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| Monday, February
19, 2001, Chandigarh, India   
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A matter
of interest Communalising
quake relief |
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Parity
in politics for French women
Budget
session at a critical juncture
Old is
gold
Older
elephants control young males Servile, and
surprising judiciary in Pakistan
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BORROWERS
from banks have reason to be happy; the interest rate is set to come down but by a minuscule 0.5 per cent. By the same token, depositors will be irked since they have to pick up the bill. The changes are not automatic since barring the SBI, the others are dithering, some want to read the budget before aligning interest rates and others are plainly reluctant to follow the RBI signal. Some economic newspapers were surprised at the RBI announcement and traders in government bonds felt cheated since the bankers’ bank moved late on Friday evening and they were holding on to costlier papers. Next trading day is Tuesday and if the developments on Saturday are any indication bond prices are set to decline by about 50 paise. But the cut in the bank rate (at which the RBI charges commercial banks when it refinances their needs) was not totally unexpected. For one thing, Governor Bimal Jalan is an ardent believer in the efficacy of the bank rate as an instrument to correct imbalances in the financial situation. He has proclaimed this in the recent annual report. Two, across the developed world central banks have nudged down the bank rate either to halt an economic slowdown as in the USA or to cushion the impact of lower US rates on their economy. Among them are the US Fed (Federal Reserve Board), the Bank of England and the Bank of Japan. Today the bank rate in the USA is 5 per cent and before the Friday announcement the difference between the US and Indian rates was 3 percentage points. Mr Jalan felt uncomfortable with this situation and hence a token reduction by a 0.5 percentage point. Many analysts are dissatisfied with this half-hearted measure. They prefer a one percentage point shaving so that the beneficial effect will be felt at all levels. But the RBI Governor is a cautious economist and will wait for the budget before planning his next move. Another RBI directive relates to the CRR (cash reserve ratio or the percentage of deposits each bank has to keep in the form of government securities). This is being brought down from the present 8.5 to 8 per cent, as a result of which the banks will have an additional Rs 4100 crore for lending. This move is aimed at halting the economic slowdown by pumping in more money for lending to industry for investment. There are two puzzles in this thinking. One, the RBI knows well enough that manufacturing units borrow mostly to build up an inventory of inputs since the inflation rate has crossed 8 per cent and is poised to touch the double-digit in April, according to an analysis by the Delhi-based Institute of Economic Growth. That connects. If prices are going to increase by 10 per cent (and of some items by more), it makes sense to borrow at 11.5 per cent when the inflation rate is only 8 per cent. Obviously the shrinkage of the CRR is intended more to generate a feel good factor than impart a powerful push to the government’s overall economic goal of recording a higher growth rate than the present 6 per cent. The RBI’s spring “cleaning” carries two interpretations. One, it has pre-empted the Finance Ministry from effecting a lower interest regimen in small savings and employees provident fund (EPF). The other is that it has forced the government’s hands. For the present Union Labour Minister Satyanarain Jatiya has ruled out a lower interest rate on EPF. Small saving will earn less, not by 2 percentage points as the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council wanted but by about 0.5 percentage points. Well, there are soft-hearted men in this government. |
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THE
Bharatiya Janata Party high command has allowed Gujarat Chief Minister Keshubhai Patel to stay put evidently because it wants to spare the state the trauma of a political aftershock close on the heels of the devastating earthquake. He was under pressure to resign because of the slipshod response of the administration to starting rescue and rehabilitation operations in the quake-ravaged belt in Bhuj. Now that he has earned an ill-deserved reprieve he should give the highest priority to ensuring that the relief material and money raised by the individuals and organisations concerned do not fall into wrong hands. Indian Youth Congress President Randeep Singh Surjewala, who recently toured the devastated region in Gujarat, has claimed that most of the relief material has been cornered by the “saffron brigade”. He may be right, because when the Congress was in power the “khadi brigade” was often accused of behaving like the “saffron brigade” in Gujarat. If Mr Surjewala were to visit West Bengal, he would return with tales of the alleged misdeeds of the members of the “left brigade”. Two wrongs do not make a right and it is now up to Mr Keshubhai Patel, who slept through most of the earthquake, to keep his eyes and ears open and deal firmly with those trying to turn even human misery into an opportunity