THE TIMES

The extremists are afraid of books and pens,

the power of education frightens them.
MALALA YOUSAFZAI

Attack on Peshawar school must steel Islamabads

resolve to fight terrorism tooth and nail

oming on the heels of the Sydney hostage incident, the attack

on a school in Peshawar by Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan militants has shocked the international community. Over 100 people,
mostly students, have been killed by armed jihadis who forced
Pakistani security personnel to carry out emergency counter-terrorism
operations. This attack is eerily similar to the 2004 Beslan massacre
that saw Islamist terrorists take over a school in North Ossetia, resulting in the death of 186 children. The Peshawar incident highlights the
growing scourge of extremism in Pakistan and also exemplifies the
increasing threat that children face in that country.
Ironically, only days earlier Pakistani teenager Malala Yousafzai
who survived Taliban bullets to champion the cause of educating children was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. That jihadis continue to
target students in Pakistan stems from
two factors. First, schools and children
are extremely soft targets. An attack
like the one in Peshawar is bound to
have huge shock value across Pakistan
and the world. Second, modern education is anathema to Islamists who see it
as a western conspiracy. Even when
Pakistani Taliban took over Swat
valley a few years ago, jihadis blew up
several school buildings.
That said, the immediate trigger for
this Peshawar attack appears to be Pakistani militarys ongoing operations
in North Waziristan. These operations seem to have dealt a significant
blow to jihadis in Pakistans northwest tribal belt. This in turn has disrupted Talibans plans to make the most of the emerging situation in
Afghanistan, where US troops are slated to gradually hand over
combat operations to Afghan forces. Through the Peshawar attack
Taliban wants to up the cost of Pakistani armys offensive against it.
However, the dastardly attack on school children should steel
Islamabads resolve to fight terrorism tooth and nail. For far too long
the Pakistani establishment has carried out a duplicitous policy of
distinguishing between good and bad Islamists. This has boomeranged in a terrible manner. Targeting jihadis in North Waziristan
while turning a blind eye to the activities of the Lashkar-e-Taiba and
Hafiz Saeed simply wont do. If Pakistan is to protect itself from
descending into complete chaos and protect its children, it must
adopt a comprehensive approach to fighting terror.

Zero Is Hero
WPI inflation dips to zero, brings cheer,
opens big window for unravelling price controls

ive years and four months after it last contracted, Wholesale

Price Index in November was static. A reading of zero is not
merely an unusual statistical phenomenon, it has resulted in
gains for aam admi. Since July, when finance minister Arun Jaitley
presented his budget, the Indian basket of crude has fallen 45%. The
benefit has shown up in many areas of consumption, including
vegetables where easing of transport cost has helped. A sharp
decline in inflation also opens up other opportunities for economic
reforms and the Modi government must make the most of it.
In areas as varied as electricity and fertilisers, policymakers face
a common problem. Years of subsidising various
inputs to keep output prices low has meant Indias
economy is characterised by a tangled mass of
price controls. The current phase of low commodity prices coal prices too have fallen sharply provides an opportunity to begin unravelling controls.
Painful reforms are best carried out in favourable
circumstances which make the governments job of
dealing with the political fallout easier. For instance,
one key reform, linking retail price of diesel to its cost,
was done a few weeks ago.
In this context, the Modi government has not done enough to
create an appropriate political climate for economic reforms. The
current Parliament session has frequently been disrupted by political
controversies that are best avoided. Some economic legislation that
should soon come up such as a constitutional amendment for a
goods and services tax needs extensive cross-party political support. It would be a pity if politics tripped up economic reforms as
Prime Minister Narendra Modi was elected on a development
agenda. This opportunity mustnt be wasted.

