P A G E
Monday, October 26, 1998
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E D I T O R I A L P A G E |
Monday, October 26, 1998 |
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PM’s
‘Big Bang’ package
Coalition
politics |
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Tagore
on Patel’s Bill
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PM’s ‘Big Bang’ package MARKETMEN have hailed Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s economic assurances at the FICCI annual session as the stock market version of the “Big Bang” theory. There is a large element of exaggerated optimism in this assessment, but then for a set of people battered by long weeks of depressed prices, anything for a cheer and encouraging noises from the highest political authority are what the doctor ordered. But a closer look and over a time will turn them into sceptics which they are because of their long association with speculation. The right to buy back its own shares by a company is good as far as it goes, but SEBI will ensure that it does not go far. There is an annual limit to this (5 per cent) and an obligation to offer the same price to any shareholder if the total worth of equity crosses 15 per cent. These restrictions are meant to ensure that the larger body of shareholders do not suffer from shady, one-to-one get-rich deals. Inter-corporate investment is another weapon to frustrate hostile takeover bids. That too will come with several inhibiting don’ts. But for the present, the Saturday announcement has sent spirits soaring, trading outside the stock market floors showed healthy increases, signalling the start of a revival. But the momentum can be sustained only if demand picks up, corporate inventory comes down, sales rise and confidence returns to the world of business. Of that, there is no sign yet. Two other items in the package bristle with a potential for controversy. The Prime Minister has promised a new look telecom policy within 90 days and he banks on the national task force headed by Mr Jaswant Singh to pull the chestnuts out of the fire. The multibillion rupee cellular and basic telephone service business is bogged down in high licence fees and lower than expected revenue. The licencees want the old arrangement scrapped and replaced by profit sharing, with the government share tapering off over time. If the government accepts this condition, there will be a howl of protest, the opposition terming it as a sell-out of public interests. If it does not, the sector will slowly stagnate to death. The other is the Money Laundering Bill, which has provoked stiff opposition from the business world. FEMA is naturally welcome, since it is loaded in favour of exporters and others. Any meek giving in will be tantamount to walking into a minefield. Much has been made of the ambitious 7000 km national expressway, involving an outlay of Rs 28,000 crore. The Prime Minister has said work will start this year. It cannot, for the plan is in its most skeletal form and even the basic road alignment work is yet to start. Land acquisition will take years if not decades. To talk of so many crore mandays of work is clearly premature. The cement industry will have look to other ways for ending the slump in sales. The PMO has added the
changed policy on insurance, airports and oil exploration
to add solidity to the package. There is no logic in
restating settled issues. There is still something very
striking. During the past few years, political bigwigs
have been attending the annual conclaves of
industrialists with reverence, carring made-to-order
gifts. Mr Narasimha Rao did it, Mr Deve Gowda did it, Mr
Gujral did it and now Mr Vajpayee has done it. In the
past, the many glittering concessions unveiled at these
meetings had remained unredeemed. Will the present
incumbent buck the trend? |
West Asia: hurdles ahead DESPITE the hiccups at every level of the negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians, an agreement on “interim issues” has finally come about. The bigger gainers, however, are not Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. As it appears immediately, the greater beneficiaries are US President Bill Clinton, who brokered the West Asian peace pact, and King Hussein of Jordan, who used his influence on the other three leaders involved to ensure that nothing derailed the process that led to the signing of the Wye River Memorandum on Friday evening in the American White House. President Clinton’s list of foreign policy successes now includes West Asia also after Bosnia, Northern Ireland and Haiti. This will provide him added strength to fight for his political survival, seriously