E D I T O R I A L   P A G E

EDITORIALS

Serial reshuffle
IT was quite unusual for the Prime Minister to announce the name of a ministerial aspirant a week before the Cabinet reshuffle. It was, therefore, quite surprising that Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee could not find a place in the Cabinet.

Time up for militants?
THE organised media trip to Surankot in Jammu and Kashmir by the Indian security forces may prove to be a public relations disaster for the military top brass. The description of Operation Sarp Vinash by most newspapers bore a close resemblance to the report of the blind men on the shape and size of an elephant.

Pyrrhic victory
THE ruling Indian National Lok Dal has little reason to gloat over the victory of its candidate Swatantra Bala Chowdhary in a virtual three-cornered contest. Last time, the party had won the Fatehabad seat with a thumping margin of 22,000 votes.

OPINION

Reforming Punjab’s power sector
Private agenda in the garb of public interest
M.G. Devasahayam
A donor-agency scripted private agenda is the hallmark of reforms in aid-receiving countries and India is no exception. This follows the universal dictum that “beggars cannot be choosers”. Unfortunately, such an agenda has been the cause of many a failure in the core economic sectors in these countries.

MIDDLE

Long wait for groom’s mare
Iqbal Singh Ahuja
WHILE planning my day’s work I realised that I had to attend six marriages. A friend who had come from Australia was shocked. “It is humanly impossible to attend all,” said my friend. I just smiled and started arranging the shagun envelopes.

Illiterate, but puts greedy groom in his place
Kanchan Vasdev
Ludhiana: Nisha, an educated girl of Noida, has become the cynosure of all eyes by taking the bold step of sending back her baraat for demanding dowry. A similar act by an uneducated girl in Ludhiana begs to stand taller. It demands to be termed as an apt case of emancipation of women.

Capsule relationships
Barbara Ellen
I don’t think I ever met a woman who doesn’t feel that she got horribly `stuck’ in at least one big relationship. Maybe it’s true of men, too, but it’s definitely a thing women do - like we possess inside information on our freakishly long life-spans.

SPIRITUAL NUGGETS

EDITORIALS

Serial reshuffle

IT was quite unusual for the Prime Minister to announce the name of a ministerial aspirant a week before the Cabinet reshuffle. It was, therefore, quite surprising that Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee could not find a place in the Cabinet. She is peeved at the proposal to induct her estranged party member Sudip Bandopadhyay in the ministry without consulting her. She will now have to wait for the next reshuffle Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee has promised in a few days' time. Leave aside her tantrum, the most significant outcome of the reshuffle is the strengthening of the BJP, obviously at the cost of its allies in the National Democratic Alliance. Rashtriya Lok Dal chief Ajit Singh had been an unwanted guest in the NDA, with a section of the BJP and the Chief Ministers of UP and Haryana arraigned against him. Had he been an astute politician, he would have known that his rightful place was outside the NDA and not inside it. But he waited for a clear signal from the Prime Minister to put in his papers. Mr Ajit Singh is hardly in a position to cause serious troubles to Ms Mayawati, who knows how to engineer a split in his party if she is pushed to the wall. Among the losers in the reshuffle are the DMK, which does not have a functioning Cabinet minister, the MDMK which could not nominate a substitute for Mr Gingee Ramachandran, who had to resign in the wake of the cash-for-transfer scandal, the PMK which is yet to get proper representation and the National Conference, which expected Dr Farooq Abdullah to be vested with a Cabinet berth.

