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Confidence destruction Welcome clampdown |
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Unity of
what?
Introspecting
constitutional values
Adventures
of a different kind!
IN FOCUS
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Confidence destruction NOW it is clear why Pakistan took so long to respond to India's 12-point proposals to improve Indo-Pak relations made on October 22. It had to moot counter proposals, which by their very nature would be rejected by India. Pakistan's behaviour reminds the world of the tiger in the parable who thinks up an excuse to kill the lamb. The Pakistani objective was how best it could sabotage the initiative India took for confidence building between the two countries. It has found clever ways to put into cold storage as many as nine out of the 12 proposals India has made. If the Indian desire was to improve people-to-people contact between the two countries as a step to normalise their relations, the Pakistanis wanted an end to any such contacts. In the end, Pakistan cannot escape blame for spoiling once again yet another opportunity to restore Indo-Pak relations to normalcy. Pakistan has accomplished this by a stratagem, which could have been devised only by those obsessed with the K-word. Some of the Pakistani proposals have elements of mischief. It offers scholarships to 100 Kashmiri children, a task which can be accomplished by a small NGO in this country. In fact, all of Kashmiri children as well as thousands of children in other parts of the country are beneficiaries of such scholarships instituted by government and philanthropic agencies. Similarly, the aged in Kashmir do not have to look beyond the borders for medical treatment as they have access to one of the best medical institutions in Srinagar, not to mention countless hospitals and dispensaries all over the state. Widows and victims of rape are not confined to Kashmir and there are institutionalised ways of providing succour to them in India. In fact, they are victims of terrorism and the greatest service Pakistan can do to them is to stop aiding and abetting terrorism. It is amazing that a simple proposal to have a bus service between Srinagar and Muzaffarabad in Pakistan occupied Kashmir has been virtually shot down by Pakistan's insistence that the passengers should travel on United Nations documents. Jammu and Kashmir is much an integral part of India as any other state is and its citizens have been travelling all over the world without any difficulty on Indian passports. Even pro-Pakistan leaders of the Hurriyat Conference have in the past travelled outside the country on Indian passports. Obviously, the idea is not to facilitate travel but to ensure that the Kashmiris on the other side of the border live in a cocoon built by the jehadis and the Pakistani intelligence operatives. Otherwise, they will realise that India is a liberal, secular democracy where the Kashmiris have as much freedom as any other section of the people. It will also take the sting out of the Pakistani propaganda about the situation in Jammu and Kashmir. Hence the insistence on United Nations documents! New Delhi has rightly rejected the Pakistani package which in any case was not designed for acceptance. The losers are the people of Pakistan. |
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Welcome
clampdown THE Haryana Health Department has done well to launch a statewide campaign against sex determination tests and seal 35 ultrasound machines allegedly used for carrying out these tests. Officially, such sonography is banned under the Pre-Natal Diagnostic Test (PNDT) Act but the injunction is defied with alarming regularity. Mofussil towns abound with clinics which double as testing centres. Whether it is in Narwana, Jind, Kurukshetra, Hisar or Ambala, one can get these tests done without too much fuss. Clever ploys have been devised to keep one step ahead of the law. At times the doctor does not even tell the patient the sex of the child in so many words after conducting such a test on the sly. His asking for “laddoos” is the codeword that the woman is carrying a boy. His asking for “barfi” may indicate that she will have a girl child. Female foeticide is the next logical step. The sealing of 35 machines should be the beginning of a sustained drive because the problem is so prevalent that there may be a hundred times more in actual operation. This will cause some inconvenience to those in genuine need of sonography tests but given the gravity of the situation on the infanticide front, such firmness is unavoidable. It is also necessary to conduct similar operations in the other states because the problem is not confined to Haryana. This social ill is equally prevalent in the neighbouring Punjab. There are many villages which have earned the epithet of “kudimaar” (killers of the girl child). Sex determination tests are aiding and abetting this inhuman practice. Side by side with the raids on the defaulters, it is necessary to launch an awareness campaign so that the public attitude towards those who commit such an abominable crime hardens. Things have come to such a pass that even the United Nations has expressed concern at the “shocking decline” in the ratio of the girl child in India due to the selective abortions and infanticide. There has been a national decline from 945 to 927 in the number of girls per thousand boys aged 0-6 between 1991 and 2001. In Punjab, Haryana and Gujarat the ratio has drastically declined to fewer than 800 girls for every 1000 boys. The sale and purchase like cattle of hapless girls from Bihar, Northeast and Bangladesh is also a direct consequence of the declining sex ratio. |
