The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Signals from Lanka
Centre has contained Tamil Nadu passions

THE Government of India has struck the right balance in getting Colombo to show urgency in dealing with Tamil concerns and, at the same time, pacifying the DMK to desist from any precipitate action that would endanger the UPA. This is no mean achievement given the situation New Delhi was confronted with: The pounding of the strongholds of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE); the Sri Lankan government’s pursuit of a military solution to the exclusion of Tamil civilian safety; and, the rising political temperatures in Tamil Nadu, where passions over developments in Sri Lanka were being whipped up by politicians. Even as the Sri Lankan security forces have been gaining in their military offensive against the LTTE with no sign of any initiative for a political solution as India has been advocating, New Delhi had to rein in Colombo without overt “intervention”.

External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee managed to do this during the unscheduled visit to Delhi of Sri Lankan President’s Special Adviser Basil Rajapaksa. The Adviser, who is the brother of President Mahinda Rajapaksa, appears to have satisfied Mr Mukherjee that Colombo was taking the necessary steps to ensure the safety and security of Sri Lankan Tamils; and that the civilian population in the island’s north where the military conflict is raging would be provided the necessary relief and humanitarian aid. India is also sending 800 tonnes of relief material for the affected civilians in the north.

This underscores that the UPA government is mindful of the genuine needs and aspirations of Sri Lankan Tamils even as it cannot intervene to call a halt to Colombo’s current military campaign. In the process, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M Karunanidhi appears to have been mollified especially after Mr Mukherjee’s meeting with him in Chennai. The ruling DMK is no longer bent on making Tamil Nadu MPs resign from Parliament thereby pushing the UPA Government to the brink. The situation in Tamil Nadu has been dealt with and Colombo given the message that the safety, security, rights and aspirations of Sri Lankan Tamils – who, as a community, are not to be equated with the LTTE – are concerns that India expects to be addressed until a resolution of the Tamil-Sinhala conflict.

India at receiving end
Policy response needs to be quicker

THE Prime Minister has said that India’s economy is bound to feel the pain of financial meltdown “sooner or later”. Well, it is already facing some of it. Only its intensity will be known later. The stock markets and the rupee are plunging to new depths. As foreign capital is fleeing, NRI remittances have slowed. The liquidity crunch has particularly hit the realty, aviation, textile and IT sectors and layoffs are rising. Fortunately, agriculture is safe, thanks to a good monsoon. India has already overshot its fiscal deficit and may have to divert funds from the social sector and infrastructure to replenish banks’ kitty and foot the employees’ increased wage bill.

Exporters are not cheering the rupee’s fall because demand worldwide is slowing. One positive effect is a sharp decline in commodity prices, including oil. This has given India some relief from inflation. The RBI, too, can claim credit but its liquidity-draining measures have resulted in the present downturn, which will pick up momentum once the current global financial tempest has passed over. Like other developing countries, India is at the receiving end. But the leadership is in a denial mode. Initially, it stuck to the “fundamentals-are-strong” line. Now it is admitting there is a crisis but is hesitating to take further corrective steps. Some Indian banks have suffered losses, but the government claims these are manageable.

Other countries with greater exposure to the US and Europe are certainly in deeper trouble and are also mulling counter-steps. Russia is spending $220 billion to boost its financial system. South Korea has guaranteed its banks’ debt. Others are rushing to the IMF for loans. China is accelerating infrastructure spending. We want the IMF to do the job. The UPA’s policy response has to be quicker. It needs to send a strong signal that growth will not be allowed to collapse.There is an immediate need to cut interest rates sharply to boost consumer demand. When all others are cutting rates, why are we still smug?

Thought for the Day

Love doesn’t just sit there like a stone; it has to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made new. — Ursula K. LeGuin

Corrections and clarifications

n Some words had got dropped from one paragraph of the page-1 story “Revolt against Khanduri” (October 21). It should have read as following: “Advani had asked them to bury their differences till the state panchayat election concluded. The BJP has swept the panchayat polls giving a morale boost to Khanduri and it was expected that this way he could consolidate his position in the state and the party.”

n In the article “Falling apart” (Oped page, October 21), It was erroneously mentioned that Punjab needs Rs 2000 or more to fund various schemes. It should have been Rs 2,000 crore. The third para should have begun as : “On the vital question of subsidising power….”. The word “subsiding” was once again wrongly used for “subsidising” later in the story. This story also used a wrong word “ruralites”.

n In the news-item “Unchanged squad for last two Tests” (October 21), the name of the Delhi leg-spinner should have been spelled as Chaitanya Nanda.

