Disinterested rate

IN the nearly two weeks since its presentation, the budget has lost a bit of its shine. For one thing, several commodities of daily use will cost more, among them vanaspati and electric bulbs of 40 watt or below. An overwhelming portion of bulbs sold in the country falls in this category. It will take considerable effort to analyse the principle behind this new tax. Almost the same is the case behind the increase in rent for government accommodation from 10 per cent to 15 per cent and the cancellation of leave travel concession for two years. Denying the employees a long available concession is not the same thing as reducing the workforce. But the most disappointed are the senior citizens. The Finance Minister has not abolished the 10 per cent tax on interest on bank deposits as was widely expected, but has slashed the interest on small savings and the employees provident fund from 11 per cent to 9.5 per cent. With this, the income from small savings has come down from 14 per cent in the early nineties to 9.5 per cent now — a savage reduction by one-third in about 10 years. More, the Minister’s logic is also questionable.

There was no immediate and corresponding cut in the lending rate by banks. They argue that the cost of mobilising deposit is still high, and an unplanned move on charging less from borrowers will be risky. This defeats the basic aim of Mr Sinha’s move. Interest rate plays only a small part in fresh investment. Anyway, major industries borrow from banks mostly as working capital. Of late, they have started issuing bonds to raise capital, which is economical and timely. An expert says that it takes about a year to finalise the formalities to secure a bank loan but only three months for a board of directors to decide on a bond issue and to rake in the sale proceeds. Also, demand plays a decisive role in encouraging investment and hence economic growth. A study of 1000 leading companies by a business newspaper reveals a depressing development. Last year the total sales were up by 20.5 per cent while inventory (unsold goods and unused raw material) increased by 19.3 per cent. In other words, there was no real increase in demand. After the initial spurt after the Fifth Pay Commission bonanza, the sale of consumer durables like refrigerator and television has stagnated. And there is nothing in the budget to spur demand. And the interest rate cut on small savings cannot do that function.

Balancing act

THE shadow of the ongoing political crisis is unmistakable on the Himachal Pradesh Budget. What it seeks to accomplish is less prominent than what it leaves undone. Innovative schemes are few; promises are aplenty. It is hardly cut out to kick-start development activities. At best, it will let the economy sputter around. For public consumption, it boasts of a user-friendly achievement: there are no fresh taxes. But that big leaf hides a huge bulk of borrowings that will burden the finances. The problems faced by this hill State are many. It does not have much to fall back on except its limited natural resources. Under the circumstances, it has no option except to promote its hospitality industry in a big way. This should have been the main thrust area of the Budget. However, there is no clear-cut focus on exploiting the potential money-spinner. The only attempt to give a fillip to the entertainment and tourism-related activities is through a 10-year tax holiday. That is a reactive measure, at best. The Budget may disappoint the farming community as well. No helping hand has been offered to it. The only ones who have been taken care of to some extent are the farmers of the lower areas of Himachal Pradesh. Chief Minister Prem Kumar Dhumal has announced the lifting of all restrictions on the trade and export of khair wood from December 1, 2001, to enable these farmers to derive full value from their khair produce. Those in real dire straits are the apple and ginger growers. Prices have crashed and worse will follow when foreign produce starts arriving to the full extent. The Budget provides no buoys for them.

To be fair, Mr Dhumal has incorporated some welfare measures. The minimum wages of daily wage workers have been increased from Rs 51 to Rs 55 with effect from August 1, 2001, while panchayat chowkidars will get Rs 500 per month instead of Rs 400. Tourists and motorists will feel relieved with the removal of tax barriers on highways and bridges. He has also proposed a big concession for jobseekers by raising the maximum age for entry into government service from 40 years to 45 years. This move has the potential of creating as many problems as it solves. More than 81 per cent of the State expenditure goes towards salaries, wages, interest payments, loan repayments, pensions and grants-in-aid. The Chief Minister has promised to control the expenditure on these major items. Rationalisation of posts in the government will be done to bring about a vertical reduction of posts from top to bottom, including a 15 per cent cut in the size of all-India services in the next five years, he says. Bold words these, but for the fact that similar assertions have been made in the past, without being implemented. One would like to hope that Mr Dhumal would be able to bell the cat this time. He has allowed all categories of doctors, including veterinarians, to do private practice while abolishing their non-practising allowance (NPA). This will save the government a few crore no doubt. On the other hand, what it will do to the services in government hospitals is also obvious.

