Opinion View from the LEFT

It points out that just a week before India extended an invitation to Pakistan for talks,top government functionaries including the home minister had threatened that New Delhi may even boycott the SAARC home ministers’ meeting. The chorus was diluted after the FBI arrested some US citizens of Pakistani origin as the mastermind of the Mumbai attack. “Though our intelligence agencies have not been allowed access to the arrested American,despite a visit to the USA,we are now in two minds; whether to depend on our own investigation or rely on what the Americans are giving out,” the lead editorial in CPI mouthpiece New Age says.

It asks the government to realise the American game plan in making India and Pakistan talk in the context of the growing difficulties it is facing in Afghanistan. Washington wants to drag new allies as it tries to win over a section of the Taliban to help US forces withdraw from the Afghan quagmire. “That should explain American interest in resumption of Indo-Pak dialogue,” it says.

Quota heat   

With the Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee government announcing a 10 per cent quota for backward Muslims in government jobs in West Bengal on the basis of the recommendations of the Justice Ranganath Misra Commission,the CPM now is trying to put the Central government on the back foot. It wants the Centre to make its stand clear on the implementation of the report. In the latest issue of its weekly People’s Democracy,the CPM asks the government to table in parliament the action taken report on the commission’s recommendations.

“Only then will the country and the people know how the government intends to implement the recommendations of the commission,” the piece argued. “It is the normal practice that any report of a commission constituted by the government of India must be brought to parliament along with an action taken report. This lapse,hopefully,should be corrected in the forthcoming budget session,” it added. The piece,by Politburo member Sitaram Yechury,also asks the Congress to explain why it delayed tabling the report for so long.

Climate hot air

Finally,the embattled IPCC gets some support. The CPI(M) feels that while the IPCC  has no doubt committed “blunders” by giving a “nonsensical” 2035 date for the disappearance of Himalayan glaciers,its core assessment that climate change is real and man-made and a threat to humanity cannot be questioned. Interestingly,an article in People’s Democracy argues that there has been a concerted effort to discredit the science and scientists backing the idea of anthropogenic climate change from the very beginning of the climate debate,and says the increasingly shrill chorus of the current campaign against the IPCC and its core findings smack of orchestration.

“Fossil-fuel based energy and automobile industry lobbies,the US and some other governments,right-wing think tanks and many others have been known to distort evidence,doctor reports,famously within the White House itself,and otherwise cast doubt on the growing evidence and consensus,” it says. While several issues have been raised by the controversies over different statements in the IPCC report,none of them contradict the core assessments that global average temperatures are rising and that atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases are increasing.

“More than 17,000 published and peer-reviewed papers have been taken into account and more than 3000 scientists have been involved… No other scientific exercise hitherto has involved such extensive and inclusive work. The message of the IPCC is incontrovertible,the attempt here is to shoot the messenger,” it says.