आन्दोलन गोर्खाल्याण्ड्को वार्ता अन्तरिमको ? 15 days' Strike threatened

Source : Sunakhari Samachar, 26 July 2011

Republic Day observation in Kalimpong

N.L.Sherpa , SDO Kalimpong  Saluting the National Flag

Ex Service men's contingent

Tired students wait for the Chief Guest and the vacant VIP gallery 

Strike threatened

KalimNews, 26 January: GJM will observe 15 days continuous strike from 29th January to12th February as proposed and earlier and each family should send one member to the rally organised by the party, said Bimal Gurung President of GJM during a Republic Day programme organised y GJM at Khumani More near the police barricade. He further said that this time we will go to Dooars and nobody can stop us. 

A party source said but no preparation is made for the forthcoming strike as such party cadres too are not sure whether the announcement is really an order or just a threatening to the Bengal government. Gurung's tone for the strike was a bit different to his previous announcement, listeners felt in this way. GLP volunteers participated in the march past and other events held in Khunia. 

Country headed for majority govt

KIRAN PUN, My Republica, KATHMANDU, Jan 27: As last-ditch efforts for a consensus government failed and the extended deadline for forming such a government of political understanding expired Wednesday, the country is now headed for a majority government.

With the political parties not requesting the President for more time to try forming a consensus government, Dr Ram Baran Yadav is turning to parliament Thursday for the election of a new prime minister.

The UCPN (Maoist), NC and CPN-UML held day-long bilateral and trilateral talks at Gokarna Village Resort on Wednesday in an effort to forge consensus on the next government.

But as in previous talks on power sharing, the parties came out with a decision to carry on with efforts at consensus. They are meeting again Thursday.

NC and CPN-UML leaders who participated in the meeting told Republica that the meeting ended inconclusively after they stood for a package deal on power sharing, the peace process and constitution writing while the UCPN leaders wanted the meeting to focus only on government formation.

“There was no consensus as the Maoists declined to address our concerns related to the peace process,” said an NC leader asking to be unnamed.

But Maoist Vice-chairman Narayankaji Shrestha told Republica, “They were not ready for a package deal in the past. They pressed for a package deal today but there was no time to discuss all the issue in a package.” He added, “There should be no conditions for us to stake a claim to the government.”

Claiming that the talks were headed in a positive direction and the environment was becoming conducive, Shrestha further said the talks were headed in the spirit of forming a government under the leadership of the UCPN(Maoist).

The UCPN(Maoist), which was for a package deal in similar talks in the past, argued that the peace process should be discussed in the Special Committee and the constitution writing in the Constituent Assembly (CA), and these issues should not be linked with government formation.

“Their stance today reflects their internal political conflict,” said an NC leader participating in the meeting.

Lately, leaders close to Vice-chairman Dr Baburam Bhattarai have accused Maoist Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal of handing over the PLA to the Special Committee without going through a proper process in the party as he was expecting to become prime minister. NC and CPN-UML leaders said this dynamic affected Wednesday´s talks.

“As this dynamic was clearly visible at the meeting, only top leaders and one each from the three parties are meeting on Thursday to try again for a government of consensus,” said a CPN-UML leader who participated in the meeting.

The NC and UML had argued at the meeting that the Maoist party should first be ready to determine the number of combatants to be integrated in the security agencies and also agree on the modality of integration after regrouping the combatants into three separate categories--those choosing for integration, those for voluntary retirement and those wanting rehabilitation.

Emerging from the meeting, CPN-UML senior leader KP Sharma Oli told journalists that the talks could not bear fruit because both the UCPN (Maoist) and NC staked claim for the leadership of a consensual government.

The meeting discussed forming a taskforce to set the criterion for a consensus government. Dahal was opposed to such a task force, arguing that his party did not want to head a government under various conditions.

“The media has already portrayed me as someone handing over command and control of the PLA to the Special Committee to become prime minister,” a NC leader quoted Dahal as saying. “We do not want to head the government on conditions.”

At the meeting, the prime minister urged the parties to reach consensus, stressing that a majority government would not work, going by the experience of two preceding governments -- one led by Dahal and another by himself, according to Shrestha.

NC, UML set terms for Maoist-led govt

The Nepali Congress and the CPN-UML have agreed allow the Maoists to head the new government if the latter agrees to vacate cantonment within three to four weeks.

Top leaders of the NC and the UML agreed to do so after Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal conveyed that Maoist Chairman Dahal during an informal meeting had agreed to vacate the cantonments in that timeframe.

However, as the leaders sat for formal negotiation, the Maoists rejected the proposal outright saying that the formation of government and peace process were two entirely different things.

“They insisted that the talks should focus only on government formation, not on issues relating to the peace process,” said a NC leader present at the meeting. “The Maoists said they are not ready to head government by fulfilling such conditions.”

