Given a particle accelerator and the Dead Sea Scrolls, what would you do? If you are from Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare in Italy, you would send proton beams of 1.3 MeV into one square centimeter pieces of the scroll to find out if they were created elsewhere and bought to Qumran.
At the LANDIS laboratory (one of the INFN laboratories in Catania), non-destructive analyses were performed to obtain results on the origin of the scrolls. To produce a scroll, which was the writing material used at the time, a great quantity of water is needed. By analysing water samples taken in the area where the scrolls were found, the presence of certain chemical elements was established, and the ratio of their concentrations was determined.

According to this analysis, the ratio of chlorine to bromine in the scroll is consistent with the ratio in local water sources. In other words, this finding supports the hypothesis that the scroll was created in the area in which it was found. The next step in the research will be to analyse the ink used to write the scrolls.[Protons for studying the Dead Sea Scrolls]

Related posts:

1. Searching for the Historical Jesus (2) For the faithful, the Bible is the word of God; for the historian it is not since there are major discrepancies among gospels. For example, the genealogy of Jesus differs...

Forcing parties to be socialist is not an academic question

Strange are the ways of the Supreme Court. Ruling against a petition to expunge the adjective “Socialist” to describe the Indian republic in January 2008, the Court said socialism “hasn’t got any definite meaning. It gets different meaning in different times.” If we are to accept this bizarre logic, why not declare India a Variable Republic, because the word variable is the most appropriate to describe something that “gets different meanings in different times.”

Yesterday, a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court, presided over by the Chief Justice, turned down the petition again:
saying though the PIL raised an important question of law, it was purely academic in nature at present. “The court will decide such a question as and when a political party which is refused recognition by EC raises it.” [TOI]

(Also see J Venkatesan’s report in The Hindu)

This is equally bizarre. Even if we were to grant that the Supreme Court should decide only on non-academic questions—and requiring every party to swear by socialism is certainly not academic—hasn’t the Bench heard of Swatantra Party’s case that is with the Mumbai High Court?

It may well be that the petitioners presented their case as a question of law and principle. That it is. But it is also more than that. Next time, the petitioners should present socialism as the cause of India’s poverty and a threat to its development. (See Atanu Dey’s recent post)

Related Posts: The background; the petition to expunge socialism from the Constitution; the first dismissal.

Recently an article appeared in the Deccan Herald which suggests that the Finnish Indologist Asko Parpola has demolished the Aryan-Dravidian divide as a myth. Dr. Parpola, for those you don’t know, has been studying the Indus scripts since 1960, and holds that the language is proto-Dravidian. Recently, the President of India awarded the first Kalaignar M. Karunanidhi Classical Tamil Award to the Dr. Parpola. In his speech Dr. Parpola said
Tamil goes back to Proto-Dravidian, which in my opinion can be identified as the language of the thousands of short texts in the Indus script, written in 2600-1700 BCE. There are, of course, different opinions, but many critical scholars agree that even the Rigveda, collected in the Indus Valley about 1000 BCE, has at least half a dozen Dravidian loanwords. [Acceptance speech of Asko Parpola at World Classical Tamil Conference]

Now if such a person, who argues that the language of the Indus was an early form of Tamil, suggests that the Aryan-Dravidian divide is a myth, then there is something to it. This is what Deccan Herald says
However, the rich religious/cultural heritage in South Asia till now has been preserved both by the speakers of Dravidian languages (predominantly in South India) and the people of North India, Prof. Parpola emphasised, to demolish the myth of a clear Aryan-Dravidian divide. Dr Parpola’s work left the top DMK leadership seated in front, nonplussed, kindling them to rethink the Aryan-Dravidian divide issue. [Jolt to Aryan-Dravidian divide theory]

The problem is this: the Aryan-Dravidian divide is not based what happened after the Aryans arrived, but before. It is based on identifying who were the natives and who were the outsiders and according to Dr. Parpola, the Aryans migrated into India. In fact he believes that there were two waves of migration: two Indo-Aryan groups — the Dasas and Panis — arrived around 2100 B.C.E from the steppes via Central Asia bringing horses with them, but they were not the composers of the Rig Veda. The Vedic composers came a couple of centuries later.

Then: 
Most of the Early Dravidian speakers of North and Central India switched over to the dominant Indo-Aryan languages in Post-Harappan times. Speakers of Aryan languages have indistinguishably merged with speakers of Dravidian and Munda languages millennia ago, creating a composite Indian society containing elements inherited from every source. [Parpola and the Indus script]

Thus what Dr. Parpola said at the World Classical Tamil Conference is not different from his decades old position. Unless Dr. Parpola states that he believes in the Indigenous Aryanism — that the Sanskrit speakers were natives of India and not migrants — he is still supporting the Aryan-Dravidian divide.

Related posts:

1. Smithsonian on Indus Script Ever since Rao et al. published that the Indus script showed the structure of a formal language, a new debate on the topic was initiated. There were some hostile reactions...
2. The Aryan-Dravidian divide myth A new paper published in Nature reveals that Indians are descendents of two genetically divergent ancient populations. One of the groups, Ancient North Indians (ANI), is closer to Middle Easterners,...
3. The Indus Script – Analysis (A letter in cuneiform sent to King of Lagash) Read Part 1, Part 2. There are two points the Dravidian camp and the Indo-Aryan camp agree on: the signs...

