 |
| Monday, March 19, 2001, Chandigarh, India   
|
A mood of
confrontation Shahabuddins
of Bihar |
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Survival
of the system at stake Gift of
the twentieth century
Drink to
think Indian-American attempts Guinness entry
Balco
opens a new constitutional conundrum
|
|
A
MOOD of confrontation is palpable in
the political air of the nation’s Capital. The entire Opposition is
united in demanding the resignation of the Vajpayee-led government.
Naturally the Congress is leading the attack and a suddenly transformed
Mrs Sonia Gandhi is leading her party. A section of the Samata
leadership is sullen and angry and refuses to withdraw the resignations.
Mr George Fernandes is defiant and combative and that is a danger
signal; it is during such times that he normally strikes. The RSS is
annoyed with the disgraced BJP chief Bangaru Laxman, calling him a
failed pupil. It is also impatient with the alliance government’s
foot-dragging on the Ram Mandir issue. The VHP lowered its customary
cautious approach to the government and came close to rating it as the
worst ever, for whatever reason. All the time the tehelka.com
revelations are assuming monstrous proportions. In it many see shades of
Bofors, Harshad Mehta’s suitcase gift to the then Prime Minister, the
JMM scandal and Mr Sukh Ram’s crores. Of course, it is not, but what
is interesting is to recall the BJP’s stand on all these. If it
squirms now, it is mostly because of the burden of the past. Having
relentlessly attacked the Congress for its real and imagined sins,
crimes and venality, it now finds the role reversed and that is
unnerving. In the ultimate analysis, the BJP’s loss is twofold. It has
abdicated its exclusive claim to moral highground, although it did not
win it but merely ejected all others from there. And that was its
selling point and that was best personified by Prime Minister Vajpayee.
In that balmy afternoon of last Tuesday, this just melted away, frame by
frame. The second is more serious. The leaders and the cadre of the
party have lost their self-esteem, which often surfaced as
overconfidence. These cannot be regained. The enormity of the impact
will be felt for long years. Reports from Bangalore suggest that the
Congress is preparing to topple the government by the simple strategem
of keeping up the attack. And possibly making a bid for power. An
irresistible dream, but a dream nonetheless. The NDA is not crumbling
yet; the allies have rallied behind the BJP in double quick time. For
the present at least, there is no threat of the NDA losing its majority.
Two, in the same way there is no possibility of the Congress cobbling
together a majority. Its ardent well-wisher is the Left group and with
Assembly elections due in Kerala and West Bengal, it will be suicidal
for the Left to advocate the Congress cause. Two important parties will
have nothing to do with the former ruling party. The Samajwadi Party
treats both the Congress and the BJP with equal contempt. The Telugu
Desam Party has this viceral hatred for the Congress. Without the
support of the two, no party can hope to form a government. |
|
BIHAR MP Mohammad Shahabuddin, a history-sheeter, in the news for taking on the police in a daring manner in the state’s Siwan district, has emerged as the most visible symptom of the fast decaying system in that impoverished part of the country. There are many Shahabuddins in Bihar who survive because of the people’s loss of faith in the law and order machinery to provide them even a modicum of security, and blatant political patronage extended to goons. The Siwan MP has been operating as an outlaw for a long time, having a large support base in his village Pratappur and the surrounding areas. He became a Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) MP not because party supremo Laloo Yadav embraced him but owing to his own popularity. What Mr Laoo Yadav did was to patronise a dreaded criminal after he had acquired the capacity to win a parliamentary election. Now no police officer could touch him. Who says all are equal in the eyes of law? This may be true elsewhere, not in Bihar, at least. Shahabuddin’s gang killed JNU student union chief Chandrashekhar a few years ago, but nothing happened to the MP and his men. After all, he had the state’s ruling party on his side. In January this year Chief Minister Rabri Devi’s brother manhandled senior IAS officer N. K. Singh but he went scot-free despite the protests made by the association of the bureaucrats. He has been involved in many such incidents, even those of the worst kind, but no one could dare touch him. In October last year there was a horrifying story of Janashakti leader Pappu Yadav’s men harassing four teen-aged girls in a Patna-bound train. Instead of the law catching up with the criminals and their mentor, they all got a hero’s welcome on their arrival in the state capital with policemen taking care of their safety! Today Shahabuddin may not be able to escape the long arm of the law because he is on the wrong side of the fence. He now belongs to the RJD dissident camp. In a nine-hour gun-battle with the police he lost 14 of his gang members and killed two security personnel. Yet he does not seem to be depressed. Instead, he has vowed to eliminate the daring SP of Siwan district. The criminal MP feels emboldened because he still has the backing of a section of the RJD leaders and, of course, a large number of villagers, who attacked the police party after the encounter. The painful message is: Shahabuddins will continue to prosper until politics divorces crime, and the people’s confidence in the system is restored. |
