 |
|
Save the deal Strings unattached Mountain man |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Disrespect to courts
Love at last
Anti-Americanism
blinds the Left Root out khap panchayats Delhi Durbar
|
Save the deal THERE is reason for hope in the standoff between the Left and the UPA government. There is no longer any talk of an impending “divorce”, to borrow the colourful expression used by a Leftist leader. Rather, there is a willingness on both sides to be more accommodative to each other. The readiness shown by the government to appoint a committee to assess the Hyde Act passed by the US Congress in December last and see whether it contravenes the provisions of the 123 Agreement is a pointer. What the critics of the agreement have been saying is that the Act makes it implicit for the US to suspend supply of all technology to India in the event the latter decides to go in for further testing. If the committee finds that the Act does not jeopardise the agreement, the Left should be gracious enough to withdraw its opposition to the deal. Also, it should not insist on suspending the operationalising of the deal before the mechanism on the Hyde Act is put in place. Similarly, the UPA government, which is dependent on the Left for its survival, should refrain from using harsh language against it as manifested in an interview the Prime Minister granted to a Kolkata paper. What is required is a cooling off on both sides. The CPM has argued that the agreement does not have majority support in Parliament. What it overlooks is that the reasons why the Left and the BJP oppose the agreement are quite different from each other. For the Communists what is objectionable is that India has entered into a deal with the US, which it cannot stand for ideological reasons. As for the BJP, which initiated the dialogue with the US, it sees in the 123 Agreement an opportunity to embarrass the government. The very fact that CPM General Secretary Prakash Karat has rejected the BJP’s call for cooperation shows the two parties are on different wavelengths. If the UPA government goes slow on the agreement, its credibility to negotiate deals with foreign countries will suffer. No country will take it seriously and regaining the lost credibility will be a Herculean task. The agreement clearly mentions that it will be guided by the national laws of the two countries. So, if the Hyde Act comes in the way, nothing prevents India from enacting suitable laws to overcome it. In other words, there are ways in which the agreement can be saved. Infantile arguments that it is not listed in the Common Minimum Programme should not be allowed to prevail and scuttle the agreement reached through painstaking negotiations spread over two years.
|
|
Strings unattached THE BJP and the RSS have always stoutly denied that the latter is instrumental in the party’s decision-making process. It is another matter that this is one of the most open secrets of the country. The involvement of the RSS has rather increased after the advent of Mr Rajnath Singh, so much so that RSS functionaries — organising secretaries as they are called —run the show right from the district level. Given such ground realities, the news that the RSS has decided to disengage itself from the party affairs will take some time to sink in. Hardboiled political analysts will surely like to wait and see if the overarching presence is indeed withdrawn. But if it actually does happen, it will indeed give the BJP the much-needed elbow room to rediscover its political space, which it lost because of the Sangh straitjacket. In fact, the RSS Hindutva diktats had a lot to do with the defeat of the BJP in the last elections. It is true that the BJP had ridden to power on that very saffron agenda but once it tasted power, it realised that the RSS philosophy was out of sync with democratic functioning. Unfortunately, right lessons were not learnt even after the poll drubbing and things have been going downhill since then. Losses in Uttar Pradesh and Goa and also the Shivpuri byelection in Madhya Pradesh all point to the growing marginalisation of the party. Ironically, decades of RSS micro-management have left the BJP in such disarray that it will be quite some time before it learns to fend for itself. There are very few leaders on the party horizon who can manage things on their own. The party cannot continue to depend on Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Mr L.K. Advani. Mr Rajnath Singh owes his elevation to the RSS. The only course that can slow down or reverse the BJP decline is to shed its Hindutva agenda. That will be quite a sharp turn. Only a highly competent captain can carry out the complex manoeuvre.
