Opinion Tough Obama
Taking forward the BJPs UPA is soft on terror argument,the RSS compares the anti-terror resolve of the Obama administration and Manmohan Singh government in the latest edition of its mouthpiece Organiser....
Taking forward the BJPs UPA is soft on terror argument,the RSS compares the anti-terror resolve of the Obama administration and Manmohan Singh government in the latest edition of its mouthpiece Organiser. It says while the US executive is focused and systematic in fighting terrorism,the Indian cabinet is confused and wavering from one knee-jerk response to another.
Take the instance of the stringent US Patriot Act enacted by the Bush administration in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. The article says Obama neither dismantled the act nor disowned the doctrine of pre-emptive strikes by letting the US military complete its task in Afghanistan. In India,the Manmohan Singh government has refused to challenge terrorists militarily on home grounds of terrorists and in 2004 dismantled the POTA law just to appease Muslims. The UPA set up the National Investigation Agency and amended Unlawful Activities Prevention Act,but official pronouncements of the UPA government to appease Muslims deter officers from using it pro-actively, it says.
The US is known to have secretly drawn up a list of terrorists including its own citizens who could be killed by US security agencies. In India,whenever police gun down terrorists based on field intelligence they are accused of fake encounters by Marxists,by media and are called upon by judiciary to justify encounters and policemen often land up in jails facing charges of murder, it says.
US economics out
The RSS has given a thumbs up to the bandh called by the united opposition saying it marked a new beginning in Indian politics. It feels the massive support to the call reminded the country of the politics of the 70s and 80s when mass protest had became a way of national life. In a democracy the idea of mass action has no time warp.
Nobody is arguing for a return to the days of mindless trade unionism,strikes and layoffs. Their time is past but mass action against the erratic,anti-people policies is another matter. Protest is a legitimate right of the people. Free market economics has its limits, the lead editorial in the RSS organ says.
The bandh proved that in the national interest various parties otherwise on the extremes of the political spectrum can join hands. This is what made the establishment most nervous. Its elitist,US-dictated economic policies will not go unchallenged. The atmospheric for protest that a united opposition creates will make too hot for comfort for the regime at the helm, the edit argues.
Badal too market-driven?
The BJP may have conveniently ignored coalition partner and Punjab chief minister Prakash Singh Badals demand that his state be paid royalty on the water allocated to Haryana and Rajasthan from its rivers. But the RSS feels the demand has no justification.
An article in the offical voice of the RSS feels that the reduction of water to a commodity on which a price is put is hardly surprising given the fact that it is becoming scarcer. But,it points out,water is renewable unlike Badal who had equated water with minerals like coal and bauxite,which are non-renewable resources. Putting a price on water will not solve the problem of water scarcity. After all,food must be produced,whatever the cost. And therein lies the flaw in Badals argument,however soundly rooted in concern for his state it might be. Punjabs water woes cannot be ignored,but the approach to scarcity cannot be based on mining and transportation of water that would be to accept Badals contention that it must be treated as a finite mineral resource, the article says.
It advocates that water must be treated as a community resource,to be conserved and managed by communities according to their needs and not those of the market. Punjab has an average rainfall of 770 mm more than enough to meet its needs,if properly managed. This involves a drastic realignment of its agricultural policy as well,which must be farmer-rather than market-driven, it says.
Compiled by Manoj C.G.
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