On the other hand, the BJP has brought in its UP strongman Rajnath Singh as Cabinet minister and three others from the same stable as Ministers of State, promoted its own Maj-Gen B.C. Khanduri (retd) and usurped the Agriculture portfolio vacated by Mr Ajit Singh. Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray was allowed to nominate a replacement for Mr Vikhe-Patil, a courtesy which was not shown to Ms Mamata Banerjee. The BJP's ardent desire to woo the Syrian Christians of Kerala with a view to opening the party's electoral account in the state is reflected in the induction of Mr P.C. Thomas, who has been ploughing a lonely furrow in Kerala politics. There are enough indications to suggest that it was Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani who called the shots in the reshuffle. By bringing a rabble-rouser like Swamy Chinmayanand under his wings in the Home Ministry, Mr Advani has sought to placate the Vishwa Hindu Parishad. The VHP will no longer be able to criticise the Centre's handling of the Ayodhya issue, when its own trusted man is Mr Advani's understudy. That the Prime Minister has promised another 'Cabinet expansion' soon, which will be the 12th since he took over, does not show him in a good light. Saturday's reshuffle would have served some purpose if he had used the opportunity to discard the deadwood and promote the deserving.

Time up for militants?

THE organised media trip to Surankot in Jammu and Kashmir by the Indian security forces may prove to be a public relations disaster for the military top brass. The description of Operation Sarp Vinash by most newspapers bore a close resemblance to the report of the blind men on the shape and size of an elephant. However, a close reading of most accounts of the handling of the operation does raise uncomfortable questions about the level of alertness of the security forces in Jammu and Kashmir. The "take-over" by the militants of an area of about 35 kilometres inside Indian territory was a disturbing revelation. The official insistence that the incursions by the militants should not be equated with Kargil raise more than routine doubts about what was really happening in the Hilkaka area. The militant outfits launched some of their most potent operations in Jammu and Kashmir from this piece of land. Major-General Hardev Liddar, general officer commanding of the Romeo Force, has been quoted as having said that some of the field fortifications destroyed in the operation were evidently constructed with the help of Pakistani regulars. The fact that over 100 bunkers were destroyed by the Romeo Force points to the long presence of the militants in the sensitive belt kissing the LoC. Bunkers are not make-shift tents that can come up overnight. They were being used for storing arms and ammunition and providing shelter to the militants.

Be that as it may, the good news is that the Hilkaka operation has helped the Army ferret out information about similar "cluster camps" in other parts of Jammu and Kashmir. With the help of helicopters, a facility denied to them earlier, the security forces are hopeful of smoking out most militant groups through coordinated action. Of course, the fact that about 60 militants were killed in an operation last month does not add up to much There are over 400 militants,representing various jehadi groups, currently active in the Indian side of the LoC. With the construction of helipads at sensitive points in the difficult terrain, the coming days may see the Army taste bigger success. The members of the Romeo Force of the Rashtriya Rifles, backed by Victor Force across Pir Panjal, are for the first time in a position to take complete control of the dense forests along the LoC because of the air-support that is now available to them. The administration too has played a key role by preventing the migrant shepherds from entering the militant-infested territory. Good luck Romeo for the different mission you have chosen for yourself.

Pyrrhic victory

THE ruling Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) has little reason to gloat over the victory of its candidate Swatantra Bala Chowdhary in a virtual three-cornered contest. Last time, the party had won the Fatehabad seat with a thumping margin of 22,000 votes. The margin this time - 7,600 votes over the Congress - is too close for comfort. It is also significant that the Haryana Vikas Party and the CPM polled 22,280 and 5416 votes respectively. In other words, an overwhelming majority of the voters turned against the ruling nominee despite the sympathy accrued to her by virtue of being the daughter-in-law of Leela Krishan, the legislator whose death caused the by-election. By notching a respectable 37,925 votes, the Congress has considerably improved its position in the constituency. Allowance also has to be made for the fact that INLD chief and Chief Minister Om Prakash Chautala did not spare any effort to keep the seat under the party's fold. Nominating a lady and that too from the family of Leela Krishan was a brilliant move to keep the Congress at bay. Mr Chautala can take comfort from the fact that his party has won all the three byelections held so far in the state since his return to power. But the results should also serve as a warning that the people are no longer enamoured of his stewardship of the state. He should also be honest enough to admit that the INLD's victory was primarily due to the split in the Opposition votes.

