The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

SC ban on mining
Aravalli’s ecology can still be saved

The Supreme Court has rightly banned as many as 157 mines in the Aravalli hill ranges of Rajasthan. In an important ruling, the Special Forest Bench consisting of Chief Justice K.G. Balakrishnan, Justice S.H. Kapadia and Justice Aftab Alam has ordered satellite mapping of the entire 15,000 sq. km of the Aravalli hill range to gauge the extent of ecological devastation caused by illegal mining in violation of a 2002 ban. The Aravalli ranges across 15 districts in Rajasthan are rich in minerals such as iron ore, lead, asbestos, wall clay and China clay worth Rs 5,000 crore. Indiscriminate mining continued in these ranges even though their licences had expired long back on the “sole pretext” that the miners had applied for renewal, the Bench observed.

The court’s ban order is indicative of its firmness to protect the environment at any cost. In May 2009, it had issued a similar ban in the 448 sq. km. area of the Aravalli ranges falling in Haryana’s Faridabad, Gurgaon and Mewat districts. Over the years, the apex court has been trying to balance mining operations with environmental protection. For some time, the court did not impose a total ban on mining so long as it was possible to undertake such operations on the principle of sustainable development. However, it cracked the whip once it was convinced that the position had only worsened.

The Rajasthan case is far worse. As there is an inherent connection between hills and water, mining has disturbed the catchment areas in the state. The Aravallis used to feed the whole of livestock from the Thar desert in the past. Now the hills are devoid of the green cover due to mining and soil erosion. Mining has particularly disturbed Bhilwara, Rajsamand and Alwar areas. In Bijolia in Bhilwara district, called Rajasthan’s “wheat bowl”, the locals buy grain from outside after the start of large-scale mining. Though it is feared that the ban on mining will trigger unemployment and halt economic activities, it will ultimately benefit the people as they will resume farming activities and the wells will also be recharged. The latest ban will save Aravalli’s ecology just as the 2002 ban protected the Sariska Tiger Sanctuary in Alwar district from the clutches of the mining sharks.

Safer clinical trials
India must root out unethical practices

With India emerging as a hub of clinical trials for drugs, the need for tougher norms cannot be overlooked. The government’s decision to tighten the regulatory mechanism is welcome, provided it is put in place with earnestness. Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh’s concern over the increasing use of animals in clinical trials and call for alternatives, too, should have gladdened the hearts of animal lovers. Indeed, India, which made the registration of clinical trials with the ICMR compulsory last year, needs to root out the unethical practices prevalent in clinical trials.

Unsafe and illegal drug testing has been a matter of concern lately. While cruelty to the animals involved in trials has often raised the hackles of animal rights activists, human experiments have also not been above board. The shocking revelation of death of an infant in Bangalore and of 49 babies in the AIIMS in over two and a half years have been grim of reminders of how Indians are becoming guinea pigs. Over the years clinical trials in the country have grown at a rapid rate. While India stands third among the destinations for clinical trials after the US and China, by 2011 it is estimated that this counry will be carrying out 15 per cent of the total number of clinical trials. India has emerged as a favoured destination for clinical trials because of lower costs, the quality of healthcare and healthcare professionals and the huge number of people available. However, poverty and illiteracy pose a major challenge to ensuring the implementation of the parameters necessary for clinical trials.

While the Indian Council for Medical Research guidelines on clinical research need to be followed with greater vigil, stringent laws to punish violators are an imperative. Awareness drives can educate the persons undergoing experiments about the dangers involved in clinical trials. Pharmaceutical companies, too, must be conscious of their social responsibility and understand that unethical trials are not only detrimental to the people but also harm their reputation and interests. Undeniably, India stands to benefit from these trials which open doors to better healthcare. But this cannot be an excuse for the violation of rights, especially of vulnerable sections.

