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A Tribune Special
Challenges before the new Army Chief |
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Path-breaking initiative
Profile
On Record
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A Tribune Special
Though Pakistan is aware that IWT has the mechanism of a Permanent Indus Commission to settle disputes between the two countries, it also knows that raising the issue in a different forum is a politically safe move to thwart Indian attempts to construct projects for infrastructure development in Jammu and Kashmir. The IWT is hyped internationally as a model for sharing waters of trans-boundary rivers among co-basin states. The treaty is said to be a unique example of successful conflict resolution in international water disputes, particularly its inbuilt resilience to survive two wars. With Pakistan urging India recently to include the issue of water sharing in the agenda for talks to ventilate its unhappiness on the allocation, attempts are again being made to vindicate the fairness of the treaty. According to the fresh line of argument by some analysts, as both India and Pakistan are unhappy about the allocation, questions could be raised over the fair division of waters. Apparently, the real facts in the treaty are concealed. In reaching conclusions, it has not followed any existing principles of law nor any prevailing theories as such — it is unique in ignoring accepted international practices. The river basin extends over an area of 11,65,500 sq km with seven major tributaries draining areas of China, Afghanistan, India and Pakistan. However, in this treaty aimed at achieving the optimal development and utilisation of the Indus waters, the requirements of China and Afghanistan were ignored. For unexplained reasons, contribution of one tributary, the Kabul river, was combined with the Indus; and to give an impression of apparently equal share distribution, the resultant six tributaries were equally divided between India and Pakistan. Accordingly, Pakistan got the western rivers (the Indus along with the Kabul, Jhelum and Chenab), and India, the eastern rivers (the Ravi, the Beas and the Sutlej). Consequently, the then assessed irrigable area of 39 million acres in India had to remain satisfied with the available water of 32.8 million acre feet (MAF) while Pakistan’s 26 million acres of irrigable area got a large quantum of 135.6 MAF of water from the Indus under the treaty. The fundamental principles of equitable distribution of the water resources were thus thrown to winds, thereby making a mockery of the model treaty. Interestingly, while other similar international treaties executed elsewhere had a fixed period of validity, the IWT has no such fixed timeframe and hence is a permanent agreement with no exit option. India was never happy with the Pakistan-biased conditions in the treaty, but agreed in the interest of peaceful neighbourly relations and early settlement of the dispute since the World Bank had brokered the treaty. The disenchantment is growing since the unprincipled method of allocation resulted in India getting only 20 per cent of the Indus waters against its rightful share of more than 40 per cent, causing water scarcity in Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan due to constraints imposed by the IWT on water use. Further, frequent wrangling in the interpretation of the treaty’s clauses affected India’s development plans in Jammu and Kashmir. For example, the construction of the Wular project on the Jhelum to provide cheap water transport had to be stopped due to Pakistan’s objections. The Baglihar hydel project got delayed only due to manipulations by our neighbour. Now it is targeting to delay the Kishan Ganga hydel project by making it a subject of endless debate. Having raised the bogey of IWT violations, Pakistan has been successful in stalling or delaying about 27 projects planned for the development of Jammu and Kashmir. Consequently, of 8769 MW of estimated hydro potential from these rivers, India has been able to tap only 1500 MW so far. Despite these limitations, India tried its best to make the treaty a success, accommodating Pakistan’s tantrums. The treaty could survive the tempests of history only because of the conciliatory spirit shown by India. However, this is being considered as a weakness, encouraging Pakistan to take up the issue frequently in various forums to malign India. Now with China having started its dam project in its part of the basin, the river flow patterns downstream are bound to be affected. India should view this seriously in the light of past experience in the Sutlej basin. In August 2000, flash floods left a trail of destruction in Himachal Pradesh. Prior to that, in the summer months, there were reduced river flows into the Bhakra reservoir, an unusual feature during the snow-melting season. The causes were not known then but were presumed to be due to Chinese construction activities in the river upstream. Again, in 2004 and 2005, heavy flows from China caused panic in India and even necessitated the closure of the Naptha Jhakri project for a couple of days. Of late, Pakistan is blaming India for shortfalls in Indus flows even though they are aware of Chinese structures upstream which affect the flows. The experience of Thailand and other co-basin states of the Mekong basin due to operations of the Chinese dams upstream should also be a lesson to us. The indiscriminate upstream reservoir operations by China affected their