|
Survival of the system at stake THEY all stand exposed. The famous Urdu saying, “Is hammam main sab nange” (In this Turkish bath all are naked), is so aptly true of India’s political class today. Politicians have lost the trust of the people, who yet seem to cherish faith in their democratic institutions. The tragedy of tehelka is that it places not only politicians but also bureaucrats in the corrupt system. There are many simpletons who did not expect this behaviour from the BJP or the RSS. They stand disillusioned, as the BJP and the RSS stand naked in the “great bath of sleaze”. Can there ever be any hope of eradicating poverty or bringing about the equality of opportunity in a state where leaders cleanse themselves with corruption? The people of India forgave this government’s monumental inefficiency in not detecting the infiltration of Kargil, though the country paid a heavy price. Over 500 of India’s brave soldiers died in a conflict that could have been avoided. Now we see that even a non-existent company, carrying money to grease palms, is able to find its way through the corridors of power to negotiate deals for imaginary weapons to equip the armed forces. Clearly there is too much money in our defence deals. The British created a system during World War-II to procure supplies for the armed forces, and there was big money involved even then. But many a senior citizen still living will vouch for the system being transparent — transparency that was necessary to allow competition to yield the best value for money. Not so today, when the final arbiter in such deals, directly or indirectly, is the politician. And criminals and the corrupt already infest the politics of free India. Can the people trust the present government to overhaul the system and bring the guilty to book? Regrettably, the answer must be a resounding NO. Putting the tehelka exposé to one side, there is the allegation that Mr George Fernandes overruled the much-respected A.P.J. Abdul Kalam to buy the Barak system for the Navy. On that count alone the Defence Minister should have been sacked. Mr Fernandes should have had the courage to resign over Kargil, instead of feigning innocence and honesty at the time. Jawaharlal Nehru removed Krishna Menon in 1962 even though the failure at that time was of the political philosophy “that nations may not resort to wars in the second half of the twentieth century to settle political problems”. The country paid a heavy price then for living in a dream world. Now that Mr Fernandes is out, the nation expects that the enquiry proposed by the government would be used not only to punish the guilty and the corrupt but also set the system of arms purchases in as much of a good order as the one that existed during the colonial days. In India it has always been held that a person’s private life is a true mirror of his public posture. It is important that the people get to know how the former President of the Samata Party, Ms Jaya Jaitly, had complete access to the home of Mr Fernandes — after all, the residence of the Defence Minister is meant to be a secure place. She might have had an equally free run of the Ministry of Defence. These and many other questions trouble the minds of the people of India. The country’s long history is not one of being conquered by anyone, but of being undermined, betrayed and sabotaged from within. Prithviraj Chauhan was betrayed before being defeated by the foreign invader. The battle of Plassey was lost also by similar intrigue resulting in India becoming a colony of a British company. And if tehelka reveals nothing else, it proves that India’s secure areas and unseen faces are within easy reach of a saboteur. The founding fathers of our Republic bestowed upon us a fine Constitution, opening with the ringing words, “We the people of India”, and formulating a democratic system adapted from the tried and tested parliamentary model of Britain. The founding fathers could never have dreamt that one day a combination of greedy people, criminals and politicians would subvert the system. But subversion is there, and the moment has come for the people of India to take action to protect the Republic from it. It has to be the people themselves who should insist on the standards to be followed by those elected or appointed to serve them. In Britain, a Minister is given his marching orders on the mere suspicion of having made an injudicious phone call; here the Prime Minister reaffirms confidence in a Minister who throws open his house to shady arms dealers. Rather than offer to resign, Mr Fernandes should have gone a step further — he should have resigned. He did not, because he knew that the government was more keen on his continuance in office than on setting healthy standards of behaviour. It is also time the Chief Vigilance Commissioner took stock of the system, rather than investigate corrupt individuals who flourish under it, important though that is. He should set about the task of making the system at least as transparent as the one that existed during the British colonial days. Similarly, the Supreme Court could perhaps initiate steps to speed up India’s justice system, which is descending into disrepute because of its delays and the manner in which the guilty go unpunished. Even where hard cash in crores of rupees has been found at the residence of a Minister, the man goes about feigning ignorance rather than get jailed. The Election Commission, too, needs to take up in all seriousness the question of electoral reforms. While it procrastinates, criminals are entering Parliament in growing numbers, and India’s political parties and politicians continue to rely on “black money” to run their affairs. Donations to political parties need to be made tax exempt. The parties must also be asked to compulsorily submit audited accounts annually; if they fail to comply they must not be allowed to contest elections. The number of taxpayers in the country is minuscule, and the reason is clear to any one willing to see. The taxation authorities, aided and abetted by politicians, are not interested in casting their net more widely, because many of their officers are preoccupied with enhancing the money they make themselves. The situation does not seem to have changed since the days of Raja Todar Mal, who established the system of taxation for the Moghul Empire; under that system the tax collectors were said to collect two corrupt rupees for themselves for every rupee they collected for the Moghul Emperor. The rate of taxation can be brought down to 10 per cent if the taxation department and the politicians were to permit the enlargement of the tax net by making a thorough survey in the districts, small towns and hamlets. The political class itself gets away hardly paying any tax on its ill-gotten black wealth. In the hallowed era of Jawaharlal Nehru, his able and highly respected Minister, Babu Jagjiwan Ram ,claimed that he just “forgot” to file his tax returns. He got away with it. Why can the country not run a national online lottery as the British do instead of scores of dubious lotteries that the states run? Part of the proceeds of such a lottery could be set aside for a fund that could be used to provide limited state support to the recognised political parties based on an authentic audit of their accounts and the numbers of members they have or the seats they win etc. As long as black money runs India’s political machine, it will only get an increased number of criminals and fixers into politics and the management of the state. India’s crisis is not limited to the manner in which arms are procured for it. Economic reforms and the management of the economy have raised many an eyebrow. Why, for example, have the authorities taken so long to bring about reforms in the stock market? The Harshad Mehta affair is long behind us, yet it cannot be said that the country’s small investors are comfortable with India’s stock exchanges. Moreover, the government is depriving small investors of their interest income in the name of financial sector reforms. Markets apart, the policy of disinvestment raises concern if the assets of the nation are handed over to individual industrial houses. In Britain, Mrs Margaret Thatcher brought about a massive dismantling of public sector ownership, but that disinvestment made almost every other person in the UK a shareholder in the nation’s assets — be it electricity, gas, railways or telecommunications — resulting in truly public ownership. In India, disinvestment is leading to a clutch of industrial houses taking control of the public sector plants. Naturally, it leads one to suspicion, even if everything is in order. A globalised India will only be able to survive if its economy is transparent and above board. Judging by the manner in which reforms to the system are being carried out, it seems a new kind of “licence permit raj” is sought to be created. In a truly competitive market economy the state should have very little to do other than collect taxes and use them for public welfare, law and order, defence, education and such other activities as enrich the lives of the people. Can anyone say with surety that the reforms are taking us on that route? The people cannot wait for the current Parliament to set its house in order. Today’s MPs seem keener on making noises, stalling the proceedings of both Houses and finding short-cuts to snatching power. Amid the din, one is not able to hear even one feeble voice calling for a return to honest debate. The issue raised by the tehelka episode is far more serious than the mere survival of this government. It affects the very survival of India’s democratic system. We have come a long way from Bofors; that scam stands overshadowed by