How Narendra Modi won by losing Person of the Year

Ruchir Sharma

All the Indians who

voted online to name
Narendra Modi as
Time magazines Person of the Year were
deeply disappointed,
no doubt. They turned out in the
millions and won the vote, but Times
editors had the final say, and decided to
give the global cover to Ebola workers
instead.
Before they sink too deeply into
despondency, however, supporters of
the prime minster should consider the
upside of losing this particular election, because there is a jinx associated
with appearing on global magazine
covers, particularly the cover of Time.
My research team trolled through
the cover stories of magazines such as
Time going back to 1980 and found
that the economic story often turned
out the opposite of what Time had
suggested, for the leader or country in
question. If the cover was celebratory,
then the stock market and the economy tended to turn for the worse in
the ensuing years. If the cover was
critical, then the stock market and
the economy tended to prosper in the
ensuing years.
There is a certain reason why these
stories tend to signal the end of a trend,
not the beginning. By the time a trend
is so big that mainstream publications
are willing to give it cover play, odds are
the trend has already been running for
long, and is about to turn.
The international attention focused on Modi has much to do with
hopes of a major economic revival in
India at a time when the global economy is short on good growth stories.
Indeed the hopes are so high it is hard
to find any financial analyst with a negative comment on the Indian economy,
but to true contrarian investors this
optimistic consensus is itself a warning signal.
As the old market saying goes: bull
markets are born on pessimism, grown
on skepticism, mature on optimism,

and die on euphoria. If Modi had made

the global cover of Time, it would have
suggested that the bull market rally
which began in the economic despair
of late 2013 had probably reached the
euphoria stage.
The most recent example of the
cover story jinx in action came from
Mexico. At the start of this year Time
profiled president Enrique Pena Nieto
as the man Saving Mexico, and that
was the sentiment at the time. The
writer of that story quoted me to the
effect that, In the Wall Street investment community, id say that Mexico is
by far the favourite nation just now.
Since then it has been all downhill for
Pena Nieto and Mexico, with the president embroiled in a series of scandals
and economic growth coming in at a
disappointing 2.2% this year.
It was hard not to like Pena Nieto
and to be seduced by the hope he held
for Mexico, given his ambitions for
shaking up the old order of oligopolies

When any trend gets hot

enough to reach the cover of
a leading global magazine, it
is probably about ready to
cool off. In this regard, it is
rather a relief for India that
Modi did not make it to the
global cover of Time
and cronyism. When i met him just
before his election in mid 2012 he came
across as more than the pretty boy his
critics in the local media described. He
was a determined leader with a definitive plan to double Mexicos growth
rate, but with hindsight we now know
that too many people got too excited too
soon. All the political scandals and the
lacklustre economic growth this year
have lowered expectations of Mexico

Criminals dont fear death penalty they fear police efficiency

Robert Badinter is former Minister of
Justice, France, and an international
authority on crimes and death punishment. Speaking with Pratigyan Das,
Badinter explained why he thinks death
penalty doesnt work, punishment versus
policing and why life imprisonment is
the toughest sentence:
 You say there should be no death
penalty why?
How can someone be in favour of
death penalty? It is a useless and inhuman punishment.
In a civilised world, especially in a democratic
country, there should be
no such punishment, as
in a democracy the first right of a person is the Right to Live.
Every state should protect this right.
 But doesnt death penalty deter
criminals?
Contemporary history proves there
is no relationship whatsoever between
the presence and absence of death penalty with respect to rate of crimes. Various studies conducted before the abolition of capital punishment give a clear
signal towards this.
Take Europe it wasnt a pleasant
continent in past centuries. Largely
driven by colonialism, Europe resorted
to capital punishment. However, atrocities committed in the first part of the 20th
century led to a moral growth and
brought realisation among many in

Q&A

Europe to value human life this led

many European nations to abolish this
cruel punishment.
Interestingly, all the nations which
abolished death penalties were democratic countries where public opinion at large was in favour of
crushing this punishment.
Most importantly, nowhere after abolishing it has there
been a way back to re-establish
this because of a rise in crimes.
The idea that death penalty
prevents criminals is false
what prevents criminals
is not the threat of death
but rather the threat of
getting arrested. Criminals cant operate if
policing is efficient.
The problem is
the
efficiency
of
police.
 Indias witnessed
heinous crimes like
2012s Nirbhaya gangrape-murder is justice ensured if such
criminals live?
Everyone has a
Right to Live. This cannot have any exceptions. Death penalty is
not given for petty
offences, its always for
heinous crimes. But
while looking at a crime,

