1 The end of perpetual was (The New York Times) President Obama’s speech last week was the most important statement on counterterrorism policy since the 2001 attacks, a momentous turning point in post-9/11 America. For the first time, a president stated clearly and unequivocally that the state of perpetual warfare that began nearly 12 years ago is unsustainable for a democracy and must come to an end in the not-too-distant future.
“Our systematic effort to dismantle terrorist organizations must continue,” Mr. Obama said in the speech at the National Defense University. “But this war, like all wars, must end. That’s what history advises. It’s what our democracy demands.”
While there are some, particularly the more hawkish Congressional Republicans, who say this war should essentially last forever, Mr. Obama told the world that the US must return to a state in which counterterrorism is handled, as it always was before 2001, primarily by law enforcement and the intelligence agencies. That shift is essential to preserving the democratic system and rule of law for which the US is fighting, and for repairing its badly damaged global image.
For the first time, Mr. Obama admitted to ordering the death of an American citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki, and to the unintentional deaths of three other Americans, including Mr. Awlaki’s 16-year-old son, in drone strikes. Mr. Obama announced important shifts in the policy of using unmanned drones to kill citizens of other countries, in the territory of sovereign nations, without any public, judicial or meaningful Congressional oversight. From now on, the Central Intelligence Agency and the military will no longer target individuals or groups of people in countries like Pakistan based merely on the suspicion that their location or actions link them to Al Qaeda or other groups allied with the terrorist network.
2 Japan tops in life-expectancy (Straits Times) Singapore has the fourth-best life expectancy rate in the world, latest World Health Organisation figures reveal. Average life expectancy at birth stood at 82 years in 2011, making it a joint fourth with Italy. Singapore women can expect to live to 85 and men to the age of 80.
The top three countries were Japan - which has a female life expectancy of 86 and a male life expectancy of 82 - Switzerland and San Marino.
3 Pakistan and the possible (Anjum Niaz in Dawn) Change, real, palpable and demonstrable can only happen if the 180 million Pakistanis feel they have a stake in their country. Why must they wait for the Sharifs, Zardaris/Bhuttos, Imran Khans, Maulana Fazal-ur-Rahmans or Justice Iftikhar Chaudhrys to take them up the garden path laden with roses? Why not make your own garden? The way Steve Jobs did.
He started out by tinkering with the Apple computer in his parents’ garage way back in 1976. When he died in October 2011, the son of a Syrian immigrant and unmarried American mother (the couple gave him up for adoption) he had built it into the world’s most valuable company. The Real Leadership Lessons of Steve Jobs is a must read for all. It took his biographer Walter Isaacson years of research including lengthy sessions with the ailing Jobs as cancer ravaged his body and death lay waiting. The man who transformed personal computing, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, retail stores and digital publishing had one simple assert at his disposal: his creativity.
Jobs is quoted as saying: “Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do.” If only Pakistan’s policymakers and decision takers had followed this one single principle doggedly. Valuable resources — human, financial and natural — would not have borne failed schemes and worthless results by each government that we suffered including the last.
Citizen activism if applied with imagination can snowball into something sustainable. Start with small things like good behaviour on the roads. The best helicopter view of a society is how people ply their four wheelers, three wheelers and two wheelers on public roads. Why is there not a law that mandates mirrors on both sides of the motorbike bar? It can save lives, prevent people’s blood pressure from shooting up in a close shave between the biker and the motorist. The law on helmet wearing is enforced strictly, why not mirrors?
Imagination, creativity and vision at every level by every individual are the only drivers of change. The rest is just idle talk. “Citizenship is not always grand and soaring, but involves daily, ordinary actions of maintenance. We should be inspired, but inspired by the common institutions that make democracy work”, says a wise man.
4 When bookies thrive in India (MJ Akbar in Dawn) The first evidence of serious match fixing came from Dubai, and South Africa was soon in play as well. But the biggest cash flow was from India. It was only a question of time before ‘foreign direct investment’ entered Indian bookie space. Dawood Ibrahim’s name is always bandied about, never with sufficient proof and always with sufficient conviction.
