The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Cultivating obscurantism
Politicians must play a role for social reform

If there ever was any doubt that the infamous “khap” panchayats in Haryana which have been in the news in recent times for their aggressive support to obscurantist casteist practices draw their strength from the silent patronage they get from politicians of all hues, the manner in which Congress MP from Kurukshetra, Mr Navin Jindal, has capitulated before them should set it at rest. Mr Jindal, who had been threatened with action in his constituency if he did not extend support to the demand of the mahapanchayat of khaps for amending the Hindu Marriage Act to ban same gotra marriages, has, in a letter to khap representatives, supported their diktat.

The young industrialist, who has had the best of modern education, had not a word of reprimand or even advice for these panchayats fuelling the retrograde practice of “honour killings” of young lovers who fall victim to the fury of chauvinist relatives and village elders. The recent landmark judgment by a court in Karnal in the “Manoj-Babli honour killing case” in which five accused were given the death sentence was a reminder to the khap panchayats that they were not above law. Yet, it is the support of politicians which encourages the khaps to cock at snook at the Constitution and implicitly mock at the changing societal norms of freedom of choice in marriages. Already, the Indian National Lok Dal had come out in support of the demand to amend the law and ban same gotra marriages.

Clearly, politicians like Mr Jindal are motivated by their desire to cultivate the vote bank that khap panchayats represent. They lack the courage to call their bluff and to stand by what is morally and constitutionally right. Significantly, Haryana has one of the lowest sex ratios (821 in the 0-6 age group) in the country. Female foeticide is rampant but not once have these panchayats passed a resolution against it. If the likes of Mr Navin Jindal pick up the cudgels against such alarming trends, they would be serving a noble cause indeed. But if they fail to do so, posterity will blame them for perpetuating obscurantism in a world that is moving on with time.

Tourism troubles
Himachal on a rough road

Just as Himachal Pradesh has achieved a national distinction in banishing illiteracy, it could very well have expanded tourism imaginatively to accommodate the neo-literate, who all now wait for government jobs. The state’s myopic political leadership has failed to tap the state’s full potential for tourism and remove even obvious hurdles. It has not yet learnt to compete and is content with whatever tourist flow the state gets. The state has gained from tourists turned away by militancy in Kashmir. Still, the hotel owners and tourist operators thank their stars if there is early and prolonged heat or snow, which means more-than-average business. The state leadership has not done any campaigning like the Centre’s “Incredible India”.

Himachal has hardly anything to offer in rain or spring or beyond the small number of tourist hotspots. High-end tourists get easily irritated by small inconveniences, which government officials don’t even notice, and fly away to better alternatives within or outside the country. But the ordinary lot too has much to complain about. When they land in Himachal they find everything except what they are looking for: cool weather, greenery, long walks in the woods and rare plants and flowers. Instead what they discover in Shimla and Manali are the same ills of urban life they try to escape from: chaotic traffic, lack of parking space, vehicular pollution, bad roads, poor water supply and haphazard growth all round.

A hill state would ideally zealously guard its green cover and go in for non-polluting industries like biotechnology and information technology. The government here is encouraging cement plants and private builders regardless of inadequate water resources and fragile mountains. Trucks carrying construction materials choke roads as tourists get stuck in traffic jams. There are long queues even to pay an eminently avoidable entry tax. Himachal’s political leadership must understand what is good for the state, abandon policies that tend to ruin the environment and remove hurdles tourists generally face.

Thought for the Day

I like to write when I feel spiteful; it’s like having a good sneeze. — D. H. Lawrence

ARTICLE

Bengal needs more than Mamata
State not yet out of the woods
by Amulya Ganguli

Only time will tell whether Meghnad Desai is right in saying that West Bengal’s problems “can only be solved after the elections if Mamata Banerjee wins and proves her incompetence”. There are two sides to this curious assessment. First is the conviction that Mamata will win. It is widely shared in the state where the Left Front is believed to have run its course. The second is the belief that the Trinamool Congress leader is not the answer to the state’s difficulties. The British peer has evidently based this assumption on Mamata’s anti-industrialisation stance which, according to him, restricts the scope for employment and development.

If she is still expected to win, the explanation lies in West Bengal’s dismal history of the last four decades when everything that could go wrong, did so in accordance with Murphy’s pessimistic law. Yet, the state had started off on the right footing after Independence because it had a towering figure like B.C. Roy at the helm. It was because of his vision and enterprise that a truncated state was able to overcome the debilitating and disruptive effects of Partition when thousands of refugees poured in from East Pakistan.

