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Why quota for Muslims? Unavoidable oil price hike |
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Stand by for take-off
Between hope and fear
The investiture
Jawans reach out to
people in Ladakh Can doctors do business? Delhi Durbar
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Why quota for Muslims? WE are for more jobs and opportunities for the Muslims in different areas, but Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y. S. Rajasekhara Reddy has done great disservice to the Muslim cause by reserving 5 per cent seats for them in government jobs and educational institutions. The retrograde step will not only hamper their natural progress but will also condemn them to a ghetto mentality. Besides, this will also widen the communal divide which is a grim reality. The Hindutva brigade can be depended on to pounce upon this “minority appeasement”. It is nobody’s case that the Muslims should not be brought up in life. A large section of them is indeed poor, but that is not because they are Muslims but because there are far too many poor in the country, belonging to all religions. The best way to ameliorate their lot is by giving them better avenues of education, training and equal opportunities. All this cannot be achieved through the reservation route, which will only ensure that a small minority among the Muslims corners the benefits — the “creamy layer” — without the community in general benefiting. President Kalam and Aziz Premji rose their way to the top because of their personal qualities and not the crutch of reservation. We already have reservation on the basis of caste and community. Granting it on the basis of religion will only help sharpen the communal divide. The Chief Minister has also defied the 50 per cent reservation cap imposed by the Supreme Court. The electoral benefits that he is hoping to reap may never materialise. Lessons should have been learnt from the heavy price that the country has had to pay because of the reservations already in existence. Mandalisation has already affected the polity. Had there been exclusive coaching so that the deprived could compete with others on an equal footing, this huge social friction and misunderstanding would have never arisen. It is ironical that instead of finding ways of tapering down reservations, some politicians are always ready to treat them as a handy electoral tool, without realising how short-sighted they are. |
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Unavoidable oil price hike THE stiff hike in the retail petrol and diesel prices, announced on Monday after supposed consultations among the UPA partners, has left the coalition divided. The Left proposes to go in for an agitation on June 28 against the very government it supports from outside. The oil price hike, the Leftists argue, will have a cascading effect on general prices. That is well known. Instead, they could have asked with some greater justification: why has the government cut the aviation turbine fuel prices to make air fares cheaper, benefiting the well-to-do, and raised the petrol and diesel prices, hurting the common people? Incidentally, the oil prices touched a new high on Monday at $59.18 a barrel coinciding with the Indian price hike announcement. The crude prices have escalated around 35 per cent since January on rising global demand and higher growth with speculators too taking advantage of the situation. Most Asian countries, including China, had already increased the oil prices. India effected the last hike in November. The government oil companies have been facing the brunt of the price rise and their losses have been multiplying. There is a limit beyond which they cannot be allowed to bleed. Experts rule out any significant fall in the global oil prices despite the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) agreeing to raise the production quota by five lakh barrels a day from July 1. Production in Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil producer, is at or near the peak and may fall in years to come. Experts do not see the oil price at $80 or even $100 a barrel a very distant possibility. India imports 70 per cent of its crude requirements. The International Energy Agency expects Indian demand to grow by 80,000 barrels a day. The country urgently needs to plan for the emerging scenario. The short-term suggestions to face the situation include the cancellation of the cess on oil, excise duty changes to soften the retail prices and creation of a price stabilisation fund. |
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Stand by for take-off THE string of deals worth around $ 13 billion (Rs 55,000 crore) signed by various Indian private carriers in a span of just a few days at the Paris Air Show have created a flutter. They suggest that we are on the threshold of no ordinary expansion, but a veritable revolution in the civil aviation sector in the country. The most startling has been the one signed by Interglobe Aviation for about 100 Airbuses, and they intend to start a low cost service by the turn of this year. It follows on other mega deals signed by Jet Airways and Kingfisher, for more than 50 planes, including the 555-seater Airbus 380 by Kingfisher. Add the in-the-wings deals for 50 Boeings for Air-India and 43 Airbuses for Indian Airlines, along with those signed earlier like the 30 Airbus deal by Air Deccan, and one is looking at Indian aircraft imports exceeding Rs 1 trillion, or Rs 100,000 crore (more than $ 23 billion), for some 300 aircraft over the next decade. Riding on liberalised air traffic agreements with several countries, increased availability of investment capital and a growing economy, Indian carriers evidently think that the projected 20 per cent growth rate for the sector is within reach. Even 10 per cent growth rates will double the volume of air traffic in the country from the present 250 lakh to 500 lakh travellers in seven years. Translating the industry’s optimism into successful and sustainable operations will be another matter, impinging on several factors. That a major overhaul of airport infrastructure and human resource development will be needed goes without saying. While all relevant issues are on the radar screen of the civil aviation ministry, precious little is visible on the ground in terms of actual initiatives. A sense of urgency is needed. If all goes well, Indian passengers, paying fares lower than ever before, can fasten their seat-belts and settle down for a ride that will realise the full potential of the Indian economy. |