Despite our earnest endeavour to keep The Tribune error-free, some errors do creep in at times. We are always eager to correct them.

We request our readers to write or e-mail to us whenever they find any error. We will carry corrections and clarifications, wherever necessary, every Tuesday.

Readers in such cases can write to Mr Amar Chandel, Deputy Editor, The Tribune, Chandigarh, with the word “Corrections” on the envelope. His e-mail ID is amarchandel@tribunemail.com.

H.K. Dua
Editor-in-Chief

ARTICLE

Jobs on the block
Financial crisis to hit India too
by Jayshree Sengupta

IT seems that India is following in America’s footsteps in tackling the financial crisis. We are now in the midst of a big stock market crisis and just like in the US, the real estate sector is in trouble. The government has announced various ways of bolstering liquidity just like the US government. The unemployment rate in the US, however, is at a record high of 6.1 per cent of its labour force. Hopefully, India will not face the same rapid rise in unemployment but certain ominous signs are there.

For example, the second quarterly results of 2008 from the corporate sector are out. A survey of 424 companies (Business Standard) show that they grew at 8.14 per cent in the July to September quarter as compared to 14.8 per cent growth in the April to June quarter and 25.7 per cent in the second quarter, a year earlier. Clearly, high interest rates and higher fuel and power costs have dented profits to a single digit.

Many companies are taking a cut in their profit margins in order to stay afloat. But this cannot be sustained and they will have to reduce their expenditure on payrolls. Every beleaguered company in the US is doing so and the dreaded “pink slips” have become common. In India, too, though there is not going to be mass retrenchment, one should expect job cuts in many companies in the near future. Some sectors where retrenchment has already started are banking, aviation, IT, cement, steel, automobiles, tourism and hospitality. These have had to bear the brunt of the financial crisis that started in the US but is now spreading to other parts of the world relentlessly.

Job losses in our manufacturing sector can get magnified anytime. The low growth rate of 1.1 per cent registered by the manufacturing sector in September 2008 means that factories are already facing slack demand and the pressure of heavy inventories has slowed down production. Unless there is a healthy growth in demand, factories cannot run at full capacity — even RIL has halved its production of polypropylene due to slack demand. Export companies specially are in trouble.

There is another factor that is going to contribute to a rise in unemployment — the decline in productivity growth. A study based on 700 big and small companies has revealed that two out of every seven companies have reported lower revenue per employee in 2008 and 39 per cent of the companies in the sample saw a drop in the net profit per head. And every third company reported lower profit after tax (PAT) per employee. Large companies fared better than medium-sized and smaller firms. In the service sector, however, over half of all software firms reported a decline in the revenue per employee while two-thirds saw a fall in PAT. Clearly, a shadow has been cast on them by the slowdown abroad.

Just as the entire BPO sector is very nervous, the real estate sector, too, is holding its breath. This is so because in the past the demand for flats/houses came mainly from the young professionals in the BPO sector and many are being laid off due to the slowdown. Just like in the US there could be a huge number of home foreclosures in India also.

The main challenge is to revive industrial growth, and for long the blame has gone to tight liquidity conditions. If production was being constrained due to tight liquidity conditions, there is now enough liquidity in the economy with the two consecutive cash reserve ratio cuts by the Reserve Bank that has released Rs 185,000 crore in the financial system. There should be little problem in obtaining credit by firms from banks.

But, apparently, even big names have been denied credit in the past due to their exposure to the uncertainty in foreign markets. “Will they be able to complete projects and will they return the loan” is a question being asked by bankers in these hard times when defaults cannot be ruled out. Thus, more than liquidity, it is the banking community’s lack of faith in industry’s ability to remain viable, especially when catering to foreign demand and projects, which seems to be the problem.

In the stock market, market sentiments have to be revived that are based not on high growth projections by government officials but on people’s confidence in the government’s ability to avert a crisis. Frankly, people are scared to put their money in stocks and even in banks.

