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Power to question Progress on pipeline |
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Taking on inflation
Nepal under Maoists
Who goes there?
Oil on the boil Saving the girl child In Russia, cartoons are no laughing matter
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Power to question FEW laws have empowered the common man as the Right to Information Act. For the same reason, many of those in power hate the Act. It is now more than two years since people began asking questions to government agencies under the Act. In umpteen cases, they got the answers. Of course, there have been stonewalling attempts. In some cases, the guilty officials were punished for not providing replies in time. On the whole, the Act has turned out to be a great check on the executive. Small wonder that there is a case for extending the provisions of the Act to sectors that remain insulated from it. The judiciary is one of them. We have in these columns argued that the judiciary should not fight shy of being covered by the Act. It would only enhance its prestige. However, Chief Justice of India K.G. Balakrishnan has opined that the Chief Justice being a constitutional authority, does not fall within its purview. On the other hand, a parliamentary committee has in its report argued that the judiciary does not merit an exemption from the RTI because other constitutional authorities are also covered by it. As we also argued, the committee, too, feels that judicial decision-making should not be subject to questioning. To elaborate, it will not be proper to ask why a judge decided in favour of the prosecution and not the defendant in a case. Such questions can undermine the authority of the court. At the same time, nothing should prevent anybody from asking questions pertaining to administrative matters. For instance, what is wrong if a person wants to know how many cases have been settled in a particular year and how many were kept pending. Or, whether a son or a daughter of a judge is practising in the same court? Public authority as defined by the RTI should also include judges. Even under the RTI Act, questions relating to national security, military deployment, international relations and the like are exempted. This being the case, there should be no hesitation on the part of the judiciary to let the RTI come into operation in its sphere also. It cannot be anybody’s case that everything is hunky-dory in the courts. The administration in the courts is as good or as bad as in government departments. So, why should there be an exemption? People have a right to ask questions about the functioning of courts as they can about the prime minister’s office. |
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Progress on pipeline IT is good news that almost all the hurdles in the way of the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline project have been cleared. As President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran announced in New Delhi on Tuesday, the discussions in this regard would conclude within 45 days. The construction work for the $7.5 billion project is expected to begin next year. The timeframe for signing the necessary agreements was finalised during a meeting between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Mr Ahmadinejad. The question of transit fee and other issues between India and Pakistan regarding the 2600-km pipeline were sorted out during a meeting of the petroleum ministers of the two countries in Islamabad last week. The pricing factor, very important for India, has also been settled to its satisfaction. Significantly, the progress has been achieved despite stiff opposition by the US. Energy-deficient India could not afford to lose the opportunity that came its way. All the countries involved will benefit considerably. The construction of the project will be undertaken by Iran till the Iranian border with Pakistan. From there it will be Pakistan’s responsibility to take it to its border with India. Then it will be India’s turn to bring the pipeline to the distribution centre in the country. China, too, has expressed its interest in the project. Its involvement may add to its viability. The pipeline to China may pass though the Pakistani territory alongside the Karakoram Highway. Iran’s massive gas reserves can spur economic activity in the region once the pipeline becomes a reality. Relations among the countries involved are bound to improve because of their common stake in the project. It may particularly provide fillip to the efforts for peace between India and Pakistan. President Ahmadinejad’s visit to New Delhi has infused a new life into the relations between India and Iran. It may serve to end the misunderstanding that was caused by India’s vote at the International Atomic Energy Agency meeting to discuss the Iranian nuclear issue. India’s determination to remain associated with the pipeline project has demonstrated that New Delhi values its traditional ties with Teheran. |