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Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so. — John Stuart Mill |
Between hope and fear FOR some, globalisation has become a battle cry; for others, it is the banner of the future in the brave new world of the 21st century. There are no prizes for guessing where to place Thomas Friedman, the New York Times columnist and world traveller, who has just written at some length about the process of globalisation and how it can make us all happy and the world a better place to live in*. Friedman is a good reporter and when it comes to basing his theory, he cites the nuts and bolts of his investigations, naming names and companies (Infosys boss Nandan Nilekani gave him the idea of a flat world), and with his reporter’s flair pithily describes his findings. Sometimes, his turn of phrase is felicitous, for instance: “In China today, Bill Gates is Britney Spears. In America today, Britney Spears is Britney Spears — and that is our problem”. At other times he is less so. But Friedman always remains quintessentially American, optimistic and earnest. He is not coy in maintaining that “deep down the rest of the world envies that American optimism and naivete, it needs it”. Perhaps, he is right, but the value of Friedman’s long account of his journey into what he describes as “a brief history of the globalised world in the 21st century” is remarkable in two respects. It brings home to the lay reader the pace at which the process is taking shape and how it is already determining the way the world is adapting to it. It stands to reason that the kinds of changes that are taking place will have a profound influence on how the world lives, does business and plays politics. The surprise for many will be the extent to which changes have already taken place (a single computer’s components are outsourced to different parts of the world) and how this world supply chain is vulnerable to local disruptions and wars. India’s great chance came with the Y2K millennium bug which enabled Indian men and companies to interact with the West’s biggest outfits, a relationship that was seamlessly exploited to take this country to a new high in information technology. In Friedman’s view, the year 2000 should be celebrated as India’s second independence day. Americans are addicted to making bullet points of their theses and Friedman has 10 to describe the flattening of the world. They are: the fall of the Berlin Wall, Netscape going public, initiation of work flow software, open sourcing, in-sourcing and off-sourcing, “supply-chaining” (the retail chain Wal-Mart), in-sourcing (UPS with its fleet of 270 planes), “in-forming” (Google and other search engines) and what he calls the steroids, digital, mobile, etc. In Friedman’s view, the triple convergence of new players, on a new playing field, developing new processes and habits of horizontal collaboration is emerging as the most important force in influencing global economics and politics. He believes the world will see “some very strange bedfellows making some very new politics” and he not referring to Al-Qaeda, which is proficient in using the tools of the new age, down to dressing the hostages they execute in the orange jump suits worn by the prisoners in the infamous Guantanamo base. Friedman is aware of the disruptions the new world will cause to individuals, hierarchies and countries, and a major challenge will be to absorb these changes without allowing them to overwhelm populations, which must not be left behind. Resisting the new processes is not an option; rather, the smart thing is to take advantage of them by getting into the loop. India and China are already in it and Friedman warns his countrymen that they are racing the United States to the top, not the bottom. And he quotes a business consultant to suggest that future industrial conflicts will not be between labour and the employer but between the customer and the worker, with the company as “the guy in the middle”. Friedman understands the incidental dehumanising aspects of cold efficiency by taking out the middleman (Wal-Mart is a case in point) but implicitly accepts it as the price of progress. He thinks humiliation is the most under-rated force in human and political relations and partly ascribes the Arab Muslim world’s rage against the US to it (witness the pictures of prisoner torture at Abu Ghraib). The US Central Command, he informs us, calls the underground Islamic network as the Virtual Caliphate. He takes President George W. Bush to task for exploiting the Nine Eleven terrorist acts to export fear, instead of hope. One wishes though that Friedman had pruned his interesting study of the world in the 21st century to a more reasonable length to make it more accessible to the general reader. And one cannot fail to notice some of the traditional American weaknesses. For instance, he virtually dismisses communism as a creed to distribute poverty; the creed’s failures cannot be equated with its Utopian dream for mankind. The virtues of free market capitalism are self-evident to him. But the often earthy treatment of an abstract subject is a tribute to Friedman as a writer and reporter. He is passionate about his theme and his passion is infectious as the reader winds his way through 488 pages. He ends on an optimistic note on at least two counts: the future globalisation will be increasingly driven by individuals who understand the flat world and, despite American failings and fears, “ America was, and for now still is, the world’s greatest dream machine”. While everything else can be digitalised and parcelled out, ideas and imagination cannot be outsourced or in-sourced, and hence remain a unique prized asset. Friedman quotes an HP executive, Maureen Conway, to explain why this is so. She told him, “The ability to dream is here (in the US). The nucleus of creativity is here, not because people are smarter — it is the environment, the freedom of thought. The dream machine is still here.” One hopes that President George W. Bush’s policies and prescriptions such as the Patriot Act do not destroy the dream
