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Jail
without trial De-stressing
exams |
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Rapist
teachers
Reforming the
United Nations
Wardrobe
malfunction
Expecting relief
before rains Bubbles abound in a
world of ready cash Pets and divorce
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Jail without trial UNION Home Minister Shivraj Patil’s statement in the Rajya Sabha that the government was considering an amendment to the Criminal Procedure Code (Cr PC) to allow some amnesty to detainees who have been languishing in jails for years even without being charge-sheeted is welcome. It is a progressive move by the Manmohan Singh Government because successive governments at the Centre have never bothered to examine this issue from a humanitarian angle. Surely, questions are bound to be raised on the significance and purpose of the criminal justice system and the government’s professed commitment to human rights if it cannot ensure speedy trial of the prisoners. The problem of undertrials is indeed alarming because this has also led to overcrowding in the jails and other accompanying ills. According to the National Crime Records Bureau, the number of undertrials in prisons at the end of 2003 was 2,17,659 many of whom were booked for petty offences. The National Human Rights Commission indicates an overcrowding of 32.33 per cent in the jails. This is disturbing. Mr Patil says that if an accused has served more than half his prison term for which he/she had been charged, some amnesty in the form of remission of sentence could be given. Significantly, the government is also thinking of completely withdrawing the cases against those who have already served 10 to 14 years of imprisonment but are yet to be charge-sheeted for murder. The proposed changes are, no doubt, appreciable, but it remains to be seen to what extent the Centre would succeed in its endeavours. For one thing, the Centre cannot unilaterally decide on the Cr PC reforms because it will have to take all the state governments into confidence since police and public order come under the State List. Incidentally, the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government’s amendments to the Cr PC are yet to be implemented because opinion is divided on some of the recommendations made by the Malimath Committee Report. Whatever the differences, reforms to quicken the pace of justice and provide relief to the hapless undertrials brook no delay if the Centre and the states are truly wedded to the concept of a welfare state. |
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De-stressing exams EVERY year, thousands of young men and women are stressed, some beyond the limits of their endurance, so much so that they even take the extreme step of trying to take their own lives. Why? Because of the examinations they take, whether at the school level or later. It is unfortunate that an antediluvian rote system, based on the one devised by Lord Macaulay to train good clerks for the British Colonial empire, continues in its pristine form. Unfortunately, the stress still continues to be on memory, rather than comprehension, understanding and analysis. An enormous amount of time and effort goes into remembering all kinds of details, rather than developing skills that would be applicable in a wide variety of intellectual pursuits. Such stress also leads to the system where the number of pages written are said to count more than the content, where examiners become suspect when re-evaluation changes the marks originally given, and carelessness in evaluation cannot be ruled out. There is no doubt that some of these ills are due to the sheer number of persons being evaluated, but at the same time, innovative ways have to be found to make the examination system more of an evaluation of the intellectual capabilities of the candidates. A meeting called by Union HRD Minister Arjun Singh has come out with some positive steps — students should be allotted examination centres in their neighbourhood, that exams should not be postponed and students who fail in their pre-board tests should not be barred from sitting for the boards. While these suggestions are so logical that one wonders why they have not been thought of and implemented earlier, there is need for out-of-the-box thinking to ensure a better evaluation system. Various suggestions like an open-book system, objective-type questions and others have been making the rounds of academia. It is high time the nation adopted measures that evaluate the students fairly and objectively. |
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Rapist teachers EVERY rape is a ghastly, unpardonable crime. It becomes all the more ghoulish when it is committed by a teacher on his student. Yet, there has been a sharp increase in the incidence of this unthinkable crime of late. If two Haldwani teachers are on the run after allegedly raping five students during school excursions, a 50-year-old Hardwar teacher is in police custody for sexual misconduct. Similar complaints have been made against a teacher of the Government College of Art. Most of the victims happen to be minors. If the fence starts eating the crop this way, nothing will remain sacrosanct. Only the other day, a principal and a vice-principal in Delhi allegedly raped a girl student young enough to be their grand-daughter. It is true that the sacred "guru-shishya" tradition of yore cannot be expected to be alive in today's world, but surely it cannot be replaced by such a reprehensible "lion-rabbit" situation. Given the stigma attached to rape, not all such cases are reported. Thus the sharp increase in the number of cases coming to light points to a far bigger tragedy. While rape is the extreme form of humiliation, sexually explicit harassment of girl students by their teachers is even more common. This is considered routine and most do not even dare to report it for fear of reprisal. After all, teachers do have the powers to spoil their careers. The problem has become so widespread that one may even think of not allowing male teachers to interact with girl students, but given the shortage of teachers, this may not be practical at all. As far as punishment is concerned, rape already entails stiff jail term. That has curbed but not stopped the heinous crime. Perhaps certainty that any such deed will make them a social outcast for life will act as a deterrent. The students themselves can also become a strong resistance group against any pervert hiding behind the cloak of a guide. |
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If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favourable.
