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Monday,
May 19, 2003, Chandigarh, India  
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On the trail of terrorism Blow against dowry Taxing toll |
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Not done in by resource crunch alone
No longer a family
In search of those who just ‘disappeared’ Tortured to death
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On the trail of terrorism The killing of over 40 persons in suicide bomb blasts at Casablanca in Morocco soon after similar incidents in the Saudi Arabian capital, Riyadh, conveys a definite message: Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda has not yet been obliterated. There are enough reasons to believe that the two developments have the hallmarks of the Saudi fugitive's dreaded terrorist network. Three days after the Riyadh bomb explosions, there was a significant occurrence in Pakistan's commercial capital, Karachi, which did not get adequate international notice because no lives were lost. But there too the targets were the interests of the US and its allies. In fact, there are fears that terrorists of the Al-Qaeda variety may launch more such attacks in Africa and East Asian countries like Malaysia and Indonesia, where they had struck in the past. This raises the pertinent query: what has the US-led war on terrorism achieved despite the huge cost it entailed in terms of human lives and property? It seems the US military action has only exacerbated the social divisions and destabilised global peace. In retrospect, the US made three basic mistakes. One, in the process of destroying the Al-Qaeda bases in Afghanistan and the Taliban regime that propped up the terrorist organization, the super power brought misery to the poor masses. This could have been avoided with a change in strategy. And when it came to rebuilding the country in ruins, the US simply forgot what it had promised after installing the Hamid Karzai regime, leading to the strengthening of the anti-American sentiment in different parts of the world. Two, it categorised the terrorist organisations into two — the Al-Qaeda and the rest. Among the rest are the large networks involved in the proxy war in India's Jammu and Kashmir at the behest of Pakistan. The Pakistan-based organisations and those having their headquarters in West Asia, East Asia, Africa and elsewhere carried on their destructive activities despite there being no let-up in the drive against Al-Qaeda. This meant that Al-Qaeda was under attack but those subscribing to its ideology were left untouched. Three, the US has not been serious enough about eliminating the factors that sustain the terrorist ideology, particularly in West Asia. In fact, it added another strong factor by using force to bring about a regime change in Iraq, defying the international public opinion, on the pretext of destroying Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, which are yet to be found. The Iraq episode has been acting like fuel to the fire when the highly sensitive issue of establishing a sovereign Palestinian state remains unresolved because the US refuses to put adequate pressure on Israel. America and its allies should remember that the anti-terrorism war cannot be won by force alone. There is need for a multi-pronged strategy to take the fight to its logical conclusion. But will the US listen? |
Blow against dowry Two instances of rejection of dowry-demands by spunky girls do not necessarily indicate the birth of a movement. But the good news is that the idea seems to be catching on. Last week it was Nisha Sharma of Noida, in Uttar Pradesh, who showed the abusive baraatis the door for insulting her father and demanding a vulgar amount of money as the price for accepting her as a “bahu”. Nisha’s tale had all the elements of a modern Bollywood potboiler revolving around the theme of dowry and how it compromises the dignity of women and their blood families. Evidently inspired by the daring example set by Nisha Sharma, another girl, this time in Delhi, decided to up the ante, as it were, by walking out on the groom within hours of the completion of the ceremony that made them man and wife in the eyes of the law and society. Anupama Singh will, no doubt, have to go through the legal hassle of getting the marriage annulled. In the case of Nisha, the groom’s mother demanded Rs 11 lakh as a condition for accepting her as the family’s daughter-in-law. Anupama’s in-laws were more crafty. They raised the demand for a sum of Rs 8 lakh after the marriage rituals had been performed. But the new age Indian woman is made of sterner stuff. She no longer accepts her position in the in-laws’ family as a doormat that everyone has the freedom to trample upon. The media has played a remarkable and major role in creating awareness against the despicable social evil of dowry. In a country where the rate of illiteracy is disturbingly high, it is the electronic media’s coverage of events that reaches a larger audience than that of the print media. Nisha’s tale of rejection was highlighted by most Indian television channels. Now they have Anupama’s tale to share with the India that is covered by the air waves. Affirmative action by the party that is directly affected by the curse of dowry is what is needed for making greedy grooms and their families mend their
ways. This is what Nisha and Anupama did. This is what every self-respecting girl should do. According to UNICEF, “husbands often engineer an ‘accident’ (frequently the bursting of a kitchen stove) when they feel the obligatory marriage dowry (gifts from in-laws) is not enough. In India, it is estimated that more than 5,000 women are killed each year because their in-laws consider their dowries inadequate.” Nisha and Anupama will at least now not be part of the latest figures of dowry-deaths compiled annually by UNICEF. And if the electronic media continues to sustain its interest in the gender-sensitive issue, India may be on course to banishing what can be called the curse of Manu on civil society. |
