relations with India to a resolution of the Kashmir problem does not get undermined. For this reason, it has yet not adhered to its obligations to India under SAFTA. Indeed, Pakistan’s obstructive policies account for poor economic integration in the SAARC region.
India’s FTA with Thailand and now with the ASEAN as a whole reflects India’s readiness to take forward looking steps to enhance mutual trade for building mutual prosperity. Now that Afghanistan has joined SAARC, common sense would dictate that Pakistan accord transit rights through its territory to facilitate Afghanistan’s trade with India as part of the process of stabilising Afghanistan.
India’s physical domination of its neighbourhood creates problems which it cannot master. Most of its neighbours are very small in comparison, geographically, demographically and economically. Even Pakistan, is less than 15 percent of India’s size demographically and economically and not too much more geographically. India and its neighbours share strong civilisational, cultural, linguistic and ethnic ties. This reality makes the neighbouring countries feel insecure in their separate identities. As identity is a core constituent of a sense of nationhood, these countries foster it by consciously asserting their distinct identities. As a corollary, India is projected as a threat and a hegemonic. This serves the objective of the political classes in these countries to rally the people behind them on a nationalist platform against India’s “bullying” tactics.
The ethnic links, such as those of the Madhesis in Nepal’s Terai region and Sri Lankan Tamils with India also generates tensions. These sections of the population are not as yet fully integrated into the societies in which they live and suffer from disabilities and discriminatory treatment. They are either suspected for their extra-territorial loyalties or are seen as instruments of Indian influence, or the sympathy and support they receive from groups in India create an atmosphere of distrust in bilateral relations.
India cannot prevent the neighbouring countries from seeking, for reasons of realpolitik, to balance India’s weight by inviting external powers into the region. This gives them greater margin of manoeuvre vis a vis India, added scope for extorting more concessions from it, as well as making themselves more eligible for economic and military assistance from powers wanting to constrain India’s rise or imposing costs on India for pursuing independent policies. Pakistan, in its obsessive pursuit of “parity” with India and a pathological refusal to accept any status of inferiority vis a vis it, has been most responsible for strategically bringing outside powers into the sub-continent.
As against India’s nonaligned choice during the Cold War, Pakistan chose to join all possible US-led military blocks against “communism”. It obtained as a result massive amounts of military aid from the US, that in turn emboldened it to pursue its Kashmir agenda aggressively. After the 1962 India-China conflict, Pakistan got an opportunity to use China to counter India, even as it maintained its relationship with the western block. Pakistan and China, in their shared hostility towards India, have forged their “all weather friendship”. The Pakistan-China nexus has sought to permanently neutralize India strategically by transfers of nuclear weapon and missile technology to Pakistan. Significantly, the US has been complaisant, as it too has favoured a strategic balance between India and Pakistan in the belief that this is needed to ensure peace and stability in South Asia.
Today China is Pakistan’s biggest defence supplier. The US too has begun supplying advanced arms to Pakistan as part of its policy to reward it for its cooperation in helping combat the insurgency in Afghanistan. Pakistan is now the recipient of arms assistance from the world’s foremost democracy and its foremost authoritarian state.
US policy of hyphenating India and Pakistan was decisively abandoned by the Bush Administration in its approach to the nuclear question in South Asia, though it sought to balance its new approach to India by declaring Pakistan a “non-NATO ally”. With the change of Administration in the US and the Afghanistan quagmire in which it is caught, Pakistan has been pressing for the involvement of the US in India-Pakistan issues, especially Kashmir, to re-create a degree of re-hyphenation. To resist US demands to step up operations against the Taliban groups targeting the international forces in Afghanistan, it has argued about the danger to its security from the east, that is, India, again to bring India into the US-Pakistan equation. It has not helped its case with the US by resisting action against the perpetrators of the Mumbai carnage and avoiding action against the Afghan Taliban targeting the international forces in Afghanistan.
Nevertheless, in view of US dependence on Pakistan for its Afghanistan operations and Pakistan’s cynical policies, India is unable to mobilize sufficient US support for forcing Pakistan to end its linkages with terrorism by using the military and economic leverages at its disposal. In Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, Indian and US policies have converged far more than was the case in the past, with the result that the governments of these countries are no longer able to use US weight to counter the Indian “hegemony”.