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Taking on inflation THE RBI and the government took some more steps on Tuesday to contain the price rise. The RBI increased the cash reserve ratio (CRR) for the second time in 12 days to 8.25 per cent to contain the inflation-stoking cash flow in the banking system. This will dent banks’ profitability, but may not lead them to hike the interest rates. Any increase in the repo and reverse repo rates would have hurt the banks and the industry more. By leaving these two key rates untouched, the RBI has adopted a benign approach, which has been rightly welcomed by the stock markets. On his part, Finance Minister P.Chidambaram did some tinkering with the import/export duties to increase the domestic availability of steel, cement, basmati rice and a few other items. This was accompanied by threats from the minister of more such curbs if the industry fails to keep prices on hold. He had earlier accused top cement and steel firms of forming cartels to push up prices. A better way is to let the Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices Commission smash cartels, if any. In a gentler way, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called for sobriety in corporate lifestyle and salaries to cut costs and maintain the price level. He needs to act on the same advice with regard to his political colleagues and bureaucrats. These steps may help only marginally in bringing down inflation, currently at 7.33 per cent. A good harvest is more effective. Thanks to a bumper crop, wheat prices have started cooling. The RBI and the government are trying to suppress demand, instead of making efforts to enhance the supply of industrial and agricultural goods. Their strategy has slowed down growth. From 9.2 per cent last year, the RBI expects it to be at 8-8.5 per cent this fiscal, while the IMF prediction is more modest at 7.9 per cent. Slower growth hurts the poor the most and reduces government revenue, which, in turn, hits social sector spending. The focus should be to raise industrial and agricultural productivity and profitability along with an effective delivery of subsidised food to the poor. |
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What is merit? The opinion one man entertains
of another. — Lord Palmerston |
Nepal under Maoists
Pushpa
Kamal Dahal aka Prachanda is an enigma to many Indians. Educated in elite universities in Chandigarh and New Delhi, he now seeks to portray himself as a moderate, determined to take Nepal forward as a democratic and federal republic. He professes to be realistic about relations with India and claims that he wants equally good relations with both India and China. While he speaks of an empathy with the ideological moorings of Indian Maoists, he asserts that violence cannot resolve political issues. This comes from a person who led a bloody armed struggle for a decade between 1996 and 2006, in which 13000 people are reported to have perished. This was a period when there was no dearth of evidence about Prachanda’s links with the Maoists in India. While there are differences of opinion about how New Delhi should respond to the challenge of a Maoist-led government in Kathmandu, there can be no doubt that like in Pakistan, our diplomatic and intelligence establishments have been horribly wrong in their assessments of emerging political development. Questions are in order about whether cronyism and parochialism should prevail over experience and expertise in postings of senior diplomats to important neighbouring countries. Those not given to sentimentalism recognise that across Nepal there is almost a pathological distrust of India. Successive monarchs have not hesitated to play the anti-India card and even political parties like the Nepali Congress, not to speak of the mainstream CPN (UML), have found Indian bashing and attempting to play the so-called “China Card” useful political tools. The monarchy has also played the “Hindu card”, to influence Indian opinion regularly, even as it sought to routinely adopt policies evoking Indian concern. The hard reality is that in the recent elections, which have been internationally seen as largely free and fair, the Maoists have secured precisely half the directly contested seats. This is a democratic verdict that cannot be ignored, whatever the reservations that distant powers may have about the Maoists. Secondly, politicians and political parties in Nepal, including the Maoists, have shown remarkable maturity in reconciling their differences. This was evident from the steps taken like the Seven-Party Agreement of December 2007 which evolved an extremely innovative combination of first- past-the-post and proportional representation seats in the Constituent Assembly. The parties have also agreed on several commissions on issues like truth and reconciliation, human rights and the return of the land captured illegally by the Maoists to their rightful owners. The process of government formation and building a consensus is, however, not going to be easy and it remains to be seen how it will be competed in the scheduled two and a half years. One hopes that during this period, the Maoists will not be denied their rightful place in the Nepali polity and that they, in turn, will recognise the merit of working with others in a consensual manner. With 26 