This integration is powered by Singer's Taboola tap. For support, visit the GitHub repo or join the Singer Slack.
A high-level look at Stitch's Taboola integration, including release status, useful links, and the features supported in Stitch.
Access to the Taboola API.
Reach out to your Taboola Account Manager for assistance. Once you receive this information, you can continue with the setup.
For example, the name "Stitch Taboola" would create a schema called stitch_taboola in the destination. Note: Schema names cannot be changed after you save the integration.
In the Username field, enter your Taboola username. This user must have access to the Taboola API.
In the Password field, enter your Taboola password.
In the Account ID field, enter your Taboola account ID.
In the Client ID field, enter your Taboola client ID.
In the Client Secret field, enter your Taboola client secret.
Change this setting if you want to replicate data beyond Taboola's default setting of 1 year. For a detailed look at historical replication jobs, check out the Syncing Historical SaaS Data guide.
After you finish setting up Taboola, its Sync Status may show as Pending on either the Stitch Dashboard or in the Integration Details page.
The campaign table contains info about the campaigns in your Taboola account.
2017-10-25 13:46:52,254Z tap - INFO Synced 100 campaigns.
2017-10-25 13:46:52,255Z tap - INFO Done syncing campaigns.
Roughly the same amount of campaigns should be extracted during every job, unless brand new campaigns are added between jobs.
When Stitch loads the extracted records into your destination, however, only new and updated campaigns will be loaded. This means that only new and updated campaign records will count towards your row count.
Currently, the Singer tap powering this integration has no way to account for campaigns that are hard-deleted in Taboola. This means that if a campaign is deleted at the source, the record for that campaign will remain in the destination.
On occasion, Taboola's API will push NULL for start_date and 999-12-31 for end_date. The Singer tap behind this integration will convert NULL dates to 999-12-31 for consistency.
The start date for the campaign.
The end date for the campaign.
The cost per click for the campaign.
The daily cap for the campaign.
The spending limit for the campaign.
Indicates if the campaign has a monthly recurring budget or an overall budget. Possible values are MONTHLY and ENTIRE.
The list of countries the campaign will target or exclude.
The type of targeting for the associated country. Possible values are INCLUDE or EXCLUDE.
The targeted countries' country codes.
The targeted country's country code.
Details about the platforms the campaign will target or exclude.
The type of targeting for the associated platform. Possible values are INCLUDE or EXCLUDE.
The platform types that will be included/excluded.
The type of platform. Possible values are DESK (desktop) and PHON (smartphone).
Details about the publishers that blacklisted from publishing the campaign.
The type of targeting for the associated publisher. This will always be EXCLUDE.
The account IDs of blacklisted publishers.
The account ID of the blacklisted publisher.
Indicates if the campaign is active.
The estimated amount of money the campaign has consumed.
The campaign_performance table contains performance data for the campaigns in your Taboola account, broken down by day.
The start date of the campaign.
The total number of impressions for the campaign for this date..
The total number of clicks for the campaign for this date.
The total actions (conversions) for the campaign for this date.
The total amount spent for the campaign for this date.
The ISO4217 currency code for columns containing monetary data.


text:
namespace jet {

//!
//! \brief 2-D points-to-implicit converter based on simple sphere model.
//!
class SphericalPointsToImplicit2 final : public PointsToImplicit2 {
 public:
    //! Constructs the converter with given sphere radius.
    SphericalPointsToImplicit2(double radius = 1.0, bool isOutputSdf = true);

    //! Converts the given points to implicit surface scalar field.
    void convert(const ConstArrayAccessor1<Vector2D>& points,
                 ScalarGrid2* output) const override;

 private:
    double _radius = 1.0;
    bool _isOutputSdf = true;
};

//! Shared pointer type for SphericalPointsToImplicit2.
typedef std::shared_ptr<SphericalPointsToImplicit2>
    SphericalPointsToImplicit2Ptr;

}  // namespace jet

#endif  // INCLUDE_JET_SPHERICAL_POINTS_TO_IMPLICIT2_H_

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


This third CD in the Jazzed Blues series opens with a two-part lick, influenced heavily by George Benson and his creative use of sliding figures and split octaves, played over a classic minor, II-V vamp. We begin with an explanation of the key center and modes used for this chord progression. The first half of the lick involves sliding half-steps, using the 5th of the key in conjunction with other tones from the scale. Next the lick moves into broken octaves, spawning numerous creative possibilities.


Today, most IP portfolio asset management processes are inefficient, highly expensive and often result in questionable value. This is precisely why Clairvolex developed a unique, technology-enabled IP asset management approach that makes portfolio development more efficient and can enhance the value of your IP. Our IPAM model leverages technical expert centers, experienced portfolio managers, predictive analytics, machine learning, automation and optimized use of legal resources to lower costs, drive performance improvements and create new monetization opportunities.
With each engagement, Clairvolex strives to architect a strategic partnership which delivers value, improves operational performance and aligns with your organizational structure without disruption. Our model offers significant savings while improving performance metrics and driving patent quality. Early adopters, including large IP owners GE and Ericsson, chose Clairvolex IPAM for its ability to address large volumes of pending patent applications globally and manage their life-cycle from first office actions right through granting, building them into strategically valuable patent portfolios. Supplementing legal judgment with our financial, technical and market intelligence throughout the patent application life-cycle, our proprietary software and deep portfolio development expertise means Clairvolex Enterprise-level engagements create portfolios with higher monetization potential.
One thing alone protects the competitive advantage you've gained through extensive and costly R&D efforts: your intellectual property. Our sole focus at Clairvolex is maximizing your return on that investment by creating and maintaining your patent portfolio. This requires deep knowledge of the latest technologies, current market conditions, and the legal landscape, including the most recent precedents. Our experienced team understands the complexities of your patent portfolio's lifecycle and investment profile, while our innovative IP Asset Management System provides all the tools and expertise to create an IP culture in your organization that supports innovation, helps prosecute patents, and monetizes IP—all at an attractive total cost of ownership. Proprietary Clairvolex tools enable the dynamic interactive IP development required in today's environment, thanks to unprecedented insight into information.
While we focus on developing your portfolio, you can innovate, invent, and focus on your business. We will be your partner every step of the way, strategically and tactically, to maximize your R&D investment in the strongest IP portfolio possible.
Interested in Full IP Portfolio Development?


text:
Henry A. Dietz is an American professor and author, currently the Professor Emeritus and University Distinguished Teaching Professor of Government at University of Texas at Austin, and is largely collected by libraries worldwide. He was also added as a member to the Academy of Distinguished Teachers at University of Texas at Austin.

References

Stanford University alumni
University of Texas at Austin faculty
American non-fiction writers
Living people
Year of birth missing (living people)
Place of birth missing (living people)

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
From atheist to church planter
Converge Content Specialist
Church planting & multiplication
Growing up in the central Wisconsin town of Wausau, Charlie Salamone wanted nothing to do with Christianity.
"From an early age, I believed that all religions were good and whatever you believed was good as long as you were sincere and trying your best to be a good, kind and decent person," he said. "Then, if there is a God of any sort, you're going to be just fine."
As a philosophy, religious studies and psychology major at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, Salamone became well known for his ability to debate with Christians. He was a fiercely committed and vocal proponent of atheism. One of his professors called Salamone "the best debater he had ever met" for the ways he attacked the Christian faith.
"I would go to Bible studies on campus just to tell Christians that they were wrong," he said.
Salamone dropped out of school and moved to Madison, Wisconsin, to try to become a professional musician. During this time, he started exploring Eastern philosophies and religions, including Taoism, Buddhism and Hinduism.
Did you find Jesus?
Then, one night 17 years ago, Salamone experienced the presence of God. In his love and mercy, God powerfully opened his eyes to the truth of the gospel and took hold of his life.
"There was a very distinct voice in my head," Salamone said. "It said, 'You fool, you've always known. You fool, you've always known this was waiting for you. You've always known, but you've pushed it away. You've tried so hard to push this away, but you've always known.'"
A few weeks later, Salamone started questioning his newfound faith. He talked about his struggles with the one Christian he knew in Madison, the manager of the bagel shop where he worked. Her advice to him was simple: Pray about it.
Salamone prayed, "Jesus, if you're real, prove yourself to me." The day after his prayer, he realized that Jesus had already shown himself to him, and he decided that day to believe and not look back.
After becoming a Christian, Salamone moved back to Stevens Point to finish his degree. His philosophy professor and classmates were shocked to discover how he had changed.
"My professor asked me, 'Mr. Salamone, how do I put this? Did you find Jesus?'"
"Church was culturally awkward."
After graduating from college, getting married and starting a family, Salamone found himself as a stay-at-home dad. He started feeling a call to ministry.
He began to learn about church planting and how it is one of the best ways to reach people for Christ.
"I was in a good Bible-teaching church," Salamone said. "I'm sitting in this church, thinking about my old nonbelieving friends, and I realized they're never coming here. And if they came, they wouldn't come back. And it wouldn't necessarily be because of Jesus. It would be because this is kind of culturally awkward for them and, to be honest, a lot of times church was culturally awkward for me."
Salamone decided he would start a church to reach nonchurched people like him. But as various evangelistic ministry ideas fizzled out or were rejected by ministry leaders, he began wondering if God was really calling him into ministry.
Salamone said it wasn't until he started talking with Dwight Perry, who served as Converge Great Lakes executive minister from 2004-16, that everything changed.
"No one was looking twice at me as someone who could do ministry full time until I connected with Converge and then all of sudden it was like, This is what I've been looking for, people that heard my story and didn't say I was crazy.
"Once I made contact with Converge, things started moving really quickly. They gave me an internship, and it wasn't long before they sent me to the Church Planting Assessment Center. Not long after that, my wife and I were raising money."
One hundred churches in 10 years
Salamone and his wife, Erin, had laid hands on a building in downtown Wausau called the Fillmore that was being renovated into a music venue, praying for God to build a church there even before they felt called to church planting. The building's owners agreed to rent to the church. However, less than three weeks before Downtown Mission Church was to hold its first Sunday service in 2012, the owners got cold feet, fearing that their bar business would suffer from having a church rent the building.
God was faithful and provided another location for the church to meet. Less than a year later, the Fillmore's owners contacted the church and asked if they wanted to buy the building. The church purchased it at a fraction of the cost of the renovations that had gone into the building. During renovations, the music venue had put in all the infrastructure that would later be just what the church needed, including two screens in the front, lighting and sound equipment.
A few years later, as Salamone drove through Stevens Point, his old college town a half-hour's drive from Wausau, he thought, We should have a church here.
First Baptist Church in Stevens Point was looking to sell the building it had owned since 1877. Salamone met with the church's pastor and asked him if First Baptist would give the building to Downtown Mission. The pastor and church members said yes, and Downtown Mission Stevens Point held its first Sunday service Aug. 28, 2016.
Downtown Mission recently started its third campus in Merrill, 15 miles north of Wausau. Salamone has a vision to plant 100 churches in 10 years.
Presenting the gospel in creative ways
Another way the pastor is trying to reach out to nonbelievers in his community is through public debates with an atheist. In April, Salamone participated in a debate in Wausau with famed atheist and president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, Dan Barker. One clip from the debate has been viewed more than 100,000 times on Facebook. Another debate is in the works for Madison, Wisconsin, in the fall, to be co-sponsored by a college atheist group.
"I know that events like this bring out more nonbelievers and nonchurch people than anything else I can think of," Salamone said. "And I'm always looking for creative ways to get nonbelievers to hear the gospel."
Throughout the seven-year history of Downtown Mission Church, Salamone has been constantly reminded of the words of Jesus in John 14:13-14: "And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it."
"I can't tell you how the story of Downtown Mission Church has been nothing more than that, asking God for big things as we seek to do his mission and watching him deliver," he said.
Michael Smith, Converge Content Specialist
Michael Smith serves as Converge's content specialist. He has nearly two decades in the newspaper publishing industry. Michael worked as a copy editor and designer for the Tampa Tribune for more than a dozen years, and has also been a member of the editorial staff of Florida Baptist Witness and other publications across the Southeast.
Additional articles by Michael Smith
Minnesota church 'pivots' to reach more people for Christ
Unfiltered: Real Church Planting Conversations podcast