The only hope for spurring domestic demand seems to be coming from the prospect of a lower rate of inflation due to the fall in oil prices. Fall in commodity prices will also help but not in some sectors like steel. But prices of food articles should come down sharply if inflation is to be subdued significantly and to make people go back to their normal spending habits. Inflation has cut into the disposable incomes of families and people feel poorer and stick to buying only essential items. They postpone the purchase of “white goods”, flats, cars and two-wheelers.

Even if inflation comes down, job cuts and the fear of losing jobs will make people postpone purchases. In the US, due to people facing job cuts, consumer spending has already declined by 1.6 per cent and it is taken to be a sure sign that recession has set in.

In India, we are still hopeful that we shall be able to avoid recession because more bank lending will take place with the recent 100 basis point cut in the repo rate (the rate at which the Reserve Bank lends to commercial banks). Let us hope that the 29 per cent credit growth declared by the RBI Governor in his latest credit policy is going to more productive sectors which will help trigger higher industrial activity and pull the economy up. May be, Indians who are by nature voracious consumers will not be stricken by a syndrome in which purchases are postponed indefinitely — like in Japan in the 1990s.

A wayout would be to see that the small and medium enterprises get enough loans to keep their businesses going. It will be the main shock-absorber of jobless people and will help in generating demand for goods and services. But banks will have to lend more and easily to the small, medium and micro enterprises. Already between 2006 and August 2008, 280 small enterprises have closed down, making 12,000 people jobless. By recapitalising public sector banks, and helping out non-banking financial companies, the government is hoping to reach such units. Micro-credit organisations too will need help.

Just like the Federal Reserve has announced a huge bail-out package of $700 billion, our Finance Minister has announced an increase in government spending of $21.7 billion. From this, farmers’ loan waivers and fertiliser subsidy should go to poorer farmers so that they may increase investment in farming. Hopefully, bigger budget deficit will not stoke inflation and instead boost agricultural productivity and incomes that will help revive industry and growth.

MIDDLE

Prof Pritam Singh’s legacy
by Roopinder Singh

This is Prof Pritam Singh, said the voice on the phone. “Ji, Professor Sahib,” I replied, even as I instinctively sat up in my chair. I was talking to a legendary scholar whose work spanned fiction, autobiography and scholarly studies of the ancient Punjabi manuscripts.

He was calling me regarding his latest book: Sri Guru Granth Sahib Wale Sheikh Farid di Bhal. Even as I marvelled at the person who was so mentally agile at 90, I congratulated him on finishing a work that had been so long in the making. We had been out of touch for a while and this call came earlier this year. With it we renewed a relationship that had begun by his carrying me in his lap.

Prof Pritam Singh spent the next few minutes reminiscing about my parents, Giani Gurdit Singh and Mrs Inderjit Kaur; he spoke about newspaper articles on current affairs, Punjab and the Punjabi language.

Although he had Master's degrees in English (1940), Persian (1941) and Oriental Learning (1941) from Panjab University, Lahore, Prof Pritam Singh was totally committed to Punjabi language and literature. He joined Government Mahendra College, Patiala in 1950 as the first Head of the Post-Graduate Department of Punjabi and taught there along with Principal Teja Singh and Prof Gulwant Singh. Prof Pritam Singh retired as Professor, Department of Guru Nanak Studies, from Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar, where his son Jai Rup Singh is Vice-Chancellor now.

Honours came his way, but not as many as he deserved. He was awarded the Doordarshan Panj Pani Sanman (2005), Shiromani Sahitkar award (1998) by the Languages Department, Punjab, and a Honoris Causa D-Lit degree by Panjab University and Honorary Professorship by San Jose University, CA, USA.

Prof Pritam Singh wrote a two-volume autobiography Kachian Pakian de Bhaa and his collection of biographical sketches, Murtan, was much discussed. He also wrote for children, and in order to enthuse such writing, he had instituted an award in the name of his mother. His works in children’s literature have been translated in many languages.

In writing Sri Guru Granth Sahib Wale Sheikh Farid di Bhal, Prof Pritam Singh brought out his research on a subject that he had been working on for decades. He was involved in writing and literary activities till the last, even as he fought age-related physical infirmities.

Prof Pritam Singh was a teacher, a writer and a linguist. To him goes much credit for modern and scientific study of Punjabi language and literature, and for shaping the life of many students and scholars.

We had been exchanging calls with each other. He wanted to discuss some issues, to share memories about my parents and his interaction with them. He said he would like me to visit him and I promised to do so.