seats yet to be filled by consensus in the Constituent Assembly, the Maoists have 220 seats, the Nepali Congress 110, the CPN (UML) 103 and the Madhesi Parties around 85 seats, with 54 being held by the staunchly anti-Maoist Madhesi Janadhikar Forum (MJF). Prime Minister Koirala showed remarkable statesmanship in striking a deal with the MJF that provided for a federal state structure with an autonomous Madhesi State and proportional representation of marginalised communities into the Nepal Army. The Maoists are not too pleased with this agreement, but they will have little choice but to implement it if they want to end decades of discrimination practised by the monarchy against a disenfranchised and disempowered Madhes population. The Madhes region bordering UP and Bihar, where a substantial proportion of Nepal’s industries are located, has become a hotbed of intrigue, violence and caste, ethnic and religious rivalries. India, which wields influence in this bordering region, should categorically reject the outrageous demands for “self-determination” by the Madhes groups, while advocating substantial devolution of powers in a federal polity. We could well be faced with a situation worse than the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka, with no dearth of clones of Velupillai Prabhakaran emerging on the scene if his issue is not sensitively handled. The other issue on which India can help is the transition process in building a new Nepalese Army whose loyalty is not to the discredited monarchy, whose days are numbered, but to the new constitution of Nepal. While individuals from Maoist cadres could be absorbed into the army, Prachanda would be well advised to avoid seeking integration of his cadres in separate units of the new armed forces. The bulk of his cadres will have to be suitably integrated into the national life of Nepal, and India would be well advised to work with the international community to raise the necessary financial resources for this process. The United Nations Mission in Nepal (UNMIN) played a useful role in both the management of the arms surrendered by the Maoists and in the election process. But some of its members were reportedly less than neutral and some even provocative in fomenting religious and ethnic separatism. It is time the size of the UNMIN was drastically reduced and confined to the management and custody of the arms surrendered by the Maoists. India will have to take a mature view on future relations with Nepal. We have to recognise that the provisions of the 1950 treaty are justifiably regarded by most Nepalese as unequal. We should be prepared to renegotiate this treaty in much the same manner as we have done with Bhutan. Likewise, Nepalese do naturally retain bitter memories of the way past river water projects on the Kosi and Gandak were tardily implemented, much to their disadvantage. There will naturally be reservations in Nepal about implementing the Mahakali Treaty of 1996. These will have to be addressed. But, at the same time, one hopes the Nepalese will realise that they will be the biggest losers if they choose to delay benefiting from hydro-electric projects with India, disregarding how Bhutan has benefited from such cooperation. Prachanda, claiming to be a realist, acknowledges that as India accounts for around 50 per cent of Nepal’s global trade and is its largest economic partner, Nepal’s problems of unemployment and economic stagnation cannot be addressed unless he pragmatically chooses a path of constructive cooperation with India. He will, however, have to persuade India that he is indeed a changed man, no longer wedded to his doctrinaire 40-Point Prog-ramme of 1996, or committed to support for his Maoist brethren in India. India, in turn, will have to engage Nepal constructively to help it on its path towards becoming a federal, democratic republic.n
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Who goes there?
THE 1962 and 1965 wars made security a hyper obsession. And I was nearly put behind bars for showing disrespect to it! I was temporarily assigned to a depot in J & K, for learning, handson, in the field, what the audit manual proclaimed in aphoristic terminology. So there I was, grappling with the goings on. One night my roommate invited me to see the depot by “night”. Passwords were de rigueur. Merely presenting one’s identity card would not do. I asked my roommate Lt Ashok whether he knew the password. “Yes”, said he and whispered it in my ear. It was a moonless night, crackling cold. We left our jeep half a mile away and tried to enter the depot by a side gate. “Who goes there”, I heard a loud voice. Then I saw the sentry ready to fire. “Friend”, said we. “Come forward for identification”, the sentry asked. We went ahead. “Pass-word”, asked he.. “Mayflower”, I confidently replied. He turned to my friend. He repeated what I had said.. “Stand still, hands up”, the sentry commanded. I was flabbergasted. He summoned three of his colleagues and ordered us to march to a nearby barrack.. “But what’s the matter”, I asked pulling out my identity card. “Not of any use. Let the Major saheb come”. Presently arrived the huge mustachioed Major, properly