The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

EDITORIALS

Nuclear command, at last!

SHOWING a laidback attitude more suited to day-to-day civilian administration, the government has announced the formation of its nuclear command structure full four and a half years after declaring itself a nuclear weapon power. Now that the political and military chain of command to administer the nation’s atomic arsenal has been formalised, it is hoped that it will be backed by quick reflexes and political will commensurate with the challenges before the nation. India is a vibrant democracy and the nuclear button has been rightly put in the hand of the Prime Minister, who is to head the political council of the Nuclear Command Authority (NCA). It is the sole body which can authorise the use of nuclear weapons. The composition and the chain of command have been deliberately not disclosed to keep the enemies guessing. All that has been given out is that the government “reviewed and approved the arrangements for alternate chains of command for retaliatory nuclear strikes in all eventualities”. That is just a diplomatic way of saying that the hierarchy has been clearly worked out to tackle a scenario in which the Prime Minister is unable to deal with the nuclear crisis. The political council will get its inputs from the executive council that is to be headed by the National Security Adviser to the Prime Minister. The Cabinet Committee on Security has also approved an all-services Strategic Forces Command (SFC) to manage and administer all strategic weapons and delivery systems. Various teething troubles (read ego problems) that the formation of this vital body was facing have reportedly been taken care of and a senior Air Marshal is all set to take over as the first Commander-in-Chief of the SFC.

Just as there are no surprises in the Nuclear Command Authority, the nuclear doctrine that has been approved is also along expected lines. In fact, it is only a reiteration of the draft nuclear doctrine prepared by the National Security Advisory Board set up after the nuclear tests in May, 1998. The kingpin of the doctrine is the centrality of civilian control over the nuclear arsenal. That is in sharp contrast to the situation in neighbouring Pakistan where the army rules the roost all the way. The document emphasises strict control over the export of sensitive technologies and materials. Not only that, India has reaffirmed its commitment to global nuclear disarmament and expressed its readiness to join multilateral arms control agreements. It will also continue to observe the moratorium on nuclear tests. The CCS has ignored the entreaties of the hawkish lobby and has decided to stick to the policy of no first use. But it has warned its political adversaries in no uncertain terms that if a nuclear attack is launched on it, nuclear retaliation to the first strike will be “massive and designed to inflict unacceptable damage.” The message of this chilling warning cannot be lost on those vainly boasting of their eagerness for an “unconventional war”. The only change that has been brought about is that India has retained the option of retaliating with nuclear weapons in the event of a major attack against it or its forces anywhere by biological or chemical weapons. This caveat was necessary considering that India being a signatory to international conventions on chemical and biological weapons does not have such dirty weapons and has to defend itself against rogue states which do. Now that India has completed the necessary preparations for maintaining a “credible minimum deterrent”, all it has to demonstrate is the determination to match its strategic strength with its steely resolve.

Korean cauldron

IT is not often that you flout international norms, and hope to get away with it. North Korea seems to think it can. Its leader, Kim Jong Il, has been at the helm of the secretive, autocratic nation, and he is displaying his characteristic belligerent behaviour by reactivating a disused nuclear reactor which would give the country the capability of building at least one nuclear bomb a year, and expelling inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency. This move, which has been condemned widely, has come in the wake of the interception by the Spanish Navy in the Arabian Sea of a ship carrings North Korean Scud missiles bound for Yemen. The 15 missiles were eventually allowed to get to Yemen, which has become a key ally of the USA in its war against Al-Qaeda. There has long been speculation that North Korea has been exchanging missiles and their technology for nuclear technology with Pakistan. According to certain reports, Pakistan’s missile and nuclear programme has its roots in both North Korea and China. Pakistan’s Shaheen missile is a clone of Chinese M 11 missiles, and its nuclear warhead-capable Ghauri missile is a copy of North Korea’s Nodong missile.

