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MARCH 2004 |
IN THIS ISSUE
MAIN FEATURE Growing Silicon Nanowires : Raj Solanki’s Breakthrough By Deepak Goyal IT BUSINESS Outsourcing Outrage : U.K., U.S. and India By Siddharth Srivastava CONTROVERSY Back to Burning and Lynching? A Playwright Responds By Sujit Saraf Publisher’s Note • Infotech India The Qadeer Quandary: India, Pak and Nukes • Health: Dealing with Anemia Bangla IT Center • Finance: Small Business and Heirs Photo Essay: Holi in Sunnyvale • Film Fest: Traveling Film South Asia 2004 Muslim Film Festival • First ICC Annual Fest • Abhinaya Dance Performance Community News in Brief: The Global Entrepreneur... Fundraiser for Judge... Remembering Athavale... Boeing Engineers Honored... New Short Film Auto Review: 2004 Nissan Quest 3.5 S • Bollywood Tamil Cinema • Recipe: Shahi Cheese Carrot • Horoscope |
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Publisher's Note
Nanotechnology is the cutting edge of computer science. However, the hype surrounding it often fails to note the very real, daunting challenges posed by this fascinating field of computing at almost the atomic level. Oregon electronics Prof. Raj Solanki may have come up with a breakthrough that could continue the breathtaking pace of miniaturization in computer chip manufacturing that could make all kinds of science-fiction-like gadgets a reality. While Solanki is the first person to admit that there is a lot of work that remains to be done, the scientific community is already hailing his discovery as a historic breakthrough. Solanki’s work is the cover story for this month’s issue. MAIN FEATURE
Growing Silicon Nanowires Raj Solanki's Breakthrough - By Deepak Goyal Oregon Professor Raj Solanki has devised a technique which could extend the limits of Moore's Law, an informal industry truism which maintained that the number of transistors on a chip would double about every 18 months. Solanki has discovered a new way to accurately grow silicon nanowires — super-small needles — on an electrode for use in fabricating transistors. This could be the breakthrough that opens up the cutting edge world of nanotechnology — the science of extremely miniaturized computing. Deepak Goyal reports. Nanotechnology may be the hottest thing in computer science, but its promises are not going to come true tomorrow, thanks to the tough scientific challenges that remain. All the same, nano is all the rage in the scientific world. The word is derived from nanometer — one-billionth of a meter. Nanotechnology is defined as anything working at the scale of less than 100 nanometers. Just to get a sense of what kind of small we are talking about, a human hair is about 50,000 nanometers thick.
The scientific possibilities are endless, but the hurdles are equally daunting. Now Raj Solanki, a professor at the Oregon Health & Science University’s OGI School of Science and Engineering, has devised a technique which could provide an early breakthrough. In techie language, Solanki and his fellow researchers have discovered a new way to accurately grow silicon nanowires on an electrode for use in fabricating transistors. The discovery may one day help engineers build faster computer chips. What it means is Solanki and his team have found a way to use a microscopic silicon stubble that used to be a nuisance when building chips. A semiconductor chip is built with an exacting recipe, with chemicals to lay down layers of metal and semiconducting and insulating films on a silicon wafer the size of a medium pizza. The metal layers are precisely patterned and interconnected with aluminum or copper wires to route electrical signals. The pizza-size wafer is then cut into postage stamp-size squares, which become the chips powering home computers, cell phones and other everyday products. For years, chip miniaturization has been a fact of life guided by Moore’s Law. Intel co-founder Gordon Moore had predicted way back in 1965 that the number of transistors on a chip would double about every 18 months But as device dimensions rapidly approach the nanometer (one billionth of a meter) scale, traditional electrical engineering methods and materials are being pushed to their physical limits, and experts now believe Moore’s Law cannot continue beyond the 2010 to 2015 time frame. It’s almost like Hollywood star Zsa Zsa Gabor’s plaintive cry: “It’s dreadful the way miniskirts are getting smaller and smaller. My legs don’t go all the way up.” “A completely new approach needs to be developed to go beyond the current limit,” says Solanki. “One possible solution is to develop electronic devices that incorporate silicon nanowires or carbon nanotubes as active components operating under physics laws of quantum mechanics.” As chips shrink to fit ever smaller computerized products, the layers of the silicon sandwich — now thin enough to be measured in individual atoms — often were polluted by a silicon-based stubble. “This kind of effect was a nuisance for a long time,” Solanki told The Oregonian recently. “We used to call it whisker growth.” “Today, however, those whiskers have a new and fashionable name: nanowires,” The Oregonian reported. “As it turns out, they might be the key to a new generation of computer chips, flat panel displays and biological sensors. “They also might be an important early development in Oregon’s quest to become a national player in the embryonic but burgeoning field of nanotechnology. “Researchers say technologies under development in Oregon could one day show up in a variety of everyday applications, including