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[1] From: Arif Khan <ank2000pk@yahoo.com> Date: Tue Jun 13, 2006 Subject: Congress pushes for democracy with aid cut Congress pushes for democracy with aid cut Daily Dawm Report WASHINGTON, June 11: Expressing disappointment with the government for ;failing to do enough&; to improve democracy and human rights in Pakistan, the US House of Representative has reduced aid to Islamabad in the current fiscal year to $300 million. Last year, the House had approved $550 million for Pakistan. 'We do not welcome a reduction in aid because it is a loss to the country,' ' said a spokesman for the PPP, Senator Akbar Khawja. ';But if international bodies are noticing that there's a need for democracy and improving human rights, it is a positive sign.' By a 373-34 vote, the Foreign Military Financing Fund for Pakistan for 2007 was also cut by $100 million to $200 million. A one-line statement in the House Foreign Operations Appropriations bill said $200 million was being earmarked for Pakistan because they assist us in hunting terrorists along the Afghan border. The bill specifically cited the increasing lack of respect for human rights, especially women's rights, and the lack of progress for improving democratic governance and rule of law ; as chief reasons for reducing Pakistan's funds. President George W. Bush had sought $23.7 billion for foreign operations but the House reduced it to $21.3 billion, which also affected the aid to Pakistan. The US Congress had applied a similar cut in last year's budget, but the US government had subsequently restored allocation. The House also approved some additional funds as support for counter-drug activities in Pakistan. Senator Khawja said the government should realize that nobody recognises a governance model led by uniform as a democratic setup .We need true democracy, in which the leadership is with the prime minister, not the president. A proposal to reduce aid to Egypt by $100 million was defeated. The House approved $2.46 billion in assistance to Israel. This includes $2.34 billion in military aid and $120 million in economic assistance. But the bill does not provide $150 million requested by the administration in economic assistance for West Bank and Gaza region. The bill does provide $80 million in humanitarian assistance but funds may not be used to support Hamas. The House gave the Bush administration $50 billion for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan for the first few months of the next year, On a voice vote, the House defence appropriations subcommittee passed a $427 billion measure for the Pentagon budget year that begins Oct 1, including operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. (This is merely lip service for installing democracy. George W. Bush would eventually help Musharraft and restore aid.) Arif N. Khan http://www.netvert.biz/wordpower ------------------- [2] www.covanetwork.org 10 million Indian girls aborted over 2 decades: study The Indo-Canadian study, whose results were published in The Lancet medical journal, provides conclusive proof that prenatal diagnostic tests, though banned, are leading to large-scale and widespread abortions of female foetuses in India About 10 million female foetuses, or one in 25 girl-children, may have been selectively aborted in India over the past two decades, according to new research. The authors of a study, recently published online by the British medical journal The Lancet, attribute the killings to the rampant misuse of ultrasound testing to determine the gender of the foetus. According to the Indo-Canadian study, half-a-million unborn girl-children are aborted every year in India. The study, which analysed female fertility figures from an ongoing Indian government survey of 6 million people, found that there were about half-a-million fewer girls born in the country in 1997 than expected. In view of the natural sex ratio in other countries, the study estimated that around 13.6 to 13.8 million girls should have been born in 1997 in India. The actual figure was 13.1 million. Extrapolated over 20 years (since 1976 when prenatal diagnostic tests were introduced in India) , the figure of missing girl-children would be 10 million, say the researchers. These latest findings support estimates by the Indian Medical Association, which has said that 5 million female foetuses are aborted in India each year. The authors of the study added that selective abortion of female foetuses is the most plausible explanation for the skewed sex ratio. They believe abortions are likely to have taken place following prenatal diagnostic tests, which reveal the gender of the foetus, although termination of pregnancy on grounds of gender has been illegal in India since 1994. The six-member team headed by Professor Prabhat Jha of the University of Toronto, Canada, and Rajesh Kumar at the Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research in Chandigarh, studied data from 1.1 million households and found that the likelihood of having a baby girl as a second or third child was significantly lower in households where there was no boy. The researchers found that the number of girls and boys born to Indian couples who already had a son was about equal. But the adjusted sex ratio for a second girl, where the first baby was a girl, was 759 for every 1,000 boys. Where families had two girls, it was 719 for every 1,000 boys. “We conservatively estimate that prenatal sex determination and selective abortion accounts for 0.5 million missing girls yearly,” Jha said. “If this practice has been common for most of the past two decades since access to ultrasound tests became widespread, then a figure of 10 million missing female births would not be unreasonable.” Commenting on the study Jha says: “Till now we had only anecdotal information on the numbers. This is the first statistically sound estimation on the number of missing girl-children at birth.” Interestingly, families educated up to the level of Class X report double the number of missing girls as compared to illiterate families. In households where the mother had a better education, it was significantly more likely that the birth of a girl