New economic challenges
E-management as the answer
Joginder Singh

The process of economic reforms has come to stay, and is moving forward. There is a political consensus on the issue. All the governments since 1991 have followed the path, of economic liberalisation, despite differing ideologies. The reform process promises to provide opportunities for rapid economic development. But at the same time it has thrown open new challenges, which can only be met with foresight, sagacity, pro-active policies and cooperation of all segments of society.

The Government of India has declared 2001 as the year of E-Governance. E-governance means E-management. It is the application of information technology in various government activities so that citizens can get better services. With the focus on 2001 as the year of E-Governance, many state governments as well as other organisations, business and industry have taken up this challenge very seriously. It will induce a healthy competition among them, both in competing with each other and excelling. Our country’s head is in the 21st century. But the tail is in the 18th century. The progress and development has not been uniform in all states, areas and sectors. There are many speeds in India. E-management provides an opportunity to make the country a modern country, in tune with our desire to be in the vanguard in the 21st century. E-management is ultimately the use of computers and fast communications. E-communication is vital for e-management. This is why the present policies are now designed to encourage making e-management and e-governance an operational reality. For a better e-management, computer density, connectivity, content, cyber laws, cost and common sense are vital.

As for as computer density is concerned, the Government of India’s policies have now made computers more easily affordable. The second important aspect is connectivity. The telecommunication policies have been encouraging the private sector to avail itself of the opportunities by which companies in the private sector as well as government organisations like the railways, the power grid and the electricity boards can provide, the bandwidth needed in the form of optic fibre networks. Connectivity has already taken a quantum jump. So far as the content is concerned, it is for the e-managers to use the opportunity imaginatively and take advantage of the present scenario, for a quicker and better management as well as commerce and trade.

The fourth is cyber laws. Our country is the second in Asia and twelfth in the world to have a separate Information Technology Act. This will go a long way in ensuring that the shift from paper-based management to e-management is not stymied because of the lack of legal framework. However, it is still to be seen that the Act is not used as the thin end of the wedge to introduce the raj of e-inspectors. At present, there are 65 inspectors visiting any manufacturing concerns. The fifth is the cost. IT-based solutions and e-management have become affordable, as can be seen from the fall of communication rates. Common sense is something which the industrial managers have to apply for furthering e-management.

The beginning of the 21st century has been so much dominated by the e-factor that, perhaps, our very existence itself is on the way of becoming e-existence. It is no wonder that everybody is interested in e-commerce, e-management and e-governance. There is a lot common between information technology and e-management and e-governance. E-management and e-governance involves processing a lot of information. It is also about ensuring, that decisions taken are fair, objective and in the interest of the organisation. Red-tape is caused as the government has to keep records. Accessing of records becomes a problem. The same is bound to happen in a private organisation. If any system, whether in the private sector or the government, is based on paper, as most of the systems now are, the time taken to access information is very high. It is possible to reduce the time by using intelligent systems. But as long as precedents have to be traced, and access to information is based on files, there is bound to be delay. On the other hand, e-management systems, particularly computers and communications, are designed for speedy processing of massive data. Information retrieval is almost instantaneous. E-management is the answer to some of the perennial problems and complaints about delay and slow response.