Thought for the Day

I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country. — Nathan Hale

ARTICLE

Why Justice Shah couldn’t make it to SC
The collegium must provide an answer
by Kuldip Nayar

This is yet another case of supersession of judges, not in the technical sense but in all other respects. Justice A.N. Shah, who retired from the office of Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court a few days ago, was one of the finest judges in the country. He was also the senior-most judge. Yet he was not elevated to the Supreme Court. The strong opposition by Justice S.H. Kapadia, a Supreme Court judge, against Justice Shah reportedly blocked the appointment. Justice Kapadia is a member of the five-judge collegium which selects judges for the high courts and the Supreme Court. All the other four judges were believed to be in favour of Justice Shah. But they were helpless because the convention is to have a unanimous choice.

When Indira Gandhi superseded in 1973 three Supreme Court judges—Jayanti Manilal Shelat, Kawdoor Sadananda Hegde and Amar Nath Grover — to appoint a junior judge, Justice Ajit Nath Ray, as the Chief Justice of India, she punished them because of their independent outlook, not tagged to what she considered “progressive”.

Justice Shelat had only a month to go for his retirement. But Justice Hegde had still two years left. A petition relating to Mrs. Gandhi’s election was pending in his court. He had found that the affidavit given by her was against the facts. He, in fact, tried to help her but her advisers thought otherwise. Justice Grover resigned because he was senior to Justice Ray.

It was a blatant and outrageous attempt at undermining the independence and impartiality of the judiciary and lowering the prestige and dignity of the Supreme Court. Mrs Gandhi wanted to make the judiciary subservient to political pressures and dependent on government patronage and influence.

However, this was not the reason for the supersession of Justice Shah. In his case, his courage to stand up was his undoing. He had dared to cross Justice Kapadia’s path when the two were on the bench of the Bombay High Court some years back. The collegium meeting, where the name of Justice Shah was discussed, was reportedly a noisy sitting with four judges on the one side and Justice Kapadia on the other.

How could he have his way in the face of four other judges is still baffling. They do not seem to have put up a fight for Justice Shah. Whatever the truth, Justice Kapadia applied the veto. I recall another instance of supersession. Justice Arijit Passayat blocked the appointment of Justice A.K. Patnaik, then the Madhya Pradesh Chief Justice, nearly one and a half years ago for reasons not known. The latter is an outstanding judge who has stood by the people whenever he has found them aggrieved. Human rights activists and other members remember with admiration his famous judgment to stop building of the Narmada Dam after attaining a particular height until the oustees were rehabilitated. (The Narmada award is that the uprooted should be settled at new places six months before their land is taken by the government).

Take another case of the collegium’s authoritative attitude. Justice Gyan Misra, a woman Chief Justice heading the Jharkhand bench, is high in seniority. When she was ignored both the President and the Prime Minister sent back her file for reconsideration, probably because the Supreme Court has not had any woman judge on the bench for the last four or five years. The collegium still went ahead and appointed Justice C.K. Prasad, superseding Chief Justice Gyan Misra. This is not aimed at questioning the excellent credentials of Justice Prasad but pointing out that a woman judge was denied the Supreme Court slot.

One thing clear from these instances is that the collegium acts like a secret agency, opaque and bizarre in its selection. It should tell the reason why a particular judge was ignored. It is understandable when Justice Shah after retiring admits before the Press that he couldn’t “pretend not to be hurt” on not making it to the Supreme Court. This is the highest position that most in the legal fraternity seek. Justice Shah’s disappointment of missing the top position was natural. When Justice Kapadia and Justice Passayat blocked the elevation of Justice Shah and Justice Patnaik, the first two must give reasons for doing so. It should not be a capricious decision. It must be backed by reasons. It cannot be left to the bias or prejudice of any judge on the collegium.

The collegium comprises five senior-most judges of the Supreme Court for appointment to the apex court and the high courts. The high courts have a three-judge collegium for appointment to the lower judiciary, including the Sessions Judge. Shouldn’t the decision be taken by a majority? There should be an effort to reach a consensus. But if that is not possible, one member should not have the final word.