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Unity of
what? THE mid-week merger of the Samata Party with the Janata Dal (United) is being seen as strategic positioning of the non-saffron wing of the National Democratic Alliance with an eye on next year's Lok Sabha poll. Whether it is the Janata Dal (United) that has joined the Samata Party or the faction that had walked out has staged a home coming is not clear. It is said that when two socialists meet they end up making four parties. Whatever their shortcomings, the Indian political scene would be extremely dull without their presence on the scene. Until the other day battlelines were drawn between Mr Nitish Kumar and Mr George Fernandes for the control of the Samata Party. Yet, at the merger ceremony Mr Fernandes replaced Mr Sharad Yadav as president of the party the Samata merged into, with Mr Nitish Kumar smiling into the cameras. The two factions of the original Janata Dal had made a futile attempt at unity in 2000. The move was sabotaged by the new president of the
JD (U) for it would have meant removing Ms Jaya Jaitley as the boss of the Samata Party! Had the merger taken place four years ago Ms Jaitley would have been saved the embarrassment of having to step down after the tehelka expose. There is talk of inviting Sharad Pawar's NCP, Mr Mulayam Singh's Samajawadi Party, Mr Ramvilas Paswan's LSP, Ms Jayalalitha's AIDMK and Mr Om Prakash Chautala's INLD for improving the bargaining strength of what should ideally now be called
JD (double united). If one more faction merges into it at a future date it should become
JD (triple united) to help analysts and followers to keep count of the meeting and parting habits of Janata brotherhood. Significantly, no one is talking about inviting Mr Laloo Yadav. He swears by JP, so do most separated socialists. So what? The present merger is not about birds of feather flocking together. The primary objective is to somehow get the better of Mr Laloo Yadav and his Rashtriya Janata Dal in Bihar. Significantly, the first casualty of the reunification was not the RJD but the Bihar legislative wing of the Bharatiya Janata Party. The merger helped the JD(U) replace the BJP as the second largest party in the state assembly. Mr Laloo Yadav is not going to let the merger make him lose sleep. The same cannot be said about the BJP leadership in Delhi and Bihar. |
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Thought
for the day Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly. — Robert F. Kennedy |
Introspecting constitutional values THE constitutionalists often confine the constitutional values to the preamble to the Constitution. No doubt, the preamble signifies some values but all values are not expressly stated in a Constitution. In many ways, contemporary thinking influences the values. Conventions and practices also reflect values of a Constitution. We often talk of good governance. If good governance cannot be ensured, constitutional values would remain unimplemented. These values are not mere embellishments to be adorned by a Constitution. For constitutionalism to succeed, it is important that they must be implemented. Justice H.R. Khanna pithily remarked that we have failed to make constitutional values a living reality. All constitutional values are important. But, by their very nature, such values cannot be precisely defined. At the same time, there is by and large a consensus as to what are basic features of a Constitution reflecting its basic values. They are unalterable and remain for ever. Other values may keep changing with the times. They may not remain constant. Right to property, at one time, formed part of the Fundamental Rights. It still is, in many Constitutions of the world. But, this right was taken away from the chapter on Fundamental Rights and included in another part of the Constitution. There is right to life and personal liberty. The apex court has expanded this right to include right to life with dignity. However, our Constitution provides that right to life can be taken away by procedure established by law. Thus capital punishment is permitted by the Constitution although the Supreme Court of India has laid down that death sentence can be awarded in the rarest of rare cases. The time may come when right to life may become absolute and it cannot be taken away even by procedure established by law. Such a right is not yet absolute or a basic feature of the Constitution. It is not yet a “constant” of the Constitution. Constitutional values permeate the entire Constitution and cannot be confined either to the preamble, Fundamental Rights chapter or the chapter on Directive Principles. While flexibility helps in development and organic growth of the Constitution, compromise on basic values may be disastrous and may spell doom for constitutionalism. The actual working of the Constitution is a mixed bag. How far the hopes and aspirations of the people have been met since India achieved Independence? While several of the human rights have been expanded and in many ways, it may be difficult to recognise whether we have the same Constitution as was propounded by the Founding Fathers. The question still remains whether justice is available to the common man, nay even the elite. Sometimes, there is a pretence of justice and a lot of exhibitionism. But, what is the reality? Is the proverbial saying that all that glitters is not gold not