Andhra Pradesh has propounded the concept of smart government. The smart government means small, moral, accountable, responsive and transparent government. The question before us is that if the application of e-management in government functions can lead to better governance and also smart governance, why it has not been embraced immediately by e-management experts? If a smart government can be had through intelligent application of e-management, there is a better reason to believe that its application in HRD and e-management can lead to outstanding results. With the computerisation of the railway reservation system and with the same staff, nearly double the work is now handled. With the application of e-management, it is possible to both check and control corruption. Today corruption has become a national menace. Transparency International in its report of 2000 mentions that so far as corruption Perception Index is concerned, India ranks 69 among 90 countries.

Corruption is flourishing in the country because of scarcity of goods and services, lack of transparency, complicated rules and red tape. All these factors encourage corruption. People have to pay speed money to get what is legally due to them. There is a lot of legal cushion of safety available for the corrupt. Our law assumes that everybody is innocent till proved guilty. In any case, there is a lot of empathy, tribalism or biradari between the corrupt. There is a proverb, of people being thick as thief. Nobody talks about honest people, being as thick as honest. It is a logical conclusion that e-management, both in the government and the private sector, can check corruption and bring about efficiency. Only time and insistence can force e-management. E-management cannot be in isolation without inputs. If there are no inputs, naturally no e-management is possible. However, the corrupt can always demand a price for inputting the data. Once information is on line, it ceases to be anybody’s empire. Mobile information can escape both the office and official boundaries. Procedural delays, lethargy, inefficiency, lack of prompt decision-making and decision implementation are the breeding grounds of corruption. With a wise use of information technology, one can speed up all processes, deliver prompt goods and service. This applies as much to the private sector as to the government sector. To a great extent it is possible to reduce corruption by adopting the e-management approach. E-management will increase the velocity and volume of business. It will make the management more effective, as the scope for greasing or extracting speed money will be greatly reduced, if not altogether eliminated.

E-management can also eliminate corruption by easily making available rules, laws and court decisions to the general public. Using e-management will make the government accessible, at your door-step and with more transparency. Transparency will lead to greater accountability. Combined with a Freedom of Information Act, it will be useful to put all government orders on the web-site. Further extension of e-management should lead to the setting up of information kiosks, where government offices can be easily accessed. Responsiveness of the government, is bound to increase because of greater accessibility and accountability. It will also induce a greater sense of responsibility. The United National Conference on Information Technology Laws (UNCITRAL) has indicated a basic framework of certain definition of what constitutes, for example, digital signature and cyber crimes. The Indian IT Act is based on the UNCITRAL. The increasing application of e-management in practically every aspect of the economy, including banking, should be encouraged, as it will lead to increased business, greater customer satisfaction as well as new opportunities for business.

The Information Technology Act recognises the offences that could be committed in the present era, of information technology. Chapter XI identifies the crimes which are relevant for the banking sector. These are: tampering with computer source documents (Section 65); breach of confidentiality and privacy (Section 72); publishing false digital signature certificates (Section 73) and publication of digital signatures for fraudulent purposes (Section 74). An important feature of the I.T. Act, 2000, under which e-management comes, is the recognition of the borderless nature of the world of the new knowledge economy. Section 75 provides that the Act will apply for offences or contraventions committed outside India also. This is an important provision from the legal point of view. All management has money angle and this section gives protection to the banking industry or for anybody connected with e-management or commerce. How this provision can be reconciled with the concept of sovereignty of nations, is still an open issue?

The year 2001 is only a beginning to make e-management and governance a reality in India. If sincerely implemented, it will lay the foundations for a better future and a better country. But a half-hearted or a half-baked approach will not do. It is time we went full throttle so that the country could move at the speed of a fast car and not a bullock cart. India should take up the challenge headlong.

The writer is a former Director of the CBI. 

China: a situation waiting to explode
S. P. Seth

The Chinese Communist Party is jaded and lacking in direction and vision as it approaches its 80th anniversary in July. It is true that China is now a powerful State with a large economy. But there is still a certain tentativeness about it. And the most important reason is that China lacks a self-sustaining institutional system. In other words, the State/nation and the ruling party are indistinguishable. Therefore, if the Communist Party were to implode or be overtaken by a popular uprising, there would be no institutional (political) successor to it. In other words, the country could just plunge into sheer chaos.