agriculture, fisheries and tourism projects. The flood flows released from its reservoirs inundated many lands in these states. China never bothered about their protests and the Mekong River Commission (MRC) could not do much on the complaints of these states as China is not a member of the MRC. Likewise, China is not associated with the IWT. Of the four co-basin states, India and Pakistan are only parties to the treaty. As such, there are no river water agreements between China and these countries except for a joint declaration made in 2006 between India and China to share the hydrological data of such rivers. The existing international laws on trans-boundary rivers being weak, it is highly essential to have proper water-sharing agreements among the co-basin states to avoid future conflicts in the Indus basin. Hence, a comprehensive review of the IWT is a compelling necessity to address the changing geopolitical situation and emerging international norms for sharing these rivers. India has to press Pakistan for such a review. If Pakistan does not agree for a review, India must draw its attention to relevant articles of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, 1969, to which it is also a signatory. Article 31 inter alia states that a treaty shall be interpreted in good faith in accordance with the ordinary meaning to be given to the terms of the treaty in their context in the light of its object and purpose. In this case, the stated purpose is to achieve optimum development and utilisation of the Indus waters. If Pakistan still does not accept our request for the review, India has to draw its attention to Article 62 of the Convention which permits terminating or withdrawing from the treaty due to a fundamental change of circumstances. India can exercise this option since this change has now occurred with China entering the scene to exploit Indus waters in its territory. The increased demand for water from the Indus system is already triggering disputes among the basin states in India while Pakistan is blaming us for its water woes even when its surplus flows are discharging into the sea unused. It is therefore for India to seize this opportunity to call the bluff and insist for the review of the treaty taking into account the changes that have occurred since
1960. The writer is a former Member Secretary, Indian National Committee on Irrigation and Design, Union Ministry of Water Resources, New Delhi
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Challenges before the new Army Chief
There has been little modernisation in the last decade or so. The budget for the army gets reduced every year in real terms. The deteriorating civil-military relations do not bode well for the safety and security of the nation. And the regional security environment is cause for concern. The status of army personnel is dwindling continuously, adversely affecting the morale of the rank and file. The shortage of officers is again at a precariously high level. The veterans’ resentment consequent to the dragging of feet by the government on their long-pending demand for one rank one pension (OROP) threatens to boil over. The situation reminds this writer of the battlefield message sent by a General to his Emperor: “Am surrounded both sides. My centre cannot hold. Situation excellent. I shall attack.” Will the new Army Chief, who had cut his professional teeth in a proud and valorous regiment, replicate this by being proactive? The citizens, who have a great affection for the army, do expect it from him. Even if Gen Singh goes on to hold other prestigious appointments in or outside the government in future, they will never be able to match this appointment — in prestige, satisfaction and the affection he will get from his vast command and indeed from the whole country. He will also have to reciprocate to the maximum extent by his deeds. Consequently, he must command with honour and neither let carrots being dangled in his face nor pressures and threats change or influence the decisions he takes. There is need to highlight a few issues that may help the Army Chief to reinforce, modify or negate the conclusions he may have reached. They may also supplement the briefings he will receive from his staff and advisors, which may not always be completely objective. In democracies the world over, the political leadership makes national policy and the national security strategy, with the active participation of civil and military officials of the country. However, in India, the military has been deliberately kept out of the policy formulation loop and even after over six decades of loyal, patriotic and dedicated service to the nation, it is obvious that it is still not trusted! Nothing else explains the reasons for its exclusion from policy formulations, the inability to evolve a viable and comprehensive structure for higher defence, the non-articulation of a national security strategy since Independence, the non-appointment of a CDS accepted nearly a decade back, the non-integration of the Ministry of Defence and not the least, the muzzling of the three Chiefs, even when they speak on professional matters and say what needs to be said. This state of affairs must change. It is only the Army Chief with the support of the other Chiefs who can convince the leadership of all parties and not just the party in power that they discard their doubts and stop listening to those advisers who have a vested interest in perpetuating this state of distrust of the military. The military also needs to modify the concept of