— Seneca |
Wardrobe malfunction BARING one bosom recently on a TV show might have cost a channel millions in the US but Janet Jackson's blaming it on a "wardrobe malfunction" isn't wholly convincing. At home, we have known people who have rather benefited from such “wilful indulgence” many a time. Taking up the cause of millions of Indians for whom there was no “kurta” available due to their “wardrobe dysfunction”, our own revered Bapu decided not to wear anything to cover his brawn, and that too, without inviting frowns. In the typical Indian mindset, this, otherwise a macho gesture, in good measures, bullied the British in India. Even Churchill, with his tongue firmly in cheek, termed the Mahatma a “Naked Faqir”. Needless to say, he grew in people's esteem nationally and globally. Trusting the power and prowess of Lord Krishna himself Draupadi in “Mahabharta” could never have blamed a malfunction in her wardrobe when the wicked Dushashna attempted to disrobe her at the instance of Duryodhna after the infamous gamble fixture. Draupadi's faith in her saviour stood vindicated. A friend of mine in his zeal to look different got a turmeric-yellow jacket stitched for him. He went to a restaurant when to his utter embarrassment all the waiters were found wearing Jodhpuris of the same colour. That he did not have to offer a tip was simply because of his supporting wardrobe. I know of a police officer who was quite unpopular among his subordinates for the proverbial “bullshit” he “spat out”. None dared to challenge him till one day when he appeared before a battery of officers with his slacks' zip open. On being pointed out in almost an aside to him, he left the room in a huff and spared the attendant officers of further humiliation at his hands. It once happened with me while travelling in the High Lands at a place called Onich on Loch Lomund in Scotland. I was a bit flamboyantly dressed with a scarf worn after Dev Anand as in "Johny Mera Naam". We were negotiating with the man on the counter when he asked me if I was an actor. "Yep. Do you see Indian movies?" I tried to sound more American than Indian while lying to him by putting a counter question, obviously confirming his query in the affirmative. "Won-dur-fool. Won-dur-fool!" said the Scotsman and offered me a 40 per cent discount straightaway. Wait a minute. Please don't jump to any conclusions. Salman Khan, John Abrahim and Bipasha Basu do not perpetually suffer from the syndrome called “wardrobe malfunction” but a “non-existing
wardrobe”.
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Expecting relief before rains Mr KS Sidhu, Chief Coordinator of the Tsunami Rehabilitation Programme, Planning Commission, pegs the rehabilitation and reconstruction cost at about Rs 12,000 crore. He says the rebuilding process will take two to three years and the government is committed. Almost three months after the devastation, the struggle to provide relief in these idyllic islands, more than 1,200 km off the Indian mainland, is an ongoing one. But with the monsoon expected to lash the islands by mid-April, India is gearing up for the new onslaught. Mr Sidhu is confident: “The rains are expected around April 15th, an early onset, but we have an assurance from the Home Department that the shelters will be ready.” Mr Sameer Acharya of SANE (Society for Andaman and Nicobar Ecology), an NGO working closely with the tribes, believes “Nothing much will happen with the rains if an adequate amount of bamboo, timber and tools to build shelters are sent on time.” The government has come under flak for restricting relief and aid agencies from entering the islands, particularly Nicobar. The reasons are varied: military sensitivity due to the island’s proximity to Indonesia and Myanmar; the islands are in a key position to monitor shipping through the Malacca Strait which is the route to vital oil supplies to Japan and China and protection of the indigenous tribes people who have led their own lives on the islands for a long time. Mr Sameer Acharya, while endorsing the defence angle, says the military has “only a nominal presence” in the region, but with the Islands a part of India, the military has a right to be in the area.” Some parts of the Andaman and the Nicobar Islands are off limits to foreigners and visitors. Mr Acharya says the government’s concern to protect the indigenous tribes along with a severe logistics problem are perhaps some reasons why India was not keen on allowing foreign NGOs into the area. Mr Sidhu says the “restriction” aspect has been overplayed. “As such, there were no restrictions. Logistically, the area was so devastated that it was not possible to move from one island to another.” Ms Aditi Kapoor, Media and Advocacy Coordinator for Oxfam (India), an international NGO with its base in the UK, also spoke about “the problem of ferrying material through the Islands” but she said that by the third week of January, 2005, the government did issue a directive at a coordination meeting that permitted NGOs to work at Little Andaman and Great Nicobar. Mr Acharya says the mistake that the government made was that it did not include the local NGOs in the initial plans. To enter into the restricted areas of the islands, the Tribal Council has to issue an acceptance pass along with the government’s permission. Nor did they consult the local tribes on their modus operandi on post-tsunami relief operations. Says Acharya, “Take the case of tools. The government