Another Reagan classic – listen to the whole thing. “Socialists ignore the side of man that is of the Spirit. They can provide shelter, fill your belly with bacon and beans, treat you when you’re ill; all the things that are guaranteed to a prisoner or a slave. They don’t understand that we also dream.“ (linkthanks NRO)

A sign of times that former Intel Chairman and CEO Andy Grove had to write a piece like he did in BusinessWeek. The magazine, it needs reminding, is now owned by Bloomberg. Tax on off-shore output is his proposal:

Levy an extra tax on the product of offshored labor. (If the result is a trade war, treat it like other wars—fight to win.) Keep that money separate. Deposit it in the coffers of what we might call the Scaling Bank of the U.S. and make these sums available to companies that will scale their American operations…. If what I’m suggesting sounds protectionist, so be it. [More here]

He may be on to something here when he comments on the undervaluation of manufacturing.

How could the U.S. have forgotten? I believe the answer has to do with a general undervaluing of manufacturing—the idea that as long as “knowledge work” stays in the U.S., it doesn’t matter what happens to factory jobs.

More accurately, it was overvaluation of service sector jobs and career relative to manufacturing – consulting, banking, broking and insurance, not to mention the knowledge economy. But, the key hypothesis that he is stating is here and that can be verified:

Not only did we lose an untold number of jobs, we broke the chain of experience that is so important in technological evolution. As happened with batteries, abandoning today’s “commodity” manufacturing can lock you out of tomorrow’s emerging industry.

His hypothesis is that offshoring commoditised manufacturing breaks the chain of experience needed for technological evoluation. Is that the case? If not, his case for taxing product of offshore labour stands dismissed. I think he stands on a weak wicket. Or, does he?

This article from ‘Washington Post’ could not have assuaged his fears one bit:

Centuries after it led the world in technological prowess — think gunpowder, irrigation and the printed word – China has barged back into the ranks of the great powers in science. With the brashness of a teenager, in some cases literally, China’s scientists and inventors are driving a resurgence in potentially world-changing research.

Vivek Wadhwa refutes Andy Grove with this claim:

The Kauffman Foundation’s analysis of Census Bureau statistics shows that net job growth in the U.S. economy occurs only through startup firms. From 1977 to 2005, existing companies were net job destroyers, losing 1 million net jobs per year. In contrast, new outfits in their first year added an average of 3 million jobs annually.

I am not sure Andy Grove was exactly calling for protection of established American companies although his proposal, in reality, might amount to that.

Why are they both silent on the vast quantities of money, compensation and wealth that American executives and the wealthy have accumulated for themselves? Check this out:

The income share of the top 1% of the population went from around 12% to 21%; the next 19% saw their income share rise a princely 1% from 39% to 40% and that of the bottom 80% saw its income share drop from around 48% to 39% [More here]

CEOs’ pay as a multiple of average worker pay is still at 344 times, although off from a peak of around 531 times, it is still far removed from the ratio of 42 times in the 1960s. The article claims that a comparable ratio in Europe is 25:1. [More here]

The emphasis on shareholder value has been a smokescreen to chase short-term stock market performance since most executive pay is linked to the performance of the common stock of the company. The best way to boost stock price is to retrench workers. No wonder American corporations are flush with cash today.

A true capitalist has no concerns with people becoming rich through the sweat of their own labour but a system in which an executive with no interest in the long-term future of their corporation can obtain rewards in a few years that ensure a life of ease and comfort is a perversion of the whole idea. Capitalism is about rewarding those people who put in the hard yards and get a few breaks – not about offering huge windfalls to greedy executives who happen to ascend the greasy pole. [More here]

I am very impressed with the recently discovered PsyFiTec Blog (ht: Paul Kedrosky). The quote above is taken from this blog.

I like Felix Salmon’s comprehensive post on the US unemployment. I think he is right, in the American context, when he talks of giving labour unions more recognition and power:

Without unions and minimum-wage laws, corporations compete on who can pay the least. With them, they compete on who has the best employees and they invest significantly in those employees. Which is exactly what we want, especially since raising the minimum wage is unlikely in and of itself to increase unemployment visibly. [More here]

It was good to see Ezra Klein leave it to the readers to make their own judgements on the India-China issue here. He was drawing attention to the fact that India’s capital’s new international terminal was completed in 35 months whereas the Beijing airport’s new terminal, readied in time for Olympics, took 48 months. Problem is that China has many infrastructure successes to show. India has one swallow. It has to show many for us to believe in the Indian summer.

Former RBI Governor Rangarajan had given a mostly politically correct interview to journalists from Indian Express. On inflation, he stressed the importance of making food stock available. Fair enough. But, what about agricultural productivity. It has been stagnating for a long time. What about production of infrastructure – electricity for example? Maoist threat is hampering coal production and hence power generation. Coal has emerged as the fastest rising substitute for crude oil, in recent years. India’s coal may have high ash content but it has plenty of it. It needs to mine as much of it as possible, wash it and even export it. But, where are we?

The persistence of food and non-food inflation calls into question, his comment about potential growth being in the region of 9.0%. We need a less upbeat and more realistic estimate. The double-digit inflation rate is a clear sign that the potential (non-inflationary) growth rate is below 8%. Former RBI Governor Bimal Jalan wants a contingency plan by September to tame inflation. Plan B comes after Plan A. Do we have a Plan A?

Mr. Rangarajan ends his interview with a call for better governance. Yes, there is a deficit of clear, competent and corruption-free governance. We all know that. But, we are only losing our hair in figuring out how to usher it in.