The Fatehabad verdict is bound to dampen Mr Chautala's enthusiasm to make the INLD a major force in Rajasthan, which will soon go to the polls. All the fodder that he sent to the neighbouring state will not compensate for the impression that is gaining ground that his own position in Haryana is not as unassailable as it was earlier. As for the Congress, it had to pay a heavy price for the rampant factionalism in the party, which prevented some of its leaders from campaigning vigorously for Congress nominee Dura Ram, who was seen more as a Bhajan Lal man than as a Congressman. If the party really wants to wrest the state from the INLD, it has to first put its own house in order and provide a new leadership that can challenge the supremacy of Mr Chautala. With the HVP winning a sizeable number of votes, its leader Bansi Lal has proved that he is hardly a pushover and his presence will have to be reckoned with in any future political alignment. A worrisome aspect of the by-election campaign was the total sidelining of the real issues that concern the people. The political parties were more interested in projecting their leaders, rather than addressing the common man's problems.

OPINION

Reforming Punjab’s power sector
Private agenda in the garb of public interest
M.G. Devasahayam

A donor-agency scripted private agenda is the hallmark of reforms in aid-receiving countries and India is no exception. This follows the universal dictum that “beggars cannot be choosers”. Unfortunately, such an agenda has been the cause of many a failure in the core economic sectors in these countries. Typical is the “management restructuring model” (MRM) that was introduced as “reforms” in India’s State Electricity Boards (SEBs) from mid-nineties. It started in Orissa, gained pace with Haryana, got accelerated in Andhra Pradesh with Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka and Rajasthan joining the race. Other states, including Punjab, prudently kept off this bandwagon.

The MRM came to a virtual halt with the failure in Orissa and the abrupt withdrawal in Haryana. Uttar Pradesh and Karnataka are tottering along and some activities are taking place in Andhra Pradesh and Rajasthan. The cumulative effect of “restructuring as reforms” has been the mounting losses of SEBs and their “decapacitation” from augmenting the generation/supply of electric power. Given this unenviable record, donor agencies and their band of reformers went into a shell and have been sulking for some time.

With the passage of the Electricity Bill, these reformers have resurfaced and before long donor agencies will be back in action. It appears that this time around Punjab is going to be the mascot for the repackaged “restructuring as reforms”. In anticipation of the imminent passage of the Electricity Bill, the Government of Punjab on December 4, 2002, appointed an expert group on power reforms headed by the author of this Bill, Mr. Gajendra Haldea, with directions to submit the report at a super-fast speed in just three weeks! Since the Bill was postponed for the budget session of Parliament, Mr. Haldea synchronized his report with the passage of the Bill!

Donor-agency trademark could be seen on every page of the report. World Bank officials and consultants were closely associated with the drafting of the report, which was got approved from senior bank functionaries at Washington! The donor imprint is evident from the expert group’s fervent plea to the Punjab Government “to initiate concerted efforts for accessing resources from the multilateral institutions such as the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank for meeting the costs of investment and adjustment financing” estimated at Rs. 20,000 crore!

The very first recommendation of the expert group reveals its deep-rooted contradictions: “The group wishes to emphasise that the primary objective of power reforms should be to provide reliable power supply at competitive and affordable tariffs. However, improving supplies, particularly to rural areas and low-income households is currently an unviable proposition”. So, while paying lip-service to the public concept of “providing reliable power at affordable tariffs” the report vigorously advocates the private agenda of “open access” and “privatisation”. To facilitate this the group has recommended physical dismantling of the Punjab State Electricity Board into six different entities — one holding company (powercom), one generation company, one transmission company and three distribution companies.