tens of others that have followed. This writer believes that the manner in which the enquiry into the Bofors case was delayed and stalled is in itself a sad commentary on how this country handles its affairs. What will happen if that enquiry finally establishes that Rajiv Gandhi was “clean”, while the money was collected by others behind his back? The vicious campaign against the young visionary who inspired India’s IT revolution was as much responsible for his assassination as those who planned and carried out the bomb attack in Tamil Nadu were. India is standing on the threshold of great opportunities. Its industrial base is strong. It has made major headway in foreign policy and is once again a proud player in the international arena. The country is making a solid case for a permanent seat in the Security Council that should have been hers, had India not been a British colony at the birth of the UN. India today leads the world in the new knowledge-based industries. Young entrepreneurs are bringing the country credit all over the world. Given an honest and transparent environment, these young people can build the nation into a super power that can confront the scourge of poverty and defeat it. But the curse of political corruption and the collusion of criminals and politicians must be ended before such a dream can become a reality. India, its democracy, and all its dreams survive because of its people. They can suffer immeasurable torture and poverty, and still come up smiling. So, it was as the tehelka scandal dominated the headlines; with a shrug, millions ignored the live telecast of Parliament, but were cheering India’s glorious and improbable victory in the cricket test match against Australia in Kolkata. At this moment let the country not underestimate the threat to its security from the North. Fundamentalist forces that have attacked it in the past are once again emerging in their worst and most inhuman form as the Taliban, aided and abetted by Pakistan. A proxy war by these elements is taking a daily toll of precious Indian lives in Jammu and Kashmir. This is no time to permit a corrupt system and politics of black money to sabotage the nation from within. The time has come for the people to take things in their own hands and deal with the corrupt politicians the way they deserve. They must be stopped from entering the high portals of India’s Parliament. And the only way to do that is not to vote for them — which puts the ball in the court of the people who have the vote. The writer is a veteran political commentator. |
|
Gift of the twentieth century THE present age, by no stretch of imagination, can be called blissful as William Wordsworth had termed his own two centuries ago. This is indeed an age of uncertainties and apprehensions. Life has assumed altogether different postures and thrown up formidable challenges. The man of today feels bewildered when he tries to comprehend the entire scheme of things. He has also entertained strange notions about the purpose of his sojourn in this world. Existential overtones have also taken a heavy toll of his peace of mind. Still the picture is not so bleak as to warrant the remark — “The time is out of joint”. In certain ways the present times are remarkable. The flowering of the genius of the Indian people has taken place in the recent past. Besides science and technology, much progress has been made in the fields of art, literature and culture. Novel, in particular, has scaled new heights at the hands of Salman Rushdie, Vikram Seth and Arundhati Roy. My times, in fact, span 55 years if I take into account the year 1945 when I came into my own as a fresher in college. At that time the second World War had ended and the freedom of the land was no more considered a distant dream. Reticence had been the hallmark of our society half a century ago. It had been grilled into the minds of the younger generation that it was better to conceal than to reveal. As a result the younger generation felt suffocated and longed for giving vent to its pent-up desires. Even the natural impulse of having a strong liking for a girl was curbed rather than allowed to have a free play. To make the most of the bad bargain, it was argued, that such a state of the mind was the pre-requisite for composing poems and ghazals, apart from resorting to the other forms of literature. The theme had mostly been unrequited love or the unfulfilled one. Such a quest for the unattainable continued for a long time, assuming new forms of expression in the process. On my part I consciously tried to steer clear of the much treaded path. I distinctly remember that on a Sunday morning in October, 1959, I wrote the first chapter of my debut Urdu novel Sogwar. Under the influence of the naturalists like Emile Zola, Balzac and Flaubert, I had tried to convey not only the sensibilities but also the sensations of the heroine of my novel in a stark language. This awakening of the modern woman impressed the readers both in India and Pakistan. Sogwar was published in 1960, whereas my second Urdu novel Mona Lisa came into being in 1962. I must admit that the immediate