NEWS

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FROM PAGE ONE

THE HINDU

Yechury pitches Left as alternative

Party general secretary attacks both Modi and Mamata governments
KOLKATA: Twenty minutes on

ied or your passion because

you do not want to turn down
the big sums, a student at
IITB who had not been
placed in the pre-placement
season said. So the computer science guys turn to the
tech majors and the rest feel
like they should try and catch
the investment banks and
consulting firms, he said.
While most students have
realistic expectations, often
there is pressure from parents who feel that they have
to recoup their investment,
Yash Shahi, dual degree Electrical Engineering student at
IIT Kanpur who got placed at
Intel said.

India to go for talks with

U.S. soon on visa fee hike
But before any action at the
WTO, discussions on the issue will be held shortly over
digital videoconference between both governments.
These discussions will be
part of the high-level IndiaUS Services Working Group
meetings, the sources said.
Commerce Minister Nirmala Sitharaman is likely
soon to write to U.S. Commerce
Secretary
Penny
Pritzker. The sources said the
Indian Ambassador to the
U.S. and industry bodies such
as Nasscom are in touch with
the U.S. administration to put The visa fee hike is likely to impact the temporary movement
across Indias view the of highly-skilled professionals from India to the U.S.
huge contribution of the Insome time soon, especially
dian IT firms to the U.S. econ- challenges).
During 2014-15, Indias ex- since the TPF and S&CD,
omy, as well as the adverse
impact of the visa fee increase port of computer services both annual events, will now
on these firms and on the and ITES/BPO services (ex- be held only in Septembertemporary movement of cluding commercial pres- October 2016. With the presihighly-skilled professionals, ence) was around $82 billion, dential elections scheduled
mainly from the IT sector, of which exports to the U.S. for November 2016, India is
and Canada accounted for looking to resolve the issue
from India to the U.S.
before the term of the Obama
Pointing out that U.S. visa nearly 60 per cent.
The sources said the U.S. administration ends, the
fee increases hurt India-US
services trade, the Indian Commerce Department and sources said.
India had earlier protested
Commerce Ministry has been the U.S. Trade Representative
insisting that all visa-related have informed that visa-relat- the delay on the part of the
issues should be part of dis- ed matters should be kept out U.S. in signing a totalisation
cussions on bilateral services of the TPF, S&CD and servic- agreement to eliminate dual
trade, the India-US Trade Pol- es discussions as, according social security taxation. The
icy Forum (or TPF, the pre- to the U.S., they are security- Indian IT/ITeS sector is almier bilateral platform to dis- related issues dealt by the ready burdened because in
cuss and resolve bilateral Department of State and De- the absence of an India-U.S.
of
Homeland Totalisation Agreement, it
trade and investment issues) partment
and the India-US Strategic Security.
has to shell out over $1 billion
Meanwhile, the Commerce annually to the U.S. governand Commercial Dialogue
(S&CD, the primary forum to Ministry, along with the Ex- ment towards social security,
discuss issues of mutual inter- ternal Affairs Ministry, are in with no benefit (as the Indian
est on regional security, trade, discussions to ensure that the employees do not stay on in
economic cooperation, de- digital videoconference on America) or prospects of
fence
and
climate visa-related issues happens refund.

foot from a traffic diversion

near Fort William, crowds
thronged the Brigade Parade
Grounds here on a quiet Kolkata Sunday to see the CPI
(M)s brass make a bid to
showcase the partys cadre
strength, amid a palpable political decline.
All buses, packed with party workers, seemed to head to
the rally from some kilometres away. Closer to the
venue, hundreds walked with
red flags, some even sporting
red caps.
The grand rally to kickstart the partys first Plenum
since 1978 had one clear aim:
to enthuse its workers before
an all-important Assembly
elections in West Bengal and
arrest its decline in a State it
ruled for 34 years.
Switching between Bengali
and Hindi, CPI(M) general
secretary Sitaram Yechury attacked both the Narendra
Modi government at the Centre and the Mamata Banerjee
government in the State, trying to project the Left as the
best political alternative for
an improved nation and State.
He launched a sharp attack
on Mr. Modi, taking a dig at

SHIV SAHAY SINGH

KOLKATA: Hoping to make a

Former West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee addressing the rally in Kolkata on
Sunday. PHOTO: PTI

his foreign visits and accusing the government of disturbing harmony. There is a
joke that the Prime Minister
was searching for a seatbelt
as he sat in Parliament. He
has been travelling so much,
Mr. Yechury said. Asserting
that talks with Pakistan were
necessary, he said a top-down
approach to engagement
would not work, especially
when singer Ghulam Ali
wasnt allowed to perform in
Mumbai.
Mr. Yechury accused the
government of fanning com-

munalism, hitting out at the

Sangh Parivar over BJP leader
Ram Madhavs Akhand Bharat comment and over the
arrival of truckloads of bricks
at Ayodhya for a Ram temple.
He showcased the Left as
best suited to overcome todays challenges, urging the
party workers to reverse its
decline. Many enemies said
they would destroy the red
flag. Hitler, Indira Gandhi
[during the Emergency] and
the Trinamool Congress said
they would destroy the red
flag. Such a power that can