Nonetheless, it is heartening to read that the Ministry of Rural Development has placed a Land Titling Bill draft for comments on its web site. If you want to send your comments, pl. find the draft here. The last date for comments has been extended to August 31, 2010. This is one of the basic steps required to unlock the productivity of India’s land. Better late than never.

Kashmir, Afghanistan, Indo-Pak dialog, Naxal insurgency and Bharat bandh.

Your weekly link digest:

• The making of Srinagar’s teenage martyrs: Praveen Swami on the rioting in Kashmir and what the administration must do to address macro issues in the state.
• It is time to be realistic about Kashmir: Vir Sanghvi opines on the ongoing violence in Kashmir in the larger context of India-Pakistan peace talks. (h/t @pragmatic_d)
• Pakistan-India uninterrupted and uninterruptable dialogue, impossible: Smita Prakash on the on-going India-Pakistan dialog and terrorism. Are there irreconcilable differences that cannot be addressed by insulating dialog with an impotent civilian administration from terror perpetrated by the MJC?
• Analysts: Postwar Afghan political landscape unclear: Dr. David Kilcullen asserts that India’s “increasingly assertive bids” to exert influence in Afghanistan has made Pakistan “very nervous.” Also see my INI colleague Dhruva Jaishankar’s response to the interview.
• Push into Naxal territory: IAF plans to build a new airbase in Chhattisgarh in the event that a larger role for the air force is envisaged to counter the Naxal insurgency. But given the nature of the conflict, where is the need for an 8 sq. km. air base which would include 3,500 yards of runway?
• Protest, softly: Pratap Bhanu Mehta asks what role social protests such as “Bharat bandh” serve in today’s India in addressing very legitimate grievances.
• The return of the Ottoman: Some shameless self-promotion. My piece on Turkey’s reorientation post l’incident flottile and how this impacts India and the subcontinent.

With or without you.

Hizb-ul-Mujahideen’s ameer Syed Salahuddin issued an ultimatum to the Pakistani establishment: support us in Kashmir, or pursue peace talks with India. One or the other — not both. Roznama Ausaf’s editorial advices the Pakistani government:

Syed Salahuddin asks of our government where its loyalties lie – “if Pakistan intends to pursue friendship with India, then let it stop advocating on behalf of Kashmiris.” Our leaders must understand that rekindling talks with India will not result in peace with that nation, but with it renouncing its support for Kashmir’s independence. [روزنامہ اوصاف]

The ultimatum itself is meaningless, given that the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen is a fully owned and operated entity of the ISI and that Mr. Salahuddin has lived in Pakistan for well over ten years. The group’s role in the on-going security situation in J&K is an act of direct provocation from Pakistan’s military-jihadi complex. The Indian government would do well to consider to what extent it can afford to “insulate dialog from terror,” given the structure of the ongoing India-Pakistan talks and the probability of further state-sponsored attacks in J&K, and perhaps even in major Indian cities.

John Mauldin’s recent offerings on the outlook for the US economy are worth reading. In one of his recent pieces, he takes a look at the US households’ vacation plans (as surveyed by the Conference Board) and uses it as a reality check for the number of jobs purportedly added in the Leisure & Hospitality sector in the last two months, according to the Birth-Death Model of the US Bureau of Labour Statistics. Those who do not know much about the Birth-Death Model can gather some wisdom here. Paul Kedrosky takes some issues with John Mauldin’s comments here. But, regardless of the validity of this criticism, the thesis of America on the cusp of a recession and what the Fed might do to avoid it are not off the mark.

Talking of Paul Kedrosky, he remains a great source of stuff that others do not flag. For example, I came across this and this on his site. Most of the posts I have read on the psy-fi blog are of very high quality. The review of John Kay’s book, ‘Obliquity’, on whether history matters as much as geography and the review of Andrew Lo +1’s paper on ‘Physics Envy’ made for stimulating reading. These were posted in June.

In Gregor.us, two posts on June 9th and 10th respectively on peak oil and the rising dependence on coal are worth reading. His comment on US energy policy posted on May 31 is spot on:

Your President, your Congress, and your Governors are doing everything they possibly can to make sure that the demand for oil here in the US, and dependency on oil here in the US, rolls onward. [More here]

PIMCO’s Bill Gross says in his latest Investment Outlook (July 2010) that

We overdid a good thing and now the financial reaper is at the door, scythe and financial bill in one hand, with the other knocking on door after door of previously unsuspecting households and sovereigns to initiate a “standard of living” death sentence.
Consumption when brought forward must be financed, and that financing is a two-way bargain between borrower and creditor.
When debt levels become too high, lenders balk and even lenders of last resort – the sovereigns, the central banks, the supranational agencies – approach limits beyond which private enterprise’s productivity itself is threatened.
Slow growth in the developed world, insufficiently high levels of consumption in the emerging world, and seemingly inexplicable low total returns on investment portfolios – bonds and stocks – lie ahead.

I say ‘amen’ to all of that.

Investing in cyber warfare capacity comes at a cost

Criticising the blacklisting of several Chinese telecommunications equipment manufacturers by the Indian government, the Global Times asks:
It is understandable when the Indian government does this to promote its own industry, especially in certain manufacturing areas that have not grown strong enough to compete with international rivals.

But in the recent case of telecom equipment procurement worth $2 billion, how come other foreign brands were let in while Chinese products alone singled out for exclusion?

Here’s why.

Related Link: In today’s FT, Stephanie Kirchgaessner and Paul Taylor report similar concerns in the United States where “Huawei’s push to expand in the US through acquisitions and contracts with telecoms groups could come at a high cost for the Chinese equipment maker, including structural changes that are already under consideration by the company.”

