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Poor Captaincy Court and the cop |
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Booze brigade
Jollygood Bollywood
General knowledge
State of Hospitals - 5 Fighting a war for truth
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Poor Captaincy WORSE than the behaviour of the police in Ludhiana on Thursday has been the response of the Chief Minister, Captain Amarinder Singh. He was nonchalant when he squarely blamed the two dozen girl students for the police highhandedness. Nothing could have been more pleasing to the policemen whose pictures appeared in all the newspapers manhandling the girls than the well-done-boys kind of response they got from the chief minister himself. He was upset that the girls did not trust his word that their interests would be protected. If his promises could be taken at their face value, then there would have been no problems in the state. After all, had he not promised that corruption would be ended, that farmers would not be cheated of their land, that so many lakhs of jobs would be created, that no farmer would be forced to commit suicide? Punjab is not a banana republic where veterinary students who fear they face a bleak future cannot protest and be heard by the government. They fear that degrees and certificates issued by the newly set up Guru Angad Dev Veterinary and Animal Sciences University will not be recognised outside the state. They were also supporting the unemployed veterinary doctors protesting against lack of job opportunities. Their perception of the problem may be wrong and the government may indeed be alive to their demands but that does not justify the brute force employed against the students, particularly the girls. The police treated them as if they were hardened criminals. Wherever there is a protest the first impulse of the police is to flex its muscles. In the instant case, the chief minister could have used the opportunity to walk up to the protesters, accept their memorandum and reiterate his promises. Alternatively, he could have just ignored the students, who would not have done anything against him protected as he is always by gun-toting commandos. Also, he could have used some other gate to enter the Punjab Agricultural University campus to inaugurate the kisan mela. The point is there were umpteen ways in which the ugly incident could have been averted. But, alas, with a police force itching for trouble, asking for such sensible steps is tantamount to asking for the moon. But the chief minister will do well to remember that with elections fast approaching he will have to account for every act of highhandedness of his police force.
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Court and the cop THE Supreme Court has directed the Centre to implement a slew of measures to streamline the police administration in the country. Such a directive was long overdue because successive governments at the Centre and in the states have been lackadaisical towards police reforms. In response to a public interest litigation, the Bench headed by Chief Justice Y.K. Sabharwal has suggested, among other things, a two-year fixed tenure for the DGP, the IGP, the DIG and the SP, the formation of state security commissions along with a national security commission to ensure independence of the police force, separate wings for investigation and enforcement of law and order and handling of important criminal cases having inter-state or international links by the CBI. Significantly, these measures are similar to those recommended by the Dharam Vira Commission, also known as the National Police Commission, as far back as 1981. The police administration is in a mess today. The command structure is under strain at the three crucial levels — the DGP, the SP and the station house officer. The effects of such disruption in the command structure can be seen in the increasing political interference in the police administration, low level of discipline, indifferent registration of cases, poor quality of investigation and mounting public grievances against the police. The suggested reforms will help improve the police administration provided they are implemented in both letter and spirit. Insulating the police from political interference is a crying need, but making it wholly independent of the civilian authority is a remedy worse than the disease. The Supreme Court’s directive underlines its keenness to stem the rot in the system. It has sought compliance reports from the Centre and the states by January 1, 2007. As the Centre is in the process of drafting a model police code, the court said that Friday’s directives would remain operational till the code was implemented. What needs to be changed on priority is the poor image of the police. It has to shun its colonial image and become people-friendly.