NISTULA HEBBAR
NEW DELHI: A day after BJP general secretary Ram Madhav
set off a controversy with the
idea of Akhand Bharat, or a
greater India with Pakistan
and Bangladesh, through
popular goodwill coming together, the BJP clarified that
neither the party nor the partys government shared the
view.
Party spokesperson M.J.
Akbar said the text cannot be
separated from the context.
A particular question was
asked to him [Ram Madhav]
to which he gave this reply. As
far as the BJP and the NDA
government are concerned,
we consider India and Pakistan sovereign States and our
position was best articulated
by former Prime Minister
Atal Behari Vajpayee in Lahore. Mr. Vajpayee had, in
Lahore in 1999, described how
he was being dissuaded from
visiting the Minar-e-Pakistan,
the countrys national monument, as it would endorse the
creation of that country.
I insisted on going because I saw no logic in what
was being told to me; and I
made it loud and clear to them
that Pakistan does not require
my stamp for its entity. Pakis-

Ram Madhav says it is not

about India waging war and
forcibly uniting countries.

tan has its own stamp, he had

said at a banquet on that occasion. The BJP has since kept
to this stance.
The RSS, which does hew
to an idea of an Akhand Bharat, also tried to finesse its position, as Mr. Madhavs comments were aired at a time
when Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a dramatic
overture to Pakistan Prime
Minister Nawaz Sharif by visiting him in Lahore. Dr. Rakesh Sinha, author of a well
regarded biography of RSS
founder K.B. Hedgewar, said
that the concept of Akhand
Bharat in the RSS was more
about cultural nationalism
rather than politics. Akhand
Bharat means Islamic countries like Pakistan, Bangla-

desh acknowledge pre-Islamic Hindu cultural roots, not

political merger, he said in
tweets and while speaking to
The Hindu.
The official spokesperson
of the RSS, Manmohan Vaidya, after first distancing the
RSS from the comment on
Saturday, refused to comment
on the matter when The Hindu contacted him. He only
said that he agreed with Dr.
Sinhas formulation of Akhand Bharat through cultural
nationalism.
Not about war
Mr. Ram Madhav, meanwhile, clarified to The Hindu
that he was asked a question
about the map of Akhand
Bharat at the RSS offices and
he had explained the ideological concept. I made it clear
that this was not about India
waging war and forcibly uniting countries. It was about
cultural nationalism and
shared cultural ethos of the
sub-continent, he said.
His explanation did not
convince the Opposition.
Ram Madhavs statement
might give a setback to the situation of friendship that is being created by the Prime Minister, Congress leader Meem
Afzal said.

ing four times the number of

conversations around his
Facebook page than U.S.
President Barack Obama, he
is very clear about what he
chooses for his radio broadcast.
No politics, only public
service campaigns and
achievements of ordinary
citizens, says a source. For
those hoping for a more political Mann ki Baat, there is
always 2016.

Congress reserves half of its

party posts for SC-ST leaders
MEHBOOB JEELANI
NEW DELHI: The Congress has

not only amended its constitution, but also started off nationwide conclaves to regain control over the Schedule Castes
and
Schedule
Tribes
constituencies.
After the 2014 electoral defeat, the party formed a commission headed by the former
Defence Minister A.K. Antony
to examine the gravity of the
loss. The party had apparently
secured 11 crore votes across
the country and one third of
the voters belonged to what
the government recognises as
the Scheduled Castes (SC) and
CM
YK

Scheduled
Tribes
(ST)
communities.
A former IAS officer who
now heads the partys SC cell,
K.Raju, told The Hindu that
the party had realised that the
one third factor could swing
to any side and hurt its electoral progress in future. In
States like Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, our vote share is coming
down, said Mr.Raju. In some
States, like Maharashtra, Karnataka and Punjab, it has remained intact.
The partys biggest nightmare, Mr.Raju said, was the advance of Bahujan Samaj Party,
which had been aggressively
venturing into new States.

