As the world is pre-occupied with dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, and individual countries solve their respective specific problems, such as India with its confrontation with China, the fate of Afghan women has received little attention. No Government seems to be bothered by the fact that a political order in Afghanistan, shaped according to the Taliban’s dictates, may once again relegate them to virtual house arrest and deprive them of almost all freedoms, including the economic activity of their choice, and independent access to healthcare — as they were during the Taliban rule from 1994 to 2001.

In a report titled The Taliban’s War on Women: A Health and Human Rights Crisis in Afghanistan, Physicians for Human Rights, a respected human rights organisation based in the United States, presented a nightmarish picture of the condition of Afghan women under Taliban rule. It wrote: “The Taliban was the first faction laying claim to power in Afghanistan, which had targetted women for extreme repression and punished them brutally for infractions. To our knowledge, no other regime in the world had methodically and violently forced half of its population into virtual house arrest, prohibiting them on the pain of physical punishment, from showing their faces, seeking medical care without a male escort or attending school.

“It is difficult to find another Government or would-be Government that has created such poverty by arbitrarily depriving half the population under its control of jobs, schooling, mobility and healthcare. Such restrictions are literally life-threatening to the women and their children.”

Lt-Gen Kamal Matinuddin (Retd) of the Pakistan Army wrote in Taliban Phenomenon: Afghanistan 1994-97, “Girls are being denied education, women have been prevented from working. If they leave their house, they have to be covered from head to foot with a veil (burqa); besides being veiled, women have to be accompanied by a male relative when they venture out on the streets. Shopkeepers have been directed not to sell goods to unveiled women. Rickshaw drivers are not to pick up women passengers unless they are fully covered. Women caught violating these rules are imprisoned, as are the shopkeepers and rickshaw-drivers.”

Things began to change after the Taliban were booted out of power in 2001 by US-led coalition forces. As George R Allen and Wanda Felbab-Brown state in their paper, Fate of Women’s Rights in Afghanistan, which is a part of Brookings Institution’s 19A: Gender Equality Series, “The post-Taliban constitution in 2004 gave Afghan women all kinds of rights, and the post-Taliban political dispensation brought social and economic growth that significantly improved their socio-economic condition.” They further state that against fewer than 10 in 2003, the percentage of girls enrolled in primary schools rose to 33 in 2017. Registered female enrolment in secondary schools rose from six to 39 per cent in the same period. Three-and-a-half million Afghan girls were in school with 1,00,00 studying in universities. They further say, “By 2020, 21 per cent of Afghan civil servants were women (compared with almost none during the Taliban years), 16 per cent of them in senior management levels; and 27 per cent of Afghan members of Parliament were women.”

These gains are no doubt unevenly distributed. The beneficiaries have mainly been urban women. According to Allen and Felbab-Brown, in rural Afghanistan, where 76 per cent of Afghanistan’s women live, life has not changed much from the Taliban era, their formal legal empowerment notwithstanding. This goes particularly for Pashtun areas besides others where rural minority ethnic groups live. They have to get permission from men in their families to access health care, attend school and work. Many Afghan men are deeply conservative. Typically, families allow their girls to have a primary or secondary education — usually up to puberty — and then arrange their marriage. Even if the male guardian of a young woman permits her to attend a university, she may not be allowed to work after graduation. Also, rural women have to bear much of the brunt of the devastating conflict between the Taliban and Government forces and local militia. Loss of husbands, brothers and fathers to the fighting causes severe psychological trauma and fundamentally jeopardises their economic survival and ability to go about everyday life.

As a result, attitudes differ. While women in rural areas want peace — many of them even on the Taliban’s terms —  urban women generally want the Government not to give in and accept a political order in which the Taliban can implement their retrograde gender and social agenda. Hence, the question: Are the Taliban prepared to moderate their stance and, if so, to what extent?

Borhan Osman and Anand Gopal write in Afghan Views on a Future State; (With an introduction by Barnett Rubin: NYU/Centre on International Cooperation), “a number of interviewees emphasised that Taliban redlines lie not with female education as such, but rather with co-ed or wholly secular education, which accords with views voiced even by Mullah Omar.” They said they did not object to women working or to the education of women in their country. However, what they objected to and prevented by force was if this work or education breached Islamic Shari’a. Nowadays, there were scores of schools, especially for girls in the area under the Islamic Emirate, and women performed jobs such as “teaching of girls and medicine for women.”  They further said, “We encourage this and we call for it on condition that hospitals for females are segregated from hospitals for males, and on condition that the work conditions are in harmony with Islamic Shari’a, not to satisfy instincts, whims and lust. We do not care if the West or the world complain about us in this respect. All we want is to establish Islamic Shari’a in Afghanistan; we do not care who is satisfied and who is not satisfied.

“Similarly, several interviewees presently active in the movement said that an Islamic State should not only allow women to go to school, but it must encourage them; indeed, the State should use its resources toward this end. The condition for such education is that girls should observe the proper hijab and that there should be full segregation. There appears to be little change on the view of women’s right to work, however. Most interviewees accepted the need of women in the sectors of health and education, and in any Government department dealing with women and children. Beyond that, there appears to be little enthusiasm for the idea of women holding public office or working in businesses not dealing with females or children.”

What all this adds up to is a far cry from what Afghan women — at least those in urban areas — enjoy in terms of opportunities, rights and freedoms. Women in rural areas doubtless lag behind. They, however, legally have the right to the opportunities available in the cities and, a great deal of their distress will disappear when peace returns — a goal that seems distant but should not be abandoned. Besides, the most important question is whether what the Taliban means what they say or are peddling falsehoods aimed at persuading the Americans to take a less stringent line with them.

In an article titled The false inclusivity of the Taliban’s emirate (www.aljazeera.com), Mehdi J Hakimi writes, “Notwithstanding repeated claims that they support women’s rights, for instance, the Taliban has continued to attack girls’ schools. Also, women and young people, while comprising most of the country’s population, are conspicuously missing from the Taliban’s negotiating team. Moreover, despite Afghanistan’s rich pluralism and cultural mosaic, there is extremely little ethnic, religious, linguistic, cultural and professional diversity within their ranks. This absence…tells us, through calibrated action rather than hollow rhetoric, who is actually welcome in the Taliban’s emirate.”