you dont take into consideration the

childhood conditions of a convict, his
background and prejudices we just
look at the act a person has committed,
which, in my opinion, is not fair. Its a
short-sighted shame for humanity. We
decide a man should die because of an
act, without any consideration that
he be given a chance to improve.
Id say revenge is no justice. Justice has to take into consideration
fundamental values. Human justice
is poisoned by all the inequalities of
society. Taking the life of a
person is not a solution
the number of such
crimes will not decrease
by keeping death penalty as a punishment.
 What are some alternatives?
Life sentence should
take over from capital
punishment. Apart from
suppressing the risk of
taking a persons life, it also allows someone to
change for the better. You
can try to bring back a man
to humanity.
Moreover, i feel life sentence is a bigger penalty
than death. In capital punishment, in seconds, a person
loses his life a person sentenced for life has to live with
his crime lifelong.

dilbert

Jug Suraiya

secondopinion@timesgroup.com
http://blogs.timeofindia.indiatimes.com/jugglebandhi/

The writer is Head of Emerging Markets

Equity and Global Macro, Morgan Stanley.

theysaidit
If there is no peace
outside, what is the
meaning of
allowing
Parliament
to function?
Sharad Yadav

To appoint Virat
captain for the rest of
the series would
be ... the best
move for a
young side
Ian Chapell

On Christmas Day,
Michelle will look at
my gift and say Thats
very sweet honey
and I never see
her wear
whatever
I bought
Barack Obama

Thought Prison
Almost all our suffering is the
product of our thoughts. We
spend nearly every moment of
our lives lost in thought, and
hostage to the character of
those thoughts. You can
break this spell, but it
takes training.

India disproves all laws of physics by

simultaneously travelling in opposite directions

secondopinion

and Pena Nieto.

This was not out of step with Times
record at earlier, critical junctures for
major economies. Before Mexico, Time
had run a number of optimistic cover
stories singing praises of Europe
shortly before the global financial
crisis in 2008. It put Germany on the
cover as a great place for doing
business and in May 2006 described
France as a country on the rise, with
presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy raising hopes of free market reform.
Of course, the story played out very
differently with France now the big
laggard of Europe.
Time also made the opposite
forecast for Indonesia and its fellow
Asian Tigers after they melted down
in the crisis of 1998, publishing
negative covers in July 2000 and then in
July 2003 on how these nations were
Tigers No More. The second cover in
particular came at the start of a global
boom that would end up boosting
growth across the emerging world,
including Indonesia.
To be fair, Time has had its share of
enduring cover calls, and the generally
contrarian value of cover studies is not
unique to Time. The Economist has
been on the wrong side of major
turning points, like when in March
1999 it wrote of a world drowning in oil
and saw the price of a barrel falling to
$5 just before prices began climbing
for a decade. It cast Africa as the Hopeless Continent in 2000, just as Africa
began a decade long renaissance. But
our research shows The Economist
storylines more often hold true for
several years, which probably has
something to do with their deliberately
contrarian culture.
In general, though, it is hard to
escape the conclusion that when any
trend gets hot enough to reach the
cover of a leading global magazine, it is
probably about ready to cool off. In this
regard, it is rather a relief for India
that Modi did not make it to the global
cover of Time.

