Dawood handling terror cash via Bank of Baroda in Bahamas?

Fugitive underworld don Dawood Ibrahim is still allegedly laundering blood money through the Bank of Baroda's branch in the tax havens in Nassau, Bahamas.

According to a CNN-IBN-First Post investigation, large volumes of funds belonging to terror groups based in Afghanistan and Pakistan are being handled by Dawood.

Highly-placed government sources reportedly told the investigation team that the Bank of Baroda's Nassau branch saw successive wire transfers of several hundred thousand dollars from at least 3 Dubai-based currency exchanges -- the al-Zarouni Exchange, the Dubai Exchange and the al-Dirham Exchange, suspected to be proceeds from organised crime.

The Al-Dirham exchange is named in an Indian government dossier on Dawood Ibrahim's operations.

The Bank of Baroda's Nassau branch was unavailable for comment.

The investigation claimed that Dawood had emerged as the principal provider of financial services to narcotics traffickers and jihadists across South Asia -- a business pegged at over $3.5 billion a year, which uses front companies to access the global financial system.

New Delhi had provided Islamabad with the dossier in 2011, naming at least 11 United Arab Emirates-based entities controlled by Dawood's crime cartel. The list, seen by FirstPost includes al-Dirham currency exchange, Almas Electronics, Yusuf Trading, Reem Yusuf Trading, Falaudi Trading Company Gulf Coast Real Estates.

Dawood's laundered money remitted back into Pakistan is boosting the economy. In 2012, remittances jumped to over 10 billion dollars. The Karachi stock exchange gained 49% in 2012, reportedly fuelled by Dawood, claim experts.

Clearly, the US led fund squeeze on terror money and terror fund managers like Dawood and India's efforts to pressure Pakistan on Dawood is not working.

No grand strategic doubts

Every so often, someone - usually from a Western think tank or
publication - comes along and asserts that India lacks a grand
strategy because it lacks a "strategic culture". Last week, it was The
Economist's turn to rehash the same old arguments and trigger a new
but familiar round of self-flagellation.

Don't you find it strange that a civilisation that has survived
several millennia of contact, invasions, colonisation and economic
exchanges with its core values intact is considered lacking a grand
strategy? Don't you find it strange the Indian Republic acquired and
maintained its unity, its pluralism, its democratic polity, in the
face of unprecedented challenges, without a "strategic culture"?

Well, I do.

If the benchmark for grand strategy is Alexandrian expansionism, then
yes, India fails the test. If, however, we look for an answer without
Western prejudices of what grand strategy ought to be, we will find it
in front of our noses: it lies in the pursuit of national unity.

The central preoccupation of India's rulers - from the Mauryas to
Mughals, from the British Raj to the government of the Indian Republic
- has been to unite the nation under one rule. This is our grand
strategy. Our "strategic culture" is centred around this.

The Arthashastra enjoins the king to become the master of the
subcontinent by various methods. But culture places limits on
conquest. Arrian of Nicomedia, a second-century Greek historian,
states that Indian kings refrained from attempting to conquer lands
beyond the subcontinent because that was considered adharma.

While it might disappoint the Alexandrians among us, it is perfectly
honourable to have an internally-focused grand strategy. There is no
reason why only territorial or hegemonic ambition should qualify. The
subcontinent is neither small in size nor the people dwelling in it
few in number; so forging unity is not a simple task. In fact, uniting
and governing a highly diverse nation such as ours is one of the
toughest tests of statecraft. It should not be surprising that the
energies of India's rulers are expended on this task.

Therefore, instead of trying to measure up to Western standards of
what grand strategy ought to be, it is far more important to analyse
what India needs to do to strengthen national unity in the current
day.

Focusing on the internal tends to diminish attention to the external.
The twentieth-century diplomat and historian, K M Panikkar argued that
a "sense of isolation and refusal to see itself in relation to the
states outside the geographical limits of the subcontinent" has
historically been India's weakness. Inattention to the situation
across the Hindu Kush meant that the enemy had to be fought on the
plains of Panipat. Both colonisation and Partition were, in part, due
to the failure of India's leaders to take an interest in politics
beyond our shores. The lesson for us is that India must shape the
global balance of power in ways and towards purposes that strengthen
its own unity.

