📰 U.S. puts Pakistan on notice over terror attack
“We need to see Pakistan taking concrete and sustained action to rein in the terrorist groups, mainly the Jaish-e-Mohammed and the Lashkar-e-Taiba”
•The United States has asked Pakistan to take sustained, verifiable and irreversible action against the perpetrators of terrorism and warned the country that another terror attack on India will prove to be “extremely problematic.”
•“We need to see Pakistan taking concrete and sustained action to rein in the terrorist groups, mainly the Jaish-e-Mohammed and the Lashkar-e-Taiba, in order to ensure that we don’t have re-escalation [of tensions] in the region,” a senior administration official told reporters at the White House on Wednesday. “And, if there’s any additional terrorist attack without Pakistan having made a sustained, sincere effort against these groups, it would be extremely problematic for Pakistan and it would cause re-escalation of tensions, which is dangerous for both countries,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
•Asked about the steps being taken by Pakistan after the Balakot airstrike, the official said the U.S. and the international community needed to see “irreversible and sustained” action against the terror groups. “It’s early to make a full assessment,” the official said.
•In the recent days, the official said, Pakistan had taken some “initial” actions. It had frozen the assets of some terror groups and made some arrests. It had taken administrative control of some of the JeM facilities. “But we clearly need to see more. We need to see irreversible action because in the past, what we’ve seen is they made some arrests and then a few months later, they released these individuals. The terrorist leaders are sometimes still allowed to travel around the country, hold rallies,” the official said.
Its true power is its capacity to make those in power accountable to those who don’t have power
•Freedom is a theme which is going to come up again and again through this election. It is a term, like truth, that has globally become extremely important today. But it is not an easy concept to understand, especially in a public political discourse. First of all, there are many kinds of freedom: freedom to speak, to write, to think, to imagine, to live our lives, to eat what we want, and so on. Since this term is invoked so quickly and so easily — witness little children saying they want their freedom to have ice cream! — it is important that we understand its diverse meanings in our everyday use of this term. Here I want to understand what one of the most important expressions of freedom, free speech, could mean.
Freedom to hold forth?
•We often tend to think that among the main elements of democracy are the holding of elections and a free media. Both elections and free media are important because they stand, among other things, for the notions of free speech and free expression. Casting a vote anonymously, of one’s own free will, is an example of free expression and is broader than just ‘free speech’. Similarly, when the media has the freedom to air all kinds of views, it is seen to be an example of free speech. But is free speech really the essence of democracy? Is it really so important for an effective democracy?
•Paradoxically, there is an inherent tension between free speech and democracy. If free speech is understood merely as the freedom to say what one wants, then that is obviously not conducive to meaningful social behaviour. For example, one can spread falsehood about another in the name of free speech. One can insult, lie, create harm and hatred through free speech. In these cases, free speech should rightfully be called rumour and gossip. Rumour, gossip, fake news and deliberate lying can be hidden under the guise of free speech. It is speech with an ulterior motive. To call these as free speech is a mistake.
•The answer to the problem of defining what really constitutes free speech lies in understanding the meaning of ‘free’ in free speech. What is really free in free speech? The freedom to say what one wants? We can’t really say what we want all the time since all speech is constrained. We are constrained by language, words, concepts and grammar, and even by the physical contours of our mouth. We are constrained by the biological and cognitive structures related to thought and its expression through language. Socially, we are not fully free to say what we want. We cannot make certain utterances in certain places. A commentator, commenting on a game of cricket, cannot suddenly give a lecture on philosophy saying that he is protected by free speech!
•In addition to constraints, all speech also has a cost. When we utter something, good or bad, there is a price to pay. Even in personal relations with family and friends, we cannot say what we want. If we do so — that is, if we are honest and outspoken — there is a price to pay. Relationships get broken, wars are declared between people because somebody spoke ‘freely’.
•Thus, the essence of free speech is not really about the freedom to say what we want. It is more about speech which is free, which comes with no cost. Free speech is actually speech for which you don’t pay a price. But paying a price is not in the hands of the speaker. When I say or write something, I do not know who will take offence at it. People get upset and take offence very easily these days! Free speech is nothing but the conditions under which the hearer is not allowed to take offence and intimidate the speaker.