for scoring political points or enriching themselves. Mr Surjewala may have exaggerated the scale of the role of the “saffron brigade” in deciding the manner of distribution of the relief material among the quake sufferers. But independent reports from Kutch too have spoken of an element of “communal politics” having crept into the distribution of relief material among the victims. The tragedy had made ordinary people rise above religious prejudices in providing help to those in distress. As a result, a group of Hindus washed and swept the Shahi Masjid, located in a communally sensitive area in Ahmedabad. It was a pleasant surprise for most to see members of the Muslim community being persuaded to start offering prayers at the mosque, which had otherwise been abandoned by them to avoid communal friction. Such stories made every citizen proud of being an Indian. But now certain elements evidently want to undo the effects of the miracle of communal harmony which the quake had performed. At one centre Muslims reportedly refused to chant “Jai Shri Ram” as a condition for receiving relief. Mr Surjewala has come back with reports that the plight of the members of the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes was no better. Independent reports too confirm that the RSS cadres and other Sangh Parivar outfits are using the occasion not for providing relief, irrespective of the caste and religion of the sufferers, but for promoting their sectarian agenda. Some Christian relief missions have been made to feel uncomfortable. The secular credentials of some of the NGOs engaged in relief work in the devastated region too need to be examined by independent agencies. Making the victims of the worst natural calamity in recent memory pick up the threads of life once again is going to be a daunting task. Instead of denying reports of the partisan role of a section of the Sangh Parivar, the Chief Minister should remove his saffron-tinted glass and have the credentials of those doing work in the region scrutinised by an agency which is respected for its integrity. It would be ideal if only social workers of the stature of Anna Hazare are allowed to supervise the rebuilding of the region and rehabilitation of the sufferers. |
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Parity in politics for French women WHILE Indian male politicians of all stripes have successfully devised stratagems sidelining legislation for fixing quotas for women in legislatures, France has acted dramatically in striking a blow for the fair sex. According to a new French law, all political parties are obliged to put up an equal number of men and women candidates in almost all elections. The first test will come in municipal elections as early as next month. The French innovation is all the more remarkable because, in European terms, it is a laggard as far as women in politics are concerned. In Sweden, 45 per cent legislators are women; France is at the bottom of the European Union scale with a score of 8.7 per cent. In the developed world, France has been traditionally run by the most elitist of men, often alumni of one administrative school sharing in an ample measure a high opinion of themselves. No wonder then that in the world, capital of fashion and feminine chic, women are conspicuous by their absence in the field of governance. This scheme of things should change spectacularly as more and more women now enter politics. Traditionally, the left has taken more kindly to women in politics than their conservative counterparts. But the late Socialist President Francois Mitterrand’s experience in appointing a woman Prime Minister was far from happy. Edith Cresson had a short political life — 10 months as Prime Minister in 1991-92 — and often complained about being judged differently than her male counterparts, on how she looked and dressed, rather than her performance. Even on the latter score, she failed to impress. In any event, she blotted her copybook by attracting charges of nepotism as a European Union commissioner, having given her dentist a sinecure consultancy. The whole commission had ultimately to resign after charges of corruption and nepotism were hurled at it and little has been heard of the unlamented Prime Minister. How then did the feminine brigade accomplish its great victory, with the result that all political parties are having to scramble to find women candidates? By all accounts, the trick was to propagate parity for women, instead of seeking quotas. A lesson in PR perhaps for Indian women activists. Press: is it change
for the better? To a returning native, the sea-change that has taken place in the Indian mainstream Press never ceases to amaze. Newspapers today are certainly brighter than they were but a few short years ago. But, in the process, they seem to have obliterated the distinctions among a broadsheet, a tabloid and a magazine. Logically, of course, magazines should now become broadsheets in content. Some, it would appear, are attempting to. Reading the newspapers, one is reminded of the Oscar Wildean adage about nothing succeeding like excess. Foreign correspondents have largely been done away with, stories often make the front page if they are saucy, not newsworthy in the accepted sense, and one is routinely regaled with party gossip and photographs which were supposed to be the forte of gossip magazines that titillated