Wherever the BSP has entered, they have taken away the
Congress vote from SC/ST
communities, he said.
To rebuild trust among these
communities, the Congress
Working Committee amended
the party constitution in September and increased the intra-party administrative share
of SC/ST leaders from 20 per
cent to 50 per cent.
Apart from that, party vicepresident, Rahul Gandhi has
commanded all the State units
to hold conclaves between December 2015 and March 2016
where B.R. Ambedkars real
ideology would be taught to
the lower caste leaders.

He is stalling peace talks: Raja

SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: CPI(M)
leader D. Raja has said BJP general
secretary Ram Madhavs
statement that India, Pakistan and
Bangladesh would get reunited
one day to form Akhand Bharat
would derail peace efforts in the
sub-continent.
Mr. Raja told The Hindu here on
Sunday that the BJP general
secretarys explanation that he
had spoken as a RSS volunteer
rather than as a BJP leader did not

mean much as his statement

showed the RSS wanted to set the
agenda for the BJP and the
Narendra Modi government. This
is nothing but an attempt to put
the RSS agenda at the forefront,
and this will douse all
expectations that the Prime
Ministers sudden visit to Lahore
had generated, he said.
India, Pakistan and Bangladesh
are sovereign nations. The effort
should be to build conditions
conducive to their peaceful
coexistence.

J&K reaping dividends: PDP

PEERZADA ASHIQ
SRINAGAR: Ruling Peoples

Democratic Party on Sunday said

people of Jammu and Kashmir
will reap the dividends of the
renewed thaw in Indo-Pak ties
and expressed resentment over
the Congress partys stand.
If everything goes well on the
Indo-Pak front, we will soon come
out of the dark era of bombs and
guns. The political dialogue
between India and Pakistan and
the restrain on borders will have a
positive impact on Jammu and
Kashmir, which will give a new

direction to the peace and

reconciliation process, said State
Education Minister Naeem Akhtar.
Unhappy over the Congress
stand on the recent visit of Prime
Minister Narendra Modi to
Pakistan, PDP chief spokesperson
Mehboob Beg said: Congress
leaders seem to be anguished
about the step taken by Mr. Modi.
Is it not true that the Congress has
always vouched for healthy
relations with Pak.? asked Mr.
Beg. He accused the Congress of
making half-hearted attempts for
a healthy relation with Pakistan.

Washington likely to host Modi-Sharif meeting

Modi winds up Mann ki Baat

for 2015 with Start Up India
ferently abled people, we
see that while God takes one
faculty away, He compensates them by making another more acute. It is like a
divine plan, therefore rather
calling them Viklang, let us
call them Divyang or those
with divine abilities, he
said.
Sources say that while the
Prime Minister continues to
be the most digitally engaged world leader, spark-

destroy the red flag hasnt

been born, he said to loud
cheers from a large group of
workers close to the stage.
Citing the axiom What
Kolkata thinks today India
thinks tomorrow, Mr. Yechury said India and West Bengal
could not be made better
without strengthening the
CPI(M). This comes a day after Mr. Yechury said the CPI
(M) would discuss the possibilities of a wider alliance later, underlining that the
Plenum was aimed at strengthening the party itself.

turnaround in the coming

West Bengal Assembly polls,
the Communist Party of India
(Marxist) is returning to what
many consider is the partys
political Waterloo Singur
and the failed promise of industrialisation of the State, in a
way prioritising industry over
agriculture albeit in a different
context when the Trinamool is
seen to have failed to boost the
economy. It is only we [CPI
(M)] who can once again set
up industry at Singur, CPI
(M) State Secretary Surjya
Kanta Mishra told the gathering. The reference of Singur
along with the Saradha scam
came at a rally organised by
the party on Sunday at Brigade
Parade Grounds in Kolkata,
marking the beginning of a
four-day plenum aimed at
streamlining and strengthening the partys organisation.
Emphasising the need for
creation of jobs, Dr. Mishra announced that a six-day march
will be organised by the party
from January 16 to highlight
the lack of industrialisation.

Party, govt. dont share Madhavs view, says BJP

VARGHESE K GEORGE

More than 3,000 suggestions, many of them after Mr.

Modis surprise visit to Lahore on Christmas day, were
received by the portal. Instead, Mr. Modi decided to
frame a new nomenclature
to refer to the differently
abled people and lauded a
mason in Madhya Pradesh
for donating free labour for
building more than 100 toilets in his district.
When we look at the dif-

Re-emphasis on
industrialisation
in West Bengal

VIKAS PATHAK

Mr. Kumar said. All it does is

to create unnecessary stress
for students and unrealistic
expectations for the parents.
I feel sorry for my students
who are burdened by these
unrealistic expectations of
the society around them, he
said.
While most students at the
IITs have a realistic idea by
the time the placement season comes of what salary
they should expect on graduating, some are demoralised by the crore-plus headlines, students say. What it
does is push you towards taking a job that might not even
be in the area you have stud-