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Items where Author / Artist / Editor is "Baker, Tremaine"
Baker, Tremaine (2017) Targets and evidence in teacher education: solely for assessment and accountability or do they serve a genuine educational purpose? In: Teacher Education Advancement Network, 11-12 May 2017, Birmingham.
This list was generated on Sun Apr 21 04:39:47 2019 BST.


Morley®, manufacturers of world famous Wah/Volume Pedals and widely used switching devices announced the release of their two newest pedals the Mini Volume and Mini Wah.
Morley, manufacturers of world famous Wah/Volume Pedals and widely used switching devices announced the release of their two newest pedals the Mini Volume and Mini Wah.
Both the Mini Volume and Mini Wah are equipped with Morley's time-tested Electro Optical circuitry so there are no pots to wear out like typical wah and volume pedals. The Mini Wah has a Wah on/off switch, Wah Level control and is designed for classic and vintage wah tones just as you'd expect from a leading manufacturer of wah and volume pedals. As expected, the volume is studio quiet and set for a smooth audio taper.
Like all Morley products, both minis are housed in durable cold-rolled steel, equipped with LED indication and easy access battery door, have a no-hassle, two-year warranty, and are both made in the USA.
Mini Volume MSRP is $119. Street Price is $69.99. Available Now!
Mini Wah MSRP is $129. Street Price is $79.99. Available Now!


text:
A-Toy Bodykits gets into motor home customization
"You Imagine, We Create" takes on a whole new meaning
Ford E-150
Nissan Urvan
Nissan NV350 Urvan
With A-Toy Bodykits having achieved all the success it could have in its line of business, its proprietor Atoy Llave has now taken his customization business to a whole new level as he now spruces up regular vehicles into motor homes.
"Everyone has this dream of going on a vacation using a motor home," said Llave to TopGear.com.ph. "When you think about it, it's the perfect way to spend a vacation. You drive to your destination, you park your vehicle, and then you cook and sleep in it because it has the amenities of home. You even get to save a lot of money because you don't have to pay for any hotel rooms."
However, if you think motor homes are only for the rich with their Ford E-450 or its relatively smaller sister, the E-150, Llave is making the motor home dream within reach of modest wage earners as he recently unveiled his first Toyota Hilux-based motor home. Llave made that possible by removing the Hilux's cargo bed and then replacing it with his own custom-designed motor home cabin. To save on space, the cabin's sleeping quarter is located right above the Hilux's cockpit.
"By mounting the sleeping area right above the Hilux's cabin, I was able to lengthen the motor home cabin to almost 8 feet in length from the Hilux's cargo bed of 4.5 feet and still basically retain the Hilux's stock length," said Llave. "That way, it can still be driven by anyone who has the standard restriction code 2 on their driver's license."
Llave's motor home conversion business started last year and he already counts celebrities like Angel Locsin, Diether Ocampo and Kris Aquino as some of his clients. Even companies like PLDT and Splash Corp. have tapped his services to customize their roving Watchpad Speedster Bus and mobile beauty parlor, respectively.
"There was a time when celebrities used to buy imported recreational vehicles from the US, but they're very impractical," said Llave. "They have stoves that we won't normally use in a motor home, and the RVs layout is basically what-you-see-is-what-you-get. And let's face it, who wants to cook when you're on a vacation when a microwave oven is more than enough?"
Of course, A-Toy Bodykits' "You Imagine, We Create" motto is still applicable to Llave's new business as he admits that its only limitation is entirely dependent on what his customer wants, and of course, the limitations of the donor vehicle, although if there's a way to get around these, you can trust Llave to find it.
"Imported RVs are also very expensive. You can pay around P5-6 million for one and you're stuck with the interior layout it came with," added Llave. "The motor homes I do sometimes cost less than half of that and you get to customize the interior to your specifications."
Llave admits that motor home customization, particularly for customers who keep changing their minds with regard to specifications, takes time. On average, it would take Llave and his staff roughly one month and a half to complete a job.
For Llave, though, the joy he has found in his new business venture all makes it worthwhile.
"Everyone dreams about going on a vacation using a motor home. But everyone thinks it's so expensive to own one," said Llave. "That's why after I started turning Ford's vans into motor homes, I thought about doing something similar for those who have a smaller budget, and that's where the Hilux motor home came in. I'm just helping people realize their dream."
Price this car #3: Honda Insight
Toyota Hilux,
Ford E-150,
A-Toy Bodykits,
customization,
Motorhome,
conversion,
RV,


Rhodes Veterinary Clinic has been providing exceptional animal and veterinary care for pets and farm aninmals in and around Colac and Simpson for over 60 years.
We have a dedicated team offering pet advice and all aspects of veterinary treatments.
We see a wide variety of patients at the Clinic and our team of veterinarians and nurses have an extensive range of knowledge and experience.
Dr Mike graduated from Melbourne University in 1984.
He began his career in an Equine practice on the outskirts of Melbourne before joining a dairy practice in New Zealand.
He has now been in the Colac district for most of his 34 years, initially working beside his father, the late Dusty Rhodes.
Dr Mike is a very experienced dairy cattle veterinarian who also enjoys small animal surgery and medicine. Dr Mike is available for pregnancy testing, herd health visits, emergency visits and advice.
Dr Mike enjoys travelling (France is a favourite), a bike ride, socialising and a nice glass of red.
Dr Peter graduated from Murdoch University in 2017 and joined us in January 2018.
A passion for a career in mixed veterinary practice prompted a move to rural Victoria after spending most of his life in Perth, Western Australia.
He has a strong interest in cattle medicine and small animal surgery but enjoys all aspects of the varied caseload available here in the south west of Victoria.
In his free time Dr Peter loves heading to the beach with his partner Aimee and their dog Maverick.


Hassan Whiteside has been nurtured into a legitimate starter by the Miami Heat, and this kid is on route for the most improved player award, he has been astonishing!
Whiteside has started all 11 games for Miami so far this season, winning 7. He was originally drafted by Sacramento as the 33rd pick in 2010 NBA draft. He has broken through into a star since joining Miami.
His stats for this season are nothing short of spectacular; averaging 15 points, 11 rebounds, and 4.5 blocks per game! Hassan also had his 2nd career triple-double on tuesday night as he dropped 22 points, 14 boards and 10 blocks on Minnesota!
The amount of blocked shots Whiteside has is incredible, this season he already has 50 blocks to his name. He leads the league with his 4.5 blocks per, his nearest competitor being Rudy Gobert with 3.22 blocks per, significantly less.
Miami have a strong roster, and Whiteside is playing an integral part in the teams success. His defence is nothing short of spectacular. But let's not forget about his offensive presence. One stat that has never been counted is the effect a player can have on a crowd, and Hassan is one of the best in the league at bringing the crowd to life. His dunks are BIG and the Miami crowd can't get enough of them. When he blocks a shot, the crowd go crazy! Even more so when he shakes his head to the crowd and says "Not in our house". He brings the crowd to life, and they help the team push through to win games.