the vanity of hostesses and unchanging guests and hence had their patronage. There is, of course, the large shadow of the international media magnate Rupert Murdoch, who has changed newspapers in many countries and taught Indian publishers a thing or two about pricing. However, one wonders whether some of us have not got the wrong end of the stick. After all, colour displays and saucy gossip are not all that one looks for in a newspaper. Amusing stories have their place but well-written concise serious news — not bare flesh — must remain the staple diet of a newspaper. Perhaps the pendulum will swing again to make a correction in our understanding of a newspaper. There are, of course, honourable exceptions in the mainstream Press resisting the vogue for triviality and trivialisation. The print medium must realise that it can never beat television in immediacy and provocation. Moghul Gardens and democracy The Moghul Gardens in Rashtrapati Bhawan are impressive on at least two counts. They are a feast for the eyes as only a well laid-out garden can be, and by throwing them open to the public once a year, the authorities practise that most valuable gift of a democracy: bringing the government to the people. In much of the developing world, particularly in India, the public’s encounter with the rulers is almost invariably hurtful: the surly and officious babu who is reluctant to do a simple job without rudeness and, more often than not, financial gratification. Thus the symbolic act of throwing open the garden of the highest titular office-holder in the land to the people is doubly welcome. And the people come to view the Moghul Gardens in droves. It was partly overcast on St. Valentine’s Day, the morning I went, and it was heartwarming to see ordinary men and women, often in family groups, stroll around the garden, with Rashtrapati Bhawan serving as the backdrop, admiring flowers and partaking of the lightness of living, as it were. The variety of roses is breathtaking and their names evoke the poet in the beholder. Alas, many rose bushes were past their prime and tulips were crestfallen. A pity. Tulips in bloom are more uplifting than any flower can be. But one cannot quarrel with nature, as the Gujarat catastrophe so cruelly demonstrated. The writer is a former Editor of The Statesman, The Indian Express and The Indian Post. He has returned home after editing The Khaleej Times in Dubai for six and a half years. |
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Budget session at a critical juncture PARLIAMENT'S budget session is going to begin in a sombre setting with the nation’s thoughts centred on the aftermath of the Gujarat earthquake which took thousands of lives and has darkened the lives of millions in the state. Gigantic tasks of rehabilitation and reconstruction of towns and villages, reduced to ruins by the worst earthquake in post-Independence India, call for mobilisation of human and material resources which can hardly be sidestepped in the fiscal and other policy measures that would form part of the agenda of the session. It is only to be expected that all parties would address themselves to the urgent tasks before the nation instead of indulging in recriminations or verbal platitudes for the people of Gujarat. Naturally, how far the state government bestirred itself to provide such relief as it could in the critical moments after the shocks wrought havoc would be a matter of inquisition for elected representatives of the people. The Centre has made it appear that the BJP-ruled Gujarat has risen to the occasion to do what it could in the circumstances. It is well-known that the state governments are not well equipped to handle natural disasters on a terrible scale when the Centre itself has no rapid response machinery. All the earlier claims of the Centre having a disaster management mechanism proved hollow so much that Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee has now proposed a special agency headed by him. It is essential that the government should tell Parliament all it did and what it proposes to do, given the dire predictions about the recurrence of earth disturbances in several parts of India, including centres hitherto thought to be safe or less quake-prone. All the international expertise available in seismology and relief operations must be availed of in the creation and maintenance of a system, which can instantly begin to act within moments of disaster strikes. The urgency of an overhaul of the existing rules and codes for buildings and other installations has been highlighted by the Gujarat earthquake in which a considerable part of destruction was attributed to the non-observance of regulations by building contractors. The law must provide for effective supervision and certification of residential and commercial buildings in regard to safety aspects and deterrent punishment for the violators of the specifications laid down by the authorities concerned. The budget session will, for the major part, be devoted to financial business, the presentation of the Union Budget for 2001-2002 and the Railway Budget for the next fiscal year, and discussions on and voting of demands for grants. Normally, the budget session finds little time for legislative business other than financial Bills. There are quite a few pending enactments of substantial nature like the Fiscal Responsibility Bill and the