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Booze brigade That the army has not been immune to a general culture of corruption and a take-what-you-can, when-you-can attitude has been known. Army vehicles openly tour civilian areas, unloading bottles of Canteen Stores Department (CSD) liquor to willing patrons, even solicitously paying periodic visits to enquire if their customers’ stocks needed any replenishing. The door-to-door service in some areas would make a proud multinational turn olive green with envy. That such a steady supply cannot be kept up without the connivance of higher officers and an extensive network is obvious. What is more, similar networks evidently exist for other supplies like petrol, tyres, food stocks and the like. The three years’ rigorous imprisonment and cashiering from service of a major-general is deserved punishment, and one that will hopefully prove a powerful deterrent. But the Army needs to make an all-out effort to ensure that the booze brigade is done away with once and for all. It is a disgrace to a fine fighting force, constantly engaged in fighting terrorist insurgency and infiltration on our borders, to find its own members, including senior officers, masterminding a racket to sell liquor. And what is the jawan or young officer in the front line, braving bullets and bombs, not to mention hostile terrain, to make of this? The scam under investigation reportedly involves at least 16 other officers, including four brigadiers and nine commanding officers. These are men who have commanded elite forces of the 6 Mountain Division, and it is distressing that they could stoop so low to make money on the sly. This is an opportunity for Army Headquarters to end this menace once and for all. And as recent scams have shown, everything from booze to meat to dals is being misappropriated. The message should go out — henceforth, there will be zero tolerance for such activities.
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Where your pleasure is, there is your treasure; where your treasure, there your heart; where your heart, there your happiness. — Augustine
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Jollygood Bollywood MOHANDAS Karamchand Gandhi, dead as he is, was dying to be saved. It was convenient to consecrate him. That way he could be deified and desecrated at the same time. Neither those who swore by his legacy nor those who swore against him feared his spectral return. Yet, that is precisely what has happened, thanks to Lage Raho Munnabhai (LRM). Director Rajkumar Hirani’s delightful entertainer with Sanjay Dutt in the lead role has accomplished more to undo our induced amnesia of the Mahatma’s words and deeds than anything done by India’s political class in the last 58 years. True, there have been memorable films on Mahatma Gandhi by distinguished directors, namely Richard Attenborough and Shyam Benegal; one offering a respectful cinematic acquaintance and the other being didactic but inspiring. For all their earnestness, neither film stirred the popular imagination like LRM has done now. For generations born after Gandhi’s assassination, Munnabhai, the eponymous hero of the film, has rendered “Gandhism” passé and “Gandhian” arcane. The new buzzword is “Gandhigiri”, a value, and valuable, addition to the lexicon of a culture suffused with every abominable kind of “Dadagiri” and “Goondagiri”. Munnabhai, as GenNow would put it, is a cool dude; a street-smart tough who gets his way and walks over those who get in his way. In a four-letter word, he is a Dada. He gets to stay on top of any situation because of his Dadagiri. Cool, until he lands in hot water with a fib he tosses at the sassy anchor of a radio chat show. Smitten by her voice, which has got him hooked to the channel, Munnabhai picks up a few facts on Gandhi to survive the radio quiz. Soon after, he is called upon to lecture — on Gandhi’s life and thoughts — to the inmates of a home for the elderly, for which occasion he dons the spurious mantle of Professor Murli Prasad. There begins the transformation of the good-hearted don, who remains the essential Robin Hood except that he has changed his way of working: instead of dadagiri, which comes naturally to him and his mates, Munnabhai resorts to Gandhigiri and prevails to equal, if not better, effect. At first, when the ghost of Gandhi