text:
Oui Capital
Mar 9, 2021·4 min read
Closing the Gender Wealth Gap
Over the years, a lot has been said about the gender pay gap. This is naturally so because, in 2018 (barely three years ago), it was estimated that for every dollar a white male earns, his female counterpart earned just 82 cents. At the current rate, A Lean In study predicts that it will take until 2059 for women to attain pay parity.
As alarming as this might sound, it is only a precursor to a much larger problem that appears to get a lot less consideration — the gender wealth gap.
The gender wealth gap is the amount of money that women have in comparison to men. However, what it truly indicates is that women own only 32 cents for every dollar a man owns with that number getting significantly less when compared to Black and Latinx women who own just one penny.
Yes, one!
So to commemorate International Women's day, we pose the question: Just what can we do to decrease this gender wealth gap?
Investments and Enterprise
The short answer according to one source is that wealth is often derived from entrepreneurship or investing. A look at the world's richest people affirms this, as they all started their companies — or inherited fortunes from others who did. If this is so, then we simply need to facilitate both by investing in companies that are led by women and in products or services that ensure financial 'wellness' for women.
So Obvious right! Why then does the wealth gap persist?
Every year, hundreds of companies go public on the New York Stock Exchange yet historically, only 20 women have founded and led a company through to an IPO with eighteen of those IPOs occurring in just the last seven years.
2020 was no different, with 442 logged as of December 14th and only 5 of those founded and led by women. This lack of female-led public companies starts at the earliest stages with women receiving less than 3% of venture dollars. This is known as the gender funding gap and it holds countless female founders from launching their businesses.
Why does the funding gap exist?
Well, research shows that it's more about biases than the bro culture that exists, particularly in tech-driven businesses. For example, a study published in Harvard Business Review found that VCs tend to be biased in how they frame their questions, asking male entrepreneurs about the potential for growth and female entrepreneurs about the likelihood of losses.
Believe it or not, this is an improvement. While conditions for female entrepreneurs are steadily improving there's still a long way to go in achieving full investment and entrepreneurial equity with men.
If we agree that this is all valid, how then do we ensure that funding companies built by women or for women are not an empty assertion?
Keep pushing, keep pitching.
Says Elizabeth Gore, CEO and co-founder of Alice, a business accelerator for women. "It can be frustrating, especially with the odds against you, but no system changes without an uncomfortable period of tension before growth."
Check your biases
Helping women get more funding isn't simply a charitable duty. Giving women ample and equitable funding serves everyone. A recent McKinsey study found that gender equality could unlock up to $28 trillion in global GDP. Companies with female CEOs and executives have been found to perform better and may be better for employees.
"Understanding the link between women's empowerment and the wealth and health of societies is crucial for humanity," Melinda Gates wrote in The Moment of Lift. "If you want to lift humanity, empower women, she said. "It is the most comprehensive, pervasive, high-leverage investment you can make in human beings."
Concluding Notes
Are there companies that we should be chatting with that are developing products or services by or for women? We at Oui Capital would love to hear from you on how we can help lessen the gender wealth gap and build a more inclusive economy. Say hello@ouicapital.vc
https://africa.businessinsider.com/strategy/hundreds-of-startups-go-public-every-year-only-20-have-ever-been-founded-and-led-by/h5qypx6#:~:text=Only%2020%20are%20founded%20and%20led%20by%20women.&text=Each%20year%20since%20the%20New,founded%20and%20led%20by%20women.
https://www.inc.com/amanda-pressner-kreuser/2-reasons-women-still-get-less-than-3-percent-of-vc-funding.html#:~:text=In%20the%20past%20few%20years,US%20are%20owned%20by%20women.&text=In%20order%20to%20make%20things,what's%20really%20driving%20the%20disparity.
https://www.equilar.com/reports/70-q3-2019-equilar-gender-diversity-index.html
https://medium.com/anthemis-insights/the-gender-wealth-gap-why-we-need-more-women-to-invest-and-to-invest-in-more-women-d428d18bea2c
https://techcrunch.com/2019/12/09/us-vc-investment-in-female-founders-hits-all-time-high/
https://pitchbook.com/news/articles/the-vc-female-founders-dashboard
https://womenswealthgap.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Closing-the-Womens-Wealth-Gap-Report-Jan2017.pdf
https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/pre-market-earnings-report-for-december-14-2020-%3A-hexo-2020-12-11
https://medium.com/@sakhno_crew/the-moment-of-lift-by-melinda-gates-5967a1aafb01
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-53548704
We invest in early stage founders building the future of the African continent.
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text:
India is not a monarchy! We urgently need to universalize the French concept of "citoyen"! (2009)
March 28, 2009 — drsubrotoroy
Each of the two sons of Feroze and Indira Gandhi died tragically in his prime, years ago, and it is unbecoming to see their family successors squabble today. Everyone may need to be constantly reminded that this handful of persons are in fact ordinary citizens in our democratic polity, deserving India's attention principally in such a capacity.
What did, indeed, Feroze Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Sanjay Gandhi, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi "live and die for"? It was not any one identifiable thing or any set of common things, that seems certain.
Feroze Gandhi from all accounts stood for integrity in Indian politics and journalism; it is not impossible his premature death was related to his wife's negligence because she had returned to her father's side instead. Jawaharlal Nehru did not do well as a father to promote his daughter so blatantly as his assistant either before 1947
or after.
Nehru did not achieve political power until well into middle age; his catastrophic misjudgment of communist ideology and intentions, especially Chinese communist ideology and intentions, contributed to an Indian defeat at war, and led soon thereafter to his health collapsing and his death. He and Indira somewhat nonchalantly made a visit to Ceylon even as the Chinese attack was commencing; a high point of my own childhood was saying namaste on October 13 1962 at Colombo airport when they arrived.
Feroze and Indira's younger son evidently came to die in a self-inflicted aeronautical mishap of some sort. What did Sanjay Gandhi "live for"? The book Foundations of India's Political Economy: Towards an Agenda for the 1990s created twenty years ago in America
has a chapter titled "The State of Governance" by the political scientist James Manor which says:
"After 1973 or so, personal loyalty tended increasingly to become the main criterion for advancement in the Congress Party. People who appeared to be loyal often replaced skilled political managers who seemed too independent. Many of these new arrivals did not worry, as an earlier generation of Congress officials had done, that excessive private profiteering might earn the wrath of party leaders. In 1975, Sanjay Gandhi suddenly became the second most powerful figure in Indian politics. He saw that the parties of the left and right had strong organizations that could put large numbers of militants into the streets for demonstrations while Congress had no such capacity. In the belief that Congress should also have this kind of muscle, he began recruiting elements from urban centres including the criminal underworld. The problem of corruption was exacerbated by demands that State-level Congress leaders place large sums of money at the disposal not of the national party but of the persons who presided over it. Congress chief ministers realized that a fulsome response to these demands went a long way toward insulating them from interference from New Delhi, and a monumental system of fund-raising sprang up. When so many people were being drawn into semi-institutionalized malfeasance, which seemed to be condoned by higher authorities, it was inevitable many would skim off portions of the funds raised for personal benefit. Corruption soared. The problem was compounded by the tendency for people to be dismissed from public and party offices abruptly, leading many Congress politicians to fear that their time in power might be quite short."
I do not have reason to disagree with this opinion contained in the book that I and WE James created at the University of Hawaii twenty years ago. If anything, Sanjay's political model may have spread itself across other Indian political parties in one way or another.
What does strike me as odd in light of current political controversy is that several of Sanjay's friends and colleagues are now part-and-parcel of the Sonia Congress – one must ask, were they such fair-weather friends that they never lent a hand or a shoulder to his young widow and her infant son especially against the cruelties Sanjay's mother bestowed upon them? Did they offer help or guidance to Sanjay's son, have they tried to guide him away from becoming the bigoted young politician he seems to wish to be today?
Indira's major faults included playing favourites among her bahus and her grandchildren with as much gusto as any mother-in-law portrayed on the tackiest TV-serial today.
What were her good deeds? There was one, and it was an enormously large one, of paramount significance for the country and our subcontinent as a whole: her statesmanship before, during and to some extent after the war that created Bangladesh. My father has preserved a classic photograph over the years of Indira's finest period as an international stateswoman, when she visited Paris and other foreign capitals including Washington in the autumn of 1971.
She tried to prevent the Yahya Khan/Tikka Khan genocide in Bangladesh when many Bangladeshis came to be sacrificed at the altar of the Nixon-Kissinger visits to Mao and Zhou. She made a major diplomatic effort in world capitals to avert war with West Pakistan over its atrocities in East Pakistan. But war could not be averted, and within a few weeks, in December 1971, Bangladesh was born.
"Indira Gandhi's one and paramount good deed as India's leader and indeed as a world leader of her time was to have fought a war that was so rare in international law for having been unambiguously just. And she fought it flawlessly. The cause had been thrust upon her by an evil enemy's behaviour against his own people, an enemy supported by the world's strongest military power with pretensions to global leadership. Victims of the enemy's wickedness were scores of millions of utterly defenceless, penniless human beings. Indira Gandhi did everything right. She practised patient but firm diplomacy on the world's stage to avert war if it was at all possible to do. She chose her military generals well and took their professional judgment seriously as to when to go to war and how to win it. Finally, in victory she was magnanimous to the enemy that had been defeated. Children's history-books in India should remember her as the stateswoman who freed a fraternal nation from tyranny, at great expense to our own people. As a war-leader, Indira Gandhi displayed extraordinary bravery, courage and good sense." (From my review article of Inder Malhotra's Indira Gandhi, first published in The Statesman May 7 2006.)
"She had indeed fought that rarest of things in international law: the just war. Supported by the world's strongest military, an evil enemy had made victims of his own people. Indira tried patiently on the international stage to avert war, but also chose her military generals well and took their professional judgment seriously as to when to fight if it was inevitable and how to win. Finally she was magnanimous (to a fault) towards the enemy ~ who was not some stranger to us but our own estranged brother and cousin. It seemed to be her and independent India's finest hour. A fevered nation was thus ready to forgive and forget her catastrophic misdeeds until that time…." (From "Unhealthy Delhi" first published in The Statesman June 11 2007).
What did Indira die for? I have said it was "blowback" from domestic and/or international politics, similar to what happened to Rajiv Gandhi and Benazir Bhutto in later years.
"Indira Gandhi died in "blowback" from the unrest she and her younger son and others in their party had opportunistically fomented among Sikh fundamentalists and sectarians since the late 1970s. Rajiv Gandhi died in "blowback" from an erroneous imperialistic foreign policy that he, as Prime Minister, had been induced to make by jingoistic Indian diplomats, a move that got India's military needlessly involved in the then-nascent Sri Lankan civil war. Benazir Bhutto similarly may be seen to have died in "blowback" from her own political activity as prime minister and opposition leader since the late 1980s, including her own encouragement of Muslim fundamentalist forces. Certainly in all three cases, as in all assassinations, there were lapses of security too and imprudent political judgments made that contributed to the tragic outcomes." From "An Indian Reply to President Zardari".