lightweight power sources capable of running laptops for days, instead of hours; more fuel-efficient cars; better methods of delivering drugs; small in-room heat pumps that eliminate the need for duct work in homes; and microreactors capable of cleaning up toxic waste.” Solanki’s team demonstrated it is possible to grow silicon nanowires exactly where you want them on an electrode using electrical fields. Solanki’s team also can grow silicon-based nanowires in the exact direction necessary to fabricate electronic devices. The researchers now are exploring electrical properties of the silicon nanowires. “Now that we know we can grow silicon nanowires in a precise location and in a specific direction, we want to know what happens to the nanowire when it contacts the metal on the electrode,” says Solanki. “We also are studying how any kind of coating or contamination on the nanowire surface affects the passage of charges through it. “These kinds of factors determine the performance of nanoelectronic devices, so we need to thoroughly understand and perfect this technological advancement before any devices with silicon and silicon-based nanowires can be mass produced,” he said. “In addition, a better understanding of the effect of contamination on the nanowire can lead to development of very sensitive sensors for a wide range of applications, such as environmental pollution to bio-toxins.” Silicon nanowires are typically between 5 and 20 nanometers in diameter (about 1,000 times smaller than a human hair) and can be up to several micrometers (one micrometer equals one thousandth of a millimeter or one millionth of a meter) long. On photos taken via electron microscope, the silicon nanowires resemble skinny needles. Unlike semiconductor silicon nanowires, carbon nanotubes—another possible tool for creating super-small chips — can be either semiconductor or metallic, and are difficult to dope — the process of deliberately introducing impurities to change electrical behavior. For those reasons, Solanki’s team is focusing on silicon nanowires, which also would make it easier for the microelectronic industry to adopt this technology. Research at other institutions involves growing nanowires or nanotubes in a chamber separate from the silicon integrated circuits, then forming a liquid suspension and flowing it over silicon wafers that have prefabricated electrodes. Some of the nanowires or nanotubes grown in this way will settle between desired electrodes, which are then fabricated into devices such as transistors. This method uses only a small fraction of the nanowires or nanotubes and is time-consuming and expensive for mass production, Solanki observed. “Growing silicon nanowires in a specific location in whatever direction you desire, which we have done, is much more practical for gigascale integration — putting a billion transistors on a chip — in the long term,” said Solanki. Solanki grows his silicon nanowires in a quartz reactor using a technique developed decades ago by Bell Labs called vapor-liquid-solid deposition. “The addition of the electrical fields is what’s new,” said Solanki. “We have also grown nickel silicide conducting nanowires, which will be useful for contacting the silicon semiconductor nanowires.” A lot of work remains. “This is still alchemy; it’s not well understood,” Solanki said. “Right now there is a lot of promise, but to actually make it work will take a lot of work — and a lot of funding.” As chips get smaller, the physical limits get closer. Solanki says current technology will hold out for six more years, at which point nanowires might start showing up in mass-produced computer chips. “That’s my guess,” he said. “This is still research. We have to make sure we can grow this well on a 12-inch wafer. At this point, we’ve just demonstrated the feasibility of the technique.” - Deepak Goyal is a frelance writer. He lives in Kolkata. |TOP| INFOTECH INDIA The TRAI would seek the appeal on the basis that it was yet to formulate detailed guidelines for CAS, implementation of which has been kept in abeyance for the time being, Baijal said, adding any view taken on the subject should await the framing of the rules. “What the Madras High Court has given is an ex parte stay. We will present our case before the court. We will also seek a clarification on whether the stay is only meant for Chennai or is it applicable to the entire country,” he said. “Implementing CAS without regulation means consumers will be exploited. Besides, the Tamil Nadu government had itself said CAS implementation should be deferred,” Baijal said, adding all these points will be put across to the court. He also pointed out that the consumer organizations have said set-top boxes for CAS are not interoperable and that consumers have been cheated. The Madras High Court, on March 4, stayed the center’s February 27 notification indefinitely suspending implementation of CAS. The TRAI, in its interim report, had suggested suspension of implementation of CAS in Chennai and South Delhi for three months, until certain obstacles in the way of implementation of CAS were removed. The new partnership effectively offers VSNL’s domestic corporate customers a cost-effective bandwidth solution to Trans-Pacific routes over Asia Netcom’s EAC cable system, or all the way to U.S. and Europe. “The combination of the new Tata-Indicom India-Singapore Cable and Asia Netcom’s region-wide network offers one of the most powerful solutions for Indian businesses to connect to the rest of the world and for multinationals looking to link up offices