has brought in tools but the tribes will not use them as they are not used to working with them. The steel is not tempered enough and the tools transmit a jerk to the shoulder joints. The tools the Nicobarese use are imported from Thailand, Burma and Malaysia.” A similar case in point is the dhoti or “sarong” worn by tribal women. “The sarong comes from Burma or Thailand and is made of cotton. The government has provided the same thing but in polyester” explains Acharya. The government is allowing the tribes to build their own homes and dig their own wells. KS Sidhu says the locals “will” be included in the plans to rebuild the affected regions. “They are being consulted on the houses as well as the layouts for the houses before they are built.” Sabita Naqvi, Senior Communications Officer for UNICEF, says their assistance “was sought by the government in ensuring immunization cover for the children in relief centres and in restoring the disrupted water and sanitation facilities in the island.” They are also setting up 4,000 toilets in Nicobar Islands in addition to providing essential medicines, education supplies and meeting basic hygiene requirements. Oxfam is working closely with a number of local NGOs like SANE, Nehru Yuva Kendra, Hamdard Youth Association, VHAI and the Nicobar Rehabilitation Committee, a body nominated by the Tribal Council for Car Nicobar. They are providing relief items consisting of family hygiene packs, sewing machines, fabrics, cycles, tool kits. They are building 300 temporary shelter units in South Andaman, toilets and washrooms in Hut Bay, Campbell Bay and South Andaman. They have also initiated a “cash-for-work” programme in Little Andaman with the Hamdard Youth Association and cleaning of wells is underway in partnership with the Nehru Yuva Kendra. |
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Bubbles abound in a world of ready cash Welcome to the Bubble Economy, 2005. There’s the housing bubble and the commercial office space bubble. There’s the bond-market bubble and its two progeny, the junk-market bubble and the emerging-market-debt bubble. That $2.50-a-gallon price you see at the pump has all the markings of an oil bubble. And the premiums being paid for all those corporate mergers and acquisitions is a pretty good indication of a stock-market bubble. In fact, nearly every asset market you can think of is showing signs of
bubble-like behavior. The reason is pretty clear: The global economy is awash in free cash. “There is an excess of liquidity around, and it is proving very hard to get rid of it,” said John Makin of the American Enterprise Institute, using the term preferred by economists. “The possibility of a liquidity bubble around the world concerns me,” Citigroup Chairman Charles Prince told the Financial Times last week. To some degree, this excess liquidity is what you’d expect as a giant baby boom generation reaches its peak earnings years and begins to save more for retirement. And surely a good part of the story is the stimulative monetary policies of central banks around the world for most of the period since the Asian financial crisis in 1998. The Bank of Japan has been pumping out cheap money for years to revive the Japanese economy and slay the deflation dragon. In the United States, the short-term interest rates that the Federal Reserve controls have been below the inflation rate for more than three years. The biggest culprit of all, however, may by the central bank of China, which, to prevent the appreciation of the Chinese currency, has had its printing presses working overtime to churn out the yuans needed to buy all those dollars earned through exports. Fed Maestro Alan Greenspan has argued that nobody can really identify a financial bubble until after it has popped, which was one reason the Fed did little to try to prick the stock market bubble in the late 1990s. That sophistry was exposed last month when transcripts of Fed meetings from 1999 were released showing that Fed officials, including Greenspan, were quite aware that they were dealing with a bubble of immense proportions. And it is now belied, as it was then, by any number of objective indicators of the widening gap between the economic and market value of various assets. The current bond-market bubble was attested to by no less an authority than Greenspan, when he admitted he was puzzled by long-term interest rates that have failed to respond to the 1.75-percentage-point increase in short rates engineered by the Fed. Greenspan called it a “conundrum.” I call it a speculative market driven by irrational exuberance and herd behavior. A similar story is told by narrowing “spreads” on riskier bonds — the interest-rate premium that borrowers have to pay over “risk-free” U.S. Treasury bonds. On the junk-bond market, spreads are near historic lows, with many new issues oversubscribed. In the market for emerging-market bonds, spreads that peaked at more than 10 percentage points at the time of the Argentine debt crisis in late 2001 fell to a low of 3.3 percentage points earlier this month. It is more of a stretch to argue that stock prices have again entered bubble territory. Certainly as a multiple of earnings, today’s prices are only slightly above historic averages. But there is a strong sense of deja vu in seeing banks and Wall Street investment houses tripping over one another to provide gobs of money on easy terms to companies and private equity funds engaged in bidding wars