And then there was Rajiv. He did not know me except in his last eight months. It has now emerged that Dr Manmohan Singh's first bypass operation was in 1990-1991, coinciding precisely with the time I gave Rajiv the results of the perestroika-for-India project that I had led at the University of Hawaii since 1986, an encounter that sparked the 1991 economic reform as has been told elsewhere. Dr Singh was simply not in that loop, nor has he himself ever claimed to have been in it — regardless of what innumerable flatterers, sycophants and other straightforwardly mendacious characters in Delhi's high power circles have been making out over the years since. Facts are rather stubborn things.
As a 35-year old newcomer to Delhi and a complete layman on security issues, I did what little I knew how to try to reduce the vulnerability that I felt Rajiv faced from unknown lists of assassins.
"That night KR dropped me at Tughlak Road where I used to stay with friends. In the car I told him, as he was a military man with heavy security cover for himself as a former Governor of J&K, that it seemed to me Rajiv's security was being unprofessionally handled, that he was vulnerable to a professional assassin. KR asked me if I had seen anything specific by way of vulnerability. With John Kennedy and De Gaulle in mind, I said I feared Rajiv was open to a long-distance sniper, especially when he was on his campaign trips around the country. This was one of several attempts I made since October 1990 to convey my clear impression to whomever I thought might have an effect that Rajiv seemed to me extremely vulnerable. Rajiv had been on sadhbhavana journeys, back and forth into and out of Delhi. I had heard he was fed up with his security apparatus, and I was not surprised given it seemed at the time rather bureaucratized. It would not have been appropriate for me to tell him directly that he seemed to me to be vulnerable, since I was a newcomer and a complete amateur about security issues, and besides if he agreed he might seem to himself to be cowardly or have to get even closer to his security apparatus. Instead I pressed the subject relentlessly with whomever I could. I suggested specifically two things: (a) that the system in place at Rajiv's residence and on his itineraries be tested, preferably by some internationally recognized specialists in counter-terrorism; (b) that Rajiv be encouraged to announce a shadow-cabinet. The first would increase the cost of terrorism, the second would reduce the potential political benefit expected by terrorists out to kill him. On the former, it was pleaded that security was a matter being run by the V. P. Singh and then Chandrashekhar Governments at the time. On the latter, it was said that appointing a shadow cabinet might give the appointees the wrong idea, and lead to a challenge to Rajiv's leadership. This seemed to me wrong, as there was nothing to fear from healthy internal contests for power so long as they were conducted in a structured democratic framework. I pressed to know how public Rajiv's itinerary was when he travelled. I was told it was known to everyone and that was the only way it could be since Rajiv wanted to be close to the people waiting to see him and had been criticized for being too aloof. This seemed to me totally wrong and I suggested that if Rajiv wanted to be seen as meeting the crowds waiting for him then that should be done by planning to make random stops on the road that his entourage would take. This would at least add some confusion to the planning of potential terrorists out to kill him. When I pressed relentlessly, it was said I should probably speak to "Madame", i.e. to Mrs. Rajiv Gandhi. That seemed to me highly inappropriate, as I could not be said to be known to her and I should not want to unduly concern her in the event it was I who was completely wrong in my assessment of the danger. The response that it was not in Congress's hands, that it was the responsibility of the V. P. Singh and later the Chandrashekhar Governments, seemed to me completely irrelevant since Congress in its own interests had a grave responsibility to protect Rajiv Gandhi irrespective of what the Government's security people were doing or not doing. Rajiv was at the apex of the power structure of the party, and a key symbol of secularism and progress for the entire country. Losing him would be quite irreparable to the party and the country. It shocked me that the assumption was not being made that there were almost certainly professional killers actively out to kill Rajiv Gandhi — this loving family man and hapless pilot of India's ship of state who did not seem to have wished to make enemies among India's terrorists but whom the fates had conspired to make a target. The most bizarre and frustrating response I got from several respondents was that I should not mention the matter at all as otherwise the threat would become enlarged and the prospect made more likely! This I later realized was a primitive superstitious response of the same sort as wearing amulets and believing in Ptolemaic astrological charts that assume the Sun goes around the Earth — centuries after Kepler and Copernicus. Perhaps the entry of scientific causality and rationality is where we must begin in the reform of India's governance and economy. What was especially repugnant after Rajiv's assassination was to hear it said by his enemies that it marked an end to "dynastic" politics in India. This struck me as being devoid of all sense because the unanswerable reason for protecting Rajiv Gandhi was that we in India, if we are to have any pretensions at all to being a civilized and open democratic society, cannot tolerate terrorism and assassination as means of political change. Either we are constitutional democrats willing to fight for the privileges of a liberal social order, or ours is truly a primitive and savage anarchy concealed beneath a veneer of fake Westernization….. the news suddenly said Rajiv Gandhi had been killed. All India wept. What killed him was not merely a singular act of criminal terrorism, but the system of humbug, incompetence and sycophancy that surrounds politics in India and elsewhere. I was numbed by rage and sorrow, and did not return to Delhi. Eleven years later, on 25 May 2002, press reports said "P. V. Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh lost their place in Congress history as architects of economic reforms as the Congress High command sponsored an amendment to a resolution that had laid credit at the duo's door. The motion was moved by…. Digvijay Singh asserting that the reforms were a brainchild of the late Rajiv Gandhi and that the Rao-Singh combine had simply nudged the process forward." Rajiv's years in Government, like those of Indira Gandhi, were in fact marked by profligacy and the resource cost of poor macroeconomic policy since bank-nationalisation may be as high as Rs. 125 trillion measured in 1994 rupees. Certainly though it was Rajiv Gandhi as Leader of the Opposition in his last months who was the principal architect of the economic reform that came to begin after his passing."
(I have had to say that I do not think the policies pursued by Dr Singh thus far have been consistent with the direction I believe Rajiv, in a second term as PM, would have wished to take. See, for example, "India's Macroeconomics", "Fallacious Finance", "Against Quackery", "Mistaken Macroeconomics", and other articles listed and linked at "Memo to Dr Kaushik Basu". See also https://independentindian.com/2006/05/21/the-politics-of-dr-singh/ https://independentindian.com/2008/04/25/assessing-manmohan-the-doctor-of-deficit-finance-should-realise-the-currency-is-at-stake/ https://independentindian.com/2013/08/23/did-jagdish-bhagwati-originate-pioneer-intellectually-father-indias-1991-economic-reform-did-manmohan-singh-or-did-i-through-my-encounter-with-rajiv-gandhi-just-as-siddhartha-shan/)
The treatment of Indira or Rajiv or Sanjay or their family successors as royalty of any kind whatsoever in India was, is, and remains absurd, reflecting stunted growth of Indian democracy. I remember well the obsequiousness I witnessed on the part of old men in the presence of Rajiv Gandhi.
Tribal and mansabdari political cultures still dominate Northern and Western regions of the Indian subcontinent (descending from the Sikhs, Muslims, Rajputs, Mahrattas etc).
Nehru in his younger days was an exemplary democrat, and he had an outstanding democratically-minded young friend in Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah.
But Nehru and Abdullah as Westernized political liberals were exceptions in the autocratic/monarchical political cultures of north India (and Pakistan) which continue today and stunt the growth of any democratic mindset.
What we may urgently need is some French Liberté, égalité, fraternité ! to create a simple ordinary citoyen universally in the country and the subcontinent as a whole! May we please import a Marquis de Lafayette?
Bengal and parts of Dravidian India have long lost fondness for monarchy and autocracy — Western political liberalism began to reach Kolkata almost two centuries ago after all (see e.g. Tapan Raychaudhuri's fine study Europe Reconsidered). Both Nepal and Pakistan have been undergoing radical transformation towards democracy in recent months, as Bengali Pakistanis had done 40 years earlier under Sheikh Mujib. I said last year and say again that there may be a dangerous intellectual vacuum around the throne of Delhi.
Posted in 1962 War, Bangladesh, Benazir Bhutto, Blowback, Democracy, Feroze Gandhi, France, India's 1991 Economic Reform, India's Bangladesh liberation war, India's corruption, India's Democracy, India's Families, India's mob violence, India's Nationalism, India's nomenclatura, India's Personality Cults, India's political lobbyists, India's Politics, India's Polity, India's pork-barrel politics, Indira Gandhi, Indira Gandhi's assassination, Jawaharlal Nehru, Liberalism/Libertarianism, Life and death, Mao Zedong, Monarchy vs Republicanism, Mujibur Rahman, Nepal, New Delhi, Pakistan's history, Pakistan, Balochistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Political assassinations, Political corruption, Political cynicism, Political Economy, Political mendacity, Political Philosophy, Politics, Power-elites and nomenclatura, Rajiv Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi's assassination, Sheikh Abdullah, Sonia Gandhi, US Foreign Policy, Diplomacy, Espionage, War, Zhou Enlai. 1 Comment »
Leadership vacuum
June 7, 2008 — drsubrotoroy
First published in The Statesman, Editorial Page Special Article, June 7 2008, http://www.thestatesman.net
Time & Tide Wait For No One In Politics: India Trails Pakistan & Nepal!
The Karnataka legislative elections, as well as to lesser extent the Bengal panchayat polls, have revealed the vacuum that exists across the leadership of India's national-level politics today.
To start with the BJP: had India been a normal democratic country on the Western pattern, Mr Arun Jaitley would have rocketed to the top of his party's leadership by now. Besides being articulate in both Hindi and English and in his fifties (the age-group of most leaders in democratic countries), Mr Jaitley's political acumen and organisational skills have been acknowledged even by his Congress adversaries after the Karnataka result. He himself has been frank and expansive about his formula for winning in Karnataka, which was simply to focus on real issues, especially state-specific ones, as well as to project a single credible leader. Had the BJP been a normal political party in a normal country, Mr Jaitley would have been given the task of leading it to victory in the next General Election and, assuming he won a Lok Sabha seat, to become its prime ministerial candidate.
Dadagiri
Instead, the BJP chooses to remain backward, backward, backward in the majority of its thought-processes and behaviour-patterns ~ from its kneejerk anti-Muslim psychology via its hyperinflationary macroeconomics and protectionist trade to its embrace of astrology and bovine exclusiveness. The idea of uniting behind someone relatively modern-minded in his politics like Mr Jaitley would be simply unacceptable not merely to people in the party within his own age-cohort (including the present party president) but even more so to those in age-cohorts decades older (including the party's present prime ministerial candidate).
The opposition of the first group would arise from, in a word, jealousy. The opposition of the second group would arise from, in a word, dadagiri, i.e. the gerontocratic idea that merely because one is older, one is owed respect, authority and the plums of office in precedence over someone who is younger. Jealousy is a universal emotion not something specific to Indian politics, but dadagiri and the lack of meritocracy in our political culture is one reason India remains an abnormal polity in the modern democratic world.
LK Advani, driven by his unfulfilled personal ambition, will likely lead the BJP in the next election and do so with Mr Jaitley's explicit support; Mr Advani may lead it into defeat or even to a victory in which he, given his age, is not as successful a PM as a Jaitley might have been. Yet our sclerotic political culture is such that neither Mr Advani nor Mr Rajnath Singh will simply stand aside now and hand over the reins to a newer, more competent and progressive leadership.