and locations inside one of the world’s fastest growing economies.” said Bill Barney, president and chief operating officer, Asia Netcom. “The eventual network architecture will not only offer unmatched network quality and performance by linking VSNL’s new subsea cable with EAC, but also eliminate expensive local loop connections that is typically necessary to link up two cable systems.” The new 3175 km Tata Indicom Submarine Cable system will run between Chennai and Singapore. The state-of-the-art cable system will have an initial capacity of 320 Gbps with the ability to scale up to its design capacity of 5.12 Tbps. With an estimated operating lifespan of 25 years, the new cable will connect Chennai to Singapore, from where onward extension to the U.S. and other significant geographies is readily available at competitive prices. After running a successful small pilot scheme in two government schools in Haryana and West Bengal in 2003, Think.com has now been introduced in 25 Kendriya Vidyalayas nominated by the Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan, their apex management body. Fifteen schools in Delhi and 10 in Bangalore have joined the pilot project. A group of 25 teacher-administrators — one from each of the participating schools — has successfully been trained on integrating Think.com into the teaching and learning activities. Think.com is an Oracle-hosted, global, Web-based educational environment and is designed for students aged between seven and 14. It enables students and teachers to create, communicate and collaborate, providing them with personal Web pages, along with powerful communication and collaboration tools at no cost. Think.com is a part of Oracle’s Education Initiatives, aimed at catalyzing learning at all levels of education by leveraging the company’s core competencies in information management and Internet technologies. By investing in the education of today’s students and partnering with governments and academic bodies, Oracle is helping students meet the challenges of the information age. “This is a very powerful collaboration tool for students enabling them to collaborate across schools and countries and undertake joint projects. I see students communicate effectively, read, reason and write more powerfully,” said S.C. Jain, former Joint Commissioner (Academics), Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan. Jain, who retired end of February 2004, was closely associated with the project and helped in getting it off the ground. “By mid-2004, we plan to include another 40 schools in the program and thereafter involve all our 930 schools over a period of time,” Jain added. “We are happy to be partnering with KVS in this initiative. Think.com is provided by Oracle to primary and secondary schools as a technology-driven collaborative learning environment that familiarizes students with the effective usage of IT tools from an early age and enhances their learning process,” said S. Dasgupta, managing director, Oracle India. Under the agreement, Thai Exim Bank will deploy Finacle across retail and corporate banking trade finance and treasury operations of the bank, an Infosys release said. “Our Telecom Ministry is talking to Home Ministry on this. We will try,” Shourie told a press conference here. He said the Cellular Operators Association of India and individual operators like Hutch and Bharti had mooted the proposal to allow mobile roaming during the Indo-Pakistan cricket series. “I have not promised anything. We will definitely talk to the Home Ministry on this issue,” Shourie said. “I give a lot of importance to views of the Home Ministry and the decision of deputy prime minister will prevail.” “We will only give views of telecom,” Shourie said. Welcome to the wire-free world of Pune University. The campus is becoming Wi-Fi (wireless fidelity). This university is the first university in Asia that is becoming wire free and in the next few days, the entire campus will become wire free. Only few universities in the world such as Carnegie Melon University, Stanford University and few others can boast of being wire free where one can log on to the computer the moment they enter the campus, university vice chancellor Ashok Kolaskar told reporters. This is being done through Centre for Network and Information Security at a total cost of around Rs. 7 million. It comprises computers, modem, and access points installed at vantage points at around 90 different places in the sprawling 412 acre of the university campus. For Rockwell Scientific Co., hiring the best talent is a matter of corporate survival but its chief executive Derek Cheung says he simply can’t find enough professionals in the United States with the highly specialized skills to produce the sophisticated sensors and other high-technology products the California company makes, media reports said here. Changes to a foreign worker visa program, he says, threaten the ability of Rockwell Scientific and other U.S. technology firms, schools and hospitals to bring in employees from abroad — just when they are needed most. The H-1B visa program, designed to allow U.S. companies to hire foreign professionals on a temporary basis, was scaled back last year because of the sluggish U.S. technology job market and a political backlash in Washington D.C. about the importation of foreign labor. Now, with the economy healing, companies are scrambling to get foreign hires approved. H1-B-holders are allowed to renew their visas if they get jobs, without coming under the quota. As per the order, Accel ICIM, a Sun iForce