The endless calamity in West Asia
Article is about Israel
Palestine issue.
2014 - U.N.’s Year of
Solidarity with the Palestinian People.
Why solidarity ?
--- Israel’s routine violation of international law and U.N.
resolutions regarding Israel Palestine issue. Matters are so grave indeed
that the Palestinians are no longer sure that they will retain the 22 per cent
of historical Palestine that had been promised to them by the 1993 Oslo
Accords.
Whats the reason behind
Israel's routine violation of U.N. resolutions - US backing
The U.N. Special Rapporteur
on Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories, Richard Falk
- Israeli policy amounts to “segregation and apartheid,”
including “continuing excessive use of force by Israeli security forces,”
extra-judicial killings that “are part of acts carried out in order to
maintain dominance over Palestinians” and a blockade of the Palestinian
economy by the use of checkpoints and walls.
- The most striking part of Mr. Falk’s report is his
assertion that Israel is conducting “ethnic cleansing” in the
region.
This report was put forward in UN and 5 resolutions were brought
out for debate. But Israeli diplomats were absent because of labour strike and
Israel's PM avoided all talk of Israeli
policy and U.N. resolution.
Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu - all critics of Israel are anti-Semites. Israel is the
only Jewish state.
U.N. agency, the Economic and
Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) in its new report, “Arab
Integration: A 21st Century Development Imperative (2014),” the Commission
notes, “Israel insists on being recognized by the world and the Arabs as an
exclusively Jewish State. It imposes this recognition as a condition for
reaching a settlement with the Palestinians. This policy is based on the concept
of the religious or ethnic purity of States, which brought to humanity the
worst crimes and atrocities of the twentieth century.” It is this idea of the
Jewish State that fuels the toxic right-wing in Israel — they will not tolerate
the return of Palestinian refugees or deliver full rights to Arab Israelis
largely because they fear that this would demographically challenge their
ability to create a Jewish democracy.
Reminding Israel that its
definition of statehood has immense racial connotations has been a salutary
task of the U.N. — it has also led to a backlash from the Netanyahu government,
unwilling as it is to allow any criticism.
India
and Israeli commerce
- Currently, according to Israeli Defense Ministry data,
India imports more than $1.5 billion of the $7 billion of weaponry that
Israel exports. It is Israel’s most important customer.
- India is currently looking at a bid from the Israeli
firm Rafael for its Spike anti-tank guided missile. This contract will
alone be worth $1 billion.
Ever since India and Israel established full
diplomatic ties in 1992, India has cooled its political support for the
Palestinians and heated up its imports of Israeli arms.
The arms deals themselves are
not always advantageous to India:
- A list of corruption scandals litters the court records
in both Israel and India.
- India has exchanged its dependency on Russian military
technology for a new dependency on U.S. and Israeli arms.
In March 2013, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh
told the Shura Council in Saudi Arabia, “There is no issue more important for
peace and stability in the region than the question of Palestine. Far too long
the brave people of Palestine have been denied their just, legitimate and
inalienable rights, including most of all the establishment of a sovereign,
independent and viable Palestinian state.”
We purchase arms form Israel
on one side and then say that Palestine issue is important and we
support Palestinian people. This is due to two forces at work:
1. India needs arms from
Israel.
2. India’s
reliance upon the Gulf Arabs(Palestinian supporter) for its oil.
To stem doubt about the
relevance of the Palestinian cause that the U.N. has declared this the Year of
Solidarity.
There are two reasons why the
current U.N. attempt is already more promising than earlier attempts.
- For one, the U.N. agencies themselves are much more
aggressive about Israeli violations of U.N. resolutions and international
law than previously. The tone of the reports and the statements by people
like the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay suggest that
U.S. protection notwithstanding, Israel is no longer to get preferential
treatment.
- Second, a new public awareness of Israeli policies fuels
the Boycott,
Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, whose Indian branch has begun to protest the
participation of Indian artists in Israeli cultural fairs and Indo-Israeli
business deals.
Public purpose of architecture
Pritzker Architecture Prize
* most distinguished and celebrated
award in architecture
* given to a professional in the field
who has contributed substantially to humanity and displayed excellence in built
work.
Awarded this year to Shigeru Ban
* built inexpensive, easily
transportable and recyclable disaster relief structures across the world for
two decades.
* His ingenious designs have converted
cardboard, paper and other relatively inexpensive materials into useful and
reliable building components. He has utilised them in challenging situations
ranging from earthquake-disaster relief work in Bhuj to refugee structures in
Rwanda.
This year’s Pritzker Prize raises a key
question for Indian architects and policymakers to reflect on: if good design
brings in innovation and adds value, why are they not increasingly deployed to
serve the public good?
In contrast, State departments in India
pay hardly any attention to design. As a result, low-income housing projects
impose unliveable environments on the poor, and cities are yet to see
well-designed bus stops, easily maintainable public toilets and user-friendly civic
buildings. Even the National Design Policy, announced in 2007, has not
sufficiently focussed on socially useful products.
The curious case of Neiphiu Rio
Neiphiu Rio: Nagaland Chief Minister to contest the coming Lok Sabha poll from the
lone seat in Nagaland
Due to coalition politics becoming a
norm of Indian political system, regional parties assume an important and
decisive role in national politics. They became king-makers or prime
minister-makers, which is why one sees so many leaders at the Centre plotting
their return to their States and not the other way round.