China played a decisive role in the creation of North Korea and is its key benefactor fulfilling an estimated 40 per cent of immediate food needs and 90 per cent of its oil needs. Even now, it is playing an important role in blunting the diplomatic reactions of the international community to Pyongyang “adventurism”. It is ironic that President Bush has said that the case of North Korea is different from that of Iraq. It is, but not in the way the USA sees it-Iraq does not possess nuclear weapons, and claims that it does not even have any other weapons of mass destruction, read biological weapons. On the other hand, North Korea freely admits to its clandestine nuclear weapon programme, and has managed to export its missiles and missile technology. The world can do well without yet another potential flashpoint, and aggressive diplomatic efforts are required to make sure that it does not become one. On its part, North Korea desperately needs international aid, trade and recognition, which would only be forthcoming if it were to open up the restrictions. Its former ally, Russia, has strong trade ties with South Korea, and China plays its benefactor by giving Pyongyang aid, even as it maintains trade with Seoul. The international community has been rightly concerned with the deteriorating situation; the Korean cauldron is a murky one, indeed.

OPINION

Novel World Bank credits
Significance of nation-states’ independence
Balraj Mehta

THE development credits of the World Bank are assuming novel features and forms in India. Noteworthy is the budgetary support, which is being provided directly to the state government for the implementation of their plans and projects as approved by the World Bank.

It is curious that the interference in the domain of the sovereign Republic of India is applauded in interested quarters as an essential and inescapable part of the reform of the Indian economy, society and polity. While the Central Government is, therefore, required to guarantee the repayment of these credits, the state governments are competing fiercely to be beneficiaries of these foreign credits. It is not surprising either that the NDA government is underwriting the repayment of these credits on a selective basis, often on political considerations.

A far-reaching transformation in the character and volume of the World Bank credits to India is indeed underway. The Aid India Consortium, after more than four decades of the management of the foreign bilateral and multilateral credits to India, has been wound up. The India Development Forum, formed in 1993, has associated multinational corporations as active partners with its working.

The World Bank has also entered into arrangements with the IMF and the WTO for coordinated action to regulate India’s policy priorities on economic and social issues as well as external trade. The grant of concessional credits of the World Bank and official bilateral credits from the developed countries to India has been severely cut.

The World Bank and official credits from the developed countries, which have been arranged since 1991, are extended primarily to service its outstanding foreign debt rather than provide additional resource for investment in India. Some old credits sanctioned by the World Bank in the past and in the pipeline may have still been made available to finance selected development projects. But this is done after fresh scrutiny and subject to more stringent conditionalities. A significant feature is that new credits are negotiated directly with the state governments and the Central Government is only required to guarantee their repayment.

The international financial institutions, in particular the World Bank and the IMF, have been working from the very start to regulate the economic policies of the developing countries that won political independence after the end of World War II. They have never provided aid for these countries to achieve economic independence. Conditions have always been attached by the World Bank-IMF combine on not only their credits but also on capital flows on private account. The imposition of policy conditions attached to the grant and utilisation of foreign official and technical credits was an issue of sharp controversy between the Government of India and the World Bank-IMF combine before 1991. Subsequently, the Government of India fell in line with the existing and new terms and conditions for grant of credits laid down by the World Bank-IMF. This is what the economic reform process initiated in 1991 has been really all about.

The most remarkable in this context is the virtue made of the system of conditionalities attached to the flow of foreign capital to India not only official and institutional but also private on the basis of what is characterised as the “realistic linkage” of the interests of the developed and the developing countries with focus directly on the “needs of the people rather than on the preferences of nation-states”. The World Bank has started establishing on this basis new forms and direct lines of credit with the state governments and non-government organisations in India. The supremacy of the “supranational” authorities in laying down development policies and priorities and managing their implementation has its own implications. The acceptance by the Government of India of these arrangements necessarily means the abridgement of the sovereign right and scope of India for independence in policy-making.

The idea of global policy initiatives and management structures may sound very appealing to the cosmopolitan elite. But it is a sinister idea, which can only be disastrous in its consequences. It exposes India and all developing countries to neo-colonial exploitation and subjugation. The fact indeed is that under the prevailing world conditions and inequalities among countries, the preservation of the independence and development role of the nation-states is a crucial historical imperative for economic, social and cultural progress in India and all developing countries.