dressed even at 1 a.m. There was deliverance now. Well, he was Major Joginder, who was my daily jogging companion. “Hello, sir”, I said. He showed no sign of recognition. I was amazed. I thought I knew him fairly well and, here he was behaving like a total stranger. Then he addressed Lt Ashok: You look like a spy, aren’t you one?” It was now the Lieutenant’s turn to be ashen faced. He had known the major for over two years! “But you know us well, don’t you”, I cried. “No, I don’t”, said he sternly. And then he gave instructions how to deal with us till the morning. We were to be confined to the barrack, given a blanket each and not permitted to move out of the room. Never was a night more miserably spent, or felt ever so long. At exact seven I heard the sentries salute someone sharply. And entered Major Joginder, smiling from ear to ear. His batman followed, with a huge thermos of tea and a stack of sandwiches! “Now I recognise you, Lt Ashok and Bhandari. You are free to go back after you have refuelled yourselves. “But what had happened in the night”, I asked in disbelief. “Grave breach of security. The password you gave, was day before yesterday’s and that puts you more at risk than not knowing the password at all”, said he. Later in the day we were summoned by the Commandant of the depot, a 2nd W.W. veteran: “Son, I hope we did not embarrass you over much. But it was necessary, don’t you agree? In my unit, way back in 1942, I lost half a dozen men because an enemy agent faked an identity card and the guards did not ask him the password. One cannot have any compromise with security”, said the old man. It was absolutely clear that I had been careless. I should have checked the password from the security officer myself. And I feel ever so grateful to Major Joginder for a valuable lesson.n |
Oil on the boil When
this wave of higher oil prices subsides, is it going to be business as usual? After the oil shocks of the 1970s and early 1980s, the oil price came back down and we went pretty much back to our bad old ways. But this time it feels different. It is true that all the attitudes that characterised previous surges in the oil price are evident now. There is the resentment against the oil companies at their profits. There is the cockiness of OPEC, with its president warning on Monday that the price might go to $200 a barrel. And there are the exhortations to conservation, but without much follow-up. In the US in the 1980s the legal requirement on car manufacturers to improve the fuel consumption of their fleets merely pushed Americans into four-wheel-drives that were exempt. This time it is legislation and subsidies in favour of bio-fuels in the US and Europe that have helped force up the price of food globally. However, though on the surface there is a sense of dejà vu, there are several reasons to suspect that it really will be different this time: that though the oil price will eventually fall back somewhat, we will never have cheap oil again – cheap in the sense of the $20-30 a barrel range of most of the 1990s and the first part of the 2000s. Never? Well never is a long time but if it is so it is good news for conservation and indeed the planet. In the short-term there may well be some shading back in the price, but our economic structure is determined by long-term prices, not short, and the present surge seems likely to hasten us along the path to a less oil-dependent world. Here’s why. It is that the balance of power between those two old warriors, supply and demand, has irrevocably shifted. Supply, as OPEC keeps reminding us, is tight. Any disruption in supplies has therefore a disproportionate impact on the price. You can see that in the way disruption in the North Sea and Nigeria pushed up the global price over the weekend. Some 60 per cent of the world’s supply comes from the non-OPEC producers and they are pumping at or close to their limits. You could say, over-simplifying grossly, that this “Nopec” oil is difficult-to-produce oil in politically easy places, whereas OPEC oil is easy-to-produce oil in politically difficult places. As far as Nopec is concerned, many of the easier (ie, cheaper to produce) fields, such as on-shore US supplies, are in decline. The first generation of off-shore fields, including the North Sea, are in decline too. Oil is still being found but the really big opportunities are in non-conventional sources, such as shale oil and tar sands, and these are expensive to exploit and may carry high environmental costs. So, over the next generation, the total Nopec supplies may creep up a bit – though even that is not clear – but it is not going to be cheap oil. Opec oil, by contrast, is in geologically easier places. We know where it is; and we know how to get it out. Actually, it is mostly in the Middle East, with a fair amount in Africa. Saudi Arabia remains the world’s largest producer. OPEC members, for perfectly understandable reasons, wish to retain control over their output, which they do either by operating through national corporations or, when they do get Western companies in on the act, keeping them tightly controlled. In theory it would be easier for OPEC to increase its production than