|
|
Mountain man THE story of Dashrath Majhi is awe-inspiring. Generations to come will be inspired by the grit and motivation of the man who carved out a 360-foot road in the mountains in memory of his wife who lost her life for want of a short-cut. They would be infuriated by the state government which was so out of touch with the needs of the people, that it stood by as he chiselled away for 22 years. Majhi’s wife died as she could not reach the nearest health centre on the other side of the Gahlaur mountain where they lived, in Bihar’s Gaya district. His efforts reduced the distance to the centre from about 50 kilometres to a manageable eight kilometres. And so he became an “icon of Bihar” in Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s words. He has been given a state funeral, and a hospital has been promised at Atri, the village of his birth. The road he made will be named after him. It is more important for politicians to be seen helping the people rather than making an actual difference on the ground, and Bihar has particularly suffered in this regard. For decades, the state was symbolic of backward politics that seemed to believe that keeping people in want was a way of ensuring that they remained trusty vote banks. It was, in fact, politicians in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh who found no use for modern highways. During the last general elections, in campaigning against the Centre’s Golden Quadrilateral programme, one worthy declared: “Of what use is a highway to a poor man on a cycle?” Dashrath Majhi would have told him a thing or two about what enhanced connectivity can do for a village, an economy, and a society’s well-being. There is a clue for governments as to the best tribute for Majhi. Build roads, lots of them, from single-lane mountain roads to concrete six-laners. And name those after persons like Majhi.
|
|
Youth is a blunder; manhood a struggle; old age a regret. — Benjamin Disraeli
|
Disrespect to courts
Hurling
of shoes or abuses at a judge in a courtroom by a disgruntled litigant may hurt the judge, but a calculated disdainful attitude to the court’s authority would damage the judiciary as an institution — surely so if defiance is repeated and by the executive wing of the State. The Prime Minister of India a few months ago highlighted the need for the different organs of the State to stick to the areas assigned to them by the Constitution and in a spirit of cooperation. Obviously, he was more than hinting that the judiciary was exceeding its limit — that was the period when the Delhi sealing drive was at its peak. Chief Justice Balakrishnan responded that under a written Constitution, some tension between the legislature, the executive and the judiciary is inevitable — nay, to some extent desirable. After all, it is for the courts to interpret the Constitution and pronounce who in a given situation has acted outside the limits. This much is perfectly healthy. But when a Secretary to the Central Government in an affidavit or a law officer treats the court with disrespect, alarm bells should start ringing. Resistance to judicial authority by the executive is not unprecedented. The early English history of a clash between the king and the court, or the speaker and the court may not be relevant to the Indian context. But in the United States of America, governed by a written constitution that highlights judicial supremacy, there were some notable confrontations. President Thomas Jefferson refused to honour a court summons to give evidence in a criminal case involving Aaron Burr, who was his former vice-president and later a bitter enemy. Jefferson also directed his Secretary of State James Madison to refuse to acknowledge the Supreme Court’s jurisdiction and to ignore any adverse order in the case of Marbury. It is a matter of history that a great legal craftsman, Chief Justice John Marshal, in the celebrated case of Marbury vs Madison declined to grant any relief to Marbury while handing down a judgment that the Supreme Court had the power to judicially review executive actions — including that of the President. Such instances can be termed as “one time” resistance to a particular situation. What we are witnessing in India is the evolution of a trend to defy, or of “developing resistance” to the expanding horizon of the PIL jurisdiction. The PIL jurisdiction is now accepted as legitimate. But is the growing criticism that in the name of PIL the court is running a parallel administration justified? Can our laws tolerate the creation of extra-legal institutions like empowered committees and monitoring committees that draw remuneration and perks from the Consolidated Fund under the orders of courts? And the courts have conferred power on them to decide the fate of citizens, as if the oath of office administered to the judges reads, “you Mr Justice or your nominee” will perform the duties of the office of a judge? All these questions arise because of the belief that despite the developing trend in other walks of life, constitutional duties cannot be outsourced. Should courts undertake exercises like Delhi sealing or forest management where continuous supervision is needed and the court finds that the existing executive machinery is unreliable or insufficient despite Article 144 of the Constitution that mandates that all civil and judicial authorities shall act in aid of the Supreme Court? And the High Courts have not lagged behind in imitating — often doing one better. They also created committees with powers, perks and emoluments decreed by the will of the court. Recently the Rajasthan High Court in effect appointed 50-odd food inspectors to check the sale of some concoction as milk. Incidentally, the learned Chief Justice who passed that order had almost a decade ago as a judge of the Patna High Court directed the Army — that too over the telephone and before day-break — to arrest Mr Lalu Prasad Yadav. The Delhi High Court, it appears, had demarcated the capital city to several zones each to be put under the charge of one of the members of its monitoring committee. One such member on his own reportedly ordered demolition of a building. Fortunately, a law-knowing judge stayed the destruction. More recently, a committee was to be appointed by the Central Government under the Forest Act. The “amicus curie” — a friend of the court —appointed by the Supreme Court and the CEC recommended some names and asked the government to notify them. The government refused to toe the line and categorically stated that constituting the committee was not the function of the court. A Secretary to the Government of India stated so in an affidavit, referred to earlier. Showing disrespect to courts can never be justified; such indefensible disdainful acts can harm the institution. They have to be prevented. Treating the challenge as contempt of court or administering admonition as was done in the case of the sting operation on a Gujarat judge can hardly be preventative. Such resistance should be viewed as a symptom. Why do they erupt? The great civil rights lawyer and a highly respected justice of the US Supreme Court, Thurgood Marshall, said: “The only real source of power that the judges can tap is the respect of the people.” People respect judges not because of any mistaken belief that they are of a different breed, but because the judges are expected to and indeed do generally function in accordance with the discipline of law. They follow the path of Dharma. Therefore, if courts develop a habit of making “ad hoc” decisions, the very foundation for the public respect is destroyed — and so is the source of judges’ power. Good order in the country cannot be established by good intentions alone. Therefore, the court-sponsored programmes with no sustained executive support are bound to fail and with it the high hopes of the people will fall to the ground. In addition, the most serious of many dangers that are inherent to ad-hocism is that it creates an ideal opportunity to the charlatans in many garbs to strike deals in the name of unsuspecting judges — may be some weak judges would succumb and many would undeservingly come under a cloud. The combined ill effect is the loss of respect that may cheer defiance. Everything is not yet lost; a larger Bench of the Supreme Court can correct the course after retracting from the path that is surely leading the judiciary to a quagmire. Maybe, a pending case of the 1980s in which the late Venkataramiah J had raised 10 questions regarding the parameters of PIL jurisdiction for decision by a larger Bench — or the appeal by the Rajasthan government in the food inspectors’ case — would provide the right opportunity to define the corridors for PILs. The issue can brook no
delay. The writer is Senior Advocate, Supreme Court of India
|
Love at last OVER my dead body; you know I’m allergic to dogs.” With these words, my better half would veto my son and me whenever we broached the subject of keeping a canine pet. My wife would go into a sneezing spree every time we visited someone with a dog. So it was with some misgiving that I gave in to the request of my aunt who was to go to visit her son in Vancouver. “I’m going for just two weeks. Could you please look after my Lisa while I’m gone?” Lisa was a lovely golden Labrador. My wife was to be in Delhi for a month and I had a big house with lawns and large open spaces around (a ‘biyabaan’ area, as some people called it!). So I agreed. Lisa adjusted to the new surroundings with surprising ease, and within a few days had made a special place in our hearts. Unfortunately, my aunt could not come back as planned. She had to stay on for a mandatory period because of her being a Green Card applicant. So, Lisa was at home when my wife arrived. We broke the news gently to her on the way from the railway station. This was taken with a look which would make hell freeze. “Just keep the dog away from me or I will kill it” were the only words she muttered. However, Lisa would follow my wife around all day and turn her melting deep brown eyes on her. She soon had a grudging admirer. Lisa had impeccable manners. She was a retired police sniffer dog, and was completely house-trained. With a leonine head and a stately walk, she had an imposing personality. Anything she did - even if going for a walk - was done with enthusiasm and a weird sense of purpose as if the fate of the world depended on what she was going to do next. Miraculously, there were no sneezing bouts. In my wife’s presence Lisa would pointblank refuse to acknowledge us - thank God, it was not the other way around! Her food, utensils and protective winter coats had to be spick and span. Woe betide the maid if she allowed even a bit of dust to land in Lisa’s water bowl. She would be bathed and shampooed very week and had her own soft toys. Our dinner might get delayed, but never Lisa’s. At night Lisa would get kissed goodnight! The person who coined the word “It’s a dog’s life” apparently had never been near Lisa. The health of the whole family improved as twice a day walks with Lisa became our routine. We discovered lovely walking areas in the surroundings that we never knew existed. During the walks if any stray dog dared to bark at us he would be immediately answered with a deep menacing growl. This would normally be enough. Very rarely would she actually get into a brawl - probably it was too unseemly for her taste. She loved travelling in a car with her snout out of the window and a happy smile on her face. I did not realise the extent to which Lisa had mesmerised my better half till one cold winter night when I asked her what she had been doing and she told me in a very matter-of-fact manner, “ I was tucking in Lisa.” Strong words indeed for a recent self-proclaimed
dog-hater.