being apolitical. The army’s long standing stance of keeping a distance from the leaders of political parties other than those of the party in power needs to be modified. In a parliamentary system like ours, policy is formulated by all parliamentarians despite differences of the opposition. After all, the Parliament Standing Committee on Defence and similar other committees are all-party bodies. Consequently, though remaining apolitical, the army needs to apprise and discuss its concerns with the political leadership across the board. This would not reduce the apolitical nature of the army, about which it is justifiably so proud. A related suggestion is to make the political leaders of the nation understand the true meaning of ‘civil control’. It implies the supremacy of the political leadership over both the military as well as the civil bureaucracy. Unfortunately, our political leaders either do not understand this or find it easier not to understand it. The political leadership must deal with the military directly, just as they do with the bureaucracy and not through the latter, which is the case at present. In its secondary role of assisting the civil authorities, the army must be employed as a last resort and such employment must be for the minimum period. However, the reality is that because the army delivers efficiently and with alacrity, it is being called out without first using the other instruments available to the government. It is also being incorrectly employed on such tasks for prolonged periods, like in Nagaland, Assam and Jammu and Kashmir for 50, 30 and 20 years respectively. Such long deployment on secondary roles affect the combat potential of the army, alienate the populace and lower the morale of the troops. Units of the Central Police Organisations (CPOs) are continuously being raised and yet the army deployments continue. Why? The last issue relates to senior officers of the army, who are the custodians of our value systems. Unfortunately, in recent years, the number of cases of misdemeanour by senior officers have increased. This trend needs to be arrested at the earliest. The army does have stringent norms for promotion and only the best get through successfully. However, to weed out the few whose motivational levels may have dropped, there needs to be greater emphasis on character qualities like integrity, moral strength, self-discipline and social as well as domestic probity or rectitude in standards of selection for higher leadership. The writer is a former Vice-Chief of the Indian Army
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Path-breaking initiative
This is a path-breaking move for a nation that has traditionally held personal choice as the most cherished value and has squirmed at any mention or thought of government subsidy in health. The Republicans have predictably sounded a nay for the Bill citing the issue of a cross-subsidy to health sector which would amount to a whopping $900 billion. The Bill has far-reaching ramifications on the public health of the Americans and promises to extend the social security net to the underprivileged in the US. It brings under its ambit all the poor households having an annual income less than $88,000. The money for the premia for the same shall be made up by higher taxes, something the Republicans have come out strongly against. The biggest bastion of capitalism thus has unambiguously marked a stamp of approval on one of the most progressive legislations which would only confirm the hypothesis of the convergence theorists who have written about the similarity in the increasing similarity between capitalist and socialist paradigm when it comes to public spending and social security. It thus becomes a bit of an irony that the Indian state is being increasingly seen as reneging on its pledge of providing social security net to all. As a quirk twist of fate, the country is witnessing a strange transition to a situation wherein there is a depleting public spending on health and at the same time the insurance companies are getting away with giving even lesser amounts to the few insurance lakh policy holders in the garb of caveats and riders. Allocation by the Centre and the states combined on health is a mere 1 per cent of GDP. A huge 80 per cent of the total spending on health is being made by the private out of pocket expenditure thereby pushing households and the vulnerable sections of society into abject penury. The Indian establishment could take a page out of the American policymakers' manual. There is no doubt about the fact that given the massive resource crunch in the country and the sheer magnitude of the huge population, the American Health Bill may not be directly replicable to the Indian backdrop. However, there is scope for customisation of the American health reforms to the Indian scenario. The answer to the problem has to keep in mind Indian realities and shall have to leverage the existing private infrastructure in health which has come to predominate the Indian health scenario. Health stamps on the lines of food stamps is an option that could be extended to the BPL families. The health stamps could be extended to the poorest of the poor and help them gain access to the private sector health set up in semi urban and Type C and Type D towns. The health stamps could be redeemed against monetary compensation by the health service providers. This could ease the pressure on the primary health centre set-up which entail huge establishment costs for the government and are accompanied with