threatened by the explosion of the “Monica bomb”. King Hussein, a terminal cancer case, will be remembered by history for making an invaluable contribution to the efforts for peace in the volatile region. President Clinton could have faced serious difficulties in getting resolved the Jonathan Pollard spy issue, but he has made no clear commitment. The aftermath of the accord will be a period of challenges for Mr Netanyahu and Mr Yasser Arafat, as both have extremist elements waiting to destroy the peace fabric they are weaving. Compared with the text of the 1993 Oslo Accord, the current agreement shows that the Israeli Prime Minister has not made any extra concessions in the exchange of land for peace. In fact, he has succeeded in making the PLO chief agree to Israeli troop withdrawal from less than 30 per cent of the West Bank areas, as agreed to at the Norwegian capital five years ago. The Palestinians will have full control over only 18.2 per cent of the West Bank areas, and 21.8 of the territory will be controlled jointly with Israel wielding an overriding authority over the security aspect. The rest of the West Bank — the 60 per cent chunk — will be under the control of Israel. Yet the hawks in Israel will not be able to swallow the arrangement. They have already charged Mr Netanyahu with succumbing to the Palestinian pressure, and have threatened to block the passage of the Wye River Memorandum in the Knesset. Mr Netanyahu is, however, sure to sail through as he may get the Labour Party’s support. Mr Arafat is expected not
to face much of a difficulty in fulfilling the promises
he made during the Maryland negotiations. His side was
already committed to renouncing the resolve to destroy
the state of Israel as contained in the Palestine Charter
of 1964. He will get the charter amended accordingly at a
meeting of the Palestine Central Committee, if not the
Palestine National Council, as required under the new
arrangement. Hamas, the most powerful extremist
Palestinian movement, will, of course, condemn the
efforts of Mr Arafat but that is not significant. This
organisation does not believe in the efficacy of the
course adopted by the PLO under Mr Arafat’s
leadership. What is significant with regard to Hamas is
that it is unlikely to indulge in blood-letting this
time. This impression one gets from some of the recent
statements made by the Hamas leadership. But Mr Arafat
will have a tough time selling the wares he has brought
from the White House as far as the role of the CIA in the
security aspect of the agreement is concerned. Another
tricky problem for him will be how to convince the
Palestinian masses that they will really have a homeland
by the promised date — May 4, 1999 — when there
are bigger hurdles yet to be crossed. Among these are the
constitutional position of the Palestinian entity, the
delineation of the borders, the final status of East
Jerusalem and the fate of the Jewish settlements in
certain West Bank areas which may become part of the
future state of Palestine. To cap it all, the areas that
will come under Palestinian control after the current
arrangement will be in cantons — fragmented
territory. Mr Arafat’s ability to carry along with
him the Palestinian masses will be on greater test now. |
Hitler lives on ADOLF HITLER is dead and buried but his spirit seems to live on in Afghanistan. In an order reminiscent of Jews’ persecution, Hindus living in this war-ravaged country have been told by the Taliban rulers to wear a distinctive yellow piece of cloth. It goes to the credit of the 50-odd Hindu and Sikh families that they continue to live in the country which their forefathers adopted three centuries ago. Twenty years of civil war has forced an estimated 550 families to migrate but still, these brave ones hold out. Their places of worship have been converted into residential areas but they still love their Afghanistan. After all, why should they leave the country where they were born and which has their hearths and homes? They have borne death and destruction like all other citizens of Afghanistan with equanimity. It remains to be seen how they react to the latest edict, which condemns them to a status worse than that of second-rate citizens. If it is any consolation, life is only a little less harsh for their Muslim brethren under the Taliban regime. Women have already been taken back to the dark ages. Girls can neither go to school nor go out on the street without covering themselves from head to toe. Restrictions are there on
men also. They have to keep an unclipped beard on the
pain of being branded an infidel. Punishment for not
offering namaz five times a day can be harsh and swift.
