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Tackling sabotage
A belated regret |
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Check on judiciary
A year after the war
The school grapevine
Monitoring health
Think of gotra before love!
Chennai Diary
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Tackling sabotage
The Maoist attack on the Gyaneshwari Express in the wee hours of Friday will make it easier for the state to justify retaliation with a vengeance and the ‘Gandhians with guns’, as they are described by the Booker prize winning author and activist Arundhati Roy, may soon realise that violence is counter-productive. Initial reports do indicate that Maoists left behind posters at the site of the derailment in West Bengal, demanding the withdrawal of security forces from the area. While the authenticity of the posters is yet to be ascertained, reports indicating that explosives and gelatine sticks were found at the site point towards the involvement of the Maoists who have been engaged in a bitter turf-war in the area with the security forces. The casualty figure would undoubtedly have been far less though if some of the coaches had not toppled over to the adjoining track, where the compartments were rammed within seconds by a goods train coming from the opposite direction. The Indian Railways remains the lifeline of the nation and daily operates 7,000 passenger trains and carries 13 million passengers every day. The White Paper on Railways issued by the Railway ministry indicates that accidents involving collision, derailment and fire have come down significantly during the last five years. And while one must fault Union Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee for not devoting enough time to her work in Rail Bhavan and for downplaying the Maoist threat in West Bengal, it is equally true that the Railways are ill-equipped to fight sabotage. Reducing the speed while passing through Maoist strongholds and having light engines run ahead of passenger trains are some of the measures which have already been tested by the Railway Board. They now need to look at other measures like re-scheduling trains or bunching trains in a convoy escorted by adequate security to ensure safety in these troubled times. At this point there are unanswered questions which the probe must address. Did five trains actually pass through the stretch, as is being claimed, during the preceding two and a half hours ? And did a pilot engine really run through the track half an hour before tragedy struck Gyaneshwari Express? While the Railways must find an answer to these questions, the state will have to act and sanitise the area to ensure that Maoists do not hold the Railways to ransom. |
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A belated regret
It is a matter of relief that Canada’s citizenship and immigration minister Jason Kenney has, albeit belatedly, expressed deep regret over the aspersions cast by the Canadian visa-issuing authorities on the legitimacy of work carried out by Indian defence and security institutions in the course of refusing visas to some serving and retired officials. Had this regret been voiced without delay, relations between the two countries could have been saved the strain that they came under. India had every reason to feel deeply outraged by the shockingly intemperate and uncalled-for comments of the Canadian visa authorities. That the Indian government had to hold out a virtual ultimatum to the Canadians that it would retaliate if there was no apology forthcoming, is a measure of the sense of hurt felt in the Indian establishment and the public. To call the BSF a “notoriously violent force” while refusing visa to a retired officer of the paramilitary force and to even turn down a retired Lt. General on grounds that he had served in Jammu and Kashmir where there were human rights violations was a shocking transgression of diplomacy. What served as the last straw on the camel’s back, however, was the denial of visa to a deputy director of the Intelligence Bureau (IB) who was to visit Canada as part of the advance team for the PM’s forthcoming visit for the G-20 meet next month. That he was later granted visa after the Canadian High Commissioner was summoned to the foreign office and conveyed India’s displeasure only did minor damage control. Now that the Canadian minister has expressed regret, the two countries must move on in bilateral relations. But it is vital that such acts of gross indiscretion not be repeated. Canada is unique among countries in revealing to visa applicants the reason for denying them permission to enter its territory. But its visa officials must make this transparency a virtue rather than a liability. It is none of the Canadian government’s business to challenge the cast doubts on the Indian government’s institutions and processes. |
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Check on judiciary
ThE Supreme Court ruling that the judiciary cannot order re-evaluation of marks in the absence of statutory rules sends an important message to all High Courts that they should not usurp the power of the legislature and sit in judgement over the wisdom of the policy evolved by it. A Bench consisting of Justice B.S. Chauhan and Justice Swatanter Kumar has set aside the Himachal Pradesh High Court’s December 2006 order for fresh re-evaluation of the answer sheets of a candidate in the Civil Judge (Junior Division) examination conducted by the Himachal Pradesh Public Service Commission (HPPSC). As the candidate failed in a paper by one mark, he appealed to the High Court against inconsistency in the question paper and for re-evaluation. Interestingly, the court not only arranged for a special interview for the candidate but also ordered re-evaluation even though the HPPSC had no such rule. Essentially, the Bench examined three questions: whether the court can take the task of the examiner/selection board upon itself, examine discrepancies in a question paper and valuation; whether it can pass a general order restraining the aggrieved persons from approaching the court by filing a writ petition on any ground and depriving them of their constitutional rights to approach the court; and whether in the absence of any rules, the court could direct re-evaluation. The Bench ruled that the High Court had no power to examine the question paper and answer sheets, particularly when the HPSC had assessed the inter-se merit of the candidates. It accepted the HPPSC’s submission that if there was a need for re-evaluation, it should have been ordered for all and not just for one candidate. Citing a 1998 Orissa High Court ruling, the Bench made it clear that the High Court cannot take upon itself the task of the statutory authority. Given the facts of the case, there is no doubt that the Himachal Pradesh High Court had erred in ordering re-evaluation of answer paper of one candidate — the petitioner. The apex court ruling should help as an important guideline and precedent for all other High Courts while dealing with similar petitions in the future. |
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God lives in the cave of our mind. Let the lamp of love illuminate the cave.