Is the Pakistani military’s support of the Taliban simply a bad habit, as David Kilcullen would have it?

Australian David Kilcullen is widely believed to be one of the smartest men in Washington, at least in matters pertaining to counterinsurgency. And with good reason: his excellent book, The Accidental Guerrilla, makes it clear that few people have looked at the many problems inherent in counterinsurgency in such an in-depth and multifaceted manner.

But for all his expertise on the subject, Dr. Kilcullen—a former colonel in the Australian Army—has fallen short, repeatedly, in his analysis of Afghanistan and Pakistan at a strategic level. Last year, for example, he readily bought into an exaggerated threat perception in Pakistan, telling The Washington Post: “We’re now reaching the point where within one to six months we could see the collapse of the Pakistani state”. His reasoning was suspect, and his powers of prophecy were, thankfully, no match for Paul the Octopus.

Now, once again, he calls into question his geopolitical nous (h/t Pragmatic Euphony):

David Kilcullen of the Washington-based Center for a New American Security says that as Iran backs Hezbollah to exert influence in Lebanon, Pakistan supports the Taliban to maintain a foothold in Afghanistan.

“There’s a habit in Pakistan of using militants as a tool for foreign policy, and we’ve seen this over a generation in Pakistan,” he said. “And it’s not something that you can just give up overnight in part because of habit, but also because these people are now out there and what are you going to do? Are you going to walk away from your relationship with them? They’re just going to go rogue [unchecked]. So I think that that’s one reason that people continue to support the Afghan Taliban.”

Analysts say India has made increasingly assertive bids to exert its influence in Afghanistan, which, Kilcullen says, has made neighboring Pakistan very nervous. [Voice of America]

So effectively, Pakistan’s support for the Taliban is no more than a bad “habit”, while India’s supposed assertiveness—as peaceful as that may be—is an understandable cause of nervousness. This comes from the same person who, only last April, alerted lawmakers to the “overwhelming evidence” in Pakistan of:

—security services that have been complicit in allowing the takeover of part of the country by militants,
—direct or indirect sponsorship of international terrorism by elements of the Pakistani national security establishment,
—ongoing support by the same national security establishment for insurgents who are killing Americans in Afghanistan, and
—a militant movement that is growing in reach and intensity week by week.

[House Armed Services Committee Testimony]

There is admittedly no simple way of squaring these acknowledged realities with a strategy that meets one or more of the base objectives laid out by the U.S. government. But such a muddy sense of the incentives, means and objectives of key regional actors, as articulated by one of the most influential voices on counterinsurgency strategy, threatens to hamper U.S. efforts even further.

A question about army’s refusal to J&K government’s request for a flag march in Sopore.

Kashmir is again in the news now, and for all the wrong reasons. But amidst all this, one story about the perilous state of civil-military relations in India will pass unnoticed. Indian Express reports:

The Army turned down a J&K government request for a flag march through Sopore town after a 20-year-old was killed in firing by CRPF on June 28.

The Omar Abdullah government, through the Deputy Commissioner, put in the request for the flag march with General Officer Commanding, Kilo Force, Major General N George.

…The Army Headquarters debated on the request and decided to reply in the negative — the brass made it clear that the Army was not a riot-control force and the primary duty of the Kilo Force was to neutralise militants, not fire against its own people.[Indian Express]

Was it constitutionally legal for the army to turn down such a request? Here is Section 132 of the Code of Criminal Procedure:

130. Use of armed forces to disperse assembly

(1) If any such assembly cannot be otherwise dispersed, and if it is necessary for the public security that it should be dispersed, the Executive Magistrate of the highest rank who is present may cause it to be dispersed by the armed forces

(2) Such Magistrate may require any officer in command of any group of persons belonging to the armed forces to disperse the assembly with the help of the armed forces under his command, and to arrest and confine such persons forming part of it as the Magistrate may direct, or as it may be necessary to arrest and confine in order to disperse the assembly or to have them punished according to law

(3) Every such officer of the armed forces shall obey such requisition in such manner as he thinks fit, but in so doing he shall use as little force, and do as little injury to person and property, as may be consistent with dispersing the assembly and arresting and detaining such persons (emphasis added)

The answer is rather obvious. And it doesn’t bode well for the state of civil-military relations in this country, where certain lines have never been crossed. While a public hue and cry or shaming of the concerned generals may not be warranted, a quiet reading of the riot act to the top army brass by the political executive of this country would well be in order.

And for those who would like to know about the ideal state of civil-military relations, here is an old blogpost on the subject.

Power is when you can break the rules with impunity

Why is China literally giving away two nuclear reactors to Pakistan now?

As this blog has long argued the new reactors do not matter much to India from a security perspective. K Subrahmanyam supported this contention in a recent op-ed in the Indian Express.

If, as China claims, the reactors are safeguarded and cannot be used to produce material for nuclear weapons, then the only risks are those relating to Pakistan’s domestic stability and its nuclear facilities. These risks, we have on the authority of the US president and the Indian prime minister, are currently adequately managed. If, on the other hand, China’s claims are false—and both this blog and K Subrahmanyam are inclined towards this—then the new reactors will escalate the nuclear arms race between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Beyond the security calculus, there is a simple political reason why China is brazenly violating the commitments it made when it joined the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) in 2004. It is playing a grand geopolitical game of tit-for-tat with the United States. It saw the US-India nuclear deal as a move to check its own power. It has responded by giving reactors away (literally)to Pakistan. Indeed, it could have done so by going through the due process of the NSG, as the United States did in India’s case. But tit-for-tat becomes all the more effective when you show that you can break the NSG norms and there’s nothing anyone can do about it—the Obama administration can just lump it. The sanctimonious Europeans, New Zealanders and others won’t even open their mouths (via INI Polaris) this time.