Even getting oneself photographed is banned. Ironically,
the taking of passport-size pictures for official
purposes is not considered a sacrilege. All this flies in
the face of the actual liberal tenets of Islam. Life
under such circumstances can be similar to living in
hell. But fundamentalism raises its head at one place or
another at every stage in history. People in power
enforce their own warped ideas of decency in the name of
preserving morality. One saving grace is that this
religious bigotry is a self-limiting disease. The flowers
of liberty and independence grow even under the
all-consuming fire of intolerance. While one expresses
sympathy and support for the people of Afghanistan, every
right-thinking person should strive to ensure that
self-styled protectors of local traditions and customs
with similar out-of-date ideas of religious and communal
superiority are not able to enforce their writ in India. |
COALITION POLITICS DURING the first 50 years of India’s Independence, the major factor that inhibited the nation and its people from realising their full potential has been the unabated pursuit of competitive populism by the entire spectrum of political and social leadership. Competitive populism, by patronising and promoting mendicancy and mediocrity, has kept our polity and economy at sub-optimal levels of efficiency and performance. The result is that despite being endowed with the best of brains and talents as well as natural resources, we are among the poorest and economically backward countries in the world today. Competitive populism has effectively prevented emergence of top-class leadership in almost all areas of activity, be it politics, government, economy, industry, business or sports. Except for some odd personalities and stray achievements, India as a nation has nothing to be proud of. In politics our standards are dismal and in governance our record is distressing. Our economic and industrial attainments have been below par. In business we have miles to go before we are looked upon with respect. And in the arena of sports, the less said the better. Except for that pastime called cricket and some elite and intellectual events like tennis, billiards and chess, we are at the bottom of the pit. Our sports leadership perhaps is the worst in the world taking us from one shame to another in international competitions. The tragedy is that our current national leadership, without lifting a finger to get the nation our of this morass inflicted by the politics of competitive populism is in fact imposing a more obnoxious phenomenon called “politics of competitive blackmailing”, pregnant with disastrous consequences. The doctrine of competitive blackmailing envisages existence of certain weaknesses among the parties or entities entering into an alliance or collaboration with each other which are known to both sides. As the relationship progresses, these weaknesses are used to advantage by either party to extract benefits or to gain superiority. The “now on-now off” relationship between the BJP and its principal ally, the AIADMK, for the last over six months has these ingredients and can therefore be considered as politics of competitive blackmailing. Let us consider the following facts: a. When the BJP and the AIADMK entered into an electoral alliance before the last Parliament elections, the BJP leadership was fully aware of Ms Jayalalitha’s curriculum vitae and the number of serious cases of corruption and economic offences being investigated against her and her party colleagues. On its part the AIADMK and its supremo knew that the BJP had no roots in Tamil Nadu and therefore badly needed an alliance partner. b. The fact that the BJP by itself will not get anywhere near the halfway mark and therefore has to greatly depend on allies was widely known. Similarly, the virtual non-existence of the Congress, the erstwhile partner of the AIADMK, in Tamil Nadu was also well known. c. Despite these major weaknesses which were mutually known, these two political entities struck up a pre-poll alliance with all fanfare. BJP leaders hailed it as “natural alliance” which will give “respectability” to the AIADMK, who in turn trumpeted its role in giving the country “stable government and able Prime Minister.” The seeds of competitive blackmailing had been sown! The seeds started sprouting immediately after the poll results were out, even before the formation of a government. “Amma’s” calculated delay in handing over the letter of support to the BJP to form a government brought the party bigwigs on their knees. They were willing to make any compromise and fulfil every wish of Amma just to get the piece of paper delivered to the President of India. I vividly remember the scene at New Delhi’s India International Centre, where cell-phone wielding BJP pointmen, all tensed up, talking in hushed whispers, burst out in cheers when news came from Chennai that Amma had granted the BJP special envoy’s prayer and had condescended to dispatch the letter to the President. The AIADMK and its supremo had drawn first blood and there was no stopping them now. It came as no surprise