appears in the library where he has gone to cram up on the Mahatma, Munnabhai is alarmed. Gradually, he gets used to the ghost who walks (with him) and doles out sage, but very practical, advice to deal with the dilemmas that call for dadagiri. Gandhigiri is shown to be the alternative that can be no less effective in settling issues, be it on the street or in a corrupt government office. In a society where corruption, money, muscle and competing forces of lawlessness and violence rule the roost, there is a deep yearning for means of resolving disputes and conflicts through ethical and honest means. The pensioner can neither fight nor refuse the demanded bribe if he has to get his due. Dadagiri would have meant Munnabhai stomping in and flexing his muscles. Gandhigiri ensures that the pensioner gets his money by shaming the clerk in a highly dramatic manner. The film’s dramatisation of Gandhigiri — manifest as a potent and morally superior power — makes it preferable to brute force. There is no dearth of dramatised sequences showing that there is a way to win; the weak don’t have to let themselves be walked over nor do they have to seek protection from dadas to defend their interests. The main drama is centred round what would now be called a senior citizens’ home, where the elderly who have been abandoned by their less-caring offspring bravely face the odds of life. The site of the old age home is the site of multiple contests: between the personas of Gandhi. One all-too-familiar persona is the mummified image, where memory of the man is manifest in statues and the roads and places named after him; almost as if he is a relic of the “Stone Age” or “Bronze Age”. The metaphorical remnants of this extinct Gandhi are the elderly homeless who are confined to the home for the aged, which is being coveted by a builder as dowry for his daughter. These elders, already evicted from their homes by their children are now to be evicted from this refuge too. Much like society’s impatience in wanting to get rid of any lingering traces of the old man. The other persona of Gandhi is his principles and values, which Munnabhai brings to life as the medium giving expression to Gandhigiri, prompted by the ever-present spirit of the Mahatma. His concern and resolve — shown by his passive resistance — to ensure that the inmates of the home for the aged are restored to their rightful place shows his rejection of the fossilised Gandhi; and his striving to secure for them the deserved respect and support represents his effort to revive the values that have been abandoned today. In an increasingly unfeeling and uncaring society seething with violence, corruption and oppression of the weak, where the dadagiri of a benevolent goonda is often the only refuge for the deprived and the dispossessed, Munnabhai proposes Gandhigiri as a practicable panacea. Doubtless, this is simplistic and, perhaps, romantic, too, in the filmi tradition of heroes who single-handedly achieve a revolutionary breakthrough as if foundational rot and structural inequalities can be remedied by individual intervention alone. But such a line of criticism and deconstruction, for all its validity, would be to deny both the logic and effect of Lage Raho Munnabhai, which is a bold and beautiful effort even if Gandhigiri is a PUF-packed pulp rendering of what is truly Gandhian. The film demystifies Gandhism, strips it of philosophical and ideological overload to its bare essential of how satyagraha can be invested with meaning and result in everyday life. This has given Gandhigiri and the film a cult-like status, making it a rage among the younger generation. Predictably, Gandhi is becoming good business, and may even grow to be an industry with all this renewed popular interest in the forgotten Father of the Nation. Of course, all good things have multiple uses and, more often than not, it is the less desirable ones that are capitalised upon for political and commercial profit. Gandhigiri, as it catches on in popularity, cannot escape being hijacked by those with a craving for power but the political skill to camouflage it as a passion for public good. That is a price Gandhigiri, too, like Gandhi’s legacy, will have to pay in the long run. In the short term, the film is having a good run and everyone comes away feeling good. Chances are that some good will come out of
it.