China, with its increased political, economic and military weight, is stepping up its presence in countries around India. It is pursuing its strategic interests in Pakistan, with current activity in the nuclear field, major road and power projects in POK and involvement in Gwadar. In Afghanistan China is investing heavily in the mineral sector and a railway link. It is likely to accept an opening to the Taliban as insurance for the stakes it is developing in Afghanistan within the framework of its strategic relations with Pakistan.
In Nepal it is becoming more assertive in demanding equal treatment with India in terms of our respective treaties with that country. With the Maoists now a powerful political force in Nepal, and given their ideological compulsion to be seen as drawing Nepal closer to China, coupled with their periodic ranting calculated to inflame public opinion against India, the political terrain has become more favourable for China. This can only make India’s task in handling Nepal more difficult. The political and social turmoil in Nepal, with its internal fractures becoming sharper, will continue to cause India serious political headaches.
India cannot be indifferent to developments in Nepal because of its border with Tibet, open border with India, the need to prevent linking between the Indian and Nepalese Maoists, not to mention ISI’s mischief making in India through Nepal. At the same time, India cannot openly interfere in Nepal’s internal affairs as that would give a handle to anti-Indian elements there to excite domestic opinion against India.
China’s position in Bangladesh is entrenched. Even Sheikh Hasina’s friendly government would see it in its interest to maintain close ties with a rising China and the benefits that can bring, including giving India an incentive to woo Bangladesh more. China has earned the gratitude of the Sri Lankan government by supplying it arms that helped in defeating the LTTE. Sri Lanka, along with Myanmar, Bangladesh and Maldives, are targets for China’s naval ambitions in the Indian Ocean area to protect its vital lines of communication through these waters.
The so-called “string of pearls” strategy, with commercial goals in view in the short term and military goals in the longer term, includes construction of new port facilities in select countries. To promote these objectives China is bound to step up further its engagement with these countries, especially with increasing material means at its disposal, posing further challenges to India’s interests in its neighbourhood.
India will not be able to shape its immediate environment optimally for its interests in the foreseeable future. Unless Pakistan is ready to end its politics of confrontation with India, that includes the over-assertion of its Islamic identity, the fostering of the jihadi mentality, the nurturing of extremist religious groups involved in terrorism and the political domination of the military in the governance of the country, the SAARC region will remain under stress. An India-Pakistan reconciliation will of course radically change the internal dynamics in South Asia and the quality of the region’s engagement with the rest of the world. The role of external powers in the region will also get substantially modified.
Afghanistan presents grave potential problems. If the extremist religious forces ultimately win there, the strategic space for them will expand enormously, with deeply adverse consequences for the region. A triumphant radical Islamic ideology can be destabilising for the religiously composite societies of South Asia. The increasing Talibanisation of Pakistan would be most deleterious for the South Asian environment. Pressure on India would grow.
The prospects for a border settlement with China remain distant. China has, on the contrary, increased tensions by making aggressive claims on Arunachal Pradesh. India’s military infrastructure in the north is being upgraded in the face of mounting Chinese intransigence on the border issue. China’s hardened posture towards the Dalai Lama and Tibet cannot but retard a resolution of India-China issues. China, meanwhile, continues to build up Pakistan against India. It is quite likely that China’s pressure on Arunachal Pradesh is intended to deter India from taking advantage of a Pakistan currently in disarray. The tactical alliance between India and China at the Copenhagen climate summit should not obscure the deeper sources of India-China problems.
The political drift in Nepal portends continuing instability there with all its deleterious consequences for the economy. India has to play its role without getting embroiled in domestic controversies to the extent possible, though traditionally anti-Indian forces there would continue to propagate the canard of overbearing Indian interference in Nepal’s internal affairs. The development of Nepal’s energy resources can re-shape Nepal’s economy and its relations with India, but the history of failed attempts to do so in the past suggests caution in expecting a breakthrough.
With the Sheikha Hasina government in power in Bangladesh India’s relations with that country seem set to improve. Bangladesh is showing an unprecedented willingness to deny safe havens to anti-India insurgents and discuss transit issues. The recent visit of the Bangladesh Prime Minister promises to “launch a new phase” in the ties between the two countries. If despite internal resistance from anti-Indian elements and the bureaucracy, India-Bangladesh relations can be steadily transformed, it will considerably improve the political and economic dynamics of the region. Bangladesh can play a positive part in linking the eastern region of South Asia to Myanmar, Thailand and beyond. A solution however has to be found, to the problem of illegal Bangladeshi migration into India.