incentive for writing a novel came to me after reading Syed Khalil Ahmed’s Urdu novel Sannata. My venturing into the domain of Punjabi fiction is a recent history. My times witnessed the emergence of the middle class out of the folds of the lower middle class. This class, newly educated and newly liberated, grasped intuitively the significance of life in the modern times and strove hard on its part to make it purposeful. This class wanted to achieve something nearer to its heart but fought shy of discarding the age-old moral values. As a result, this class became the victim of the dichotomy of the mind. The question that always disturbed such people was whether to be or not to be. The pros and cons of being a saint or a sinner ever weighed heavily on their minds. Frustration in one form or another resulted in the lop-sided growth of personalities. Some of them tried to hold their pen like a sword without dipping it in poison. When all is said and done, the last two decades or so have changed the whole complexion of our age. The steady realisation of the birth of a New World has taken possession of the minds of the people. It may not be possible for us to call it. The brave New World but the reality is that the man of today does not consider himself an intruder when he sets himself in motion in the spheres of the universe. So far as literature and literary criticism are concerned, the world of today has assumed the form of a global village. Apart from the creative works, the new critical theories have deeply influenced the minds of the common readers and academics all over the world. In the words of Dr Gopi Chand Narang, “We are all living in an age of post-modernism. We are placed in it. As far as its ideological shifts and premises are concerned, it is upto us to reject them or accept them or modify them.” In my view the greatest achievement of my times has been the emergence of woman as a liberated being. In the process man, who had been the age-old victim of circumstances, has also acquired new confidence. He has now found a companion in the true sense of the word. Earlier he was in the habit of merely shedding tears on her shoulder or seeking escape from the grim realities of life in her arms. Now the two of the kind have found in each other a true companion. This realisation, though belated, is in itself a gift of the 20th century to the 21st century. |
|
A
STUDY in Japan has shown that moderate drinkers have higher 1Q than teetotallers. Researchers at the National Institute for Longevity Sciences in Aichi Prefecture, 250 kilometres west of Tokyo, tested the 1Qs of 2000 people between the ages of 40 and 79. They found that, on average, men who drank moderately — defined as less than 540 millilitres of sake or wine a day — had an 1Q that was 3.3 points higher than men who did not drink at all. Women drinkers scored 2.5 points higher than female teetotallers. The type of alcohol did not influence the results. The volunteers tried a variety of tipples, which ranged, from beer and whisky to wine and sake. The researcher however says that the results do not necessarily show that drinking makes people more intelligent. “It is very difficult to show a cause-effect relationship,” says senior researcher Hiroshi Shimokata. “We screened subjects for factors such as income and education but there may be other factors such as lifestyle and nutritional intake”, according to a report in New Scientist. Shimokata says that people who drink sake, or Japanese rice wine, tend to eat more raw fish. This could be a factor in enhanced intelligence, as fish often contain essential fatty acids that have been linked to brain development. Similarly, wine drinkers eat a lot of cheese, which is not something Japanese people normally consume or buy. Shimokata says the high fat content of cheese is thought to be good for the brain. If alcoholic drinks are directly influencing 1Q, Shimokata believes chemicals such as polyphenols could be the critical factor. They are known to have antioxidant properties and other beneficial effects on ageing bodies, such as dilating constricted coronary arteries.
PTI Regenerate a broken tooth American researchers have shown that cells can produce dentine and pulp, two key components of human teeth, opening up possibilities of growing new tooth tissue. Studies were done using wisdom tooth of people aged between 19 and 29. To test whether dental pulp stem cells would generate new tooth tissue, scientists mixed batches of cells with a ceramic powder containing hydroxyapatite, the mineral found in bone, and implanted the mixture under the skin of mice. After two months, it was found that the cells had produced dentine and also a pulp-like tissue. The dentine had exactly the same structure as human dentine, but pulp needs further examination. According to Songtau shi at the National Institute of Dental and Cranio-facial Research, it does contain blood vessels and nerve tissue. “What we are looking at in the long term is to regenerate teeth with the blood supply and everything else”, says Shi. He hopes the technique can initially be developed to help repair holes in teeth.