Since Roy was a man of the modern era - he thought of an underground railway for Calcutta in the 1950s when its cost was estimated at Rs 20 lakh - the state was able to cope with the influx with its industrialisation drive, which saw the establishment of the Durgapur industrial and Haldia petro-chemical complexes. The Calcutta State Transport Corporation was set up to provide jobs mainly to the refugees, and satellite towns were conceived in the Salt Lake area near Calcutta - as it was known then - and farther away in Kalyani, where a university was also set up.

But even if West Bengal was able to deal with the after-effects of Partition, it had the misfortune of harbouring a communist leadership driven solely by its revolutionary doctrine of violence and destabilisation, which was again in evidence in the recent bandh against price rise when Chief Minister Buddhadev Bhattacharjee’s preference for a new work ethic and exemption of the 24x7 IT sector from closure came to naught. One reason why the communists were able to propagate their nihilism was that they drew their cadres from the refugees, who were in an anarchic frame of mind because of the loss of their home and hearth.

Yet, the fact that communist theory had little to do with their rebellious outlook became evident in the early 1970s when the Youth Congress and the Chhatra Parishad were able to enlist a large number of young men and women from the same lower middle class sections. However, the state’s bad luck of being saddled with a cynical communist leadership was compounded, first, by the declining calibre of Congressmen after Roy’s death in 1962 — Atulya Ghosh and P.C. Sen were not exactly inspiring figures — and, secondly, by the Emergency of 1975-77, which was a shot in the arm for a demoralised Left Front, which was left dazed by its defeat in 1972 when Siddhartha Shankar Ray became Chief Minister.

What is distressing, however, is that the story of West Bengal’s decline and fall, which began with the Left’s assumption of power in 1977, is set to continue, as Lord Desai has hinted. If the communists robbed West Bengal of its primacy of position as an industrial state by their militant trade unionism, their putative successors — Mamata Banerjee and Co — offer little hope of redemption because they, too, have imbibed the same destructive mindset. As her agitations in Singur and Nandigram have shown, her economics is little different from that of the Luddites at the dawn of the industrial age with their intense aversion towards machines.

Mamata’s politics, too, has an anarchic streak, as was evident from the way she enlisted the help of the Maoists during her anti-Tata and anti-industries movements. It is clear, therefore, that West Bengal will not know how to move forward if she does become the Chief Minister. Since her Luddite tendencies seem to go hand in hand with the socialistic preference for the public sector, she may make the state relive the nightmare of driving away the private sector and pouring funds into the bottomless pit of the unproductive and loss-making public sector. It took Buddhadev Bhattacharjee three decades of communist folly to overturn its earlier anti-private sector policy. But if the person, who successfully frustrated his efforts, replaces him as the Chief Minister, then one can only expect a turning back of the clock.

If the Trinamool leader has become known for her whimsicality and recklessness, it is because these traits served her well in her long battle against the Marxists. The Congress’s degeneration into what she described as the CPM’s “B” team meant that she had to take on the Marxist goons all by herself. Despite being physically attacked which led to a fairly prolonged hospitalisation, she didn’t lose heart. But the initial single-handed battle forced her to accept help from whoever was willing to provide it, whether the Maoists or that maverick group of communists belonging to the Socialist Unity Centre.

But though she is on the verge of success, she hasn’t been able to shed her tendency to be guided by rash instincts, as her sudden snapping of ties with the Congress in the state shows. Had the two remained united, there is little doubt that the Left would have received a severe drubbing in the forthcoming municipal elections, and especially in the contest for the Kolkata Municipal Corporation, where a Congress-Trinamool Congress victory would have set the tone for next year’s assembly poll. The breakdown of their alliance has cast a shadow, however, over the outcome. The Trinamool may still win, but the victory margins and majorities in the various local bodies will be low.

It is possible that the two parties will reunite after the municipal polls to fight the assembly elections together. Even Mamata may not be so impetuous as to go into the most important battle of her life on her own when an alliance with the Congress is expected to hand her an easy victory. The Congress’s presence by her side is also likely to introduce an element of moderation in her policies and thereby prove Lord Desai wrong. But nothing can be said with certainty where Mamata is concerned. Her sole objective, of course, is to defeat the CPM. But her relationship with the West Bengal Congress, though not with the party at the national level, has always been an uneasy one because she cannot forget how it treated her when she was no more than an ordinary member.