India’s relations with the international financial institutions have never been easy and smooth. The norms of surveillance and management which have been introduced by the World Bank / IMF in their relations with India in the name of economic reforms are having a strongly adverse impact on the democratic rights and living conditions of the people. The rising unemployment, growing social inequalities and sharp and sudden fluctuations in the growth rate of the economy testify to this position. The skewed distribution of the gains of economic growth, anti-labour legislative and administrative measures and preference for elitist education over mass education which are being given the shining labels of modernisation, are cruelly exploitative of the domestic resources, human as well as natural.

A myth has been spread that economic reforms, have been initiated and implemented in India by elected governments of different ideological complexions. It is, therefore, argued that the reforms must enjoy national consensus and any opposition is inspired by narrow sectional interests. This is far from the truth.

The credentials of a government with minority support in Parliament and without democratic sanctions which launched economic reforms under the direction and surveillance of the IMF-World Bank combine have always been suspect. They have been widely questioned. They actually mark a cynical break with the national consensus on the economic development process based on the principles of equity and self-reliance on which India had embarked on after winning political independence.

India did count on sizeable capital and technology transfers from abroad to augment scarce resources needed to overcome colonial backwardness and accelerate economic growth. These transfers were, however, desired within the framework of a well-directed socio-economic priorities and plans. This position is now undergoing a drastic change. The process and priorities for the development of India’s economic and social structures as well as its strategic linkages in the world order are being refashioned to the advantage of the developed countries, especially the USA. The supposed convergence of interests — economic, social and political — of those who run and control the international financial institutions and the ruling elite in India and its political managers is now based on iniquity for the mass of the people and is the primary cause of unrest and political instability.

MIDDLE

A primer for budding drivers
Amar Chandel

ON coming here for an extended stay, a Canadian friend of mine thought it would be wiser to buy a second-hand car than hire an expensive taxi. He drove his new acquisition for less than 500 yards and, believe it or not, was involved in three near-collisions. He sold the car pronto. His respect for me grew after that, since I had been driving for several years and was still in one piece, but for a few dents and bruises to myself, my ego and my vehicle. He begged me to teach him the finer nuances of Indian traffic. Here is a copy of the manual.

The first rule you must know is that rules are for fools. From Kashmir to Kanyakumari India is one, one large race track that is. The Darwinian principle of “survival of the fittest” is in operation during this never-ending cannonball run. Don’t fume and fret if others zoom past you from both sides. Thank your stars that they don’t overtake you from above.

There is a strict order of precedence on Indian roads. Trucks and buses are the uncrowned kings. No mere mortal can cross their path and live to tell the story. These behemoths are fitted with steering wheels only as emergency equipment, to be used for urgent purposes like overtaking. In ordinary circumstances, their drivers are programmed to drive them bang at the centre of the road. Always squeeze out of their way.

These drivers are conscientious power savers. So, they run their vehicle on one headlight at night. The one that is switched off is generally towards the centre of the road. So whenever you see a “motor cycle” approaching, be sure that it is a nine-tonne truck. (Note: tractors and three-wheelers are totally exempt from having headlights.)

All over the keep-left world, a vehicle ahead of you uses its left indicator when you honk and it is ready to let you pass. Here, exactly the opposite is true. So, the sign is the same whether the vehicle ahead of you is turning right or asking you to overtake. Take a wild guess and leave the rest to God.

Basically, roads are meant to be grazing ground for stray cattle. They can appear in the middle of road as if by magic, especially at night. Cows and buffalos have tails but no tail-lights. Don’t dare to shoo them away or you will be in trouble with Maneka Gandhi. Drive around them or wait reverentially till the sacred cows vacate the road.

The sound you must learn to respect is the blaring of siren. Look in your rear view mirror immediately. If it is an ambulance with a blue light, you don’t have to bother, because it is not fashionable to be considerate towards a person in trouble who can do you no harm. But if it is a red-light Ambassador of some VIP, throw you car in the nearest ditch and climb atop the farthest tree double quick, because these gentlemen are loathe to sharing road space with ordinary mortals. Bodyguards accompanying them in escort vehicles are licensed to shoot you for this temerity and then prove that you were a terrorist whom they shot in an encounter.