partner in India, will provide systems integration services support at United India Insurance Company’s 24 regional offices across the country and offer software upgrades and updates for four years, a UIIC press release said in Chennai March 2. “We selected Sun’s Star Office software because it matches our technical specifications and it is very competitively priced,” S.M. John Victor, assistant general manager, UIIC, was quoted as saying in the release. Under the tie-up, Servion would provide a customer-friendly, multi-lingual interactive voice response system for Bharti’s network of services, according to a Servion press release in Chennai March 1. Plans are on to deploy a full-fledged computer telephony-integration solution for Bharti, the release said. Mony, director of the Indo French Centre for the Promotion of Advanced Research, supported by both the governments, is the first Indian to get this French honor in the category of science. The centre is a joint organization with equal participation between the two countries that takes up research projects involving the two sides in various areas of science. “The creation of such a centre to support collaborative research in science and technology was without precedence in the history of bilateral cooperation in science and technology between any countries of the world,” French Ambassador Dominique Girard said, honoring Mony. The organization has funded more than 230 research projects with 68 ongoing projects, he said. Mony said for the past three years, the body had also started projects with industrial partners. Mony graduated from the University of Kerala and did his M. Tech from the Indian Institute of Technology, Chennai. He worked as an engineer in the field of atomic energy for 31 years. He was also involved in setting up of country’s Tarapur nuclear plant. Noted filmmaker Satyajit Ray had got this honor in the category of fine arts. “Clandestine transfer of technology by the neighboring country was everyone’s concern in the region and we have to protect our interest and everything around us,” he said. “Our installations are very secure. Measures are in place and periodical reviews are being undertaken by the department and is a matter of routine,” Kakodkar told reporters after inaugurating the 15th Foundation Day celebrations of Board of Radiation and Isotope Technology here. “Because of our strength in security measures, even the International Atomic Energy Commission had requested for a training program for its few member states by the DAE and one course of training has already been completed. “The next training program for IAEC member states is again scheduled for anytime this year,” Kakodkar said. “The logic of it is irrefutable,” Singh said March 5 during an interview to USA Today, one of the largest circulated newspapers published from several cities in the United States. “I’m convinced the logic of outsourcing is such that eventually it will reassert itself,” he added. Singh stressed that outsourcing has now become a two-way traffic — with some jobs coming from the U.S. to India and some flowing in the reverse direction from India to the U.S. Proudly noting the economy’s eight percent growth rate in India, he called India “the land of tomorrow.” “I think the economy is on a roll....India is the land of tomorrow,” said Singh. Rebuffing U.S. critics, the paper reported, Singh said that high-tech jobs would continue to move from the U.S. to India because the savings make it unavoidable. Amid a so-called jobless recovery in the U.S., the paper notes, Democratic presidential contender Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts has slammed corporations transferring jobs to India and China as “Benedict Arnold” companies (named after the traitor to the American Revolution against the British) and called for efforts to discourage additional shifts. In recent weeks, as the debate flared, some U.S. companies involved in moving work abroad, or “offshoring,” grew skittish about being publicly linked to the practice. India, where operating call centers or writing software costs a fraction of what they do in the U.S., said the paper, has become a magnet for high-tech jobs. Companies under pressure to cut costs have shifted thousands of information technology jobs to the well-developed technology industry, centered around Bangalore. Supporters of offshoring say it benefits the U.S. economy because companies invest the sizable savings in other job-creating activities, far outweighing the number of jobs lost. The number of positions affected is only a sliver of the labor force of 138 million, in the U.S., they argue. Amid the furor over job relocation, the Indian economy is growing at a robust 8 percent annual rate. Singh said that while many low-end technology jobs were moving to India, at the “upper end,” many were moving from India to the U.S. “India, too, is outsourcing. So many things are being outsourced in high technology, certain aspects of research,” he said. “It is now a two-way traffic. It is not a one-way traffic.” India, the paper points out, is preparing for national elections next month. Singh refused to comment on statements by Kerry, now the apparent Democratic nominee, supporting tax code changes that would discourage companies from relocating jobs to other countries. But the minister, clearly hoping that tempers will cool after the November U.S. presidential election, suggested that any protectionist moves are doomed. “If we are moving into a globalized world, we won’t be able to keep these doors shut for too long,” he said.