|
Anti-Americanism blinds the Left THE Ugly American” was, of course, a Hollywood movie of the 1960s but if recent political dramatics in our country are anything to go by, the USA, for some, continues to be the dirty bully that it has always been; this despite the fact that more than 60 per cent of our people see that country and its leadership as friendly to India. The Communist parties, who now use the more sophisticated term “Left” to describe themselves, see red whenever the USA is mentioned; it being a different matter that China itself seeks and revels in strategic cooperation with the superpower. The BJP, drooling at the Americans when it was in power, now claims that they are taking us down the drain. Somewhere on the sidelines are the ragtag group calling themselves the UNPA – our United Non Performing Assets. The nuclear agreement is only one issue on which there has been so much humbug. In any event it has now become abundantly clear that the 123 itself is not the issue; while one side will oppose it because it could not take it through during its own period in office and sees political capital in now opposing it, the other dislikes anything remotely American even if that is pro-Indian. But there are other areas which have been used to project the Americans as demons out to get India in some way or to subvert its sovereignty. At least three of them, all in the maritime domain, need discussion. The first of these is the Container Security Initiative or CSI. Following the attacks on the World Trade Centre etc in September 2001 the USA looked at every aspect of its security and found, correctly, that there were glaring loopholes in ports, both in terms of their physical security as well as of ships that came in from all over the world. A particularly weak area was in the containers which arrived in the country after being routed through many ports around the world and could carry illicit materiel including arms, explosives and even WMD. Accordingly, all countries were informed that containers coming into US ports would need X-ray certification from wherever they were loaded; a perfectly sensible measure for any country to take. The matter was deliberated upon by the International Maritime Bureau (IMB) a subsidiary of the United Nations and it was accepted that CSI was needed, not just for container movement to US ports but to other places as well. India is a member of the IMB and is obliged to follow its directions. It is, therefore, proceeding to implement the CSI progressively given that there is a cost, but there can be no doubt of its necessity. We are, of course, at liberty not to do anything ourselves but we cannot tell others that they are wrong if they require strict security norms. Yet, our Left says that we are kowtowing to the Americans and being driven by them to conform to their dictates. The second American action that allegedly will compromise our sovereignty is the Proliferation Security Initiative or PSI. When first put out, the PSI was an American initiative with fourteen member countries. Briefly, the PSI required participating states to board and search ships at sea (also aircraft and vehicles) suspected to be engaged in transporting WMD or related materials. Obviously, the maritime domain was the most suited to the crime. Objections raised by many countries, including India, were that international law did not permit ships to be so investigated on the high seas, that there was need for IMB deliberation and action rather than American direction and that there were loose areas to be resolved such as source and reliability of intelligence based on which action would be taken, liability for damage resulting from search etc. The PSI now has 86 member countries on its rolls; even more important, its provisions have been incorporated by the IMB in the October 2005 Protocol to the Suppression of Unlawful Activities at Sea (SUA) Convention. So, objections to the PSI are now irrelevant as we now have to comply with international conventions. In any event, we have not been very fussy in earlier years about arresting and even destroying ships suspected, not known, to be carrying arms for the LTTE on the high seas. To say, therefore, that joining the PSI would violate our sovereignty is hogwash, to say the least. The third issue is opposition to joint naval exercises. Until the late 1960s, ships of the Indian Navy exercised routinely with those of several other navies. Thereafter, with hardware from the former USSR coming in with a security clause