Tit bits from Southasian region

NEPAL
Yeti! Uh-huh!  
A team of mountain climbers returned hurriedly to Kathmandu via helicopter in late November from near the Mount Everest base camp on the Nepali side. The reason for their excitement: they felt sure that they had found indisputable footprints of a yeti.

"We are happy to say that we have found footprints of yeti," announced Joshua Gates, the expedition's leader.

"The snowman is no more a legend for us now." Gates showed off a plaster mould that had been made of the alleged footprint, which measured 33 cm in length and 25 cm across (see pic). Gates said that the casts would be sent to the US for scientific study and assessment. The footprints were reportedly found near the confluence of the Dudhkoshi and Ghattekhola rivers in Khumbu, 150 km east of Kathmandu, at a height of 2850 metres.

Before the ink had dried, wildlife experts in Nepal were pouring cold water on the claim – and not just because the expedition had been on Everest to tape a science-fiction programme. To begin with, these could easily have been the prints of a Himalayan black bear, while it is also easy to mistake patches on the snow or mud as footprints. The head of the Nepal Mountaineering Association, Ang Tshering Sherpa, also pointed to past 'knowledge' of the yeti to further disprove the new find, noting that while the beast is traditionally believed to have only four toes, the prints found by the Gates expedition had five.

At the end of it all, no one was suggesting that this was not a publicity stunt by the film crew.  

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NEPAL/ TIBET
Bring on the trains!
Nepal's foreign minister, just prior to a visit to New Delhi in early December, told a high-level delegation from Beijing that she was keen on the extension of the Beijing-Lhasa railway line to Nepal, across the Himalayan barrier. The Nepali government had never previously discussed the rail extension as being a major priority, and Indian diplomats were purported to have expressed their shock at the news, if the Indian Express newspaper is to be believed.

Beijing has long indicated its enthusiasm for extending the rail line to the south, however, even before the tracks were laid to Lhasa. Additional connections between Nepal and Tibet have also been in the offing in recent times, with the Kathmandu-Lhasa bus service to resume service in January, and bilateral agreements having been signed to widen the single-lane Kathmandu-Lhasa road.

The Express sought to juxtapose Nepali enthusiasm for the Tibet rail line with the worries expressed by Kathmandu over a highway planned by India along the south of the border in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. Already suffering from water-logging through existing roads and embankments in various parts of the Nepal Tarai, Kathmandu believes that the elevated nature of the highway will exacerbate the problem.

In reality, the answer seems simple: culverts on the southern highway, while welcoming the railway line from Lhasa. If inter-connectivity is what South Block has been proposing as Chair of SAARC this year, surely the Beijing-Lhasa-Kathmandu rail connection will benefit Bihar and UP, as well. Such is the way of economics, after all!

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PAKISTAN
Pakistani Sikhs and the law  
For the first time anywhere in the world, marriage legislation specifically for the Sikh community was recently introduced in … Pakistan! Caretaker Minister for Law and Justice Afzal Haider made the announcement in mid-December, when he reported on the imminent promulgation of the Sikh Marriages Ordinance, 2007.

Up to this point, Sikh marriages have been legally binding only under addendums in related legislation – in India they are governed by the Hindu Marriage Act. The new Pakistan ordinance now promises to allow members of the Sikh community, from anywhere in the world, to come to Pakistan to solemnise and register their marriage. Though specific points may be added later on, for the time being six places have been specified for the purpose of registering Sikh marriages – in Islamabad, Lahore, Karachi, Peshawar, Quetta and Nankana Sahib.

Do not be surprised if there is a sudden surge of marriage tourism to Pakistan. Anything to be truly legal!

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NEPAL/ INDIA
Army-army bhai bhai
It is always good to look rastrabadi (ultra-nationalist) in Nepal, and that almost always means strutting one's anti-Indianism. This is a tool of the (formerly 'Royal') Nepal Army as well, even though the relationship between the Nepal and Indian armies is somewhat deep. This relationship was suddenly put in cold storage after King Gyanendra's military-assisted coup of 1 February 2005, after which New Delhi's political leadership cooled on its 'twin pillar' theory of supporting the kingship and democracy.

Almost two years later, the army chiefs in Nepal and India have found it high time to revive their relationship. As such, in a mid-December ceremony full of the requisite pomp, Nepal Army Chief General Rookmangud Katuwal was named Honorary General of the Indian Army by Indian President Pratibha Patil (see pic).

The ceremony marked the revival of the longstanding Indo-Nepali tradition of honouring each other's newly appointed chiefs of the army staff. Evidently sending a message to the Maoists, who are dragging their feet at elections, the Indian leadership made sure that Gen Katuwal – who had been cooling his heels for a full year before the Delhi visit – met with the prime minister, the defence minister, the foreign minister, as well as three of the defence chiefs in New Delhi. Those in the know in New Delhi said that the lavish reception was also a shot across the bow to Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala, with whom New Delhi appears frustrated for his inability to take the Maoists to the previous scheduled 22 November polls.