service delivery problems which accompany all government projects. This may give a fillip to movement of private health professionals in the backwaters where the government finds it difficult to send doctors and paramedics. This could also give the fledgling rural health industry a great boost and could also be used to give a forward push to alternate medical regimes like AYUSH. The delivery mechanism for health stamps could be dovetailed with the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act and greater community participation. As regards the slowly but surely swelling numbers of the Great Indian Middle Class, the American model of compulsory enrolment to an insurance scheme could be replicated. Non-enrolment could translate into penalties like in the American model. The government introduced the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana in 2007-2008 wherein there was a provision of health insurance cover of up to Rs 30,000 per BPL household per annum against a government payout of Rs 750 per family which would amount to 75 per cent of the contribution. A similar enlarged model with higher compulsory coverage and higher premia entirely paid by the end user could be applied for above BPL households as well. At the same time, the government may need to step in by introducing tough parameters for the insurance agencies to adhere to so that the insurance holder does not get a short shrift at the hands of the now proliferating health insurance providers. On the fiscal side, a health cess on fuel and other consumptive luxury items like air travel and hotel stay could also be envisaged which would help to bring in the required resources for the Indian health reforms. Only when the health of a nation is secure can true development and progress be achieved. An all-encompassing reform in the health sector could thus go a long way in securing the health of the teeming millions and truly set the nation on the trajectory of all round growth by unleashing the much famed human resource potential of our
country. The writer, an Indian Revenue Service officer, is Assistant Commissioner of Customs, Mumbai
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Profile Barely three years ago, he had to sell his original manuscripts at throwaway price. He was quoted as saying, “I have sold my works to publishers, who cheated me and have not paid the money. I am ready to sell my awards, including the Sahitya Academy Award. I need money to survive”. The publishers, who used to make a beeline for the rights to Kant's books and novels, are now allegedly not paying his royalty through the sale of his works —Sukha Patta (dry leaf), Kale-Ujale (black and white), Bich Ki Diwar (wall in the middle) and Desh Ke Log (people of the country). Even though Kant is not keeping well, he can stand upright and as someone remarked, “he is a living symbol of protest and vice of dissent”. He does not want people to empathise with him and offer charity. Instead, he wants the government to provide him his rightful due. He has reportedly told his friends and admirers, “I have served the country for long with my works; now I want the government to serve me”. Kanr suffers from osteomyelitis, an infection of bones. With no one else to take care of him, his son Arvind Bindu looks after his ailing father and has no occupation. Often Kant dictates his work and his son writes down in long hand. Kant keeps on writing to make both ends meet. Depending on the number of writings published in a month, he can barely get along. His medical bills alone run into Rs 5000 a month. The state government that honoured him with the Mahatma Gandhi Award and the Sahitya Bhushan, has not come forward to help him. Kant is also a Soviet Land Nehru Award winner. His books are still taught in several universities in Russia, Japan and India. Recalling his freedom struggle days, Kant has been quoted as saying: “I was very young and was an intermediate student in the Ewing Christian School when I left studies and jumped into the freedom struggle”. He never claimed the freedom fighters' pension. Many believe it is because he refused to compromise with the system and that he had to wait for 30 years for the Sahitya Akademi Award. Kant has been honoured with Vyas Samman for his much acclaimed novel — Inhin Hathiyaron Se (through these weapons), published by Rajkamal Publications. Indeed the pen has been his weapon all these years. Set in the backdrop of rural Balia region of eastern Uttar Pradesh, the novel opens with the Quit India movement of 1942 and journeys to Independence in 1947. Balia, it may be recalled, was the epicentre of the freedom movement and for a brief period freedom fighters threw out the English and declared Independence. Kant too was born in Bhagdalpur village of Balia. He began his career as a journalist. The K.K. Birla Foundation's Vyas Samman Award is given to an outstanding literary work by an Indian citizen in any Indian language, published in the last 10 years. It can be bestowed upon any genre of writing such as poetry, short story, drama, history of language, criticism, essay or biography. A member of the Nai Kahani (new story) literary movement of the 1950s, Kant's fictional art developed under the Progressive Writers' Association, the magazine — Kahani — and works of noted author Bhairav Prasad Gupt. The Vyas Samman is the second most prestigious award given by the K.K. Birla Foundation. Kant's first story — Babu —was published in 1949 and one of his most celebrated stories is — Dopahar Ka Bhojam (Lunch).