This is because China is under a communist oligarchy. And they have chosen to govern the country through regimentation, repression, terror and, if this too fails, through sheer brutal force. Its examples are myriad right from the founding of the People's Republic in 1949. To cite only a few: the elimination of owner-farmers and landlords in the fifties, the 1957 purges of intellectuals, the 1958 Great Leap Forward leading to mass famine with starvation deaths alone estimated at 36 million people, and the terrible chaos of the Great Cultural Revolution.

More recently, there was the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre of the students seeking democratic reforms to make the system accountable and fair. The recently published Tiananmen Papers reveal the lack (if not the absence of) any coherent institutional framework for consultation and decision-making to manage and channel such popular anger. We have the image of a bunch of old men worried about the gathering dark clouds, with Deng Xiaoping expressing their collective fear. He reportedly said, "if things continue like this, we could even end up under house arrest." Which led them to use military force to crush the unarmed and peaceful demonstrators on June 4, 1989.

Currently, it is the Falun Gong that is giving them nightmares. They have sought to damn the movement by exploiting the recent immolation and deaths of some of its members at Tiananmen Square. The Falun Gong though claims that it was a set-up by the Chinese authorities to discredit its popularity. Whatever the truth, the fact remains that Falun Gong associates are the only people since the communists came to power in 1949 who are managing to stage regular protests to defy the omnipresence and omnipotence of a brutal state apparatus.

That the Falun Gong has managed to make a dent in the State's control mechanism by enlisting the sympathy and support of some of its own constituents (including in the party and the armed forces), is an ominous sign. In some ways, the Falun Gong is like the underground (and elusive) Communist Party in its earlier days, with its loose chain of command, popping up anywhere and everywhere. The centralised KMT, then ruling China, was unable to deal with an elusive enemy operating in small groups in the midst of an increasingly sympathetic population, especially in rural China.

Today's communist China, in its ruling structure, has the same sort of rigidities that plagued the KMT. This is not to suggest that the Falun Gong is about to overthrow the communists. In any case, they are not fighting for political power. But by protesting so openly at Tiananmen Square (the symbol of communist power) and elsewhere, the Falun Gong is setting a dangerous precedent that is not lost on China's communist rulers.

Even though much is made of China's undeniable economic growth, its social and cultural costs are not highlighted. Take, for instance, the massive corruption underpinning the system. Now and then the government gives the impression of dealing with it in a big way, but its roots are deep involving even top functionaries. As an example, Mr Li Peng's children are said to be involved in some shady deals or with perpetrators of such deals. And there are reports of other "princelings" (children of top leaders) making the most of their parental connections.

In her 1998 book, "Zhongguo de xianjing" (China's Pitfall), He Qinglian is scathing about the process of urban economic reforms in China. According to her (quoted in The New York Review of Books), from the outset the urban "reform" amounted to "a process in which power-holders and their hangers-on plundered public wealth." She adds, "The primary target of their plunder was State property that had been accumulated from 40 years of the people's sweat, and their primary means of plunder was political power".

In their review of Hu's book in NYR, Liu Binyan and Perry Link pointed out that during 1990s the government functionaries were "able to shake loose at least 500 billion yuan — about $ 60 billion — to use in speculation, especially in real estate. The money has been siphoned from State funds that had been intended for the purchase of State grain, for education, and for disaster relief..." There is more of the same in Hu's book and its review.

Is it any wonder that the Chinese people are distrustful and cynical of the government's periodic anti-corruption crusades? It is like putting the fox in charge of the hens' cooperative.

Even though China's economy has grown, it is overwhelmingly benefiting the party and bureaucratic hacks in cahoot with a new entrepreneurial/business class — the two together constituting the New Class, as Milovan Djilas put it in another context. The political and social base of this new class, in terms of China's large population, is very small. And it is also largely urban-based. What is means is that there is not only a deep class (poor/rich) divide in China but that a widening urban/rural divide compounds it.

