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Children in neglect Need more funds, more efforts A few public-spirited citizens led by Jean Dreze, Aruna Roy and others through a letter published in The Tribune have expressed dismay at the small increase in the allocation for the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) in the Union Budget for 2007-08 and sought the Prime Minister’s intervention to ensure a fairer deal for children below the age of six.
Congress needs to change itself
Identity crisis
Fiscal prudence takes
a back seat Health Delhi Durbar
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General and the Judge Whatever
the charges framed against suspended Pakistan Chief Justice (CJ) Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, the manner in which President Pervez Musharraf removed him from the position he held till Friday is bound to be viewed as an attempt to prevent the judiciary from functioning independently. This is not something new in Pakistan. If Justice Chaudhry is the first chief justice to have met this fate, he is the fifth judge who has been pushed into the dock. Interestingly, when the Supreme Judicial Council tried the earlier such cases it was a General who held the reins of power as is the reality today. It is indeed shocking to see that a President in a General’s uniform can even think of summoning the CJ to his office and make him realise the “mistakes” he had made. The treatment meted out to Justice Chaudhry has evoked strong reactions from various sections of society, including opposition politicians and lawyers across the country. But what the legal fraternity says has special significance because among the charges levelled against him are that he has been insulting and intimidating lawyers and that his verdicts pronounced in the court were found to be different from what was there in the written judgements. However, if this was the truth, lawyers throughout Pakistan would not have boycotted courts on Monday. The way they have been protesting against the suspension of their CJ shows that he had enjoyed considerable respect among them. He even brought down the number of pending cases in the Supreme Court from 38,000 to 10,000 which cannot be easy in Pakistan. Justice Chaudhry earned the reputation of a brave judge when he gave the verdict preventing the sale of a public sector unit, Pakistan Steel Mills, to a private consortium. His independent stand on the cases relating to hundreds of missing persons, perhaps, shook the civil and military establishment by its very foundations. He came to be considered as the most inconvenient chief justice. He is, perhaps, not the kind of a judge who could be expected to cooperate in a scheme that might extend General Musharraf’s rule. However, the action against Justice Chaudhry appears to be snowballing into a major crisis, which might upset the General’s game-plan.
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Family rule IT is strange that even those who pour venom on the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty for perpetuating itself think nothing of replicating the family rule in their own turf. The big-ticket entry from Punjab is Mr Sukhbir Badal, whose appointment as the acting president of the Shiromani Akali Dal is being seen as a precursor to his stepping into the shoes of his father, Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal. In the Indian political arena, even a single precedent is a good enough excuse for doing anything. Mr Badal can quote any number of them. Right next door, Mr Bhajan Lal, the late Devi Lal and his son Om Prakash Chautala have groomed their sons assiduously. Mr Lalu Prasad Yadav handed over the reins of Bihar to wife Rabri Devi when the fodder fire got too hot for him. Stalin has Karunanidhi and Omar Abdullah has Farooq and Sheikh Abdullah to thank. The family rule has often blurred the line between the party and the government. The question of handing over too many top positions to his family members was posed to Jawaharlal Nehru also. His retort reportedly was: “What can I do if some of the most suitable persons happen to be my blood relations?” Perhaps even today, some of the second or third-generation leaders are storehouses of perceived talent and qualities. Positioning Mr Sukhbir Badal as the heir-apparent has not come as a surprise to anyone in Punjab, but his choice may not be quite popular with old timers in the SAD. Murmurs can grow louder if he does not deliver the way as he is expected to do. What may also complicate matters further is the fact that Mr Parkash Singh Badal has handed over some of the most cherished ministries to his relatives. Theirs is not the only family which wants to have a monopoly over leadership. Many more are waiting in the wings and would rather promote their own sons and daughters instead of going along with the Badal tag for all times to come. |
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Children in neglect A few public-spirited citizens led by Jean Dreze, Aruna Roy and others through a letter published in The Tribune have expressed dismay at the small increase in the allocation for the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) in the Union Budget for 2007-08 and sought the Prime Minister’s intervention to ensure a fairer deal for children below the age of six. The Budget has increased the allocations for health and education, and also raised the education cess to 3 per cent. This will help children and women to some extent, but the challenge of meeting the basic nutrition and health needs of pre-school children, especially in the poverty-stricken rural areas and urban slums, is too formidable to be met by a modest increase in the budgetary funds. The latest Human Development Report and the FOCUS (Focus On Children Under Six) 2006 survey highlight the neglect of children In India. High economic growth alone is not enough. The health of citizens is equally important. India is far behind China and even Bangladesh in providing ante-natal care and nutrition to women and children. Although India’s infant mortality rate has declined from 150 per 1,000 live births in the late 1950s to 60 per 1,000 today, the progress has been painfully slow. Shockingly, about one-tenth of the Indian children die before reaching the age of five. While the efforts being made at the grassroots level by NGOs and Anganwadi workers are commendable, fund constraints and indifference on the part of the political leadership and the bureaucracy have come in the way of faster child development. Even the directions of the Supreme Court have been taken lightly. The court was constrained to summon the Chief Secretaries of several states, including Punjab and Haryana, for not implementing its orders on the ICDS. The Central and state leadership will have to take a pro-woman/child stance, earmark higher budgetary outlays and monitor the outcomes. |