machine. * The World is Flat — A brief history of the Globalised World in the Twenty-first Century by Thomas L. Friedman; Allen Lane/Penguin India. |
The investiture HIS Excellency the Governor of Uttaranchal Pradesh, Mr Sudarshan Agarwal, was then addressing a battery of senior Indian Police Service officers who had graduated in a course held at the ATI, Nainital. He was playing host to these officers at Raj Bhavan. Neatly decked up in an English suit, he preferred standing against the support of the table in front of him while addressing the officers. His language was lucid and laced with veneer of anecdotes, dwelling in detail about the success stories he came across in life. While exhorting the officers, he chose a matter-of-fact style. Being the Centre’s Observer to this course, I was seated by the side of the Governor. I watched him do some plain talk on the need for police officers developing a people-friendly attitude towards the community at large. I did not have the faintest of idea that a great and pleasant surprise was in store for me which would thrill me even at its thought, for all the years to come by. It so transpired that while speaking about the need to ensure peoples’ participation in policing, the Governor happened to cite an example that he described was rare to be found. He spoke about a police officer who floated a non-political, non-governmental organisation with nearly a hundred socially conscious citizens of his district, some years ago, in a north Indian state. He also recalled the transparency this organisation ensured in police work as also the credibility that the department earned due to this new venture. He tried to recall the name of the place the officer had been then posted to, but couldn’t actually do so, since about a decade had elapsed since when the Governor, as Secretary-General of the Rajya Sabha, first took notice of the officer’s initiative. But he was able to recall the name of an adjoining district. This mention of the place rang a bell in my mind. Somehow I got the impression that the Governor was talking about my district and my own initiative launched with the formation of an NGO — a police-public platform way back in 1998. Modesty held me back but I summoned up courage and stood up, seeking the Governor’s attention beseeching: “It was yours truly, Your Excellency!” “What’s your name?” the Governor asked me when I promptly pronounced it. “And what was the name of the place? He queried again. When I gave him the name he repeated it thrice, gazing deep in my eyes fulsomely and with admiration, “Yes! Yes! Yes! So, here you are!” There was a sparkle of sorts in the eyes of a doting Governor. All eyes got focused on me. The entire gathering was excited at the Governor’s “find”. And who was me, myself. Elated? Emotional? on cloud nine? May be I felt humble, but at the same time I felt several medallions on my
chest.
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Jawans reach out to
people in Ladakh THE deployment of the Army for the last five decades in Ladakh has gone through several stages, and the Army has touched every aspect of Ladakh’s life, economy, employment and the environment. The Army has not only guarded the country from external invasion but has also played a vital role in empowering and developing the people of the border regions through various programmes such as the Sadbhavana project. “The Army, realising its role and potential as an extended arm of the nation, together with genuine concern for its fellow countrymen of this inaccessible region, has launched Operation Sadbhavana to integrate the populace of the Ladakh region with the national mainstream,” say Army sources. The Army for the last five years has helped uplift the inhabitants of the border areas through the Sadbhavana programme by providing quality education, growth opportunities and training. One of the many initiatives under Operation Sadbhavana has been to electrify some villages. “About 100 villages are being electrified with micro-hydel projects. Steps to tap wind energy are also being taken. The endeavour is to electrify all villages in Ladakh by the end of the year 2005,” say Sadbhavana officials. “The micro-hydel projects (MHP) will be handed over to the local village administration for future maintenance.” The Army hopes that in the near future MHPs will also be used for flourmills, cotton combing, lathe machines, welding machines and air reservoir for filling of air in vehicle tyres. Tyakshi and Patsathang are two villages in the Turtuk region to the North of Leh on the Indo-Pak border, where people are happier with the Army services than the civil administration and the local Hill Council. “Our leaders come and make promises during elections but they have not helped us as compared to other villages. The Army is our lifeline,” say leaders of these two villages. They have a Sadbhavana high school with 125 students. The Army has electrified their villages. Besides many villagers are employed as porters. Donkeys in the Turtuk area have a record of earning up to Rs 1,000 a day. The Army has opened 16 Army Goodwill Schools to provide equality education to needy students. These schools follow the CBSE syllabus and provide free uniform, transport, meals, books and free medical services. However, educationists are of the opinion that the Army could have helped strengthen local education more if it had helped the existing government schools rather than opening parallel schools. Over a period of time a large number of women, over 3000, have been trained at various women empowerment centres. Some of them are said to have been