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General knowledge Unlike other boys his age, my son is an avid viewer of TV news channels, particularly parliamentary proceedings. That has me worried because this over-exposure coupled with an aversion to books and dictionaries is giving him a distorted world-view. For instance, just because he sees several MPs, who happen to be on the wanted list for serious crimes in their constituencies, moving about freely in the national Capital and even attending Parliament, he has come to believe that a non-bailable warrant is a warrant on which a person cannot be arrested. Incidentally, he also thinks that all “sadhus” of the world are like Sadhu Yadav. The other day, there was a complaint from his school that he abused and thrashed a classmate. When I scolded him, he protested vehemently: “But dad, I didn’t say or do anything unparliamentary at all”. Several politicians who are too tainted to hold a public office in their home states have become ministers at the Centre and are doing fine. This has given him the warped notion that a dip in the Yamuna in Delhi is all that it takes to wash off all sins. He happened to buy a watch without a proper bill. I wondered if it was original. “I know it is counterfeit, dad, but it has the Telgi stamp,” he said. “And what is a Telgi stamp,” I asked. “It is a guarantee that the fake item is a quality product. I’m sure you know that even officials admit that the duplicate stamp papers that Telgi made and sold were as good as, if not better than, the genuine ones. I wonder why they don’t make him in-charge of the Nasik Security Press”. My boy may forget to wish us family members but makes it a point to touch the feet of all bad elements of our locality. His logic is that we must show due respect to budding leaders of the country. When he brought his report-card for my signature, I asked him why he had fared so poorly. “Dad, we must demand immediate suspension of my teachers and the Principal followed by a CBI enquiry,” he said helpfully. Whenever the government imposes any cess, he thinks that the money thus collected will go into a cesspool. To brush up his general knowledge, I asked him whether he knew what VAT was. “Of course, I do dad,” came the prompt reply, “Sunjay Dutt talks of ‘Vaat lag gayee’ in ‘Lage Raho Munnabhai’ several times”. I once overheard him telling his friends that terrorist attacks meant confidence-building measures in Pakistani language. Last night when he came home late, I asked him what took him so long. “I was playing Chor-Police”, he said. “What were you in the game?” “Policeman, of course,” he said. My chest expanded with fatherly pride. “And who played the thief?” I happened to ask. “Me again, dad. You see, I double up as the thief at night,” he whispered in a conspiratorial
tone.
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State of Hospitals - 5
Sridhar K Chari visits the Indira Gandhi Hospital at Shimla and finds that lack of integrated planning and lop-sided development mar a place that can otherwise boast of good doctors and advanced equipment IT is not every government hospital that can boast of graffiti praising their doctors. And as the lift doors of the Indira Gandhi Hospital in Shimla close, you can’t miss it, scrawled in black: “Love you all doctors of the 4th floor.” On the fourth floor, in one wing, is the paediatric surgery department. In another are some of the swanky new cardiology and cardiac surgery facilities. One can’t be sure exactly what the graffiti writer had in mind. But the fourth floor does exemplify an interesting divide in a hospital where lack of integrated planning, where some departments are privileged over others, has led to lop-sided development. As such the hospital is one of the better equipped and managed government hospitals in the country. It was not always so. The Indira Gandhi Medical College and Hospital was set up in 1966 at Snowdon in Shimla, and was known by that name till 1984. Its complex of buildings includes the former residence of the commander-in-chief of the British army, Lord Kichener. It has been plagued by both staff and equipment shortages, compounded by the setting up of another medical college at Tanda. But there is now, a brand new, Rs 7 crore, MRI facility, that started functioning since January. The radiology department in fact has a full complement of CT-Scan and Colour Doppler imaging as well. Decades-old x-ray machines are an issue, but doctors have just initiated the process of getting new ones. No one complains of funding problems. As for the cardiac super-specialty, it has just about everything one could ask for. Dr P. Venugopal of AIIMS, New Delhi, had personally overseen the setting up of these facilities and training for staff and doctors. 