IT BUSINESS
 Outsourcing Outrage U.K., U.S. and India - By Siddharth Srivastava Already Britain is realizing that ranting against outsourcing is futile, but things are different in U.S., with tempers frayed in an election year. India, meanwhile, is fuming at rising protectionist trends in the country that teaches the rest of the world the gospel of free trade, writes Siddharth Srivastava. Usually Britain and the United States are in sync on most major issues, including the invasion of Iraq (at the governmental level, at any rate). However, when it comes to outsourcing, the difference could not be starker between the transatlantic cousins. The United States and Britain find themselves at the two ends of the spectrum on the issue. While an anti-outsourcing movement rages across the U.S., in the UK, apart from the trade unions and people affected, everybody (politicians included) wants to join the party — cutting costs to almost a quarter. Outsourcing is turning out to be a major issue in the build-up to the U.S. elections. U.S.-based top executives of Indian IT and BPO firms are boycotting the fund-raising dinner parties for John Kerry, who has been dubbed the “BPO party spoiler.” President George W. Bush had to turn defensive after a backlash over an aide’s contention that free flow of jobs, including the migration of services to India, benefited the U.S. economy in the long run. Although White House economic adviser Greg Mankiw was merely echoing what was stated in Bush’s economic report to Congress, Washington’s political class lashed out at him. The case of the U.K. is different. It will be “wholly wrong” to adopt a protectionist attitude regarding outsourcing by British companies to India, a 10-member all women Labor MP delegation said after a visit to India. “The whole group felt that it will be wholly wrong to be protectionist on the issue of outsourcing which not only helps India but also the British companies,” Dari Taylor, leader of the delegation, said. Similar sentiments were echoed by Stephen Timms, the U.K. minister for e-commerce, department of trade and industry, earlier in the month. “We don’t want to interfere in the decision-making process of investing companies. We will leave it to the market forces to make decisions. I believe protection is not the way for progress,” he said. The list of companies based in U.K, outsourcing to India have grown exponentially over the past couple of years. They include all the big names — Abbey, ABN AMRO, American Express, Aviva, Axa Insurance, Barclays, Citibank, Deutsche Network Services, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, Morgan Stanley, Prudential, Standard Chartered Bank, JP Morgan Chase, Capital One, Lloyds TSB, Accenture, AOL Online, British Airways, British Telecom (with plans to mover more than 7,000 jobs,) Dell, GE (over 11,000 employees), Ideal Shopping Channel, National Rail Enquiries (plans to move 600 call center jobs to India), Tesco, Vertex. Among the US biggies assigning work to Asia are Oracle, Hewlett-Packard and AIG Life Insurance. The difference in approach in the U.K. and U.S. is due to economics scoring over politics or vice versa. While political compulsions score high in the U.S. in an election year, in the U.K. the movement of jobs is related to good business sense. Indeed, as far as business is concerned there appears to be a near unanimity that outsourcing is good for individuals as well as economies. There will be the initial hardship of a job loss compensated by re-training and creation of other jobs. A Bloomberg report said that Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines created 1,000 call-center jobs last year in India. The Indian operations saved $25 million in 2003, enabling the No 3 US air carrier to add 1,200 positions for reservations and sales agents at home. But no Delta employee lost his or her job as a result of outsourcing. General Electric has created 20,000 jobs in India since 1997. Peter Stack, a GE spokesman, said: “When we sell effectively to international markets, it grows our business, and that benefits our workers here (USA).” Economists including Stephen S. Roach of Morgan Stanley have all come out in support of outsourcing, saying it will benefit the U.S. on a long-term basis. US Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan has strongly defended free trade in goods and services. McKinsey has estimated that every dollar of U.S. labor cost assigned overseas will generate $1.12 to $1.14 in additional value for the American economy by making goods and services cheaper and companies more competitive. Hewlett-Packard chief executive Carly Fiorina has urged tax reductions and better schools to improve the competitiveness of U.S. industry. Business groups in the U.S. are protesting