would not be followed by the birth of another girl. The researchers said it had long been observed that fewer girls than boys are born in India, as in China. It is likely that natural causes were responsible for some of the imbalance, but not the sort of ratios they found. There is little reliable evidence on female infanticide, and the number of stillbirths reported -- which could mask infanticide -- did not account for all the missing girls. “Missing females is a growing problem,” says Kumar. “Our study emphasises the need for routine, reliable and long-term measurement of births and deaths. The ongoing Sample Registration System in India will help track missing female births and also gender differences in mortality.” The widespread societal preference for boys has skewed the sex ratio in India. According to census figures, the number of girls per 1,000 boys declined in the country from 945 in 1991 to 927 in 2001. While both foetal sex determination and medical termination of pregnancy based on the gender of the foetus have been banned for over a decade, but there is published evidence of rampant female foeticide in India where daughters are regarded as a liability. “Female infanticide of the past is refined and honed to a fine skill in this modern guise.” According to Jha, the imbalance in sex ratio could have a profound demographic impact in the coming years. It will mean bachelorhood for many men, social strife, even an explosion in HIV/AIDS. Source: The Guardian (January 9, 2006) The Indian Express ( January 9, 2006) Reuters (January 9, 2006) Source: http://www.infochangeindia.org/ChildrenItop.jsp?section_idv=4#top ------------------- [3] From: Logically Genius <gurudatta_raut-socialengineer@yahoo.co.in> Date: Tue Jun 13, 2006 Subject: Most of the Indians want Scholarships and not quotas The Times of India Online Printed from timesofindia.indiatimes.com > Columnists> Gurcharan Das> Men & Ideas --------------------------------- Scholarships, not quotas by Gurcharan Das [ Sunday, May 07, 2006 09:10:55 pmTIMES NEWS NETWORK ] When the cabinet meets to consider the proposal for raising caste reservations in institutions of higher learning from 22.5% to 49.5% it should imagine itself to be the admissions committee of one of the Indian Institutes of Technology. It has to choose whether to admit the son of a backward caste businessman from a posh South Delhi address who received low marks or the son of a poor brahmin schoolteacher in Muzaffarpur who got much higher marks. Under Arjun Singh's proposal, the IITs will be forced to admit the privileged son of an OBC businessman and reject the high scoring school teacher's son. There are a number of lessons to be learned from this thought game. First, our innate sense of fairness accepts more easily reservations for the poor rather than for the 'low' caste. Second, lowering admission standards for one group is unfair because it treats equals unequally and offends our idea of a just, merit based society. Third, it is unjust when beneficiaries of reservations are prosperous lower-caste persons, whom the Supreme Court called the 'creamy layer'. Why then should the government play this cruel, morally offensive joke? The reason is that there is a strong case for affirmative action, which has been made far more eloquently by the US Supreme Court. While US courts have always opposed quotas on grounds of reverse discrimination (meaning unequal treatment of equals), they have enthusiastically supported vigorous efforts to raise blacks and women on grounds of diversity and integration. Even in the recent Michigan University judgment, Justice O'Connor wrote glowingly about the benefits of a diverse student body. The best reason for preferences (which she didn't emphasise enough) is that a university's role in society is to develop leaders from diverse communities. If India's future leaders in commerce, arts and the professions come only from the 15% upper caste, the losers would not be the lower castes alone, but the Indian people, who would have failed to create a healthy, integrated society. The way to create leaders from the low castes is not through reservations but through scholarships, beginning in the first grade. Alas, most of our government schools, which were our greatest hope, are so rotten that there is no hope there for lifting anyone. Therefore, I would propose scholarships for 25% of the seats in all private schools and colleges subject to these four conditions: one, scholarships should not be caste-based, but economic. This preserves the idea that we are not for a casteist future; and it prevents the 'creamy layer' from grabbing the rewards. Second, government must fully pay for these scholarships from the 2% education cess; it would be wrong to ask schools to bear it. Third, government must not interfere with a school's autonomy. Finally, standards must not be allowed to fall. I would extend this scheme gradually, starting from below, thus giving institutions time to expand their facilities and the low caste to get acculturated. Enrollments for the disadvantaged would be additional; thus, merit candidates would not be deprived, as they would be with reservations. When the cabinet meets, it might also remember how badly history treats the self-serving proponents of caste reservations. If there were glory or votes in reservations, VP Singh would have been a respected leader today, even a PM. And Janata Dal would have been a strong, vibrant party. Instead, both lie in the dustbin of history. gurcharandas@vsnl.com http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1521263.cms --------------------- [4] From: yogi sikand <ysikand@yahoo.com> Date: Tue Jun 13, 2006 Subject: Azim A. Khan: Militancy and Prospects for Peace in Doda (J&K) Militancy and Prospects for Peace in Doda Azim Ahmad Khan In 1990, hardly two years after the outbreak of militancy in Kashmir, Zahoor, a school teacher, was invited to a meeting in a village not far from Doda town. He had been informed that some ‘mujahidin’ wanted to talk to influential people of the locality. With a deep sense of religiosity and charged with a passion for freedom from what he and many of his fellow Muslims in Doda were given to believe