In those days, the party of Pranab Mukherjee and A.B.A. Ghani Khan Chaudhury found her too individualistic to be accommodated and, therefore, virtually forced her to quit, expecting her to fade away. But she proved both her friends and foes wrong. Her street-fighting ways — she had once danced on the roof of Jayaprakash Narayan’s car in Calcutta — was the right antidote to the CPM’s crude dominance. It didn’t take long for the Trinamool Congress to become the first among the non-Left parties and reduce the Congress to its “B” team, where it has remained. And which is why it is secretly resentful of her imperious nature. But the two complement one another — the Congress with its greater experience in governance and Mamata with her popularity. However, if they remain apart, West Bengal ‘s tale of woe will continue.

MIDDLE

Happy birthday to me
by Shriniwas Joshi

Today, I am entering the 75th year of my trip round the sun. I would not have disclosed the year of my first journey, i.e. 1936, but thought of doing so yesterday when I was standing in Marina Book Shop on the Mall, where antique books are sold.

A lady watched me from the front and back and sides and told the keeper that there was no price tag on this piece. I was not annoyed by her comments but appreciated her for having thought of the price of a burning building.

I feel proud of my age because I am sure that nobody can stick charges of sexual harassment on me unless I turn ND Tewari. I am also sure that if ever a hostage situation arises, I will be among the first to be released.

I have reasons to be happy that all my favourite movies of yesteryears are being re-released in colour; my clothing that I had dumped in suitcases have come back in style and when I wear those, I get envious looks from the youngsters; all pharmacists and chemists are my new acquaintances and present me the new-year calendars with devis and devatas in blessing pose reserving those with pictures of semi-clad heroines for other customers; I have no troubles with my teeth because my teeth and I never sleep together; with crow-feet around my eyes, eagle headed baldness and turkey’s neck, my face is birds’ paradise and it is always the doctor who tells me to slow down not the policeman standing near the Victory tunnel.

On the eve of this birthday, the next door neighbour asked me, “Uncle, what present should I bring for your birthday?” I joked, “Something with diamond.” And lo! She brought a pack of cards that is lying before me; surely I will use that to play ‘Patience’. She also brought a half-pound chocolate-cake and on my telling her that eating birthday cake gives me heartburns, she quickly retorted, “Never eat the cake along with burning candles, uncle.”

When I was celebrating the 62nd birthday, the day gained such importance that May 11 was declared the National Technology Day because on this day the first indigenous aircraft Hansa-3 was test flown at Bangaluru, Trishul missile was fruitfully test fired and Shakti, nuclear tests, were successfully carried out at Pokhran. The day which was important for me became important for the nation of a billion and more. Inspite of K. Santhanam and his anti-Pokhran tests uttering, my pride for the day enhanced 1998 onwards.

I am happy but also recall Clinton’s saying on his fiftieth birthday, “I have less tomorrows now than yesterdays” and feel that my birth certificate is also approaching the expiry date but despite already eating away four years of one of my Himachali brother (life expectancy in HP is 70), I shout Happy Birthday to Me and wait for the next one.

OPED

Caste in census
Politics of social division or inclusion?
by Manjit Singh

Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan with his wife Sadhna Singh giving details of their family members to census officials in Bhopal. — PTI

The inclusion of a column on caste in the data collection of census 2011, after a heated debate in and outside Parliament, at the first instance seems to be a benign and insignificant issue. A closer look at the long-run implications of such information forces us to go back to the historical debates on caste-based political reservation and its impact on social inclusion.

Before going in for a social auditing of 60 years experience of caste-based politics in independent India, with the obvious purpose of social inclusion, it is important to have a fresh look into the sources of strength of the caste system and its continuous reproduction even at places where there is no objective basis.

Nowhere in the world had slavery, followed by feudalism, taken such a rigid form of mutually exclusive social estates, namely, castes, as in India. The reasons for the survival of the segmented society in India till today lies in the multiplicity of disabilities heaped upon the socially marginalised sections of society, call them slaves, dalits, or socially excluded people.

The caste system is perpetuated not so much through economic exploitation or socio-cultural deprivation of the working people as much through the ideology of ritual degradation, and thus devaluation of harsh and hazardous labour, along with the labourer himself.

Consequently there is a wide acceptance of the calculation of the statutory minimum wage of a worker on the basis of meeting physical needs measured in calories (body energy) and not human needs.

The framers of the Indian Constitution were fully aware of this ground reality and thus prescribed a policy of reservation as a means to mitigate social, economic, cultural and political disempowerment of what were termed as Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. There is no doubt that reservation (protective discrimination) has helped to ameliorate social and economic conditions of millions of dalits in India who were living under slave-like conditions at the time of Independence.