therefore that within days of the BJP-led government
being sworn in at the Centre, Amma demanded the dismissal
of the DMK government in Tamil Nadu here and now. She
alleged total breakdown of law and order in the State and
virtually ordered instant dismissal. The tone and tenor
of her demand sent the BJP party and government
heavyweights scurrying for words and deeds. Words came in
torrents from the party president at Ahmedabad down to
the local factotum describing the law and order situation
in Tamil Nadu in worst possible terms. Action manifested
in the form of the Union Home Ministry dispatching a
special fact-finding team to study the law and order
situation in the State. When the leader of the team
reported normalcy, he was summarily bundled off to the
Planning Commission just to please Madam! But despite
best efforts Amma’s orders could not be complied
with simply because any move to dismiss the DMK
government without valid grounds would have been blocked
by the President, Parliament or the judiciary. Amma did
not forgive the BJP for this failure. From then on the relationship between the AIADMK and the BJP has been more as adversaries rather than alliance partners and the effort to browbeat and blackmail each other was becoming open and blatant. Jayalalitha used the Jain Commission’s observations about Mr Karunanidhi to demand his arrest and prosecution. This also could not be complied with by her ruling partners. Angered and annoyed by BJP’s inability to cow down to her wishes, Jayalalitha played the ultimate card of threatening to withdraw support on the Cauvery issue hoping that she could whip up Tamil sentiments on this emotive issue. Here also she failed miserably and the Prime Minister turned the table on the AIADMK by successfully brokering another scheme by evolving a consensus formula with the four Chief Ministers of the riparian States. In utter frustration, Jayalalitha fixed a deadline for withdrawal of support hoping for appropriate response from Congress Party president Mrs Sonia Gandhi staking claim to form a Congress-led government at the Centre. When this response failed to materialise Amma was left in the lurch not knowing what to do. Taking advantage of Jayalalitha’s daze, BJP’s spin doctors went into action and transferred Enforcement Director M.K. Bezbaruah, thus fulfilling a long-standing demand of Madam. This was a masterpiece of BJP’s counterblackmailing. The spin doctors knew full well that this transfer was bound to become highly controversial and hoped to deflect the brickbats towards the well-endowed lady. Amma in a smart counter-move, disowned any role in the transfer and challenged Vajpayee to cancel the transfer. But this bluff did not carry conviction, given the low credibility of Jayalalitha’s statements. Nevertheless, the BJP countered this high pitch by removing Mr Karunanidhi’s name from the Jain Commission ATR wherein his name was included only to please Amma! This high-profile blackmail drama, enacted in full public view, has ended in anti-climax, with Madam failing to carry out her threat of destabilising the Central Government. She has, however, promised to keep the matter under constant review! This brand of competitive blackmailing in politics seem to be a new phenomenon and is the offshoot of coalition politics. This is being practised by two political parties who are wielding power at the Centre for the first time and do not seem to realise the enormous damage it is causing to India’s economy and its polity. Whatever hope people had in this government upholding certain principles and values has been dashed to the ground. Internationally also we have lost heavily in terms of respect and goodwill. This seem to be the legacy of the BJP-AIADMK alliance to this hapless nation of ours in the year of its golden jubilee!! Politics of competitive
populism has kept the country backward and corrupt for
half a century. As we should be entering the new
millennium with dreams and hopes, is it our sad destiny
to carry the cross of competitive blackmailing as the
nation’s political trademark? |
Sen’s concept of poverty DR Amartya Sen, the pride of India, who has won the coveted Nobel Prize for economics, gave to the world the economic analysis of normative problems, a new dimension to the distributional aspect. What is novel of Dr Sen is his remarkable ability to distinguish between the deontological approaches based on duty on the one hand with consequence-based analysis on the other throughout his works. His doctoral thesis, “Choice of Techniques” (under the guidance of M. Dobb) is the first masterpiece that “delineated” the case which many developed nations faced — whether to adopt labour-intensive or capital-intensive techniques of production. Influenced by J.B.S. Haldane’s poem called “Cancer is a funny thing”, Dr Sen observed that “poverty is no less funny”. He examined three broad aspects of poverty — subsistence, inequality