growing attempts to curb outsourcing. “We want to grow the worldwide economy and create jobs. Isolating ourselves is not the way to do it,” director of communications from Business Roundtable Tita Freeman has said. The Business Roundtable is an association of CEOs of the biggest firms in the U.S. and it recently urged the Bush administration not to be swayed by the public furor over the loss of American jobs overseas and not to espouse policies that would prevent American firms from getting jobs done cost-effectively, including outsourcing and subcontracting to countries like India, China or Russia. Opponents of moving work offshore, such as Paul Craig Roberts, former assistant secretary of the Treasury during the Reagan administration, say that times have changed and that today’s migration of service-industry positions isn’t likely to provide the benefits that some economists say it will. “It is not your father’s traditional foreign trade,” Roberts said in an essay published by NewsMax.com. “Goods are not being traded. Offshore production is not a case of the U.S. making good X and trading it to China for good Y. It is a case of the U.S. ceasing to make good X in the U.S. and making it in China instead.” Here in India, the reactions have been of unqualified umbrage. “The laws are a surprise,” Commerce and Industry Minister Arun Jaitley said, recalling his meeting with US trade representative Robert Zoellick in June last year in which Zoellick had termed as “bad policy” attempts then being made some state legislatures to ban outsourcing of government contracts to countries such as India. Zoellick who was in New Delhi recently met Jaitley to discuss a range of trade-related issues. Speaking to reporters after the meeting Jaitley said that any further progress in the WTO linked to opening up of Indian agriculture will be pegged to the U.S. approach to outsourcing. “It is strange that on the one hand, people are talking about opening of markets, and on the other hand, banning business process outsourcing. Our agriculture is fragile as it is not subsidized, like in the U.S.,” Jaitley said. Echoing similar sentiments, information technology minister Arun Shourie has said that this was not the way Washington could advance in the backdrop of multilateral trade negotiations. “I feel this would worsen prospects of multilateral negotiations in trade,” Shourie has said. “We must continue to move up the value chain and evolve such solutions and services which are good and cost-effective and Indian IT companies must diversify to other markets,” Shourie said. Indian industry too has reacted angrily to “protectionism” building up in the U.S. ahead of this year’s presidential election. Software industry association Nasscom president Kiran Karnik said, “We are dismayed. Such legislations are not in keeping with the increasing globalization of trade which benefits all countries and is contrary to the spirit of free trade espoused by the U.S.” Observers in India say that U.S. lawmakers are being shortsighted and populist and will be brought to their senses when enough qualified people are not found to do the job. On the next course of action, the advice is to bide one’s time taking a leaf out of the response to outsourcing in U.K. The belief is that matters will die down. Some prominent American think tanks (Economic Strategy Institute, East West Center), have already advised India to keep calm for the moment, as the outsourcing backlash is likely to die out once the elections are over in the U.S. Shourie has said: “The real action has to come from the firms who avail our services and they must know the consequences on their competitiveness if they are not allowed to outsource.” In a broader context, the moves are being seen in India as a test of U.S. commitment to the ideal of free trade. To votaries of free trade, any attempt to erect barriers in services is as reprehensible as maintaining barriers in the movement of manufactured goods. NASSCOM, the leading software forum, has advocated that India keep it counsel and observe a low profile strategy, as the anti-outsourcing bills are likely to be ineffective. They will end up costing more U.S. jobs than they save. The bills will be shelved the moment a new government —Democratic or Republican — is in place. - Siddharth Srivastava is a journalist based in New Delhi. |TOP| REPORT  The Qadeer Quandary India, Pak and Nukes – By Siddharth Srivastava Pakistan’s N-bomb guru A.Q. Khan’s dramatic mea culpa marks an essential difference between how governments in India and Pakistan function, writes Siddharth Srivastava. This subject has caught attention here — how would have Pakistan’s tainted nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan (inset, above) been treated had he been in