For instance, there is a floating rural population, estimated at 150 million or more (increasing at the rate of 10 to 15 million people per year), searching for jobs in urban areas. And these people are not even entitled to some basic benefits available to their city cousins, because they are not supposed to be there in the first place. In other words, even though the State is aware of their existence and even tolerates it as they are China's new economic fodder (cheap labour for urban industry and development), it is unwilling though to provide minimum standards and care for their bare existence.

At the same time, these floating rural people are living in social and cultural alienation, away from their homes and families. The economic dispossession (from rural farms), coupled with social and cultural alienation, is a recipe for disaster. Add to it the urban unemployed from the restructuring of State enterprises, and the new pool of workers seeking jobs all the time, you have a situation waiting to explode.

It doesn't mean that a social explosion is about to occur anytime soon. China is an old civilisation and people's threshold of pain and suffering is quite high. But, historically, whenever it has reached saturation point, it has resulted in an explosion of utmost intensity. When that level will be reached under the current regime is anybody's guess. But it is bound to happen sooner or later.

Balco: unitary judiciary has pro-Centre bias
Anupam Gupta

Giving an entirely new twist to the Balco disinvestment controversy and plunging into a highly contentious legal, economic and political issue, the Supreme Court held a special sitting last week at a Judge’s residence and in a strong, ex parte order restrained the State government of Chhattisgarh from aiding the workers’ strike in the country’s third-largest aluminium company.

Sitting at 6.30 pm on March 7 at Justice B.N. Kirpal’s residence, a Bench of the court comprising Justice Kirpal and Justice V.N. Khare directed the State Chief Secretary and Director-General of Police “to ensure that the workers and the management are not in any way intimidated or prevented from willingly going to work’’ and to ‘‘afford full protection to the workers, their families and the management inside and outside the Balco plant at Korba so that they do not suffer physical harm of any kind.’’

Acting on an urgent application moved by the Centre, the Bench also directed the State government not to disrupt the supply of water, electricity and food either to the plant or the township at Korba in Chhattisgarh.

Passed during the Holi break, the interim order creates an important industrial law precedent in itself even though technically it is still subject to confirmation. And raises larger concerns about the court’s social and ideological inclinations.

The alacrity with which the court acted, without even verifying the facts from the State government or the striking workers or waiting for their version, has served only to accentuate these concerns.

The manner in which the Government of India rushed to the Supreme Court in aid of a private party — the new management of Balco — also calls for deeper reflection.

Disinvestment by the state, one would have thought, necessarily entails withdrawal of the organisation or entity concerned from the public law domain. Seeking, from the superior judiciary under the Constitution, public-law protection for the privatisation of the public sector appears (at least on first principles) to be a contradiction in terms.

If immediate orders were not granted, Union Disinvestment Minister Arun Shourie told a press conference on March 7, reading out the order passed by the Supreme Court that evening and disclosing what his government had impressed upon the court for securing it, an alarming situation would arise with irreversible consequences and the process of disinvestment and the declared economic policy of the Centre would suffer a grave setback.

I concede Mr Shourie’s right to his own convictions but how can the government’s determination to implement its new economic policy be a measure of the court’s jurisdiction?

Or its keenness to promote investor confidence and panic over failure to do so owing to official recalcitrance in Chhattisgarh?

How can the primacy of economic considerations alone impel the court into a field bristling with problems of justiciability and the relevance and efficacy of judicial review?

“When twenty years ago a vague terror went over the earth,” Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said in 1913, “and the word socialism began to be heard, I thought and still think that fear was translated into doctrines that had no proper place in the Constitution or the common law.”

It is astonishing, indeed, that a century later when socialism is a discredited and forgotten word, the fear of its revival or vestigial presence in the guise of a workers’ strike, aided by a new-born provincial government, should spur the Union and the Supreme Court into ex parte emergency action of the kind seen on March 7.

