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Tuesday,
May 13, 2003, Chandigarh, India  
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Who will
judge judges? ‘Normal’
death toll Cost of
harassment |
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The
cause of good governance
Shanghai
then and now Post-Independence
generation in the fray The
homies are here
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Who will judge judges? The Indian judiciary is passing through extremely trying times. The superstitious will blame it all on the stars. But there is no denying the fact that the arrest of one more judge, this time in Chandigarh, by the CBI in a corruption case is likely to set the alarm bells ringing across the country. The often asked question, who will judge the judges, has now acquired a disturbing dimension. The list of members of the judiciary being investigated for a range of criminal acts is getting longer. And that is bad news for the judiciary as a whole. Mysore, Rajasthan, Delhi and now Jalandhar. The Jalandhar District and Sessions Judge, on whose behalf a judicial magistrate had allegedly demanded a sum of Rs 11 lakh from a litigant, has been placed in CBI custody. The corrupt judges must be brought to justice. But they are the manifestation and not the cause of the disease. Where should one begin for identifying the cause of corruption even in the higher judiciary? A survey conducted by Transparency International revealed that the judiciary was the most corrupt public institution, after the police, in South Asia. The survey report was released in December last year. It exploded the popular myth about the judiciary being the only ray of hope in the otherwise corruption-riven societies in India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bangladesh. The easy option would be to take an alarmist view and announce the death of the honest judiciary. The better approach would be to see the disquieting trend in the context of sweeping economic and social changes that are part of the process of globalisation. It would be unfair to seek exceptionally high levels of conduct from the judiciary alone, without making the political class and the bureaucracy mend their ways. Five years ago the Indian chapter of Transparency International organised a Conference on Delays and Corruption in Indian Judicial System. Chairmen of the National Human Rights and Law Commissions, the Attorney General of India and legal luminaries from Germany, Nepal and Bangladesh were among those who participated in the two-day conference. It identified two major areas of concern. One was the interference of the politicians and the bureaucracy in the selection, appointment and transfer of judges. To mention one such case, a former judge of the Punjab and Haryana High Court was transferred out as Chief Justice of another state before he could deliver the judgment in a case involving a close relative of a Haryana politician. The other was the absence of direct or indirect accountability of the judiciary to the people. Should India, therefore, opt for the American system of appointing judges to make them indirectly accountable to the people? |
‘Normal’ death toll At least 19 persons got killed during the panchayat elections in West Bengal on Sunday and yet Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee remarked that the elections were by and large peaceful. Could there be a more telling commentary on the law and order situation in the Left bastion? Yes, there could be and it came from none other than the State Election Commissioner, Mr Ajay
Sinha: "I am satisfied about the poll. We have about three crore voters; so the death toll is quite normal". Hear all those who lament the naked dance of violence during elections; the benchmark has been set. As long as the figure is below 20 per three crore voters, there is nothing to crib about. The Chief Minister at least had some justification for his "by and large peaceful" assessment. According to him, the violence was confined to three or four districts. What Mr Sinha says is unbelievable. But in states like Bihar and West Bengal, one has to shed his sense of disbelief. Opposition parties have described the wave of terror spread by the ruling CPM as "state-sponsored terrorism", but the fact of the matter is that there is hardly a party which is not guilty. Of course, the culpability of the ruling party is all the more, but in West Bengal CPM supporters consider it a matter of honour to win every physical duel. Since the party has lost about 10 workers in the violence, there is apprehension that there may be more clashes when the votes are counted on Tuesday. An unusual phenomenon this time was that there were clashes in North Bengal and South 24-Parganas even between activists of the CPM and the
RSP, both Left Front partners. Panchayat elections are fiercely fought not only because of their political significance. Panchayats get a lot of money directly from the Central Government, which is not strictly audited. That is why everyone is keen to commandeer the gravy train. The CPM had a near-monopoly for nearly two decades, but of late the Trinamool Congress and the Congress have started "encroaching" on its territory. The score is often settled through use of force. It is clear from the statement of the poll panel chief that this violence is not considered extraordinary. Although repolling has been ordered in 86 booths across West Bengal, it is not in response to reports of snatching of the papers during the poll alone. There have been many printing errors and problems in the distribution of ballot papers also. All this casts a shadow on the whole poll process. |