and externality — and propounded the next as a first approximation, that “poverty is, of course, a matter of deprivation”. The first concern of the concept of poverty is of a criterion — who should be the focus of the economist’s concern. Part of the job is done by the specification of certain consumption norms, or of a “poverty line”. The poor are those people whose consumption standards fall short of the norms, or whose incomes fall below that line. The second aspect is that of “primary poverty” popularised by S. Rowntree defining families in primary poverty “if their total earnings are insufficient to obtain the minimum necessities for the maintenance of merely physical efficiency”. The third is the “inequality approach” which believes that “transfers from the rich to the poor can make a substantial dent on poverty in most societies”. The fourth is Dr Sen’s concept of “relative deprivation” which contrasts between the feelings of deprivation and conditions of deprivation. Accepting that the different issues related to the general notion of relative deprivation have considerable bearing on the social analysis of poverty, he came to the conclusion that “the approach of relative deprivation supplements rather than supplants the analysis of poverty in terms of absolute deprivation”. The close connection between evaluating poverty and assessing inequality (including inequality among the poor) has received much attention of the world economists in the mid-seventies. Dr Sen made an attempt to integrate the two sets of concerns, namely poverty and inequality, and proposed a distributive-sensitive measure of poverty over the unidimensional indicator of the individual income, with poverty being seen as inadequately low income-labelled as poverty income. The poverty measure proposed in the mid seventies is a direct combination of three distinctive characteristics of the interpersonal profile of poverty, namely, the head-count ratio, which identifies the poverty of the community with the proportion of the poor people; the income-gap ratio wherein the depth of a poor person’s poverty is measured by the “gap” between the poverty line and the person’s income; and a measure of distribution of incomes among the poor, namely the Gini coefficient. The original derivation of the measure in Dr Sen was based on welfare economic ideas rooted in the idea of relative deprivation. By the mid-eighties the refinements in welfarism and utilitarianism on the one hand, and of the Rawlsian approach, on the other, tempted Dr Sen to accept an alternative informational perspective: the space of functioning, the various things a person may value doing (or being). It was emphasised that “the valued functionings may vary from such elementary ones as being adequately nourished and being free from avoidable diseases, to very complex activities or personal states, such as being able to take part in the life of the community and having self-respect” almost analogous to Adam Smith’s analysis of “necessities”. This is termed the “capability approach” dealing with realised functioning or on the set of alternatives or real opportunities. In addition to the normal analysis or primary poverty defined in terms of lowness of incomes, economists emphasised secondary poverty influenced by relative deprivation in terms of incomes yielding absolute deprivation in terms of capabilities. This made sense to see poverty as capability deprivation. It is apt to conclude, in the words of Dr Sen, “How much further we can go in inequality analysis on the basis of ordinal comparisons alone remains to be seen. But it is definitely one of the possible routes through which the consideration of broader framework of advantages and capabilities can enrich the study of inequality and poverty...”. The author teaches at
Hindu College, Delhi University. |
Serendipity
at Sukhna... UNLIKE devotees of the morning glory, I prefer to take my “constitutional” at the city’s “heaven lake” — the Sukhna — after dusk. The nocturnal landscape of stars, silence and serenity hold a promise of serendipity. And I never come back disappointed. The lake promenade, curling up to the distant hills, is dotted with low, soft lights; ideal for introspection, solitude and soliloquies. Other walkers are just shadow lines, passing you by like silent “ships” in a sea of darkness, but for their occasional voices. The only other audible sounds are the occasional ripples in the tranquil lake waters or the cry of peacocks from the forest across the lake. Instead of mundane
chattering with friends, it is much more elevating to
communicate with the heavens, the silhouettes of the
distant hills and the sculptural trees. Is the faint
glimmer of twinkling lights on the mountain tops, of
Kasauli or Dagshai or some unknown hill settlement you
wonder? The resplendent Shivalik hill hold many such
secrets. Similarly, star-gazing at the vast expanse of
the night sky above the lake/can be a fascinating quiz.
Is the bright-red planet that you spot Jupiter or Mars?