However in a democratic system of “one person, one vote” reservation has also turned out to be a tool with the political parties whose interests otherwise are in direct clash with the dalits. It is precisely for the twin conflicting arguments, one for social justice and the other of apprehension of political abuse, that there is a sharp division among the political parties on the inclusion of an additional column on caste identity in the ongoing census.

Some of the national dailies have opposed the move by pointing out the difficulties in collecting authentic data on such a diverse reality, while the others have questioned the use (or possible abuse) of such data against the very purpose for which it is to be generated. There is no simple “yes” or “no” to such a historic decision that, of course, is being taken in haste, more out of political expediency rather than a historical understanding of caste and its possible negative fallout.

All over the world identity politics, in the name of race, ethnicity, minorities, immigrants or “foreigners”, has tended to bypass the core issue of exploitation, poverty and marginality, thus distorting the democratic functioning of political institutions.

The real question is: Despite compiling detailed data on the SCs and the STs since Independence, why has the Indian state failed to generate security among the dalit masses and integrate them with the process of nation building?

Unless we address this question squarely, the collection of additional information on castes would perhaps lead to new fissures in the already fragile social fabric of India rather than empowering the disempowered as claimed by the vociferous Indian political elites in Parliament.

The argument that such a data on castes is being collected after a gap of 80 years ever since the British did this exercise in 1930 provides all the more ground to suspect the real purpose of such information.

Castes have strengthened over time in independent India while we are not sure how far the caste system as a whole has been weakened through the efforts of the state as also social resistance.

If we deliberately wish to turn our back to the political upheaval of inter-state “red corridor”, what we denounce as the Naxalite menace, still waiting for more data on ethnic identities, there is every reason to suspect the professed claims of those politicians who are advocating data collection on castes in the name of social justice to and empowerment of those hanging on to the social margin of society.

It is not as important to collect or not to collect details on castes in India as to address the question whether we have a roadmap of metamorphosing India as a nation by melting down the steel frames of caste hierarchies or we still want to carry on with the age-old strategy of dividing people on different identity lines over which the individual incumbent has no control.

If the experience of the past 60 years is any indicator, the way Indian democracy functions within a multi-cultural and uneven social framework, it is not difficult to imagine that how far the data on castes is going to meet the desired constitutional goals of social justice and empowerment, and how far it is going to end up as a political plank for garnering communitarian support at the hustings.

The writer is the Director, Centre for the Study of Social Exclusion, Panjab University, Chandigarh

Privatising healthcare in UP
by Shahira Naim

The civil society is set to oppose the Uttar Pradesh government's decision to hand over the complete public health infrastructure in four districts to selected private partners for 33 years.

Describing it as the state abdicating its constitutional responsibility, more than three dozen NGOs and concerned citizens have regrouped under a newly formed 'Swasthya Sewa Nijikaran Virodhi Manch' (SSNVM) to launch a public campaign against the move.

Sources claim that Apollo Hospitals, Fortis Heathcare, Max Healthcare and Rockland have been shortlisted by the state government for the management, operation and maintenance of public health service facilities.

According to Jashodara Dasgupta from HealthWatch UP-Jharkhand, the SSNVM will launch a multi-pronged campaign to challenge the move that is being viewed as a violation of the fundamental right of a citizen to life with dignity.

In the very first attempt of its kind anywhere in the country, the Uttar Pradesh government has selected four District Hospitals, eight Community Health Centres, 23 Primary Health Centres and 210 Sub Centres for handing over to selected private partners. The districts selected for the experiment are Allahabad, Kanpur, Firozabad and Basti.

For this a Special Purpose Company is to be set up with the private partners in which the government will have a mere 11 per cent shareholding. After 33 years the SPC will be dissolved and the shares will revert to the government on the payment of a nominal sum of Re 1.

The 26-page Request for Qualification (RFQ) document available on the state government's website speaks of the entire curative chain being made a "financially viable business proposition" in which the government offers the partner a "captive market" of 23 lakh population in the district with "practically no presence of any other quality private provider".

According to Dasgupta, the word 'free' occurs only once in the document where it mentions that only those services which are free under category ‘A’ Conveniently these services have not been listed. No provisions for providing free services for the poor or BPL finds a mention in the bid document.

“Category B (list to be made available only to the shortlisted bidders in the RFQ document) are mandatory services to be introduced by the private partner for which they would "be allowed to determine its own charges” “as per market forces”.

It is very clear from the bid document that the state government will not make any financial contribution to the capital and running costs other than providing “supplies under National programmes”.

In its bid to offer an uncharted market to private players in the health sector the state government has not mentioned its obligation or that of the private partner to the increasing number of the poor and marginalised, who are getting free or subsidised medical care. There is no mention if there would be free beds for the poor.