Replying to a question at the press conference, Mr Shourie also said that the Centre was not contemplating the “extreme remedy” of dismissal of the Chhattisgarh government. “There is no need for resorting to Article 356,” he said, as quoted by The Times of India, “when other remedies (such as the petition moved in the Supreme Court) are available.”

So moving the Supreme Court has now become, or is in the nature of becoming, a political alternative!

That this is not an uncharitable comment is proved by the furore raised in Parliament the next day on March 8.

The government, said CPM leader Somnath Chatterjee, himself a lawyer, was taking recourse to the judiciary to hustle through its disinvestment policy and destabilise the constitutional equilibrium.

“Do you talk to the state government through courts?” he asked. And added: “I know we do not have a perfect federal structure in the country but there are certain inbuilt mechanisms to solve Centre-state disputes.”

With great respect to the Supreme Court, it would be totally missing the point if it takes the criticism emanating from Parliament as criticism only of the government (in approaching the court) and not of the court itself.

Heading as it does a unitary judicial system, the Supreme Court has in recent years been showing a disturbingly casual disregard for the dynamics of the federal, or quasi-federal, polity it is meant to guard as a sentinel on the qui vive.

“A dual judiciary, a duality of legal codes and a duality of civil services.. are the logical consequences of a dual polity which is inherent in a federation,” B. R. Ambedkar told the Constituent Assembly on November 4, 1948, while moving the Draft Constitution for its consideration.

In the USA, he said, the federal judiciary and the state judiciary are separate and independent of each other. But the “Indian federation though a dual polity has no dual judiciary at all. The High Courts and the Supreme Court form one single integrated judiciary having jurisdiction and providing remedies in all cases arising under the constitutional law, the civil law or the criminal law.”

The fact that it is itself thus unified in hierarchy and jurisdiction, I argued before an Indo-German workshop at Jaipur in November, 1998, has obviously influenced the Indian judiciary’s approach to the manifold problems that have confronted the federation since independence. There have been virtually no proponents of what are known as “state rights” either in the Supreme Court or at the High Court level.

On the contrary, Indian judges have been vocal spokesmen of the national, as distinguished from the regional, perspective and have been manifestly averse to any expression of (what they perceive to be) parochial sentiment.

Together with other papers presented at the workshop on a variety of subjects, my paper on “Profile of Federalism in Practice: Role of Judiciary”, from which I have quoted myself, was published by Macmillan India the following year as part of a book titled “Principles, Power and Politics”.

The March 7 order of the Supreme Court in the Balco case reflects, almost unwittingly and without realisation of its constitutional implications for the federation, this pro-Centre bias of the judiciary.

It is, however, perhaps for the first time that this bias has found expression in the field of industrial action, where law is so clearly wedded to economic interest and ideology.

More on the Balco controversy next week. 

Pakistani women battle for water rights

Women in rural Pakistan are finding themselves forced to give up the “purdah,” which relegated them to the shadows, and fight for even basic amenities like water.

But there is no real escape from time-worn rules of society and a government that does not acknowledge their presence in the economic structure. However, a silent revolution is sweeping through the dry, water-starved villages of southern Punjab province, bringing hope to innumerable women who mutely suffer discrimination at home and work. Asserting their rights to equal participation in a man’s world, these women offer a ray of hope as the world commemorated another International Women’s Day.

“Women in the poorest of villages are gathering forces, organising movements which have enabled them to renegotiate for rights to water. It has given them strength and courage to voice their feelings without fear,” said Manoshi Mitra Das, a specialist on South Asian affairs currently working on a project for the Asian Development Bank (ADB).

