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A little under two years ago on July 6, 2006, the Nathu-La Pass situated on the border between India and now illegally occupied Tibet was opened for border trade between the Indian state of Sikkim and the so called Tibetan Autonomous region.

At that time much of the media and officialdom had gone on an overdrive peddling the line that this was being done because China had finally recognised Sikkim as an integral part of India, in exchange for the India’s unequivocal recognition of Tibet as a part of China.

But since then though countless Indian officials, mediamen and politicians cutting across party lines have many times chanted the mantra that India recognises Tibet as an integral part of China without the slightest provocation, no Chinese leader has ever made a similar statement on Sikkim even when asked pointed questions in that regard. The closest that they ever came was when Chinese premier Wen Jiabao in his April 2005 visit to India in reply to a pointed question tactfully replied “It is well known that the issue of Sikkim is no longer the problem between China and India. This is the common consensus reached by the leaders of both countries.”

The Indian side unfortunately did not push this matter forcefully enough with the Chinese side and extract a unambiguous written statement from the Chinese declaring that they accepted that Sikkim was an integral part of India and chose to be content with the Chinese statement that “Sikkim was no longer a problem between China and India”.

Well now they have decided to make it a problem. A year after they demolished a makeshift bunker on the Indian side comes the news that they have now laid claim to a piece of land in North Sikkim.

China has surprised India by laying claim on a small tract of land in North Sikkim, even threatening this week to demolish existing stone structures there. India has strongly rebutted these claims, lodged an official protest and barred Chinese troops from entering the area.

Referred to as the “Finger Area” by Indian armed forces, this territory falls north of Gyangyong in Sikkim and overlooks a strategically important valley known as the Sora Funnel. It contains several stone cairns, which are essentially heaps of stones that can be used for shelter. The area is in the northernmost tip of Sikkim, north of a place called Gyangyong, and appears like a protruding finger on the map — hence the name Finger Area.[link]

The bottomline is that the Indian side brought this upon itself by not extracting a written and unambiguous statement from the Chinese side that they regarded Sikkim as an integral part of India and lulling themselves into complacency. The Media is not entirely blameless in this episode as it had back then shirked its duty of playing the role of a vigilant watchdog and allowed itself to be taken in by the government line that the absence of an unambiguous statement from the Chinese side was not a big deal at all. so this despairing statement at the end of the article in the Indian express appears quite disingenuous.

But clearly, what was considered a settled issue once China recognized Sikkim as part of India is now making an uncomfortable re-entry into the boundary settlement discourse.

can we hear that collective refrain from the Indian establishment and the media- oh! the wicked Chinese not respecting the “spirit” of that “settlement” .

got news for you guys with Communist China even the letter doesn’t matter. but it would have atleast made you guys look less stupid now if you had only managed to get it.

The Hindu, the unofficial communist mouthpiece in India cannot hide its glee at what it calls a “meticulously planned attack” by the Naxals on a police armoury, station and a training school in Nayagarh, Orissa last night which killed more than 14 people and injured many more including many civilians.

Maoists kill 14 in meticulosly planned attack in Orissa 

Nayagarh (Orissa) (PTI): Maoists killed 14 people, including 13 policemen, and took away a huge quantity of arms and ammunition in a meticulously planned attack on a police station, police training school and armoury here in Nayagarh district late Friday night.

A group of nearly 100 maoists, including women cadre armed with guns and bombs launched the attack at 11:00 pm last night, the first attack in coastal Orissa a mere 90 km from the state capital, and a rerun of the March 2006 attack on a sub-jail in Udaygiri in Gajapati district and looting of an armoury in Koraput town earlier in February 2004.

Nayagarh Superintendent of Police Rajesh Kumar said while 10 policemen were were shot dead by the maoists at the police training school, a civilian died after being caught in the crossfire at the Daspalla police station, 30 km away.

The two other police casualties occurred when the maoists, retreating after attacking the Mahipur police outpost shot them dead, the SP said.

The maoists took away all the arms in the district armoury and the police training school in a truck and a hijacked bus.

Landmines laid by the maoists while retreating at Majuriapali near here injured one person.

Very difficult to miss the triumphant language used while recounting the body count of this gruesome incident and the spoils taken away by the marauders. there is absolutely no sympathy for the innocent people killed in the barbaric attacks anywhere in this article by this newspaper. It makes one wonder where the sympathy of this paper really lies? what kind of an India do they envision if they condone violence and lawnessness in this manner? Is this how a “respectable” newspaper should behave in this hour of tragedy?