•The real freedom in ‘free speech’ lies not in the freedom of the speaker to say what she wants but in the constraint on hearers to allow the speaker to say what she wants. Thus, when we demand the right to free speech, we are essentially demanding the right to stop others from not letting us speak. The most important consequence of the idea of free speech is that it shifts the responsibility of free speech from the speaker to the hearer. But does this mean that anybody can say what they want? Can they slander a person through falsehood in the name of free speech? Is slandering a person the same as criticising the government or the nation? After all, our governments, independent of which party is in power, have effectively used the charge of sedition to stop certain utterances in public.
Criticism as a duty
•It is not free speech to purposefully slander a person. But criticising the government or nation is not the same as slandering an individual. Such criticism is not just a right, it is more a duty of democratic societies. In a true democracy, there is nothing that can be considered as slandering the government, even if a criticism may be wrong and unjustified. That is because free speech is a tool to make democracy workable and it is not really about the individual freedom to say what one wants.
•Democracy is about governance for others and on behalf of others. It is a social and public system of responsibility of governance. The very foundation of democracy is collective action and the real freedom in a democracy is the freedom of choosing who will govern on our behalf. The ideal of democracy is that we are all potential rulers — any one of us can be the Prime Minister of our country. When we elect somebody, we are only putting a group of people to govern on behalf of us. Free speech is the mechanism to make sure that they govern correctly and on our behalf. It is only free speech, defined in this manner, that makes democracy workable.
•The true power of free speech lies in its capacity to make those in power accountable to those who do not have power. It is a means to control those in power and is not really about freedom of individuals. The price we demand for making somebody govern on our behalf (the elected leaders) is to allow us to say what we want about them, not as individuals but as political leaders.
The power equation
•Thus, true free speech covers only those acts of speech which speak against power, and keep those in power accountable. It thus safeguards the most cherished democratic principle. Free speech by itself is not the essence of democracy but is the means by which any democracy can be sustained. Anybody who doesn’t like to hear criticism of government or government representatives is being undemocratic. We dilute the importance of free speech when we use it to derive personal benefit or cause harm or do so in situations which are not about power. Speech, in the task of keeping check on power, has to be subsidised and made free by those in power.
📰 Beyond the ‘us-them’ binary
By calling the Christchurch attacker a terrorist, the New Zealand Prime Minister sent a powerful message
•Though some media outlets gave it needless coverage, anyone could have expected that the Islamic State (IS) would call for “revenge” following the Christchurch, New Zealand mosque shootings on March 15, in which 50 people lost their lives. At its peak in 2015, the IS had 30,000 fighters and the estimated support of (at the most) half a million Muslims — out of a total world population of an estimated 1.8 billion Muslims in 2015. It also has the reputation of being the organisation that has killed the maximum number of Muslims in recent years, a fact obscured by its gory executions of ‘non-Muslims’.
•For the IS to urge ‘revenge’ on the behalf of all Muslims was exactly the same as the act of terrorism perpetrated by the Australia-born, white supremacist, alt-right terrorist on men, women and children who had gone to two Christchurch mosques for peaceful Friday congregational prayers on March 15. As his ‘manifesto’ indicates, this young white alt-right male terrorist was also seeking “revenge” for various acts of real or imagined violence by ‘Muslims’. In short, the perpetrator of the Christchurch massacres and the IS are caught in a distorting binary worldview of ‘us versus them’, and inevitably this is the world they will create if the rest of us do not call their bluff.
The ‘T’ word
•And this time, for a change, a world leader called their bluff right at the start. The Prime Minister of New Zealand, Jacinda Ardern, not only referred to the attacks as “one of New Zealand’s darkest days” but, more courageously, did not hesitate to call their perpetrator a “terrorist”. By using the ‘T’ word — which is easily applied to terrorising violence by Muslim criminals but tardily applied to similar violence by white supremacist or (in India) Hindutva criminals — Ms. Ardern sent a powerful message. In this, she was supported by her counterpart in Australia, Scott Morrison, who also did not hesitate to describe the perpetrator as a terrorist.
•The hesitation in the media to describe white extremism or Hindutva violence as terror is a reflection, however diffuse, of exactly that binary division of the world into ‘us versus them’ that I have highlighted. It has its counterpart in the Muslim world too, and I will come to that a bit later. Evidently, Ms. Ardern’s honest description of what happened in Christchurch sent a message not only to the world media but also to Muslims: what she effectively said was that Muslims are not ‘them’ in New Zealand. She highlighted this in many ways, by thoughtful acts of condolence as well as a clear statement in which she embraced the victims (mostly immigrants and refugees) as “one of us”.