— The Upanishads |
A year after the war
One year after the war, victorious President of Sri Lanka, Mahinda Rajapaksa will be in India on June 8 to discuss relief and rehabilitation of the nearly 300,000 war displaced Tamils of the North. Any serious dialogue with Indian leaders on power sharing with minority Tamils and implementing the 13th Amendment in letter and spirit is unlikely though the issue will make it to the joint statement. Despite winning the war, the Sri Lankan President has wavered on a political solution by failing to appreciate the necessity of securing peace and ending the ethnic conflict. Mr Rajapaksa is a happy man and must thank his stars for the unprecedented battlefield successes which were wisely converted into a string of spectacular political gains. He is a second-term executive President, his six-year term beginning only in November this year, his ruling alliance is six short of two thirds majority needed to change the constitution to give him a third term and his party rules in all the provinces where elections have been held (elections in the North are awaited). With these formidable credentials Mr Rajapaksa is destined to create history. But there are negatives too which were ignored during and after the war. Disregard for human rights and international humanitarian law; curbs on press freedom especially the foreign media; eviction of NGOs and excessive and indiscriminate use of military force attracting allegations that 40,000 civilians were killed in the last phase of battle. In its latest report, the International Crisis Group has alleged that displaced Tamil civilians were killed in large numbers by the Army. “Evidence gathered by ICG provides reasonable grounds to believe that during April-May 2009, security forces intentionally and repeatedly shelled civilians, hospitals and humanitarian operations.” Amnesty International went a step further accusing the Sri Lankan military of war crimes. UN Secretary General Ban ki Moon is to set up an expert panel to advise him on the credibility of Sri Lanka’s own investigations into war-related charges. And EU has issued notice of suspending trade concessions called GSP Plus. The West is incensed with the way the Rajapaksa government rejected its appeals for restraint and ceasefire and refused to entertain Western emissaries in the country. Many see Sri Lanka moving away from the West to the East with friends like Iran, Burma, China, Pakistan… It is useful to recall the root causes of the conflict as some Sri Lankan leaders have said: there was no ethnic conflict, it was terrorism and with terrorism eliminated, it is hunky-dory. This lingering illusion among the majority Sinhalese contains the seeds of rejuvenating the Tamil cause and the idea of Eelam, given the one million Tamil diaspora and a nascent Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam (with an estimated LTTE bounty of $ 600 million). Four watershed events spurred the ethnic conflict — the Sinhala-only language Bill; the 1972 Constitution; parliamentary elections of 1977; and the 1983 Tamil pogroms. The Eelam War I reached its culmination in 1987 when India intervened to end the fighting. The LTTE brush with IPKF ended inconsequentially. Eelam War II began in 1990 and closed in a ceasefire in 1994. The next round of fighting was between 1995 and 2002. The decisive Eelam War IV flared up in 2006 with security forces scoring a historic victory by defeating the invincible Tigers at Mullaithivu. President Rajapaksa demonstrated that not only can a guerilla force be vanquished, it can also be comprehensively routed though at enormous social, human and diplomatic cost. The centerpiece of past government strategy was bringing the LTTE to the negotiating table. Ceasefires were accompanied by five direct and two back channel negotiations with the LTTE. The first of the five attempts was the failed Indo Sri Lanka Accord followed by efforts towards power sharing made by Presidents R. Premadasa and Chandrika Kumaratunga, Prime Minister Ranil Wickramesinghe and President Rajapaksa. When the latter realised that Mr Prabhakaran would never be amenable to a negotiated settlement as he was determined to win Eelam through a military solution, Mr Rajapaksa picked up the gauntlet at Maavil Aaru. President Rajapaksa achieved in 2009 what Indira Gandhi had in 1971 – winning the war. There are lessons from Sri Lanka’s military success. But whether countries are able and willing to apply military forces in the face of external criticism and threats of sanctions is a moot point. India could almost never emulate this model as it follows a policy of minimum force with the use of heavy weapons and the use of air power almost unthinkable. While in Delhi, Mr Rajapaksa must be told that Sri Lanka’s national question dealing with the political empowerment of Tamils is also India’s regional issue. History and geography dictate an equitable power-sharing arrangement with the minority Tamils (Sri Lankans now say there are no minorities — all are Sri Lankans). Neither the sacrifice of 1200 IPKF soldiers nor the sterling military, intelligence and diplomatic assistance provided by India during the decisive war should go in vain. Just as relief and rehabilitation are humanitarian requirements, dignity and devolution of power are political imperatives. That’s the message for President Rajapaksa. The logical conclusion to Sri Lanka’s military victory over the LTTE and the peace process is empowerment of Tamils to ensure durable