true in many cases? Have the values and pledges contained in the Constitution not got eroded over the years? The erosion may have taken place due to political compulsions. People placed in a particular situation may have compromised with the values, but if one is prepared for the consequences and sacrifices, values and healthy conventions can be maintained. A line may have to be drawn in this regard so as to avoid impracticable results. There should be good governance consistent with values of the Constitution. Some values could even be given the status of peremptory norms such as untouchability from which no departure could be made. But, apart from the ground realities not necessarily to be forgotten, there may be real issues of value conflicts to be settled by the judiciary. Should the objective criteria be applied to settle an issue in a given case irrespective of the conflicts and each value be given an absolute place? Lip service to national integration is nothing short of hypocrisy. This is a value which each political party must imbibe and must not be sacrificed come what may. Casteist politics has played havoc with the democratic norms and put insurmountable obstacles in its genuine promotion. But, who cares? The preamble being an admissible aid for construction of a statue, the preamble to the Constitution has to be held sacrosanct and immutable. It cannot be compromised to ensure electoral victories. Affirmative action may have been necessary to undo injustices of the past to a certain sections of society but it is equally important to balance the interests of these sections with the needs of integrity of the nation. No one should be allowed to have vested interest in the continuation of the system which may become inequitable in the long run and eventually result in alienation of a large section of society. The continuation of this situation may also make them believe that they have no stake in welfare of the country. These are hard issues which may pose dilemma before the judiciary in each case. One example of such a case may be the case of Pakistani prisoners in the Indian jails and the matter is still before the apex court. Similarly, rights of the minorities might not be in consonance with secular values. Dr B.R. Ambedkar pleaded for common brotherhood of the Indians. Obviously, the concept of fraternity is wider than that of secularism. This is clearly recognised by a noted Indian jurist. Public interest litigation in the higher courts is aimed at protecting the interest of the public where the executive may go astray. Without commenting on the specifies of such litigation, it is pertinent to mention that there is a tendency to move courts to vindicate private interests rather than public causes. Public interest litigation might be in order if it is meant to protect established and undisputed constitutional values. Some new values may also need to be built up based on new concepts already found in the Constitutions of the other countries. It is necessary that there should be constant and continuous growth of the Constitution around new concepts and values and review of some of them. However, it would be futile to expect this when concern for public weal is incidental and only concern is the necessity of electoral victory. Constitutional values which hardly receive any priority in decision-making necessarily get trampled. In these circumstances, the electorate goes in for the lesser evil when there is not much to choose from. Sarvodya leader Jayaprakash Narayan pleaded for the right to recall. Such a reform is necessary if parliamentary democracy, which is still the best hope for the country, is to be retained as a constitutional value. It is hoped that constant introspection would form necessary part of any constitutional reforms so as to achieve the optimum in the constitutional values. A meaningful constitutional reform must not stop at peripheral issues but go to the root of all that ails the political system. Competitive populism at the cost of the constitutional values can only spell disaster for the country with irreversible doom. Committing mistakes is not a sin but wanton and deliberate distortion of the Constitution is. As Dr B.R. Ambedkar once observed: “If we wish to maintain democracy we must hold fast to constitutional methods of achieving our objectives.” This undoubtedly is the only way of implementing constitutional values. The writer is a former Secretary to the Government of India. |
Adventures of a different kind! WE pushed open the rickety old gate and entered the “adventure tourism” complex. Treading cautiously over loose stones and wild shrubs, we reached a dimly lit hall. The caretaker of the complex, playing cards with his buddies, rose hastily with welcome smiles. Dumping our bags and baggage in the allotted rooms, we freshened up and gathered in the hall. “Tell us, what adventures do you provide here?” asked my friend. “All lined up, sir. This spot has natural advantages. Your stay, we hope, will be most comfortable, sir”. We agreed, looking at the caretaker who seemed a sensible guy. Besides, there was a strange glow on his face. We preferred an early dinner and retired into mosquito-nets. An altercation outside my room woke me up in the morning. A friend was shouting: “You didn’t tell us that the common toilet was out of order…” “But sir, please cool down”, the caretaker with a lota in hand was pleading, “you will be most happy behind the bushes in the backyard…. We have numbered them, just to ensure privacy. You may take bush No-4, sir…” We the city-bred took