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EDITORIAL
Wag
The Indo-Pak Dog
Engagement is fine but
the outbreak of peace is a fantasy
 The
text is all optimism and "O Brother" bonhomie. What with Prime
Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's unanticipated invitation and General Pervez
Musharraf's unexpected enthusiasm for the handshake. However, the hope
of the leadership, both in Delhi and Islamabad, is not shared by those
who have made a prosperous fundamentalist career out of Kashmir-the jehadis
across the border, for instance. The Lashkar-e-Toiba chief has reportedly
threatened to kill the Indian prime minister outside the Red Fort. The
suddenly dovish Musharraf has asked him and fundamentalists like him to
shut up, and the next day, an equally peace-crazy Vajpayee welcomed the
spinefulness of his would-be partner-in-peace. This is some subcontinental
brotherhood. Really? Come to the subtext and read the motives.
True, at the outset the grand gesture of Vajpayee
has the makings of statesmanship, and this subcontinent badly needs some
amount of it. On closer look, the grand gesture has the makings of a grand
diversion: a symbolic border escape from the domestic hothouse, a desi
version of Wag the Dog, the only difference being that the diversion is
not a phony war but a phony peace. A crisis of confidence, not-so-happy
assembly election results, cracks in the image-the Vajpayee mystique was
in need of some repair. And the General has not yet passed the trust test,
despite the belated brave words against the jehadis. He is, after all,
the same man who responded to Vajpayee's Lahore journey by initiating
Kargil. This man has done nothing pathbreaking to convince India that
he is different from his predecessors, for Kashmir has been a politically
as well as religiously mobilising slogan for successive Pakistani leaderships.
And Indo-Pak history is replete with instances of grand gestures being
followed by grand deceptions. So, engagement is fine but the outbreak
of peace is fantasy.
Double Trouble
Gujarat's two-child norm
is bad law and worse politics
 In
deciding to legislate in favour of a two children per couple norm, the
Government of Gujarat has either grasped the nettle or committed political
suicide. With a population of one billion and growing, there is no question
that a check on this great proliferation is among India's top priorities.
Yet to actively encourage small families to the point of virtually outlawing
the alternative is an alarming action. There is the liberal argument that
regulating the personal lives of citizens does not quite fit the government's
job description. It is only non-democracies like China that have such
rules. In India, the one major coercive strategy adopted to control population-by
Sanjay Gandhi during the Emergency-led to forced sterilisation, the tyranny
of the minor bureaucrat desperate to meet annual "targets" and
a tremendous political backlash.
Enforcing the sort of law Gujarat has proposed
is also going to be a nightmare. Will it, for instance, cover a Bengali
temporarily residing in Gujarat? Can a permanent resident of, say, Surat
who works in Bangalore have two children or three? In tackling such profound
questions, the law will make an ass of itself. Rather than address itself
to the impossible-state-specific population control-Gandhinagar should
put forward an all-India proposal that the Centre could carry to the rest
of the country. It is also worth asking whether a blind numbers approach
is the correct-indeed, only-way to ensure a stable population. Demographers
and population specialists have pointed to the larger social benefits
of checking maternal and infant mortality or of a focused women's empowerment
mission. In February 2000, the Union Government accommodated the very
views in the national population policy. Gujarat can't pretend this document
doesn't exist.
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