The commencement of a dialogue between the US and the Myanmar junta validates India’s policy towards that country. If the US has woken up to the danger of leaving China to consolidate its hold over Myanmar, it is all to the good. India needs to implement its assistance projects, especially the multi-modal transport ones, without further delay. We have to contend with China’s much more purposeful approach in strengthening its strategic presence in our neighbourhood, including using Myanmar’s ports for increasing its presence in the Indian Ocean area.
India’s very cordial relations with the Maldives need to nurtured, especially in view of the attention it is receiving from China at the highest level. In Sri Lanka, the heady feeling of triumph at eliminating the LTTE needs tempering and a permanent solution that the Tamils can live with should be encouraged with India’s discreet prodding.
Bhutan has been the only real success story in terms of India’s relations with its neighbours. This underscores the point that good relations between India and its neighbours depend not only on wise policies on our side, but, equally, the pursuit of wise policies by our partners, with Pakistan and China and other external interests not allowed to upset the building of positive equations to mutual advantage.

Entering into the New World



Today I have entered into the new world where you are looking at. This is my first time that I have started the blog to practice absolute freedom of expression. Particularly, in this blog, my articles, feelings and political news/events will have been posted in future. At the beginning, acknowledging my weakness about design and layout of the blog, I have posted two of my published articles for your information about my entrance into the new world. But one thing, I can never go ahead without your creative suggestion and comment. I will always be looking forward your suggestions, comment to improve my design, layout as well as the level of language. I would be grateful to you for the comments and suggestions to make it better.

दिल्लीलाई माओवादीले दिएको दुःख

पर्शुराम काफ्ले
भारतीय दूतावासले कात्तिक ८ गते नेपालको परराष्ट्र मन्त्रालयलाई पठाएको पत्र माओवादी अध्यक्ष प्रचण्ड चीनबाट फर्केर निमन्त्रणा नआएको अवस्थामा भारत जाने लालसा व्यक्त गरेपछिको प्रतिकि्रया हो त्यसकै वरिपरि यतिवेला नेपाली राजनीतिले फन्को मारिरहेको छ । माओवादी नेताहरुको नामै किटेर उनीहरुले भारतीय माओवादीलाई तालिम दिएको किटानीसहित दूतावासले पठाएको पत्रको जवाफ सरकारले हालसम्म पठाएको छैन बरु घटनाक्रम हेर्दा देखिन्छ दुई देशका माओवादीबीच भारतले लगाएको आरोप पुष्टि गर्न सरकारले खोजिरहेको छ । मानौँ नेपाल सरकारले दुई माओवादीबीच तालिमको लेनदेनस्तरसम्म