Referring to the “blatant inconsistency between the Taliban’s mantra of inclusion and praxis of exclusion, this early in the intra-Afghan talks,” and their reneging on their “counter-terrorism pledges to the United States by continuing to operate closely with al-Qaeda,”  Hakimi concludes by writing that the Islamic emirate’s recurring duplicity “must serve as a reminder of the perils of hastily taking a leap of faith towards the Taliban. A lasting peace, after all, is possible only through a genuinely inclusive process — not through one masquerading as such.”

Clearly, there is no guarantee that the Taliban will implement even their currently professed stand on the opportunities and freedoms they would grant women — which themselves fall far short of what Afghan women enjoy now — when they are in power. Afghan women are in peril. Civil societies in all democracies must press on their Governments not to abandon them.

(The writer is Consultant Editor, The Pioneer, and an author)

The overall impression that many outsiders have of Thailand as an idyllic, sunshine-filled tourist destination, complete with beautiful beaches, pristine reefs and a vibrant nightlife, is far from the truth. Visitors over the past decades have often noticed protestors, usually identified by the colour of their shirts, who have championed various political goals, sometimes opposing the Government, sometimes supporting it and at other times standing up for the Thai monarchy and what not. Some protests became so volatile and violent that normal life and tourism, the lifeblood of Thailand, was impacted. However, the current movement for democracy has taken on a completely new hue because the protestors, who have no overall leader, are not only asking for the removal of the current military oligarchy that runs the country but are also demanding monarchical reforms. Thailand is famous for its lese majeste laws, yet there appears to be significant anger against the actions of the new king, Maha Vajiralongkorn, who succeeded his father late King Bhumibol Adulyadej in 2017.

Although the past 15 years have been defined by political protests, events took an unusual turn in August, when a few students at a rally aired unprecedented criticism of the monarchy. The speakers boldly criticised the wealth accumulated by King Vajiralongkorn, his influence and also the fact that he spends much of his time in Germany. Among their calls were a greater oversight of royal budgets and an end to the practice of endorsing military coups by Thai monarchs. Shorn of the significant tourist income, thanks to the Coronavirus — although Thailand and the rest of South-East Asia are exemplars in managing the pandemic — the protestors have gained a lot of support from the youth, many of whom are jobless. The willingness by the military to suspend any “threat” from political parties it feels will strip it of its importance is further fuelling the anger. Will the protestors succeed? That depends on how much change the old Siamese Kingdom is willing to accept. Some of the demands are rather strong but it is important that proper democracy is restored in Thailand and that the monarch deals with some of the issues raised by his subjects, many of which stem from the high levels of secrecy that surround the palace and stories about the colourful past life of the king.

Mian Saheb is an unlikely Pakistani politician who has spent a career trying to be someone he really isn’t. When the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) leader and former Prime Minister of Pakistan, Nawaz Sharif, was incarcerated in jail and was asked about his health, he had spouted Mirza Ghalib, “Unko dekhne sey jo aa jati hai muh par raunaq, woh samjhtey hai ke bemaar ka haal acha hai (On seeing her, my face lights up and she presumes that I’m much better now).” The portly Punjabi politician is the principal Opposition leader to the reigning Pakistani Prime Minister, Imran Khan, except that he is not based out of Pakistan (declared “absconder” of bail and currently in the United Kingdom) and is actually of Kashmiri ethnicity (paternal side from Anantnag and maternal side from Pulwama). Nevertheless, the thrice elected and the longest-serving PM is a trapeze artist who revels in managing contradictions. Sharif has now fired his most calculated salvo against the Pakistani “Deep State” or military.

In Pakistan’s stuttering democracy, the ubiquitous shadow of barrel-chested military men operating out of Rawalpindi headquarters is mentioned only in deferential whispers — addressed euphemistically as Farishtas (angels) or Khalai Maqlook (alien creatures), who usually manipulate from the background. And occasionally they step in formally, like Ayub Khan, Yahya Khan, Zia-ul-Haq or Pervez Musharraf. But the veteran of Pakistani intrigues has broken traditions of indirect allusions and brazenly name-called the Chief of Pakistan Army Staff, General Qamar Bajwa, along with the infamous Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) to be the real movers and shakers of Imran Khan’s Government. In one stroke, Sharif has torn the traditional Pakistani cover of the “civilian government” and made the military directly accountable and responsible for the country’s ongoing and inevitable fate and predicament in the public imagination.

Sharif’s current democratic grandstanding notwithstanding, he himself is a product of the Pakistani military establishment and its machinations. While it is widely presumed that Sharif was born of the former military dictator, General Zia-ul-Haq’s personal preference, it was actually another quintessentially slippery Pakistani General, Ghulam Gilani, to whom Mian Saheb owes his political initiation.

Lieutenant-General Ghulam Gilani’s colourful past had included taking a year-long sabbatical to fight in the Kashmir valley as an “irregular” (Indo-Pak war of 1947-48), fighting the 1965 and 1971 Indo-Pak wars, serving as the Director-General of the notorious ISI, partaking in Zia-ul-Haq’s coup d’état, which was ironically code-named “Fair Play” and ill-advising Zulfiquar Ali Bhutto till his end to the gallows.

Later, General Zia appointed Lieutenant-General Ghulam Gilani as the Governor of the all-powerful Punjab province, where he deliberately plucked out an ostensibly safe, non-feudal and pliant industrialist, Nawaz Sharif, to be the Finance Minister of Punjab. The urbane, obliging and malleable Sharif soon wormed his way to be the Chief Minister in the dark and transformational days of Zia’s Shariaised Pakistan, even though Sharif was hardly a modicum of religious piety.