The same idea of dadagiri pervades what passes for the official "Left" in India as exemplified by the CPI-M. Mr Jyoti Basu has in a recent letter to Harkishen Singh Surjeet reminisced of their times together, and in doing so remarked that he remained the Chief Minister of West Bengal for as many years as he did because the Party had instructed him to do so, and when he handed over power to Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, he did so with the Party's agreement.
Those who believe in India's parliamentary democracy might have thought that what our system requires is for a Chief Minister to hold the confidence of the legislative assembly from the bottom up but clearly that is not so because what a CM or PM seems to need are Party instructions from the top down. When Mr Bhattacharjee was anointed the new CM, the present author had remarked to the then Editor of The Statesman that the transition seemed to take place even without a formal vote of confidence in the Assembly. Does anyone in fact recall the last confidence vote debated and passed in the West Bengal Assembly? Democratic legislatures the world over routinely begin their new sessions with a debate and vote of no confidence being brought by the Opposition against the Government-of-the-day.
Does that happen with us, purportedly the world's largest democracy? Let aside State legislatures, even our Parliament sees only the rare vote of confidence, and LK Advani specifically as Leader of the Opposition seems to have introduced none. Oppositions that do not wish to properly oppose are of course complicit in a government's misdeeds.
It is the dadagiri culture shared by the official Communists that has caused the generational handover of power from Mr Basu and Mr Surjeet to the JNU coterie of the Karats and Mr Sitaram Yechuri. The "Left" like the "Right" and everyone else in Indian politics, can only handle cherubic "known" faces at the top ~ genuine grassroots activists like Binayak Sen or Medha Patkar must languish in jail or starve on hunger-strike in seeking to represent the politically and economically powerless in India while the entrenched dadas of Indian politics continue with their dissimulation.
Puppet-masters
In case of the Congress, it is an even deeper aspect of the Indian joint family system than dadagiri that has dominated its political culture, namely, the question who is the karta of the family and, if the karta is or seems too young or naïve or inexperienced, who will act as Regent on the karta's behalf? Indira Gandhi was successfully guided in international politics for several years by a coterie led by PN Haksar. Rajiv Gandhi was attempted to be guided by several different competing coteries of senior party dadas ~ one of whom first brought up the name of Manmohan Singh in Indian politics on 22 March 1991 in a challenge addressed to the present author on liberalisation plans that Rajiv had authorised.
It is almost true to say that Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi have been in recent years played by puppet-masters of whose personal interests and intrigues they remain clueless. As has been said before by this author, the most salubrious thing Sonia Gandhi could have done for the Congress Party was to remain steadfast in her decision to stay out of Indian politics, and to have organised a fair, tough intra-party contest among its putative senior leaders based on differences of political and economic ideology.
Instead there is now paralysis in decision-making induced by Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh each mistakenly relying upon the other's purported economic wisdom and political acumen. This confusion came to be most clearly illustrated in the choice of Head of State last year though that was something politically costless ~ the failures of which Karnataka is the current example may lead the Congress to lose what it, like other Indian parties, loves most of all, namely political power in Lutyens' Delhi.
Indians should make no mistake: our good neighbours in Pakistan and Nepal (Muslim in Pakistan, Hindu and Buddhist and communist in Nepal) have been through healthy cathartic political experiences in recent months and years of a kind we have not. There continues to remain a dangerous intellectual vacuum around the throne of Delhi.
Posted in Asia and the West, Bengal, BJP, Communists, Congress Party, India's Constitution, India's Electorate, India's grassroots activists, India's Panchayat local democracy, India's Parliament, India's Personality Cults, India's Politics, India's Polity, India's Presidency, Indira Gandhi, Manmohan Singh, Medha Patkar, Nepal, Pakistan's history, Pakistan's politics, Pakistan, Balochistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Rajiv Gandhi, Sonia Gandhi, World History. 1 Comment »
Assessing Manmohan: The Doctor of Deficit Finance should realise the currency is at stake
April 25, 2008 — drsubrotoroy
Assessing Manmohan:
The Doctor of Deficit Finance should realise the currency is at stake
by Subroto Roy
First published in The Statesman, Editorial Page Special Article, April 25 2008,
The best thing that may be said of the Manmohan Singh premiership is that when it began in May 2004, it seemed, for a short while, refreshing in comparison to the dysfunctional arrogance and brutality displayed by its predecessor. By the last months of the Vajpayee-Advani Government, there were party appointees who had ended all pretence of purportedly Hindu values and were raking it in shamelessly. The Golden Rule of Democracy is "Throw the rascals out", which is what Indian democracy upheld as it has done time and again. By 2009, India's electorate will have the chance to decide whether the incumbent government deserves the same fate.
Manmohan Singh was seriously discussed as the Congress's putative nominee for PM as early as 2001. The idea brewing at the time with the party's next generation of wannabe leaders (in their 50s and 60s, where Manmohan was near 70) was that they needed to maintain good relations with the Great White Queen and wait out one term of an inevitable Singh premiership before having a shot at the top job themselves.
What is surprising is Dr Singh appeared never to feel it necessary to educate himself privately on how to retool himself for the necessary transformation from being the archetypal bureaucrat he had been in his working career to becoming the national statesman he wished to be after retirement. It is doubtful, for example, if he ever stood in front of a mirror and practised an extempore political speech in Hindi in preparation for the highest executive post in the country, let aside writing a clear-headed, original vision or mission statement of substance as to where he wished to lead it. As Narasimha Rao's Finance Minister, he could meekly take orders from his PM; it seemed he wished to continue in the same mode even when PM himself.
Jawaharlal Nehru is supposed to have been a hero of Dr Singh's ~ but Nehru was a thorough parliamentarian, among the finest anywhere, and someone who always respected the Lok Sabha immensely. Dr Singh, after he lost to VK Malhotra for the South Delhi seat in 1999, made not the slightest effort to enter the Lok Sabha again, even when the Akalis indicated they might not oppose him in a Punjab contest. When asked specifically at a large press conference about not entering the Lok Sabha, Dr Singh murmured words to the effect he had better uses of his time ~ a display, if anything, of the misplaced arrogance of many New Delhi academics and intellectuals. Dr Singh may be the first PM in any parliamentary democracy never to have won a seat in the lower house nor felt a need to do so.
Dr Singh's bureaucratic expertise assisted him well in the first national crisis that came his way, which was the Tsunami of 26 December 2004. There appeared to be an air of efficiency about the Government's response and he seemed in his element as commander of bureaucratic forces while working with Pranab Mukherjee in enlisting the military. George W. Bush (not a great geographer or historian) was apparently impressed to see on a map that India had naval forces deployed as far as the Andamans.
By 2005 though, Dr Singh's bureaucratic mindset had its negative impact. Montek Ahluwalia had been his Finance Secretary when he was Finance Minister. Mr Ahluwalia's spouse had been a main supporter of Dr Singh's unsuccessful Lok Sabha attempt. During the Vajpayee Government, Mr Ahluwalia remained a Planning Commission Member for several years before moving to Washington. With Dr Singh as PM, Mr Ahluwalia returned from the USA in mid 2004 to become Deputy Chair at the Planning Commission. Simultaneously with his return, the idea that the American nuclear industry would like to sell "six to eight lightwater reactors" to India arose.
That is as much as is presently known in public. Dr Singh and Mr Ahluwalia may in the national interest want to frankly and precisely explain to the Indian people the full story of the sudden origins of this idea. Certainly, none of the lessons of the Dabhol fiasco a decade earlier seemed to have been learnt, and the Maharasthtra Government (and hence the Government of India) ended up paying some $300 million to General Electric and Bechtel Corporation for Dabhol before any nuclear talks with the USA could begin. Nor had any serious cost-benefit analysis been done or discussion taken place comparing nuclear energy with coal, hydro and other sources in the Indian case.
Indian foreign policy became frozen in its focus on nuclear negotiations with the USA, swirling around Dr Singh's fife-and-drum welcome at the White House and President Bush's return visit to India. At the same time arose the issue of Paul Volcker's UN committee mentioning the name of India's foreign minister. As The Statesman put it, regardless of the latter's involvement, "the damage to India's diplomatic reputation in the world" was done and it was inevitable a new foreign minister would be necessary. After dilly-dallying and much 10 Janpath to-and-fro, Dr Singh followed Nehru's mistake of becoming his own foreign minister. The idea was that this would be temporary but it became almost a year.
Instead of transforming himself towards Indian political statesmanship, Dr Singh advanced other retired bureaucrats' ambitions on similar career-paths. Foreign policy went out of the MEA's control and seemingly into the control of the new "National Security Adviser". Dr Singh, sometimes with MK Narayanan beside him, travelled a large number of countries from Brazil to Finland and Uzbekistan to South Africa and Japan. Dr Singh also found time and willingness to accept honorary degrees from British and Russian universities during these short months.
While Dr Singh seemed thus preoccupied, two of India's main neighbours underwent massive democratic revolutions (leave aside magnificent Bhutan). Nepal's people practically stormed their Bastille while Dr Singh and Mr Narayanan visited Germany to discuss BMWs. Pakistan's democratic forces could hardly believe the cold indifference shown to them by a New Delhi merely following Bush's support for Pervez Musharraf. While Pakistan and Nepal, and to lesser extent Bangladesh, saw movements towards better governance, Sri Lanka descended towards civil war ~ India's PM remained obsessed with the magic wand that the nuclear deal was supposed to be.
Then suddenly the magic vanished ~ Dr Singh seemed to finally come to a silent private recognition that the economics of the nuclear deal simply did not add up if it meant India importing "six to eight lightwater reactors" on a turnkey basis from the USA or anywhere else. Dr Singh seemed to come out of his self-imposed trance and return a little better to reality. By the time he visited China, although he was as deferential to Hu Jintao in his body language as he had been to Bush and Musharraf and even accepted an indoor guard of honour, he also seemed willing to stand up for India. The Arunachal visit was a reality-check.
Now there is inflation ~ and one year left in the UPA's term. What the country needs is tough sensible macroeconomics and clean public finance. A pandering profligate budget in February was not a healthy sign. Instructing Mr Ahluwalia to close down the Planning Commission and make it a minor R&D wing of the Finance Ministry would be instead a good step. Instructing the RBI to clean up its bureaucratic wastefulness and prepare itself for institutional independence from the Finance Ministry would be even better. Getting proper financial control over every Union and State government entity spending public money and resources would be most important of all. Such major institutional changes in the policy-making process are what an economist might expect of an economist prime minister who wishes to lead India in the 21st Century. India's currency is at stake.
(See also: "The Politics of Dr Singh", May 2006; "Mistaken Macroeconomics", June 2009, etc.)
Posted in Atal Behari Vajpayee, BJP, Communist China, Congress Party, Dabhol/Enron fiasco, India's Budget, India's corruption, India's Democracy, India's Economy, India's Electorate, India's Foreign Policy, India's History, India's inflation, India's Lok Sabha, India's Macroeconomics, India's Monetary & Fiscal Policy, India's Politics, India's Polity, India's Public Finance, India's Reserve Bank, India-United States business, India-US Nuclear Deal, Inflation, Jawaharlal Nehru, LK Advani, Macroeconomics, Manmohan Singh, Nepal, Pakistan's politics, Politics, Sonia Gandhi. Leave a Comment »
Lessons from the 1962 War: there are distinct Tibetan, Chinese and Indian points of view that need to be mutually comprehended (2007)
January 15, 2008 — drsubrotoroy