भएको पुष्टि गर्दै नेपाली माओवादीसँग राजनीतिक प्रतिशोधकै लागि भारतलाई पत्र पठायो रे † त्यसपछि नेपालमा भारतीय चासोको स्तर कति बढ्नेछ र मुलुकको हालत नै के हुन्छ यसको गम्भीरताबारे सरकार मौन छ । त्यसबारे अहिले नै अनुमान गर्नु हतार हुनेछ तर माओवादीका रिसले नेपाल सरकार प्रतिकि्रयाविहीन भएर रहिरहने हो भने उसको यही मौनता नै भविष्यमा आफ्नो सुरक्षाको मामिलामा भारतको चासो थपिएर फौजीरुपमा प्रवेशको नाका खुल्नेछ र माओवादीको मात्र होइन िसंगो नेपालकै बद्नाम हुनेछ । सरकारले माओवादीसँगको राजनीतिक असहमतिलाई अर्कै तरिकाले हल गर्नुपर्छ र भारतविरुद्ध नेपाली भूमि प्रयोग नभएको जवाफ शीघ्रातिशीघ्र पठाउनुपर्छ किनभने दूतावासको पत्रको आशय माओवादीसँग बिग्रेको भारतीय संस्थापन पक्षको सम्बन्धको परावर्तन मात्रै होइन नेपाली भूमि भारतविरुद्ध प्रयोग भइरहेको भन्ने गम्भीर आरोपसमेत हो । यो आरोपमाथिको जवाफ माओवादी नेताले भाषणमा दिएर पुग्दैन सरकारले औपचारिक रुपमा स्पष्ट पार्नुपर्छ ।

वास्तवमा नेपाली माओवादी र भारतीय संस्थापन पक्षबीचको सम्बन्ध युद्धकालदेखि १२ बुँदे सम´दारी र स्वयं तत्कालीन प्रधानमन्त्रीको राजीनामा दिने वेलासम्म नै प्रश्नको घेरामा छ । जनयुद्धको आरम्भदेखि आखिरीसम्म मुख्य नेतृत्व र प्रमुख नेताहरुको भारत बसाइ र अत्यन्तै सीमित नेताहरुको मात्र गिरफ्तारी अनि भारतीय भूमि हुँदै नेपालमा हतियार ल्याएर माओवादीले साचालन गरेको जनयुद्धको भित्री कथा अ´ै रहस्यको गर्भभित्रै छ । भारतीय भूमिमा जनयुद्धको अधिकांश समय रहेका माओवादी अध्यक्ष प्रचण्डले पटक-पटक भारतसँगको आश्चर्यजनक सामीप्यको खुलासा गर्दै आएको पृष्ठभूमि छिपेको छैन । भारतमा गएर आइएसआइद्वारा प्रस्तावित सहयोग नलिएको भन्नेदेखि नेपालस्थित भारतीय दूतावासमा आºनो हिमचिमको सातौँपटक साचारमाध्यमले लैनचौरमा उजागर गरेको अतीत धेरै पर पुगिसकेको छैन । त्यसबाहेक राजीनामा दिनुअघि राकेश सुदलाई पाँचपटकसम्म बोलाएर भारतीय उच्च अधिकारीसँग भेट गराइदिने याचना गरेको प्रचण्ड आफैँले खुलासा गरिसकेका छन् ।

तर माओवादी-भारतसम्बन्धको पृष्ठभूमि वा वर्तमान जेसुकै रहे पनि दूतावासको पत्रको सारलाई इतिहासका रहस्यमय घटनाक्रमतिर पन्छाएर उम्किन मिल्दैन । भारत सरकारले पठाएको पत्रले माओवादीलाई मात्र होइन त्यससँग अरु केही गम्भीर विषयलाई उठाएको छ । पहिलो नेपाली माओवादीले भाकपा माओवादीलाई वैचारिक मात्र होइन भौतिक सहयोग गरेर सहयोग गरेको आरोप छ । वेला-वेलामा नेपाली सीमाबाट साना हतियार तस्करी गरेर भारतीय माओवादीले लैजाने गरेको आरोप लगाएको भारत सरकारले यतिवेला तालिमै दिएको भन्दै स्थान र व्यक्तिको नामै तोकेर पत्र पठाएको छ कारबाहीका लागि । भारतीय राजदूत राकेश सुदमाथिको जुत्ता प्रकरणदेखि माओवादीको चीनसँग बढ्दो हिमचिमका सबै प्रकरणसँग जोड्दै भारतीय माओवादीसँगको साँठगाँठ जोडेर भारतीय दूतावासको पत्र आएको छ । दोस्रो उक्त पत्रमार्फत नेपाली भूमिमा भारतविरुद्ध गतिविधि भइरहेको र सरकारले रोक्न नसकेको सन्देश दूतावासले दिएको छ । भारतको आन्तरिक सुरक्षाको सबैभन्दा ठूलो चुनौती मानिएको माओवादीलाई नेपाली भूमिमा तालिम दिइएको उसको आरोपलाई चानचुने रुपमा लिइनु हुँदैन । तेस्रो माओवादी लडाकुको क्यान्टोन्मेन्टभित्र भारतीय माओवादीलाई तालिम दिइएको आरोपले राष्ट्रसंघीय नेपाल मिसन अनमिनलाई पुनः बेकामे देखाउन खोजिएको छ । अनमिनमार्फत युरोपियन युनियनको चासो बढेको भन्दै अफ द रेकर्डका रुपमा भारतीयले असन्तुष्टि पोखेको पृष्ठभूमिमा उसलाई बिदा गर्न पहिलेदेखि नै लबिङ भएकोमा पछिल्लोपटक पत्रले पनि त्यही कुरालाई लक्षित गरेको छ । र अन्ततः आफ्नो सुरक्षा स्वार्थलाई कारण देखाउँदै माओवादीलाई सरकारको नेतृत्व मात्र होइन सरकारमै सहभागी गराउन नहुने भन्ने भारत सरकारको आशयसमेत पत्रमा प्रकट भएको छ ।

भारतीय पत्र प्रकरणको पृष्ठभूमि रोचक छ जसले आफ्नो सुरक्षा मामिलालाई सम्बोधन गर्न भारत सरकारको तयारी कति पहिलेदेखि भएको हो भन्ने स्पष्ट पारेको छ । भारतीय पत्रको मूल आधार केही थपिएको पनि छ द इन्डियन एक्सप्रेसमा छापिएको एउटा महŒवहीन समाचारमा आधारित छ । अक्टोबर ११ मा पटनाबाट सब्यसाची बन्धोपाध्यायले प्रेषित गरेको समाचार भोलिपल्ट एक्सप्रेसको चौथो पेजको बक्स समाचारमा छापिएको छ । उक्त समाचारमा जुन २८ मा आन्ध्रप्रदेशलगायतका भारतीय माओवादी सर्लाहीको मलंगवाबाट नेपाल छिरेर अनमिनको अनुगमनमा रहेका माओवादीको क्यान्टोन्मेन्टमा तालिम लिएको उल्लेख छ । एक्सप्रेसका संवाददाताले पत्रको पूर्ण विवरण नै आफूसँग रहेको समाचारमा उल्लेख गरेका छन् । बिहारबाट पंकज नामका भारतीय माओवादीको नेतृत्वमा २३४ जना माओवादीले तालिम लिएको उल्लेख छ पत्रिकामा । दूतावासको पत्रमा भनिएजस्तै एक्सप्रेसका अनुसार विनोद गुरुङ प्रकाश महतो र लस्करे तोइवाका लतिफ खान र रजाक अन्सारीको सुपरभिजनमा तालिम लिएको उल्लेख छ ।

हुन त प्रचण्डको भारत भ्रमणको लालसाबारे भारतीय विदेश मन्त्रालयको नेपाल डेस्क हेर्ने सहसचिव सतिष मेहताले नयाँदिल्ली आउँदा नागरिक समाजका अगुवा पद्मरत्न तुलाधर दमननाथ ढुंगाना र पूर्वसचिव विद्याधर मल्लिकसँग अक्टोबरको अन्तिम साता स्पष्ट पारिसकेका थिए । मेहताले १२ बुँदे सम´दारीदेखि यता हालसम्म्ा भारतले दिन केही पनि बाँकी नरहेको तर माओवादीले कार्यान्वयन गर्न थुप्रै विषय बाँकी रहेको भन्दै बहुलवाद र माओवादीको लोकतान्त्रीकरणप्रति पहिलेको प्रतिबद्धता कार्यान्वयन गर्नुपर्ने र कब्जा भएका सम्पत्ति फिर्ता गर्नुपर्ने कुरा कार्यान्वयन गराउन सल्लाह दिनूस् भनेर नागरिक अगुवालाई फिर्ता पठाएको धेरै भएको छैन । तुलाधर ढृुंगाना र मल्लिकले मेहताबाहेक पूर्वराजदूत केभी राजन र बिजेपीका नेतालाई भेटे तर भारतीय प्रधानमन्त्रीका विशेष दूतका रुपमा अगस्टमा नेपाल गएका पूर्वराजदूत श्यामशरणले भेट्न अस्वीकार गरेका थिए । बुि´एअनुसार श्यामशरणले सतिष मेहतालाई भेट्नूस् मेरो कुरा त्यही हो भनेका थिए । १२ बुँदे सम´दारीमा सहयोगी भूमिका निर्वाह गरेका माक्स्रवादी कम्युनिस्ट पार्टीका वरिष्ठ नेता सीताराम यचुरीसँग पनि नागरिक अगुवाले भेट गरेनन् । भारतीय संस्थापन पक्ष र राजनीतिक दलहरुको माओवादीलाई हेर्ने दृष्टिकोण एकै पाएका अगुवाहरु एकदिन चण्डीगढसमेत गएका थिए मुड प्रुेसका लागि । घटनाक्रमहरु उस्तै रहेमा प्रचण्डको भारत भ्रमणको लालसासमेत पूरा नहुने देखिएको छ ।
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