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There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full. — Henry Kissinger
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Congress needs to change itself
THE Congress is suffering a mid-life crisis. This is not merely because it lost two of the three recent state assembly elections — the results were largely on predicted lines — but because at the midway point of its stint as leader of the coalition at the Centre, it seems bereft of new ideas. The party, as opposed to some wings of the government, has a tired look and the aam admi theme, much like gharibi hatao in an earlier era, has served its purpose. There is a new perception that the division of labour between party president Sonia Gandhi and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, which worked reasonably well for the first half of the term, needs to be refined. Historically, there has been friction between the chief of the party and the government head in the Congress and the only remedy that seemed to work was to combine the two posts. The present arrangement is unique because the party president bequeathed the prime ministership to Dr Manmohan Singh for shrewd personal and political reasons and thus acquired a halo. The Congress president was entitled to bask in the halo of the Congress victory, less than spectacular though it was, because she was its chief architect. And in the process of discharging her party responsibilities, she often displayed competence and an unsuspected political acumen that reminded old-timers of her mother-in-law. Has the Midas touch worn off? The limited campaigning Ms Gandhi did in the assembly elections was far from impressive and there was little spark in the predictable themes that were highlighted. The Congress always places a disproportionate burden on the leader in elections because there is no reason why she alone should lead the campaign in every state election. It stands to reason that high growth rates must be tempered by a better distribution of wealth and a new accent on agriculture. There were no stirring calls to lend all hands to pull up the poor and the deprived, no rousing of party troops and sympathisers. In recent times, the Congress has had to reinvent itself because the famous Brahmin-Dalit-Muslim combine was shattered years ago. The Dalits got wise and formed their own parties to elect their men and women. The Bharatiya Janata Party often appropriated Brahmins and the Muslim vote was scattered among those like the Samajwadi Party that ostentatiously spread out the welcome mat or the left parties or narrower religious-based entities. Thanks to six years of BJP rule at the Centre, a portion of Muslim votes is drifting back to the Congress. But the Congress has been unable to make a comeback in the Hindi heartland seized by Dalit-or backward castes-based regional parties or the BJP flaunting its Hindutva card. Important elections to the Uttar Pradesh assembly next month do not offer the Congress much hope because the contest in mainly between the Samajwadi Party and Ms Mayawati's Bahujan Samaj Party, with both the BJP and the Congress trailing.
Ms Sonia Gandhi's own assessment of Congress losses in the assembly elections, that they were partly influenced by the price rise, is reasonable but on past form, her admonition to her party men and women to introspect will largely go unheeded. Two factors seem to be militating against the Congress. How can the party return to power if it continues to lose one assembly election after another? Second, after the near-suicidal faction fights in the BJP, it seems to be getting its act together and will pose a threat to the Congress in the next general election. After the Congress lost its primacy, it has had difficulty retaining power in New Delhi. P.V. Narasimha Rao managed to convert his minority government into a majority by methods that are still being questioned and the next time around the Congress could come to power only by leading a motley coalition supported by the left parties, which chose to stay out. The BJP, in its first successful attempt to rule at the federal level, had an even greater pool of disparate parties. How far the familiar cry of a third front will change political equations remains to be seen. Individual and parties' opportunism has always sunk the prospect of a genuine alternative to the Congress and the
BJP. The crucial question facing the Congress, in reality its leader, is how far it can reinvent itself a second time. There is, of course, the mechanics of contesting elections, a drill the party knows better than any other entity. As Ms Gandhi should realise, her task transcends operational matters. She has to project a new élan, a new rallying cry that appeals to a wide constituency cutting across some caste and class lines. The minorities still favour the Congress because, despite all its sins, it remains largely secular and concerned about the welfare of all. The BJP is already employing the plank of berating the Congress for its minority "appeasement" and its alleged softness towards terrorism. This goes well with its Hindutva theme, which waxes and wanes with local and regional conditions. A price rise is an extra bonus for the BJP in contesting elections but it seems to have decided to unsheath its Hindutva sword to fell the Congress. Once the fog of the third front lifts, the Congress will have to decide on its election allies well in advance. As the grand old party of Indian Independence and the primacy it enjoyed for decades after Independence, the party is loath to acknowledge its inability to come to power on its own. Yet it might be forced to fight elections jointly with designated parties before polling. The difference between the seats won by the Akalis and the Congress was only four and it was the Akali party's pact with the BJP that helped give it a comfortable governing majority. Traditionally, the Congress relies on one leader — over the decades symbolised by one family — to lead it to victory and it gives that leader dictatorial powers. Ms Gandhi, therefore, bears great responsibility for keeping her side of the bargain. She has to energise not merely her troops but also the entire country to see the virtue of returning the party to power in the next general
election.