was ‘Indian occupation’, Zahoor marched to the venue. Before leaving, he did not forget to perform wazu, the ritual washing of the body that Muslims engage in before they say their prayers. This was because he was going to attend not just any ordinary meeting but, rather, to shake hands with people whom he thought of as fighters for a sacred cause. ‘At the meeting’, he muses, ‘I was overjoyed listening to these people talk passionately about jihad and freedom for Kashmir. Those were the days when raising slogans like Pakistan jayenge, Kalashinkov layenge, Kashmir azad karayenge (‘We will go to Pakistan and bring Kalashinkov and with that the freedom of Kashmir’) was commonplace’. ‘Some enthusiastic youths adjusted their watches according to Pakistani time and even used Pakistani currency for local trade. The entire population was misled by the claims of the jihadist groups that Kashmir’s independence was a matter of only a few days’, he says bitterly. ‘Today, however, many people are disillusioned and think differently’, he says. Says Naseem, a student from Kishtwar, a town in Doda district, ‘The Iranian Revolution of 1979 and the victory of the Taliban in Afghanistan boosted the morale of jihadist groups. To add to this, the fall of the Soviet Union provided fuel to the idea of establishing Dar ul-Islam in South Asian subcontinent’. ‘Some militant groups in Kashmir’, he adds, ‘started claiming that India was the only evil power in South Asia and that it would be wiped out and that America, the only remaining superpower, would be brought down to its knees’. Naseem’s family, like that of many other Muslims in Doda, are devoted followers of the Sufis. It was the Sufis, with their message of peace and love, who were instrumental in the spread of Islam in this remote, mountainous part of Jammu and Kashmir. Naseem does not conceal his horror of the version of Islam preached by some anti-Sufi jihadist groups, such as the Lashkar-e Tayebba, which he condemns as a crude cover-up for terrorism. ‘These groups began re-interpreting and distorting Islam, doing the work of Islam’s enemies, and that is why many people now wrongly think that Islam preaches terror, while actually it teaches peace’, he laments. Today, many Muslims in Doda are tired of the years of conflict that have taken a heavy toll of lives. ‘In fact’, says Hussain, a shopkeeper in Thathri, ‘many more Muslims have died at the hands of the militants, and, of course, the armed forces, than have Hindus. If we refuse to shelter militants, pay them money, send our sons to join them or dare speak out against them we could easily be killed’, he tells me. Clearly, the prolonging of militancy is paying against militancy itself. ‘People are frustrated. They know that the freedom of Kashmir is a distant dream. They now know about the deadly sectarian violence in Pakistan and the terrible economic conditions there, and have realised that they would be far worse off there than being with India’, Hussain explains. ‘We do not trust Pakistan. It is not a true friend of Kashmir. See the complete turn around in its position on the Taliban, just to curry favour with the Americans’, adds Hussain’s friend Arif. ‘Pakistan uses the Kashmir card for its own benefit. The situation in Pakistani-administered Kashmir, we all know, is worse than the Indian-ruled parts of the state’, he insists. Salim is an alim, a trained Islamic cleric, in a village in Doda’s Bhadarwah tehsil. He tells me how he was being pressurised by the militants, including his own cousin, for many years to give either his son or a hefty sum of money to the ‘cause’ and how he steadfastly refused. After being an active militant for 13 years, his cousin has now surrendered. ‘What has he gained by the gun?’, asks Salim. ‘He only brought disrepute to the family. Because he was a militant, every member of our family was beaten and harassed by the Indian army.’ ‘Corruption, poverty, state apathy coupled with misinterpretation of religious texts triggered militancy in Kashmir’, he says, ‘and only if these are actively countered can normalcy be restored’. Ahmad is a police officer in Doda district. His father was killed because he turned down a demand by the Hizbul Mujahidin to either give his younger son to join the ‘cause’ and take up arms against India or else shell out a hefty sum of 5 lakh rupees. ‘Most active militants are illiterate or poorly educated and come from poor families. Poverty and illiteracy are major factors in attracting youth to join the militants’, Ahmad argues. ‘These people have little knowledge of Islam. They’ve been fed with distorted interpretations of it, which makes them easily fall prey to the militants’ hate propaganda that they falsely pass of as true Islamic teachings’. During my recent trip to Doda, I had the chance to interview two recently surrendered former militants. In their twenties and neatly dressed in shirts and trousers, they seemed like any other youngsters in Doda. They were forcefully abducted, they said, by militants associated with the Harkat ul-Ansar. They did not appear to me to be particularly pious or devout, although the group with which they were associated claims to be struggling to establish an ‘Islamic state’. Certainly, they did not fit the image of the hardened, hardcore fanatic that the media depicts the stereotypical Kashmiri militant to be. Life in the Harkat, as they described it, was obviously not led strictly according to Islamic moral dictates. One of the commanders of their group had abducted a girl from a village and kept her with him as his partner without entering into the mandatory nikah or marriage, this being haram or wholly illegitimate according to Islamic law. Poverty, rampant corruption, denial of democratic rights, state repression and obscurantist interpretations of religion have all combined to make for militancy in Kashmir. Clearly, then, as these voices from Doda suggest, a broad strategy needs to be worked out on all these fronts if peace is to see any future in the region. ======================== The writer is a New Delhi-based human rights activist. He can be contacted on azimsherwani@gmail.com ----------- |
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