for Nopec, but political realities curb the extent to which that is likely to happen. So supply will remain tight for the foreseeable future. It may become very tight indeed if the “peak oil” advocates are right. These are geologists who believe that the world is close to the technical limits on what can be produced and that oil production is set to reach a peak and then to decline in the next few years. Most people in the big oil companies disagree but even “big oil” would acknowledge that the age of easy oil is past. That is materially different from the situation in the 1970s and 1980s. Tight supplies clash with strong demand. The burgeoning demand from China for all sources of energy has been widely recognised. China last year becane a net importer of coal for the first time. (It has been a net importer of oil since the early 1990s.) The point about oil, of course, is that it is not just a source of energy but also a feedstock for many chemicals, so while China is scooping up world coal and gas supplies too, it cannot carry on growing without relentlessly, year after year, importing more oil. Add in demand from India and the consumption situation is utterly different from every previous global downturn. Every time up to now, and particularly in the 1970s and 1980s, a slowdown in the developed world economy fed through into a decline in demand, or at least a slowing in rate of growth. That does not seem to be happening now. US oil demand is slackening, as you would expect, and European demand may well follow suit. But Asian demand is not. So Chinese growth comes down from 11 per cent a year to, say, 8 or 9 per cent? That does not help release much pressure on the oil fields. Oil becomes more expensive? Sure, but China has huge foreign exchange reserves and has to have it. So it will pay. As a result, both supply and demand are less responsive to price changes than they were in previous cycles. Eventually, at some price, people are forced to conserve more oil. We either use less of it or we substitute where possible with alternatives. Eventually, if the price is high enough, the oil companies will figure out ways of extracting more of the stuff. But this process will not happen as swiftly or as dramatically as it did in previous cycles. That is good news. The plunge in the oil price, particularly after the peak in the early 1980s, and the low price through the 1990s until about three years ago, undermined a lot of the conservation efforts those spikes in the price provoked. The price hit $80 a barrel in the early 1980s, in real terms roughly where we are now. Had that price been maintained through the following quarter century we would be in much better shape than we are now. By arrangement with
The Independent |
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Saving the girl child The
alarming decrease in the number of girls born vis-à-vis the number of boys in India has been a matter of widespread publicity for many years. In India, very low sex ratios at birth are believed to be a result of a low birth rate combined with a population wealthy enough to be able to afford the ultrasound test to determine the sex of a foetus. In fact, when we look at states that meet those criteria, we find just that. Punjab, Haryana, Jammu & Kashmir and Delhi do, in fact, have the lowest sex ratios at birth in India in the 800-850 range in 2004-2006, according to the Sample Registration System (SRS) of the Registrar General of India. In order to evaluate the extent of the problem, we must look at data from the 2001 Census, which provides very fine level geographic detail. In 2001, there were 50 villages in Punjab where not even a single girl, aged 0-6, was enumerated. There were an additional 500 villages where there were fewer than 500 girls per 1,000 boys ages 0-6 (Table 1). Statewide, that number was 798. This is a demographic phenomenon unprecedented in the country’s history. The child sex ratio varied from 758 among Jains to 879 among Muslims. As surmised, both wealth and a lower birth rate do play a role. In the 2001 Census, the proportion of children 0-6 in Punjab among scheduled castes (SCs) was 15.44 percent while it was but 12.04 percent among non-scheduled castes. Clearly, SCs have a higher birth rate and, of course, are at the lower end of the wealth spectrum. Are SCs less likely to abort a female fetus? The sex ratio of the 0-6 age group among SCs in 2001 was 861 girls per 1,000 boys, compared to just 767 for non-SCs. It should be noted that a normal sex ratio in the child population is 950 since there are 5 percent more boy babies born worldwide than girls, a simple biological fact. These data for SC and non-SC populations bear out the suspicion that greater wealth provides the financial means to seek a sex-selective abortion and that a low birth rate places additional pressure on couples to abort a female foetus. At least in some areas, it may be that the defense of the girl child is showing results. SRS figures show that the sex ratio in Punjab rose from 775 in 1991-2001 to 808 in 2004-2006; from 803 to 837 in Haryana, 858 to 872 in Himachal Pradesh and 837 to 865 in Gujarat. No significant improvement was however recorded in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. Interestingly enough the ratio in Maharashtra declined from 915 in 1999-2001 to 879 in 2004-2006 and in Rajasthan also from 885 to 855 during the same period. We can probably expect that the problem will only become worse nationwide unless quite serious steps are taken. Son preference is rooted not only in India’s traditions but in the economic reality of a male birth vs. a female birth. It is that problem that lies at the heart of the current demographic and humanitarian crisis and that is where it must be attacked. Sharma is India Representative and Haub a Senior Demographer, Population Reference Bureau, Washington DC |