This was not to be. Dr Mohinder Singh of Delhi called me to say that the last scholar of an era of giants had left us. Many dons, students and friends will remember Prof Pritam Singh and proudly recall their association with this scholar. As for others, he has left behind a rich body of written work that will ensure that his legacy lives on.

OPED

N-deal and votes
PM is a lone advocate of energy security
by G.S. Bhargava

Will the Indo-US civil nuclear deal, signed, sealed and delivered, yield a bonanza in electoral support for the Prime Minister and his Congress party? It seemed so on the surface but the appearance is deceptive. The agreement is too “airy” and remote from the point of firing people’s imagination and inducing their voting preference.

A power generation plant, that too a nuclear one, has a long gestation period. On an average, it took 10 to 12 years for our CANDU-type heavy-water nuclear reactors to go on stream.

That our country’s nuclear power output is a pitifully low 3,900 mwe after 20 years’ effort is a sufficient commentary on the ground situation. True, the toll of the technology denial regime to which India had been subjected since the 1974 Pokhran “peaceful” weapons test by Indira Gandhi.

In other words, Dr Manmohan Singh, assuming he will still be around, will be lucky if the promise of abundant power supply from the India-US deal materialises by the 2014 general election.

Also large and mid-sized industries and the urban population consume most of the generated power.

Because of dilapidated transport infrastructure and paucity of power there are huge urban slums and unacceptable infrastructural and income disparities between the urban population and hundreds of millions of poverty-ridden inhabitants of the in rural areas. .

Against this background, while highlighting his government’s accomplishments like the employment guarantee scheme and the 15-point programme for free education of minorities up to matriculation, Dr Manmohan Singh could point out that lack of development is one of the main reasons for social problems like violence against Christians in BJP-governed states of Orissa and Karnataka.

Further, the Finance Minister has been at pains rightly to put life into the loan-waiver scheme unveiled at the time of the last Budget in February, 2008, but overlain by unabating price rise and the alarming international credit system.

It is intriguing that the Prime Minister should be ducking Parliament. Admittedly, he is not much of a speaker or debater. His flair for bringing to bear a melancholy note on his utterances, as if they were obituary references, is off-putting. Still, his speeches in cold print read well and most newspapers — in different languages — publish them at length.

Secondly, speeches are not winners always. Pranab Mukerjee, who deputises for the Prime Minister in his capacity of leader of the ruling party in the Lok Sabha, is no Syama Prasad Mukerjee or Pandit Gobind Ballabh Pant or Pandit Nehru either. His Bengali intonation of English speaking can be cut with a blunt knife.

This is not to say that our Parliament has been bereft of gifted speakers. In its heyday, the Lok Sabha had a galaxy of speakers who could match the best in the mother of Parliaments, including Churchill, Aneurin Bevan or Michel Foot viz - Nath Pai, Feroze Ghandi, T.T. Krishnamachari, Ram Manohar Lohia, Hiren Mukerjee, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Prakash Vir Shastri, Inderjit Gupta, S Jaipal Reddy, and the incumbent Speaker, Somnath Chatterji, when he was the leader of the CPI (M) group in the Lok Sabha, and Arun Jaitley as Information Minister, to mention some.

On the other hand, the crippled Parliament session, wedged between festivals and simultaneous with assembly elections in several states, suggests an aversion to face Parliament. It seems that the architect of what has been hyped as a historic civil nuclear deal with the US was not raring to claim his laurels from MPs.

This can be a fatal error. Nehru never missed a Parliament sitting and would never opt for an overseas engagement during a Parliament session. That between the budget session and now, Parliament has met for hardly 30-odd days is a poor reflection on a parliamentary democracy.

Still, there is a silver lining. The Prime Minister is widely accepted as the almost lone purveyor of the energy situation, tirelessly advocating remedial measures. In fact, whenever there is power shutdown, which is very often, consumers carrying on with regulators and invertors, fondly wish for a situation of electricity on tap.

They look forward to the promised deliverance from this depressing situation as a result of the agreement with the US, with the possibility of France, Japan, some European states and, perhaps, Australia, too, pitching in.

Here can be the Prime Minister’s trump card. He could highlight the linkage between social strife in large parts of the country and the deprived economic status of the people on account of energy short supply. As a tireless advocate of nuclear energy, he has an undeniable edge over other political leaders within and outside the Congress party. Providentially, Delhi is in the first lot of states slated to go to the polls in next month’s semi-finals to the general election, as a commentator tellingly called them.