PTI Indian-American
attempts Guinness entry Indian-American artist Vahid Saadati believes his needlepoint mural that will take 5,247,000 stitches to create will be the biggest ever made and will find a place in “The Guinness Book of World Records.” Saadati has 280 volunteers working on the project started by him with a large number of them being South Asians. The mural will be a 4.5 m by 7.5 m tapestry, which is equivalent of about 12 queen-size mattresses. Saadati and his volunteers hope to unveil this mural on Canada Day, July 1, in Toronto. The project was recently displayed at the Bramalea City Centre in suburban Bramalea (which is Liberal lawmaker Gurbax Malhi’s riding) where several visitors added their own stitches, including Brampton Mayor Susan Fennel. “The objective of the mural is to show the world what Canada is about,” Saadati said, adding that the most interesting part of the project is that it has brought people from different backgrounds together. The mural will be pieced together in 416 squares, each measuring 28 by 36 cms, that have been sent to volunteers all over the world, including Caribbean island of St. Vincent, Denmark, Iran and the USA.
IANS |
|
Balco opens a new constitutional conundrum REALISING
the damage caused by impulsive judicial intervention, the Supreme Court vacated last Monday — the very first opportunity to do so — its March 7 order in the Balco case restraining the State government of Chhattisgarh from aiding the workers’ strike against the new management. Having severely castigated the court in my previous column for taking sides in a Centre-state dispute and betraying an ideological slant at odds with the Constitution, I must acknowledge today the speed with which the court has acted to retrace its steps even while remaining seized of the matter. To err is human but correcting an error, especially if the error be enormous, is not something that comes naturally to humans nowadays. All the more, therefore, that the court be complimented for the correction. And yet, and despite tehelka.com having since swamped and devastated the nation’s psyche, the issue of Balco still remains. The issue, wrote Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Ajit Jogi, a former IAS officer, in a special edit-page article published in The Hindustan Times on March 10, is an “interesting case study from at least three perspectives” — one, the economics of privatisation and reforms; two, the delicate constitutional balance which the Centre ought to respect while dealing with the states; and three, respect for the protection to Scheduled Tribes under the Constitution. The first, namely, the economics of privatisation and reforms, falls essentially outside the purview of this
column at least for the time being. The law affords, as it must, a very large latitude to the state in matters of economic policy. For all the virtues and excesses of public interest litigation, the battle for and against globalisation must be fought in Parliament and in the state legislatures, not in the courts. From Union Disinvestment Minister Arun Shourie to Mr Ajit Jogi — both amongst a rare breed of intellectuals in politics — it is important, nay imperative, for everyone to realise this lest the representative character of Indian democracy be usurped by an unelected judiciary, non-responsible by institutional definition. President Roosevelt’s historic warning against the Supreme Court acting as a third chamber of Parliament, a warning repeated by Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi, holds good for all time regardless of whether the court acts as the last bastion of the Left or of the Right. And regardless of whether it throws its weight behind a discredited capitalism or a discredited socialism. And yet, even on this point — the economics of privatisation and reforms — two caveats must be entered. First, unlike most other Constitutions in the world, the Indian Constitution prescribes, through the Directive Principles of State Policy, the adoption by the state of an economic system that “does not result in the concentration of wealth and means of production to the common detriment” and enjoins that the “ownership and control of the material resources of the community are so distributed as best to subserve the common good”. Indiscriminate privatisation, privatisation unconnected with the efficiency or profitability of the public sector, or — to put it in other words — privatisation after a fashion, or even privatisation as state ideology, impinges, therefore, on the fundamentals of the written Constitution by which India is governed. The fact that the Directive Principles are not, as Article 37 expressly provides, “enforceable by any court” means only that no court can grant a mandamus for their implementation. Or, to put it even more precisely, that no court can be approached for such a mandamus. It does not and cannot mean that the state can turn a blind eye to, or, better still, mock at the Directive Principles with an easy conscience. Second, it would be a folly to depreciate or dismiss the Balco issue merely because it involves a clash between two rival political parties, one in power in New Delhi and the other in Chhattisgarh. The issue transcends in principle all political boundaries except boundaries which reflect ideological divisions. This is evident above all from Congressman Jairam Ramesh’s article against his own state government in the