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Issue 29 Vol II, December 15, 2006 |
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A N A L Y S I S
Energy Crisis and Warlords PUNJAB is changing fast. A section of people now own more wealth and enjoy new amenities. There are more cars and other vehicles of all sorts and even wide roads are filled to their capacity. Look at the bus stands of even small towns, we can find plenty of taxis to hire. If you forget metropolitan cities like Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore, Punjab, perhaps, owns more per capita automobiles than any other state. Also in number of trucks, buses and tractors and other farm machines, the state takes the first position. Planners are busy in widening existing roads and adding four lanes. Roads present a chaotic scene. Bazaars and streets are worse with milling crowds. Our homes have more facilities; television sets, telephones, landline and mobile, washing machines and more clothes. Markets are full and rush of people to the shops; even those selling costly products are unimaginable. Our food basket also offers more variety and abundance. Of course not for everyone. Our consumption of alcohol sold at the thekas or brewed at farms and homes runs into millions of bottles. Chandigarh beats every other city in the country in the consumption of alcohol. And a large section of the youth is killing its time and health in the consumption of opium and all varieties of intoxicants and drugs. We are guzzling liquors and eating to our heart’s content, even losing sight of good health of which we were once were proud of. Side by side we are building more houses; some even matching the high western standards. New housing colonies are coming up. Land prices are soaring on daily basis beyond imagination from Rs ten lakh an acre to Rs five crore an acre at some places. Those selling land here and making fast buck are either becoming big consumers in the short run or rushing out to other provinces to buy land or to the cities to buy property. In nutshell Punjabis like their urban counterparts elsewhere are consuming much more than what their forefathers did. Lifestyle, socialists tell us is changing fast and of course its own kind of problems too. Suicides, dowry deaths and killing of unborn daughters in the land of the great gurus have something to with our greed and eagerness to be part of the boom. This also explains rush for other countries to earn more and consume more. All this creation of wealth requires labour and energy; electricity and petroleum. And here a world wide crisis is building up that could burst this small bubble. We are warned by experts, “It took us 125 years to use the first trillion barrels of oil. We'll use the next trillion in 30. Energy will be one of the defining issues of this century. One thing is clear: the era of easy oil is over..." What we all do next will determine how well we meet the energy needs of the entire world in this century and beyond? Demand is towering like never before. As populations grow and economies move up, millions in the developing world are enjoying the benefits of a lifestyle that necessitates increasing amounts of energy. In fact, some asserts that in 20 years the world will consume 40% more oil than it does today. At the same time, many of the world's oil and gas fields are getting smaller. Energy from other sources; coal, hydel and atomic resources have also limitations in terms of costs, production and environment degradation. New energy discoveries are mainly occurring in places where resources are difficult to extract, physically, economically and even politically. When growing demand meets tighter supplies, the result is more competition for the same resources. Many recent developments; persistently high gasoline prices, unprecedented warnings about global warming and environment degradation suggest that the world is about to enter the Twilight Era of Petroleum. This means a time of chronic energy shortages and economic stagnation as well as recurring crisis and conflict. Wars and blood shed. Petroleum is not going to disappear, but it will still be available at prices which not many could afford. This would mean the present life style shall suffer a hard knock. Not many could afford it. While the rich developed West would suffer, the developing nations and their poor population shall suffer still more. They may not get to new developed standards where hunger is a thing of the past and where good life is granted. This builds up a dangerous situation. World has witnessed wars during the last 50 per cent that can be traced to fight for oil. What exactly are America and England fighting for in West Asia? President Bush tells a shameless lie when he declares that he wants to liberate Iraq or Syria or Iran and is unhappy with the rise of socialists in Latin America as they are not democrats enough. He only wants oil from Iraq, Syria, Iran and Venezuela. Lakhs of people are being killed and new armaments and methods of war invented at the cost of billion of rupees are only meant to control world energy resources. If China is adding new friends across the globe from Iran to South African countries and Congo, it is all for oil. All these wars as in the past were to control the economic wealth and oil the most precious of all and continue to be so. Americans consume the lion's share, 46 per cent of world energy for just 300 million people of global petroleum stocks on a daily basis, shall face more competition from other countries, including China and India, for access to an ever-diminishing pool of oil supply. The era of violent conflict that began with the oil as driving economic force shall be more brutal. These series of events suggest that the transition from a period of relative abundance to a time of persistent scarcity would mean more hardships. These events will take both economic and political form: on the one hand, rising energy prices and contracting supplies; on the other, more diplomatic crises and military conflicts. We can wait until a crisis to force us to do something. Or we can commend to working together, and start by asking some tough questions. How do we meet the energy needs of the developing world and those of industrialised nations? What role will renewable and alternative energies play? What is the best way to protect our environment and yet develop and meet the needs of million of poor. And for India as well as for Punjab, there is now an urgent need to think ahead and devise new strategies that may help us to maintain economic progress, but also make us more aware of the path to philistine consumerism has more thorns and less roses. |
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Musharraf and his Pocket Full of Poses