India and leaked as well as shopped nuclear arsenal around the world? Reflection on the issue offers a fundamental answer of how Indian society has developed so much differently from Pakistan since partition created the two countries in 1947. It also provides an insight into the way corruption is viewed in both the countries as well as systemic checks and balances in place. But first, a brief survey of what happened. This is how events have unfolded in the past couple of weeks — the initial reaction of President Pervez Musharraf, in what has become apparent was evidence of nuclear peddling supplied by the U.S., was to crack down on the scientists involved. But, Musharraf had to demur. Taking on Khan was not going to be easy as the scientist presented just the tip of the iceberg that involved the military rulers of the country, the ISI intelligence establishment as well as several leaders past and present. Musharraf’s military advisors warned him against any overt action against Khan. Khan, himself threatened to spill the beans through a video safely tucked away with his daughter who moved out of Pakistan. What further clinched it for Khan were the widespread protests against the treatment meted out to him, as well as the growing perception that Musharraf was acting at the behest of the U.S. Khan’s role in leaking nuclear technology to countries such as North Korea, Libya and Iran in exchange of enormous sums of money could be forgiven. After all, it was Khan as father of Pakistan’s nuclear program, who made Pakistan see eye-to-eye with enemy number one — India. In the end, Musharraf had no choice but to arrange a deal with Khan. A presidential pardon followed Khan’s admission of guilt on national television. The U.S. has so far restrained itself from presenting any fait accompli to Musharraf. In its estimate Musharraf still remains the best bet for a moderate Pakistan away from the Islamists who continually threaten to Talibanize the country. India, too, has been remiss in its response to the events. With the peace process in place and it does not want to indulge in any verbal sparring with its neighbor. The Indian government has all along kept a studied silence on the issue, except for a mild statement criticizing Pakistan issued by Foreign Minister Yashwant Sinha during the visit of his British counterpart Jack Straw. Even as election-related speeches gain tempo in India, nobody from the Indian establishment has overtly attacked Pakistan. The Khan episode has drawn comparison to a recent court judgment on the late Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, though the issue is not of the same magnitude as Khan’s misdemeanors. After 17 years of hearings, Gandhi was exonerated from any pecuniary gain in the Bofors gun deal that bedeviled his career in the latter half of the eighties. The Swedish Bofors guns were among the best in the world and extensively used during the Kargil war, a low-intensity conflict between India and Pakistan in 1999. Gandhi enjoyed an unblemished image of “Mr. Clean” when he began his tenure as prime minister in 1984. Seeds of the Information Technology revolution and economic liberalization were laid in this country, courtesy his vision. Yet, when it came to unsubstantiated reports of him or his family having benefited from the Bofors gun deal, the Indian electorate did not forgive him. He lost subsequent elections and eventually was assassinated by LTTE terrorists from Sri Lanka. The experience of Khan and the late Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi are not related in any way. But, in their stories lies a critical difference in the way corruption or moral standards in public life are viewed in the two nations. It is not as if corruption is not endemic in India — it is, as evidenced by a slew of recent scams involving tinkering with the stock market, spurious stamp paper, ministers being caught on camera accepting bribes. Petty government officials make it a habit to harass the public for well, petty, benefits. A recent analysis titled “Why Indian N-tech wont leak” in The Times of India, reads: “In the past, other countries like Iraq and Iran have expressed interest in Indian nuclear and missile technology, but have been politely shown the ‘not for sale’ sign. How do Indian scientists resist the lure to flog WMD technology around the world? According to a former nuclear scientist, there are several reasons for this — foremost being the strong culture of bureaucratic control by the Prime Minister’s Office and Cabinet. In contrast to Pakistan, Indian nuclear and missile scientists, while celebrated, have not been needlessly lionized and made to feel they are above the law. Second, Indian efforts have been largely indigenous and did not require an extensive network of