In a world where people, capital and ideas can move around relatively
easily, nations are defined by success. Everyone wants to part of a
successful nation; flights out of failed nations are often full.
National success is built on the back of prosperity. In other words,
India's unity will come under threat if it is not prosperous. Creating
prosperity is in the domain of domestic policy, but protecting it is a
task of foreign and defence policy.

The experience of the last century has created a mindset in our
establishment that sees the world from a foxhole, defending a weak
India against a hostile external world. We need one that thinks in
terms of promoting the interests of a stronger India in a world where
there are both opportunities and threats.

All of these, essentially, suggest that New Delhi must project power
internationally for the simple, old reason of ensuring our survival as
a united nation. For the next few decades, we will witness a
geopolitical contest between a reigning superpower and its principal
challenger. India shares a number of common interests with the United
States, while Kautilyan logic suggests a structurally adversarial
relationship with China. Even so, India is best off not choosing sides
at this time. It is better off swinging between the two, enjoying
better relations with each of them than they have with each other.

However, those looking for the government to promulgate and implement
a grand strategic blueprint fail to understand that such a thing is
not part of our political culture. It is unlikely that New Delhi will
articulate an official grand strategy. It is, after all, too busy
keeping the nation together.


The writer is director of the Takshashila Institution, an independent
public policy think tank
businessstandard

Can we have waterless agriculture too Mr PM?

We need a master plan to increase our water storage capacity, improve
irrigation facilities and create water networks across the country
that links the draught prone with those experiencing floods, writes M
R Venkatesh.

Water is one crucial factor that sustains life on earth. Yet we take
water for granted unless of course reminded of its importance by
Bollywood actors celebrating waterless Holi. India [ Images ] is
estimated to have a mere 4 per cent of global water resources, while
it has to support 16 per cent of the world's population. Merely by
that equation India is water stressed if not water starved.

The annual precipitation of water in the country is estimated to be
4000 Billion Cubic Metres (BCM) of which three-fourth get precipitated
during the monsoon season (June to September). Of this 4000 BCM, it is
estimated that approximately 1120 BCM are only utilisable. That in
turn adds to the stress.

When rains fail, this situation gets compounded. For instance, the
rainfall in 2009 in India was a mere 78 per cent of the long-term
average rainfall. A 22 per cent shortfall is disastrous in such a
situation. Co-incidentally the UPA under Manmohan Singh [ Images ] was
re-elected only in May 2009. Was Mother Nature warning us?

Similarly in 2012 we faced "drought like" situations in several parts
of India as rainfall was 92 per cent of the long-term average. This
brings in another dimension to our water crisis. When it rains, it
pours during the monsoon. For instance in 2012 nearly 58 per cent
districts recorded excess rain causing flood (the balance 42 per cent
face moderate to severe shortfall).

It is in this connection that the National Water Policy notes that the
availability of water is highly uneven in both space and time.
Precipitation is confined to only about three or four months in a year
and varies from 100 mm in the western parts of Rajasthan [ Images ] to
over 10,000 mm at Cherrapunji in Meghalaya.

No wonder India alternates between floods in some part and drought in
other. The challenge is to link the two.

Dream remained as one

That takes me to the Budget of 2004-05 where finance minister P
Chidambaram [ Images ] said, "I now turn to one of my big dreams.
Water is the lifeline of civilidation. We have been warned that the
biggest crisis that the world will face in the 21st century will be
the crisis of water."

And his response to this "crisis?" "I therefore propose an ambitious
scheme. Through the ages, Indian agriculture has been sustained by
natural and man-made water bodies such as lakes, tanks, ponds and
similar structures. It has been estimated that there are more than a
million such structures and about 500,000 are used for irrigation.
Many of them have fallen into disuse. Many of them have accumulated
silt. Many require urgent repairs."

Absolutely spot on I thought.

In fact his proposal captured the imagination of the entire nation
then. Proposing to launch "a massive scheme to repair, renovate and
restore all the water bodies that are directly linked to agriculture"
the FM sought to begin "with pilot projects in at least five
districts" - one district in each of the five regions of the country.

And once the pilot projects were completed and validated, the
government was to "launch the National Water Resources Development
Project and complete it over a period of 7 to 10 years."

In conclusion, the FM added "It is my hope that by the beginning of
the next decade all water bodies in India will be restored to their
original glory and that the storage capacity of these water bodies
will be augmented by at least 100 per cent."