Prefatory Note: This is part of a series of articles published in The Statesman since October 2007 and republished here, viz., Understanding China, India-USA Interests, China's India Aggression, Surrender or Fight?, China's Commonwealth, Nixon & Mao vs India, China's India Example and China's Force and Diplomacy. See https://independentindian.com/2009/09/19/my-ten-articles-on-china-tibet-xinjiang-taiwan-in-relation-to-india/
Lessons from the 1962 War
Beginnings of a solution to the long-standing border problem: there are distinct Tibetan, Chinese and Indian points of view that need to be mutually comprehended.
First published in The Sunday Statesman, January 13 2008, Editorial Page Special Article
WAR is an existential experience from which nations emerge altered, reflective and sometimes more mature. Germany tried to purge anti-Jewish hatred, Japan to adopt pacifism, Britain to break class-structures, Russia to explode Stalin's cult. America learnt little from its Vietnam debacle, creating new tactics and technologies to reduce American casualties in war but not showing any improved capacity to comprehend the world beyond its shores and borders.
India after the 1962 defeat by Mao's China learnt less than was possible and necessary to do. The Government's official history concluded: "In a fundamental sense, the origins of the 1962 Sino-Indian conflict lay in Chinese expansionism and occupation of Tibet. The issue got further aggravated due to failure of the Chinese to win over the Tibetans. Indian asylum to the Dalai Lama raised Chinese suspicions about ultimate Indian intentions. On the other hand, India, while tacitly accepting the Chinese occupation of Tibet through a treaty in 1954, failed to obtain any quid pro quo on the border issue." This is true enough but a deeper probe is also possible.
India's 20th Century political and intellectual leadership may have grossly failed to comprehend critical world events in a realistic manner, specifically Vladimir Ulyanov's German-assisted Bolshevik coup d'etat, the Kuomintang and Maoist takeovers in China, as well as India's own struggle for Independence. After BG Tilak, Annie Besant, GK Gokhale and other founders of Indian nationalism passed from the scene, leaders arose like MK Gandhi, MA Jinnah, SC Bose and J Nehru who tended to be consumed, to lesser or greater extent, by their own hubris and were less able to see India's fortunes and capacities in context of a larger world. None had military, administrative or public finance experience needed for practical government; instead there arose almost a new hereditary caste of the "professional politician" who has no other vocation or anything better to do in life. Nazi-admirers like Mashriqi and Rahmat Ali among Muslims and the Mahasabha and RSS among Hindus also lent mainstream Indian nationalism a harsh distasteful colouration.
Czechoslovakia's great nationalist Masaryk (who famously denounced Austro-Hungary as a "corrupt, pretentious, senseless relic") was said to be "a leader who planned further ahead than his contemporaries, understood the corroding effects of power, the vital need of restraint in the ruler, and above all the need for taking the nation into his confidence, educating it in the sense of drawing out all its innate qualities and sharing its manifold aspirations" (Seton-Watson). India's clear-headed statesmen of that calibre were not among its most visible or ambitious. Vallabhbhai Patel, MAK Azad, C Rajagopalachari and others were left on the sidelines of free India's politics ~ as Plato predicted, the genuine pilot of the ship of state will be hardly invited to take its wheel nor even want to do so.
Nehru alone, as chosen by Gandhi, came to wield actual power in the 1950s, having maneuvered Rajendra Prasad to being President. And Nehru, besotted in middle age with a married British woman, seemed awestruck by appearance of a victorious Maoist communism in China just as he had been adoring of Stalin's Russia two decades earlier. The Congress's friends among India's official Communists and fellow-travelers never had much original indigenous grassroots support and always looked abroad for guidance. Non-alignment needed to be made of sterner stuff.
Nehru's flawed management of the relationship with Communist China included not merely choosing a favourite like Krishna Menon to head India's military, but also imagining himself a competent world diplomatist. Girja Shankar Bajpai would have been far superior as India's first Foreign Minister. In 1952, Bajpai, then Governor of Bombay, wrote to Nehru saying India should inform Zhou Enlai the McMahon Line was firm in law and non-negotiable.
Was the McMahon Line firm and just? Nehru was no Curzon but it was as a Curzonian imperialist that Mao and Zhou saw him. All Chinese, whether Communist or Nationalist, chafed at the way the Manchu-dynasty's Empire had been carved up. "China is our India" was Czarist Russia's intent towards China itself. China had an awful political and military history from when foreign depredations began in the 1840s all the way until the Mao-Zhou era ended in the 1970s. Indeed China's polity between the 1840s and 1940s suffered far greater chaos and anarchy than India's in the same period.
From a Chinese standpoint, Younghusband's diplomatic and military invasion of Gyantze and Lhasa in 1903-1904 was an insult they had been unable to militarily confront. Curzon sent Younghusband's expedition because there appeared to be Russian intrigues with the Dalai Lama via the Russian/Mongolian agent Dorjiev who had transmitted Russian ideas of extending its new Siberian railway to Lhasa and posting Cossack soldiers there. The Russians seemed to want to adopt the Dalai Lama given his religious influence over Mongolia. The British were alarmed and determined to annihilate the influence of Dorjiev which they did. Thence came the Anglo-Russian Treaty of 1907 which specified British and Russian spheres of influence in Iran and Afghanistan, and stated Tibet would be dealt with internationally only through the Chinese Empire. The McMahon Line, as a recognition of the traditional boundary, flowed naturally from the legitimacy of the Anglo-Russian Treaty. As for Sinkiang, though a Chinese province since 1884 it came to be ruled by warlords under Russian influence.
The Mao-Zhou war machine was determined to take over and militarily hold both Sinkiang and Tibet as an assertion of new China's self-definition against Russia and Britain; hence their denunciation of Nehru as a pawn first of Britain and then of Russia. China building a road surreptitiously between Sinkiang and Tibet through Aksai Chin was reminiscent of Russia's coercive behaviour against China in building the Trans-Siberian Railway through Chinese territory to Vladivostok. At worst, the Indians would have to admit that erstwhile J&K State since October 1947 had become an ownerless entity whose unclaimed territory had been carved up by force by the new Pakistan, new India and new China.
From an Indian standpoint, the traditional recognised boundary placed Aksai Chin clearly in Ladakh and not Tibet. Aksai Chain is a salt pit without "a blade of grass" but for all anyone knows, it could be rich in minerals. Karakorum Pass is also newly valuable to the Chinese as they seek to develop a land-route from Baluchistan's Gwadar Port through Pakistan to China. If India has lost Aksai Chin and Karakorum Pass by force of arms without compensation, force of arms may be the only means of retrieval. Due compensation from China could be Chumbi Valley between Sikkim and Bhutan, and China seems once to have mentioned mutual perpetual lease of Aksai Chin and Chumbi Valley.
From a Tibetan point of view, the Amban representing the Chinese Emperor was driven out of Lhasa in 1912 and Tibet was independent of China for 38 years. Tibet has as much of a claim to be independent of China as Poland or Ukraine have had to be of Russia. As for the McMahon Line, it is indeed legally non-negotiable between China and India as it flowed directly out of the Anglo-Russian Treaty of 1907, and it was under that Treaty that China received international recognition of its formal suzerainty over Tibet since 1720 until that time. Mao once likened Tibet to the palm of a hand with Ladakh, Nepal, Sikkim, Bhutan and Assam as five fingers. Modern China must decide between such a metaphor of Maoist expansionism (which India would have to militarily resist) and joining the world of international law created since Grotius. Democratic conditions in Tibet would also have to be insisted upon so the Dalai Lama and other Tibetans may return home from India in peace and freedom.
Posted in 1962 War, Aksai Chin, Anglo-Russian Treaty 1907, Annie Besant, Asia and the West, Assam, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Balochistan, Bhutan, Bolsheviks, C Rajagopalachari, Chiang Kaishek, China, China's expansionism, China's History, China's military, China's Politics, China's wars, China-India Relations, China-Tibet problem, Chumbi Valley, Communist China, Congress Party, Curzon, Dalai Lama, Dorjiev, Existentialism, Germany, Gilgit and Baltistan, Girja Shankar Bajpai, GK Gokhale, Good and Evil, Holocaust and its denial, India's Army, India's Foreign Policy, India's Military Defence, India's Polity, India-China relations, India-Tibet Border, International Law, International politics, Jammu & Kashmir, Japan, Jawaharlal Nehru, Karakorum Pass, Kuomintang, Laddakh, MA Jinnah, Mao Zedong, Maulana Azad, MK Gandhi, Nationalism, NEFA Arunachal, Nepal, Pakistan's history, Pakistan, Balochistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Plato, Politics, Rajendra Prasad, Russia, Sikkim, Sinkiang, Sino-Indian Border, Stalin, Tibet, Uighurs, US China policy, US Foreign Policy, Diplomacy, Espionage, US Military Doctrine, USA, United States, Vallabhbhai Patel, Vietnam War, War, World History, Xinjiang, Younghusband, Zhou Enlai. Leave a Comment »
Surrender or Fight? War is not a cricket match or Bollywood movie. Can India fight China if it must? (2007)
December 4, 2007 — drsubrotoroy
Surrender or fight?
War is not a cricket match or Bollywood movie. Can India fight China if it must?
First published in The Statesman, Dec 4 2007, Editorial Page Special Article
Armies of the subcontinent, all deriving from rather antiquated British military traditions, have only once since 1947 fought an external army ~ when China's Communists, using Lin Biao's military doctrines, attacked India in 1962 and India lost territory, soldiers and self-respect, gaining ignominy for half a century instead. India and Pakistan have fought wars against each other, India's army has fought Kashmiri, Naga and other rebels, Pakistan's army has brutalised Bangladeshi and Baluchi civilians and fought Pashtuns in Waziristan, Bangladeshi soldiers have brutalised tribal minorities and shot at Indian border guards, Sri Lanka's military has fought Tamil rebels, Nepal has fought communist rebels, etc. Other than the 1962 Chinese attack, all warfare in the subcontinent has been domestic and internecine.
Official 1962 history
The official Government of India history of the 1962 war frankly says: "The Indian Army trained and fought like the British Army, unimaginative, elephantine, rule-bound and road-bound. Armies of Germany, Japan, USSR or China were vastly better war machines, and patterned very differently." During the 1962 war, the US Ambassador JK Galbraith wrote to President Kennedy: "The great question is what the Chinese intend…. The Indians have consistently underestimated Chinese intentions…. the Indian Army in its command, organisation, tactics and equipment is extremely old-fashioned. The individual soldiers carry personal arms that are sixty years old and this can hardly give them the feeling of equality with opponents carrying modern light automatic weapons. The tactics are stuffy and rigid… Some of the commanders are very good. More still are the amiable frauds that rise to the top in any peacetime Army… "
When diplomacy is exhausted and international conflict arises, there is always an option of surrendering or yielding sovereignty instead of standing up to fight, e.g. Vichy France yielding before Nazi Germany. There is always a choice between submission and fighting. Pakistan's military has geared itself over decades only to fight India, and chosen to serve the West and China as desired towards that end. Whatever America wants in Pakistan, America gets, e.g., if American missiles need to enter Pakistani airspace to hit Afghan targets, the US Government does not seek Pakistani permission but merely informs them not to think offensive missiles have been sent from India, and they say okay.
India's Army may be under some suspicion of being similarly geared to fight only Pakistan ~ and when India and Pakistan are armed and obsessed only with fighting one another, they can hardly think of taking on other adversaries. "India's soldiers now stand sentinel along India's frontiers; but they perform guard-duties and are not spear-heads for her advancing armies", Peter Lyon in FS Northedge (ed), Foreign Policies of the Powers, 1973.
Certainly India's military has not seemed keen to have anything but a highly defensive posture against Communist China. On 23 March 1991, Rajiv Gandhi at his residence released a fat book by a retired Army Chief on Indian military defence titled Prepare or Perish. The book's author and the present author had been working together for Rajiv, and the former was asked why in the hundreds of pages of the book there was barely a mention of Indian military preparation against China. He replied that our strategy against China would have to be a defensive holding action which relied on the international community's intervention before matters escalated ~ revealing a rather wild optimism about the efficacy of international relations. Another Army Chief years before him, General Thimayya himself, is reported to have said "as a soldier he could not think of a total war with China and would leave the dispute to be settled by the diplomats" (BN Mullick, The Chinese Betrayal, p. 318).