This is nothing but the MRM, the genesis of which can be attributed to a World Bank-sponsored study and the report submitted by US consultants in 1996. The cardinal elements of the MRM are: dismantling and unbundling of SEBs to form several companies centred around regions or functions such as generation, transmission and distribution; the unbundled organisations being turned into privately owned firms; fixing of the tariff on a cost-plus basis and its continuous upward revision and across-the-board elimination of all subsidies. In short, it was prescribed that the massive inefficiencies and losses of SEBs will be remedied through physical dismantling and these entities made viable and profitable by a free-wheeling market mechanism since “the quest for profit will motivate activities of the new entities, and they will have a greater commercial orientation than most government-owned organisations”.

This was the “failed reform” model pursued in Orissa and the route Haryana took leading to a public and political backlash resulting in a change of the government and the formal reform process coming to a halt. The situation in Punjab cannot be any different. In fact, the perception of power sector reforms among major stakeholders is one of breaking down institutions, reduction of jobs, a continuous tariff hike and elimination of the subsidy without visible, tangible or perceivable near-term benefits. World Bank experts involved in Haryana reforms had conceded this and expected consumers to patiently wait for “efficiency to trickle down” through the “structural layers”, and in the meantime pay heavily for the inadequate and low quality power being supplied.

Unfortunately, “trickle down” methods cannot work in the socio-economic milieu of states like Punjab and Haryana. The industrialist, if he were to pay a higher tariff, would demand copious, uninterrupted and high quality power here and now. The farmer, if he were to forgo his subsidies and pay a reasonable tariff, would insist on getting power when he wants, where he wants and in the manner he wants it. These consumers are not willing to go on paying a high tariff and give up benefits while waiting indefinitely for things to improve and “efficiency” to trickle down. Any reform model to succeed should take into account this basic requirement of the end-users.

In the event consternation among the PSEB employees caused by the Haldea report and the swift follow-up action initiated by the Punjab Government is understandable. Calling it a “cloak and dagger” attempt to privatise the PSEB, representatives of the employees are opposing it and are suggesting alternative “internal reforms”:

• Functional unbundling of the PSEB, improving consumer services and stoppage of power theft;
• Fixing responsibility and accountability for performance at each level starting with the Technical Member down to the junior engineer;
• Rigid energy auditing and accounting at sub-division, division and circle levels
• Massive training and HRD drive
• Introducing the private sector as business partners in 100 per cent metering, remote meter reading, power factor improvement, energy conservation, high efficiency pump-sets and implementation of the PSEB’s IT plan.

The writer, a retired IAS officer, is a former Member (Administration and Commercial), Haryana State Electricity Board.

MIDDLE

Long wait for groom’s mare
Iqbal Singh Ahuja

WHILE planning my day’s work I realised that I had to attend six marriages. A friend who had come from Australia was shocked. “It is humanly impossible to attend all,” said my friend. I just smiled and started arranging the shagun envelopes. As I finished my work, he could not resist saying: “By jove! you will be losing 200 Australian dollars by midnight.” I laughed and told him: “In Ludhiana you have to maintain your standard whether you beg, borrow or steal.” My friend still looked puzzled. “How can you have so many marriages in one day and at the same time?” he asked. I explained that in India most of the things depend upon the astrologers. Even the time of the marriage ceremony is fixed according to the stars. “Why these astrologers fix the same day and same time? Don’t they know you can’t eat at six places. If they can’t help it, at least they can adjust the timing to coincide with breakfast, lunch and dinner,” said my friend.

We started off. Most of the time it was going in and coming out of the marriage palaces. All the roads looked full of baratis. After every few yards a new barat appeared.

On the way we had to face a lot of blocks and traffic jams. At one place we were caught in a jam and the barat could not move an inch. I turned off the ignition.

I was still lost in thoughts when my wife shook me up. The road had cleared. Finally we reached the last leg of the journey. It was past midnight. The barat was standing on the roadside about 300 metres from the gate of the marriage palace. We got a bit scared. What if the boy had refused to enter the marriage palace? Was it a dowry demand?