Once again in his Budget speech of 2005-06 the FM visited the subject
albeit briefly. The zest that was palpable the previous year was
missing. The grand announcement of July 2004 for a pilot project when
the Budget was presented was still on the drawing board and expected
to be "launched in the month of March 2005."

That was the last time I heard of the FM speak of his "big dream." The
promise made almost a decade ago on the floor of the Parliament on
augmenting the storage capacity of water bodies "by at-least 100 per
cent" remains unfulfilled even to this day. So much for government's
concern for farmers, agriculture and creating basic rural
infrastructure!

Now to the second leg of the water problem - the need for irrigation
facility as delivery mechanism.

Once again the FM was spot on with his diagnosis. "The Accelerated
Irrigation Benefit Programme (AIBP) was introduced in 1996-97 and was
allotted large funds year after year. Yet, out of 178 large and medium
irrigation projects that were identified, only 28 have been
completed."

Therefore the UPA government came with a practical proposal to
"restructure" AIBP by ensuring "truly last mile projects that can be
completed by March 2005 will be given overriding priority, and other
projects that can be completed by March 2006 will also be taken up in
the current year."

Well did the government re-structure AIBP? The answer lies in the
Budget speech of Mr Pranab Mukherjee [ Images ] of 2012 where he adds,
"To maximise the flow of benefits from investments in irrigation
projects, structural changes in AIBP are being made."

Readers may note the change in semantics: "restructure AIBP" of 2005
had become "structural changes in AIBP" by 2012!

Despite all the bluster of the FM in his Budget, the fact remains that
the irrigated land as a percentage to total agricultural land in India
has improved marginally between 31.6 per cent in 2004 to approximately
37 per cent in 2011. This eloquently captures the neglect of
irrigation in India by UPA to this date.

The great Indian rope trick

It is in this connection that a target of creating an additional
"irrigation potential" of 10 million hectares (mha) between 2005-06
and 2008-09 was fixed. Interestingly, data with the ministry of water
resources claim that the government "achieved" a physical target of
7.3 mha.

How much of this was "actually" achieved and resulted in improving
farm production is anybody's guess.

Yet till 2012 since its inception in 1996 the AIBP has an outlay in
excess of Rs 55,000 crores either as central grant or loans. While the
sums do indeed look massive the fact remains the overall accretion to
agriculture lands under irrigation has not improved significantly.

Pointing to this anomaly Harish Damodaran in a well-researched article
in The Hindu Business Line pointed out (March 6, 2007) despite the
Centre spending a total of Rs 20,598.48 crore (Rs 205.98 billion)
under the AIBP, with the states releasing an additional Rs 15,000
crore (Rs 150 billion) or so since its inception in 1996.

So how much of new "irrigation potential" has been created under the
AIBP? According to Harish Damodaran, "The cumulative figure from
1995-96 to 2005-06 comes to 4.04 mha, with another 0.9 mha estimated
to be created this fiscal. All that adds to some five mha over a
11-year span."

While the physical accretion is minimal the amount spent on AIBP is
indeed gargantuan. It is in this connection the Comptroller and
Auditor General of India (CAG) in its Report No. 15 of 2004 (Civil)
commented among other things, it noted that over 35 of the
expenditures under AIBP were "diverted, parked or mis-utilised."

In short, as the joke goes amongst economists, AIBP is neither
accelerated nor does it benefit farmers. At best it is yet another
avenue for loot and scoot.

That explains why states like Maharashtra [ Images ] despite having
several such irrigation schemes, funded both by the state and central
government, is perennially water starved. And that would include
Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka [ Images ] and Orissa amongst others.

This in turn leads to farm stress and resultant suicides which in turn
trigger another round of committees, reports, schemes, programs and
once again loot.

It may be noted that India is experiencing its fourth drought in a
dozen years. Needless to emphasise, this raises concerns about the
reliability of the country's primary source of fresh water, the
monsoon rains. Scientists warn that such trends are likely to
intensify in the coming decades because of climate changes caused by
the human release of greenhouse gases.

India with large sections of poor is extremely vulnerable to such
weather patterns.