His new four point peace proposals, one of those many in the series have received mixed reaction in India. Prime Minister Manmohan singh had termed them as positive as these take the thinking on Kashmir forward. How those really work as Pakistan was now insisting on the old UN Resolution for a permanent solution, is yet not clear. But at the home front he has been now for the first time trying to break the shackles of old terrifying Islamic laws. Recently Pakistan's Supreme Court blocked a fresh attempt to enact a Taliban -style law to enforce Islamic morality in North West Frontier Province (NWFP). The court instructed the provincial governor not to sign the bill. North West Frontier Province, which is governed by an alliance of religious parties sympathetic to the Taliban, passed the legislation last month. The bill adopted by the NWFP assembly last month was a watered-down version of the legislation rejected by the Supreme Court last year, again after a petition from the president. The key difference between the bills is that the proposed department to be set up to enforce morality will not have its own police force. But it would, however, be able to requisition police "to promote virtue and prevent vice". The plan is reminiscent of the infamous Department for the Prevention of Vice and Promotion of Virtue, set up by Afghanistan's former Taleban rulers. It has been the focus of criticism by human rights organisations. Religious police would patrol the streets in Afghanistan, forcing women to adhere to a strict dress code and men to pray and grow their beards, among other things. Last year a similar bill was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. It is almost unheard of for the same bill passed by a provincial assembly to be challenged twice in the courts by the federal government. President Musharraf he wants Pakistan to espouse an enlightened, moderate form of Islam and has denounced the bill as fundamental breach of human rights. The Supreme Court ordered the NWFP governor not to sign the Hisba (Accountability) bill into law until the case had been decided. It said it would take up the matter again in the third week of January and the NWFP government gets a chance to defend the bill. NWFP Information Minister Asif Iqbal Daudzai, a member of the ruling alliance of religious parties, accused the government of being undemocratic. "We are really surprised. We drafted the bill in light of the Supreme Court's directives. The federal government's decision to go to the court exposes their claims that they believe in democracy." Civil right groups and large section of the public opinion hope that the court would help moderate forces of social change. |
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Punjab Politics: Strange Bedfellows
But a Session’s Court in Patiala in 1990 acquitted the two. The government appealed against the judgement in the Punjab and Haryana High Court. In November 2006, a division bench of the High Court held both as guilty and awarded three years rigorous imprisonment to Sidhu besides fine. It would have been simple news and buried in some obscure corner of newspapers and forgotten. But Sidhu by now had become high profile Lok Sabha member of the BJP from Amritsar. He was also a new avatar of the small screen. In the post ideological era of Indian politics, he was considered a star campaigner for the Akali BJP combine during the upcoming assembly elections in Punjab. Akalis and BJP, who are eager to capture power cried foul, though could not directly accuse the Court for fear of being hauled up for defamation. The Congress defended by saying that it was the verdict of the Court. This punishment renders Sidhu a lame duck politician who can not contest any election. His graph too fell. He now knocks the doors of the Supreme Court to seek mercy. The intriguing part that exposes the Punjab politicians particularly the Akali stalwart Parkash Singh Badal is that during the Akali government the case was registered and it was their government which went for an appeal to the High Court. Sidhu at that time was aligned with the Congress. His father Bhagwant Singh Sidhu was a former advocate general of the state and linked to the ruling parity for decades. Navjot later even wrote to the Congress chief minister Beant Singh seeking his intervention. Beant Singh did oblige and asked officials if the case could be withdrawn. But that was perhaps not possible. Navjot Sidhu who had always posed as person of high moral values sent in a conditional resignation. It was a clever move to maintain a moral ground and retain membership of the Lok Sabha. He had put conditions knowing fully well that a conditional resignation was not acceptable. As expected Speaker Somnath Chatterjee turned down the resignation. The ploy was exposed as the BJP central leadership where he had his detractors along with his arch rival; the Punjab BJP President Avinash Khanna told Navjot to send a clear resignation otherwise his moral position would be exposed. Navjot had little choice. The intriguing aspect does not end here. Badal has been publicly championing Sidhu’s case and went out of the way to defend him as did some central BJP leaders. Yet as some observers saw the SAD leadership as well Punjab BJP leaders like Khanna felt relieved after the High Court order of December 2. 2006. Many in the Dal were apparently disturbed at the speed at which the popularity graph of Navjot Sidhu was rising. It may, perhaps, be the reason why of late he was not being invited to address rallies of the SAD of Parkash Singh Badal, and his son and heir apparent Sukhbir Singh Badal. Navjot Sidhu is a petite runner in ountry’s politics. His main forte as speaker is jokes, barbs and theatrics. This does not last for long. He has little ideological moorings and looks every inch an upstart to many a political observer. Yet no one thought he would suffer this ignominy. If the Supreme Court upholds the judgement then he cools his heels in jail for the next three years. Similarly, any relief could make the difference for his political career. |
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PAKISTANI
President Pervez with an eye on elections next year is on course
correction. And, he seems to be in some hurry. At one level, he is
offering new formula to India to solve the government tangled web of
Kashmir and at another he seeking more space as a moderate leader
committed to a liberal democratic regime. Interestingly he has been
trying to woo the Talibans through sops and mend fences with Kabul.
ON
December 27, 1988, a former cricketer Navjot Singh Sidhu and his
friend Rupinder Singh Sandhu got into an argument with an elderly
person Gurnam Singh over parking space near the State Bank of Patiala.
He allegedly dragged Singh out of his car and dealt him a series of
blows, causing his death. Jaswinder Singh, who was with Gurnam Singh,
tried to intervene was also battered. The two fled from the spot.
Gurnam singh died later and the two were charged with culpable
homicide.