With great hesitation we enquired. “Uncle, the ‘ghori’ has not arrived as yet. I will not enter the marriage palace without a ‘ghori’,” said the boy. I offered him one of my friend’s Mercedes car but he would not relent. I asked about the ‘ghori’. Nobody had any clue about it. We decided to arrange a mare for him. After visiting several marriage palaces, we found one mare. We saw a tempo and requested the driver to carry the mare to the marriage palace. Initially he was reluctant. But our perseverance paid off. We managed to get the mare into the tempo and sped towards the marriage palace. Within six minutes we were at the gate. The band woke up and started playing “Le jayenge, le jayenge dil wale dulhaniya le jayenge”.

The marriage palace was beautifully decorated. There was a huge spread of all the dishes of the world. We counted at least 125 vegetarian dishes and 30 desserts. We could not decide what to eat. By the time we reached the end of the ground we were too tired to go back to eat the dishes of our choice. Hence we came out without eating anything. “I wish the same money had been given to the girl or donated for a noble cause and not wasted in display,” said my friend.

We came to know that the parents of the boy and girl were very close friends. I could not help saying: “Yaar ne hi loot liya ghar yaar kaa.”

Illiterate, but puts greedy groom in his place
Kanchan Vasdev

Nisha (centre) and others up in arms against dowry. — Photo Mukesh Aggarwal

Ludhiana: Nisha, an educated girl of Noida, has become the cynosure of all eyes by taking the bold step of sending back her baraat for demanding dowry. A similar act by an uneducated girl in Ludhiana begs to stand taller. It demands to be termed as an apt case of emancipation of women. For she belongs to such a section of society where female rights may not even be thought about, what to talk of being discussed. Where arranging square meals and not the women lib movement or human rights is of prime significance.

Nisha has the backing of her education. She can earn and live life independently. But girls like Geeta, the illiterate daughter of a small-time mechanic in a factory in Baba Deep Singh Nagar, Ludhiana, is the true archetypal woman for whom the first half of life is spent in the house of the father and the second in that of her husband chosen dutifully by her parents.

Her house is flocked by the media ever since she forced her prospective husband and the baraatis to drink sewer water as a punishment for seeking dowry and humiliating her father in front of the community. The uneducated girl, in true Hindi film style, roared about the anti-dowry act and brought her tormentors on their knees. She ordered them out of her house, converted into a marriage pandal, and now sits back at her home enjoying her emancipation.

After struggling a lot to convince her parents that nothing would go wrong if the daring act of the girl is highlighted, The Tribune talked to her about her feelings and what prompted her. She was also asked about the proverbial ‘baraadari mein izzat’ issue. And how, she would cope with the question: “who would marry you know?” that is commonly raised by the so-called guardians of society.

It was not difficult to locate her house in Baba Deep Singh Nagar in Ludhiana. The news of the incident had spread like a wild fire. Her father, Ram Sarup, a middle-aged man was, however, not willing to divulge details of the incident, thinking it would cause negative publicity for the girl and nobody would marry her in future.

When he was convinced that his daughter had done a good job and would set an example to eradicate the evil of dowry from society, he reluctantly started talking about the incident. Even then he did not want anybody to meet his daughter. It was only after hard reasoning and assurances that nothing would go wrong that he agreed saying that he did not know that his daughter had done him proud!

Geeta with her father and uncle in Ludhiana on Saturday. — Photo Pradeep Tewari

Twentyone-year-old Geeta had been working as a domestic help with a family since her childhood. She could hardly have watched TV to get an idea of women’s rights. Her case is simply of a righteous rebellion that rose from within.

She does not know from where she got the inspiration to do so. The provocation for her was the excruciating painful scene of her father, who was begging of the groom’s family to take her along as otherwise nobody would marry her.

“What if he is the father of a girl? That doesn’t mean that he will become a beggar to fall on his knees and beg for his daughter. I had been working since my childhood and had never been a liability. If nobody will marry me for doing this I don’t care. I can remain single.”

Just on the next day of her wedding, Geeta went back to work with the family in the Model Town, looking for a new life. “Yes. I was excited that I was getting married. The picture of the boy was shown to me. My father told me that he worked as a mechanic in a factory. I did not know how much he was earning. The match was finalised through some relatives who had said the boy’s family did not want anything except the girl.