As far as possible, avoid travelling during rush hours. This period is reserved for road repair work which involves rearranging potholes in a different pattern. The safest time to drive is between 1 a.m. and 3 a.m. when you have no threat except from highway robbers and cops on patrol duty. You may pick a fight with the former but never argue with the latter. Hand over everything obediently.

Western designers have fitted vehicles with several redundant gadgets, only to increase their price. One of them is a headlight dipper. Its use is tantamount to abject surrender. Keep it at full glare, like everybody else. It’s a question of who blinks first.

Traffic lights at an intersection are danger signs. Red light is like a red rag to a bull. Before going ahead at a green signal, please remember that drivers held back at the other three sides are choking at their leash. It is but natural for some of them to vroom ahead. Respect their sudden adrenalin flow.

We are a very musical people and using the horn constantly is part of our DNA makeup. Research is now being carried out to prove that the use of horn not only keeps us in good health but also turbo-charges the engine. Join in or use the ear plugs.

You don’t have to go to Appu Ghar or Essel World to ride crazy cars. Roundabouts are officially marked for this fun activity. You can bang your vehicle into others from any side. In the rest of the world, the vehicle on the right has the right of way. Here, the one driving the fastest is the lord and master of the ring.

We are also the only country in the world where the driver of a bigger vehicle is law-bound to pay compensation to the driver of a smaller vehicle in the case of an accident, whether he is guilty or not. So if a scooter-wallah bangs into your stationary car and breaks its windshield, don’t argue. Lie flat at his feet and pay him whatever “compensation” he demands for the “mental torture” you have caused him by your very presence or existence.

Never carry expensive items with you while driving. If you meet with an accident, passersby are authorised to walk away with all valuables. The rest becomes the property of the investigating staff.

Remember, there are traffic aid posts every 10 km on highways to assist you. If all goes well, these will even have working telephones, running vehicles, first aid boxes and courteous staff by 2070 AD.

POINT OF LAW

One law for lawyers, another for free society?
Anupam Gupta

"THROUGHOUT the history of civilisation there have been abortive attempts to set up or to maintain a polity without law," Roscoe Pound, Dean of the Harvard Law School for two decades and, by universal consent, one of the tallest legal scholars of the twentieth century, wrote in 1953. "Every Utopia that has been pictured has been designed to dispense with lawyers."

This has been manifest, said Pound, in the preface to his book "The Lawyer from Antiquity to Modern Times", particularly in the legal schemes imagined after revolutions.

"The organised legal profession was abolished (he pointed out) following the French Revolution and again after the Russian Revolution. In each case the attempt proved vain."

In clamping down on lawyers' strikes on the ground that they amount to an interference with the administration of justice, the December 17 judgement of the Supreme Court betrays a not dissimilar want of appreciation of the relevance of lawyers in society and the polity, even though, ensconced (at all times) in the highest and most protected reaches of the Establishment, the judiciary can hardly claim for itself the halo that surrounds revolutionaries.

From the Supreme Court to High Courts round the country that have spoken on the subject, the streak of authoritarianism that marks judicial opinions on strikes by lawyers ill comports with the Constitution's guarantee of fundamental rights, or the jurisprudence of freedom.

"There is no fundamental right, either under Article 19 or under Article 21 of the Constitution," ruled the Delhi High Court less than three years ago in B.L. Wadehra's case, "which permits or authorises a lawyer to abstain from appearing in court in a case in which he holds the vakalat for a party in that case."

On the other hand, ruled the High Court, a litigant has a fundamental right to speedy trial of his case, as laid down by the Supreme Court in Hussainara Khatoon vs State of Bihar (1979).

"Assuming that the lawyers are trying to convey their feelings or sentiments and ideas through a strike (said the High Court) in exercise of their fundamental right to freedom of speech and expression guaranteed by Article 19(1) (a) of the Constitution, we are of the view that the exercise of the right... will come to an end when (it) threatens to infringe the fundamental right of another."