controversial Bill to bring down government equity in the nationalised banks, apart from legislative measures dealing with reforms in power, telecommunication and coal sectors. The passage of these important reforms measures would depend on how far the government succeeds in building a broad consensus as the support of the Congress is crucial, especially given its majority in the Rajya Sabha. President Narayanan, in his opening address to Parliament, will outline the approach of the government on major issues of foreign and domestic policies and set out the legislative agenda for the session. His address is expected to set the tone for the deliberations of the budget session. The President’s observations and the pre-budget Economic Survey would provide an exhaustive background on the state of the economy for members to get the grips with the fiscal position of the Centre and the problems looming on the agricultural and industrial fronts. The forthcoming budget would have to be considered in the context of the many negative trends in the economy, how far it would seek to correct them and whether it would enable the country to perform better in the coming year. The Finance Minister, Mr Yashwant Sinha, is engaged in a more complicated exercise in budget formation than in the last two years, partly because of the disastrous impact of the earthquake and the consequences for the national economy as well as safeguard measures for the future, and partly due to sluggishness of industry in general. How to revive the economy while attempting to raise substantial additional resources for public investment and ensure that the fiscal deficit is restricted to a reasonable level is the major challenge before him. Both fiscal and monetary measures can be expected to be geared to growth with stability, but any optimism has to be tempered by the uncertainties over how private domestic and foreign investments flow into the economy. It is here that the budget would be looked for to provide that needed stimulus. The Railway Minister, Ms Mamata Banerjee, is under pressure to revise passenger fares in order to help improve railway finances though several MPs have opposed such a proposal. The Minister herself, since last year, has been harping on “alternative and non-conventional ways” of raising funds for financing railway works
programmes. The forthcoming elections in West Bengal will weigh heavily with Ms Banerjee as her Trinamul Congress has been working with determination and confidence for the defeat of the Left Front government. Elections in Tamil Nadu and Kerala in the next few months and possibly in UP during the year will also tend to influence both the ruling alliance and parties in opposition in their approaches to the budget and socio-economic issues in general. Thus, an unduly harsh budget can be ruled out, but still a large dose of taxation will be inescapable, so long as the government cannot bring down its non-productive expenditure. It is possible that Mr Sinha may come up with a few ideas of downsizing the government, but whether it would make any significant difference in the existing order remains to be seen. |
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Old is gold “OLD is Gold” is a familiar saying, but the present obsession for everything that is new and modern has almost driven the maxim from people’s mind. Especially those in a hurry have little time and even less inclination to give it a thought. I beseech them to tarry awhile and spare a few moments for this piece. They may come to realise what treasures and truths of life lie behind this commonplace statement; they may even stand to gain. There is a whole world of good old things. Look at the following array. Old wine as every lover of the drink knows, is considered to be tastiest and most wholesome. There are entire cellars especially built to store it for long years, to let it ripen and acquire that heady flavour. Those who have used wood to make fire know that old wood burns brightest — no smoke, no bleary eyes, and no torture of blowing air into a smouldering fire. “Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds”, is a well-known saying of Shakespeare. He is not merely advising constancy, but also sending a signal that old sweethearts and old lovers are soundest. And as in love, so in friendship; old friends are most trustworthy. Hearken the advice given by Polonious to his son in Hamlet: “Those friends thou hast and their adoption tried/Grapple them to they soul with hoops of steel”. Their love for you is selfless and supplants their need of you. Old horses, it is said, are best to ride. They understand the master’s nod, his every nudge and every spur. So well do they respond to his body as well as verbal language, as never to let him down. Old stamps, old coins, old curios and artefacts, paintings of old masters, old vintage cars are all highly prized. These nuggets, when put to auction, sell for a fortune. Marilyn Monroe’s bra, it is said, was sold for a fabulous sum; so was the necktie of Charlie Chaplin. The old-world charm of many of the streets and towns of India attract the foreign tourists by the flock. What they enjoy most is being treated with old-world courtesy and regaled with old-time customs and delicacies, in old-time ambience. And how utterly delightful, to come across suddenly, in the restaurant or at a party, an old flame, whom you had loved