requiring it not to be exposed to ‘western’ eyes, these interfaces came to an end as we retired like frogs into our own little well. It took three decades and the end of the Cold War for things to change. We now exercise at sea with several countries, not just that of the USA. These include those from Russia, Australia, the UK, France, Japan, Singapore, Indonesia, Philippines, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Oman, and, yes, China. There is a purpose to these exercises. They enable us to judge our own professional capabilities against a standard – those of the others. They, therefore, generate confidence. At the same time, they enable the others to assess our own standards and there is reason to believe that we score very high. Easily the most competent navy in the world is that of the USA and exercises with it have been very useful in reassuring us of our own skills and in honing them. Furthermore, these interfaces establish our position and legitimacy in the waters of concern to us. If India is today acknowledged as the premier regional maritime power in the Indian Ocean it is not because of sitting at home in splendid isolation, doing nothing. To argue that by engaging in such exercises we will become somebody’s stooge is as foolish as it is laughable. In short, anti-Americanism parroted ad nauseum is not going to promote India’s national interests. The writer is a former Commander-in-Chief of the Eastern Naval Command
|
|
Root out khap panchayats THE Khap Panchayat is largely a Jat institution around Delhi – Delhi Dehat, Haryana, Western UP and adjoining areas of Rajasthan. It is a gotra-centric panchayat covering a cluster of villages dominated by a particular gotra of Jats. All the members of the khap are supposed to be related to one another with ties of blood. This bhaichara (brotherhood) is the basis of community solidarity. Marriage within the same khap is a taboo. The exposure of the youth to the modern ways of living and the spread of education has greatly weakened the khap structure and eroded its appeal and legitimacy. The joint family system has largely broken down and the family elder has lost his old prestige. All the members of a khap are no longer regarded as brothers and sisters and intimacy between the two sexes is getting quite common. When it tends to take the form of a matrimonial alliance, this is taken as a threat to the halloed institution of the khap by a section of the rural society. It is treated as an unpardonable sin and invites barbarous punishment including instant death. The khap panchayat has become a law unto itself. Kangaroo courts are held and fatwas issued. It is anti-women and anti-weaker sections. Since a daughter is treated as a repository of family honour, she bears the brunt when she deviates from the khap norms in matrimonial alliance and her male partner too meets the same fate if caught together. Of late, there has been a spate of such cases in Haryana. A number of couples have fallen to brutal murder at the hands of the girl's relatives. The administrative apparatus of the state which is supposed to maintain the rule of law is either a mute spectator or lends a helping hand on the sly to facilitate the ghastly act. The latest is the case of a couple in Karoda village in Kaithal district of Haryana which has hogged the media headlines. Police showed undue haste in registering a case of kidnapping Babli, shown as minor, against Manoj and his family without verifying facts, after they duly solemnised their marriage at Chandigarh. Sessions Judge, Kaithal reprimanded the police after the girl established in the court that she was major and had married Manoj of her sweet will. The court directed the police to provide protection to the couple until they reached their destination. But the sudden disappearance of the police men on duty on the way, the whisking away of the couple by the girl’s relatives, police inaction in spite of this information reaching them via the bus driver and a road contractor, the hasty cremation of the couple’s decomposed bodies, as unidentified, after their discovery in a canal, establishes the complicity of the police in the gruesome act beyond any reasonable doubt. Purity of blood – the motivating force behind the ideology of fascism in Germany and Italy – is a myth now in all the ethnic groups the world over, thanks to the developments in the field of genetics. This is more true of Haryana. After the collapse of the Mauryan empire, a number of new ethnic groups came into