Hence, it said, “lawyers cannot go on strike infringing the fundamental right of the litigants for speedy trial.... irrespective of the gravity of the provocation and the genuineness of the cause.”

Describing these observations as "absolutely correct", the Supreme Court on December 17 affixed its seal of approval to the judgement in Wadehra's case, even though—as I wrote last week—it allowed, nonetheless, lawyers to hold a one-day strike in the rarest of rare cases involving the "dignity, integrity or independence" of the Bar or the Bench, a rather elastic expression, or to agitate through dharnas and protest marches, a freedom conceptually denied in the past.

What the Delhi High Court and now the Supreme Court have overlooked is that the freedom of speech and expression under Article 19(1)(a) can be restricted, under Article 19(2), only in the interests of the sovereignty and integrity of India, the security of the State, friendly relations with foreign states, public order, decency or morality, or in relation to contempt of court, defamation or incitement to an offence.

Unless and until, therefore, a lawyers' strike impinges on public order or involves incitement to an offence—factors a consideration of which lies more in the domain of the police than in the judicial domain—it cannot be thrown out of court, to use the lawyer's phrase, without serious injury to the integrity of constitutional principles.

As for contempt of court, neither the High Court nor the Supreme Court has gone so far as to hold lawyers' strikes to be in contempt—an example of judicial prudence well observed —and further discussion of this aspect is, therefore, unnecessary.

It would not be out of place, however, to draw the readers' attention to what the late H.M. Seervai, Advocate-General of Maharashtra for 17 years before he resigned in protest against the Emergency and veteran of many a constitutional battle, has to say on the subject of contempt of court in his commentary on the Constitution, rightly hailed as perhaps the best book on the constitutional law of India ever written.

The theory that in contempt of court cases truth is no defence, says Seervai, "cannot survive a balancing exercise between two public interests”, because pubic interest also demands that a corrupt judge be brought to book and be removed from office unless he resigns, and should be criminally prosecuted.

Since public confidence in a fearless and incorruptible judiciary is a vital public interest, writes Seervai, "it would be desirable if a public spirited lawyer or lawyers' Association conveyed in good faith and in sober language, the allegations of corruption, with supporting evidence, to the appropriate authorities with a view to action being taken against the judges."

Practising lawyers may be unwilling, however, notes Seervai, to take such a step, or persons in authority may turn a blind eye. “The process of removal of a judge by impeachment is cumbrous, and without a public outcry, might not be resorted to. It then falls to the Press” to undertake to expose a corrupt judge and place relevant evidence before the public.

If true, he concludes, "the writing cannot be a contempt of court, because nothing brings the administration of justice into disrepute so much as corruption in the judiciary."

The December 17 judgement quotes Seervai against strikes by lawyers, but it is essential to know as well what Seervai has to say about the judiciary in order to get the full measure of the distinguished jurist's non-conformism.

Dwelling on the same theme two decades earlier in his Chimanlal Setalvad Memorial Lectures at the University of Bombay—delivered at the invitation of the Vice-Chancellor, and former Chief Justice of India, P.B. Gajendragadkar—Seervai spoke approvingly of the young but public-spirited American attorney, Thomas E.Dewy, who had brought charges of corruption before the Senate Judiciary Committee against a senior judge of the US Circuit Court of Appeals.

Faced with the charges, the judge resigned and the committee found it unnecessary to impeach him.

"I share Dewy's view, "said Seervai in his lectures, later published by the University of Bombay, "that public interest is better served by prosecuting a judge to conviction than by allowing him to slink out of office by the easy path of resignation."

Far from shaking public confidence in the administration of justice, he said, "such prosecution re-establishes that confidence more firmly. For every citizen can see for himself that where there is a wrong there is a remedy, and that there is not one law for the corrupt trader and another for the corrupt judge."

With great respect to the Supreme Court, and craving the reader's indulgence for the change of context, there cannot be one law under Article 19 for lawyers and another for the rest of free society.