passionately in the past but who, alas, could not be yours! The memory of old, though sad, is yet so exquisitely pleasuresome. Old tunes never fade; they fascinate year after year. The song “choli ke peechhe kya hai...” was the rage only recently, and is now all but forgotten. But, an old song like “chaudvin ka chand ho, ya aftab ho...” is as fresh as when it was first sung. One like the new literature, but nevertheless the old authors are best to read. For, they are the perennial sources of enjoyment, insight and instruction, and are eminently re-readable. “Never wear new shoes when going for an interview or a journey”, is a piece of good old advice. The reason, the shoes may creak or pinch. King James, it is said, used to call for old shoes; they were easiest for his feet. Who doesn’t remember with nostalgia the good old days? Old school-days, in particular, are the dear golden days — when the mind was light; a two-penny whistle, a fortune; a candy, a luxury and; truancy, a pardonable offence. “Old places and old persons”, according to George Santayana,” have an intrinsic vitality — that of balance and wisdom that come from long perspectives and broad foundations”. Old age is a grand opportunity to do things, unencumbered by the profit motive. One may discover new pastimes like, gardening, or social work. It is also a great occasion to become virtuous. According to a Biblical saying, “Old age is a blessed time; it gives us leisure to put off our earthly garments one by one, and dress ourselves for heaven”. The old couples have a peculiar beauty, born out of togetherness. Having fought the world side by side and become aged together, they are often seen to lean on each other in sorrow, minister to each other’s pain, and be one with each other in silent, unspeakable memories. Time has come to ask the reader if he now agrees that “old is gold”. If not, he may read the
foregoing once more, this time between the lines. But if his answer be yes, let him sing with me the lines of Robert Browning: “Grow old along with me!/ The best is yet to be, / The last of life, for which the first was made”.
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Older elephants control young males OLDER male elephants have been shown to have a restraining influence on younger males by controlling their aggressiveness and deviant behaviour. Normally male elephants experience an aggressive phase or ‘musth’ after they are 25-30 years of age. Musth is characterised by surges in testosterone, a substance which is responsible for male characters, and a distinct posture, swollen and secreting temporal glands, urine dribbling and heightened sexual and aggressive behaviour. Musth occurs as males become bigger and more experienced and better at winning encounters with other males. Its duration increases with age for age 25-30, it lasts from days to weeks, for age 31-35, several weeks, for age 36-40, 1-2 months, and after age 40, musth lasts for 2-4 months, according to a report in the Nature. However, young orphan 10-year-old African elephants Loxodonta africana, which were introduced to Pilanesberg in South Africa during 1980s and grew in the absence of adult males, started breeding at the age 18 and entered musth, which was represented in form of killings of more than 40 white rhinoceros between 1992 and 1997. The phase lasted for up to five months, a duration even longer than seen in males twice their age. The report said that earlier it had been experienced in Kenya that young elephants were less likely to be in musth, if a larger male was present. They also lost the physical signs of musth minutes or hours after an aggressive interaction with a higher-ranking musth male, according to the report.
PTI Know your enemy So you hate cockroaches! Here are some of the facts you should know about your enemy: The world’s largest roach (which lives in South America) is six inches long with a one-foot wingspan. Roaches by the numbers: 6 — Number of legs on a cockroach 18 — Number of knees on most cockroaches (at least!) 40— Number of minutes cockroaches can hold their breath 75 — Percentage of time that cockroaches spend just resting (how lazy can you get?) 5,000 — Number of species of cockroaches worldwide 280 million+ — Years ago that cockroaches are thought to have originated (during the Carboniferous era) Bad news: Some female cockroaches mate once and are pregnant for the rest of their lives (bummer). The legend of the headless cockroach: A cockroach can live a week without its head. The roach only dies because without a mouth, it can’t drink water and dies of thirst. Wanna race?: Cockroaches can run up to three miles in an hour. (Hey, it’s no marathon, but it’s not bad.) Little Hearts: A cockroach heart is nothing but a simple tube with valves. The tube can pump blood backwards and forwards in the insect. The heart can even stop moving without harming the roach. Home truths about adoption As a step towards dealing with the problem of baby dumping, the Malaysian government recently amended the Adoption Act to give greater rights to parents who are adopting a child. One of these measures includes issuing adopted children with regular birth certificates that do not mention that they are adopted. The decision is drawing criticism from people who believe that it is not up to the government to decide whether or not parents should tell their adopted children the truth.