Cost of harassment Sunday’s statement of Mr N.R.Narayana Murthy, the chief mentor of Infosys Technologies, announcing the company’s out-of-court settlement of the sexual harassment case filed against it in California, must have come as welcome relief to the anxious investors as well as the well-wishers of the company. Infosys will pay out $1.68 million as its part of the $3 million settlement (the balance to be paid by the insurers) reached with a former employee, Ms Reka
Maximovitch, who had slapped a sexual harassment case against Mr Phaneesh
Murthy, a former board member and head of global sales of Infosys based in the US. Mr Phaneesh
Murthy, who had terminated the services of Ms Maximovitch allegedly for refusing to continue a relationship with him and who resigned in July last year after the incident came out in the open, is not happy with the settlement. He wanted to fight it out in the court and come “clean”. Charging that the company had been forced into the settlement because of the coming ADS issue, Mr Phaneesh Murthy has also sought the release of his 28,000 paid-for shares. On the other hand, as part of the settlement, Infosys has “retained all the rights to proceed with legal action against Mr Phaneesh Murthy for his conduct and lack of contribution towards the settlement”. That India’s most widely known listed IT company, which is globally admired for strictly following corporate ethical practices, should get embroiled in such an unsavoury situation is simply unfortunate. Everyone associated with the company would like to forget this unpleasant incident. Obviously, there are lessons to learn.
Infosys, Mr Narayana Murthy assured the investors, has taken steps to “strengthen our internal processes and improve the checks and balances to handle a similar situation” in future. The responsible Indian
corporates, specially those doing business abroad, are also bound to, and ought to, banish gender exploitation from their work culture without loss of time. It was because of the unsparing California law and the US judiciary, known for imposing hefty
penalties in such cases, that partly ensured a hurried out-of-court settlement. Had the incident taken place in India, the case might have dragged on for years and the compensation paid ultimately would not have been worth the bother. It is a fact, as the International Labour Organisation would testify, that women are discriminated against and sexually exploited at the workplace. It is for the Indian judicial system to put the fear of the law into the minds of the offenders. |
The cause of good governance “Good governance is perhaps the single most important factor in eradicating poverty and promoting development,” according to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. There is consensus that governance is no less an important determinant of development than technology. As Human Development Report 2002 says, pressing problems all over the globe — widespread corruption, inefficient and ineffective public services, schools without teachers, courts without justice, bureaucrats demanding bribes, etc — are largely due to the failures in governance. Senior leaders, bureaucrats, academicians and others have repeatedly pointed out the intensity of the problem in India. The Department of Administrative Reforms, Government of India, prepared a comprehensive document on governance in 1996-97 after wide-ranging deliberations. It contains a nine-point action plan. It talks of a Citizens’ Charter and an accountable administration. It wants an effective and speedy public grievance redressal system. It desires empowering elected local bodies in rural and urban areas and decentralised delivery of service. It recommends review of the laws, regulations and procedures. It wants transparency and the right to information. It desires access of the public to information from public offices and creation of facilitation counters. The document recommends for a code of ethics for public services. It wants action for tackling corruption and cleansing the administration. Finally, it wants the stability of tenure and a scheme for Civil Services Boards. The plan sounds like a wish list, at best a statement of objectives. More than five years have elapsed since then, yet the government has not really moved beyond the framing of rules and regulations, and enacting new legislation. Implementation failures galore! Practically, all the points of what was declared an action plan remained more or less in the government files at various levels. The crisis of governance has only deepened since then. Hard labour by the experts involved in the preparation of the document and the huge costs incurred by a poor nation have virtually gone waste. Why do the recommendations for reforms not result in reforms in practice? There is no dearth of analysis. To quote just one analysis published in a reputed journal, “Indian Journal of Public Administration,” in 1998, author P.K. Basu says: “The paradoxical absence of any long-term impact of the administrative reforms... can only be explained by our preoccupation with forms, facades, intentions and rituals... Whenever decisions involve