Once again the Judicial system in India has proved that when it comes to punishing the Rich and the powerful their famed blindfold does come off for a little while.

While the sessions court sentenced the owners of the Cinema hall and some civic officials to a mere two years and even readily set them free on bail they sentenced a mere gatekeeper, the lowest person in the chain and hence not in a position to hire the best lawyers to defend him to seven years rigorous imprisonment and promptly sent him to prison.

Now in what way is a mere Gatekeeper more culpable than the owner of the building who built the hall flouting all norms, bribed civic officials to look the other way, maintained the building in a poor shape and finally hired him, a thoroughly incompetent gatekeeper, and others, the managers and supervisors to run the whole place?

The buck in this case clearly stops at the very top. And the Association of Victims of Uphaar Tragedy are clearly right in expressing their dismay at the verdict and seeking to approach the High court.

The poor quality of the infrastructure and public facilities and the woeful safety record in the country is a direct result of the people in charge the builders, the civic officials etc… not being held to accountable for their actions and unless the justice system starts taking stringent action against the powers that be such tragedies will continue to happen on a regular basis.

At the end of the 17th Chinese Communist party Congress Hu Jintao the current president has according to most observers secured his position and also managed to get most of what he wanted including the possibility of either of his favourite proteges Li Keqiang and Xi Jinping succeeding him when he steps down in 2012. something which his predecessor Jiang Zemin couldn’t manage partly because Hu was Deng Xiaoping’s pointman and destined to become President after Jiang. Hu gained favour with Deng because of his successful suppression of the Tibetan uprising in 1988-89 when he was the party chief in the Tibet.

This act of his impressed Deng so much that he immediately put Hu on the path to power by promptly including him as a member in the seven member politburo during the 14th party congresss held during 1992. The original plan was to elect a politburo to manage the transition from the so called second generation of party leadership led by Deng to the third generation of party leadership around Jiang zemin.But then Hu Jintao, the new blue eyed boy of Deng was included as the nucleus of a future fourth generation of party leadership. Effectively creating two factions within the Party. The Jiang and the Hu factions.

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The riots that followed a Radio Jockey’s comment about recently crowned Indian Idol Prashant Tamang has lessons for everyone involved.

First it is time(it is 60 years since independence for heavens sake) that we Indians from all over the country start addressing each other by their own respective names and stop using slang to describe each other. that means no more talk of madrasis, bhayyas, chinkies, banias etc… full stop to that.period.

Second, learn to take it easy. going on a rampage because someone said something that you do not like is so futile in this day and age. It is a globalised world with 6 billion people around and not everyone is your fan.

Third, The Indian state should seriously start pursuing and convicting Rioters/vandals/lynch mobs etc… At this point the impression has become widespread that the long arm of the law will not catch up if the crime is committed during public disturbances such as Riots, strikes and hartals etc…That impression should be changed forthwith and the authorities should start by throwing as many rioters as one can identify by means of eyewitness accounts, camera recordings etc… behind the bars for good. That should put the fear of the Gods in the sub-continental mobs for all time to come.

Tarun Vijay’s recent alarming report on the problems in the North-East of the country is nothing new. There have been many, many such columns on a regular basis and even a high quality documentary by a TV channel about the problem. And they go along the same line- “The North-East is burning but the nabobs in Delhi couldn’t care less, All the money that is earmarked to go to the north-east for developmental purposes is diverted into the pockets of the corrupt netas, babus, contractors and assorted middlemen etc…”

And the Big one- “Bangladeshi illegal immigration is going on unchecked but the politicians are standing in the way of tackling this problem because of their perverted vote bank politics etc…”

But is it enough to just stop at blaming the government of the day? Or is it a much more deep rooted problem? Even the supposedly patriotic NDA govt which was in power for six years didn’t do anything much better than the current corrupt and anti-national dispensation.

Infact during the NDA rule the BDR even got away with the brutal murders of the BSF jawans in cold blood!

So what is it that keeps India from responding appropriately to the Bangladeshi problem? A peep into the thinking of the Indian establishment with regard to Bangladesh can be had in B.Raman’s recent book “The Kaoboys of R&AW” where the author laments about the Bangladesh issue thus.

“Bangladesh which brought glory to the R&AW in 1971, became an embarrassing millstone around its neck. It watched helplessly as there was one surprise after another and as Bangladesh once again became the hub of anti-Indian activities directed against India’s North-East.The spread of insurgency to Tripura and Assam in the 1980s from sanctuaries in Bangladesh and the seeming Indian helplessness in dealing with it strengthened India’s image as a soft state”.