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Identity crisis
Bihar was the third largest state of India divided into 17 districts. The distances between the district headquarters and the state headquarters in some cases took a whole day of travel by car. The Railways provided overnight direct trains for district headquarters like Dhanbad and Ranchi. I had to return from Patna after a state-level meeting to Dhanbad where I was posted as the deputy commissioner in 1961. I had stayed in Patna with a colleague who happened to be the secretary to the governor. He undertook to get my return trip booked through the governor’s quota in the train, which gave me the privilege to travel in a coupe alone. Being sure of the seat in the train we sat down for a sundowner before leaving for the railway station. I found that when I reached the railway station, the train had started moving, slowly though. I rushed to jump into a first class compartment that was immediately before me scaring the hell out of a Bengali co-passenger. He pulled the chain before I could utter a word to explain my sudden appearance in his compartment. The train came to a halt and the guard came running to enquire about the chain-pulling. He heard me and said that my compartment was far ahead in the train, so I should wait till the next stoppage some 15 minutes ahead and change over. He ordered the train to move after doling out his advice to us. I got down on the next stoppage and moved to my first class coupe. Surprisingly, I found one more passenger in the compartment contrary to my expectation. I raised my eyebrows on seeing him and asked him as to how he was there. He looked at me and said that he was just keeping the seat warm for me and disappeared from the scene immediately. I locked my compartment from inside and went to sleep as I was confident that no one would come to disturb me till Dhanbad. The train reached Gaya junction at about 2 a.m. when I heard someone knocking on my compartment door from outside. I ignored the initial knocking till I could hear a crowd outside and some people asking me to open the door as they were the police. I got up and opened the door. I was shocked to see a group of railway officers and police officers holding out a telegram from Patna saying that SS Dhanoa who was to travel had missed the train and in his place an imposter who had cheated a family at Patna was in the train. They told me that they had come to arrest me. I lost my balance for a moment as I did not have any identity card unlike the armed forces and the police and Gaya was a different district where I knew no one. The sheer bafflement resulted in a stream of angry abuse in English from me which halted the police hands that were advancing towards me with handcuffs. The senior police officer apologised for the mistake and showed me the telegram. I told him that there was a gentleman who had got into my compartment at Patna before me as I had moved in only at the next station where he had disappeared. Luckily, the police got satisfied. I was saved from being detrained and reached home in one piece. I came to realise a decade later as to how narrow was my escape from a tragedy when late N.S. Kharola, a serving deputy commissioner of West Bengal, got rounded up in a somewhat similar jam by the Delhi police from where he could get out only after he had spent a month in Tihar
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Fiscal prudence takes
a back seat THE Union budget for 2007-2008 has promised to bring down the fiscal deficit. But with public expenditure at Rs. 6.81 lakh crore and revenue receipts only Rs. 4.86 lakh crore, it is difficult to see how union finance minister P. Chidambaram will achieve a reduction. In spite of a growing tax-GDP ratio and continuous buoyancy in revenue receipts, the revenue deficit and fiscal deficit are not declining. Moreover, there is no movement on disinvestment. Therefore, achieving the target of zero revenue deficit by 2009-10 (earlier 2008-09 was the target) as stipulated by the FRBM Act-2003, appears to be a far cry as now onwards we will be moving to the election year. Likewise, the Finance Minister is silent about the road map for adopting a comprehensive goods and services tax (GST); though he has assured, for obvious reasons, to refer the matter to the Empowered Committee of State Finance Ministers. An average Indian must learn to live with inflation as no fiscal