More than equating Pakistan to India, China is signaling that it is the United States’ equal. Once it is down that path, it can hardly back off. Can it?

Is he is or is he ain’t?

Predictably, in response to the Data Darbar attacks in Lahore, the government in Punjab made all the right noises about eradicating terrorism from the province. Earlier, Interior Minister Rehman Malik traded barbs with Punjab CM Shahbaz Sharif on his use of the term “Punjabi Taliban.” The nomenclature did not sit well with the government in Punjab; the Taliban, they claimed, had no identity and references to Punjab hurt the sentiments of its residents.

Nonetheless, nominal steps were taken to curb extremism in the province. A news report in the Jang elaborated:

The Punjab Home Department has “banned” 17 organizations; these include Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, Sipah-e-Mohammad, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Mohammed, Tehrik-e-Jafria Pakistan, Tehrik-e-Nafaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammed, Millat-e-Islamiya Pakistan, Islamiya Tehrik-e-Pakistan, Hizb-ul-Tehrir, Jamaat-ul-Ansar, Jamaat-ul-Furqan, Islamic Students Movement, Baluchistan Liberation Army and Jamaat ud-Dawwa.

This list does not include Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), despite statements made by Interior Minister, Rehman Malik, which indicate that the TTP and al-Qaeda have collaborated with Sipah-e-Sahiba and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi in Punjab.According to the Home Department, there are approximately 4,000 individuals with relations to these terror groups. These individuals have been placed under surveillance, per Section 4 of the Anti-Terrorism Act and they have been banned from carrying out such activities. [جنگ]

Almost equally predictably, an editorial in the Jang’s sister publication, The News, went soft when news broke, contrary to previous reports, that the Jamaat ud-Dawwa had not been banned. The editorial reasons:

The JuD and other organizations may not be behind direct acts of militancy. It is also a fact that they are engaged in many good works that bring solace to many everywhere. Hindu women in Sindh have recently demonstrated in their favour. [The News]

So Hindu women from Sindh demonstrating in JuD’s favor is reason enough to absolve them of the massacre of several hundreds of civilians in the name of religion and state? Something to keep in mind the next time someone gives you the old “we’re both victims of terror” spiel. While these events unfold, the federal and state civilian administrations are anxious to demonstrate their capacity for action against terror groups. PML (N) leader Nawaz Sharif called for a “national conference” on terrorism, which Pakistan’s Prime Minister, Yusuf Raza Gilani has accepted.

But should it surprise anyone that Messrs. Gilani and Kayani are simply waiting for the storm to blow over? Prior to this “national conference,” Mr. Gilani was busy ruling out military operations in South Punjab, while Shahbaz Sharif went even further and denied the existence of the so-called “Punjabi Taliban.”

One wonders what the big purpose of this “national conference” is then. Half the terror groups that should have been part of an offensive (including the TTP/ al-Qaeda affiliates and JuD) have already been given a clean chit and in any case, there’s not going to be any military action against the groups that did end up making it to the Punjab Home Department’s list of “banned” groups.

A month from now, everything will be forgotten and it will be business-as-usual. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

China’s blatant offside goes unpunished.

This year’s World Cup (whose second semi-final takes place today), has been marked by a spate of bad decisions by officials. A crucial United States goal against Slovakia was incorrectly disallowed. Carlos Tevez scored from an offside position against Mexico. Miroslav Klose was shockingly sent off against Serbia. And Frank Lampard’s goal against Germany went unnoticed by the officials, with the match still very much in the balance.

But one very good ruling—not to mention a very smart move—was Luis Suarez’s “save” against Ghana. The goal was not counted (and it should not have been as the ball did not cross the goal line), but Suarez was given an automatic red card for an intentional handball, and Ghana was awarded a penalty, which striker Asamoah Gyan failed to convert (see it all here). Yet this has not stopped Ghanaian players and supporters—devastated, as can be expected—from believing that they were robbed.

Unlike football, the international system is not always governed by strict, enforceable rules. There may be officials, but they have only yellow cards at their disposal, not red. At the same time, it is still possible to distinguish between good officiating and bad officiating. The decision by the members of the Nuclear Suppliers Group—in particular, the United States and Western European nations—to not resist the agreement between China and Pakistan concerning the sale of two civilian nuclear reactors would fall into the latter category.

Why? First, the deal in question not only violates NSG guidelines, it involves two countries with abjectly poor non-proliferation records. (Here is some further reading on the subject.) Second, the general silence of those members of the international community who resisted or condemned the nuclear deal between the United States and India for its non-proliferation implications has been shocking.

Third, the decision cannot be equated with the U.S.-India nuclear agreement, as some members of the international non-proliferation community argue. The United States sought a waiver for India at the Nuclear Suppliers Group; China is simply circumventing that body (so much for maintaining the integrity of the international non-proliferation regime). India has also had to bring its export controls into line with other members of the nuclear mainstream; Pakistan is under no such obligation. In fact, the erroneous equation only appears to justify China’s actions.