Taxing toll A special leave petition (SLP) seeking a stay on the tender process for collecting toll tax on the National Highway between Panipat and Jalandhar raises a vital point: is the money collected by the National Highway Authority of India
(NHAI) for this purpose properly utilised? The Foundation for Civil Liberties
(FCL) which has filed the SLP alleges that although Rs 100 crore has been collected so far, the maintenance and improvement of the road are just not up to the mark and potholes can be seen all over the stretch. The apex court has sought a reply from the Centre and the NHAI within six weeks and will deliberate on the various accusations after that. There is need for looking at the process of collecting toll tax in its entirety because people are being burdened with development as well as maintenance of roads. While on the one hand, there is cess on petrol and diesel ostensibly for the development of roads, on the other the Union Ministry of Road Transport is collecting toll tax on roads and bridges in perpetuity for maintaining them. This double burden on the public is illogical enough. Not using every penny thus collected for the maintenance of roads makes it even worse. As the FCL has argued, the government has violated the citizen’s rights of safe travel by not providing “safety features” even on an important road like National Highway No. 1. It is not only the paying public which is annoyed with the double burden. Even the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Transport has expressed its displeasure on the method being devised to collect toll tax on highways. It notes that once the cost of construction of a road or a bridge plus interest is recovered, the collection of toll should be stopped. It is unreasonable on the part of the government to collect tax in perpetuity. Toll is collected on highways which have been or are being converted from two lanes to four lanes. By making the users pay for the development as well as the maintenance of the roads, the government is passing on to them the burden of its own inefficiencies. The government must also heed the recommendation of the parliamentary panel that persons travelling on smaller stretches of national highways where the toll is being collected should be charged a lower amount than the persons using the entire length of the highway. It is odd that all motorists should have to pay the same tax for using the toll road irrespective of the distance they cover. |
Not done in by resource crunch alone Given the seriousness of the revelations made in the report of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Defence, one had expected the Opposition to take the government through the grinder, but the fast-moving developments on the Indo-Pak front and the ongoing boycott of Defence Minister George Fernandes have made it fritter away this ammunition. Had such an investigative report been published by any newspaper, the government would have certainly derided it as a misrepresentation, but since the author was an authoritative parliamentary committee, that too headed by the BJP’s very own Madan Lal Khurana, no plausible explanation was available to the government. The committee has found many faults with the treatment meted out to the armed forces. The most sensational is the fact that the Kargil tax was diverted to the general fund, meaning thereby the funds collected for the specific purpose of national security have become the part of general revenues of the government. This is a fraud on the Army as well as the common man who has been paying this surcharge all along in the hope that it is going to benefit the country’s soldiers. The government levied a 5 per cent surcharge on taxpayers for national security during the year 2002-2003. It has also levied a surcharge of 10 per cent for the same purpose on taxpayers earning more than Rs 8.5 lakh per annum during 2003-2004. The fund generated by this surcharge was Rs 4,253 crore in 2002-2003. In 2003-2004 a sum of Rs 2,800 crore is likely to be collected. The committee has recommended that funds collected from the national security surcharge must be placed in a separate “non-lapsable” fund to be utilised by the Ministry of Defence for capital expenditure. (Capital expenditure includes expenditure on land, construction works, plant and machinery, equipment, tanks, naval vessels, aircraft and aero-engines, dockyards, etc. Expenditure on the procurement of heavy and medium vehicles as well as other equipment, which have a unit value of Rs 2 lakh and above and a life span of seven years or more, also come in this category.) But then, the needs of the defence have never got the priority that they deserved. Slippages, slow progress of work, non-finalisation of deals and contractual commitments are the order of the day. One unexpected consequence of the Tehelka expose has been that even the items needed very urgently are not procured. There is a major shortfall of nearly 2.5 lakh bulletproof jackets with the Army for its operational role at the Line of Control and in its counter-insurgency operations. This has happened despite the fact that the procurement action was initiated as far back as 1988-89. The committee has expressed its distress at the under-utilisation of defence allocation, particularly in respect of capital expenditure, continuously for the last several years. A huge amount of Rs 6,499 crore which constituted 30 per cent of the total capital expenditure earmarked for the year 2002-2003 remained unutilised. The quantum of under-utilised funds becomes more glaring if comparison is made between the Budget estimates and the actuals in the preceding years. The under-utilisation has weakened the process of modernisation of defence services with possibilities of ominous consequences in the prevailing international