Though not really a Punjabi, feudal or a military man, Sharif was a player, manipulator and a survivor. Soon after Zia’s mysterious plane crash, he tactically aligned with religious parties, took ISI’s beneficence and split with a rival faction within Zia’s political party, Pakistan Muslim League (Pagara group) to later form Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) or PML-N. Sharif’s then rival Benazir Bhutto (Pakistan People’s Party) had earlier paid a more personal price of losing her father in the fight against the Pakistani Generals but Sharif was more conversant with the inner workings of the “Deep State.”

But even the wily Sharif has erred, miscalculated and underestimated the power of Pakistani Generals. Mian Saheb has had to deal with six Pakistani military chiefs (including appointing four of them personally) and has the dubious record of fractious relations with all, without exception. Sharif’s first appointee, General Waheed Kakar, had later pressurised him into resigning as the PM. By Sharif’s second term, he had inherited Benazir Bhutto’s appointee, General Jehangir Karamat, with whom Sharif  differed and who he forced into a premature resignation. In hindsight, hardly-the-wiser, Sharif selected an ostensibly safe Mohajir, General Pervez Musharraf, who not only initiated Kargil on his own but also bumped off Sharif to Saudi Arabia after yet another coup d’état. In his third innings as the PM, Sharif had to tread carefully with the unpredictable General Pervez Kayani (appointed earlier by Sharif’s bête noire, Pervez Musharraf), who, too, extended his tenure unilaterally. Sharif’s third personal and unlikely (again superseding others) choice of General Raheel Sharif was to be no different with the “Army House” routinely calling all shots and defining the “red lines” for the Sharif dispensation.

General Raheel Sharif elicited embarrassing retractions (for example, post Ufa summit), policy flip flops and publicly lectured the civilian Government on corruption (for example, Panamagate). But it is the fourth personal choice of Sharif who is at the centre of the ensuing gambit, General Qamar Bajwa — who too superseded others and was supposedly apolitical and low profile. The Generals have historically got the better of Nawaz Sharif, because they consistently outwitted or bulldozed Mian Saheb by tactically propping his political rivals with no real ideological preferences, except for protecting their own institutional turf. The invaluable cover and protection to the Pakistani military was afforded by the façade of the civilian Government.

This time, Sharif has drawn blood, redrawn the battle lines and for once, boxed the military generals into a huddle. Unfortunately, for the Pakistani generals, the Imran Khan Government is failing desperately at all levels and the “Deep State” or the Pakistani military  is unable to extricate itself from the “Titanic” portents.

The Pakistani public is increasingly restive, suspicious and convinced of the military ghosts at work. And the Generals cannot be saddled with the “failures” of the civilian Government as they delegitimise the institution that has thrived despite the humiliations of 1965, 1971 and Kargil. Sharif has punted on forcing the military establishment to pull the plug on the Imran Khan Government, as they have historically done, whenever in such situations. This time, Mian Saheb may just have outwitted the Generals?

(The writer, a military veteran, is a former Lt Governor of Andaman & Nicobar Islands)

US President Donald Trump was warned about the possibility of a mysterious pneumonia-like virus outbreak in the country on January 28, during a discussion in the Oval Office of the White House, according to Bob Woodward, whose investigative reports in the past have played havoc with the lives of many presidents.

In his latest book Rage, which hit book shops across the world amid the pandemic, Woodward, who won two Pulitzer Prizes in his nearly half-a-century old career, says the callousness shown by Trump is likely to see his ouster in the November election.

He says that Robert O’Brien, the National Security Advisor (NSA), had warned the President about the catastrophe which was to strike the US shortly. “This will be the biggest national security threat you face in your presidency,” O’Brien had told Trump, according to Woodward.

“Trump’s head popped up. He asked the Intelligence briefer, Beth Sanner, several questions. She said China was worried, and the intelligence community was monitoring it, but it looked like this would not be anything nearly as serious as the deadly 2003 Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak,” Woodward writes in the prologue of the book.

Matt Pottinger, 46, Deputy NSA, who was present during the meeting, also agreed with the views of  O’Brien. According to Pottinger, he had asked one of his contacts in China whether the pandemic reported from Wuhan province was as bad as the 2003 SARS outbreak. “Don’t think SARS 2003.Think influenza pandemic of 1918,” Pottinger’s Chinese contact had told him.

The Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918 had killed an estimated 50 million people worldwide with about 6,75,000 deaths in the US, writes Woodward. 

He says Trump did impose certain restrictions on travellers from China, a move opposed by a number of his Cabinet members. “But his public attention was focussed on just about everything except the virus; the upcoming Super Bowl, the technological meltdown in the Democratic caucuses in Iowa, his State of the Union address and most importantly, the impeachment trial in the Senate.

When the highly-infectious respiratory disease caused by the Novel Coronavirus, known as Covid-19, did come up in settings where he had an opportunity to reach a large number of Americans, Trump continued to reassure the public they faced little risk,” says Woodward in the 450-page book.

He says the President did not elaborate about the disease in his State of the Union address on February 4, which was watched by nearly 40 million Americans. Neither did he talk about the warning given by the NSA. “When I later asked the President about the warning from O’Brien, he said he didn’t recall it. And in an interview with Trump on March 19, six weeks before I learned of O’Brien’s and Pottinger’s warnings, the President said his statements in the early weeks of the virus had been deliberately designed to not draw attention to it,” writes Woodward. “I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down, because I don’t want to create a panic,” the author quotes Trump as saying.

From the prologue, he goes on building a major chargesheet against  Trump for his four-year-long acts of omission and commission. He has put Trump under a scanner and has completed a thorough analysis of  the presidency under him.  It took him 17 interviews with the President during the last four years to collate the materials with which he has built up this work. Also included in the book is how Rex Tillerson, the CEO of an oil giant, was appointed as his Secretary of State and Jim Mattis as the Defence Secretary, both resigning from their posts sooner than expected.