Is the kite-shaped constellation shining so brightly
Pegasus or the Orion? We wish they would install a
telescope at the observation tower of the lake to solve
such mysteries. If you are intrepid enough to walk beyond the main promenade, where the lights end, you can spot a valley of glow-worms. The ideal time to find them is the monsoon season, when the wild growth of shrubbery provides them good habitats. Some of the fireflies even perch up on the kachnars, dressing them up like Christmas trees. Besides such encounters of the sublime kind, one can at times be lured into some unwanted eavesdropping! You can catch interesting snatches of conversations between people or even someone just talking on his mobile phone. Usually the chatter is about nasty bosses, bureaucratic transfers, business deals or some juicy local scandal. Of course, there are the occasional hushed whispers or romantic sweetnothings also! Rarely though, there are some eerie experiences also. Like once, I nearly stepped on a snake, but mercifully the serpent just slinked past with a harmless hiss, without any more intimate contact. Similarly, I once brushed by a huge unleashed bulldog, with its proud owner walking along, majestically unconcerned, a la an erstwhile emperor of Ethiopia who had a pet African lion by his side always. Luckily, the menacing canine was all bark and no bite! But it did send my heart racing for quite some time. Fortunately, there have
been some other heart-throbbing experiences also but of
the pleasant kind. Lately, I have been running into a
tall, stately figure who breezes past me like an
apparition. A heady perfume announces her arrival much
before her steps. It’s too dark to discern any
further. Perhaps, it’s nice to leave the mystery
unsolved, like the many other unknowns of Sukhna. But
only if I could serenade like Frank Sinatra..... |
Hated emergency: a Pak judicial view
“COURTS everywhere live in a delicate balance between upholding and challenging the distribution of power,” writes Paula Newberg, one of the very few scholars in the world to have studied the legal and judicial history of Pakistan, “but courts in authoritarian states carry extra burdens.” The recent decision of the Pakistan Supreme Court upholding the Proclamation of Emergency while regretting its imposition, bears eloquent testimony to the fact. A hated word in neighbouring India, Emergency was clamped in Pakistan on May 28 this year in the immediate wake of the country’s nuclear blasts in reply to our own. It was challenged in court by several leading figures of the Opposition — Farooq Leghari, the former Head of State who, but a year ago, had plunged Pakistan into its worst ever constitutional crisis in quiet collusion with the former Chief Justice Sajjad Ali Shah, Awami National Party chief Ajmal Khattak and cricket superstar turned politician, Imran Khan. Handing down its judgement last fortnight, a seven-member Supreme Court Bench headed by Justice Ajmal Mian, who replaced Shah as Chief Justice in the culminating act of the crisis, regretted that “unlike the Indian Constitution, there is no check on the perpetual imposition of emergency in Pakistan”. The present Proclamation can remain in the field for years to come, observed the court with a heavy heart (refraining nonetheless from striking it down), for it will depend on the sweet will of the government in power to advise the President for its revocation. Regardless of the
geopolitical divide on other issues, the judgement is of
singular significance for Indian statesmen, judges and
lawyers. For the Pakistan Supreme Court — the apex
court of India’s traditional and seemingly
irreplaceable “enemy” — to invoke and
compliment the Indian Constitution at a time when the two
nations are engrossed in consumptive nuclear discord, is
a remarkable example of the oneness of ideals that draws
their people together. The judgement also confirms American jurist, the late Prof Robert McCloskey’s acute reflection on the advantage of the judicial process at the apex level — “the great advantage of taking the long view, especially when others take the short....” In a statement that is not only historically accurate but brave as well in the Pakistan context, the Supreme Court has identified indefinite emergencies, martial law and denial of fundamental rights to the people as a major cause for the carving out of Bangladesh from the womb of Pakistan. Until the fall of Dhaka in 1971 the Pakistan people, says their Supreme Court, had enjoyed fundamental rights for a total period of 7 years, 6 months and 14 days out of an aggregate of 24 years since independence. The “most disturbing effect” of the Proclamation of Emergency, holds the court, is that Parliament can take over the legislative as well as executive powers of the provincial governments, thus denying the federating units their provincial autonomy even to the extent guaranteed under the Constitution. Though couched in legal language, this