Thimayya realised India was weak after World War II facing Mao's Communists who had two and a half million armed men, had acquired large stocks of American and Japanese weapons after defeating Chiang Kaishek, and were aggressive and experienced after decades of fighting culminating in the Korean war. (Three divisions were trained in India by the Americans and sent for Chiang in 1942-45 with supplies along the Stilwell Road or flown across the "hump".) Indian soldiers had fought mostly under British or American commanders; in 1947, they disintegrated in chaos into the new armies of India and Pakistan who went to war with one another immediately over J&K.
Not only was India militarily weak until 1962, our political and diplomatic policies since 1949 had been consistently ones of flattery and appeasement, betraying our interests as well as our relationships with Chiang's Nationalist Chinese and, most cruelly of all, with the Tibetans who shared India's culture. Our first Ambassador to Beijing was a communist sympathiser, his son-in-law a leading Indian communist. India was the first country outside the Soviet bloc to recognise Communist China, the first to help Mao diplomatically in the Korean war, the pioneer of many UN resolutions to have Communist China admitted as a veto-holding Security Council member in place of Chiang's Nationalists. We bent over backwards to accommodate and appease them over Tibet. All this got us less than nothing ~ Communist China soon enough joined hands with Pakistan's greedy generals against us.
Zhou Enlai was said to be "one of those men who never tell the truth and never tell a lie. For them there is no distinction between the two. The speaker says what is appropriate to the circumstances. Zhou Enlai was a perfect gentleman; he was also a perfect Communist" (Father Laszlo Ladany, The Communist Party of China and Marxism, 1921-1985, Stanford 1988). Zhou enforced India's political and diplomatic surrender, and then we failed to fight adequately on the military front. Communist China thus established its dominance over India. After Nixon and Kissinger made their devious opening to Mao and Zhou using Pakistan, American policy changed too, almost betraying Taiwan and certainly stamping American approval on the idea that between Communist China and India, China shall be seen as dominant.
For recent Chinese Ambassadors to New Delhi to brazenly use today the same language as Zhou did half a century ago is not a good sign but an indication of Communist China's wish not to have a relationship with modern India on the basis of sovereign equality. For them to say Tawang must be theirs because the monastery there was where the sixth Dalai Lama was born and the Dalai Lama is Chinese and not Indian, is to reveal an aggressive subconscious against us. We may next hear it said Buddha himself was Chinese since he was probably born in Nepal, as an excuse for further Communist encroachment.
The last time China's Communists attacked India the world was distracted by the Cuban missile crisis just as it is distracted today with Iran and Iraq. The Tawang monastery issue today is symbolic of India's entire relationship with China since 1949. There is no economic reason why bilateral trade in goods and services cannot continue but it may be high time India gathers some remaining self-respect and downgrades and then considers ending diplomatic relations with this aggressive dictatorship, awaiting instead the development of democracy and a free society for all of China's great people, perhaps on the Taiwan-model. The Dalai Lama was greeted with great warmth in Taiwan and there is no doubt a free democratic China will seek a healthy new relationship with Tibet as befits great cultures. Militarily, India must indeed prepare for the next Communist aggression or perish, which requires real modernisation and efficiency in the armed forces and an end to corruption, indiscipline and incompetence.
Posted in 1962 War, Air warfare, Asia and the West, Balochistan, Bangladesh, British imperialism, British military doctrine and traditions, Chiang Kaishek, China, China's expansionism, China's History, China-India Relations, China-Taiwan problem, China-Tibet problem, Communist China, Communists, Dalai Lama, India's military doctrine, India's airforce, India's Army, India's Bangladesh liberation war, India's Diplomacy, India's History, India's Military Defence, India-China relations, India-Tibet Border, India-USA interests, Laddakh, Military doctrine, NEFA Arunachal, Nepal, Pakistan's history, Pakistan, Balochistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Pashtuns, Rajiv Gandhi, Sino-Indian Border, Taiwan, Tibet, UN/League of Nations, Unconscious Mind, US Foreign Policy, Diplomacy, Espionage, War, World History, World War, Zhou Enlai. 1 Comment »
Lessons for India from Nepal's Revolution
The Statesman, frontpage, April 26 2006
King Gyanendra of Nepal has lost legitimacy in the eyes of almost all his people. His days as a monarch are numbered. It is as inevitable as night follows day that his dynasty is over, and Nepal will sooner or later become a secular Republic. The practical questions that follow include what is to be done with him and his family, that is, which country should they seek exile in and at what pension, to whom exactly should sovereignty in Nepal pass immediately and in the long term, how may needless bloodshed, civil chaos and mayhem come to be avoided, and how soon can a viable democratic republic and a healthy economy and society emerge.
Salus populi suprema lex: the good of the people is the supreme law. And the good of the people in Nepal today requires Gyanendra to depart (that is, for exile in Britain), after abdicating in favour of his son ~ or better still his infant grandson, placing a Regent acceptable to the Seven-Party Alliance in charge of calling a Constituent Assembly as everyone and especially the Maoists have demanded.
The Government and people of India seem strangely ignorant or indifferent about what is happening right next door to us, even when that door is open. While the people of Nepal almost stormed their Bastille, we witnessed instead the bizarre televised parade of politicians and Bollywood personalities to visit another celebrity in hospital (we should be thankful they have not been allowed anywhere near him).
Our Prime Minister/foreign minister, with his "national security advisor" sitting next to him, flew off to a brief spring holiday in Europe to discuss importation of uranium and BMWs and other such posh things. The Congress Party has said the Prime Minister may have expressed "his own views" on the subject of supporting King Gyanendra's Friday offer but that the Government of India always supported "multiparty democracy" and the Congress Party supported the government! Have people become even more detached from reality here? If it is the case the Prime Minister has become so utterly consumed by personal hubris that he is making impromptu remarks contrary to his own government's policies, then it may be time for him to realise he has filled his quota of foreign trips and put in his papers. At the very least, MK Narayanan has been derelict in his duties by joining the Prime Minister in the European spring rather than remaining in India watching Nepal. The Prime Minister has been so negligent as his own foreign minister (for example, handing over his America policy to personal diplomacy by his favoured aide, Mr Montek Singh Ahluwalia) that he is making the country almost miss the foreign minister who had to be fired, an unfortunate thought!
In the last six months, Nepal's non-Maoist opposition coalesced and the Maoists declared a unilateral cease-fire. India remained preoccupied with the vanities of its own petty dynasties. Why we Indians, despite our pretensions as the world's largest democracy (in reality, the world's largest voting public), may have been so dull and ignorant with respect to Nepal's "trinamul" democratic movement is that we have never had any kind of revolution ourselves.
Revolution is anathema to the pompous bureaucrats of New Delhi, just as it is to the pompous generals of Islamabad. Partition was the one all-consuming trauma experienced by the Indian and Pakistani ruling classes, and they are simply unable to understand populist rebellions of the kind now being seen in Nepal or seen under Sheikh Mujib in East Pakistan almost 40 years ago. The Indira Gandhi brand of populism practised by India's "democratic leaders" has to do with renting crowds and giving speeches while waving to the TV cameras, always making sure to fly back to air-conditioned comfort in Lutyens Delhi by the end of the day if at all possible. Lutyens Delhi is Royal India, and Royal India secretly sympathises with all Royalty and pseudo-Royalty. Ours has become a democracy upside down where it is not a question of how the interests of the people of India should be represented in New Delhi but how New Delhi's interests can come to be projected upon the people of India.
In Nepal on the other hand, the questions now precisely have to do with the most difficult issues of sovereignty, political legitimacy and representation. The forced exile of the Shah of Iran was followed by the return of Ayatollah Khomeini from Qom and the brutality and bloodshed of the Islamic Revolution. The exile of Sihanouk of Cambodia was followed by the horrors of the Khmer Rouge. Can mass bloodshed and class war be averted if the exile of King Gyanendra is followed by a Maoist takeover in Nepal? The Maoists are indisputably led by Pushpa Kamal Dahal (Prachanda) who does not appear to be a murderous Pol Pot and has been projected as principled and statesmanlike. But will he be able to control his own creation or could he himself be swept aside? "Revolution is not a tea party" said Mao Zedong. There are at least two other proximate models that are more benign. One was the forced exile of Ferdinand Marcos and his odious family to the USA in 1986, leading to Mrs Benito Aquino becoming President of the Philippines. She and Fidel Ramos had led ordinary people to the most peaceful bloodless revolution ever seen until then, and coined the term "People Power". Democracy has had its problems here but has survived intact ever since. Another relevant model has to do with the forced departure for Bombay of Hari Singh of Jammu and Kashmir (who pretended to "abdicate" in favour of his young son though in fact no such alternative existed in international law). Sheikh Abdullah knew his constitutional politics well enough and then led J&K to a reasonable Constituent Assembly. Our Pakistani cousins, cut from the same political cloth as ourselves, embarked haplessly saying "That the sovereignty in Pakistan belongs to God Almighty alone and that the Government of Pakistan shall administer the country as His agent". In the words of Rashid Rida and Maulana Maududi, Islam becomes "the very antithesis of secular Western democracy. The philosophical foundation of Western democracy is the sovereignty of the people. Lawmaking is their prerogative and legislation must correspond to the mood and temper of their opinion… Islam… altogether repudiates the philosophy of popular sovereignty and rears its polity on the foundations of the sovereignty of God and the viceregency (Khilafat) of man." Sheikh Abdullah by contrast told the J&K Constituent Assembly: "You are the sovereign authority in this State of Jammu & Kashmir; what you decide has the irrevocable force of law. The basic democratic principle of sovereignty of the nation, embodied ably in the American and French Constitutions, is once again given shape in our midst. I shall quote the famous words of Article 3 of the French Constitution of 1791: `The source of all sovereignty resides fundamentally in the nation. Sovereignty is one and indivisible, inalienable and imprescriptable. It belongs to the nation.' We should be clear about the responsibilities that this power invests us with. In front of us li e decisions of the highest national importance which we shall be called upon to take. Upon the correctness of our decisions depends not only the happiness of our land and people now, but the fate as well of generations to come."
The fact the young son of Hari Singh then caused or contributed to a putsch against Abdullah is among the most regrettable events contributing to the misfortunes of J&K's recent history. Nepal is going through its own French Revolution in which Gyanendra is no longer able to claim the "Divine Right of Kings" simply because his people have permanently withdrawn their acceptance of his legitimacy.
In the circumstances, Nepalese of all political colours would do very well to remember that the greatest of them in the history of mankind was a Hindu prince who became the founder of Buddhism. As the Himalayan home of Hindus and Buddhists and many others, the Nepalese Revolution could be among the most exemplary in being peaceful without bloodshed. The aim of Indians and all other friends of Nepal must be to seek to ensure that.
Posted in Buddhism, Communists, Congress Party, France, Hinduism, India's Foreign Policy, India's Jurisprudence, India's Polity, Islam, Jammu & Kashmir, Liberalism/Libertarianism, Manmohan Singh, Natural Justice, Nepal, Pakistan, Balochistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Sheikh Abdullah, World History. Leave a Comment »