On February 7, when Woodward met Trump for the sixth interview of the series, the author asked the President what was the plan for the next eight to 10 months. “Just do well. Run the country well,” Trump replied. The author asked him to define what does he meant by “well.” “Look, when you are running a country, it’s full of surprises. There’s dynamite behind every door,” Trump had replied. The remaining 11 interviews convinced Woodward that the “dynamite behind the door” was Trump himself. “The oversized personality. The failure to organise. The lack of discipline. The lack of trust in others he had picked, in experts. The undermining or the attempted undermining of so many American institutions. The failure to be a calming, healing voice. The unwillingness to acknowledge error. The failure to do his homework…” the chargesheet goes on and on.

The day Trump inaugurated his presidency in 2016 saw widespread riots all over the US as one of the news channels reported. The run-up to the election to be held in November is full of news that he is in for a sure defeat. How nice it would have been had the world worked as per the whims and fancies of political commentators and the media.

At the conclusion of the interviews, Trump told Woodward in July that he would triumph over Covid-19 and the economic calamity. “Don’t worry about it. We will get to do another book. You’ll find I was right,” the author quotes the President  as telling him.

Rage is Woodward’s 20th book. Maybe his 21st book could be one based on the re-election of Trump as things stand today.

Talking about the electoral system in the US and the forthcoming presidential election, Dr S Kalyanaraman, a one man think-tank based in Chennai,  says, “Trump has achieved something phenomenal in the US economy. Pension savings of the middle class have more than trebled because of his handling of the economy. The stock market has boomed. So the electorate will think of its wallet and vote for Trump. Look at the State rallies. Trump is a phenomenon, remarkable ever since the days of Abraham Lincoln. Even the Black lives which matter will vote for Trump. Electoral college is only the pakkavaadyam; the real fat lady is the economy, stupid.”

“It is the economy, stupid!!!” This expression was coined by poll strategist James Carville during Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign. Remember, Hillary Clinton lost in 2016? Most likely former US Vice-President Joe Biden will lose in 2020. However, I am yet to get an answer to the query why Hillary Clinton opted out of the presidential race and allowed Biden in.

(The writer is a senior journalist)

In 1973, an Urdu film, Insaan Aur Gadha, was suddenly ordered by the Government of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto to be taken off the screens, just weeks after it was released in cinemas in Pakistan. Directed by the late actor and director, Syed Kamal, the film was a satire on the condition of people in Pakistan. Popular actor and comedian Rangeela played the role of a donkey who had turned into a person after praying to God to transform him into a human being.

In a biting reflection on the state of affairs in Pakistan, after the donkey’s prayers are answered and he turns into a man, he soon realises that his existential purpose and sense of morality had more meaning, balance and clarity as an animal than as a person. Disappointed by humanity (or its lack thereof) he ends up asking God to turn him back into a donkey.

The reason the movie got taken down by the Government was a scene in which the donkey-turned-man addresses a large gathering of donkeys. He promises them that he would fight for their rights and against their cruel and unjust human masters. The late filmmaker, Mushtaq Gazdar, in his book Pakistani Cinema: 1947-1997, writes that the scene did not hide the fact that it was parodying Prime Minister Bhutto’s signature style of populist oratory. This was what had angered him. But his Government’s censor board shared this reservation only with the producers of the film. Publicly, the reason given for the ban was that the scene had ridiculed the masses by depicting them as a bunch of donkeys.

Even though the movie was eventually allowed to return to the cinemas, it is interesting to note the nature of the justification given by an offended Government for its removal from the country’s cinemas.

Recently, the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) banned the popular Chinese app Tik Tok just days after Prime Minister Imran Khan lamented that it was promoting “immorality” in the country. However, in a tweet, the senior political commentator Najam Sethi insisted that the app was banned because many of its local content-makers were parodying and satirising Khan’s populist rhetoric, which is in stark contrast to his Government’s political and economic incompetencies.

The ploy of using moral or religious rationale and angles to ban a popular cultural product that has offended a sitting ruler’s inflated ego was not present in the country before the late 1970s. Had it been in use before that, the Zulfikar Ali Bhutto regime would not have hesitated to use it to ban Insaan Aur Gadha. Or for that matter, the Ayub Khan regime would have used it to outlaw 1959’s Jago Hua Savera.

Jago Hua Savera, scripted by the famous communist poet Faiz Ahmad Faiz, is a story based on the struggles of a poor fishing village in former East Pakistan. Ayub saw it as commentary against his ambitious economic plans. But the reason given by the regime for banning it was that its content was “inflammatory” and that it could arouse hatred among East Pakistan’s Bengali majority against their West Pakistani brethren. In today’s Pakistan, Ayub could have simply banned it on the grounds of it being a communist film, and thus promoting atheistic ideas. In his 1967 book, Islamic Modernism in India and Pakistan, the scholar Aziz Ahmad writes that the founders of Pakistan went out of their way to underline the fact that their idea of Islam was different to the one held by most ulema (Muslim scholars) and clerics. To the founders, their idea of Islam was inherently modern, rational, sophisticated and progressive, as opposed to the “reactionary” and myopic ideas of the faith propagated by the Islamists.

The State and various governments carried forth and further expanded this narrative till 1974. Therefore, till then, the notion of banning a cultural product on the basis of morality would have seemed contrary to this narrative or something that was the domain of unsophisticated mullahs.

However, things began to change rapidly after the Zulfikar Ali Bhutto regime handed the once-despised “forces of myopia” their greatest victory through the constitutional Second Amendment in 1974, which ousted the Ahmadiyya community from the fold of Islam.

Bhutto believed that he was ahead of the curve by noticing the rising interest in the Muslim world towards (albeit utopian) ideas of “Islamic rule.” The French political scientist, Oliver Roy, in his 1992 book, The Failure of Political Islam, agrees that indeed from the mid-1970s, polities in the Muslim world had begun to shift rightwards towards political Islam.

But Bhutto was giving himself too much credit for anticipating this shift, and, more so, for believing that he was monopolising it before the Islamic parties could. Because no matter how hard he tried, the Islamic parties understood the dynamics of this better than he did and were, therefore, more adept at exploiting its emotional and psychological appeal, as they did during their 1977 protest movement against the Bhutto regime.