On the occasion of the bestowal of the new title on Gen Katuwal, Indian Army chief Deepak Kapoor also took the opportunity to assure the general that the suspended support of arms and ammunition was being resumed. Katuwal's reception once again sparked speculation that if the Maoists remain obdurate, India would wilfully support a so-called civilian government of willing politicians backed by the Nepal Army, in turn backed by India and the international community.

Meanwhile, Gen Katuwal must be tickled pink by the sudden love and respect down south. He even got to fly all over India on his own aircraft, an aging Avro HS-748.

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REGION
Connect, connect, connect
The issue of direct road and air connectivity between SAARC countries was the main agenda for the SAARC meet on regional transport cooperation in early December in Delhi. Following the first meet, in April, the ministers met again to discuss the SAARC Regional Motor Vehicle Agreement, an attempt to better link the region's countries by ground. The April workshop had produced agreement but no formal memorandum.

At present, India has one road link with Pakistan, with buses regularly plying between New Delhi and Lahore. New Delhi is now reportedly interested in signing similar agreements with all SAARC countries, including Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan. Deliberations have subsequently started over a common SAARC transport policy, patterned on the European Union, which it is hoped would help both trade and tourism.

Each country has now been tasked with identifying entry points for the movement of passengers and goods, and sorting out protocol, security and customs-related issues. "Once people start getting short-stay visas, we can gradually start the movement of goods vehicles," a SAARC official said. "At present, there is very limited trade movement by road to Pakistan. This linkage would have tremendous potential with other SAARC nations as well."

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BHUTAN/ NEPAL
Seeing red
Thirty people of Nepali origin were sentenced to five to eight years in jail by the Thimphu government in mid-December. The group was charged with being supporters of the shadowy Communist Party of Bhutan (Marxist-Leninist-Maoist), and alleged to have been plotting the launch of an armed insurgency. Two of the individuals sentenced are high-school students, from whom the state media reported that the police had confiscated Maoist literature.

The group is accused of having been formed within the Lhotshampa refugee camps of southeastern Nepal, where they are said to have received training in Maoist revolutionary philosophy from Nepali Maobaadi cadres. The state-media reports also suggested that the Maoists have been holding frequent secret meetings in Bhutan, in an attempt to trigger an anti-monarchy movement. The Bhutan Tiger Force, an organisation said to be responsible for an explosion in Thimphu in December 2006, is believed to be close to the Maoists.

Observers suggest a direct link between the new arrests and the national polls slated for late December. Ahead of the elections, Bhutan's first, the royal government has reportedly begun a fresh crackdown on people of Nepali origin. We now have to see how much pressure regional and international human-rights groups are able to generate, to ensure that these 30 detainees have access to representation and fair trial. The lack of interest thus far is worrisome.

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BANGLADESH
40 percent of Sundarban destroyed
As the debris has started to clear, concerns over the destruction wrought by Cyclone Sidr have moved away somewhat from the human catastrophe. By mid-December, officials in Bangladesh, including UNESCO experts, announced that 40 percent of the Sundarban had been devastated by the raging sea and storm. The forest department has estimated the financial loss to be BDT 8-10 billion. Sidr seems to have particularly destroyed the eastern part of the mangrove forest, which is considered the most biologically rich section of this World Heritage Site.

With the habitat gone, the wildlife would surely have suffered as well, though the extent of this is still being researched. Experts warn that it could take years for the forest to recover. How many of the scarce Royal Bengal Tigers that inhabit the Sundarban is anybody's guess, but meanwhile, poaching could be exacerbated by the current lack of foliage.

UNESCO suggests that the forest could rejuvenate itself naturally, however, so long as it is left alone and spared indiscriminate resource extraction or settlement. In this vein, Dhaka has now drawn up a five-year plan to develop and safeguard the area, at a cost of BDT 5 billion (USD 72.8 million).

In the meantime, the damage to the forest is being considered so extensive that traditional activities within the Sundarbans, such as the collection of honey and nipah-tree products, will be banned this year.

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BHUTAN
Commission omissions
At the end of November, the Bhutani state media announced that 79 percent of "eligible voters" within Bhutan had been registered to take part in the National Council election, slated for 31 December. The final roll is reported to include close to 313,000 registered voters, and the Election Commission warned that there would be no changes to that roll between 30 November and the day of the poll. The Commission did concede that the roll would be open for revision thereafter.

There was no official statement regarding the Nepali-speaking Lhotshampa community – particularly those individuals living outside Bhutan, of whom none are currently being allowed to vote. With the Commission's strict regulations on changes to the voter roll, it appears that any hope otherwise has now dissipated.

