O P I N I O N S

EDITORIALS

“Sati” tourism!
At stake is the reputation of Rajasthan
UNDER the Commission of Sati (Prevention) Act, 1987, sati is a crime and so is glorifying it. To the best of our knowledge the law applies to every part of India, including Rajasthan. But the government of the state does not seem to think so.

United we stand
India can do a lot with China and Russia
IT was former Russian premier Yevgeny Primakov who made the tentative suggestion of a trilateral partnership among India, China, and Russia a few years ago. His idea has evoked everything from enthusiastic support to strong denials, counter arguments, worried warnings, and intrigued commentary from leaders, officials, and strategic studies experts. 

Rotten practice
Children's health at risk
NO parent or elder will ever give rotten food to children. Bring in the government and its agencies, and this impossibility becomes a painful reality. Such cases have been highlighted in the columns of The Tribune from different places, at various times, and it is indeed unfortunate that they recur with distressing frequency.

• Thought for the day

The cutting edge
Restoring the primacy of Collectors
by V. Eshwar Anand
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s interaction with the Collectors and District Magistrates of all states and union territories at a two-day conference in New Delhi recently was a commendable effort. It was a wrapup of four regional workshops held at Jaipur, Nainital, Hyderabad and Guwahati.

MIDDLE

My Deep Throat
by A.J. Philip
If Mark Felt can be identified as the “Deep Throat” who helped Washington Post correspondents Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein in their reporting of the Watergate scandal, I too can identify my own “Deep Throat” in the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA).

OPED

A second career for the jawan
National effort needed to make an Army career more attractive
by Maj Gen S.P. Kapoor (retd)
The Indian Army, the largest component of our defence forces, plays an important role in India’s emerging status as a global power. The Indian Army has always risen to the occasion whenever there has been a threat to external or internal security.

A home for women in distress
by Aditi Tandon
The complexities of urban living are posing unexpected challenges, throwing more and more women in situations they are ill-equipped to handle.

A hormone that increases trust
by Shankar Vedantam
Scientists have found the chemical equivalent of the perfect sales pitch: a hormone that makes us more trusting than we normally are.

From the pages of

October 27, 1883
Indian tea in Russia

 

REFLECTIONS

EDITORIALS

“Sati” tourism!
At stake is the reputation of Rajasthan

UNDER the Commission of Sati (Prevention) Act, 1987, sati is a crime and so is glorifying it. To the best of our knowledge the law applies to every part of India, including Rajasthan. But the government of the state does not seem to think so. Otherwise, how could it be that the Rajasthan Tourism Development Authority under the Tourism Department could come up with a package promoting Rajasthan’s sati sites as tourist destinations? The booklet mentioning that “there is not a spot in the state where women had not committed sati” has been withdrawn following a hue and cry in the media but that does not silence the question: How could the state government so blatantly promote the sati cult? Nor is this the first time that such none-too-tacit support for the obnoxious practice has been shown. The Jaipur Development Authority recently went to the extent of naming a new township “Shree Rani Sati Nagar”. One is shocked to find all this happening in a state led by a woman chief minister.

The problem is that Rajasthan seems to exist in a feudal time-warp where every wind of modernism and change is frowned upon. In public, leaders may speak against sati but in private they find nothing wrong in this veritable murder of the womenfolk. That is why when last year a lower court acquitted all the accused of glorifying Roop Kanwar who committed sati in 1987, there was no serious attempt to go in appeal.

It is because of such deep-rooted prejudices that the inhuman burning of the wives on the funeral pyre of their husbands still takes place, as it happened recently in Banda in Uttar Pradesh. In most such cases, it is found that the women have not chosen to immolate themselves out of grief but have been forced to do so by vicious relatives out to grab their share of property. To that extent, these are clear-cut cases of murder and the law admits as much but with even senior officials having hidden sympathy for the reprehensible practice, the culprits get away lightly. Those who thought it fit to promote “sati tourism” are nothing less than killers themselves.