•The good effect of such admirable statesmanship was evident in the responsible way in which the New Zealand media largely covered the tragedy. Those of us in India who are used to our hyperventilating evening shows should have marked this difference. Not that the ‘us-them’ binary disappeared. The tabloid press — not least in England, a country whose inability to face up to its own subterranean prejudices has landed it in the on-going mess of Brexit — still continued, much of the time, to think along those binaries. This was admirably exposed by The Feed, which, among other things, compared the initial front page Christchurch heading of The Daily Mirror (‘Angelic boy who grew into an evil far-right killer’) to how the same paper had covered the Orlando nightclub shooting of 2016 (‘ISIS Maniac Kills 50 in Gay Club’).
•The Feed went on to note, with references, that there is a tendency in sections of the Western media to focus on the ‘humanity’ of the Christchurch murderer, sometimes even before talking of his victims. This contrasts to the normal (correct to my mind) option of focussing on the humanity of the victims when the murderer is a Muslim extremist.
Sustaining a worldview
•However, this ‘us-them’ attitude is not limited to the ‘West’. That large sections of mainstream Muslims also share it was illustrated by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who rashly described the Christchurch massacres in terms of a broader attack on Turkey and Muslims. If Ms. Ardern — unlike most other Muslim or non-Muslim leaders in similar situations in the past — showed vision and humanity, Mr. Erdoğan displayed, at best, political expediency. Just as it is easy to whip up anti-Muslim sentiments among many peoples in the West and in places like India, it is easy to whip up the exaggerated bogey of Islamophobia among Muslims all over the world.
•Yes, extremist ideologies exist among Muslims and other peoples: hence, Islamophobia also exists. But these are sweeping explanations, which finally ‘explain’ by obscuring much on the basis of a prior investment in the ‘us-them’ ideology. While noting the difference in media coverage, The Feed rightly explained it not in terms of a hatred for Muslims but a refusal to see that ‘we’ are not that different from ‘them’. Hence, it is easy to see ‘them’ as maniacs and ‘us’ as fallen angels; it is easy to call ‘them’ terrorists, and ‘us’, well, anything but terrorists. By doing so, we refuse to accept our complicity in sustaining a simplistic and distorted binary worldview that permits such acts of terror — against Muslims, Christians, Hindus, atheists, gay men, women, whatever may be the ‘nature’ of ‘them’ in our book of otherness.
•Once we have demeaned ‘them’ to a subhuman level, it is easy to kill ‘them’ as if they were not human. Most of us won’t go that far, but most of us do help sustain the ‘us-them’ binary that enables a ‘maniac’ (or ‘fallen angel’) to go that far. This, as Ms. Ardern also noted, is further magnified by the media tendency to give easy publicity to such confused murderers. Don’t name the perpetrator of the Christchurch massacres, she advised. And I, for one, have not.
📰 Back on track: On India-Maldives ties
India and the Maldives must continue to build a shared strategic vision
•India and the Maldives appeared to return to the old days of strategic bonhomie when External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj met her counterpart Abdulla Shahid in Male during a brief visit this week. It is the first full-fledged bilateral visit at the political level from India to the Maldives after the new government assumed office in the wake of the historic election last September. President Ibrahim Solih assumed charge after a multi-party, pro-democracy coalition led by his Maldivian Democratic Party was swept to power. Mr. Solih’s inauguration, which was marked by the attendance of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, was assumed to be a potential inflection point in the trajectory of bilateral ties with India. The previous five years witnessed Male’s disconcerting drift, under the aegis of the Abdulla Yameen government, into what many Maldivians felt was the stifling embrace of China. Chinese financing for infrastructure and construction projects poured in even as the functioning of the political Opposition and the judiciary was harshly curtailed. All of this flux appeared to have been washed away on September 23, 2018 when the Maldivian electorate voted resoundingly for the coalition that backed Mr. Solih for President.