The tactic of using the Islamic or morality card to proscribe a cultural product which, in reality, has only offended the ego of a ruler, earnestly began from 1977 onwards, with the coming to power of the reactionary Zia-ul-Haq dictatorship.

Before my father passed away in October 2009, he would often tell his friends the story of how, soon after the 1977 coup, when he was a reporter at a large Urdu daily, he was told that his name had been put by the dictatorship on a “blacklist” of “pro-Bhutto journalists.” This meant he could not write anything on politics. So, a few days before 1978’s Eid-ul-Aza — the day when Muslims sacrifice bulls, goats or camels — my father was allowed by the editor to do a completely apolitical piece on a makeshift market of sacrificial animals in Karachi’s Gizri area. He went there, completed his report and submitted it.

The next day he was told that the report had been removed by the Zia regime’s Information Ministry, which used to scan newspapers before they went into print. A member of the ministry told the editor that there was a whole paragraph in the report about how people were checking the front teeth of the sacrificial goats. The Ministry man then added that the writer was being “cheeky” by indirectly mocking Zia’s prominent front teeth. But the reason provided to my father was that the article was “ridiculing the holy tradition of animal sacrifice.”

The act of proscribing a cultural product on the basis of immorality just because it offends the bloated ego of an individual or that of a community has little or nothing to do with preserving the moral fibre of a nation.

The ban culture is all about feeling a sense of power, which feeds inflated egos, and the monomania of those who have an entirely illusionary understanding of the society they live in. Unlike those who go on a banning spree to avenge what they believe has offended them individually, the other lot actually believes they are fighting a holy war to save society.

The result is a suffocating environment, which stunts the growth of creativity, tolerance and of democratic values in a society. This is what is happening increasingly in Pakistan and around the world, especially where populist or Right-wing regimes are in power. This must be stopped at all cost before we all lose our freedom of speech, creativity, innovation and thought. That will be a downright tragedy of epic proportions.                     

(Courtesy: Dawn)

Despite intense lobbying, Pakistan continues to be on the “grey list” of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) — the global watchdog that tracks terror-funding States and can disqualify them from aid by World Bank and other global institutions. Even after the Paris-based body extended the deadline because of the pandemic, it found “strategic deficiencies” and non-compliance of six key markers in its 27-point action plan. These have to be addressed by February. But given Pakistan’s track record, it has rarely gone beyond token compliance. In August, it had imposed financial sanctions on 88 banned terror groups and their leaders, which included the mastermind behind the 26/11 Mumbai attack and Jamaat-ud-Dawa chief Hafiz Saeed, Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar and underworld don Dawood Ibrahim. However, it failed to take substantial action against Azhar and Hafiz Saeed. It may have booked Saeed’s charities through which he funded money but is yet to cap the money trail to listed terrorists or prosecute the financiers. Besides, their confinement doesn’t mean that they cannot inspire or raise new outfits under different names. And imprisonment is just a euphemism for protection and nurturing their safe havens. Besides, as India pointed out, the names of over 4,000 terrorists suddenly disappeared from its official list.

Nothing much seems to have changed since Pakistan was first put on the list in February 2012 with the FATF’s main concern being that the country did not have appropriate legislation to identify terror financing and to confiscate terrorist assets. This is the second time Islamabad is trying to wiggle out of the “grey list” and if it succeeds without guaranteeing it won’t continue harbouring and aiding terrorist organisations, the credibility of FATF will also be in question. For now, with its economy already in the doldrums, it has brought time to “repair the outstanding issues.” Besides, Pakistan’s all-weather friend China is trying to devise a workaround, arguing for a re-negotiation of the FATF brief itself, saying the grouping had no business to blacklist nations but should help them counter terrorist funding instead. India must realise that the shades of the FATF list mean nothing in terms of threat levels ever since the blacklist was diluted as a “call for action” and the “grey list” was downgraded to “other monitored jurisdictions.” It must remember that global penalties won’t impact Pakistan’s proxy war and it has to evolve its own dynamics about sponsored terror instead of focussing solely on isolating our neighbour diplomatically.

The recently concluded New Zealand parliamentary election has once again brought back Jacinda Ardern to power. The election was scheduled for September, but because of the Covid-19 pandemic, it was postponed by a month. Since the introduction of the MMR in the 1996, the Labour Party has become the first ever party to form Government on its own, winning 64 seats out of total 120 in the House of Representatives. Looking at the results: Labour Party 64 seats (49.1%), National Party 35 seats (26.8%), ACT (Association of Consumers and Taxpayers) 10 seats (8%), Greens 10 seats (7.6%), NZ First (2.7%), but no seat, Maori Party 1 seat (1%) and others got 7.7 % (no seat), it is clear that the centre-Left Labour has recorded a landslide victory.

With this thumping victory, Ardern has spread the message of stability and certainty to the people of New Zealand.

Jacinda’s foray into politics is an interesting story. With her father being a police officer and mother a school cook, Jacinda had a ground experience of poverty that her country was facing. When she was 17, she was an active Labour Party worker. After completing her degree in Communication Studies in Politics and Public Relations, she started working for Helen Clarke, the then Prime Minister of the country. She also had the experience of working in the UK Cabinet Office when Tony Blair was the Prime Minister of the UK. By 2008, she was back to her country from London and became an MP of the Labour Party. One of her most controversial political moves was an attempt to introduce a Bill to support gay rights in her country. She even renounced the Church of Jesus Christ Latter-day Saints in her early twenties as the Church’s views on gay rights clashed with hers. Thus, she is in favour of equal rights for the LGBTs.

“Jacinda Mania” has finally worked. She has been awarded an outright majority, with an approval rating of 55 per cent. The election was set behind an extraordinary background accompanying three pronged crises — the first being a terror attack, second the natural disaster, and third the global pandemic of Covid-19. She has been able to handle all the three issues much better than any other leader of the country. Her unequivocal stand not to defend the white man accused of the terror attack in the Chirstchurch area that killed 50 and wounded more than fifty in mid-March 2019 earned her admiration of the people.