Das has studied six villages in the Harunabad district of southern Punjab in Pakistan, which has had no rains for five seasons. The villages are practically bereft of ground water and one of the main features of this area is the availability of water through “barabandi,” a rotational system that affects all aspects of the villagers’ lives. The entitlement to water is not universal but decided on the basis of land rights. IANS

Shortchanging women

This year’s Union Budget contains even less on gender empowerment than it has in the past. This, despite the assurance in the Economic Survey that gender would be “taken on board” in order to “focus on the status of women and the extent to which the rhetoric of women’s empowerment had got translated into budgetary commitment”. But rhetoric was all that the Budget turned out to be, say disappointed women.

Of the three heads of allocations cited as “specifically women oriented” only one — schemes for destitute women including the widows of Vrindavan and Kashi — is “new”. WFS

Learning to listen

When it comes to providing contraceptive choices, providers’ perspectives tend to prevail. There has been little respect for clients’ needs. Despite official claims of providing a basket of choices, oral pills and condoms remain the two most common contraceptive methods available in developing countries. Swaasthya, an NGO, is trying to change this. The philosophy is: Instead of finding a client suitable to the method, find a method suitable to the client.

While young men reportedly faced no difficulty in obtaining condoms from either the paanwallas or the pharmacy, a woman reported that the anganwadi worker asked her a lot of unnecessary questions as a result of which she felt intimidated and embarrassed. WFS

Dimmer bulb

An unidentified 40-year-old man drove into a gasoline station on the Gold Coast of Queensland, Australia, and began to fill a jerrycan with gas. The fumes rose up to the lit cigarette dangling from his mouth and exploded, throwing him 15 feet and landing him on an ant hill.

“He suffered a few small burns and some ant bites,” a police spokesman says. “We took a vote and this is one of the stupidest things we’ve ever heard of.” Reuters

Rich-poor gap widens

Hundreds of thousands of working Australians are going without meals, do not take holidays, cannot afford their own home, buy second-hand clothes and struggle to pay the bills. The widening gap between high and low income Australians is causing anger among the ‘working poor’ who believe the nation’s relatively strong economic growth is passing them by.

Trade Unions are demanding $ 28 a week “living wage” on behalf of Australia’s 1.7 million low-paid workers. Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) data showed working families were struggling to pay for basic necessities. The figures reveal that more than 30,000 working Australians go without meals and cannot afford to keep their families warm during winter. More than 40,000 such households had sold or pawned items to remedy cash shortages and 220, 000 believe their standard of living was worse than two years ago.

The ABS household statistics also reinforce that Australia is one of the most unequal countries in the Western world. High-income Australian households average more than four times the spending power of low-income households. Debunking notions of Australia as an egalitarian country, a global study found the gap in after-tax income between high and low-income households in the mid-1990s was the fourth highest in a survey of 21 western countries. WFS

SPIRITUAL NUGGETS

The bondage (of the soul) has a cause i.e ignorance. All sinful acts such as worship of objects than God and ignorance result in suffering which has to be borne though no one desires it. Hence it is called bondage.

Salvation (mukti) is the emancipation of the soul from all woes and sufferings and to live bond-free, a life of liberty and free movement in the All-pervading God and His creation, and resumption of the earthly life after the expiration of a fixed period of enjoying salvation.

The means to attain salvation re contemplation of God i.e the practice of yoga, the performance of virtuous deeds, the acquisition of knowledge, practicing brahmacharya, associating with wise and pious men, true knowledge, purity of thought, a life of (benevolent) activity and the like.

—Swami Dayananda, Swamantavyamantavya, 11-13.

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I am He,

You are she;

I am song,

You are verse,

I am heaven,

You are earth.

We two shall here together dwell,

becoming parents of children

—Atharva Veda, 11.2,71

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From the beginning of creation 'God made them male and female'. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and he two shall become one flesh'. What, therefore, God has joined together, let not man put asunder.

—The Holy Bible: Mark, 10:6-9

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Blessed art Thou, O Lord, King of the universe, who created mirth and joy, bridegroom and bride, gladness, jubilation, dneing and delight, love and brotherhood, peace and fellowship.

—Talmud, Kethubod 8a