•Yet it would be unwise for New Delhi to take the Indian Ocean nation for granted. There is indeed an opportunity for reset on numerous policies, and some of that has already happened. In December, when Mr. Solih visited India, a $1.4 billion financial assistance package for the Maldives was announced. While the proximity of the Indian general election may have precluded any major policy announcements from New Delhi, the two countries have agreed to exempt holders of diplomatic and official passports from visa requirements, inked an MoU on Indian grant-in-aid for “high-impact community development projects”, and other agreements on energy efficiency and renewable energy, areas critical to the agenda of Mr. Solih. At a broader level, the archipelago and the larger Indian Ocean region could expect more collaborative approaches on regional maritime security issues, including counterterrorism and trans-national crimes. However, Male is still grappling with the legacy of the Yameen administration’s headlong plunge into the orbit of Beijing. The massive debts the Maldives incurred, by some estimates to the tune of $3 billion, linked to infrastructure investments need to be unwound. Second, the multiparty alliance must hold firm despite immense political pressures that arise from varying visions for governance. Some tensions already seem to be bubbling to the top: on February 25, Mohamed Nasheed, former President and important coalition-builder in the MDP, tweeted about the country’s Supreme Court “meddling in elections — again”. For genuine peace and bilateral harmony to take root in the region, building a shared vision for the future of the Maldives is the immediate task at hand.
📰 What can India do to influence China on Masood Azhar?
India-China dialogue has expanded but the two countries are not on the same page on terror
•Last week, China placed a hold on the listing request for Pakistan-based terror group Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM)’s leader Masood Azhar at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). The Ministry of External Affairs said that it was “disappointed” by the outcome. Alka Acharya and Jabin Jacob talk of the Azhar problem, the Wuhan summit, and the strategic view of India’s relationship with China, in a discussion moderated by Suhasini Haidar. Edited excerpts:
India has taken a much calmer tone than what we have seen in public on China’s refusal to allow the listing at the UNSC of Masood Azhar. Do you think this will work?
•Alka Acharya: I don’t see why not. Yelling and screaming was not helping the issue. I think the significant thing to understand is that the Chinese have not provided any indication as to whether they are going to change on this particular issue. Whereas, on other issues they have — for instance, blacklisting the organisation (JeM), or putting Pakistan on the Financial Action Task Force Grey List. So, there are also various shades to China’s stand and actions at the global level.
Professor Jacob, would you agree? That China’s objections to listing Azhar are probably not ideological, and therefore, there is some room for flexibility? Or would you say that China is essentially giving a strong message by refusing to list him for the fourth time in a decade, and India should take that message.
•Jabin Jacob: Yes, definitely. India should take a message from that. It’s not ideological, but I would say there is a larger issue here, which is of politics. Clearly this is a different China that we’re dealing with. It’s not the same China that we’ve seen over the last 10 years. I think the problem is that India is too subtle. If India does not take a consistent position, or a position that appears to evolve into something, the Chinese are not going to take you seriously. While we say that China is not supporting us on this aspect, we also have our annual counter-terrorism exercise with China. I think that sort of mixed messaging doesn’t work.
On the one hand, if you seem too conciliatory with China, then it may see that as a sign of weakness and therefore not change its position. Is this actually a larger challenge for India when it comes to China?
•A.A.: I don’t agree that because China has chosen to block Azhar’s listing, it amounts to its contradictory stand on other issues with us. China has tried to take a consistent position as to why it has to blacklist an individual, whereas it is taking a slightly different position with regard to the organisation (JeM).
📰 SCO offers “mediation” to smoothen India-Pakistan
Tensions between India and Pakistan escalated after a suicide bomber of terror group JeM killed 40 CRPF personnel in Pulwama.
•The eight nation Shanghai Cooperation organisation (SCO) on Wednesday offered to smoothen a bilateral dialogue between India and Pakistan so that the two countries can resolve their differences, following last month’s Pulwama terror attack in Kashmir.
•Addressing his first press conference after taking over as the new Secretary General of the SCO, Vladimir Norov offered “mediation,” to support direct talks between New Delhi and Islamabad.
•Mr. Norov said that member states of the SCO were ready “to offer mediation… as there is an intention (by India and Pakistan) to resolve the differences in a bilateral format”.
•He added that membership of India and Pakistan-two large states in South Asia-benefited the entire Eurasian region.
•The SCO’s proposal follows similar openings for mediation by China and Russia.
•Military tensions between India and Pakistan, both SCO members, had escalated dramatically following the February 14 Pulwama attack, in which more than 40 CRPF personnel had been killed.
•Elsewhere, Mr. Norov clarified that differences between India and Pakistan “must be resolved and are being resolved through bilateral consultations and dialogue, goodwill and mutual reasonable compromises”.
•The SCO head made it plain that the grouping does not offer a dispute settlement mechanism where member countries can lodge their differences. “One of such fundamental obligations (of SCO members) is not to bring bilateral contradictions and disagreements to the SCO family, as the SCO is not engaged in the settlement of disputable bilateral issues, whether border, water or other topics in relations between individual Member States,” Mr. Norov observed.