Haryana region – the Greeks, Shakas, Scythians, Parthians, Huns, Kushans etc. – and many of them settled here. This explains the motley traditions of Haryana people. The medieval era was marked by a series of foreign invasions by Mughals, Afghans, Turks, Persians, Mongols etc. and the Haryana region had to bear the brunt. Three famed battles of Panipat, a town in Haryana, changed the course of Indian history. Many members of these ethnic groups settled in this region. Historically speaking, Haryanvis are of mixed breed. Modern science of genetics tells us that mixed breed is better in many ways like hybrid seeds which have greater productive potential. Likewise, the concept of brotherhood in a khap, which played a useful role by providing a sense of security to its members in medieval times marked by lawlessness, has lost all its relevance in modern times. In fact, the Jat community is suffering from the pangs of transition. It has failed to resolve the tension between tradition and modernity. Tradition untouched by modernity is decadent while modernity unhinged from tradition is shallow. It is the harmonious blend of tradition and modernity that puts a community on the onward march and Jats have failed to achieve this. This explains the growing irrelevance of this community in the national context. Some developments paint the Jat community in still darker hue. Some Jat organisations have publicly declared their intention to honour the Karoda killers and establish a Jat Takhat at Pushkar on the pattern of the Akal Takhat at Amritsar, to regulate the conduct of the community. All this is fast pushing this community into a dark zone of brutality and barbarism.
|
|
Delhi Durbar Recently
elected Vice-President and Rajya Sabha Chairman Hamid Ansari’s family members were overwhelmed by the warm reception accorded to him on his first day in the House of Elders. His wife, Salma, sons Usman and Suleman, daughter-in-law, Sana and nephew Rashid enthusiastically heard the welcome speeches of members in the House of Elders. They tried to catch every word of BJP member Najma Heptulla’s speech as she was also in the race for the Vice-President’s post. Stepping out of the visitor’s gallery, the two ladies in Ansari’s family described their visit to Parliament as a wonderful experience. While Ansari’s wife runs schools in Aligarh for children below the poverty line, his New York-based daughter-in-law works on the business side of The Time magazine. Ansari is slowly but definitely getting the hang of overseeing the proceedings of the Rajya Sabha notwithstanding the initial confusion with some members’ names and party affiliations.
Karnataka in a tangle Even as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh hinted at the Congress not having another power sharing alliance with the JD(S) during a recent visit to Karnataka, there is a sizeable section in the state Congress which is not averse to such a tie-up to prevent the state from getting a BJP Chief Minister in October, when the partners of the ruling coalition are due to swap the top positions. While the PM’s comments came out of his evident anxiety to see the Congress coming to power on its own in the next assembly elections, several party leaders feel that the saffron party will be on a firmer ground in the southern state once it has its Chief Minister. A section of the Congress leaders from Karnataka have met party president Sonia Gandhi to press for the formation of another Cong-JD(S) government. While a section of JD(S) is also not keen to back a BJP-led government, any new tie-up in the name of secularism will require sorting out several vexed questions, including that of the choice of Chief Minister.
Jagmeet lying low Former Congress MP Jagmeet Singh Brar has been keeping a low profile for some months now, evidently with an eye on the post of the Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC) chief. Jagmeet, whose outspokenness has not always found favour with the party’s central leadership, is seemingly keen to get the coveted post in the state to establish himself as a leader with wide appeal. Never shy of verbal duels, Jagmeet has apparently been advised by his well wishers not to get embroiled in any controversy. Contributed by Tripti Nath and Prashant Sood
|
| HOME PAGE | |
Punjab | Haryana | Jammu & Kashmir |
Himachal Pradesh | Regional Briefs |
Nation | Opinions | | Business | Sports | World | Mailbag | Chandigarh | Ludhiana | Delhi | | Calendar | Weather | Archive | Subscribe | Suggestion | E-mail | |