measures have been taken to tackle it. The monetary measures announced recently by the RBI, like raising of various interest rates, CRR, repo rate, etc., have already become ineffective in view of the large scale incentives offered by the banks to increase their cash deposits. Inflation is going to stay, as fiscal and monetary measures are working at cross purposes. The matter will be further compounded if the ‘Debt Management Office’ as proposed by the Union Finance Minister is allowed to operate independently of the monetary authorities. Further, the supply side is already sticky, both in the national and international markets. Therefore, the Finance Minister should have announced some fiscal concessions to incentivise the farmers to increase production, as was done during the period of green revolution. Similarly a small increase in the rate of interest on non-tax-saving instruments would have enabled him to mobilise resources and curtail disposable income. For the first time, agriculture, education and public health have received special attention, while industry and service sectors have been left to fend themselves. Weather based crop insurance scheme will be introduced. The problem of depleting ground water has been recognized. Hundred per cent subsidy for digging wells and 50 per cent for water recharge will be provided. Rural credit has been enhanced to Rs. 2.25 lakh crores. Incentives for developing better seeds, watershed management, etc. would benefit the agricultural sector which has experienced almost a stagnant per capita income during the last three years compared with robust growth in service and manufacturing sectors. Expenditure on education and public health has been enhanced by 34.2 per cent and 21.9 per cent respectively for the next fiscal compared with the current fiscal. Since most of the expenditure will be incurred through the state governments, the states should gear up their machinery to reap the full benefits. In fact, states like Punjab need to create a special cell in the finance department dealing with central and centrally sponsored schemes. Based on the assumption that industry and service sectors have taken off and achieved the stage of self-sustained growth, these have been left almost untouched. Across the board decrease in peak import duty at the so called ASEAN level perhaps has been done under international pressure, and for a level-playing field this has necessitated countervailing cuts in union excise duty. All this will adversely affect the finances of both the Union and the state governments because almost 30 per cent of all tax revenue of the central government flows to states. Then, across the board increase in threshold income tax limit by Rs. 10,000 may benefit the lower income strata more but the increased education cess to 3 per cent may neutralize their gains, if any. Another thrust of the budget seems to be extending the social security net particularly for the workers in the unorganized sector. The insurance cover will be extended to rural landless households under the ‘Aam Admi Yojna Scheme’. Similarly 1 lakh jobs would be created for the physically handicapped persons during 2007-08. But the difficult question is, how will it be implemented and monitored? It would have been better if some mechanism for effective service delivery, involving all the stakeholders, including the institutions of local self-governance, had been evolved. The National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme where PRIs play a dominant role will be extended to 330 districts compared with 200 at present. And in rest of the districts ‘Swarn Jyanti Rozgar Yojana’ will be operated. Thus the budget has rightly shown its concern for the deprived sections of the society. Senior citizens too have something to cheer about. The income tax exemption limit in their case has been raised from Rs. 1.85 lakh to Rs. 1.95 lakh, though it is still short of the exemption limit of nearly Rs. 2.0 lakh which they enjoyed in 2005-06. Contribution to medical insurance in their case too has been raised from Rs. 15, 000 to Rs. 20,000, though here again the increased concession has already been eaten away by the insurance companies which have enhanced their premium. Considering their ever increasing number, it would have been better if the Finance Minister had constituted a commission to study senior citizens’ social and economic needs in a wider perspective.