replacing any old system for the new, inertia continues to operate strongly against such change. This has been the face of committees and commissions and task forces appointed from time to time — many of whose reports are either not read or not considered for years.” Why does all that happen? Analysts agree that it is primarily due to the lackadaisical attitude of politicians, bureaucrats and others. A proper mindset is sine qua non of good governance. However, nothing meaningful has really been done to mound the mindset of those responsible for governance. Change in the rules and regulations do not root out the causes of inefficiency and ineffectiveness; they can at best temporarily control the menace of corruption, dishonesty and other evils. Citizens’ charters, no matter how well thought out, would only decorate the files of the department concerned if the mindset remained unchanged. Clever people would find loopholes in any legislation to suit their self-interest, no matter how carefully it is drafted. What can be done to mould the mindset? Behavioural scientists, particularly those concerned with improving the performance of managers in the corporate sector, have discovered that although there is a genetic factor influencing one’s attitude, nurturing can play a significant role. Based on extensive researches, modern behavioural scientists have discovered a method for changing the mindset. Attitude is born in the neurotransmitters of the limbic system of the brain. The limbic system governs feelings, impulses and drives. The other part of the brain is neocortex that governs analytical and technical ability. The focus of most of the training programmes, workshops, conferences and seminars intended to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of governance has been neocortex. Thus, such programmes would develop technical and analytical ability, increase awareness and knowledge, improve the grasp of concept and logic. However, they would bring little change in the mindset. In fact, the programmes that operate on neocortex might even be counter-productive if used to change the mindset. The interventions that aim at attitudes, feelings, impulses and drives should be specially designed to operate through the limbic system. As Daniel Goleman said in his celebrated article, “What makes a leader?”, published in “Harvard Business Review” in 1998, these would need an individualised approach, motivation, extended practice and feedback. It is possible to change one’s attitude but not easy, says Goleman. The methods suggested by Goleman and others try to improve the ability of self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation by factors beyond money and status, and empathy. It may not be out of place to mention here that modern discoveries in this area based on scientific methods point to the path of spirituality. For example, Arjuna tells Krishna in Bhagavadgita, “Mind is volatile and too powerful to mould. It is like changing the direction of mighty wind.” Krishna agrees with Arjuna as regards the difficulty of controlling the mind, yet beseeches that it is possible to control it. He suggests the methods of Sankhya, Karma and Bhakti yoga. Yoga is indeed an effective method for changing one’s attitude, but, as Krishna says, extended practice with dedication and devotion is necessary. The document referred to above desired a strong message to be conveyed that “administration is for the people and not for the public servants themselves”, and that “public servants should realise that efficiency will be measured not in terms of what the services purport to offer, but in terms of public satisfaction”. Those could be conveyed effectively only through programmes that operate on the limbic system and not on neocortex. The document talks of a code of ethics and value systems. The programmes would convince the participants that these codes are meant to improve their own performance and thereby their prestige in society. That is possible only through motivation (not preaching or lecturing) and extended practice and feedback. Indeed, the task is enormous in view of the time required and involvement of such a large number of people. It will need services of skilled behaviour therapists. Such trained people are in short supply. It would also be quite useful involving spiritually oriented secular individuals/organisations in the process. Secularism and spirituality are not antonyms. One of the successful women candidates in the Civil Services (Main) examinations of 2002, when asked about her priorities, is reported to have told the media that she as an IAS officer wanted to root out corruption. Corruption, according to her, could be contained only by keeping away from personal greed and competition to amass wealth. Like her, many young men and women join civil and other services every year with all good intentions. But, unfortunately, many buckle under the systemic pressure. The approach of the kind suggested here should also aim at sustaining the enthusiasm of young officers. Good governance is not a dream. It is in the realm of possibility. It is the only hope as
well. The writer is a professor at Panjab University, Chandigarh |