The government can retrieve the situation to some extent by appointing Justice Shah as the Law Commission’s chairman. But Law Minister Veerappa Moily, respected for his integrity, is reluctant to do so lest Justice Kapadia, who is the next in line for the post of Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, should feel offended. Mr Moily is unnecessarily bringing in the wishes of Justice Kapadia to a post which is entirely in the domain of the government. The Supreme Court has nothing to do with it.

One must admit that the judiciary in Pakistan has become an example of probity after the lawyers have won the battle for reinstating Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry to the Pakistan Supreme Court. President Asif Ali Zardari arbitrarily appointed Justice Saqib Nisar as the acting Chief Justice of the Lahore High Court and also elevated Justice Khwaja to the Supreme Court. There was no consultation with Chief Justice Chaudhry. The two judges refused to take the oath because they wanted the appointment to be approved by Chief Justice Chaudhry. The entire nation has stood behind the Supreme Court chief and has blamed President Zardari for throwing the country into a constitutional crisis. Opposition leader Nawaz Sharif has criticised President Zardari’s appointment as “the murder of democracy.” Ultimately, Mr Zardari’s notifications in this regard have been withdrawn.

What the Indian judiciary can learn from the Pakistan judiciary is that the judges, if not appointed through a correct procedure, refuse to take the oath of office. The Supreme Court specially needs to take note of it. The manner in which it has superseded Justice Shah is simply not acceptable. It is another matter that people cannot do anything. This is an issue which Parliament should discuss at its next sitting, particularly how to stop the judges of the collegium from settling personal scores.

MIDDLE

Zyada better English
by Aradhika Sharma

I remember going to an Indian-Chinese-continental restaurant in Jalandhar a few years ago and ordering the ‘Chow Mien-Manchurian’ listed in the dog-eared menu. The waiter, a friendly soul, asked me solicitously, if I would prefer the ‘Chow Minnie’ with garlic tadka or with ginger tadka?

That only confirmed my belief that we Indians add our special tadka to everything in our path, making it uniquely ours, be it Indian, Chinese, Mughlai or Continental. This is especially true of the Queen’s language. I’ve always loved to mark and collect the quaint usages that we employ with impunity.

We have no qualms in doing direct translations from Hindi or vernacular into English, using the same grammatical rules. A mother may tell her kids, “Why are you dancing my head? Listening to your shouting, my head is going round and round and eating circles.”

“You agree with me, no?”

An Indian may not find anything wrong with the above usage at all, but it’s only an Indian who will add the “no” to “Do you agree with me?’ and how about “Boss only told that I could go early” instead of “Boss told me to go early”?

In the South, you may come across this conversation:

“Why are you standing here?”

“Simply!” (Meaning, “just like that”)

Basically, we love to use words like, no/only/simply because it’s a part of our Indian English. We’ll overuse actually/ seriously /obviously/generally. Seriously, there’s no particular reason. We just do it like that only!

Our special ability lies in the alteration of the preposition. Recollect, how often you hear the phrase, “Let us discuss about this” instead of “Let us discuss this.” The sentence coming up has so much Indian-ness contained in it that I don’t even want to attempt an analysis, “I’m not understanding only, why you are doing like this always.”

The verbs ‘is’ and ‘are’ are often placed at random in a sentence, usually after the pronoun, rather than before: “Why you are staring at that girl? Tell, no, what you are thinking? You are liking her? Shall we start talks with her family?”

Then we just love to use the progressive tense in stative verbs. Where the Queen may say, “I like it very much,” we’ll definitely say, “I am liking it very much.”

So, my dear readers, please tell me your ‘good name” and then we go out for some pizza- shizza. Good idea, no?”

The world over, people may talk of the McDonaldisation of Society. We Indians have an answer to that, no? We tadka-fy the society.

OPED

Different forms of corruption
How budgets are to blame
by D. N. Bezboruah

Lately, the public protests against the rising prices have risen to a crescendo all over the country. This is inevitable, considering that the cost of food has literally gone through the roof, without anyone being able to do a thing about it.