latest, March 26 issue of India Today. “My esteemed colleague (writes Ramesh), the engineer-administrator-politician, Ajit Jogi is resisting the privatisation vociferously. He is personally spearheading an agitation against Sterlite (the new Balco management), perfectly justifiable for a political activist but inadvisable for a Chief Minister of a new state desperate for fresh investment. Balco is virtually under a lock-out. The impasse lingers and the Supreme Court will hear the case again on April 9 by which time Balco would have become a ghost facility.” Commending the disinvestment of 51 per cent shares by the BJP government as “eminent economic sense” and spurning Jogi’s take-over offer to the Centre of Rs 552 crore — half a crore more than that paid by Sterlite — as a “recipe for continued conflict” between Chhattisgarh and Delhi, Ramesh savages the “conclusively demonstrated incapability” of successive governments to run the public sector professionally and commercially. Confessing to a predicament on the Balco issue, being a Congressman, but asserting “ultimately the need to preserve professional integrity even while serving as a political apparatchik”, he sees no need for the public sector except in the area of irrigation, primary education and health and possibly energy for while. While the economics of the public sector — where layer upon layer of half-truth is being piled up — lies outside the purview of this column, the self-same need for professional integrity compels me as a student of the Constitution to cry foul. There is no way the ideological apparatus of the Constitution, embodied in the Directive Principles of State Policy, can be reconciled with such sweeping views on privatisation. Even if, owing to the unrepresentative character of the judiciary as an institution as well as the unenforceability of the directive principles, the matter is one not fit for judicial review. But the last of the three perspectives of the Balco issue indicated by the Chhattisgarh Chief Minister — respect for the protection afforded to Scheduled Tribes under the Constitution — falls in a totally different category. Balco was set up, wrote Jogi in his HT article, and has mines on the lands acquired from cultivators belonging to the Scheduled Tribes. These people were displaced from villages in Scheduled Areas. Under the Madhya Pradesh Land Revenue Code, applicable in Chhattisgarh, transaction of land from tribals to non-tribals is prohibited in the Scheduled Areas. Even in the case of lands that are not for agricultural purposes, the permission of the Collector is required. These provisions in the law (he said) have been introduced through the special powers granted to the Governor under the Fifth Schedule of the Constitution. Notwithstanding anything in the Constitution, says Para 5 of the Fifth Schedule, the Governor may (by public notification) direct that any Act of Parliament or the State legislature shall not apply to a Scheduled Area, or shall apply to it subject to such exceptions and modifications as the Governor may specify. The Governor (it says further) may make regulations for the “peace and good government” of any Scheduled Area in a State, including regulations to prohibit or restrict the transfer of land, and while doing so may repeal or amend any Act of Parliament or the State legislature applicable to the area in question. It is these sweeping, overriding provisions of the Fifth Schedule, as interpreted by the Supreme Court in 1997 in the Samatha case, that the young Chief Minister of the new tribal state of Chhattisgarh, himself a tribal, has now invoked to cancel the Balco disinvestment sale. More on the Fifth Schedule, the Samatha case and the tribal situation next week. |
|
Bad deeds, and deed harmful or hurtful to ourselves, are easy to do; what is beneficial and good, that is very difficult to do. **** Before long, alas! this body will lie on the earth, despised, without understanding, like a useless log; yet our thoughts will endure. They will be thought again, and will produce action. Good thoughts will produce good actions, and bad thoughts will produce bad action. **** Those who imagine truth in untruth and see
untruth in truth never arrive at Truth, but follow vain desires. They who know truth in truth, and untruth in untruth, arrive at Truth, and follow true desires. **** If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows him as the wheel follows the foot of the ox that draws the carriage. **** An evil deed is better left undone, for a man will repent of it
afterwards; a good deed is better done, for having done it, one will not repent. **** a man commits a sin let him not do it again; let him not delight in sin; pain is the outcome of evil. If a man does what is good, let him do it again; let him delight in it; happiness is the outcome of good. **** Let no man think lightly or evil, saying in his heart, "It will not come nigh unto me." As by the falling of water drops a water pot is filled, so the fool becomes full of evil, though he gathers it little by little. —
The Dhammapada, 10, 12, 14, 17, 20, 26, 27 |
 |
| Punjab | Haryana | Jammu & Kashmir | Himachal Pradesh | Regional Briefs | Nation | Editorial | | Business | Sport | World | Mailbag | In Spotlight | Chandigarh Tribune | Ludhiana Tribune 50 years of Independence | Tercentenary Celebrations | | 121 Years of Trust | Calendar | Weather | Archive | Subscribe | Suggestion | E-mail | |