As for the litigant's right to speedy trial—a right which may be assumed to extend to civil litigation even though, as the law presently stands, it applies only to criminal cases—it is either a right complete in itself without the intervention of a lawyer, in which case a strike by lawyers causes him no injury, or a right inchoate in the absence of counsel, in which case it can hardly be used to deny the rights of counsel himself.

The notion of "vakalat", too, as propounded by the Delhi High Court and approved by the Supreme Court on December 17, the notion that a lawyer enters into and is bound by a contract or "vakalat" with his client, is so plainly contrary to more than a century of legal lore—witness the leading decision of the House of Lords in Rondel vs Worsley (1967) and the staggering richness of the opinions therein—that one is led to wonder whether the Bar itself has been intellectually remiss in assisting the Bench on the whole issue of lawyers' strikes.

That, the Bar's slackness of performance, and its adverse impact on the quality of judgements delivered, is something that should worry litigants more than even the law's delays.

TRENDS & POINTERS

When Macmillan was bored to sleep

FORMER British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan admired French leader Charles de Gaulle, was bored to sleep by German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer and found U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower “sometimes unintelligible”.

In a series of letters to Queen Elizabeth released for the first time on Thursday by Britain’s Public Records Office, the British premier from 1957-63 gives a candid look at his contemporaries, who led the world at the height of the Cold War.

Macmillan seems in two minds about Eisenhower’s abilities. While praising his “nobility of character”, he is less than complimentary of his communication skills.

“There was something very queer in the contrast between the stately, almost 17th or 18th century, French which de Gaulle speaks and the strange and sometimes unintelligible Americanisms of the (U.S.) President,” the UK Prime Minister writes in his account of a summit of world leaders in Paris in 1959.

The Germans got a less favourable write-up. “After lunch, which was extremely good, Dr Adenauer delivered for nearly an hour a lecture on the dangers of communism,” Macmillan wrote. “I regret to inform Your Majesty that I fell asleep during the latter part of this oration.” Reuters

Inept Canadian car thieves

Two would-be Canadian thieves learned the hard way on New Year’s Day that knowing how to drive a car is a prerequisite for stealing one. The police said the two males accosted a pizza delivery man in northeast Edmonton, Alberta, early Wednesday and demanded the four pizzas he was carrying as well as cash.

The bandits, aged 17 and 18, apparently changed their minds at one point and jumped into the man’s car. But their getaway was foiled because the 17-year-old behind the wheel did not know how to drive a stick shift.

Flummoxed by the manual transmission and clutch, the duo then went back to their original plan to commandeer the pizzas. When officers soon arrived on the scene, they spotted one of the suspects entering the home where the pizzas were to be delivered. Both were arrested. Reuters

SPIRITUAL NUGGETS

Universe=Unity+Variety

The force we waste upon our fears is all that would be necessary for the achievement of our purpose.

Let us brew a wine to drown both death and life in it.

Experience deals us just the blows we need to teach us.

Your senses work by fits and starts,

hence you see diversity.

Our most precious opportunities are often those disguised in tatters. They pass us by unrecognised, because we judge life by appearances instead of principles.

When the ambassador from the French Court presented to the Buddhist King of Siam the request of Louis XIV that he would embrace Christianity, he replied, "It is strange that the King of France should interest himself so much in a matter which concerns only God, while he whom it does concern seems to have left it wholly to our discretion".

What bends the back, aches the head or bows the chest? Adding to the burden of today, tomorrow's load.

Men read into nature what they find in themselves.

Unless you feel all,

you know not all.

Be true to yourself and the world is true to you.

— Swami Ramatirtha, In Woods of God Realisation, Vol. IV, Notebook VII

***

O what is there to love?

See with your eyes open.

One is gone,

and another is about to go.

Everyone goes in his turn.

— Sri Guru Granth Sahib, M5, Bilawal, page 808

***

The world is peopled by the dead;

It is like a castle of sand;

Its destruction,

like that of a piece of paper in a rainstorm,

Can be accomplished in a moment.

— Sri Guru Granth Sahib, M5, Bilawal page 808