Shanghai then and now Relations between the US and the UK were not cordial with China when India’s flagship entered the port of Shanghai in the fifties during those days of cold war. London and Washington were burning midnight lamps to obtain every scrap of information about China’s emerging defence might. The entire company of the ship was excited to visit the developing country whose highly motivated army had marvellously swept across a vast country with lightning speed and tenacity. The intense “bhai bhai” spirit prevailed throughout the ship’s passage from Indonesian straits to mouths of the Yangtze and Huangpu rivers where Shanghai lies. The Indian embassy staff boarded before the ship’s company lined up on both sides and started responding to the cheering Chinese crowds. During the afternoon officers and other crew members were invited ashore in groups. Shops had few items on display and everything was of local make. Yuan was unstable but the average Chinese was healthy although deprived of top grade allopathic medical assistance. The pilot who boarded the ship looked like a wrestler. The guide explained that to cater to the acute problem of house flies and rodents an attractive prize was given to those who could produce 100 dead flies or 10 dead rats before any police station. This had helped in eradicating cholera and plague in five years. However, everything was not rosy. Dr Chowming Lee, a Chinese doctor, attended a reception in honour of visiting Indian seafarers. He revealed that available local medical treatment could not cater for any emergency treatment like cholera, heart ailment or trauma requiring urgent surgery. Just before he joined the party a young lady had come to his clinic carrying the body of her husband, crying for medical help. The cities were crammed with cycles and hand rickshaws. Only half of school-age kids were seen attending partially equipped old style schools. How things change! A few months ago I returned from San Francisco via a Shanghai flight. On the next seat was a journalist from the famous Janes publications. While waiting for the connecting flight he offered me a guided tour of the Shanghai area with which he was so familiar. This enabled me to have a close look at the enormous and spectacular progress made by Shanghai. The streets were spotlessly clean with massive multistoreyed structures on both sides, some of them with helipad facilities and robots on hotel reception counters. Large departmental stores stocked Bohemian crystal, caviar, and choicest French wines and perfumes. We went to a modern toy making centre and a school. The giant factory was spread over three square miles producing one lakh automatic and static toys per day. The production cost of a Barbie doll was less than half of that in Europe, America or India. In a free public primary school well-dressed Chinese kids were served their three-course lunch, including milk, fish, cheese, chips, rice, orange juice, salad and icecream, in spotlessly clean surroundings. All this was prepared in automatic machines. During informal chats all Chinese extended due courtesy to all Indians. Towards the end of our educative tour I decided to buy a tourist guide with a map of Asia at its back page. I noticed that our Arunachal Pradesh was not shown as a part of India. I was stunned and surprised. I dropped the book at the counter and returned to board my flight without uttering a word. I even dropped my copy of Cosco Pacific Ltd (China’s largest shipping company) report on a 100 billion yuan deep water port in Yangshan, near Shanghai, in disgust.
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Post-Independence generation in the fray Fatehabad: There is at least one similarity between the Assembly byelection held in the Fatehabad constituency of Haryana in 1998 and that being held in 2003. Like 1998, the constituency this year will again return a candidate born after Independence. On all other occasions, it had been electing a representative of the pre-Independence generation. In 1998, the Fatehabad electorate had favoured the present Finance Minister of Haryana, Prof Sampat Singh, who wrested the seat from the then ruling Haryana Vikas
Party (HVP) for his Indian National Lok Dal (INLD). This year all the four main contenders for the seat were born after Independence. Three of the main contenders are at least graduates, with one of them holding a master's degree. After matric, Mrs Chowdhary did her graduation from Government College, Chandigarh. After obtaining the master's degree in political science from Kurukshetra University, she did her B.Ed from Hindu College, Sonepat. After her marriage with Mr Chowdhary, a bank officer, she joined the Education Department, Haryana, as a school lecturer. In September, 1999, she became the Principal of Government Girls Varisht Madhyamik Vidyalaya in Fatehabad, a post she held till she resigned to contest the byelection. The Chief Minister and the INLD supremo, Mr Om Prakash Chautala, wanted to nominate a member of the family of the late MLA as his party nominee, obviously to cash in on the sympathy factor. He chose Swatantara to give representation to women in the Women Empowerment Year. Mrs Chowdhary says she had never thought of joining active politics. Till her mother-in-law was alive, she used to campaign for her father-in-law along with other women members of the family but had no ambition to be an active politician herself. After the death of her mother-in-law, she most confined herself to her official and domestic responsibilities. Of course, she was active in the field of social service by virtue of being the President