Lhotshampa-related issues have not been the only shenanigans attempted by the royal government in Thimphu in the run-up to the country's first 'democratic' elections. The same week, the Election Commission ruled that the Bhutan People's United Party (BPUP) – the first party registered after Thimphu allowed for the legal formation of democratic parties in 2005, and one of the few said to have no royal links – had insufficient "vision, goals and aspirations" for a democratic Bhutan.

With that ruling, the BPUP was disallowed from taking part in the polls. As such, the number of parties between which Bhutanis – those lucky enough to be registered, at least – will be able to choose was cut down to just three, all of them 'royalist'.

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REGION 
No dual citizenship
A petition to extend India's overseas-citizenship policy to all those who migrated from India and acquired foreign citizenship was again rejected by the Indian government in early December. New Delhi stated that those persons of Indian origin, or PIOs, who had migrated from India to Pakistan or Bangladesh would not be eligible for dual citizenship. The reasons given were "security concerns".

A PIO card allows for a 15-year period with no visa requirements "within facilities on a par with non-resident Indians". This means that a card carrier receives all of the same opportunities that are given to non-resident Indians, except in matters relating to the acquisition of agricultural lands. No such parity is allowed in the sphere of political rights, however.

The petitioner in this case, K N A Farooqi, a Lucknow-born resident of Pakistan, said that the current overseas-citizenship policy is discriminatory. The government, however, defended its policy, noting that nationals of Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Bhutan, Nepal, Iran, China and any other country are also not eligible for PIO cards.

"The exclusion of certain classes of persons from the PIO scheme is made with sound basis and not in an arbitrary manner," the government stated. "However, the scheme does not debar them to avail themselves [of] the benefits of visa regime applicable to those nationals for the purpose of specified duration of visits to India."

But deep down, there is an incongruity here, of course. Those who migrate out to select far-away (affluent) countries are eligible. Those who migrate to nearby (poor) places, however, are not.  

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REGION 
More primary schoolers
The UN's children's fund, UNICEF, announced recently that access to primary-school education across the globe is currently better than it has ever been. The number of children going without such access has fallen by more than a quarter in recent years. Internationally, around 87 percent of children now have access to primary education.

While globally this means a four percent rise since 1999, there has been a 22 percent rise in primary-school enrolment for that period for South and West Asia. Much of this improvement has been put down to an increase in international assistance, as well as a reduction and outright removal of school-related fees in many places. But UNICEF officials cautioned that there are still around 72 million children without any access to education whatsoever, and most of these are either in Southasia or sub-Saharan Africa.

The report was issued in order to track the halfway point of the UN's Millennium Development Goals, which are supposed to be reached by 2015. With that in mind, UNICEF said that, current positive developments notwithstanding, 58 out of 86 countries currently look set to fail on the primary-education goal by that date. In order to achieve that goal, 18 million more teachers would need to be hired, and USD 11 billion would need to be spent. Given the statistics, one can assume that much of that would need to take place in this region.

Elsewhere in the report, Southasia also stood out in terms of the numbers of girls who are disproportionately sidelined from education, as well as lingering high levels of illiterate adults. Out of the eight countries showing high levels of adult illiteracy, three were from Southasia – India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, the latter topping the global charts on this score. Pakistan's education system was also ranked in the bottom ten overall, while the rest of Southasia escaped that citation.

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AFGHANISTAN
$65,000 a minute
Spending on development in Afghanistan is dwarfed by the cost of fighting the Taliban, the international relief agency Oxfam announced recently. A report by Oxfam states that the US military is currently spending nearly USD 65,000 a minute in the war-torn country.

Oxfam called for the 25 provincial reconstruction teams run by the armies of 13 countries to carry out relief work only where there is a critical need, and to pull out of areas where the security situation is stable. Under the current set-up, the report warned, reconstruction teams are "being nation-led … often driven more by available funding or the political interests of the nation involved rather than development considerations." The result was "a large number of small-scale, short-term projects … It is unsurprising that the huge expansion of [provincial reconstruction team] activities has not prevented the deterioration of security."

Indeed, little of this money or development appears to be changing the situation on the ground in Afghanistan. According to UN statistics, violence has increased by at least 20 percent in the country since last year, and has also spread northwards to many areas previously considered safe.

Meanwhile, one has to try and imagine how such a volume of money is corrupting a select few in Afghanistan, which will put in place yet another roadblock to development when peace finally comes.

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REGION
Pre-game war game  
Just ahead of the first-ever 'war game' exercises planned between India and China, there were reports in mid-November that Chinese troops had destroyed two unmanned Indian Army posts on the Sikkim frontier. The structures were described as fibreglass huts that Indian Army soldiers used during cold weather, and were reportedly near bunkers that had been the focus of Chinese complaints for some time. The posts were apparently demolished on 8 November.