United we stand
India can do a lot with China and Russia

IT was former Russian premier Yevgeny Primakov who made the tentative suggestion of a trilateral partnership among India, China, and Russia a few years ago. His idea has evoked everything from enthusiastic support to strong denials, counter arguments, worried warnings, and intrigued commentary from leaders, officials, and strategic studies experts. While India and China had reacted with caution, then Russian foreign minister Igor Ivanov had even dismissed the possibility saying that the era of Cold War-style blocs should not be revived. He was thinking, of course, about such a partnership inevitably being seen as a counter-balance to American predominance in the international system.

The idea has refused to go away and in their first stand-alone meeting in Vladivostok on Thursday, foreign ministers of the three countries have issued a broad-based joint communiqué, belying the avowedly “informal” nature of the discussion. Though avoiding mention of red herrings like defence cooperation and “strategic partnership” and stressing that it was not directed at “any third country,” the basket of subjects for cooperation spans agriculture, transport, energy, high technology and fighting terrorism and drug-trafficking. What is more, they have even declared that they “favoured democratisation of international relations aimed at building a just world order” and “progress towards multi-polarity”.

While China is routinely described as being lukewarm to the prospect given its relationship with Pakistan, the idea has received repeated endorsement over the years by strategic affairs specialists in China’s state-sponsored think tanks. Russian cooperation with China has been growing in strength and now encompasses several fronts and it has pushed for and welcomed the recent initiatives for better ties between India and China. None of the countries has neglected its relationship with the United States, though. Given the nature of the international system, classic balance of power equations are unlikely to suddenly lose their relevance. The stage is being set for the emergence of an interesting new element in the geopolitics of the 21st century.

Rotten practice
Children's health at risk

NO parent or elder will ever give rotten food to children. Bring in the government and its agencies, and this impossibility becomes a painful reality. Such cases have been highlighted in the columns of The Tribune from different places, at various times, and it is indeed unfortunate that they recur with distressing frequency. The anganwadi scheme provides eatables to expecting mothers and children aged up to six. Recently, a team of the district administration of Karnal found anganwadi food unfit for human consumption. Earlier, investigations into the 645 anganwadi centres in Bathinda district found that some children had taken ill after eating stale food. In some cases, the food also smelt bad. Had this been isolated incidents, it would have been shocking. However, this is even worse.

Earlier this month, fungus-infested meals at Fatehgarh Sahib grabbed headlines. In Kaithal last year schoolchildren got fungus-infested meals. There has actually been a deluge of reports about food, supplied through government agencies, often sub-contracted through private companies, not being up to the required standards. It is a sign of the times that indifference and negligence together negate whatever good intentions the government has in initiating the anganwadi and mid-day meal schemes. Crores of rupees are being spent from the taxpayers' money to finance such schemes, but they are often victims of the non-caring attitude and lack of supervision.

Food has very specific shelf life and needs to be monitored closely for hygiene and storage. It is not that there are no agencies to look after food quality; rather, it is a question of too many cooks spoiling the broth. Responsibility for lapses that lead to poor quality of food being served to students or schoolchildren under these schemes must be fixed and effective action taken against erring officials so that it acts as a deterrent against any such instances in future.

Thought for the day

The act of taking the first step is what separates the winners from the losers. 

— Brian Tracy

ARTICLE

The cutting edge
Restoring the primacy of Collectors
by V. Eshwar Anand

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s interaction with the Collectors and District Magistrates of all states and union territories at a two-day conference in New Delhi recently was a commendable effort. It was a wrapup of four regional workshops held at Jaipur, Nainital, Hyderabad and Guwahati.

The conference, which this writer had the privilege of attending as an invitee of the Union Ministry of Personnel and Administrative Reforms, helped the Prime Minister, his senior colleagues and the Collectors to examine their strengths and weaknesses and how to respond to the current challenges effectively to prove worthy of people’s expectations. The quest for responsiveness naturally led to issues of responsibility, accountability and democratisation.

Union Ministers P. Chidambaram and Mani Shankar Aiyar enriched the proceedings with their inputs on how to develop an effective interface between the district administration and the people. They underlined the Collectors’ changing role in public administration and recalled their close involvement with a similar exercise carried out by the late Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1987-88.