What would happen to the UPA government's ambitious National Rural Health Mission is also not clear. In areas like maternal health, family planning, tuberculosis and malaria control the NRHM has provided a mechanism for laying out technical standards, funding as well as accountability for the health system.

The Director General, Medical Health Services, Dr R R Bharti, remained busy in meetings and was unavailable to comment on apprehensions of the civil society on this move to privatise health services in the four districts of the state.

Delhi Durbar
Supreme advice to media

In the recent judgement on the pre-marital sex controversy created by the remarks of Tamil actor Khushboo, the Supreme Court said it wanted to give a piece of advice to the media before saying “omega” (concluding). The reason: some of the observations made by the court during the course of the hearing were reported by a section of the media giving the impression that these were the orders passed by the Bench on the subject.

This misled several religious organisations, prompting them to shoot off letter petitions to the court praying for a review of these orders. According to sources, the three-member Bench even received religious and mythological texts from some outfits which wanted to educate the judges on the high moral values being practised in the country for many a millennium. Some of them had even threatened to stage demonstrations outside the apex court. No wonder, the Bench said “omega” (the last Greek alphabet) only after sort of admonishing the Fourth Estate!

‘Power couple’

Union Home Secretary GK Pillai and his Chandigarh-educated wife and batch-mate in the IAS, Sudha Pillai, are now the ultimate “power couple” in the bureaucracy in the capital. The Home Secretary's “better half” is now the Member Secretary of the Planning Commission in the rank of Minister of State.

Sudha Pillai, a 1972 batch Kerala cadre IAS officer, started her career as SDM Thiruvananthapuram. Born at Shimla, Sudha was educated in Chandigarh and topped the BA Honours exam of Panjab University. She went on to secure the second rank in the civil services exam, besides completing her masters.

In a lighter vein, people are asking if the lady, who now holds the MOS rank, will be senior to her husband in terms of protocol. On a serious note, the couple is down to earth and hardly displays the immense power it wields. In the past, the famous power couple at that level were SS Grewal, who was the Cabinet Secretary, while his wife, Sarla Grewal, was the PS to the PM.

Caste unites rivals

Lalu Prasad

Gopinath Munde

The debate on the caste-based census in the Lok Sabha the other day generated a lot of heat and some surprise affection as well. The most notable exchange of warmth was witnessed between two arch rivals — Lalu Prasad of the Rashtriya Janata Dal and Gopinath Munde of the BJP. Separated by political ideologies, the two came together on the floor of the House to demand the right of other backward classes to be counted.

And both did it in style. Munde, while stressing the importance of the caste system in India, said, “I don’t know if I would ever be reborn. But were I to apply to God for a rebirth, even He would ask me which caste I would prefer to be born into…”

Mesmerised by Munde's manner and the way he built a case in support of caste-based enumeration of people, Lalu went an extra mile to pat his OBC colleague's back. So when it was Lalu's turn to talk, he told Munde, “Sure you will be reborn. And I will personally recommend to God that you be born in Bihar as a Yadav.” The House was in splits as caste, for once, seemed to unite people rather than divide them.

Contributed by R. Sedhuraman, Ajay Banerjee and Aditi Tandon

Corrections and clarifications

n The headline, “C-CAD must do aggressive marketing,” (Page 3, May 10), is incorrect because it is C-DAC.

n The photograph of Valerie Vaz on the front page (May 8) with the box, “NRIs script history,” carries the caption, Keith Vaz. The latter is her brother.

n The intro line with the story, “935 Pak Mata Haris waiting to honeytrap Indians,” (Page 1, May 7), reads “Women spies been trained…” instead of “being trained”.

n In the news item “MM Joshi is new PAC chief”, (Page 2, May 7), the full form of PAC has been erroneously mentioned as Parliamentary Accounts Committee, while it stands for Public Accounts Committee.

n In the news-report headlined “Sukhbir: Naxals won’t be allowed to establish base in the state,” (Page 5, May 6), the last paragraph has a reference to Maharaja Jassa Singh Ramgarhia hoisting the Tricolour at Lal Qila. At that time the Tricolour did not exist and it was the Khalsa Kesri Nishan Sahib which was hoisted by him.

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

This column appears twice a week — every Tuesday and Friday. We request our readers to write or e-mail to us whenever they find any error.

Readers in such cases can write to Mr Kamlendra Kanwar, Senior Associate Editor, The Tribune, Chandigarh, with the word “Corrections” on the envelope. His e-mail ID is kanwar@tribunemail.com.

Raj Chengappa
Editor-in-Chief