Sacredspace

Forward, backward
India is rewriting the laws of physics by simultaneously moving in opposite directions. It is travelling forward on several
fronts. One initiative is that of the Swachh Bharat programme
to provide toilets to millions of rural and urban households,
enabling the country literally to clean up its act.
Another is the Make in India campaign which seeks to turn
the country into an international manufacturing hub where makers of all sorts
of products, from automobiles to zip fasteners, will set up shop, providing
employment to over a hundred million young people over the next several years.
India is moving forward with its plans to clean the Ganga and the Yamuna,
build a hundred smart cities, and put the stalled economy back into top gear so
that the countrys growth rate overtakes that of Chinas in the next two years,
as some analysts have predicted.
No doubt about it, were forging ahead on all these fronts. But for every
forward movement there is an equal and opposite backward movement,
occurring at the same time.
So even as Isro is being globally lauded as having successfully launched a mission to Mars, making India a member of an elite international space fraternity,
we have a neta informing us that so-called modern
science is a pygmy compared to astrology.
Were told to chuck our history books out of the
window and instead read our ancient epics to discover our glorious past, which included the creation of supposedly modern technologies like television, heavier-than-air flying machines, nuclear weapons and
organ transplants, the last being evidenced by Ganesh, the elephant-headed god.
Were told that sexual assaults on women, the incidence of which is rising
horrifyingly, are not so much a law and order problem as the social problem of
women dressing and behaving indecently in public, thereby inciting and
inviting attacks on themselves.
Will these two Indias one going forward, the other backward ever meet? The
world being round, two travellers going in opposite directions will eventually
meet up. So forward India and backward India should eventually meet up, somewhere or somewhen. The problem is, when they do will either recognise the other?

THE TIMES OF INDIA, NEW DELHI

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 17, 2014

Hit Me Baby One More Time

A thought for today

Pakistans Beslan

OF IDEAS

Chad Crowe

26

Sam Harris

Contrarian View Of Priests And Politicians

Osho

here are vested interests which

dont allow you to go into joyous
ways. They need a miserable
man. For their own purposes the
miserable man is more suitable than a
happy man, because a happy man is a
rebel and a miserable man is never a
rebel. A miserable man is always
ready to obey, always ready to submit.
A miserable man is so miserable that
he cannot stand on his own; he knows
that on his own he is just miserable. So
he is ready to fall into anybodys trap.
Any politician can become the
leader if people are miserable. Then
any stupid person can become your
leader, your prime minister, your
president because he can promise
you things, he can promise you great
things. And you are so miserable that
you trust the promises. If you are
happy, nobody can deceive you by
promising because you need not
have any promise, you are already

happy. With a happy world politicians

will disappear.
When you are unhappy you start
thinking, Maybe this life is wasted,
maybe I could not manage this life, but
if I can manage the next one, the coming one, that is more than enough to
ask. You go to the priest. The priest
promises you good in the
other life. The politician
promises something good in
the future in this life, and
the priest promises you
something good in the other
life beyond death. Both go
on promising. Promises are
needed by miserable people.
If you are happy, you will
not go to the politician and
you will not go to the priest.
For what? You are already
happy, you are already in
paradise. Then the whole
profession of the priest and the politician disappears.
These are the exploiters. These are

the people who are sitting on your

heart and blocking your energies.
They can remain in power only if you
are miserable. Remember it. By being
miserable you are helping a gang of
exploiters. Be happy and you bring the
greatest revolution in the world.
I am doing something really revolutionary, radical: I am trying to make you happy. It
may not be very obvious to
you how it is concerned
with the revolution of society, but it is. A happy person
is beyond being oppressed,
exploited, because a happy
person needs no promises.
A happy person is already
happy so he is not worried
about paradise or afterlife.
That is all nonsense. A happy
person is not worried about
tomorrow; the morrow takes
care of itself.
I would like you to become a lily, a
flower, unconcerned about the future,

the

speaking
tree

unconcerned about the past. The past

is no more and the future is not yet.
Only the present is there. Bloom in it,
be happy in it, rejoice in it, celebrate
in it, and you bring a great revolution
in the world.
Priests and politicians create guilt in
you. They do the harm and then they
make you feel guilty. They destroy your
capacity to live, to love, to delight, and
then they throw the responsibility on
you It is your sin, it is your wrongdoing that has made you so miserable.
But the basic problem is conditioning. Man should be helped to live a natural life, man should not be conditioned to live an unnatural life. The
basic problem is not an incapacity to
live you are born with the capacity to
live the basic problem is how not to
allow others to destroy that capacity.
Extract from Sufis: The people of the
Path, Courtesy Osho International
Foundation, www.osho.com
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