•But he pointed out that because of their involvement in its institutions and initiatives, the SCO provides India and Pakistan ample opportunities, to quietly address their differences and concerns.
•Mr. Norov said that representatives of India and Pakistan have been actively working in the SCO Secretariat and the executive committee of the Tashkent based SCO Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure (RATS). Besides the two countries were working together in all the 29 working mechanisms of the organisation.
•“Being at the same negotiating table, and on a regular basis and in different formats, India and Pakistan are now in the process of a permanent dialogue on all issues which are currently in the agenda of the SCO,” Mr. Norov said.
•He added: “It is well known that constant dialogue, especially based on convergence of long-term strategic interests, contributes to the strengthening of mutual understanding, trust and the search for new points of contact.”
•Mr. Norov stressed that New Delhi and Islamabad were active participants of the SCO-Afghanistan Contact Group, which was engaged in Afghanistan’s transition.
•“The work of the SCO-Afghanistan Contact group at the level of Deputy Foreign Ministers has been intensified. Two promising meetings of the Contact Group have been held in Moscow and Beijing, and we are preparing for the third meeting,” Mr. Norov said.
•He added: “A roadmap for the activities of the SCO-Afghanistan Contact group is being developed. In the beginning of this year, a meeting between representatives of the Afghan public and the Taliban took place in Moscow. The Tashkent process has been launched, which aims to lessen the differences between the Kabul Government and the opposition.”
📰 Enforcing a ban will not end the menace of stubble burning, say researchers
‘Farmers must be educated on its monetary costs’
•Only educating farmers about the monetary costs of burning stubble can address the environmental crisis triggered every year in Punjab, says a team of Swiss and Indian researchers who interviewed 600 farmers over two years. Burning stubble, the rice chaff left over after harvesting, is linked to winter air-pollution in the State as well as down-wind Delhi
•According to the team, the government’s efforts — earmarking funds for specialised farming equipment (for straw management) or enforcing the state-led ban on the practice — are unlikely to solve the problem.
•Farmer cooperative groups — a key link between government and farmers — ought to be playing a more active role in educating farmers, say key authors associated with the study.
Cheap solution
•“The main message is that farmers are not to blame (for the pollution crisis),” says Max Friedrich, a post-doctoral researcher at the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (Eawag). “There are deeper causes beyond economic incentives or awareness about the health consequences of burning at play.”
•On average, about 20 million tonnes of straw are generated in Punjab, and they barely have two to three weeks to dispose them of and prepare the fields for the next crop. Hence the popularity of deploying stubble-burning as a quick and cheap solution.
•For about a decade now, the Delhi and the Centre have held this practice responsible for the abysmal air quality in the capital in winter.
•In 2013, the National Green Tribunal issued a directive to Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh asking them to ban such stubble burning. The environment ministers of these States as well as top officials at the Centre declared a “zero tolerance” policy on the burning of stubble, which has been estimated to contribute anywhere from 7% to 78% of the particulate matter-emission load in Delhi during winter.
•The Centre has spent about ₹600 crore in subsidising farm equipment via village cooperatives to enable farmers to access them and avoid stubble burning. In 2018, Punjab had disbursed about 8,000 farm implements to individual farmers and set up 4,795 custom hiring centres, from where such machinery could be leased. The cost of hiring these machines was about ₹5,000 an acre, as The Hindu has previously reported.
Mixed results
•However, the success of these efforts has been mixed, even though stubble-fires in 2018 were fewer than in 2017 and 2016, according to satellite maps by independent researchers.
•In their interviews, the researchers found that farmers who had bigger landholdings were more likely to burn straw; those who used combine harvesters (for cutting the straw) as opposed to manual labourers were more likely to engage in burning; and those who burnt or didn’t burn were equally aware of the steps and procedures required to abstain from burning, said Dr. Friedrich. On average, the input costs of farmers who burned straw were about ₹40,000 per acre and those who didn’t about ₹25,000 per acre but the incomes of those who burned and those who didn’t were closer — about ₹60,000 and ₹50,000 respectively.
•“There needs to be greater participation by village cooperatives in being able to impose social norms that would dissuade burners,” said Banalata Sen, an independent public health professional, associated with the study, coordinated by Ranas Mosler (affiliated to Eawag), the Centre for Sustainable Agriculture (CSA), Hyderabad and Kethi Virasat Mission (KVM), Jaitu, India.