and national security environment. There is no long-term perspective plan for self-reliance and modernisation of the Army, the Navy and the Air Force with clear indication of requirement of funds so that scarce resources could be properly managed. The Budget estimates for defence services at Rs 65,300 crore for 2003-2004 show a negligible increase of 0.5 per cent over the Budget estimates of Rs 65,000 crore for 2002-2003. However, it shows an increase of 16.61 per cent over the revised estimates of Rs 56,000 crore for 2002-2003. The latter figure makes some believe that India is assigning enough money for defence, but the real story is exactly the opposite. There is a perceptible decline in defence expenditure as the proportion of Central Government expenditure from 15.84 per cent in 2002-2003 to 14.88 per cent in 2003-2004. The share of defence expenditure as percentage in gross domestic product (GDP) has also declined substantially from 3.38 per cent in 1987-88 to 2.28 per cent in 2002-2003. On the one hand, there is continued under-utilisation of funds while on the other high projections are made by defence services with no proper fiscal planning. The committee feels that the weak monitoring system for spending allocated funds well within pre-fixed target dates and lack of effective and fast system of identifying the cause of delay in decision -making and implementation are some of the main reasons for the surrender of funds year after year. The committee has noted with “gravest and utmost” concern that the Tenth Defence Plan (2002-2007) has still not been finalised even though the first two years of the projected Plan are already over. This is indicative of the adhocism and the non-serious approach which still prevail despite the trauma of Kargil and other assaults on national security. The lack of urgency in acquiring the aircraft carrier Admiral Gorshkov and an advanced jet trainer (AJT) and the development and induction of indigenous main battle tank Arjun has also come in for sharp criticism. At present the ageing INS Viraat is the only aircraft carrier with the Indian Navy which is expected to be in service till 2007. Even if the deal to acquire Admiral Gorshkov is finalised immediately, it will take another 52 months to make it operational. The air defence ship, which is not a substitute for the aircraft carrier, is also not forthcoming before 2010-2011. The government has yet to acquire an AJT for stage-III training of the fighter pilots. This has resulted in an increasing number of accidents of fighter aircraft causing an avoidable loss of young pilots and innocent civilians apart from a huge financial drain on scarce resources. Interestingly, while the impression so far was that the government has zeroed in on the British Hawk, the parliamentary committee has caused a flutter by asserting that “as both the trainer aircraft, British Hawk and Czech L-159B, are found to be viable and acceptable to the Air Force, the committee recommends that both options should be considered to ensure that the suitable trainer aircraft are available at the lowest cost to the IAF without any further delay”. But in practice, this may further delay the selection of the AJT. The L-159B, manufactured by Aero Vodochody, a Czech aviation company with major US investment and spare-parts, was not in the picture till two years ago. Its big advertisements a year back and the support of the parliamentary committee now has brought it to the limelight. Interestingly, the latest report of the Comptroller and Auditor-General of India on defence services pertaining to 2001-2002 is equally unsparing. The leitmotif of the appraisal is “deficiencies in planning and lack of clarity in regard to operational requirements”. Small wonder that our defence services are not quite as fighting fit as they are made out to be. That is an affront to the brave soldiers who are ever ready to lay down their lives for the country. The nation owes it to them that they fight to win, no just to die. |
No longer a family “Had I been in a joint family I would not be feeling so lonely!” That was my cousin who was laid up with a broken back for about three weeks in his flat and feeling terribly lonesome. His wife was in the kitchen and his kids had gone away to school. Nobody had any time for him. I was feeling a bit guilty because although I stayed at a distance of just 4 km from his place in the same city I could find time to look him up only after three weeks of his unfortunate accident. Even he had no time for anyone when he was up and about. A busy chartered accountant, most of his time was spent in office or in threshing out business deals and all the time his wife led a lonely life in the cubbyhole of a flat. He graciously admitted that and went on to hold forth on the blessings of a joint family. “You see, we never lacked support — physical and emotional. If someone was busy there was always somebody else to fill the gap. There were any number of uncles, aunts and cousins and, of course, grandpa and granny to take care of you when you were sick, to give you company and regale you with stories. There was never any feeling of loneliness or depression; the entire family rallied round to give an emotional cushion. We hardly missed our parents. In fact, children in a joint family hardly knew their parents; they were closer to other elders.” It was obvious that he was missing his childhood days. He wanted someone to sit with him, to talk to him and make him feel normal. But modern existence does not afford that luxury. You are not only born alone and die alone, you live alone too! I came back a bit thoughtful wondering about the advantages of the joint family. I have never lived in one. But still there was no loneliness in my family of four — my parents, my elder sister and me. My father worked a lot but still he could find time to go to films with us on odd Sundays or take us out on a picnic and even