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In Russia, cartoons are no laughing matter With his easily recognisable features, his omnipresence in every area of Russian politics and foreign policy, and his penchant for withering, snappy one-liners, Vladimir Putin is a cartoonist’s dream. At the beginning of his eight-year reign, he was launching a bloody war in Chechnya and promising to “waste” terrorists; as it draws to a close he is denying rumours of secret plans to marry a 24-year-old gymnast, and telling journalists to keep their “snotty noses and erotic fantasies” out of his private life. There’s plenty of material for even the most unimaginative cartoonist to have a field day. There’s only one problem for Russian cartoonists, however – they’re not allowed to draw him. Mikhail Zlatkovsky is perhaps the most famous cartoonist in Russia, with his sketches appearing daily in Novye Izvestia newspaper and a history of political cartoons and existential artwork dating back to the 1970s. He was the first Russian cartoonist to draw Mikhail Gorbachev, and actively caricatured Boris Yeltsin. He has also drawn Stalin, although the cartoon that he did as a teenager in 1959 took until 1988 to be published. When Yeltsin named Mr Putin as acting president on New Year’s Eve 1999, Zlatkovsky drew the ailing Yeltsin dredging a mermaid-tailed Putin out of the sea and putting a crown on his head. Putin became a regular feature of Zlatkovsky’s cartoons. But the new President was officially inaugurated on 7 May 2000, and the next day, Zlatkovsky’s editor at Literaturnaya Gazeta, where he then worked, came into the newsroom, fresh from a Kremlin reception. “He said to me, ‘Misha, we’re not going to draw Putin any more,’“ recalls Zlatkovsky. “The young lad is very sensitive.” From that day onwards, Zlatkovsky has not had another cartoon of Mr Putin published. Nowadays, the only cartoons of the Russian leader to appear in the Russian press are those that depict him in a positive, or even heroic light. As Mr Putin’s rule went on, says Zlatkovsky, the number of taboo subjects increased – ministers, Kremlin aides, Chechnya and top military brass all became off limits. Recently a cartoon depicting Alexy II, the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, prompted a phone call from the patriarchate and a strong request never to draw him again. “There’s no central censor these days,” says Zlatkovsky. “Instead, we have the censorship of the fire safety inspectorate; or the censorship of the tax police.” Satirise the ruling class today, and tomorrow the newspaper offices will be paid a surprise visit by fire inspectors who will find a bureaucratic regulation that the office does not meet, and close it. Or there will be a call from the printworks stating that the price of paper has inexplicably risen tenfold. Many cartoonists have given up, finding other work, and newspaper editors prefer to err on the side of caution and not publish cartoons at all. Zlatkovsky is taking part in a series of Cartoonists for Peace exhibitions to mark the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. He has worked as an artist and cartoonist since 1971, but during the Soviet period he would never have dared to draw cartoons depicting party leaders. The cartoons that appeared in the press praised socialist development, or railed against the imperialist West. Perhaps the only cartoonist at the time who was bold enough to subvert the system was Vyacheslav Sysoyev – his cartoons were published in the West, and he was arrested in 1983 and jailed for “distributing pornography”. “Satirists ought to build a monument to Boris Yeltsin,” says Zlatkovsky. “Of course there was a lot wrong with those times, but in comparison to what we have now it was a golden age.” For now, the internet remains a place where Russians can laugh at their leaders, and blogs and websites are full of Putin jokes. But many fear that as Mr Putin prepares to leave the Kremlin next week, even the internet is coming further under governmental control. Purposefully vague “anti-extremist” laws have been used against websites critical of authorities. Last week, the internet site of a local paper was closed after users wrote derogatory remarks about local authorities on the paper’s blog. “The authorities fear satire and mockery more than anything else,” says Zlatkovsky. “Nothing dents their aura of greatness like satire.” By arrangement with
The Independent |
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