absorbed in various Sadbhavana ventures as teachers and some have started their own ventures. In this era of information technology the Army has set up computer centres in Leh and Kargil where young women learn basic computer skills. Besides, the Army has provided computers to many school libraries. Between 2000 and 2005 the Army treated almost three lakh patients at their different hospitals in Leh, Hunder, Turtuk, Dras, Kargil, Darchik and Achinathang in addition to occasional health camps at various remote locations. A release from the 14 Corps says that 24-year-old Prem Lal had suffered 9 per cent burns in September last year after a stove accident and it was nearly impossible to save his life but an Army medical team at Kargil saved him and he is on the road to recovery and rehabilitation. Losing her first child at birth and pregnant with her second child, Ayesha Bano of Kargil had developed complications. She was rushed to the Army Hospital at Dras in February 2005 where a team of Army doctors operated on her and saved both the mother and the baby. “There is a record surge in the number of patients reporting to Army Medical Aid Posts and field ambulances,” says an Army release. The Army also says that it is undertaking relief operations against the threat of avalanches and landslides. When it snowed heavily in 2005 in Ladakh, the Army established relief camps at Khumbathang in the Suru valley to coordinate relief and provide aid to the civil administration in the areas of Kargil, Dras, Batalik, Padum and Muskoh. People of the Nubra valley, who are sometimes stranded due to heavy snowfall causing the closure of Khardong pass, are sometimes flown free of cost in Army planes. Even though they are not deployed there, the Army helps Zangskar too, especially in severe winter. When the region is cut off by heavy snowfall the Army and the Air Force provide helicopters to serious patients and stranded passengers. The change of Gen Arjun Ray, GOC, who started the Sadbhavana programme, seems to have changed the priority of the Army. The people of the Turtuk areas complain that the pace of the Army programmes has not matched the hopes generated by General Ray.
— Charkha Feature |
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AS American medicine becomes more “managed” and doctors complain they can hardly make ends meet, young Indian physicians in the US are choosing entrepreneurship that gives them more freedom and could if successful, bring in greater profits. At the 23rd Annual Convention of the American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin (AAPI) in Housten, the young physicians sections highlighted careers that hold the promise of taking them out of the managed care of American medicine and the increasingly heavy regulatory environment. The highly influential AAPI, which has over 25,000 doctors as members, selected some successful entrepreneurs who had broken the physician mould to chart a new course for themselves. Raising the question, “Can physicians be good entrepreneurs?” Purushottam Madhu, incoming president of Young Physicians, mentioned four physicians-turned-entrepreneurs: Sangita Reddy of Apollo Hospitals in India, Chirinjeev Kathuria of Chicago, Avtar Dhillon based in San Diego and Meetpaul Singh an investment analyst. Madhu said the health entrepreneurs’ forum was inspired by the works of Kiran Patel of Florida, who developed a medical insurance network in the state and was heavily involved in philanthropic work in the US and India. Sangita Reddy is executive director Apollo Hospitals, India, and managing director of Apollo Health Street in California. “Doctors need to be doubled, nurses tripled, paramedics to be increased by five times,” she said. While the infrastructure is clearly inadequate, she said, 70 per cent of healthcare is in the private sector and 87 per cent of tertiary healthcare is in the private sector. Reddy’s father, Prathap C. Reddy, studied in the US and went back to India and became an entrepreneur even though he had never been a businessman. Apollo Hospitals is considered the world’s third largest healthcare corporation. Kathuria, a medical and business graduate from Stanford, has his finger in a range of industries from Internet to commercial space travel. Dhillon of Inovio Biomedical Corporation in San Diego, as a medical student, had opened a successful hair salon. He had come to Canada from Punjab when he was eight. In less than three years as CEO, Dhillon turned the company around from a small $6.5 million company with only two weeks of cash left to operate to a company with a market cap of nearly $100 million. He secured bridge financings, restructured the company to work more efficiently and began designing a trial that would accelerate the marketing of the companies’ electroporation therapy system used in treating cancer. The company now has Phase III and IV trials in head and neck cancer. It has also announced licensing deals with Merck and Vical in DNA delivery as well as an investment by Quintiles. Meetpaul Singh is an analyst of MDS Capital based in the Palo Alto office in California. His primary responsibilities includes accessing strong deal flow, due diligence on all facets of investing, and investing in companies located in the South West region of the US. Over 3,000 people attended the June 15-19 meet at the Hilton Americas here. — Indo-Asian News Service |
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Natak Akademi gets chief THE prestigious Sangeet Natak Akademi has a new Chairperson in old Congress war horse Ram Niwas Mirdha with controversial Sonal Mansingh making an ignominous exit. Certain members of the Akademi’s general council quit because of the alleged high-handed functioning of Sonal Mansingh. Thanks to the pressure mounted by the Left, she was sent packing by a Presidential order. This is not the amiable Mirdha’s first stint with the Akademi. He was its Chairperson twice before. Now there is talk that the Akademi’s general council might also witness changes as it has appointees of the previous NDA government and suspected of having pro-saffron leanings.