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Servile, and surprising judiciary in Pakistan UNLIKE
its Indian counterpart, accustomed to public adulation and official submission, the higher judiciary in Pakistan has rarely received more than scant respect from the executive and scepticism from society at large. Even against this not so bright background, however, there could not have been a worse start for it than the first year of the new millennium. Nor a worse month in the year than February, 2001. The release last fortnight of the Justice Qayyum tapes, revealing how Benazir Bhutto’s trial in 1999 was fixed, has destroyed all remnants of judicial credibility across the border. “What the publication of the Hamoodur Rahman report did for the Army, the Justice Qayyum tapes as revealed by The Sunday Times have done for the higher judiciary,” states Ayaz Amir, writing in the Dawn and republished by The Times of India on February 16. Prolonged authoritarianism, he says, has taken its toll, even on judges sworn to uphold the cause of truth and justice. In the “Turkish bath of Pakistani politics everyone is naked....” That is a strong comment indeed but Ayaz Amir is no admirer of Benazir or the Bhutto clan. “Among the long line of failures and mediocrities,” he wrote in the same paper five years ago on October 28, 1996, “who have flitted through the halls of government in Pakistan, her name and that of her husband’s who has shared power with her, will perhaps shine the brightest... The dyarchy of Benazir Bhutto and Asif Ali Zardari will be remembered not so much for its slime and corruption as for its sublime heedlessness for doing things, questionable things most of the time, without caring for the consequences.” A week later, on November 5, Benazir alongwith her government was sacked, her husband detained and the Pakistan National Assembly dissolved by President Farooq Leghari. The ensuing elections held in February, 1997, saw her party — the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) — being totally routed and Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League being returned to power with a huge, two-thirds majority. Amongst the many factors contributing to the rout was the Pak Supreme Court’s verdict, pronounced by Chief Justice Sajjad Ali Shah to a packed court, upholding the presidential proclamation of November 5. “Its timing, just four days before the votes were to be cast,” writes British scholar Ian Talbot in his recent history of Pakistan, “undoubtedly damaged the PPP’s prospects.” The months which followed, Talbot continues, were marked by protracted and dramatic confrontation between Nawaz Sharif and the judiciary, culminating in the removal of Chief Justice Shah and the resignation of President Leghari on December 2, 1997. The complete inside story of that confrontation, the sharpest in legal history anywhere in the world and the most dangerously instructive on the perils of judicial activism, has yet to be told. Not inconsiderable confusion still prevails on the subject, not only in Pakistan but in India as well. And not only amongst laymen but also the ablest legal minds. But there is no doubting Talbot’s conclusion that the departure of both the Chief Justice and the President from the scene left Nawaz Sharif “in the strongest position of any elected Prime Minister since the days of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.” It is this that turned Sharif’s head and led him to pursue Benazir through the agency of the judicial process. And an obliging Lahore High Court judge called Justice Malik Qayyum. “Now you tell me how much punishment do you want me to give her?” — The Sunday Times, publishing on February 4 the transcripts of his bugged telephone conversations, quotes Qayyum as asking Saifur Rehman, the chairman of the accountability bureau who headed the investigation against Benazir leading to her trial before Qayyum. “Whatever you have been told by him,” replied Rehman, referring evidently to the Prime Minister (Nawaz Sharif). “How much?” asked Qayyum again. “Not less than seven years,” said Rehman. “No, not seven (said Qayyum). Let us make it five. You can ask him. Seven is the maximum and nobody awards (the) maximum.” “I will ask and tell you,” said Rehman. As it turned out, Benazir was convicted (of corruption) and sentenced by Qayyum to five years imprisonment. The transcript of the judge’s conversation