accompany mom to the super market. Those were family outings when the four of us became one. And my parents had made it a point that we had our lunch and dinner together everyday almost without exception. But what kind of a life do I lead today? The thought struck me as I sat working at the system in the front room. My seven-year-old son back from school was watching television in the middle room while my wife was checking exam papers in the bedroom. My son is busy in school, cricket, tuition, computer games and tests. My wife has her college, her music and her gym. She has her own car, own mobile, even own phone. She goes shopping alone and watches films on television I have odd timings. Sometimes she comes back home first to have lunch; sometimes the privilege is mine; my son has his lunch late as he comes back from school only in the afternoon. Invariably when I return late at night he is in bed and as I take roti and sabzi sitting in the TV room a yawning wife worried about her classes next morning gives me company waiting for me to finish so that she could wind up the kitchen for the day and hit bed. Talk of family togetherness? |
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In search of those who just ‘disappeared’ The following are excerpts from a 634-page report entitled “Reduced to Ashes” (to be released in New Delhi on May 23) brought out by the
Committee for Coordination on Disappearances in Punjab:
Paramjit Kaur, Jaswant Singh’s widow, told Geoff Parish of the SBS television in March 2002: “In court we have to fight and there is so much of harassment. Seven years have passed and we haven’t gained anything as yet. This won’t finish in our lifetime.” Jaswant Singh’s father Kartar Singh was born when his father, a revolutionary committed to the goal of India’s freedom from the colonial yoke, was interned in Punjab from 1915 to 1922. Born in 1917, Kartar Singh is today 85. As a school teacher at Khalra village who never compromised with the dignity of his father’s ideals of freedom, Kartar Singh has been a witness to the passage of an Independent India into its political adulthood. He told one of the authors of this report in the course of a long discussion held at his village home on 27 March 2000: “The government did not have the ability and the system to cope with the unrest and the armed struggle in a legitimate way. The government officials, the police, the judiciary, the political class were all corrupt, disinterested in their duties, ignorant of the rules and out of touch with the people. The government did not have a hold on any section of the society. The government had to react and suppress this movement. But there were no principles and institutional ways to guide its actions. In that situation, abuses and atrocities became inevitable. The security forces were given blanket powers to stamp out the agitation by whatever means. The police did not have the ability, the training or the aptitude to identity and nab real offenders. So, their actions became indiscriminate. When the militancy increased, they began to catch and kill the family members and friends of those who were involved. This way, they tried to create pressure on the relatives to stop those who were involved. Kartar Singh compared the working of the people in India before and after 1947 in the following words: “The British were here to rule us. They did that under some rules and norms. After Independence, political power has gradually become bereft of all rules and norms. In the British period, custodial killings, victimisation of family members of political or revolutionary suspects, false prosecution, etc., were unheard of. Now what purpose did the abduction and disappearance of Jaswant Singh serve? It was a purely malicious and unreasonable action and all the institutions of the state, by participating in the cover-up, have become personifications of the same maliciousness and unreasonableness. But Kartar Singh does not despair. He says: “My son followed the path of truth and bold opposition to injustice. He was proud of his ancestral history of martyrdom for justice and freedom. In spite of my personal grief at his loss, I know that if there is to be any hope for Punjab and for India there has to be a resurgence of that spirit of freedom and the courage of conviction which my son embodied. I have faith. In spite of the rotten state of affairs today, there will be a new phase of struggle to realise the ideals of freedom which our leaders have betrayed.” Jaswant Singh Khalra died a death he may have foreseen; perhaps courted. The lingering memory of the legend of Surat Singh’s defiant martyrdom in the family against the Mughals after Banda Singh Bahadur had been captured and executed in Delhi in 1715, may even have played a part in making Jaswant Singh so bold and reckless against the Punjab police. But there is a different between his own sacrifice and the sacrifices of his ancestors in 1715: There is more “probable knowledge” about what happened to them in 1715 than we have about what happened to Jaswant Singh in 1995. In 1715, two agents of the British East india Company in Delhi, John Surman and Edward Stephenson, had witnessed and recorded the heroism of Banda Singh Bahadur and his associates who accepted death by spurning the offers of pardon in exchange for apostasy. We can read about it and feel inspired. Jaswant Singh’s death is an obfuscated event even for those who knew him personally. There is no verifiable record of others like him, thousands of them, who were consigned to flames in illegal cremations, that Jaswant Singh tried to expose. The difference has implications for the role of memory and meaning in inspiring “knowledgeable” initiatives in which Kartar Singh, Jaswant’s father, endows hope. ‘Probably of knowledge’, through empirical observation, cognitive recovery and documentation, shows what we ‘care’ for and how we mean to influence the shaping of realities.