And finally, there is a sad irony at the heart of all of this. The United States is terrified about aggravating relations with China and Pakistan. Cooperation with Pakistan is seen as crucial to ensuring that its region stabilizes, so that the worst-case scenario of nuclear weapons in the hands of terrorists does not materialize. Meanwhile, good relations with China are required for, among other things, ensuring that Beijing supports a sanctions regime against Iran for its pursuit of a nuclear weapons program. (In a further irony, Iran’s weapons program was helped in large part by the proliferation of technology from Pakistan.) It appears that a tacit deal between Washington and Beijing, which secured China’s support of sanctions against Iran in exchange for the United States looking the other way on a deal with Pakistan, may have been made in March.

A rule-based international system is inherently on weak ground; not only are the officials weak, but there is no higher body, no equivalent of an appeals system, a Court of Arbitration for Sport, or—dare I say it—a Sepp Blatter. But a system is clearly rotten when the officials are so afraid of players as to not pull out their notebooks and flash even a yellow card for a blatant offside.

Correction: It occurred to me—thankfully, before anyone else had to point it out—that that last line is deceiving, since yellow cards are rarely (never?) given for offsides. Consider it creative license.

In the last few days several media reports have been carrying articles to the effect that according to an alleged “internal Government note” the Department of Telecom (DoT) of India will ask Research in Motion and Skype to make their content “readable”.

“DoT will call the representatives of Research In Motion (manufacturer of Blackberry devices) and Skype and ask them to ensure that the content going through the telecom service providers is in readable format. They have to ensure that this is implemented within 15 days failing which services that do not allow lawful interception on a real-time basis would be blocked/banned,” said an internal Government note. (source)

While all noise that ensued has been on the basis of a leaked note that may or may not exist (none of the reports really say who has seen this mysterious note), this author has reasons beyond the article to believe that such steps are indeed being discussed and acted on.

For those who ask whether there is international precedence on government laws and actions along same lines, look no further than the US. The Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) forces telcom providers operating in the US to provide similar support to the government. This applies to VoIP based providers too. According to the FCC website:

All facilities-based broadband Internet access providers and providers of interconnected VoIP service have until May 14, 2007 to come into compliance with CALEA. In the May 12, 2006 Commission order, the Commission found that section 107(c)(1) may not be used by entities seeking extensions for equipment, facilities, and services deployed on or after October 25, 1998 (the effective date of the CALEA section 103 and 105 requirements).

The question of whether the DoT has any legal standing in this matter is to an extent answered by the IT (Amendment) Act 2008. Amended Section 69 now reads:

(1) Where the Central Government or a State Government or any of its officers specially authorised by the Central Government or the State Government, as the case may be, in this behalf may, if satisfied that it is necessary or expedient so to do, in the interest of the sovereignty or integrity of India, defence of India, security of the State, friendly relations with foreign State or public order or for preventing incitement to the commission of any cognizable offence relating to above or for investigation of any offence, it may subject to the provision of sub-section (2), for reasons to be recorded in writing, by order direct any agency of the appropriate Government to intercept, monitor or decrypt or cause to be intercepted, monitored or decrypted any information generated, transmitted, received or stored in any computer resource.

sub-section (3) clarifies further:

(3) The subscriber or intermediary or any person in-charge of the computer resource shall, when called upon by any agency referred to in sub-section (1), extend all facilities and technical assistance to–

(a) provider access to or secure access to the computer resource generating, transmitting, receiving or storing such information; or

(b) intercept, monitor, or decrypt the information, as the case may be; or

(c) provide information stored in computer resource

The term “computer resource” is defined as follows:

(i) “computer” means any electronic magnetic, optical or other high-speed data processing device or system which performs logical, arithmetic, and memory functions by manipulations of electronic, magnetic or optical impulses, and includes all input, output, processing, storage, computer software, or communication facilities which are connected or related to the computer in a computer system or computer network;

(j) “computer network” means the interconnection of one or more computers through—
(i) the use of satellite, microwave, terrestrial line or other communication media; and
(ii) terminals or a complex consisting of two or more interconnected computers whether or not the interconnection is continuously maintained;

(k) computer resource” means computer, computer system, computer network, data,computer data base or software;

(l) “computer system” means a device or collection of devices, including input and output support devices and excluding calculators which are not programmable and capable of being used in conjunction with external files, which contain computer programmes, electronic instructions, input data and output data, that performs logic, arithmetic, data storage and retrieval, communication control and other functions;

In addition, s.118 of the IPC has been amended to recognize the use of encryption as a possible means of concealment of a ‘design to commit [an] offence punishable with death or imprisonment for life’.

It is not sure however, whether applications like Skype can be held accountable when it operates in a pure p2p manner and does not use the PSTN (which forces a central server into the picture). But the government could argue that the end peer should log all the encryption keys used in a session at the peer, thus allowing the agencies to retrieve it.

The other point that needs clarification is whether one can enforce one part of the Act without having mechanisms in place to enforce another. Sub-section (2) of section 69 states:

(2) The procedure and safeguards subject to which such interception or monitoring or decryption may be carried out, shall be such as may be prescribed.

I am no lawyer, but as a layman (a) I have no idea what that means and (b) I don’t know whether such procedures and safeguards have indeed be “prescribed”.

Update (08/07/2010): I have been told by someone who knows a lot more about legals things than me that indeed, the safeguards are a prerequisite for the actions considered under the section. The question of whether such procedures and safeguards are in place is still an open one.

Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act

Why India must promote democracy abroad & private enterprise at home

An interesting conversation with Rajeev Mantri & Yogesh Mokashi last week led to the writing of this piece: how might India compete against China in the global quest for energy (and other) resources:
Moreover, the “game” is not one-off. It is a continuous ongoing game that will be played for generations. Nor is it entirely “zero-sum”. It is possible to envision a world where both China and India have access to the energy resources they need. Such a world is possible even when, perhaps only when, the two countries are competing (in a free market) for those resources. Such a world, however, will cer-tainly not come into being merely by wishing for it. It has to evolve, under the tender loving care of nuclear weapons.

The Indian government is trying to improve its score. It has set overseas acquisition targets for state-owned corporations and permitted them to spend $1.1 billion ‘without government approval’. This might yet produce some results—especially if it is backed by political support. It is unlikely, though, that bidding wars with companies that have parents with the world’s deepest pockets are winnable. That’s not all. As India found out in Kazakhstan in August 2005, the kid whose dad drives a Merc can get the goalposts shifted after the game begins.

Clearly, India’s strategy must be different. It must be one that plays to India’s strong points. It must also be one that undermines China’s advantages. The greatest asymmetries that are in India’s favour are democracy and private enterprise.

Consider. It would be much harder for China to move goalposts by coddling the dictator if there were no dictator to coddle. It would be much easier for Indian companies to compete against Chinese ones if the former didn’t have the Government of India as the single largest shareholder. In other words, in the long term, it is in India’s interests for resource-rich countries to be democracies. It is also in India’s interests to facilitate its private sector to expand globally. [Yahoo! India]

Read the whole thing at Yahoo!

Using the development pacakge to cover up for vacillation and prevarication by the political leadership in undertaking security operations against the Maoists is a recipe for disaster.

For the UPA government, development — without security — is the abiding mantra when it comes to solving the Maoist problem. Indian Express reports that “the Planning Commission is all set to approach the Union Cabinet for a proposed outlay of Rs 13,742 crore to wean away the tribals from sympathising with the Maoists through comprehensive infrastructure and economic development”. This is part of an integrated action plan by the Planning Commission for development projects in 35 Maoist-affected districts.

It is exactly these kind of development initiatives by the government in Maoist-infested areas that Bibek Debroy has questioned in his column in the Indian Express last week. He makes three succinct arguments against such proposals.

One, UPA-I had a special development package of Rs 20,000 crore, spread over three years and concentrated on these 33 districts and another 22 contiguous ones. If that public expenditure splurge did not work, what makes us think the present one will be any different?

Two, Bibek Debroy asks why are the government departments, ministries, state governments and even district administrations operating in their own silos. He doesn’t provide the answer but it is clearly a lack of national policy and decrepit governance mechanisms that are behind this dysfunctional governance.

Three, he raises the most important question about the top-driven model of development and the Maoist menace. What exactly does development mean?

…in looking at simple correlations with economic backwardness or shares of tribal population, we may be over-simplifying. For instance, beyond economic backwardness, there may be a sense of social and political marginalisation, non-existence of redress mechanisms, bypassing by the law and order machinery. Should one therefore have a centralised template, imposed top-down from Delhi, and assume it will solve the problem? Or should the integrated action plan evolve from below, from the level of districts? There is no doubt Balaghat needs roads. But that does not seem to be the primary issue for Aurangabad. Rural electrification is important in Rayagada, but less so in Rohtas.[Indian Express]

He then goes on to make another interesting argument about the NREGS being more acceptable to the Maoists because it has reduced out-migration, chiefly of the male variety. “Has it then also reinforced — instead of reducing — Maoist violence?”

There is another additional issue to be considered here. In an article in the CRPF’s in-house magazine ‘CRPF Samachar’ Inspector General (Special Action Force) Ashutosh Shukla had identified development funds being grabbed by the Maoists as a challenge for the government. If one were to conservatively estimate a 10% levy or cuts from these developmental projects for the Maoists in these districts, it would mean an accretion of Rs 1374 crore to the Maoist kitty. It goes without saying that such developmental aid packages — which are counterproductive to national interest — will be warmly welcomed by the Maoists and their overt sympathisers.

In a lawless environment with a weak government & high instability, developmental money generates & fuels conflict, it doesn’t alleviate it. It creates and sustains a conflict economy in the region which develops deeply entrenched interests for all the actors — Maoists, politicians, bureaucrats and security forces — and drives back any attempts to return to normalcy.

But if columnists, bloggers and twitter users can see this, then surely the government must also have realised by now that while security without development is meaningless, development, without security, is unachievable. Then why is the governement still continuing with such fallacious developmental plans, without establishing security first? The obvious answer is a lack of political will in the government. In simpler terms, or put cynically, this means that there is little electoral incentive for the ruling dispensation to pursue a rational and prudent course of action. With the next Lok Sabha polls still four years away, there is no price to pay for government inaction today.

Moreover, there is little analysis of the larger picture or questioning of the long-term impact of such decisions. This has created a false populist narrative which allows the government to get away with this course of action. Consider this debate about undertaking security operations against the Maoists. Most people realise and understand that any security operations undertaken against the Maoists now will be an ugly affair. This will entail suffering for the innocent, wanton loss of property and lives, allegations of human right violations against the state, adverse media publicity and some loss of lives of security forces personnel. Thus the government eschews security operations now in the hope that the feel-good development package will miraculously work somehow. But little do these people realise that this vacillation and procrastination by the government is only delaying the inevitable — a security operation will have to eventually take place against the Maoists. That security operation, at a later date, will be far uglier compared to what it will be today. There will be greater suffering and pain for the innocent, more wanton loss of property and lives, more brutality from both sides, worse media publicity and far greater loss of lives of security forces personnel.