“Even then my parents spent around Rs 1 lakh and bought some household goods for me, including a TV set and a refrigerator. They arranged for two meals for the baraatis also. When it was the time of doli, the groom and his sister came inside our house. I heard some arguments when I was getting ready. I saw my father begging of them and they insisting on cash. They were demanding an amount of Rs 30,000 from her father and were asking him to pay the taxi bills of the baraatis. My father did not have it. He tried to collect some from the relatives but could not do so. The boy put his foot down and said, ‘no ways, I cannot go with them’.

“I decided I would not let them treat us like dirt. I announced publicly that I would not marry this boy. He has to go back without me. I saw my mother saying — na beti aise mat bol — but my decision was final. I told my relatives to throw the boy out and remove his clothes that were gifted by my father. Thankfully my neighbours and relatives supported me. We even made him drink sewer water.”

Back to her work the very next day, Geeta seems to have grown several years with a single experience. She has neither any remorse about her act nor any pretensions about her future.

And marriage? “Yes, I want to get married but to the right guy, who seeks me and not the dowry.”

Capsule relationships
Barbara Ellen

I don’t think I ever met a woman who doesn’t feel that she got horribly `stuck’ in at least one big relationship. Maybe it’s true of men, too, but it’s definitely a thing women do - like we possess inside information on our freakishly long life-spans.

In relationships, it’s like women feel immortal and they have all the time in the world to hedge and fudge and weep and fret, and bore their friends stupid about how miserable they are.

What these women are waiting for is anybody’s guess — things to get better, an emotional epiphany, a bus? And all the while, time, precious time, is trickling away through their open fingers.

While it’s often quoted that women are usually the ones to finish a rotten relationship, it’s never said how long it’s taken them to get to this point, how many months or years they have wasted being frustrated, unhappy, bored, stuck. Inside every unhappy woman there’s a small child crying, afraid of bailing out too soon and missing out on Christmas.

Considering this, it’s almost heart-warming to learn that half of Britain’s teenagers admit to indulging in one-night stands. Of course, it’s probably the same sad cider-and-groping scene of my youth, but it’s nice to think that there might be a new generation making some point about their time being valuable, dolling out their emotions and sexuality in mini-bites.

A new dawn of the ‘one-night relationship’ might be a nice antidote to the way society tends to assess the success of a couple by how long they have lasted, however dysfunctional they might be.

Once you know about the Long Term Unhappy Club, you see their members everywhere. The Short Term Unhappy are everywhere, too, but at least they’re fun, at least they put on a bit of a show, arguing and provoking each other the whole time. With the Long Term Unhappy, it’s like they are stuck in a glass display case together, enacting a live embalmment.

If there was any mercy in the world, they would have meters placed on their relationships, and once they ran out, that would be it. A man with a megaphone would be sent out to call them in. `The couple who haven’t spoken to each other in any great depth for three years, come in, your time is up.’

On the other hand you get people who are so babyish and commitment-phobic they need a good slap. What we seem to need is a mature compromise, to which end could I suggest that people, and women especially, consider attempting a Capsule relationship. Capsule relationships are like brief(ish) flings which are perfect for the time and place they are in but disappear the moment they become difficult.

Even when a Capsule relationship ends you wouldn’t shout or cry or argue, you would just wake up one morning and find a Get Out of Jail card tucked behind your ear. The Guardian

SPIRITUAL NUGGETS

As the threads from the spider,

the tree from the seed,

the fire from the coal,

the stream from the fountain,

the waves from the sea,

So is the world

produced from Brahma.

— Mundaka Upanisha

While Jesus is alive, it is dangerous to be with him. No businessman will come close to him — only gamblers might risk it and be with him. It is dangerous to be with him: he can be crucified, you can be crucified.

— Osho, Words from a man of no words