But senior Indian and Pakistani cricketers of a generation ago were caught in the company of fixers located in Dubai but with wider travelling rights. What did the authorities do? Nothing much. Everyone was eventually rehabilitated. As great a public hero as former India captain Azharuddin was banned by the Board of Control for Cricket in India, but then honoured with a seat in the Lok Sabha.
It is perfectly reasonable, then, that today’s young men swimming in the sex and fame of the IPL industry should believe that their only punishment, in the unlikely event of being caught, is a slight tap on the knuckles just now and a parliament seat from Trivandrum or Kochi when they reach a more enlightened age. We should have no illusions. The few who are staring at the walls of a prison represent only a few chunks of a pretty huge iceberg. This scandal began unravelling when the Delhi police said that it was limited to three fools from the Rajasthan team. It has climbed pretty fast to the owner of the Chennai franchise, N. Srinivasan, and his now famous son-in-law Gurunath Neiyappan. From there it will find its way to other stars and superstars.
Indian bookies thrive over two seasons, cricket and elections. One can only hope that bookies will never be strong enough, even with Dawood Ibrahim’s help, to do unto our elections what they have done unto our cricket. The thought that fixing election results could begin from the fringe, in isolated assembly constituencies, is too intriguing to be entirely dismissed. Shift, for instance, 15 seats from Narendra Modi’s tally in Gujarat to Congress, and Indian politics becomes a different drama. The price of corruption can never be predicted.
5 India needs a sexual revolution (Shikha Dalmia in The Wall Street Journal) Twice a year, in spring and fall, India's Hindus celebrate Navrati, a nine-day festival during which they pray each day to a different female deity. Navrati culminates in "kanya puja," or a day of maiden worshiping. Such veneration of women may surprise foreign observers of India, considering the recent epidemic of rapes there and publicity about the everyday harassment that Indian women face—lewd gestures, catcalls, groping and worse.
Some have blamed modernity, suggesting that India needs to return to its past. But when it comes to "eve teasing" (as this practice is euphemistically called), I would argue the opposite: It is precisely the stubborn hold of India's prudish culture that has made many Indian men so callow. I first felt myself donning this burqa sometime in my mid-teens as I walked with my mother to the market near our home in New Delhi and a group of young men started hooting, whistling and singing Bollywood songs.
What is the cause of this phenomenon? Some argue that the uneven economic growth triggered by India's two-decade-old liberalization has left many men feeling emasculated. "Men's loss of power and control over women has made professional women particularly vulnerable, especially in male-dominated work environments and in public spaces," writes Rasna Wahra for the Daily Nation. But street harassment predates liberalization by generations. My mother endured it 50 years ago.
Unlike rape and sex-selective abortion, which represent a genuine devaluing of women, sexual harassment in India is, I believe, an expression not of the power of Indian men but of their helplessness. It's a pathetic attempt to have a sexual encounter, no matter how meaningless and evanescent. Its real cause is free-floating male libido with no socially acceptable outlet. India's sexual mores and institutions are rooted in a pastoral past, when people died before 50, so marriages between minors were the norm.
Today the average marriage age in India has risen to 22 for women and 26 for men. Yet virginity and chastity—especially for women, but also men—remain prized virtues. Girls are expected to go from their father's house to their husband's, virginity intact. The upshot is legions of grown, unmarried men who have never had sex. What would work? Nothing short of transforming India's puritanical culture and giving men and women more freedom to forge sexually mature relationships outside of marriage. The reform process is already under way among the urbanized upper classes. "Living together before marriage is not a crime," Deepika Padukone, a famous actress, recently declared.
But the process will take generations. Given India's starting point in ancient traditions, one can hope that it will result in a balance healthier than what has unfolded in the over-sexualized West. But unfold it must, because the status quo demeans India's daughters—and warps its sons.
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