The Collector is the most crucial link between the government and the people. The image of the government — at the Centre and in the states — depends largely on his performance because it is he who implements the various development programmes at the field level. The administrative apparatus which free India inherited was primarily oriented to the maintenance of law and order, tax collection and settlement of litigation. However, with the rapid economic development, the fostering of social justice and the building of a new order, the frame of reference has changed as also the style of functioning.

Even as the Collector is expected to develop a humane outlook and an eager responsiveness to the people’s changing needs, he will have to foster a greater degree of integration among the various departments under his control. His role as a coordinator has increased after the zilla panchayats have been involved with the development process.

Some Collectors, in their presentations to the Prime Minister, identified the main problem areas and offered suggestions to rectify them. These ranged from a re-definition of their role to giving greater clarity about their duties and responsibilities, rationalisation of various programmes, evaluation of the delivery of services by each department by an external agency and their possible re-designing if the quality of services was unsatisfactory, enhancing the training and capacity building of the district level officers and encouraging enterprise and initiative to solve local problems.

On top of all this was the suggestion for a fixed three-year tenure for Collectors. They said that they were not being allowed to continue for a longer period and make a visible impact on the administration. The Administrative Reforms Commission recommended long ago that a Collector needed a fixed tenure to do substantial work. But this is rarely being done.

The news of the abrupt transfers of the Collectors of Siwan and Gopalganj in Bihar, even when the conference was examining the problem, came as a bolt from the blue. Mr C.K. Anil (Siwan) and Mr K.K. Pathak (Gopalganj) are known for their high integrity and character. As they were taking on powerful leaders like Syed Shahabuddin and Sadhu Yadav, Governor Buta Singh clipped their wings, apparently under pressure from Railway Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav.

The Prime Minister readily endorsed the suggestion for a fixed tenure for Collectors and said that he would give practical shape to it by bringing the matter before the National Development Council. He admitted that short tenures do not produce accountable results. If he can convince the Chief Ministers about the problem, he may succeed in his mission. But given the present political climate, the task is not going to be easy.

Today, the political malaise is so deep-rooted that it has vitiated many an initiative towards meaningful reform at the cutting edge of administration. The problem that confronts the district administration is that there is a contradiction between the targets set for certain programmes on one hand and political pressure on the other. Most Chief Ministers treat districts as their personal fiefdoms. A total disregard of all norms, frequent transfers to the point where the civil service collapses, a deliberate destruction of hierarchical discipline have all contributed to sloth, insensitivity and inefficiency in the system.

The mechanism to implement schemes and deliver welfare at the field level has been rendered ineffective in many states. Programme after programme fails for want of efficient implementation. Stories of failure through leakage, slippage or inefficiency are more numerous than stories of success. Limited resources are wasted or siphoned off and people are denied welfare. Even flood relief funds are not spared. The Bihar Government’s belated red-corner alert on Patna’s former Collector and District Magistrate Gautam Goswami for his role in the flood relief scam is a shame on the bureaucracy.

Obviously, a system with failures lends itself to abuse because it divorces decision-making from responsibility and renders sincere and honest officials less effective in implementing policy. It also encourages functionaries to look to those within the Chief Minister’s camp. The cutting edge of the government has been harried and shifted around to an extent where upright officials find it difficult to operate.

Criminalisation of politics, especially in north India, is a more frightening phenomenon. First politicians supported by criminals and later criminals themselves turning politicians! The latter’s use of the police force to settle scores with their opponents has affected the police administration. Senior police officers like the DIG and SP question the Collector and District Magistrate’s authority in law and order matters. And the subordinate policemen, on the payroll of the criminal-politician nexus, ignore the authority of their own superiors.

Some Collectors felt that it would be difficult for them to deliver with a blunted tool. They should be given a free hand to exercise effective control over police officers for strengthening the law and order administration. It was suggested that as in Tamil Nadu, in all other states, the Collectors should supervise the weekly diary system of the Superintendents of Police.