The writer is an UGC Emeritus Fellow, Department of Economics, Punjabi University, Patiala |
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Health The fight against cancer has entered a new
phase with a study that opens the way to a new generation of drugs to combat
the harmful genes that give rise to the growth of tumours. Scientists have carried out the widest survey yet of the genetic errors that cause cancerous tumours to grow and overwhelm the body. The findings will be used to design potent anti-cancer drugs specifically targeted at counteracting mutations in a patient’s DNA. All cancers are thought to result from an accumulation of mutations in one or another of the 30,000 genes that comprise the human genome. These mutations cause a single cell to multiply uncontrollably to form a tumour that can then spread lethally to other parts of the body. Scientists have identified about 350 genes that have been implicated in the development of different cancers but have not until now had a clear idea about how many mutations in these genes are directly involved in triggering cancer. The latest study begins to answer this question by analysing 200 samples of cancerous tissue, surveying 500 genes and sequencing more than 250 million letters of the DNA code. An international team of more than 60 scientists led by Michael Stratton of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridge identified 158 mutations in 120 different genes that they believe can be implicated in cancer development. Professor Stratton said that the number of mutations that appear to be involved in driving the growth of cancerous tumours was larger than expected, but ultimately the technique will allow scientists to acquire a complete catalogue of all the mutations involved in each class of cancer. “The human genome is a vast place and this, our first systematic exploration in cancer, has thrown up many surprises,” Professor Stratton said. “We have found a much larger number of mutated driver genes produced by a wider range of forces than we expected,” he said. “It’s important because the more cancer genes we find, the more targets we’ll have in terms of potential new drugs.” The study, published in the journal Nature, compared the genetic sequence of the DNA derived from a patient’s tumour cells with the DNA of healthy cells from the same patient. The aim was to find the mutations that are present only in the tumour cells, and which could therefore be implicated in their growth. The scientists concentrated on a class of gene called the kinases which are known to play a role in cancer. They identified about 1,000 mutations in these genes. The next stage was to try to assess whether these mutations were directly involved in “driving” cancer development, or whether they were harmless “passenger” mutations, which always accumulate in the body with age. Andrew Futreal, a senior team member at the Sanger, said that some 158 driver mutations were identified by a statistical approach, or by a process of scientific deduction, in 120 of the kinase genes studied by the scientists. “It turns out that most mutations in cancers are passengers. However, buried amongst them are much larger numbers of driver mutations than was previously anticipated,” Dr Futreal said. “This suggests that many more genes contribute to cancer development than was thought,” he said. Scientists believe that a fundamental analysis of the “cancer genome” will lead to a new approach to the design and development of specific molecules that will act as potent anti-cancer drugs. “This study vindicates all of the effort that went into the Human Genome Project. Understanding the mutations that cause cancer is crucial in order to develop accurately targeted treatments,” said Mark Walport, director of the Wellcome Trust. Francis Collins, director of the US National Genome Research Institute said that the genome approach will open the door to new cancer breakthroughs. “A full assault on the cancer genome will yield many opportunities to revolutonise diagnosis and treatment,” Dr Collins said. By arrangement with
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Delhi Durbar Agriculture minister and Maratha strongman Sharad Pawar’s daughter Supriya Sule, the latest entrant to the Gen-next club in Parliament, has demonstrated over and over again that she is no pushover. For one, she refuses to respond to queries on her father’s charges, agriculture and cricket. In fact, she did not hesitate to tick off eager television journalists, who are constantly chasing her for sound bytes. “Don’t ask me anything about cricket or agriculture. I’ve had it up to here on these subjects,” she said while gesturing to her head. When a journalist told her how her father is under attack for the rise in prices of wheat and pulses. “I am sure he is tough enough to handle it,” she shot back.
I am back Human resource development minister Arjun Singh met presspersons earlier this week ostensibly to discuss this year’s budgetary proposals for education. But the real purpose of this exercise was to tell his detractors in the party and government, “Main Hoon Na.” Arjun Singh had not been attending office or Cabinet meetings since he underwent a surgery over three months ago, which had led to speculation that he could either be shifted to a vacant Raj Bhavan or made a minister without portfolio. The veteran Congress leader made it abundantly clear to all those who were busy writing his political obituary that he should not be written off. He said he will start going to office from Monday and even made it a point to attend the core committee meeting at the Prime Minister’s residence last Friday.
Girl power Women and child development minister Renuka Chaudhury has a knack for stirring up things wherever she goes. She created quite a buzz when she was heading the tourism ministry with her innovative schemes and controversial decisions. She has done the same in her new ministry, having taken up the cause of the “missing girl child” with her usual passion. So, it was not surprising when she managed to persuade telephone service providers, the railways and airlines to beam out the message of the “value of the girl child and women’s empowerment” on International Women’s Day last week. The ministry organised a series of programmes to mark the day and ended with a special dinner at Renuka’s residence for which she put together an eclectic mix of guests.
You, too? The Congress, which lost the electoral battle in Uttarakhand largely because of its infighting, can derive some satisfaction from the way things have gone in the BJP. It took some effort for the BJP high command to get the MLAs to agree to its choice of Maj Gen (retd) B. C. Khanduri as Chief Minister. State BJP chief B.S. Koshiyari, who was in the race for the top post, has been made chief of the coordination committee. Though it is early to say how the BJP machinery will work in the state, the Congress would be looking to expose loose ends.
Contributed by Prashant Sood, R.Suryamurthy and Anita Katyal
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I have the highest reverence for Brahminism, under which a class has been set apart from generation to generation for the exclusive pursuit of divine knowledge and consigned to voluntary poverty. God himself shapes (men as) pots and brings them to perfection into some is poured the milk (of loving kindness), while others are set for ever upon the stove (of passion). But wander from death to death; but those who have discrimination, with a still mind and a pure heart, reach journey’s end, never again to fall into the jaws of death.
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