it sportingly and ventured out with our respective bush numbers, paper-soap and water-filled lotas. An hour later, we were told about a small pond in the complex where a child-less couple in mythology reportedly took a bath and was promptly blessed with babies. Smiling away the fears of our bachelor members, the caretaker led us to the pond with towels and cakes of soap in hand. After a nice breakfast , we trudged out with a young “guide” towards a hill nearby. The real adventure would begin now, we assured ourselves, recalling the “dos and don’ts” mentioned by the guide. Minutes later as we faced a smooth and slippery mud track, the young guide made us remove our shoes. “Just a mile or so of smooth mud-rafting sir. Just imagine that you are ice-skating or river-rafting ,” said the young fellow cheering us up. Bare-footed, we tried a few yards, holding each other’s hands and clinging to our dear bones. “Isn’t there any other route?” The guide said no, this marshy land was the chosen one. If you were bureaucrats, he giggled, you would find this track more exciting. We gave up and returned to the guesthouse. “Now what?” We asked the caretaker in exasperation. “Hunting”, he said, pointing at the hordes of humming mosquitoes that gathered in our absence. “Hunt them, sir, and put them in these glass jars. Under a scheme, you will get a day’s stay here entirely free, upon scoring a 100 dead or alive…” We moved out, minutes later. Sniggers and chuckles greeted us at the bus-stand. We were told that the “caretaker” was a tourist guide — once upon a time. He was sick of flashing artificial smiles, cutting poor jokes, making polite conversations and cooking up legends about every wall he showed to the tourists. He became kinky and quit the job when he inherited this building. Now, he enjoyed catching and “handling” casual tourists like us! |
IN FOCUS
LOCATED in the heart of Haryana’s Jatland and the state’s first medical college, the Post-Graduate Institute of Medical Sciences, Rohtak, has become a hot-bed of caste politics and dubious manoeuvring. Except for the multi-storeyed concrete structure, nothing seems to be above board in the
Institute, which nurtures an increasingly frustrated and complacent faculty. Political interference is so rampant and blatant at every level of the administration that considerations of professional merit and fair play seem chimerical. There is growing discrimination based on caste lines with members of a dominant caste hogging most of the prestigious positions. Often, the rules are bent and regulations redrafted to favour particular faculty members. The natural corollary of such manoeuvrings has been repeated supersessions and chopping and changing at the top echelons of the Institute administration leading to frustration and disillusionment among the faculty members. The overall development of the Institute has suffered in the process. Barring the super specialities’ wing, not a single new building or block has been constructed to deal with heavy congestion in the hospital, which attracts a huge rush of patients. Wards, OPDs and even waiting areas are chock-a-bloc with patients and their attendants at all times due to lack of expansion of the college and hospital over the years. Worse is the condition of the gynaecology, orthopaedics and paediatrics departments facing an acute shortage of beds. The Institute was first started under the name of Medical College, Rohtak, in the year 1960 and for the first three years, the students were admitted to Medical College at Patiala, which acted as a host institution.”
It was in 1963 that the students were shifted here and since then multifaceted expansion measures have transformed the Institute into a fully developed centre of medical education and research,” feels Maj
Gen (retd) Virender Singh Punia, the Director Principal of the Institute. The Institute has failed to develop any superspeciality despite its existence for more than four decades. Research has taken a back seat because of the burgeoning patient load. “With so much of patient load, there is hardly any time left for quality research work, which was supposed to be one of the most important objectives with which the Institute was set up”, rues a junior doctor. There are many like him who chose to stay back here despite lucrative offers from the private sector to gain exposure and do research in diseases afflicting the rural population, who do not have an access even to basic health facilities. Patients from Rohtak, Jhajjar, Sonepat, Bhiwani, Rewari, Hisar, Sirsa and even Karnal and Panipat come for treatment to the hospital, despite all its shortcomings. Some of the departments like psychiatry, orthopaedics, community medicine and medicine attract patients from even Delhi and parts of Punjab, despite excellent health services being available there. There is a perennial shortage of resident staff amidst a heavy rush of patients. An estimated 9.19 lakh patients visited the OPDs of the hospital last year, while 58,884 people were admitted to the various wards. The upgraded accident and emergency department provided services to almost 78,000 patients from the region. “You can well imagine our plight, when we have to cater to this huge number of patients with some two-third of the sanctioned posts in some of the departments lying vacant,” said a head of the department. They feel strengthening the health services in the periphery was the only way to prevent the dilution of quality healthcare at a tertiary level hospital like theirs. Doctors are not far off the mark when they complain “the biggest bane of the Institute is that it is under the control of the state government. Had it been an autonomous body or a deemed university, things would have been totally different”. Being run by the state government has lent the Institute open to political manoeuvrings, which have proved stumbling blocks to its development. Supersessions have become the order of the day with the departments of surgery, paediatrics, pathology and orthopaedics being in the news for this very reason. Ignoring seniority as well as merit in promotions is one major reason why doctors from outside are rather reluctant to join here. During the past four years, the Institute has seen six Directors with some of them even failing to meet the basic eligibility conditions or their eligibility has at best been