We need huge quantities of food to feed our population. For that we
require water. So would our industry which is expected to grow
exponentially. Weather patterns show remarkable departure from the
past - if it is drought in one part of the country we will have
floods. Either way it is a disaster.

Ideally we need a master plan to increase our water storage capacity,
improve irrigation facilities and create water networks across the
country that links the draught prone with those experiencing floods.
Unfortunately the decade of UPA rule, like so many other spheres been
a disaster on water management too.

Will someone tell the PM that we can have a waterless Holi but not
waterless agriculture? Will someone educate the PM that a sustainable
development model depends on something as elementary but as crucial as
water. For too long we have ignored this fundamental fact. The
waterless Holi was a rude wakeup call.

The author is a Chennai based Chartered Accountant.
rediff

Cost Cutting in India Media

With high decibel studio discussions dominating 'prime-time' news on television, good old-fashioned field-based reporting is on the decline

A well-lit studio; a celebrity anchor; half a dozen guests representing familiar, but conflicting, view-points on any particular issue; a couple of 'neutral' analysts or journalists thrown in; each panelist fighting hard to get a couple of minutes of air-time to express his views; provocative questions, screeching voices, loud arguments; and a wrap-up which exposes, but also sharpens, the polarized nature of discourse over complex issues 'facing the nation' or that the 'nation wants an answer to'.

In the past few years, news channels have increasingly adopted such a template for shows in 'prime-time' slots. Studio discussions are neither new nor unique to India. They can also provide the viewer with a range of perspectives from key actors. But what is new, and some argue, disturbing, is that this format is no longer a supplement to ground-level reportage, but almost a substitute to it.

When asked why such shows have become the norm, Sreenivasan Jain, managing editor of NDTV, told The Hindu, "Various channels have experimented with different formats on prime-time. There was a perception that viewers preferred in-depth discussions rather than the bulletin format. But this is not cast in stone. The nature of programming shifts depending on viewer feedback."

But two senior editors, in NDTV and the IBN Network, who wished to remain anonymous, said that economics and the imperative of 'cost-cutting' is a key factor. "It is the cheapest form of journalism. The success of Times Now's show changed the paradigm, and all of us emulated it," said one of them. The economic downturn had a major adverse impact on television channels, with reduced advertising budgets impacting revenues. This compelled channels to 'rationalise and be prudent' about expenses. But an infusion of corporate funds, and the slow market recovery, is helping things now.

The rise of the studio discussion format has taken place with a corresponding decline in reportage on television.

Presenting evidence of the reduced investment in reporting budgets, a senior journalist in one leading English news channel said, "We have no correspondent in Guwahati. From about 25 people, the Mumbai bureau is down to 5-6 people. There is one reporter in a State of Uttar Pradesh's size. There is no investment in the stringer network. Reporters are travelling less." He also pointed to the increasing reliance on travel junkets, sponsored programmes, special shows dictated by advertiser interests, and agency footage as a growing trend which had replaced independent reportage.

Another journalist links reporting with television ratings, and consequently, the advertising inflow it can generate. She says, "Investment in reporting depends on whether it falls in our TRP zone. So for Kumbh, Hindi channels sent teams and did live shows for weeks but they would not do it for the North-East."  

But the story is not black-and-white, and TV journalists are swift to list out the caveats. They claim there is no compromise on 'essential stories', and even studio discussions are preceded by short news stories on the issue. Established figures in channels still have leeway in determining their reporting priorities, and can travel with teams to do in-depth stories if they choose to do so. Delayed as it may have been, some big networks did send reporters out to the neighbourhood to cover key events like the Shahbhag protests in Dhaka recently.

NDTV's Jain is one of the few senior journalists to have broken the trend with his weekly reportage show, Truth Versus Hype, which broke several stories including Nitin Gadkari's dubious business interests. "I wanted to return to old-fashioned, grassroots, field journalism. And I certainly think there is a greater need to do that given the crisis of faith in the media." He found that viewer ratings were surprisingly good for shows on issues like Chhattisgarh, which media managers are quick to dismiss as unappealing.

But these are few and far between. Sashi Kumar, Asian College of Journalism chairperson, is scathing in his criticism. "A package story would give the background, the context, perspectives and provide the viewer with a well-rounded picture. One doesn't see those capsules on news anymore. They have studio guests, and a reporter giving his unsolicited opinion." This, he says, is "impressionistic, subjective, and a violation of journalistic standards".