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A dictionary for our times
Pratap Bhanu Mehta, IE, Jan 27:In ancient polities political disorder used to be best measured by linguistic disorder. In the Mahabharata, a sense of moral vertigo is induced by no one knowing quite what key moral terms mean any more. Thucydides conveys a sense of political disorder and chaos by telling us that words themselves have lost all meaning. Confucius thought that a well-ordered society required “fixing names.”

On that measure most of the key terms of our political Constitution are now profoundly disordered. The traditional associations of those words don’t make any sense; but the new ones are not fixed. Perhaps the path to moral clarity lies through first recognising and fixing meanings. Only then can we understand that we are in the midst of a new constitutional regime, where old words need new definitions.

Let us begin with our constitutional order.

Office of the prime minister: The weakest office in the cabinet.

Cabinet government: Each minister for himself or herself.

An opposition party: A party guilty of exactly the same things it accuses government of.

Federalism: A system of government where the Centre takes credit for growth and blames the states for poverty.

Member of Parliament: Marginal players in the system, whose sense of worth depends upon major pandemonium.

Supreme Court: The only office whose majesty cannot be redefined. (Any redefinition risks incurring a contempt petition.)

Office of the governor: Like an imperial regent in princely states. Can meddle if necessary.

Civil liberties: Something you might just get — if you can have Ram Jethmalani as a lawyer.

Coalition politics: When there is always some other party to blame.

Separation of powers: When each branch of government thinks it can do the other’s job better.

Then there are two curious words associated with government. These are curious because they mean themselves and their opposite. Is it a coincidence that they are used in connection with our government? The first is scheme: both a benevolent government project to help the people and something conspiratorial. In government the two meanings unite to make benevolence a conspiracy. The second is sanction: it can mean “giving permission” or “reprimanding.” When sanctions are given or refused, which speech act is being undertaken?

Then there are some new words that signal political change; words that promise a new revolution and imagine new utopias.

Governance: During revolutions, new slogans are coined. “Power to the People!”, “Liberty!” and so on. Now our war cry is “Governance!” Fourteen prominent citizens have even petitioned the prime minister to take this seriously. A powerful revolutionary slogan, inevitably, has several meanings. It poses a real semantic challenge. Is it a noun or a verb? Is it a problem or is it a solution? Is there a path to governance or is governance the path?

But here are some competing definitions. 1) The word polite company uses when it doesn’t want to directly blame the government for not taking decisions. 2) The word the PM uses to explain why he cannot take decisions. 3) The word used by people fed up with politics. 4) The word used by politicians fed up with bureaucrats. 5) The word used by civil society fed up with everybody. 6) The word used by people who wish they were living in China.

Independent institutions: Another revolutionary re-imagining of our institutions. What form of government does it mean? 1) Where people have the illusion that they can bypass politics. 2) Where people want to duck the question “Who guards the guards?”. 3) Where the solution to a breakdown in every institution is to create another one. 4) One which bureaucrats and judges love, since they get more power.

But perhaps we should not complain. After all, all utopias are fuzzy and vague. And seriously, can there be a more energising war cry than “Governance”?

But we don’t just have an emerging utopian political imagination. Even some of our old institutions have taken on new roles. Consider:

Income tax department: The department that raids individuals when the media does not do a good enough job producing gossip about film stars.

Central Bureau of Investigation: The agency the Supreme Court trusts, just because the court is monitoring it.

Civil society: That part of the establishment that does not like the establishment but is too afraid to come out on the streets.

Ministry of defence: The ministry that defends India against its greatest enemy: not Pakistan, not China, but corruption. No decision, no corruption.

We even have a new economics to go with a new political system.

Inflation: The only economic phenomenon that government can blame on the weather.

Public-private partnerships: More efficient rent-seeking arrangements between the public and private sectors.

Interest rate: The thing the RBI has to fiddle with when the government closes off all fiscal options.

Inclusive growth: The kind of growth that gives the government an excuse to launch more schemes that it claims it has no capacity to implement.

Free market: When government discretion and tariffs are sold on the market.

Then there are serious redefinitions of major political challenges:

Kashmir: The place the BJP needs to plant a flag when it is bored with other problems.

Northeast: The place where ethnicity and elections are synonymous.

Maoism: The political phenomenon that the Trinamool thinks will be easier to fix than the Railways.

The list could go on. After all India has arrived at the world stage. It must have a new global vocabulary.

Strategic thinking: The decision we take when we have given ourselves no options.

This list is admittedly incomplete and random. More skilful linguists could come up with deeper and profound changes. Our language is breaking under the weight of our political and economic innovation. We are talking at cross-purposes because we don’t know whether we are using words in their old or their new meanings.

Since language is an inherently social enterprise we will all have to contribute to the reconstruction of our language. But how can one possibly make sense of our times, when words and institutions lose all their meaning? In uttering them, we conjure up merely unmeaning shadows of their former referents.

The writer is president, Centre for Policy Research, Delhi

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