The mass shooter Brenton Tarrant, an Australian white man driven by anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim sentiments, was temporarily based in the country before the incident took place. In fact, an unsigned manifesto before the carnage on the Twitter and 8chan, an online messaging platform which has been used by anonymous accounts to share extremist messages and cheer on mass shooters, was posted in Tarrant’s name. The attack threatened the country, particularly the Muslim community. Throughout the entire crisis, Jacinda stuck to her stand that the white gunman was a terrorist and emphasised that he did not represent the people of New Zealand.

Second, when a volcanic eruption rocked the White Island or Whakaari, a small volcanic Isle in New Zealand’s Bay of Plenty, on December 9, 2019, it shocked the nation as Covid-19 was already gripping the world around the same time. This was probably the worst case scenario for the islanders that killed more than 17 people. Jacinda joined a nation-wide mourning on this incident. The fact is that the White Island is a summit of a complex submarine volcano. As the island is regularly visited by tourists, the Government was extremely careful in taking the best of the post-volcanic disaster management measures.

Third, unlike many other countries, the Covid-19 handling was too early and followed by extremely hard actions by the Jacinda Government. Its success in controlling the virus has been widely described as “crushing the curve”. The island nation’s Covid strategy was based on speedy testing, contact tracing and isolation, while adhering to strict public health guidance norms across the country. Indeed, the country benefitted from being a high income and an island nation with an advanced health care system at its best. But the best part of the Government was that it called on its entire population to fight the menace as a “team of five million” to protect their families, friends and all the neighboring nations. And Jacinda has earned rare reputation and fame by taking such preventing measures to save her people from this health havoc.

Her charisma is well appreciated. On record, she has become a Labour leader just seven weeks before the 2017 parliamentary election that gave her a rare opportunity to grab power at Wellington with a coalition Government with the New Zealand First Party and the Greens Party, although she was able to score only second highest number of votes. But the country’s unique proportional representation system had helped her to form the Government with these two coalition partners. Very soon, she was branded as an anti-Trump liberal icon at a time when the international community witnessed a wave of rightist nationalist leaders around the world. Again she came into prominence for wearing a Maori cloak, known as “Korowai”, while meeting her monarch Queen Elizabeth-II in April 2018.

Jacinda’s popular slogan “be strong, be kind” has worked magic in this election. And she has become the third woman Prime Minister of the country. She has driven a positive message across. Considering her age, unlike the other Opposition leaders, she has long and bright future in New Zealand’s politics. But the critics and global political experts say that the absolute majority could be a problem for her, even as top Opposition leaders like Judith Collins of the National Party has accepted her defeat and she has vowed to play the role of a robust Opposition figure in Parliament.

Much more than this, people have also voted on two critical referendums; the first being the legalisation of euthanasia and the second, for using cannabis. The first will offer terminally ill patients to go for assisted dying. It is a binding vote and if more than 50 per cent voters say yes, this will be implemented soon. The second is related to the recreational use of cannabis making legal. This is not a binding vote which implies that even if more than 50 per cent people say yes, cannabis can’t be made legal on the basis of this referendum. The Jacinda Government has to bring a fresh Bill to legalise this. And finally when the results of both these referendums are expected on October 30, the decisions delivered by the voters will make a lot for the entire nation and especially for the widely popular Jacinda.

(The writer is an expert on international affairs)

For long, India had not been too keen on firming up the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue with Australia militarily. While it had committed to the security alliance in principle to rein in China in the Indo-Pacific region and been comfortable with the US and Japan, it had been wary of Australia’s role — considering its deep dependence on Chinese markets — and its ability to override economic imperatives. After all, China continues to be Australia’s largest trading partner and accounts for 32.6 per cent of its exports. Besides, China sources iron ore, coal and gas from Australia because of its geographical proximity and mined quality, preferring the latter over Brazil. India was sceptical about Australia doing anything to jeopardise this mutually beneficial relationship. Besides, both India and Australia, being in the neighbourhood, didn’t exactly want to rile up China or risk a hit-back by overtly upping the dragon’s anxieties. Therefore, India had never included Australia in the Malabar naval exercises, a series of simulated war games and combat manoeuvres it has been conducting with the US and Japan since 2017. Last year, the exercises were upgraded to complex maritime operations focussing on anti-submarine warfare, anti-air and anti-surface attacks, maritime interception and other tactical manoeuvres. But in a post-pandemic scenario, which has been entirely the fallout of China’s negligence and its neo-imperialism in a world flattened by the virus in more ways than one, new allies are realising that without standing together as a bulwark, there’s no chance of standing up to China’s might, the only nation to notch up positive growth in distressed times and in a position to dictate its terms again. Now both want competitive advantages at China’s expense. So India has finally announced Australia’s participation in the Malabar exercise along with the US and Japan, the Quad’s first full military-level engagement. This is significant geo-politically because four of the biggest democracies with stakes in the region are collectively committed to preserving open waters and hold off China’s misadventures to monopolise them ruthlessly. The initiative allows inter-operability between the four partners, which means accessing and using each other’s strengths and bases to pursue their common mission of maritime democracy. This makes Quad formidable. For far too long, the group has been under criticism for being amorphous, united by posturing than real intent and being half-hearted about taking on China in a real theatre of geo-strategic capabilities. The full-fledged military alliance gives a robustness of entity, one which can now embolden Quad plus nations to coalesce together against Chinese assertiveness and debt-trap diplomacy. Except the US, nobody in the group had directly dared to call out China. With a military-level agreement, there should not be trust issues anymore. And if mutual interests and concerns find congruence, then over time it could become what the US calls a NATO-like presence in Asia that could contain China’s expansionist designs and one-sided behaviour. Most significantly, the military alliance could also be strengthened to forging an economic coalition of sorts, for example setting up a Quad Free Trade Agreement (FTA) to attract investment and set up an alternative supply chain network that would reduce the dependence on China. Australia has been keen to be part of the Malabar exercises for quite some time to acquire strategic depth with India and further sharpen its maritime capabilities. Virus-hit badly, it had, with US encouragement, spearheaded a petition for a neutral, global investigation into Covid-19’s origins and China’s role in it. China, which now sees both India and Australia as US stooges in the region, immediately hit back, imposing an 80 per cent tariff on Australian barley and banning beef imports. Ever since, Australia has been looking to find allies where it can diversify markets and find support. One of the results was the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership, agreed upon by Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Prime Minister Narendra Modi on June 4, 2020. The military exercises seem to be a corollary of this understanding.