MONDAY, DECEMBER 28, 2015

CPI(M) PLENUM

Average offers at IITs modest

This excluded the five who
received offers in U.S. dollars, according to data shared
by placement officer Babu
Viswanathan; computer science students were the ones
who got the high end of the
offers at Chennai too.
Most of the crore-plus salaries reported by the media
are simple conversions into
Indian currency of placement offers made in U.S. dollars, placement officials said.
Many, however, are keen to
point out that this is an unfair
metric. Those [crore-plus]
salaries are nothing special,
Brijesh Kumar, assistant professor at IIT Roorkee, told
The Hindu. Every engineer
in these companies starts
with those salaries when
they work in California because the cost of living is so
high over there. The croreplus packages that the companies advertise include
stock components payable
over five years contingent
upon the person working
there for that many years, he
said.
Moreover, it is meaningless to convert these salaries
to Indian rupees because if
the income is in dollars, so
are the taxes and expenses,

HYDERABAD

Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif wearing a turban

gifted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the wedding of
his granddaughter, in Lahore on Sunday. PHOTO: PTI

WASHINGTON: As India and Pakistan enhance their engagement over the next weeks,
after the abrupt turnaround
in relations, the U.S capital
will likely be the venue for
the next meeting between
Prime Ministers Narendra
Modi and Nawaz Sharif.
U.S. President Barack
Obama has invited both
Prime Ministers for the Nuclear Security Summit on
March 31 and April 1, 2016.
Though no formal announcements have been made, it
is almost certain that Mr.
Modi and Mr. Sharif will be
attending it.
Mr. Obama sees nuclear
terrorismthe most imme-

diate and extreme threat to

global security, according
to a White House statement
on the summit. Nuclear security remains a lingering
concern for the U.S policy
for South Asia particularly.
The summit will be the first
occasion in 2016 that will
bring both Prime Ministers
together. Official-level talks
between the countries are
scheduled to start in mid-January, 2016.
Meanwhile, U.S scholars
who welcome Mr. Modis latest initiative believe the
onus is now on Pakistan, particularly its military, to ensure that relations remain on
track. Prime Minister Modis unexpected visit to Lahore is a welcome develop-

ment. Let us hope it leads to

an improvement in trust between Delhi and Islamabad.
But, that will only occur in a
meaningful way if the Pakistani military also opens itself
to better relations with India, said R.Nicholas Burns,
Professor of the Practice of
Diplomacy and International Relations at the Harvard
Kennedy
School
of
Government.
This is clearly a big win
for Mr. Modi and for creative
Indian diplomacy, said
Alyssa Ayres, senior fellow
for India, Pakistan, and
South Asia at the Council on
Foreign Relations (CFR) and
former Deputy Assistant
Secretary of State for South
Asia.

Speaker wants a new building to house Parliament

NATIONAL BUREAU
NEW DELHI: India needs a new

Parliament building as the

current one is in great distress,
according to Lok Sabha Speaker
Sumitra Mahajan in a proposal to
the Ministry of Urban
Development (MoUD).
Speaking to The Hindu, MoUD
spokesperson Aishwar Rao
confirmed that a letter proposing
this had been received by Urban
Development Minister M.
Venkaiah Naidu last week.
In her letter, Ms. Mahajan has
said that a structure more
spacious and technologically
advanced than the current one
should be built either within
the Parliament building or
outside it across the Rajpath.

On account of ageing of the

Parliament House building and
expansion in activities, staff etc,
the building has shown signs of
distress and overutilisation...
Under the circumstances, there is
an imperative need for the
construction of a new state-of-art
Parliament building, she says in
the letter.
Ministry officials said the
matter would be discussed with
the Cabinet Committee on
Parliamentary Affairs as well as

with the Union Cabinet.

Citing the reasons for having a
new building, Ms. Mahajan has
said that the Lok Sabha seats are
likely to increase after 2026 in
accordance with the provisions of
the explanation to clause (3)
Article 81 of the Constitution.
Since the current building has the
capacity for 550 members, there is
no space left for more members.
The number of Lok Sabha seats
can only go up if the countrys
population increases to a degree

where the Article 81 becomes

applicable.
The Article 81 commands
balancing the representation of
people in Parliament on the basis
of the population recorded by the
last census.
This is not the first time that
this has been proposed. Former
Speaker Meira Kumar too
proposed a change of venue and
had constituted a committee to
look into the matter.
A fire hazard audit had also
been instituted as a result of
which cooking and storing of gas
cylinders inside Parliament have
been mostly discontinued.
The committee, which
included senior BJP leader L.K.
Advani, had decided to leave
things there.
HY-HY