Oddly, information about the action was made available only when a contingent from the People's Liberation Army arrived in Calcutta, in order to discuss the Sino-Indian war games, which were subsequently scheduled for 20-28 December in Chengdu, in China's Sichuan Province.

The remoteness of the area was such that it was more than a month later that the realisation dawned that the huts were actually not in India at all, nor in Tibet. Rather, they were 150 metres within Bhutani territory. So India seems to have encroached Bhutani territory. And while China may have destroyed Indian huts believing them to be in Chinese territory, they were in fact in Bhutan! Thimphu should be simultaneously seeking apologies from Beijing and New Delhi.

The news of the Chinese incursion into Bhutan seemed to rattle the Indian establishment to the very top. By mid-December, an Indian Army division was being diverted from Jammu to north Bengal (see map). As of deadline, however, the war-games plans appeared to be going full-steam ahead.

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PAKISTAN/ INDIA 
Of rice and wheat
Pakistan's rice producers are becoming increasingly frustrated, as Iranian rice importers are turning away from Pakistan and towards India. The reason for this has reportedly been the heavy taxes imposed by Tehran on imports coming through land routes, but the Pakistani rice sector is placing the blame largely on bungling in Islamabad.

Three years ago, the Indian share of the Iranian rice market was relatively miniscule, with exports of just 60,000 tonnes annually. By 2006-07, however, that number had jumped to 225,000 tonnes, much of which has eaten into Pakistan's exports. This comes on the heels of Pakistani rice producers having lost out to India in recent years to markets in Europe, West Asia and Russia.

Meanwhile, other Pakistani cereals producers are cashing in on lucrative westward 'exports' – though officials in Islamabad are calling it out-and-out smuggling. Even while Pakistanis are facing a drastic shortage of wheat, more than 2000 tonnes of Pakistani wheat flour are moving across the frontier into Afghanistan every day, according to an official with the Food and Agriculture Ministry in Islamabad.

High demand, and high prices, for wheat in Afghanistan is what is having Pakistan's wheat producers turn their backs on the local market, though government subsidies to Pakistani flour mills do not seem to be helping the consumer either. Pakistan's flour exports to Afghanistan have nearly doubled this year, even while many consumers at home are being forced to go without their daily roti.

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TIBET/ CHINA
Tibet and the world  
Beijing recently kicked off the first-ever Tibet economic 'roadshow' in Vienna, in a renewed push to attract foreign investment into the high plateau. Until now, Tibet has been almost entirely devoid of foreign money, due to both worry in Beijing and political considerations by foreign governments.

"We shall follow the established path of market economy development, treat the market as a guiding force, and continue to actively reform the investment and financing mechanism so as to attract more investment," announced Nyima Tsering, vice-chairman of the Tibet Autonomous Region (see pic). Tsering was addressing the Vienna show, the first of what is expected to be a regular series around the Western world. Despite the hope of greater development taking place in what is still a dramatically poor area, observers greeted Beijing's new initiative with scepticism. Advocates have regularly pointed out that the optimism of foreign investors has long acted as something of a counterbalance to the regular human-rights-related criticism that is levelled at China, both in and out of Tibet. On the other hand, that Beijing is starting down this road indicates its own increased confidence vis-à-vis Tibet and the world.

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BURMA
The generals can smile
Two draft resolutions were discussed in mid-November by a committee for the United Nations General Assembly regarding the treatment meted out to civilians and monks by the Burmese junta during the September agitations. Although the moves could pave the way for the UN secretary-general to begin taking concrete steps regarding the situation in Burma, dissension within the UN member countries have made unclear the final fate of the Assembly resolutions.

The first draft resolution, directed solely at Burma's generals, accuses the regime of "beatings, killings, arbitrary detention and enforced disappearances" of demonstrators during the recent round of protests. The second draft grouped abuses by the Burmese government together with those committed by governments in Iran and North Korea. Here, the draft calls for an immediate end to human-rights violations and the release of all political prisoners in the three countries.

While the Security Council has been exercised over Burma before this, and the secretary-general has sent his special envoy to meet the generals in Naypyidaw before this, the discussions marked the first time that the General Assembly has waded into the waters of Burmese issues. The voting trends hinted at why. In the committee, the former motion was carried by a vote of 88 to 24, with 66 abstentions; the latter garnered 97 votes in favour, with 23 against and 60 abstentions.

Interestingly, nearly all member countries of the Non-Aligned Movement opposed the two resolutions, arguing that the negative language would only hinder the chances for dialogue and reconciliation. These naysaying members included not only India and China, but also all ten members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

The timing of the vote proved something of an embarrassment for ASEAN countries, which had unveiled a new regional charter just days before the UN debate. Among other things, the charter for the first time set up a human-rights body within ASEAN, and was signed by one of the Association's founder-members – Burma itself.

 
    
 
 
 

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