50 open-heart surgeries have been conducted at CTVS so far, and the department’s functioning has received well-deserved praise. Which brings us to the “divide.” Apart from cardio-thoracic surgery, Snowdon has four other surgical super-specialties – plastic surgery, urology, paediatric surgery, and neurology. All four are reeling under severe shortages – of doctors, supporting staff, beds, and indeed, even of operating time. At any given point, 20 to 30 patients are in the waiting list, says a senior doctor. “We are neglected because we are not “required” as per MCI norms,” he says, referring to norms laid down by the Medical Council of India for the running of medical colleges, violation of which could invite de-recognition. “We are merely decoration pieces, to be put out during functions, as super-specialities.” As for heart related problems, “that is a VIP disease in the sense that VIPs give priority to it. They want to make sure that in an emergency, treatment facilities are available. It has become the favourite baby of the government. Not that a VIP will get treated here if he can help it.” Laughs a doctor from general surgery: “They have even got a washing tub costing Rs 1.5 lakh. Others have to make do with the same wash basin and the Rs 100 tap that does not work properly!” The neglect of divisions like Orthopaedics (a department which has had problems with MCI recognition) and Neurology are particularly telling. A place like Himachal Pradesh frequently sees severe falls and accidents. “Bone injuries and head injuries are routine.” But now there is only one senior doctor doing neurosurgery, and the pressures on him are enormous. “There is no VIP push on these departments. The rich don’t fall,” jokes a doctor grimly. If you have any choice in the matter, authorities seem to be saying, have a heart attack rather than a head injury. There was another doctor in neurosurgery, who has gone on “extraordinary leave” for a two year period and is working at a private hospital in another state. Official sources said that the government had, last month, decided not to allow any more such extraordinary leave for doctors. The policy for such leave, introduced in 1999, was initially intended to facilitate doctors gaining experience abroad. But in 2001, it was extended to include jobs within India as well. “Now that they have stopped the policy of granting leave, what about those who have already taken leave and working elsewhere or simply roaming here and there? They should be called back,” fumes a doctor. Facilities for thermal trauma is another deficiency. There are no facilities to treat severe burns, and burn injury patients are sometimes discharged with deformities, putting pressure on another ignored super-specialty – plastic surgery. These super-specialties clearly need more senior doctors, supporting junior doctors (residents or registrars) and supporting para-medical staff. Existing posts are also poached by other, more privileged departments. The supporting staff crunch does not concern just the super-specialties. No new posts have been sanctioned for new machines like the MRI. “While putting up the case for an MRI, they should also have asked for staff. They don’t do that,” said a senior para-medical staff member. The demands of the Tanda college add to problems. One way in which Snowdon does not differ from other government hospitals is that reliability of lab tests is suspect. Official records show that in 2005, 6,82,126 tests were conducted, but most patients prefer to get it done outside. “Apart from being unreliable, we sometimes don’t even get the report.” Interestingly, the number of tests shows a drop after 2004, when 7,18,665 tests were conducted. There are other typical problems that one encounters in a government set up. Decent operating instruments are sometimes hard to come by, while costly equipment “with better margins” are rushed through the procurement chain, laments a doctor. The simple fact that there is not much of a private medical establishment in Himachal Pradesh itself points to a “push factor” keeping the hospital going at a reasonably optimal level. But the hospital did not have an Intensive Care Unit (ICU) and a make-shift one has been set up, after pressure from the courts. But it is truly make shift – “this must be the only place where a patient walks into the ICU, as he can’t be wheeled in!” says a doctor. But the money for a new one has been released – Rs 1.4 crore – and Dr Hardyal Chauhan, Sr. Medical Superintendent is confident of setting it up in a few months time. The adjunct Kamala Nehru hospital, the gynaecological division, is to be rechristened as the Kamala Nehru Hospital for Mother and Child. A Rs 59 lakh renovation covering new special wards, laboratories and OPD is on. Funding is clearly not a problem – finding staff is.