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On Record Once in mid-1980s when Army operation against the Naga rebels was at its peak, the GOC 3 Corps of the Army, described her spirit and courage by saying: “She is the only man in Nagaland.” She is also an acclaimed poet and storyteller. Monalisa is the first Naga poet to visit the International Indigenous Peoples' Forum, Oslo, in 1997 where she presented her collection on Monsoon Mourning, which reflect Naga society of the late 1980s and 1990s. Her first volume of poetry Weapons of Words of Pages of Pain was published in 1993 while the second volume Monsoon Mourning was published in 2007. Her poems, titled Of A People Unanswered, a trilogy, are taught in the MA English course at Nagaland University. The Tribune spoke to Monalisa Changkija at her Dimapur residence recently. Excerpts: Q: What is your impression about the ongoing Naga peace process involving the Naga rebel group NSCN-IM and the Government of India? A: It is a very difficult situation here. Peace must come, but nobody has guts to say what peace is. Times have changed as we have. We are in no position to tell the NSCN-IM or the Centre what we actually want. New Delhi sounds happy with the NSCN-IM and Muivah (rebel leader) sound happy with Government of India. Nobody here knows what is actually going on between the two parties. We must have a vision of what do we want finally. Q: How challenging has it been for you in a conflict-ridden society? A: Journalists in the entire Northeast always have to tread along a road fraught with dangers, including armed underground groups, security forces and troublemakers, but that makes life more precious to us. It is important that we are alive because there are so many stories and histories of our people that must be told in our own ways and at our own time. Q: Is there anything that makes you worry most about the contemporary society in the North East? A:
Our children are getting detached from their roots. We must take steps to address this issue before it is too late. We have to take our children to their roots. Of late, I have noticed that a subtle form of dowry in our society and people don't want to talk about it or try to ignore it. It is an outcome of plain greed, as dowry has never been a part of culture in the Northeast. Traditionally, a Naga girl used to bring only a traditional loin loom along with her to the boy's home after marriage. But today you see how many things a girl takes to the boy's family! Q: What about the oft-repeated allegation of N-E issues not getting highlighted in the media outside the region? A: The media tends to get detached from ground realities. Of course, in the rest of the country, it could have played a much bigger role in bridging the 'gap' between the N-E and rest of India. Those who have money have invested in the media - it is no longer journalism but marketing. I brought out Nagaland Page just to highlight issues of Nagaland and neighbouring states. Q: What about the general lack of awareness about the N-E in the rest of the country? A:
We have to put our house in order first before pointing an accusing finger at others. We shouldn't get fixated at other people's ignorance about us. We have to gauge first how much do we know about ourselves and people from neighbouring states in the region. How many of us properly know about the unique history of our tribes, villages and way of life. We have to know ourselves first to let others know about us.
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Pakistan’s
General V.K. Singh
THE United States
Congress passed the historic Health Care Bill extending health care to tens of millions of uninsured Americans. 
WELL known Hindi writer Amar Kant has been chosen for the prestigious Vyas Samman. He is 85 and will get a cash prize of Rs 2.5 lakh but how long will it last? The internationally acclaimed litterateur, who has participated in India's freedom movement, has been ailing and virtually penniless. 
IT takes tremendous guts to be a journalist of substance in a place like Nagaland where prolonged armed conflicts have taken a heavy toll on society that has virtually allowed diktats of armed groups to decide its course. A Delhi University alumnus, Monalisa Changkija, Editor of Nagaland Page, who was recently conferred the prestigious Chameli Devi Jain Award for 2009-10, has exhibited tremendous courage, grit and dedication to do justice to the profession under trying circumstances.