Even if ours is not a totalitarian state, controlling prices is quite possible through “coercive” persuasion and by reducing the number of middlemen drastically. The rest of the equation, at least in terms of falling vegetable prices, is not difficult to explain. Nothing has been done so far either to cut out the number of middlemen or to discipline them. As a result, two interesting phenomena are visible. While the prices of locally grown vegetables have plummeted almost to the old levels, onion prices have stubbornly remained at their election-time levels. Likewise, the prices of pulses and sugar have not weakened at all.

The thrust of this article, however, is neither vegetable prices nor just food prices. It is what the coming Union Budget is going to do to inflation and how it is going to stoke more corruption to increase the day-to-day costs incurred by the common man because of corruption. One of the most significant things that might happen in the coming Budget is that fuel prices may be deregulated so as not to have the heavy burden of government subsidies that we have been used to over the years. Some amount of subsidy will doubtless be retained on cooking gas and kerosene. Even then the price of a cylinder of LPG may be raised by Rs 100 and kerosene prices may go up by Rs 6 a litre.

At present the discount given by the government on each cylinder of domestic LPG is Rs 287.59 and on each litre of kerosene Rs 18.06. If fuel prices are not increased beyond the present level, Indian Oil, Bharat Petroleum and Hindustan Petroleum will lose Rs 46,000 crore in revenues during this fiscal. According to the present policy, revenue losses on petrol and diesel are met by firms like the ONGC. Of the revenue loss of Rs 31,574 crore expected on LPG and kerosene, the government has so far given only Rs 12,000 crore. Such an arrangement cannot be allowed to go on indefinitely. We have had for decades populist measures that are politically right but economic disasters. Even now, we have all the political parties swearing to oppose any move to hike the prices of fuel. They have said that an increase in fuel prices cannot be permitted.

Have all the political parties been able to prevent a huge increase in the prices of different commodities? Have they been able to prevent the change in airfares from just Rs 68 to well over Rs 2,000 between Guwahati and Kolkata? Why should prices remain static just because the Bihar Assembly elections are due in a few months? Did they remain static when we had the Lok Sabha elections?

However, I am far more worried about the fraud that Budgets embody. Let me take just two examples. One is the huge subsidies that we have in our Budgets for a whole range of things. First of all, there are subsidies for the terminally sick public sector undertakings (PSUs), which go on year after year and for all sick PSUs. Most of the PSUs are sick because they are obscenely overstaffed and terribly mismanaged. And we conveniently forget that they are so overstaffed because of the efforts of politicians. It is the political leaders who insist on the PSUs taking on more employees than they can sustain and putting almost every PSU under a politician chairman who knows nothing about managing such organizations.

We thus have two infallible ingredients for failure from the beginning: overstaffing and mismanagement. And we go on pretending from year to year that these PSUs can be turned around and brought back to sound health. This pretence itself is a form of corruption that we sustain at great public cost. It is a form of corruption because this pretence at public cost is immoral. The acid test is that no politician would recommend such subsidies if the money were to be paid out of his own pocket. But plundering the exchequer is all right as far as politicians are concerned.

The other fraud is the pretence that all politicians are losing a lot of sleep over the very high levels of unemployment in our villages. They are not concerned about what happens to Bharat. But having huge allocations for rural employment guarantee schemes is the best way of earmarking funds that can be easily siphoned out to augment party funds for elections. That is what happened with the interim Budget just before the last Lok Sabha elections. They left all heads with the allocations of the earlier Budget, but increased the allocation for rural employment alone by 87 per cent. All such corrupt practices lead to huge leakages of public funds into private pockets or the coffers of political parties. This is not to be tolerated in a country where our leaders give sermons to us about transparency and accountability. Thus, it is time the citizens began asking the Union Finance Minister whether the cost of corruption - whether in terms of subsidies to moribund PSUs that can never be revived or in terms of the allocations made for rural employment that are siphoned out for other needs - has been taken into account in preparing the Budget. After all, these are forms of corruption, and one can see how much of corruption the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) has generated all over the country.