is a clear judicial warning against the peril of creating other Dhakas in the future. A Proclamation of Emergency in Pakistan, or any part thereof, is issued by the President under Article 232, Clause (1) of the Pakistan Constitution. The sting, however, lies in Clause (2). “Notwithstanding anything in the Constitution (it says, iterating that most famous of legal phrases) while a Proclamation of Emergency is in force,” the Majlis-e-Shoora or Parliament shall have power to make laws for a province with respect to any matter “not enumerated in the Federal Legislative List or the Concurrent Legislative List.” The executive authority of the Federation shall also extend to the “giving of directions to a province” as to the manner in which the executive authority of the province is to be exercised. That, of course, is not enough. The Federal government, adds sub Clause (c) of Clause (2), may also “assume to itself ... all or any of the functions of the Government of the Province” and make such further incidental and consequential provisions as appear to be necessary or desirable for giving effect to the objects of the Proclamation of Emergency. They (“incidental or consequential” provisions!) include provisions for “suspending, in whole or in part, the operation of any provisions of the Constitution relating to any body or authority in the province” except the High Court. What remains of provincial autonomy after this? It is interesting to note that the provisions of Article 232 (2) (c) of the Pakistan Constitution closely approximate the provisions of Article 356, Clauses (1) (a) to (c) of the Indian Constitution. The observation of the Pakistan Supreme Court that Article 232 (2) virtually destroys provincial autonomy is, thus, directly relevant to our own polity though in the slightly different context of President’s Rule. The observation could, in fact, be cited with profit at the Bar in future Indian court debates on Article 356. What is even more significant for midnight’s children across the border is the judicial emasculation of the Proclamation of Emergency, even as the Proclamation itself stands. The provision next after Article 232, Article 233 of the Pakistan Constitution empowers the President to suspend by order the right to move the courts for the enforcement of any of the fundamental rights. It is this, more than anything else, that makes emergency such a dreaded thing. And it is this, the Presidential order under Article 233 (2), that the Pakistan Supreme Court has struck down even while sustaining the emergency itself. It is a contradiction no
doubt but one that serves a great civic purpose. And with
a similar provision, Article 359, staring us in our own
face, Indian judges could take inspiration from their
Pakistani brethren if ever an occasion arises. |
Some heads may roll in Education Ministry
THIS whole week was dominated by the State Education Ministers’ Conference, its agenda details and of course, the aftermath. Reports leaked to the effect that the Union HRD minister Murli Manohar Joshi was bringing about sweeping changes in the very education pattern by ‘saffronizing’ it, which put members of the Opposition on alert much before the three-day long meet. And though on the opening day itself as Joshi relented, rather was forced to shelve his spread of Hindutva education amidst protest walkouts, there is news that in the coming days some bureaucratic heads will roll in the Education Ministry. For the minister is left asking — Who leaked those agenda details to the Press, to members of the Opposition or to the Chairman of the National Commission for Minorities? But if the Chairman of the Minorities Commission, Dr Tahir Mahmood, is to be heard then, “in the first week of June itself, someone got the news that the Union Education Ministry was planning to bring in changes in the very education policy which could affect the minorities, and also that they would be holding an Education Ministers’ meet. Immediately, on June, 11 one of the Commission’s members was asked to write a letter to the Education Ministry demanding that this Commission be invited for this meet. But leave alone a reply there was no acknowledgement of that letter. And on October, 19 that is on this Divali day, I got frantic calls from all over the country, which included calls from Education Ministers of some states. Over the telephone they read out the meet’s agenda details to me.... and some even faxed those details to me... God bless their souls!” He points out that this Commission’s representation would have been important in the view of the fact that “this meet has some extremely serious proposals on its agenda, including direct or indirect amendments in Article 28 and 30 of the Constitution. And as regards the proposal to induct Hindu religious philosophy into the school curriculum it sets at naught, Article 28 of the Constitution which bans religious instruction in schools maintained or aided by the