peace. |
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The school grapevine
It was 1974 and my wife was expecting our third child. We had two daughters and, as always happens in middle class Indian families, the hopes and expectations were that this time round it would be a boy. How universally shared this hope and expectation was in the school was brought home to me when, Jai Singh Pathania, the then Headboy of the school, who was to go on to be a lifelong friend and support, came up to me one morning and stammered. “Sir, you are going to have a son. I had a dream last night. I saw an old holy man giving some mangoes to Mrs Dhillon. I have heard my mother tell other ladies that fruit being given to an expecting mother in a dream means that she is going to have a son”. I was so deeply touched that I replied impulsively. “God bless you Jai - if it is a boy we’ll name him after you.” The news of my son’s birth came to me ten minutes short of the end of evening prep. I took five minutes to get the Deputy Head Master’s permission to go down and then I rushed home to pack my bag.I was still in the process of packing when the bell rang. In the next few minutes the little house was swarming with dozens of children all calling out excitedly. “Give our love to chut Jai Singh. Sir, give our love to chut Jai Singh”. How the news spread in so short a time, that too while the children were at prep, has remained, till this day, one of the most enduring mysteries of my life. But it is a great tribute to the strength and beauty of the Sanawar grapevine. This strength has, gratefully, remained undiminished over the years. Now in May 2010 my daughter, who teaches in Sanawar, was to have her second child. The children in Sanawar, with their usual interest and concern had asked her what she would name the child. She said if it was a girl she would be called Ismat and if it was a boy, he would be named Rehaan. It was a boy. He was born in Chandigarh at 8.47 in the morning but because my second daughter, who also teaches in Sanawar, was in school, I was only able to give her the news a few hours later. The bell rang for milk break and children swarmed in from all directions, crowding around her, jostling and pushing to catch her attention and the discordant babble of voices had one repeated refrain: “Give our love to little Rehaan — Ma’am, give our love to little
Rehaan.” I sat still when I heard this, my heart and mind overwhelmed by the complexity of my emotions. In this world, so seething with change that one is often left confused and perplexed, I was reassured by the continuity of the strength and beauty of the grapevine in my old
school. |
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Monitoring health
There are essentially two different ways through which health conditions in any society improve. First, economic growth and employment in gainful activities, which means prosperity can bring the means of health care and nutrition within the reach of all sections of society. Secondly, specific support of food consumption, community health, medical care, basic education and awareness can transform the general health conditions. In some cases, it has been seen that these two processes — economic growth and public support — work independently of each other. For example, China, Sri Lanka, Cuba, Costa Rica and Jamaica have achieved remarkable improvements in health conditions even without much economic growth. There is also evidence to support the view that economic growth and the consequent rise of per capita GNP can contribute significantly to health achievements, especially when the growth process takes an employment-oriented participatory form. Haryana (with 2 per cent of India’s population) has created a distinctive place as it contributes close to 3 per cent of India’s national income. Haryana has shown an above average performance in all sectors and this is reflected in its high per capita income, availability of infrastructure, decline in the crude death rate, increase in life expectancy etc. With the Green Revolution, the state has attained a distinction in food production and with mounting public food stocks one expects that the dietary intake of the population in general has improved. The National Family Health Survey, (NFHS-3), however, has revealed that almost half (46 per cent) of children under 5 years of age are stunted (too short for their age), which indicates that they have been undernourished for some time. Again 40 per cent are underweight (which takes into account both chronic and acute undernutrition), and 19 per cent are wasted (too thin for their weight), which my result from inadequate recent food intake or a recent illness. Not only this, the current status of the disease pattern in the state (DGHS, Haryana) shows that about 40 per cent of the patients suffered from two major diseases: (i) respiratory and (ii) infectious and