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Fighting a war for truth In a brilliant lecture at the University of Regensburg last week, Pope Benedict XVI made three crucial points that are now in danger of being lost in the polemics about his supposedly offensive comments about Islam. The pope’s first point was that all the great questions of life, including social and political questions, are ultimately theological. How we think (or don’t think) about God has much to do with how we judge what is good and what is wicked, and with how we think about the appropriate methods for advancing the truth in a world in which there are profound disagreements about the truth of things. If, for example, we imagine that God is pure will, a remote majesty with whom our only possible relationship is one of unthinking submission, then we have imagined a God who can even command what seems to be irrational – like the murder of innocents. Pope Benedict reminds us, however, that mainstream Christian tradition, following its Jewish parent, has a different concept of God. The God of Abraham, Moses and Jesus is a God of reason, compassion and love, a God who comes searching for man in history, appeals to the human mind as well as the human heart and invites human beings into a dialogue of salvation. This God cannot demand the unreasonable or the irrational. This God’s revelation of himself, in the Hebrew Bible and the Christian New Testament, does not cancel out or abrogate human reason. That is why mainstream Christianity has always taught that human beings can build decent societies by attending to reason. The pope’s second point, which flows from the first, was that irrational violence aimed at innocent men, women and children “is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the (human) soul.” If adherents of certain currents of thought in contemporary Islam insist that the suicide bombing of innocents is an act pleasing to God, then they must be told that they are mistaken: about God, about God’s purposes and about the nature of moral obligation. Responsibility for challenging these distorted views of God and the distorted understanding of moral duty that flows from them rests, first, with Islamic leaders. But too few Islamic leaders, the pope seemed to suggest, have been willing to undertake a cleansing of Islam’s conscience – as Pope John Paul II taught the Catholic Church to cleanse its historical conscience. We know that, in the past, Christians used violence to advance Christian purposes. The Catholic Church has publicly repented of such distortions of the Gospel and has developed a deep theological critique of the misunderstandings that led to such episodes. Can the church, therefore, be of some help to those brave Islamic reformers who, at the risk of their own lives, are trying to develop a parallel Islamic critique of the distorted and lethal ideas of some of their co-religionists? By quoting from a robust exchange between a medieval Byzantine emperor and a learned Islamic scholar, Benedict XVI was not making a cheap rhetorical point; he was trying to illustrate the possibility of a tough-minded but rational dialogue between Christians and Muslims. That dialogue can only take place, however, on the basis of a shared commitment to reason and a mutual rejection of irrational violence in the name of God. The pope’s third point – which has been almost entirely ignored – was directed to the West. If the West’s high culture keeps playing in the sandbox of postmodern irrationalism – in which there is “your truth” and “my truth” but nothing such as “the truth” – the West will be unable to defend itself. Why? Because the West won’t be able to give reasons why its commitments to civility, tolerance, human rights and the rule of law are worth defending. A Western world stripped of convictions about the truths that make Western civilization possible cannot make a useful contribution to a genuine dialogue of civilizations, for any such dialogue must be based on a shared understanding that human beings can, however imperfectly, come to know the truth of things. George Weigel, a senior fellow of Washington’s Ethics and Public Policy Center, is the author of “God’s Choice: Pope Benedict XVI and the Future of the Catholic Church.”
By arrangement with
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From the pages of Haryana cauldron
Haryana’s political cauldron, never really placid for long periods, is boiling again. The reasons, as on most previous occasions, are factional and personal and arise from traditional distrust and jealousies. Although the immediate cause was the hooch incidents at Kalanwali and Narwana last month, the political and administrative twists and turns given to these unhappy events were characteristically Haryanavi. Mr Balwant Rai Tayal, the State’s Finance and Excise Minister, resigned on December 31 following strong and repeated criticism of the administration of the Excise Department. This led to a controversy about whether he had voluntarily submitted his resignation or had been forced to do so by the Chief Minister. What is currently happening in Haryana is neither unusual nor surprising. The political history of the State over the past 14 years has shown repeated instability and opportunism which were not confined to members of the Congress organisation. After his dramatic coup of last year Mr Bhajan Lal seemed gradually to have got a fairly firm grip on the ruling party within the State with Delhi’s support. However, Haryana does not appear to be destined for long spells of calm. There is certainly no imminent danger to the Chief Minister’s position but his life is not being made easy.
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I would go to the sacred places of pilgrimage and bath there, if by doing so I could win His love and grace. But bathing alone is of no use, if it does not please Him. There are many ways by which we can try to win Him over. Only we have to work towards that end by listening to His voice. Meditating on Him we can develop priceless faculties of the mind and the soul. Restraint of the eye is good. So is restraint of the ear, nose, tongue, speech and thought. He who is restrained is freed from all pain. Curbs help the self realise self. Be they Muslims, Jews, Christians, or Sabians, those who believe in God and the Last Day and who do good have their reward with their Lord. They have nothing to fear, and they will not sorrow.
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