Rejecting the 'this is what viewers want' claim as a 'dope peddler's argument', the ACJ chair made a distinction between different forms of reportage. "Having half-an-hour specials, investigative documentaries would be the icing on the cake. But these are costly affairs that require expertise and even international channels are cutting down on it." Its absence, he indicates, is understandable. "But daily news capsules are the staple diet and providing that is the duty of channels. TV has done away with the concept of reporting. It is all opinion now."

thehindu

MANMOHAN STEPPING DOWN?

What Naipaul Got Right, and Wrong, About India

By Pankaj Mishra - Mar 31, 2013
While reading a shocking report about extrajudicial killings and
torture by Indian security forces in Kashmir, I was reminded of V.S.
Naipaul's "India: A Million Mutinies Now," arguably the most
influential book about modern India.

More than two decades after the book was published, India is full of
ominous signs of the breakdown of governance and the increasing
recourse to violence by the Indian state as well as extremist groups.
And so it was strange to read Naipaul's optimistic take on an earlier
phase of this turmoil: "Many of these movements of excess strengthened
the Indian state, defining it as a source of law and civility and
reasonableness."

The special pleading here actually belies the prophetic cast of many
of Naipaul's observations, which have shaped much recent writing and
thinking about the country, from Sunil Khilnani's "The Idea of India"
to Suketu Mehta's "Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found."

Naipaul traveled in the late 1980s to Mumbai, South India,
communist-ruled Bengal, Lucknow, Delhi and Kashmir. His interlocutors
came from a carefully chosen sample of Indians: poor Muslims,
upper-caste Hindus, Sikhs, Kashmiri Muslims, Punjabis, Tamils,
ex-communists and Dalits, formerly untouchable Hindus. Naipaul even
sought out the producers and consumers of women's magazines.

Simple Thesis

Out of these varied encounters, Naipaul drew a simple yet irrefutable
thesis about India: "People everywhere have ideas of who they are and
what they owe themselves."

You could argue with Naipaul about whether India's "civilization" had
really been "wounded" by decayed Hindu rituals, barbaric Muslim
invaders and a sterile Gandhism. Nevertheless, he seemed to have had
brilliantly intuited that many long-suppressed Indians, galvanized by
ideas of freedom and dignity, were now finally revolting against their
wretched circumstances.

Intriguingly, such upbeat assessments of India's latent energies
reflected a 180-degree turn in Naipaul's thinking about the land of
his ancestors. This was the same writer who had skittishly charged in
the early 1960s that "Indians defecate everywhere" -- and made this
proclamation, equally hyperbolic, in the mid-1970s: "India needed a
new code, but it had none. There were no rules; and India was
discovering again that it was cruel and horribly violent."

Cruising down the road to Damascus in 1990, Naipaul wasn't deluded
into thinking that there was anything nonviolent or benign about
India's million mutinies. In fact, they were "supported by 20 kinds of
group excess, sectarian excess, religious excess, regional excess."
Nevertheless, the eruptions of rage had to be contrasted with what
didn't exist before in India: "a central will, a central intellect, a
national idea."

"What the mutinies were helping to define," he wrote, "was the
strength of the general intellectual life, and the wholeness and
humanism of the values to which all Indians could appeal." So, as
Naipaul saw it, "the mutinies were not to be wished away. They were
part of the beginning of a new way for millions, part of India's
growth, part of its restoration."

It is worth asking today: Has a writer ever been more wrong and more
right at the same time?

In retrospect, Naipaul had chosen in 1990 a perversely unpromising
moment to bet on the Indian state's ability to arbitrate -- and
eventually defuse -- the million mutinies. Militant insurgencies in
Punjab and Kashmir, the assassination of a prime minister, and pogroms
against Muslims and Sikhs had made the 1980s the most violent decade
in modern Indian history.

New Inequalities

Two years after the publication of "A Million Mutinies Now," the Hindu
nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party would demolish a medieval mosque in
North India. Then, rising on a wave of anti-Muslim violence, it would
assume power in Delhi in 1998 and immediately conduct nuclear tests.

Assaults on minorities, especially in Kashmir, would intensify,
culminating in the mass murder, assisted by the local government, of
more than 2,000 Muslims in the state of Gujarat in 2002. Economic
globalization, while benefiting a small minority, would graft new
inequalities of income and opportunity on to India's older hierarchies
of caste.