The Prime Minister did voice his concern about the bane of political interference in the day-to-day administration when he said that politics, instead of being an instrument of “social change”, has become an instrument of “personal aggrandisement”. However, he called it an “aberration” and told the Collectors to reckon with the realities as they exist. He told them to take a longer view of the polity and steer the public ship in the desired directions as enshrined in the Directive Principles of State Policy.

Dr Manmohan Singh described the post of Collector as a “prized institution” and a “proud legacy” of the British and called upon the delegates to uphold the Constitution, the rule of law and safeguard the sacred values of the Indian Republic. He set five goals for them — remain faithful to the Directive Principles of State Policy, operate in the frontiers of knowledge, use the state as an instrument of socio-economic justice, promote social equity, and strive every nerve to wipe out tears from the disadvantaged.

The validity of the British doctrine that the district is the pivot of the Indian administration has greater relevance today. If this pivot breaks, the whole administrative façade would collapse. There is a need to restore the primacy of the Collector. One can undermine his/her authority only at the peril of a civilised and orderly administration in the districts.

MIDDLE

My Deep Throat
by A.J. Philip

If Mark Felt can be identified as the “Deep Throat” who helped Washington Post correspondents Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein in their reporting of the Watergate scandal, I too can identify my own “Deep Throat” in the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA).

In the early seventies, it was my bosom buddy N. Parameswaran Unni who brought me to Delhi and subsidised my stay in the Capital with his meagre resources. He was in high spirits having topped in the Clerical Grade Examination and being posted in the East Asia Division of MEA. “Do you know Prime Minister Indira Gandhi sits right below me?” he would often ask us. He sat on the upper floor and she on the lower floor.

Within a few days of my arrival in the Capital, he managed to smuggle me into South Block and show me his own office and the Prime Minister’s. Security was lax those days and DTC buses passed through the Parliament House complex. When a police constable looked at me a bit suspiciously, Unni panicked and advised me to leave immediately.

Unni was brilliant. He topped in the Assistants’ Grade examination too and, as luck would have it, was posted in the same Division. He often told us about his foreign posting that was due in a couple of years.

Unni had set his sights high — he wanted to be in the Indian Foreign Service. He would persuade me to sleep early so that he could prepare for the IAS examination.

One day he told me about a “Top Secret” paper he had seen in the office. The gist of the paper was that India had decided to re-establish diplomatic relations with China, which was snapped following the 1962 war, and Mr K.R. Narayanan, who later became the President of India, would be posted as the Ambassador.

Instantly, I knew it was a great story. Unni felt a little “guilty” leaking the report but nonetheless allowed me to use it. Those days I had not learnt the art of padding up a story. So, when I submitted it to my editor O.P. Sabherwal, he was thrilled, though he was not sure whether a cub reporter like me could pull off such a scoop. He added a few lines by way of backgrounder and released it as our agency’s lead story that day.

I was thrilled to see the story on the front page of the now defunct Patriot. Unni got scared of his own shadow. He thought the intelligence sleuths could easily identify the source of my story. He even refused to receive my telephone calls.

The day after my story appeared, G.K. Reddy of The Hindu followed it up with a lot more details. The same day Foreign Minister Y.B. Chavan made a statement in the Lok Sabha about the posting of Mr K.R. Narayanan as India’s first Ambassador to China after the 1962 war. The Editor complimented me for the “scoop”.

However, the happiest man was Unni, who knew that nobody would now inquire as to who leaked the report to the media.

I went up in the esteem of the Editor. Every time a major diplomatic story broke, he would ask me to check with my source who, he thought, was a top official. I allowed the impression to prevail to protect my friend and for selfish reasons.

Unni could not appear for the IAS exam as he was down with jaundice at that time. But he passed the Probationary Officers’ Examination of the State Bank of India, went up in his career till he resigned from the SBI a few years ago to head a bank in West Asia. 