A senior IB officer, Maloy Krishna Dhar, who had been travelling clandestinely to the Tarn Taran police district for 12 years beginning 1980, wrote the following words in tribute to Ajit Singh Sandhu: "In my job, I always travelled undercover, usually as a media person. My profession had compelled me to stay aloof from the state machinery and establish rapport with the militant leaders. I was not a part of the killing machine Ajit Singh Sandhu and his colleagues, some of them missionaries in uniform, accepted their assigned jobs as frontline soldiers. They were told to shoot first, ask questions later. They were assured by their bosses in Chandigarh and Delhi that they would be taken care of. The unholy war had to be won... Our political leaders, like their imperial masters, have been using the police and the administration for coercion in the name of preserving the unity and integrity of the country. Sandhu, who had carried out the orders of his superiors and political masters and secured Tarn Taran, thought he was above the law. Many brave and honest officers like him had committed themselves and made Punjab safe at a colossal human cost. The sacrifices performed by perfidious politicians required human blood... Policemen are asked to break the law in the name of protecting it. In the bargain, they protect the interests of politicians and jeopardise their own interests and of the people. We salute Ajit Singh Sandhu, a martyr to the corrupt system, but exhort the nation to look into the concept of comprehensive accountability, especially for the political class..."
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Tortured to death Sukhdev, a baptized Sikh, had been an active member of the Sikh Students Federation since early 1982 and had participated in the Akali Dal's agitation launched in 1982 that was crushed by the June 1984 military operation. Sukhdev was also arrested in June 1984 and jailed at Jodhpur prison in Rajasthan for the next 18 months. Following his release, Sukhdev tried to busy himself with the agricultural work, but the police continued to arrest and torture him in illegal custody out of suspicion about his political connections. Sukhdev, fed up by the harassment, left his home and began to live at his sister's house in Tole Nangal. On October 1, 1987, the Ajnala police raided his sister's house at Tole Nangal village where he was staying with his wife. Sukhdev managed to dodge the police but was alter arrested the same evening at village Bhitte
Wadh. The police interrogated him for two nights and than killed him in a fake encounter. The police carried out the cremation without informing the family who learnt about the killing from a newspaper report from 4 October 1987. According to Sawinder Kaur, the police arrested Sukhdev's sister's son Kuldeep Singh, son of lakha Singh, from his village Tole Nangal one month after eliminating Sukhdev and killed him as well in a separate incident of encounter faked near village Harsha
Chheena. Killed in ‘encounter’ Twentyfive-year-old Gurdeep Singh, alias
Mana, from Kairon village under Patti sub-division of Amritsar district, was a moderately well-to-do farmer, married to Manjit Kaur with four children. The police suspected the family of sheltering and feeding militants. The police raided the house several times and took Gurdeep Singh's father Ajit Singh to Kairon police post in November 1992 for interrogation. Ajit Singh disappeared. In the third week of February 1993, ASI Naurang Singh of Kairon police post arrested Gurdeep Singh. Manjit Kaur was unable to do much. She had four small children, and her father-in-law had already disappeared, she was paralysed with fear. Her village neighbours were also afraid and did not want to interfere. Gurdeep Singh was shown killed in an encounter on January 31, 1993. No one informed her about the cremation.
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Twentyfive-year-old Sukhdev Singh, son of Angrez Singh and Prakash Kaur, was a resident of
Chamiari, Bhasinian Di Patti, under Ajnala sub-division in Amritsar district. He was married to Sawinder Kaur and had a son, Satinder Pal Singh, who is now 17.
The committee has acquired the following information through its incident report form no.
CCDP/00550. The main informant is Manjit Kaur, Gurdeep's mother.