But Naipaul saw India, especially its Hindu majority, making another
tryst with destiny. In his own version of the Hegelian-Marxian
dialectic, conflict helped usher India into a higher stage of
progress. It was a kind of national development that, to use Lenin's
words, "proceeds in spirals, not in a straight line; a development by
leaps, catastrophes and revolutions."

To be sure, Naipaul hadn't relied on any grand teleology to hail the
progress of India's democratic revolution. He worked, as always, from
the story he had constructed of his own life. Phrases such as "central
will" and "national idea" always had a great emotional appeal for
Naipaul, who grew up with a bewilderingly mixed identity in a
politically insignificant country (Trinidad). He extrapolated from his
own improbable success as a self-made writer from nowhere to evoke a
future for India in which most of its citizens would, after some
necessary struggle, find happiness.

Indeed, Naipaul was much taken with the American idea of happiness. As
he said in a lecture at the Manhattan Institute in 1990: "So much is
contained in it: the idea of the individual, responsibility, choice,
the life of the intellect, the idea of vocation and perfectibility and
achievement. It is an immense human idea."

But, unlike most of his conservative audience that day, Naipaul did
not see big government as obstructing the private pursuit of
happiness. He partook rather of the assumption -- commonplace among
Third World intellectuals -- that the state was the prime agent of the
spirit of history, whose central intellect and will assist and protect
its citizens as they seek material and intellectual fulfilment.

Losing Legitimacy

Though alert to the failures and disasters of postcolonial regimes in
Africa, Naipaul strangely could not see -- the consequence, perhaps,
of his excessive reliance on individual encounters and near-total
indifference to political economy -- how the Indian state was rapidly
losing its credibility and legitimacy in the 1970s and '80s.

In "A Million Mutinies Now," he completely missed how the central
government had cynically encouraged, even helped create, the
secessionist minority of Sikhs in Punjab, or how it had routinely
rigged elections in Muslim-majority Kashmir, finally forcing its
peaceable population to take up arms in the late '80s.

As the '90s progressed, Naipaul confused his cherished "national idea"
and "central intellect" with irruptions of a xenophobic nationalism
among a minority of middle-class and upper-caste Hindus. Not
surprisingly, he hailed the BJP's vandalizing of a mosque in 1992 as a
great historical "awakening."

It is not clear what he makes of the demoralizing spectacle today of
the undermining of the Indian state's central will by crony capitalism
and allegations of gargantuan venality, and the replacement of the
national idea by private fantasies of rapid self-enrichment.

In 1990, Naipaul was perfectly placed to describe the magnitude and
vitality of India's experiment with democracy, if not foresee the
paradoxical result of its success: fragmentation into multiple
competing political and economic interests, and incoherence and
paralysis at the center.

Certainly, Naipaul's early predictions about politicized and motivated
Indians have been abundantly ratified. But, for all their literary
power, his writings cannot lighten the task of those who struggle to
decipher today -- in the larger postcolonial world as well as in India
-- the million mutinies that continue to erupt in the great void of
the national idea.

(Pankaj Mishra is the author of "From the Ruins of Empire: The Revolt
Against the West and the Remaking of Asia" and a Bloomberg View
columnist, based in London and Mashobra, India. The opinions expressed
are his own.)
blooomberg

Fearful female tourists are now avoiding India:

The number of foreign women tourists, including Australians, visiting India has dropped by 35 per cent in the past three months following a spate of sex attacks that have made global headlines.

The Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India says overall tourist arrivals are down 25 per cent year-on-year, with holidaymakers opting instead to visit other Asian countries such as Malaysia and Thailand.

The fatal gang-rape of a 23-year-old Indian student by six men on a bus in New Delhi in December sparked outrage over the country's treatment of women, and since then there have been other widely reported attacks.

A Swiss cyclist was gang-raped in Madhya Pradesh last month, while a South Korean tourist was allegedly drugged and raped in the same state in January by the son of the owner of a hotel where she was staying.

These incidents have "raised concerns about the safety of female travellers to the country", said D.S. Rawat, secretary general at ASSOCHAM, which surveyed 1200 tour operators from different cities.

rediff