With this consolidation, Beijing could have a tough time monitoring the entire South China Sea, which it claims as its own. Its intention is to encircle the region, particularly India, with a “string of pearls” or islands friendly to it and keep a hawkish overlordship of the littoral States. India, which has realised that China won’t budge on Ladakh, is now seriously considering getting down to “a poke for a poke” strategy. It is now firming up more military pacts, like the Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement for Geo-Spatial Cooperation (BECA) with the US during the 2+2 dialogue between the Defence and Foreign Ministers of the two countries later this month. This will amplify India’s maritime vigilance capabilities significantly. The US can share advanced satellite and topographical data for long-range navigation and missile-targeting with India. We can now use US unmanned aerial vehicles for reconnaissance. Besides, after years, India is also keen on formal trade negotiations with Taiwan. This is tricky territory as India would have to sidestep issues that China might raise regarding bilateral trade agreements and pledges made under fair practices. India doesn’t formally recognise Taiwan, with the two Governments maintaining unofficial diplomatic missions. But a trade pact, if it does materialise bypassing Chinese resistance, would help us reduce our supply chain dependency and attract massive investments. Galwan may have been the trigger that China has wrongly pressed. For it has forced India to develop its own protective “ring of fire” in the region.

The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 7.1 aims to ensure universal access to affordable, reliable and modern energy services by 2030. India’s journey so far has been remarkable in achieving near-universal access to electricity in the last one decade. As per the “Saubhagya” dashboard, 99.9 per cent of rural households in the country have been electrified and less than 20,000 homes lacked electricity access as of March 2019, but as per NSS-76, more than six per cent households in rural areas and one per cent in urban areas had no access to electricity till December 2018.

A majority of the States have above 97 per cent access, but larger States such as Uttar Pradesh (UP), Jharkhand and Odisha still lag behind the national average. Rural areas of UP and Jharkhand are most deprived with 80 and 85 per cent access to electricity respectively.

According to the National Family Health Survey (NFHS)-4, in 2015-16, Bihar ranked at the bottom of all States with just 60 per cent of its households having access to power. Since then, it has made significant progress in expanding its electricity access to near-universal coverage in the last three years. But despite attaining near-universal electrification for the majority of States, securing continuous and quality supply of power to remote villages and poorest households still remains a big concern.

Compared to electricity access, larger variations can be observed in the access to clean fuel among the States. Meghalaya, West Bengal, and Empowered Action Group (EAG) States, excluding Uttarakhand, still lag in providing universal access to clean cooking fuels, and every second household has no access to it. This significantly low national average poses a core developmental and health challenge. Even Kerala, despite its high living standards, has witnessed glaringly low progress in this aspect. Also, as per NSS-76, there exists a blatant, countrywide rural-urban divide in the access to clean fuel.

On average, the beneficiaries of the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY) go for only 3.1 LPG cylinder refills in a year. For the year 2019-2020, around 4.14 crore families never opted for a refill of more than three cylinders. Madhya Pradesh, UP and Rajasthan fared the worst in this regard. According to the information given in the Rajya Sabha recently, since the beginning of the new financial year in April till August, around 1.84 crore families refilled their LPG cylinders only once. This information came in even as the Government claimed of providing free cylinders to the poor during the lockdown. Hence, the challenge further remains to not only increase the access to cleaner fuels for households, but to increase the overall consumption per family.

Energy production of all types contributes to about 70 per cent of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions across the globe. Energy-related CO2 emissions grew 1.7 per cent in 2018 to reach a historic high of 33.1 gigatons of CO2 globally. It was the highest rate of growth since 2013, and 70 per cent higher than the average increase since 2010. However, the global energy demand in the first quarter of this year declined by 3.8 per cent relative to the first quarter of 2019, resulting in five per cent lower CO2  emissions as well. But this seemingly desirable change, that was mainly caused by the national lockdowns, may not continue for more than a few months.

To sustainably move towards a better future, it is now essential that we cope with our energy needs, giving due consideration to the environment that has been long neglected and continues to be so. The energy transition from conventional to renewable sources is the biggest need of the hour. Owing to this, SDG target 7.2 aims to increase the share of renewable energy in the global energy mix by 2030.

Among the BRICS nations, Brazil has been leading the way in the share of renewable power in its total energy mix, drawing advantage from its high potential of electricity production from wind and solar energy sources. India’s share of renewable energy in its final energy consumption stands at 32.2 per cent as of 2017 and has been suffering a decline for the last many years. Even though India’s share of renewable energy is higher than countries like Russia, the US, China, Japan and Europe, the decline in this share must be controlled. Whereas for countries mentioned above, in order to be able to sustain the share of renewables in their total energy mix, intense efforts for increasing that share must be realised too.

The Energy Statistics 2020 has reported a substantial growth in the renewable energy share in the total installed electricity generation from 13.4 per cent (2015-2016) to 17.7 per cent (2017-2018), owing to significant investments and expansions made in wind and solar power generation. A recent International Energy Agency analysis shows that in 2018, India’s investment in solar energy was greater than in all fossil fuel sources of electricity generation put together. SDG- 7.3 aims to double the global rate of energy efficiency by 2030. Energy intensity indicates the amount of energy needed to produce one unit of the GDP, where a smaller value is always desirable, as it points towards greater energy efficiency.