controversial. The post of Director-Principal has totally become a political posting with the present government changing six Directors in four years. There are allegations of favouritism and of promoting juniors, leading to discontent among the heads of departments and senior faculty members, who feel ignored and sidelined. It is a vicious circle with some faculty members reasoning out that in the absence of non-cooperation from senior faculty members, the Director-Principal had little option but to rely on juniors. Another sore point with the faculty and other staff members is the low salary structure, as compared to other postgraduate medical institutes. “When we are expected to match the standards of AIIMS and the PGI, Chandigarh, then at least we should be paid on a par with them or at least some enhancement in the meagre allowances we are getting,” point out doctors. This is one reason why doctors who do their MD or super-specialisation from here prefer to work elsewhere, be it in government or private hospitals. The mess in the hospital is best illustrated by the conversion of the Trauma Centre into a super-speciality centre despite being designed for handling trauma cases. At different times, the government arbitrarily changed the use of the Trauma Centre building, built at a cost of Rs 3.5 crore, to a mother child hospital , and then incario-neuro centre. “The lame excuse given by the authorities for this after-thought was that a trauma centre would be better located on a highway and was as such coming up at Karnal,” said a doctor from the orthopaedics department. The authorities too could not provide a plausible answer for converting the trauma centre into a super-speciality centre. He said the coming up of the Trauma Centre would have helped in the upgradation of the much-needed ortho facilities and space for poor patients coming to Rohtak from all over the state. Incidentally, often there is a shortage of even basic material like cotton and patients are asked to get even simple medicines from outside The casualty ward is congested and cramped with just 50 beds. The hospital administration is now in the process of installing an MRI, while the two CT scans and a ten-bedded ICU in the casualty to deal with emergency cases has proved to be very useful. A new operation theatre complex and a new building for the Nursing College is also in the pipeline. “I admit that for a while the growth of the instituted remained stunted but now we are focussing on developing specialities like nephrology, urology and gastroenterology, as in some cases patients have to be referred elsewhere for this reason,” says General Punia. He said the cardiac cath lab would be made operational within a month’s time as all equipment had been installed and people with cardiac problems would not have to go outside and pay heavily for various procedures. He said that the projects in the pipe line included a Burns Centre, a telemedicine project with AIIMS, PGI, Chandigarh, and Sanjay Gandhi PGI, Lucknow and a new Blood Bank, as there was a lot of pressure. The Institute has a good dental hospital and college, which is thronged by patients from the surrounding areas. The dental hospital, which has a spacious building has more than 400 OPD patients, daily apart
from a 24-hour emergency. The Institute also has a School of Nursing, a pharmacy college and a de-addiction centre. Spread over 350 acres, the Institute has a strong faculty of over 200. In the field of research more than 250 papers have been published in national and international journals by faculty members. The various departments also keep organising CMEs, seminars and workshops from time to time. However, a majority of the doctors, specially those who have seen the Institute grow from scratch feel till political interference in day-to-day affairs is not stopped and the administrative head not given a free hand to exercise his powers, neither can the Institute grow nor things improve from what they are after almost four decades of existence. |
It is Allah who has created seven heavens, and earths as many. His commandment descends through them, so that you may know that Allah has power over all things, and that He has knowledge of all things. — The Koran When one casts off all desires that enter the mind, O Partha, and is satisfied in Self alone by Self, then he is called (a man) of steadfast wisdom. — The Bhagavad Gita God does everything and causes others to do whatever He wills. He also knows everything. — Guru Nanak He doesn’t know his own self: how should he know the self of another? — The Walled Garden of Truth The fruits of the tree of knowledge are various; he must be strong indeed who can digest all of them. — Mary Coleridge |
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