with Sharif’s Law Minister Khalid Anwar is no less revealing. It starts with Khalid conveying the Prime Minister’s unhappiness over the delay in the trial and pressing Qayyum to “reach the final result within the outside limit of two weeks”. You should stay in Islamabad for the full week, says Khalid, instead of two days and “just take up this case for the whole week” so that it is completed in time. I have already been here (in Islamabad) nearly every day of the last two weeks and “am doing nothing else,” assures Qayyum. But a slight delay is inevitable. And ends with the following exchange, an eloquent comment on the position of the judiciary in Pakistan — Qayyum: “By the grace of God we shall conclude this very soon.” Khalid: “Kindly do it because from reading between the lines I could gather....” Qayyum: “No, no...I shall definitely do it.” Khalid: “Thank you.” Qayyum: “No, sir, I am at your disposal.” Khalid: “Allah hafiz.” Qayyum: “Thank you, sir.” The bottomline of the tapesgate scandal, Farhatullah Babar wrote in the Dawn on February 16, is this — if the audacity of the executive in pressuring the judiciary was shameless, the willingness of the judges to oblige was pathetic. Just three days after the Qayyum tapes were published in London, a 11-member Bench of the Supreme Court in Islamabad, invoking the notorious doctrine of necessity, upheld yet again General Pervez Musharraf’s coup d’etat of October, 1999, overthrowing Nawaz Sharif and terminating Pakistan’s brief affair with democracy. “We are firmly committed,” said the Bench, “to the governance of the country by the people’s representatives and we reiterate the definition of the term democracy to the effect that it is government of the people, by the people and for the people, and not by Army rule for an indefinite period.” Nonetheless, it ruled, due to the situation prevailing in Pakistan before October 12, 1999, for which the Constitution provided no solution, the armed forces had to intervene to save the state from further chaos and to maintain peace and order, economic stability and good governance. Accepting the General’s assurance that he would hold elections by October 12, 2002, and replicating a constitutional experience that is by now nauseatingly familiar, the Bench observed: “The legitimacy conferred on the present regime, on the touchstone of the doctrine of state necessity, does not imply abdication of the power of judicial review in the transient suspension of the previous legal order.” Only the Pak judiciary can explain what that impossible conundrum means. |
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"I am His! I am His! I am God's !" This seems to be an elementary stage. Oh! But how difficult it is for people to realise the elementary stage of religious development, and if a man, sincere, really sigleminded, really devout, puts into practice what he believes.... feels it with every drop of his blood, gets himself saturated with it, with this elementary creed, he may become an angel in this world. — Swami Ramatirtha, In Woods of God Realisation, Vol IV Lecture II. *** All is God, all is God, there is naught but God. One string holds hundreds and thousands of beads; God is the thread which runs through them all. Waves, foam and bubbles are not separate from water. The illusion is the play of the Supreme Lord. —Sant Namadeva, Sri Guru Granth Sahib, page 485. *** Oh, educated women, just as the dawn, with the Sun's all-piercing rays brings joy to all and gives pure water-giving dew, so also you, advanced women, who do your work very well, and who give birth to valiant and brave sons and are givers of happiness and providers of pure foods and water, you noble women come to our homes. May you ever protect us. — Yajur Veda, V.,34.40. *** Where the women are honoured, there the deities are pleased; but where dishonoured, there all religious rites become useless. The family soon goes to rack and ruin where women are unhappy and miserable. That family enjoys perpetual prosperity where women are filled with joy, alacrity and delight. —Manu Smriti, III, 56-57. *** When out walking at Chitor in 1881 Swami Dayananda saw a girl four years old without any clothes on, he bowed and said, "Mother". When asked, he observed, "I bow to her as Matri-Shakti" (motherhood). — Cited in Harbilas Sarda, Life of Dayananda Saraswati, chapter XXVI |
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