To put it bluntly, there are simply no good options left for the government to embrace now. It has to choose the least worst option against the Maoists here. This is not an easy decision to take for the top political leadership of the country. But if it was such an easy choice, as Robert Gates so presciently put it, some one lower in the hierarchy would have already taken the call much earlier.

The price of failure to meet the challenges of good leadership today will be paid by the future generations. Can the top political leadership of the country rise to this challenge now and make the choice?

It’s not just about those who found nations; those who nurture them are just as important.

Yesterday—July 4—was the day marking the anniversary of the United States’ declaration of independence in 1776. As with such anniversaries all over the world, it is a time for a country’s citizens to remember the founding of their nation, and give thanks to those who made it possible. Other than unbridled patriotism and overanxious self-appraisal, a recurring theme of such anniversaries is the reinforcement of longstanding historical narratives, specifically those concerning today’s lesser mortals standing on the shoulders of moral or philosophical giants.

In yesterday’s Washington Post, the Pakistani scholar Akbar Ahmed makes the comparison between Thomas Jefferson—the third American president, co-author of the Declaration of Independence, and one of the key ideological drivers of the U.S. constitution—and Mohammed Ali Jinnah, whom he describes as “the Muslim world’s answer to Thomas Jefferson.” Biographical parallels aside (both were worldly lawyers born subjects of the British Empire) Professor Ahmed focuses on Jefferson and Jinnah’s shared commitment to individual liberty and freedom of religion.

But Pakistan is clearly not the United States, and the drawing of such tenuous parallels between two individuals—however important—only obscures the reasons behind their countries’ different trajectories. The United States has experienced 223 years of constitutional continuity and the leaders that followed Jefferson and his peers, while consistently upholding the original document, addressed—if belatedly—its weaknesses regarding such matters as slavery, civil rights and female suffrage. In Pakistan, the original constitution of 1956—which took almost nine years to craft—lasted less than three. The current 1973 constitution is still not universally accepted, let alone consistently upheld.

Several broad reasons have been given for this. By 1951, the only two leaders capable of consolidating the new state of Pakistan—Jinnah and Liaquat Ali Khan—were dead, depriving the country of a generation of formative leaders during a delicate transition period. Second, historians have pointed to Partition leaving Pakistan with far fewer bureaucratic resources than India, a factor that empowered the military relative to civilian administrators. According to this reading, Pakistan’s present-day civil-military dysfunction can be seen as inherent to its creation, if not virtually pre-ordained. A third view, championed mostly by non-Pakistanis, is that Pakistan—as an essentially conservative, Islamic state—was socially not hard-wired to be a post-colonial, parliamentary democracy. For those of us who espouse a more Whiggish reading of history, none of the three explanations are entirely satisfactory. Founding fathers have turned despots, civil bureaucracies and administrations have grown and strengthened over time, and Muslim societies are not fundamentally incompatible with democracy.

The essential fact, then, is not that Jinnah was a Pakistani Jefferson, but rather that Iskander Mirza, Yahya Khan and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto were not Pakistan’s answers to Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt. The purity of founding ideals is, in a sense, a necessary but insufficient guarantor of a nation’s future. Just as important, if not more so, are how those ideals are maintained and tended by subsequent generations of leaders.

In the July 2010 issue of Pragati, I review Turkey’s transformation from a status-quoist, West-leaning, secular-nationalist state to one that seeks to become a regional power and indeed, a “Muslim superpower.” Its confrontations with Israel, most recently over the Gaza flotilla raid, involvement in negotiating a way forward in Afghanistan, and its attempts, along with Brazil, at brokering a deal with Iran over the nuclear impasse all point to a Turkey eager to break the shackles of the Kemalist ideology that has guided it since its birth in 1923.

But Turkey’s geo-strategic reorientation has consequences far beyond its region. Indeed, its involvement now in Afghanistan, historic cultural and military ties to Pakistan and its location at the crossroads of Central Asia’s energy trade make it very important to India. How must India view Turkey’s rise and what opportunities and challenges exist in India’s bilateral relations with Turkey?

Turkey’s strategic reorientation is also significant to countries outside its region. Two aspects of Turkey’s rising profile stand out for India—regional stability and energy security. On regional stability, Turkey historically has had close cultural, ideological and military ties with Pakistan. It has provided arms, equipment and training to the Pakistani armed forces. Turkey came to Islamabad’s assistance during the latter’s 1965 war with India and provided it with significant quantities of ammunition. A member of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), Turkey routinely supports Pakistan’s narrative, endorsing a plebiscite and voicing concern over “the use of force against the Kashmiri people.” The exclusion of India from the Istanbul Summit on Afghanistan at the insistence of Pakistan, also underscores the leverage Pakistan enjoys in Ankara.

Read more about it in this month’s Pragati ( PDF; 1.3 MB)

Turkey’s strategic reorientation is also significant
to countries outside its region. Two aspects of Turkey’s
rising profile stand out for India—regional stability and
energy security. On regional stability, Turkey historically
has had close cultural, ideological and military ties with
Pakistan. It has provided arms, equipment and training to
the Pakistani armed forces. Turkey came to Islamabad’s
assistance during the latter’s 1965 war with India and
provided it with significant quantities of ammunition. A
member of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference
(OIC), Turkey routinely supports Pakistan’s narrative,
endorsing a plebiscite and voicing concern over “the use of
force against the Kashmiri people.” The exclusion of India
from the Istanbul Summit on Afghanistan at the insistence
of Pakistan, also underscores the leverage Pakistan enjoys
in Ankara.