India has made significant progress in delivering energy efficiency. It has done better than major economies, namely China, the US, Russia and several European countries. It has showcased exemplary performance on this front and achieved an energy intensity level of 4.1 to 5.1 megajoules per US dollar (MJ/$) that is even lower than the global average of 5.4 MJ/$. Energy efficiency and increasing share of renewables are fundamental in achieving several other sustainable development goals. Without accelerated clean energy innovation and transition towards renewables, the  2030 agenda seems far-fetched.

As the nation faces the grim economic impact of the pandemic, energy efficiency offers several opportunities to provide the much-needed boost to the economy in the form of employment generation and so on, although a great deal of uncertainty exists with regard to SDG-7.

(The writers are researchers, International Institute for Population) Sciences, Mumbai)

Chinese history, taught in its formative schools, is complex, wounded and deliberately provocative as it aims to undo the “century of humiliation” that ostensibly ended with the advent of the Communists in 1949 under Chairman Mao Zedong. Seeds of revenge, insecurities and expansionist tendencies were assiduously sown and harnessed by the focussed efforts of the single-party regime. This transformational narrative of the deprived past to that of the dreams of the hegemonic “Chinese Century” (21st century) has distracted, galvanised and anchored the faith of the citizenry to the illiberal and undemocratic regime. A collateral outcome of this national passion has been the planned outreach beyond its cartographic limits in terms of trade, commerce, military and diplomacy, both welcomingly and unwelcomingly. This demanded a governance tonality of disruption, deceit and re-interpretation of all known laws of sovereignty, morality and all other forms of global operating systems. It has led to a unique situation of China having territorial disputes with at least 18 countries, while having borders with only 14. Ironically, the Chinese greed does not spare its own allies like North Korea, Philippines and most recently, Nepal.

The Chinese approach towards territorial aggrandisement has swerved from creeping, brazen, opportunistic to even innovative — but always, relentless. With such a backdrop, it was hardly surprising that Beijing stated, “China does not recognise the Ladakh Union Territory illegally set up by the Indian side and the Arunachal Pradesh.” This was patently duplicitous, obstructionist and retracting Chinese diplomacy at its normal. Constant flare-ups that end up enhancing the Chinese footprint are a critical and reassuring component of its power projection, as President Xi Jinping had famously claimed, “Only if there are battles, there are opportunities.”

The ensuing trade wars with the United States, sabre-rattling with Taiwan, prickly relations with Japan, a military stand-off with India and continuing belligerence in the South China Sea are carefully plotted moves in the mould of “shock and awe,” to reassert the Dragon’s arrival and supremacy on the global centrestage, with or without anyone’s permission. Part of this Chinese tact is to draw the opponent into a “limited” theatre and then out-muscle and out-posture the same into subservience without matters escalating beyond the defined realm. History suggests that the outcome of a long-drawn and expanded conflict has never ended in China’s favour — like the China-Vietnam war in 1979. China had underestimated the Vietnamese resolve as the then Chinese Vice Premier, Deng Xiaoping, had mentioned to American President Jimmy Carter before China’s ill-fated intrusion into Vietnam, “The little child is getting naughty, it’s time he got spanked.” By the end of the bloody conflict, most independent historians agree that the ragtag but battle-hardened Vietnamese outfought and outperformed the numerically and materially superior Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA).

China can suddenly seize unoccupied shoals, reefs and islands beyond its maritime limits like the Johnson Reef, Mischief Reef, Scarborough Shoal, Paracel Islands, Spratly Islands and more, and then start mega reclamation projects to enlarge the landmass into full-fledged, militarised bases. Towards this, it can discount all international treaties and norms to propound its own unique formula like the “nine-dash line” to the consternation of the rightful claimants. China will invariably posit an admixture of disputed history, vague claims and cartographic dashes that were clearly declared to be unlawful under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Seas (UNCLOS). Beijing disregarded the verdict of the International Court of Justice and brazenly added another 10th and 11th line dash to its claims.

China’s claims on Taiwan are equally disbelieving with the Chinese Communist Party (CPC) never ever ruling the island State since the independence of either of the nations, and only alluding to an expeditionary Chinese force in AD 239 to buttress its claims.

In recent times, devious efforts to soften its expansionist image by propounding creative formula, like “one country, two systems” in Hong Kong, have been completely exposed and unmasked. Even shifty leaders like the Philippines President, Rodrigo Duterte, who had shocked everyone by siding with the Chinese just when Manila was embroiled in a territorial dispute with Beijing or Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli of Nepal, have been forced into serious introspection of their dalliances with China. Duterte not only dialled down his anti-US rhetoric but also hailed its verdict against China as “the triumph of reason over rashness, of law over disorder, of amity over ambition.” Somewhere the Dragon’s free-run seems to have run into rough weather and the clouds of a pushback are looming on the horizon.

Indian armed forces are staring back, hitting back and have dug their heels, the Quad discussions (US, Japan, Australia and India) are moving from paper to spadework and the US naval warships are passing through the choppy Taiwan Straits. China is clearly feeling the heat as Jinping was left goading his military, “Put all (your) minds and energy into preparing for war.”

The situation is getting uncomfortably prolonged, inconclusive and simmering to Beijing’s discomfiture, and perhaps the sense that it has bitten more than it can chew simultaneously, has dawned on the Chinese. The entire neighbourhood is seemingly on a “high alert” and this works to the detriment of the Chinese, who typically thrive on nibbling and “salami tactics” on unsuspecting, napping or trusting neighbours. Even Russia, which has its own axe to grind with the US, would not mind seeing China in a tight spot and may allow its “neutrality” to worsen the situation for Beijing. In such a situation, Sino-wary nations need to collectively stare back, ignore and blunt the provocative Chinese statements that are intended to dramatise, coerce and win bullet-less wars.

The pandemic has weakened the global economy, but for China to unilaterally stand up against the combined resources in a militaristic misadventure could be regime-threatening given the imploding undercurrents that could get unleashed with the crumbling of the “Chinese Dream.” The Dragon has effectively been checkmated in its tracks, even though restoring status quo ante may not be possible. Yet the bombastic statements from Beijing are reflective of pressure and not confidence. 

(The writer, a military veteran, is a former Lt Governor of Andaman & Nicobar Islands)