So Rio’s decision to contest Lok Sabha
election is a rare case and may be attributed to Naga national politics.
The tech edge to Africa’s first Islamic insurance for herders
In Kenya’s arid north pastoralists rely
on livestock herds surviving boom and bust cycles of drought.
Takaful Insurance of Africa: Africa’s
first livestock insurance scheme to make payouts compliant with Islamic law, by
bringing together Muslim scholars and number-crunching agricultural experts
using NASA weather satellites.
Unlike ordinary insurance schemes
prohibited by Islam, takes only a management fee from clients.
Payments are assessed not according to
the deaths of individual animals as it would be impossible to provide proof,
but according to an index drawn up by experts at the Nairobi-based
International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), using satellites to measure
vegetation coverage and thus the severity of drought.
Any surplus money after payments made is
distributed equally among remaining policyholders.
Gyaan:
Such schemes can be recommended for
India also.
The flexible working debate
Gateway Women: Started by Jody Day and gives voice to
women who would like to have been mothers, but aren’t.
Now a survey of women aged between 28
and 40 confirms that a significant number — 54 per cent of a big sample — feel
that childless women have to work longer hours than mothers.
There is also a pull-out quote from one
respondent complaining that a “women friendly” workplace means just a
mother-friendly one.
The survey found that nearly half the
women questioned agreed that women who worked flexibly were resented.
Voting while in the Army
A new vote bank of Armed Forces
personnel is now looking a step closer to reality with the Supreme Court
directing the Election Commission (EC) to allow defence personnel to vote as general voters in
peace stations.
The Representation of the People Act, 1950
defines the term ‘ordinarily resident’ in Section 20, a qualification
required to get registered as a voter. Armed forces personnel are among the few
categories of people defined as persons with ‘service qualification’ in
Section 20(8) and are given a special dispensation in Section 20(3) and Section
20(5). This category can declare while living at a place ‘ordinarily resident’
status at another place where they would have normally lived, if it were not
for the exigencies of service. Implicit faith was to be placed on their
declaration and they would be registered at the place they indicated as their
place of ordinary residence, most likely their native place, and as a corollary
the place of their posting could not be their ordinary place of residence.
In a matter arising from the Nagaland
Assembly Election in 1969, the court did not accept the argument that for
service personnel, the place of posting cannot ipso facto be the place of
residence.
The law gave a special dispensation to a
service voter in that his declaration designating a place as his place of
ordinary residence and certified by his organisation was not to be questioned
by the Electoral Registration Officer (ERO) but simply accepted. It was
intended to avoid the delay in registration if an enquiry were to be done
independently by the ERO as in the case of ordinary voters.
Interpreting that judgment as mandating
the registration of a service voter at the place of his posting and by cleverly
using the provision u/s 20(5), a campaign was mounted in the run-up to the
Punjab Assembly election in 2007 by Brig. H.S. Ghuman (retd.) and his All India
Veteran’s Core Group (AIVCG) to have service personnel posted in several
cantonment towns in Punjab to register as ordinary voters there.
Since then, retired service officers and
others including a Member of Parliament have lent their support to this
campaign culminating in the latest verdict of the Supreme Court. But as a note
of caution that was sounded in many border States — that the local voter population
may be small and can be outnumbered by the service personnel — the Court
restricted the applicability of the order only to peace stations. In other
words, only in peace stations can service persons claim they are ordinary
residents and vote locally.
If peace stations are defined in a
location-specific manner, this can lead to anomalies. If Itanagar or Leh are
defined as peace stations but not Tawang or Nubra, it may be kosher for vote
bank politics but it will create disaffection among the local population in
both places, given the small-sized constituencies and the thin margins of
victory. Distinctions based on unit-specific roles in the same station will
entitle men of the non-operational unit to register as voters and of the
operational unit ineligible. So States have to be in either category to avoid
anomalies.
As a larger number of service personnel
would be in the many cantonments in Haryana and Punjab, competitive canvassing
by politicians there can bring in its wake other problems.
A normal movement of a unit can be
questioned by rival politicians as favouring one or the other candidate or
party.
The formation commanders can be accused
of favouritism as happened in the Punjab Assembly election in 2007.
Since the new
dispensation would not extend to all the defence personnel and since many
service personnel may still remain registered in their native towns and
villages by choice, the postal ballot system or its alternative — the proxy
voting facility — would still be relevant.
Transmission time can
be cut down if blank ballot papers are sent electronically, providing more time
for their return. Better still would be to develop online voting and what
better way than to provide it to the group that deserves it the most? We certainly
owe it to our Armed forces personnel to do all that is possible to enable them
to exercise their franchise.
IDFC, Bandhan get ‘in-principle’ nod to set up banks
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI), on Wednesday, granted ‘in-principle’ approval to two applicants, IDFC Limited and Kolkata-based Bandhan Financial Services Private Limited, to set up banks.
The RBI has also accepted the recommendation of the High-Level Advisory Committee (HLAC), set up by the RBI, to consider the application of the Department of Posts, separately in consultation with the Central Government.