OPED

A second career for the jawan
National effort needed to make an Army career more attractive
by Maj Gen S.P. Kapoor (retd)

The Indian Army, the largest component of our defence forces, plays an important role in India’s emerging status as a global power. The Indian Army has always risen to the occasion whenever there has been a threat to external or internal security. Over a period of time, however, an Army career has lost the charm it once held for the youth of the nation. In the year 2003, only 1100 officers passed out from the Officers Training Academy and the Indian Military Academy though the capacity of these institutions is around 1800.

Delayed promotions and the lack of sufficient slots on the move up the ladder have been identified as one of the major problems needing correction. Another key aspect is the lack of prospects for a second career after leaving the Army. It is the duty of the Government to facilitate a second career for those who retire at a very young age or for those seeking a second avenue to further their career when their promotional avenues have been blocked. Half hearted measures such as implementation of AV Singh Committee Report are unlikely to have any major impact.

A sepoy who joins the army at the age of 17 years leaves it at the age of 32-34 years if he does not get promoted to the rank of a Junior Commissioned Officer (JCO), which is mostly the case. Even the JCO retires in his late thirties or early forties. Unlike in older times, this young man cannot get back to tilling his land in the village. The pension is meagre, and he needs a second employment to keep him occupied and financially secure. Unfortunately, there is no institutionalised system of providing a second career to this person. The combat duties, extremes of terrain and climate and related hardships of the job make it imperative that the age profile of a combat unit is kept young. This young age profile and consequent early retirement poses peculiar problems while seeking a second career.

It is ironic that even though other forces of the Union of India and the state police and security forces maintain large strengths, induction into these forces from amongst the most trained and disciplined force, i.e. the army, is not substantial. The need of the hour is to enable lateral transfer of retiring personnel to other such government maintained forces or that of PSUs, Nationalised Banks, and even the Corporate Sector. The Adjutant General along with the Directorate of Resettlement and the Sainik Welfare Organisation should be made responsible for the implementation of such a scheme.

In the officer’s cadre a deficiency of around 12000 officers persists despite the vigorous advertisement campaign organised by the Army to attract youth. The first and foremost reason is that the remuneration package given is not commensurate with the hardships, dangers and frustrations that an officer has to undergo. The Army is deployed in the highest, coldest, hottest, remotest and roughest areas. The Army’s employment in anti-terrorist operations is ever on the increase. In addition to the separation from the family, education of children suffers due to frequent moves and absence of the head of the family.

The second major reason is the limited avenues for promotion. Today, a Colonel in the Army puts on his rank after 20-22 years of service at an average age of 42-43 years whereas ideally he should be doing so after 15-16 years of service. Of the Lt. Cols. who come up for promotion to this rank, on an average only 50 per cent make it — for the others, from the age of 42, there is nothing to look forward to till 54 when they retire. Promotion prospects in the ranks higher than Colonel get further reduced to 25 per cent to 30 per cent of the officers being considered. All this happens because of the very broad base and the thin top of our Army’s hierarchical pyramid. Under the system of vacancy based promotions even officers with above average to outstanding career profiles are left out for no fault of theirs. This causes a lot of frustration and in many cases leads to litigation, which brings a bad name to the Army. Another reason for the Army’s unattractiveness is that even though the officers are allowed up to two years of study leave, they are not allowed to leave the army for three years thereafter.

To achieve this dual purpose of faster and more promotions it is necessary that the base of the pyramid is reduced and officers with blocked promotional avenues are permitted to seek lateral transfer to PSUs, Banks, the Corporate Sector, Central and State Tribunals or Boards and the like. In the past many steps have been taken in the shape of giving commission to selected other ranks in the main stream as well as in the Special List Commission so that officers of comparatively higher age groups do not add to the number of officers coming up for promotion to higher ranks. The Short Service Commission and the Women Entry Scheme have also been introduced where these officers leave after 5-10 years of service. However, these measures have fallen short of the objective. Now a national effort is required in this direction. A clue can be taken from what the Army is doing to overcome the shortage of infantry officers. Officers of non-combat services do a three-year attachment with the Infantry and then go back to their parent Corps or Service. Similarly, it is now time that the Para Military forces and other security forces of the Union of India are integrated into a scheme to help the Army, with appropriate training capsules. As a spin off, it will give highly trained and experienced officers to other forces.