While talking about such forms of corruption, one is reminded of what happens routinely when a contractor lands a government contract in Manipur. He is told how much the cut for the underground is. He is also told that the government will pay this additionally and even take the trouble of handing it over to the underground. But the contractor would have to sign a receipt for the additional amount as well. The rest of the arrangement would naturally have to be restricted to verbal instructions.

This is a terrible equation since a percentage of the cost of a development project goes to the underground with the knowledge and blessings of the state government. But there is a trifle more honesty about this bizarre arrangement that the series of Union Budgets that have continued at least the two-fold corruption mentioned above for years on end.

There is much more corruption in the form of subsidies on power, fertilizers and other agricultural inputs that go to land owners who are exempt from paying direct taxes rather than to actual farmers. All this corruption goes unbudgeted. No one complains because those in the corridors of power are generally beneficiaries of the game and the public has apparently come to terms with corruption because it is too tiresome to combat it. This, indeed, is a very sad scenario.

A UK thinker turns his back on Parliament
by Steve Richards

James Purnell joins the departing herd. The so-called Blairite Labour MPs were hopeless at acting together when fighting political battles, but they move as one in leaving the Commons at the next election. Purnell joins other former cabinet ministers, including Alan Milburn, Steve Byers, and Patricia Hewitt, who have opted to pursue alternative careers, a route taken by Tony Blair on the day he left No 10.

As a relatively youthful figure Purnell’s departure is the one with wider implications. He had a future and chose to turn away. A few senior Labour figures saw him even as a possible successor to Gordon Brown, although Purnell was always adamant that he had no interest in the leadership.

His departure is a blow to David Miliband, a contemporary who stays behind to fight for the leadership after the election. Miliband worked closely with Purnell when they were advisers to Blair in opposition and in No 10. At a Labour conference fringe meeting a couple of years ago, when there was feverish speculation about a coup against Gordon Brown, I asked Purnell how often he spoke to Miliband. “We speak most days ... sometimes several times,” he said with a provocative evasiveness. The coups went nowhere but Miliband has lost an ally in the battles to come.

So close to an election, Purnell’s announcement is bad news for Gordon Brown. Another high-profile departure conveys a sense of impending doom whether it is intended to do so or not. Youngish MPs do not leave Parliament when sunny days of stimulating power appear to stretch ahead.

Labour’s opponents will also argue that the departure of another former minister associated with Blair shows the party is moving leftwards. The reality is more complicated. Purnell never exuded a great appetite for party politics. I am not surprised that he is leaving the Commons and predicted he would do so when he resigned from the Cabinet in the summer. He is close friends with another former adviser to Blair, Tim Allen, who runs a thriving consultancy company. Perhaps Purnell will seek a more financially rewarding role by following a similar path. He has also shown considerable support for non-party bodies such as London Citizens. Next week Purnell is taking part in a five-day residential training course in Hemel Hempstead with 50 civil society leaders, including teachers and nurses, under the auspices of Citizens UK. The Conservative leadership is showing considerable interest in the organisation as well.

Purnell’s limited hunger for party politics was matched by an indifference to the manoeuvring and scheming that are an unavoidable part of mainstream politics. His cabinet resignation was announced without consulting other disaffected colleagues. If he had wanted to bring about the downfall of Brown he might have let others know. He did not do so. Brown stayed and the former rising cabinet star left for a somewhat shapeless career as a backbencher and a thinker. Soon after he left the Cabinet, Purnell became more actively involved with the think-tank Demos, another organisation which now has close ties with the Conservative leadership.

Purnell was proving to be a more interesting thinker than the stereotype might have suggested. He was moving on from the Blair era. In a recent article he argued that New Labour had been paralysed by caution and went too far in its accommodation with markets. Purnell also formed a relationship with the leftish MP, Jon Cruddas. The two of them sought common ground partly to avoid a civil war in the event of Labour’s defeat and, more constructively, in the hope of establishing a more pluralist culture in their party and beyond. Cruddas is another potential leadership candidate who will be disappointed by Purnell’s decision to leave the front line.