parasitic. It shows that bacterial diseases have the highest fatality (36.4 per cent). However, the statistics reveal that the leading cause of death was diseases of circulatory system (20%), followed by infectious and parasitic diseases(17.1%). It may also be noted that deaths due to maternal causes were 2 per cent. A large number of deaths due to diseases of the circulatory system i.e. from rheumatic heart diseases and hypertensive diseases are largely associated with demographic and lifestyle changes. But the 17 per cent of deaths reported due to infectious and parasitic diseases show that there remains a vast unfinished burden of preventing, controlling and eliminating major communicable diseases. It is a well known fact that there is a direct relationship between the availability of water, sanitation, nutrition and infectious and parasitic diseases. A further disaggregation of infectious and parasitic diseases into water-borne and human excreta borne diseases is an eye-opener. For example, diseases such as cholera, typhoid, para-typhoid, ameobeasis, gastroenteritis and other intestinal diseases classified as human excreta borne. Similarly, polio, measles, trachoma, chickenpox, viral hepatitis, entric fever etc are both human excreta and water contamination borne diseases. The matter of concern is that in case of Haryana, both economic prosperity as well as the so-called vast infrastructure of rural health services revised on the lines of the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) are not in the reach of the poor and vulnerables. The incident of women and infant death, at Fatehabad, due to the insensitivity of medical staff is not an abrasion rather is testimony to the insensitivity and functioning of most of the public health care facilities in the state. The main aim of the NRHM is to provide accessible, affordable, accountable, effective and reliable primary health care, especially to the poor and vulnerable sections of the population. Just having the requisite number of hospitals and health centres is not enough. There is an overall shortage of personnel and the situation is aggravated by the lack of motivation and insensitivity on the part of medical personnel as well as their skewed distribution within the state. Further, as there is a shift in the disease pattern also (which has to be there due to prosperity and changes in lifestyle), the existing public health care facilities in the rural areas are not equipped to provide even the primary care in case of those diseases . The third district level health survey (DLHS-3) shows that 80 percent of specialist positions are vacant in CHCs. PHCs lack coordination with CHCs as well as at the lower level i.e. sub-centres. The task of ensuring the availability of MBBS doctors and specialists and to build capacity for rural health care is huge. The coverage strategy should not only address the numeric adequacy of sub-centres and PHCs, but it should also ensure the availability of doctors and personnel along with the appropriate motivational mix of reaching out to the vulnerable population. The real award to Haryana state as the best NRHM state can be only when it ensures the availability of health care and personnel to its rural population. The writer is an Associate Professor, Department of Geography, Kurukshetra University |
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Think of gotra before love! The young lovers in Haryana are suffering the brunt of caste and paying with their lives. The khap panchayats’ logic is that people from the same gotra are like siblings and thus their union is incestuous. Well, caste and sub-castes and gotras were formulated during the Vedic period in India and since then many permutations and combinations have taken place in marriages. Hence racial or class purity has dwindled or rather paradoxically flourished into dilution and variety of offspring. The chances of the same genetic material overlapping, even among the marriages within the same gotra are very few. While this logic can contribute phenomenally to the thrust of family planning, as the forcible vasectomies during Sanjay Gandhi’s tyranny did, it does little for the people who fall in love without first checking their caste, sub-caste and gotra! The very concept of caste in a marriage becomes important, especially in villages and small towns, because marriage is seen less as a union of two individuals and more as a The man and the woman are not left alone to make the biggest choice of their lives. It is the whole village or town that has a say in it! To appease everyone and yet fall in love is perhaps extremely difficult. Some or the other person in your community or family will always have objections to the one you choose as a life partner, whether in a socially acceptable marriage or otherwise. The question arises: Is marriage more of a social pact or is it more of an individual to individual one? If the khaps have their way, then in their patriarchal set-up, marriage is an extremely social issue and it is the right of every male cousin, every uncle, every grandfather and every male neighbour, to decide who the groom-to-be should marry. Women too are a party to this provided they