illegal back-channels where the “hook or by crook” and “money is no object” culture prevailed. Third, Indian WMD capabilities have evolved with a strong system of formal and informal governmental controls. According to a former atomic energy department head, India has had “formal and informal” export controls since the 1950s’ Atomic Energy Act. The strict guidelines are not just about missiles and nuclear weapons, but have even been applied, in one case in the 1980s, to jeeps being sought by Iran, for fear they may land up in its Iraq war front. Since the 1990s, even these have been tightened by written guidelines being disseminated to all public sector units, the departments of space, defense research and atomic energy, on what can be exported and to whom. Indeed, it is the informal controls in the form of norms of behavior that defines the way how the corrupt or others who are perceived to be corrupt are treated in this country. The five-year-old Bharatiya Janata Party-led government under Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee has witnessed several sting operations by television journalists. The president of the BJP and a union minister reporting to Vajpayee have been caught on camera accepting bribes. Similar allegations have been leveled against Defense Minister George Fernandes. However, none of these charges have had any impact on the stature of Vajpayee, whose reputation remains unblemished in the eyes of the Indian public. The former BJP president and the minister were disgraced. Fernandes has continued as he enjoys the confidence of Vajpayee. Such has not been the case with Pakistan, wherein the means are being justified to meet any ends. The military, including Musharraf, are part and parcel of the same system that propagates, indeed, supports such ends. All is fair as long as it meets with the agenda of putting Pakistan on an even keel militarily with India. - Siddharth Srivastava is a journalist based in New Delhi. |TOP| CONTROVERSY   Back to Burning and Lynching? A Playwright Responds – By Sujit Saraf Bay area-based theater activist and playwright Sujit Saraf’s provocative play ‘Tatha Kuru’ rewrote the Gita as a book fit for an atheist. The performances drew a flurry of ugly emails. Sujit Saraf responds. On February 7, 8 and 21, the theater group Naatak staged its seventeenth production, my Hindi play Tathaa Kuru: The Bhagavad Gita As It Should Be. The words tathaa kuru translate into “do that,” from the last instruction that Krishna gives to Arjun in the Bhagavad Gita: “Reflect fully on the truth revealed to you by Me,” says Krishna, “and then, whatever you desire, do that.” The play, our advertisements said, “re-writes the Bhagavad Gita as a book fit for an atheist.” This made clear, I hoped, that the play was not a reverent recitation of platitudes about the wisdom of the Gita, its infinite depth and its eternal truth. Instead, I hoped to indicate that I had read the Gita (not books about the Gita), found ideas in it that did not satisfy my intellectual curiosity, and had my own ideas about how it could be re-written to make sense, at least to me. We staged two very successful shows of Tathaa Kuru. After the shows, we received a flood of emails. Some praised the play for its originality and boldness, some criticized it for its impudence, and some were outraged that we had dared to speak about the Bhagavad Gita without their permission. We were flattered that our play generated such attention, but we were shocked to discover that, hidden in the moderate climate of the Bay Area, there are people with extreme views who cannot tolerate the slightest dissent. Instead of expressing intellectual disagreement with the play — which is their privilege — these “critics” took great offence at the play, treating it as a personal attack on themselves. They let loose a torrent of abusive emails, accusing Naatak members of being “bastards,” “commies” and “Hindu haters.” They took up the cause of Hinduism as they understood it, which was to warn us not to stage our third show. We staged the third show. There were protesters outside the theater, holding signs that accused the play of “insulting Krishna.” There were protesters in the parking lot, handing out flyers and encouraging people to turn back. The protests were peaceful, except for frayed tempers when we decided to take down the protesters’ names, in case they had planned disruptions inside the theater (they had not). The audience did not seem to care about the protests, and the show was successful. The protesters enjoy the same rights as we do. It is their privilege to criticize our play, as it is our right to stage it. This, perhaps, is American civil society at its best, except for one wrinkle. The protesters were peaceful, but not by cho |