His departure is both bigger than it seems and less significant. On one level it is the personal decision of another Labour politician with only a limited commitment to the vocation. Blairites never gave the impression they were ready for the long haul. Most of them did not survive in the Cabinet very long even when Blair was Prime Minister. Indeed some – including Purnell – were promoted after Blair had left.

But Purnell is part of a bigger, more portentous exodus, as MPs from across the political spectrum turn their backs on Parliament. Some of those departing were useless, but not all of them. Voters are fed up with politics. An ominous number of MPs, including Purnell, seem to share their disillusionment.

— By arrangement with The Independent

Chatterati
Maturing of the polity
by Devi Cherian

Instances of the Congress and the BJP agreeing on anything are too rare. So, everyone was shocked when BJP chief ministers, especially when Gujarat’s Narendra Modi, praised the Home Minister for impeccable handling of internal security. It shows to some extent a maturing of the Indian polity.

We are so used to the opposition parties protesting against government policies just for the sake of it. After the Mumbai tragedy, the BJP lashed out at the UPA government and tried to make it a poll issue. This did not sell right for the BJP with voters. Terrorism is the biggest threat worldwide today. No party can afford to play politics on securing the country against possible terror attacks. Therefore, it was a pleasant surprise that both the Congress and the BJP seem to have realised that the country expects the political class to tackle the danger of terrorism unitedly.

Anyway, it is time our political parties realised what it meant to be in the Opposition and how to play the role responsibly. The culture of parties indiscriminately going hammer and tongs at the governing party should be finished. In a mature democracy, the Opposition must play a constructive role. So, one was so impressed and relieved at this new development. Let us see how long it lasts.

One man, one post

One has been hearing of one man, one post for some time. So, everyone is anxiously waiting for a reshuffle in the Cabinet and the AICC. But speculation about the AICC reshuffle is quiet now with all in the Congress lobbying for Cabinet berths at the Centre as UPA-II will complete its first year in May. And as usual, the backbiting and leg-pulling has started. But now the mood at the AICC headquarters is not for a change. No one wants to disturb the process of organisational elections.

Rahul Gandhi as a charismatic leader has made the Congress party “feel good”. The one role everyone longs for in the Congress is to strengthen the hands of the young leader. Rahul, Congressmen feel, has revived the Congress in Uttar Pradesh, made the party number one in Maharashtra and will now concentrate on Bihar. In Tamil Nadu and West Bengal, the Congress is bringing talent and youth into the party. Also Rahul’s taming of Bal Thackeray has gone well with all Congress men.

Lobbying for Cabinet berths in the Congress is interesting now because those in the second line in the ruling party want to prove their mettle by becoming ministers. Youngsters feel that the Prime Minister and the Congress chief can create a space for a second rung in the Cabinet by giving other assignments to senior ministers. The lobbying could become intense once the biennial elections to the Rajya Sabha are over. Many Union Ministers term will also get over.

Pawar politics

Sharad Pawar is at the receiving end from all political parties, including the Congress, on the price rise issue. Pawar personally went to call on his old friend Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray and this visit has put the Congress on guard. Pawar, however, claims that he went to request Bal Thackeray to control his forces when the cricket matches will take place in Mumbai. But, surprisingly, Pawar did not take his Home Minister Patil with him for this visit. Wonder what comes first to Pawar —cricket or price rise.

The relationship between Pawar and the Congress is rocky. R.R. Patil as state Home Minister is cozying up to the Congress. He specially went to watch “My Name is Khan” at a multiplex in Mumbai and even stood in a queue and bought a Rs 350 ticket. With Pawar being pressurised for wearing too many hats and not concentrating on the Agriculture Department, one wonders if he went there for support and for what.