“In India one doesn’t often realize the constraints imposed on Indian policy making in Bangladesh, the like of which one does not face in Pakistan. Bangladesh still has a large number of Hindus and has substantial pockets of friendly feelings for India. Any unwise and hasty use of the big stick against Bangladesh could have negative consequences for the Hindus and the pro-India sections of its population.The resulting Indian reluctance to use the big stick is exploited by the anti-Indian elements in the local administration and political class to further step up their anti-India activities. We have not yet found a way of breaking out of this vicious circle.”

It is said that for the Americans Iranian history doesn’t go before 1979. A similar mental block seems to afflict Indians in the case of Bangladesh who cannot see that country without the prism of 1971 not one year before not one year after.

We Indians seem to have collectively forgotten what pre-1971 Bangladesh was. We seem to have forgotten that before the events of 1971 today’s Bangladesh was East Pakistan and it chose to secede from its mother country and join Pakistan willingly with even a referendum to boot and also it did more than its share to make the Pakistani dream come true. Have we forgotten that some of the worst riots, massacres and cases of mass ethnic cleansing designed to make Pakistan a reality happened in the East? What about the Calcutta direct action day? Noakhali? etc… The slaughter in the East was just as worse as that in the West which gets much of the attention in the chronicles of the partition.

1971 therefore was just an internal problem between the two wings of Pakistan where we merely intervened to safeguard our own interests. As simple as that. But instead of seeing that reality in the right perspective the Indian side naively expected that East Pakistan will be replaced by a grateful and friendly Bangladesh. The disappointment and bewilderment that it did not happen is palpable in the above quoted paragraph written by one of the long time insiders of the Indian establishment.

Even the remote possibility that Bangladesh will somehow buck its own chosen destiny and evolve into a friendly state went bust in 1975 with the overthrow and execution of its founding father Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. Since then Bangladesh has steadily reverted to the path that it had chosen for itself when it became East Pakistan in 1947 but had been temporarily forced to pause by the events of 1971.

The Bangladesh of today is therefore the heir of the East Pakistan of 1947 and not the Bangladesh we helped found in 1971. Hope we start admitting that to ourselves before we can begin to deal with the challenges posed by this rogue state in sheep’s clothing.

One year ago more than 200 innocent people doing nothing more than returning home from a hard day’s work were brutally murdered and hundreds more were injured in the name of an insidious and perverted ideology.

But the perpetrators of this dastardly crime are still at large and even basic security measures to make sure such tragedies never occur are yet to be taken. Our politicians aided by the heavily politicised media are more than happy to brush this and other such incidents under the carpet by invoking the so called “Mumbai spirit” and thus escape their own responsibilities to ensure safety and security in the vulnerable public places across the country.

A week after July 11, 2006, Western Railways installed close circuit television (CCTV) cameras at seven of the 28 suburban railway stations in Mumbai. It was decided that a total of 530 CCTV cameras would be installed throughout the suburban rail network. This has not happened yet, as mandarins continue to dither over whether it would be cheaper to hire these cameras rather than buy them.

This is just the tip of the iceberg that no one seems to be worried about crashing into time and again. As we did in the days following July 11, 2006, we’ll hear more about the indomitable spirit of Mumbaikars this week. By extension that’s the tragic tale of India and its general approach to terrorism: we can handle every tragedy; all we have to do is to keep calling it ‘moral victory’.[HT]

And the invertebrates of the UPA and the MEA simply cannot be bothered with it.

Is the left-liberal leaning Gandhian Indian establishment really serious about safeguarding India’s territorial integrity at any cost or are they are just going through the motions so that in future if anything went wrong they can say that they tried their best when in fact they had not?

China jams AIR and DD in Arunachal Pradesh

SHILLONG: Now, the people of Arunachal want the Indian government to provide facilities to learn Chinese!

This strange demand is borne out of frustration at the inability of most areas in Arunachal Pradesh to access any Indian news channel or tune into All India Radio programmes. Both All India Radio (AIR) and Doordarshan, forget any private news channels, are jammed by the more powerful Chinese transmitters that are used use to air their radio and television programmes to the residents of the Arunachal districts near the Chinese border. The weak transmitter in Itanagar does not cover the remote districts of the state, though it serves the state capital and areas near it.

At a time when China is claiming Arunachal Pradesh as its own territory, Delhi’s oversight is a glaring example of successive governments’ lackadaisical attitude to the people of the region.