of a voluntary organisation, Mahila Kalyan Manch, which organised marriages of daughters of needy families. She is thankful to God, the Chief Minister and the duo of "Ram-Lakshman", as she describes the Chautala brothers, Ajay and Abhey, for campaining on her behalf. Their criticism is based on the fact that he contested the 1996 and 2000 Assembly elections on the HVP nominee from the adjoining Darba Kalan constituency in Sirsa district, the stronghold of the Chautala family. He lost the 1996 election by just 198 votes. Mr Gillankhera says the criticism is baseless. His grandfather, Mr Ganga Ram, was the first MLA of Fatehabad. Mr Gillankhera was born on November 12, 1954. After graduating, he joined politics via the social service route. He became the Chairman of the Fatehabad Block Samiti in 1985. He remained a Director of IFFCO from 1998 to 2001. He has been the President of the Sirsa district unit of the HVP and has been in charge of the party affairs in Fatehabad since 2001. Popular with the youth of the area, he is held in high esteem because of his helpful nature. Though Fatehabad had been his "political karyakashetra", he would go to the authorities with anyone who approached him from here for help in official matters. Interestingly, Mr Gillankhera is related to two prominent political families of the State — the Chautala family and the Jakhar family. Born on January 18, 1958, Mr Dura Ram made a formal entry into politics for the first time when he was elected a member of the Hisar Zila Parishad in December, 1994, though, being the scion of a political family he had been participating in politics since his childhood. Later on, he was elected the Vice-Chairman and Chairman of the parishad. Even now he is a member of the Fatehabad Zila Parishad. He was the President of the Fatehabad unit of the Youth Congress when he was a college student. According to his biodata, Mr Dura Ram, after passing the middle class examination from his native village of Mohammadpur Rohi, did his matriculation from Dhaagarh village. He studied in M.M. College, Fatehabad, for some time. For reasons not known, he did not fill the column relating to the educational qualifications in his nomination papers. Mr Bhajan Lal was not very keen to give the party ticket to Mr Dura Ram, for that matter, to any of his family members because, as he says, this would have invited the charge of nepotism against him. It was only when all the senior leaders of the Haryana Congress unanimously recommended the candidature of Mr Dura Ram that the former Chief Minister relented. Now the byelection has become an issue of personal prestige of Mr Bhajan Lal. Despite being a trained teacher, Mr Swaroop declined the offer of a government job made to him during the famous teachers’ agitation in 1973. He was even arrested on February 14, 1973, at Bhuna, for his participation in the teachers’ agitation. He was first arrested for his political activities when he was an active member of the students agitation in 1969 and spent some time in Tihar jail. The agitation was launched to press the demand for making employment a fundamental right, introduction of elected student unions in educational institutions and for making one's mother tongue as the medium of instruction. Since then he has never looked back. He remained the General Secretary of the Haryana Students Union affiliated with the Students Federation of India(SFI), a front organisation of the CPM, for five years from 1972. Because of his active involvement in the student politics as well as for his participation in the agitations launched by various sections of the working class, warrants were issued for his arrest during the Emergency in 1975. When the police failed to arrest him, he was declared a proclaimed offender. After the Emergency was lifted, he played a leading role in the four-month-long agitation of the textile workers at Hisar, for which he was arrested in April, 1978. He was elected Sarpanch of his native village in June the same year. During his tenure of five years as Sarpanch, only five FIRs were lodged with the police from Gorakhpur village. Almost all the disputes among the villagers were resolved by him to the satisfaction of all concerned. Since 1978, Mr Swaroop has been working among the farmers. He is a member of the Central Committee of the All-India Kisan Sabha, a front organisation of the CPM. He is also the General Secretary of the Haryana unit of the Sabha. Because of his political ideology, Mr Swaroop has often found himself on the wrong side of the government. He was allegedly implicated in a false dacoity case and kept in jail for six weeks for his role in the Janata Truck Union agitation launched in Hisar in 1991 when Mr Bhajan Lal was the Chief Minister. He was again arrested in 1993 for his participation in the employees' agitation during the Bhajan Lal government. History is his favourite subject. The other 11 candidates in the fray are Mr Baljit Singh(Akali Dal--Mann), Mr Madan Lal, Mr Leela Krishan, Mr Joginder Singh, Mr Banwari Lal, Mr Ramesh Kumar, Mr Randhir Singh, Mr Gurmit Singh, Mr Upender Kumar, Mr Devi Lal and Mr Rattan Singh. |