Instead of seeking to enter Parliament through the back door of the Rajya Sabha, that too from Assam, Dr Manmohan Singh should contest a Lok Sabha seat in the national Capital, which he will win, unlike in the past when local politics spoiled his chance. The Delhi Chief Minister, Sheila Dikshit, can and should ensure it.

Dr Manmohan Singh should take a leaf from Indira Gandhi’s book. At the height of political adversity, with the Janata Party in power, she did not hesitate to split the hide-bound Congress party to form her own Congress (I) and win the 1980 general election hands down.

Leading from the front has immense advantage. Micro factors like Mayawati-Mulayam equation, Amar Singh’s posturing and the like will all fall in their place once the Prime Minister takes the lead. Good luck to him.

Making community rural radio a reality
by Abhilaksh Likhi

Radio broadcasting has proved to be a very effective means of mass communication that has enabled the building of capacities of non-literate and marginalised communities in rural India.

Over the years through programming to inform, educate and entertain it has also striven to forge in our civil society a public sphere that is plural, egalitarian and equitable.

The first regular radio service was inaugurated in India by the Indian Broadcasting Company in July 1927. Ever since then AIR (All India Radio) has expanded to become a network of 215 broadcasting centres, covering 91 per cent of the rural population by area in 24 languages and 146 dialects.

With 13.2 crore radio sets in about 11.7 crore households, the average actual listening of AIR, including those residing in rural hinterlands, on any day are roughly estimated to be 53 crore.

As a part of the Seventh Schedule of the Union List, radio broadcasting is governed by the Indian Telegraph Act of 1885, the Wireless Telegraphy Act of 1933 and an assortment of other legislation.

Civil society groups and various review committees appointed to examine the reach and impact of radio broadcasting continued to pinpoint the top down and vertical reach of AIR and these later initiatives.

Therefore, the question raised was: how could radio broadcasting help to create a participatory model of development in the vast rural hinterland where information flowed not only downwards from the government to the people but also upwards from people to the govenment?

Resultantly, the issue of autonomy and the degree of the state’s monopoly over broadcasting has also been conceptualised and brainstormed time and again.

Other than aiming at enabling AIR to function as a true public service broadcaste and not as a propaganda machine, the various reports have raised perennial questions about people’s access to communication technologies and facilitation of self-representation through popular and community-based media.

Thus, the 2006 policy guidelines for setting up community radio stations evision that marginalised communities in rural areas manage, own and operate radio stations with the help of civil society and voluntary organisations.

The aim is to generate a horizontally dialogic and community-based media literate environment for articulating locally relevant needs — be they cultural, social or economic.

With a transmitter having an effective radiated power of 100 Watts, the community radio station is expected to cover a range of 6-10 km. Besides, non-profit organisations that apply will be eligible to seek funding from multilateral aid agencies.

To ensure viable and operational local community access stations a few pertinent issues have to be addressed.

First, the grassroots grounding of such stations needs to be structurally dovetailed with the constitutionally backed third tier of rural local self-governance i.e. the gram panchayats. In the backdrop of the second-generation reforms currently under way to devolve three Fs (funds, functions and functionaries) to gram panchayats, civil society and voluntary organisations can enter into public-private partnerships with them to run rural radio stations.

Secondly, the centre should make available to the state governments the expertise and advice of community radio consultants.

Thirdly, district magistrates need to be sensitised about the relevance, need and utility of the 2006 community radio guidelines to establish radio stations for effective empowerment of marginalised rural communities.

Fourthly, a few reputed non-profit non-governmental organisations set up community radio production centres in remote rural hinterlands before 2006. The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting needs to put together the experience gained by these NGOs in entry point activities related to media literacy campaigns and extensively disseminate the same through their website and other means.

Fifthly, high start-up costs prohibit access to the medium as envisaged in the 2006 guidelines. The estimated budgets for setting up a rural radio station under the current dispensation range from Rs 20 to 50 lakh in the first year with the equipment to be purchased only from the authorised dealers.

Besides, the five minutes of advertising allowed per hour of programming cannot cover the operational costs. Therefore, one viable option could be to create structural synergies to use dedicated funds within umpteen Centrally sponsored rural development schemes for IEC (Information, Education, Communication) with multilateral funding that is availed to set up and run the radio station.