A home for women in distress
by Aditi Tandon

The complexities of urban living are posing unexpected challenges, throwing more and more women in situations they are ill-equipped to handle.

Himachal Pradesh also has a few homes, which are inadequate to meet the needs of women in stress conditions. While crimes against women rise, several Government of India schemes conceived to provide a life of dignity to abandoned and dejected women await optimum realisation. Swadhar is one among the many.

A hormone that increases trust
by Shankar Vedantam

Scientists have found the chemical equivalent of the perfect sales pitch: a hormone that makes us more trusting than we normally are.

Volunteers in a study were told they were participating in a decision-making experiment. Those who inhaled the hormone, which occurs naturally in the brain, were more likely to entrust others with large sums of money than were volunteers who inhaled no hormone.

The experiment has profound implications about the nature of human trust. Researchers said their finding might lead to cures for people with disorders that prompt them to hold others at arm’s length, but they acknowledged that the chemical, which is widely used in medicine, could be misused.

The experiment, involving 128 participants, was conducted by scientists at the University of Zurich and other academic centers. Researchers had some volunteers inhale oxytocin and then examined how they, and those who inhaled a placebo, invested money in a mock transaction.

The transaction involved taking a risk: handing over money to a ``banker’’ who had the option of returning the investment with a profit or withholding principal and profit, leaving the investor with nothing. The experiment was a measure of the trust that the investors had in the bankers.

Volunteers who inhaled oxytocin were more likely to trust the banker with money and risk larger sums, the researchers said in an article published in the journal Nature.

The scientists said they made sure the chemical was not merely enhancing risk-taking behavior by substituting bankers with computers. Without the interaction with a human, the hormone had no effect.

Oxytocin did not alter the behavior of the bankers, which strengthened the researchers’ belief that the hormone was influencing trust. Bankers did not need to trust investors, because they were taking no risk. A banker’s decision to return money was more a question of fairness, which oxytocin did not affect.

Trust is central to virtually every positive social relationship, from intimate love and friendships to financial transactions and politics, but little had been learned about its biological correlates in the brain, researchers said. Oxytocin is known to be activated in a range of social relationships in many animals, but this is the first time scientists have shown it can serve as a switch to enhance trust in human relationships.

Ernst Fehr, director of the Institute for Empirical Research in Economics at the University of Zurich and one of the scientists who conducted the experiment, said the peak effect of oxytocin was seen after about 50 minutes and it wore off after two hours.

“Some may worry about the prospect that political operators will generously spray the crowd with oxytocin at rallies of their candidates,” said neurologist Antonio R. Damasio of the University of Iowa, who has long studied the neurobiology of human emotions and who wrote a commentary accompanying the study.

At the same time, he added in an interview, politicians and marketers were probably already triggering the natural release of oxytocin in the brains of audiences through their campaigns. ``I am more alarmed about the manipulations of marketing than the possibility of oxytocin sprays,’’ he said.

Damasio said it was inevitable that science was going to learn more about the biological correlates of trust and other human emotions. He said he saw no reason such knowledge should affect notions of human dignity and agency.

— LA Times-Washington Post

From the pages of

October 27, 1883

Indian tea in Russia

INDIAN tea-planters will be glad to learn from one whose interest lies in a contrary direction that there is in Russia a growing taste for Indian tea, which threatens the supremacy hitherto maintained by the China leaf in Russian markets. The Commissioner of Customs at Tientsin tells us that Indian teas are now imported into Russia from London, as well as from Calcutta direct to Odessa, and are mixed by retailers with China teas; while the leading Russian firm in Tientsin has despatched an agent to this country to make purchases direct in order to prepare a blend for export. Russia does not rank next to Britain as a tea-consumer: the U.S.A. holds the second place, but Russia comes third so that the importance to Indian merchants of this new development is very great.

REFLECTIONS

— Guru Nanak