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Tuesday, April 14, 1998

	Is it old or new? For the BJP, the more things change, the more they remain the same. What else to make of the many voices to have come out of its national executive? The executive has yielded the interesting spectacle of L.K. Advani speaking in a voice that would normally be expected from Atal Behari Vajpayee.		Letting it all flow out Bans have always been notoriously difficult to impose, even if they are being done for morally defensible purposes like fighting alcoholism. What can work, however, is an efficient regulatory regime sharply focused on what it is required to do.
	Transfer as a weapon Urban Development Minister Ram Jethmalani reportedly telephoned Prime Minister A. B. Vajpayee to stop the transfer of the Chief Justices of the five High Courts. The reply from the other end was not disclosed. The agitated lawyers who had approached Jethmalani forwarded, in protest, a memorandum to President K.R. Narayanan.		Lessons from the school of violence Bully, riot, swear, snatch, scare, vandalise, kick, hit, insult, or simply isolate and ignore. Violence in schools round the world is pervasive, pernicious and on the rise. But not until a child picks up a gun, shoots madly around, slaughters a few comrades, wounds a few others, not until the act agitates the conscience of a nation and until the media amplifies it into a horror story, does the question of violence in school get the kind of attention it deserves.

Checking out the new guys
Still fresh into the exercise of power, the BJP government receives today a high-profile delegation from Washington that understands well the need to early establish lines of communication which clearly spell out its agenda for the new century: a free trading world with little or no tariff, where power is concentrated in the hands of the openly nuclear-capable states -- and no one else possesses the ability to challenge that hierarchy.

Chaos on the move
The Army is essentially restless. Thanks to short tenures of duty and umpteen temporary moves, most of its time is spent on wheels. All such migrations are accomplished in convoys. A convoy move is essentially simple. There is a starting point, a destination, and a route to follow. A meticulous chart giving prominent locations and destinations is prepared and handed down the ranks.