State”. Reacting to Joshi’s plea that Justice JS Verma had described Hindutva to be a way of life, he counters that by stating “Justice JS Verma’s Hindutva judgement of 1996 containing his perception of Hinduism and describing it as the way of life of the people in the subcontinent is subjudice. Soon after it was delivered, the judgement had been referred to a larger bench of the Supreme Court. The reference was made to a three-judge Bench led by Justice K Ramaswamy. I have spoken to Justice K Ramaswamy in Hyderabad and he confirms this information....it is therefore not permissible for any one to treat Justice Verma’s judgement as final ....” And Professor Mahmood like any thinking man is far from relieved to hear that Joshi was left with no choice but to withdraw the introduction of those controversial changes, for as he points out unsetting changes are already taking place in many a school and could have far reaching consequences. “In UP, which is also governed by the party now ruling at the Centre, education is already being de-secularized day in and day out to which the minorities are very much disgruntled....” What has the PM to say to this finding? Esp in the context of the fact that the capital city of this very state is his very constituency and if he cannot keep track of the communalisation in education in that very city then what good are passionate speeches? Rising above the school level, sources point out there are definite changes taking place in the Indian Council for Philosophical Research, Indian Council of Historical Research, Indian Council of Social Sciences Research and in the Indian Institute of Advanced Study (Shimla), with BJP-RSS sympathisers getting a way in these bodies. In fact, ever since IIAS was equipped with a new chairman, GC Pande, there is said to be a sense of demoralisation amongst its fellows for he is being quoted as saying that the Institute was ideal for ‘vanaprasth’ (last stage of life beyond retirement) and there was a move to overlook the experts committee in the selection process for new fellowships — the institute awards 30 new fellowships every year. ‘The Sufi way’ After the Union Home Minister L K Advani gave an all-clear invitation nod to controversial writer Salman Rushdie he is being getting invited for probably giving the okaying nod to Jalabala Vaidya and Gopal Sharman’s controversial television series entitled ‘The Sufi way’. The so called world premiere of this three long hour film was scheduled to be held here in the October 23 evening (the day of my filing this column) with the Home Minister and a number of well known personalities getting invited. The episodes revolve around the lives and times of the patron saint of the Valley, Nund Rishi Sheikh Nuruddin Wali and there is controversy amongst some sections whether the Sufi saint can be presented on the small screen. Some relief that.... After this fiasco ridden
education scenario there is news that the well known
writer - bureaucrat (Maharashtra cadre) Upamanyu
Chatterjee has just got posted in the Union Education
Ministry. Not that great writers can make very much
difference to the rulings of the day. Another reassuring
aspect seemed to be when on the opening day of the
Education Ministers’ meet journalist/commentator
Mrinal Pande, during DD’s ‘charcha mein’,
was asked to comment on Joshi’s new education
rulings she not only seemed critical but even agreed that
there was fear and unease in people’s minds. Mrinal
ought to tell him exactly this — after all she is
the niece of Mrs Murli Manohar Joshi. |
IT is humiliating to find that some of our countrymen are opposing Mr Patel’s Hindu Inter-caste Marriage Bill under the notion that it will injure Hindu society if it is passed. They do not seem to consider that those who are already willing to accept social martyrdom should not have any further coercion, passive or active, from any governing power, to oblige them to observe, against their will such conventions as are not based upon the foundation of moral laws. To say that Hindu society cannot exist unless it has victims who are forcibly compelled to live the life of falsehood and cowardice is tantamount to saying that it should not exist at all. Moreover, such an implication is a libel against the spirit of Hinduism, which all through its history has been accommodating different creeds and customs, allowing mixture of castes and making new social adjustments from the time of the Mahabharata until now, when an alien government has already succeeded in petrifying our social body with its rigid laws, depriving life’s flexibleness and thus hastening its fatal stage of sensibility.... Those who feel no compunction in invoking the organised power of the State to compel by its connivance or help a weak minority to submit to the worst form of social slavery, can certainly not be held as fit to claim a large share of such power. — Rabindranath
Tagore |
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