for telecom and software firms. And I assign some significance to the fact that Warren Buffett, who correctly identified the last bubble, now has $43 billion sitting in the bank, unable to find acquisitions to make at reasonable prices. The tendency among economists has been to assume that bubbles happen only when there is too much cheap money around and that responsibility for controlling the money supply and containing bubbles rests with the Fed and other central banks. Adam Posen of the Institute of International Economics did a nice job of knocking down such outdated monetarism in a short, pithy article in a German newspaper last week. I don’t know whether this means the Fed was right or wrong this week in not raising interest rates more than a quarter of a point and in sticking to its promise of “measured” increases in the future. What I do know, however, is that it is silly for the Fed to continue to ignore the condition of asset and currency markets when making such decisions and explaining them to the public. — LA Times-Washington Post |
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Pets and divorce In a recent UK survey by Direct Line Insurance, more than a third of respondents said they’d take legal action to keep their pets in a divorce, while one in six said they’d spend as much as £10,000 on the battle. Typically, those involved in pet custody cases are affluent, childless couples. Pet ownership has grown in two particular demographics - young couples who are waiting longer to have children, and couples whose children have grown up and left home. These couples develop the strongest attachments to pets. They treat them like children — the kind you can spoil with gifts and dress in cute outfits without worrying whether they’re doing well at school or have the right kind of friends. And so animal custody cases increasingly resemble child custody cases, and can be just as bitterly fought and expensive. While child psychologists are employed to determine the child’s living conditions and welfare with each parent, so vets and animal evaluators are employed for pets. And, like children, pets suffer in the tussle. According to Deanie Kramer, a mediator for Divorce Resource Inc, a TV news presenter had his dogs flown back and forth from New York to Los Angeles as part of a visitation agreement. “I also had a bizarre case with a parrot,” she says. “Before he gave it to her, he taught it obscenities just to embarrass her.” There are stories of spouses killing the pet to spite the other; stories of pups in washing machines, cats in microwave ovens, a strangled macaw. The key difference between child and animal custody cases, however, is that in the former, the welfare of the child is paramount, whereas the animal’s interests are rarely considered. Legally, a pet is property, a “chattel”, like a piece of furniture. To arrange joint custody for a dog is legally equal to visitation rights over a sofa, and most judges tend to apply the law literally. But some judges, often pet owners themselves, understand the emotional difference between relating to a dining-table and relating to a dog. Increasingly, these judges rule to protect this relationship. The wave of pet custody cases is also a small victory for the animal-law community. The more courts recognise the value of the relationship between a human and a pet, the further animal-welfare issues shift in favour of animals. But are there other implications? Could pet custody rulings affect the treatment of lab rats or abattoir cows? The greater the emotional bond, the better the animal’s interests are protected. This explains why dogs are the most contested pets in custody cases. Cats come a distant second, then horses. Dogs are particularly comforting in times such as these, with job insecurity, the fragility of families, the demise of community and the pace of life. — The Independent |
Records are set all the time by big-hearted people who don’t have the right background, ability or experience — or who simply don’t know any better. — Kobi Yamada How to lift the veil of darkness and find him? The only ways to do so is to live and work according to his will and move about in this world as preordained by him, there is no other way. This is the eternal truth, all else is false. — Guru Nanak All relatives, friends and lovers salute a man who has been long away and has returned safe. So do a man’s good deeds receive him when the time comes to depart this world. — The Buddha The man without enemies is the one without any selfish desires. These desires bring us into conflict with those of others. Determined to pursue our goals to the end, we begin to look on each other as enemies — The Bhagvad Gita Honour is a touchy thing. If all be honoured equally and simultaneously, those with greater self opinion feel humiliated. Yet if one be honoured first, many of the others feel neglected. — The Mahabharata If we pray, our hearts become clean, and we are filled with the love of God— a love that gives without counting the cost; love that is tender and compassionate; love that forgives. — Mother Teresa  |
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A
massive rehabilitation plan for the tsunami affected areas of Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Pondicherry, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh has been prepared by the Asian Development Bank, the World Bank and the United Nations. The proposal was finalised on March 8, 2005.