“We have been demanding more powerful transmitters for many years but nobody is bothered. We want to access Air India Radio and Doordarshan and know what is happening in the rest of the country,” said Anthony, a human rights activist from Arunachal.

He said out of anger and frustration he had asked Indian officials to start Chinese classes.

There is also the fear in the districts bordering China that New Delhi may let go of their areas to China during border talks.

That fear is indeed very much justified considering the kind of people running the current government led by a puppet PM who went on record recently claiming that China is his “greatest neighbour” (Which isn’t way off the mark if one has seen the gigantic size of the Chinese embassy as compared to other embassies in Lutyens Delhi where he himself resides) that combined with the track record of the “panchsheel” MEA. The matter is very serious indeed.

The Chinese have now officially laid reasserted their claim to the whole of the North-Eastern Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh.

NEW DELHI, MAY 25: Chinese territorial claims over Arunachal Pradesh—a key component of the longstanding boundary dispute with India—has once again come in the way of bilateral interactions, acting as a major party pooper for a group of IAS officers headed for a management program to China.

A study visit of 107 IAS officers to Beijing and Shanghai, part of a programme to learn more about Chinese economic growth and policies, has been cancelled because of Beijing’s refusal to grant visa to one IAS officer hailing from Arunachal Pradesh.

The denial of visa to the officer, Ganesh Koyu, a 52-year-old promotee, obviously stems from China’s refusal to accept Arunachal Pradesh as part of the Indian territory. In fact, Beijing is understood to have pointed out that the man in question is a Chinese citizen.

Nothing starkly highlights the bankruptcy of the Indian diplomacy in one snapshot than this fiasco. Back in November the Chinese Ambassador to India had in an interview to CNN-IBN claimed that his government considers the whole of the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh as their territory. At that time the UPA government and its foreign ministry ably supported by the Indian communist infested mainstream media had tried to brush the whole matter under the carpet by claiming that perhaps he was misquoted, that he might not be reflecting the actual opinion of the Chinese govt back home etc… Well now they have official confirmation. Sun Yuxi was not speaking for himself but he was very much speaking on behalf of his government.

While the Indian side in a lame and lazy manner is seeking to hold the 10th, 11th….1000th round of border “negotiations” in more and more attractive resorts and five star suites at taxpayer’s expense, the Chinese are sharply focussed on what they want.This glaring deficiency in the approach of Indian diplomacy is showing. It would be a good idea for India to rethink its entire foreign policy, disband the Ministry of External Affairs and the entrenched IFS cadre and open up the Foreign services to more open competition and include more subject experts in its ranks who want to be in the Foreign service as a first choice rather than just people who got into the IFS because they couldn’t make it to the IAS.

What does Mayawati’s sweeping victory in the UP elections mean for the dalits? Nearly a week later it is clear that all that euphoria about a so called great “social revolution” caused by her bringing together of a rainbow coalition of upper castes, dalits and muslims was nothing but meaningless and premature.

And so were any hopes of her giving a better administration to that much misruled state been dashed by her partisan behaviour in the past week when she immediately stayed all the decisions of the previous government, transferred officials who she did not see eye to eye with and threatened to launch enquiries into alleged wrongdoings of the previous government. Added to that her party and government has the same problem of having alleged and convicted criminals in its rolls as any other previous or current governments and political parties across the country.

So what has really changed? According to Mr Chandra Bhan Prasad, a noted Dalit intellectual.

The only thing that has changed is the arrival of the dalits as a strong political force on the national stage on their own steam.They call the shots in this government and for a change it is the others who play second fiddle to them now.That’s a huge revolution in a country where for thousands of years they had virtually no voice.

Analysts will debate over the spectacular success of Mayawati’s Dalit-Brahmin thesis, and make predictions on India’s political equations.But what we must ponder over is: what does this victory mean for the larger Dalit mass?

Critics will have their day. ‘Few thousands Dalits will benefit individually, they will say. Many more Dalits will become ministers, Dalit bureaucrats and mid-level officers will get plum positions, and a host of new policy packages will be unleashed for Dalits,’ they might sneer.

‘Can State-engineered public policies reach each household in any society,’ they will ask.’At best, Dalits will have satisfaction that their own person is at the helm of affairs,’ they will whisper.

Such possible criticisms deserve attention.Fact: No State policy, howsoever big, can reach all citizens.

The Mayawati government too, therefore, cannot reach out to every Dalit household and uplift it. That is the truth. But, Mayawati’s ascendancy to power can do much more than what we generally can comprehend.

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