Telengana not yet Regional Telengana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) leader and Union Labour Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao has visited his home state of Andhra Pradesh only once in the last five months. Threats to his life have increased with Naxalite groups daring him to make a trip to Telengana. Rao’s plea for spending more time in the national capital is ostensibly to put pressure on the Congress to consider his demand for carving a Telengana state out of Andhra Pradesh. Rao is feeling the heat as the Congress is in no hurry to concede the demand of a Telengana state as it will lead to other demands like a separate Vidarbha state, which has remained a backward region of
TDP may dump BJP Chandrababu Naidu’s Telugu Desam Party (TDP) is biding time to severe its links with the BJP, which is proving to be more of a liability to the regional party in the southern state. This was evident in the recent byelections in AP where the TDP nominee won because of the sympathy wave in her favour after her husband was killed with political rivalry taking an ugly turn. For the TDP, which considers the Congress and the BJP as its main enemies in Andhra Pradesh, it is only a question of time before it breaks free with the BJP. The TDP insists that the BJP is slipping badly in AP and has failed miserably in enlarging its constituency in the state.
Finance Minister P Chidambaram did a neat tight rope walk while briefing on the CCEA meeting. With the whole media waiting for an announcement on the petro price hike, Chidambaram avoided the question till the very end. When pointedly asked whether the price rise issue was on the CCEA agenda, he replied in the affirmative but hastened to add that a decision had been deferred since some “senior” ministers were not present at the meeting. When asked who were these “senior” ministers, he said without taking names that “well, all ministers are senior and some of them were not present.” Contributed by S Satyanarayanan, R Suryamurthy, Prashant Sood and Gaurav Choudhury |
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From the pages of INDIAN FACTORIES BILL THE Bill to amend the Indian Factories Act, 1881, which was introduced in the Viceroy’s Legislative Council by Sir Andrew Scoble at the beginning of last year, has been modified in some respects by the Select Committee to whom it has been referred for consideration. The Select Committee have taken away with one hand what they have given with the other. They acted rightly in substituting the word 50 for the word 20 in the definition of factory, and they should have qualified the definition in the way they have done. The Bill as amended distinctly provides that no child shall be employed in any factory if he is under the age of nine years; and that no child shall be employed before five o’ clock or after eight o’ clock in the evening. These provisions are not open to objection. But in modification of the definition of “child” the committee have proposed to fix 14 years as the age below which persons shall be deemed to be children. In England there is a class of persons intermediate between children and adults; but the Committee do not consider it expedient to have such a class in this country.
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Try to think of your body as a temple and God as the deity within.Then all you have to do is close your eyes and look within. No more do you have to search outside. — Books of quotations on Hinduism The thirst of a thoughtless man grows like a creeper. For him who conquers the thirst sufferings fall off like water from the lotus leaf. This is the thirst of desires, of wanting more and more. — The Buddha God’s name is the real place of pilgrimage (i.e. the source of purification). — Guru Nanak One whose guest lives without food and drink loses all goodwill. —The Upanishads No man is happy who does not think himself so. — Book of quotations on Happiness O people! Serve you Lord, who created you those before you, So that you may be conscientious. — Book of quotations on Islam His words are the Vedas, for they are inspired by the spirit of God. — Guru Nanak Where the impulses of the body and mind no longer stir us, we find Heaven. — The Upanishads Even so we cannot describe Him. Indescribable in human words as He is. — Guru Nanak  |
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