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The homies are here I love people who work from home. We are the trolls of the working world. The underground people. The homies. A recent study was waffling on about how working from home was easily as stressful and busy as going to an office, which sounds about right, but it failed to mention the exquisite pleasure of voluntary solitary confinement. People often wonder what life would be like after a nuclear holocaust but, radiation sickness aside, homeworkers are already there. You get up in the morning and there's an empty world. No one much to see, very few to talk to — just you, your thoughts (such as they are), a mug of tea and strange telly programmes that never made it to night. You get so used to being alone that it can get slightly dysfunctional. There's a knock on the door and you stop short, your eyes flicking about furtively. Who is that person and what do they want from you? You might even try to peek through the blinds or do that pressed-against-the-wall slithering thing you've seen in action movies. The very last thing you'll do is open the door like a normal person and cope with whatever's Out There. Whatever the perks of homeworking, the downside is waving a firm goodbye to sanity. But hey, were you ever that well acquainted anyway? Admittedly, there are other downsides to working from home. For a start, your dress sense disintegrates. Getting a bit nippy? Stick a crumpled dressing gown on over your clothes. Feel a bit hot? Start stripping. Then there's the time wasting. No one's ever going to convince me that skiving doesn't go on in offices. The hardest work people in offices do is convincing other people that they're working. For homeworkers, that brake is off, and time wasting becomes part of your itinerary. Lurking aimlessly by the kettle is a perennial favourite. Snoozing a must — I call them powerless naps. Then there's important stuff like counting your freckles and filling the dishwasher with vases. However, skive all you like, but the work will always be there. When you do it from home, work gets into every nook and cranny of time and space, like sand at a windy beach picnic. For all the flexitime you have, very little of it flexes in the right direction. So yes, for your information, work does get done, just at our own pace — which is like a snail's but slower and leaves a trail of coffee cups instead of slime. And that nixes the common misconception that homework is as close to being unemployed as you can get while still being paid, a kind of slacker's paradise. This explains why people always expect you to somehow factor the housework into your working day because, ‘Well, you're home anyway.’ That's why the biggest fallacy about homeworkers is that we've been forced into it. As if we've fallen off the righteous path of ‘real’ employment because we just weren't good enough. All this rings a distant bell in my case, but most homies are a breed apart anyway. We were born to work at home, it's a vocational thing. (Though it helps if nobody ever asks you to work in their office anyway, all the better if they make it clear that you're not at all welcome. I've always been lucky that way.) Mainly, though, homies like myself are completely unsuited to office life. I, for one, get overexcited and hysterical if I enter an office and expect everyone to go down to the pub with me. It's just the sight of all those adults — I want to play with them. Maybe it's this lack of understanding about offices which keeps me housebound. For some of us, offices are just confusing: we have no role there, no place to be, so it makes perfect sense to be at home. After all, that's where the art is.
The Guardian |
There are three ways of committing sin: By one's own activity, By an agent; By approval of the deed. — Sutrakritanga, 1, 2, 26 There is no life after death, as you know life. And if there is any life, you have to learn to live now. And you have to live it so totally and intensely that if there is any life after death you will be able to live there too. — Osho, Words from a man of no words. Do no sinful act nor cause others to do one. —Acharanga Sutra 1, 2, 6, 1 |
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The INLD nominee, Mrs Swatantara Chowdhary, is a daughter as well as a daughter-in-law of Fatehabad. Born and brought up in the town, situated on the Hisar-Sirsa highway, Swatantara was married to Mr Narinder Chowdhary, a son of Mr Leela Krishan, whose death in March last caused the byelection. Her parents named her "Swatantara" because she was born on the Independence Day of 1955. 
Mr Prahlad Singh Gillankhera, the HVP nominee, carries the tag of "Mr Gentleman" in the area. Even his political rivals do not have anything to say against him. All that his rivals say against him is that he is an "outsider". 
Mr Dura Ram, the Congress nominee, is a nephew of the former Chief Minister and Haryana Congress President, Mr Bhajan Lal. Mr Dura Ram is not a new face in the politics of Fatehabad. He was virtually the unelected MLA from here when his uncle was the Chief Minister of the State. During this time he made equally strong friends and enemies. Besides politics, he runs a commission agent shop in the local grain market. 
The CPM nominee, Mr Krishan Swaroop, is the oldest among the four main contenders. Born on June 15, 1949, in Gorakhpur village of the district, he studied up to matric in his native village. He graduated from Dayanand College, Hisar, in 1969 and did his B.Ed from Jat College, Hisar. Good at studies, he always secured either of the first two positions in his class. He left his M.A. incomplete because of his involvement in student politics.