There will be a Q&A session at the conclusion of the presentation.
Daniel Riviera is an entertainment and intellectual property attorney based in San Francisco. He practiced law in Los Angeles before moving to the Bay Area and has extensive experience in all aspects of the motion picture and television industries. Mr. Riviera has represented many writers throughout his legal career.


"By the time we get to 2020, Donald Trump may not be President... In fact, he may not even be a free person," Warren told an audience at a campaign event on Sunday in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Warren elaborated the remarks to the media later at another event in Iowa City, pointing to the ongoing investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 election by Special Counsel Robert Mueller."Well come on. How many investigations are there now? It's no longer just the Mueller investigation," Warren said. "They're everywhere and these are serious investigations, so we'll see what happens."
Asked whether she believes Trump should be impeached, the Senator said it was important to first see Mueller's findings.Warren formally kicked off her bid for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination before a crowd of about 3,500 supporters in Massachusetts on Saturday. She is part of a rapidly expanding Democratic White House field that includes Senators Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand and Amy Klobuchar, who announced her bid on Sunday. Also expected to join the race is Vermont Senator and former presidential candidate Bernie Sanders.
At the event in Cedar Rapids earlier on Sunday, Warren lamented that the country is in a "dangerous moment", and that, "what happens in 2020 is going to determine the direction of our nation, the direction of our people"."Every day, there's a racist tweet, a hateful tweet, something really dark and ugly," Warren said of Trump.
"And what are we, as candidates, as activists, the press, going to do about it? Are we going to let him use those to divide us?"Warren's remark comes as Trump's legal woes mount and as Mueller's investigation on Russian election interference has closed in on several key members of the President's circle, reports The Washington Post.With last month's indictment of Roger Stone, Trump's longtime friend and adviser, 34 people have been charged in the Mueller investigation, and six Trump associates have pleaded guilty.


Video plays before target is shown.
First post here, I have a question that I'm has a stupidly simple solution.
I've created an AR Trackable prototype that plays a video over the tracked image. Everything works great except one little thing, I can hear the video as soon as the app is built instead I'd like it to start only when the target is recognized.
I try playing with some settings, for example not to "play on awake" but then the video doesn't load at all :(. Not sure what's wrong.
I've attached screenshots of my settings, I'm using the latest version of both, Unity and Vuforia.
The Image Target scene in the Core Samples has an example of displaying a video over an Image Target. The Fissure Target object will have the example. I would recommend reviewing how that is done and seeing if it helps you resolve your issue.