concede to what the men decide! No wonder, women are often co-perpetrators of honour killings. There have been barbaric cases in rural India where mothers have demanded the killing of the daughter for marrying the wrong man. Can a wrong choice in marriage become such a social crime that it needs to be so severely punished, and so brutally, that the mother becomes privy to it? How does marriage between two people acquire such a colossal social significance that the entire family’s and community’s honour gets linked to it? Our young MP from Haryana, Mr Naveen Jindal, has been opposing honour killings while supporting the khap diktat that same gotra marriages are anti-social. He even went to the extent of asking a question to a reporter whether she herself would marry within the same gotra?! One wonders if Mr Jindal’s claim to modernity is limited only to the hoisting of the Tricolor everywhere and anywhere. Does empty form mean more to him than the very essence of a modern progressive thinking? It would not mean much to the young couples who are running for their lives to know that he has earned himself the modern privilege to wear a tricolor broach on his clothes everyday, while they are brutally hacked to death by a barbaric decision. Age-old draconian social rules are often upheld in our country by politicians for fear of losing their vote banks and this cardinal sin is responsible for suppressing new voices of social change and progress. Society is within us. We cannot escape it. It shapes us, and gives us a platform for growth and expression. We accept it or react to it but we cannot entirely escape it. It often gives us our moorings. It helps keep some sort of order, or civilizations would be chaotic. But there are some decisions like marriage which are best left to individuals and their private space. The diktat of the khaps is encroaching upon that very private space of individual choice, faith, perspective and lifestyle. A civilization can flourish only when there is a healthy dialectic between individuals and society. If society has to dictate every aspect of an individual’s life, there would be no scope for development, new ideas and change, in the world. Such autocratic thrusts are no better than Hitler’s extreme hatred of the Jews and his absurd beliefs in racial purity. It does not say much for a nation if its deadliest terrorist caught in the jail gets the same sentence as two seemingly free people who inadvertently fall |
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Chennai Diary
For a change, this time, Raavan has refused to land in Lanka. He now prefers the floating city of Venice. The film “Raavan” directed by popular director Mani Ratnam, will not be screened at the International Indian Film Academy awards festival due to a decision by the Tamil film industry to boycott the show at Colombo. Instead, the film starring Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai will be screened in “the city of water”. Even though “Raavan” had changed his location, the story line closely resembles the epic Ramayan. It tells the story of a bandit leader who kidnaps the wife of a policeman who killed his sister. Oscar award winner AR Rahman has composed the music for both the Tamil and Hindi verstions. Mani Ratnam will also be honoured with the Jaeger-LeCoultre Glory to the Filmmaker Award at the festival to be held in September this year. Announcing this, Venice Film Festival director Marco Muller hailed Mani Ratnam as one of the greatest innovators in contemporary Indian cinema. Mani Ratnam, who used to make movies only in his native tongue Tamil, was one of the handful of filmmakers to successfully reach out to the all-India market, Muller said. In recent years the award has been given to filmmakers Takeshi Kitano, Abbas Kiarostami, Agnes Warda and Sylvester Stallone.
Fish gravy for all ages The “meen kolambu” fish gravy is a common delicacy in the rural areas of Tamil Nadu. The villagers, who get fresh fish from nearby ponds, lakes, sea and rivers, used to prepare the reddish brown gravy by boiling fish pieces in tamarind water mixed with chilli powder and other spices and finally adding onions roasted in oil. It is blended with rice and taken as a delicacy at least once a week in rural Tamil Nadu. It used to be the favourite delicacy of Chief Minister M Karunanidhi, before he became a vegetarian a few years ago. In several interviews, he had said “the two things he liked the most in the world is politics and fish gravy”. Much water with lot of fish had flown under the Cauvery since then, and several new dishes like pizza, fried rice and tandoori items, tickling the taste buds of youngsters have invaded Tamil Nadu kitchens. However, in a recent interview, Karunanidhi’s grandson Udhanidhi Stalin, who is a film producer, said the most delightful food he liked was fish gravy. Three generations had passed, but “meen kolambu” seems to have retained its place. Hiranya: myth or
The Narasimha Avatar is known as one of the ten “Avatars” of Lord Vishnu. The Vishnu purana and Bhagavatha purana describing how asura Hiranyakashibu was killed by the Narasimha Avatar was also known to most people. But, the inscriptions found in an excavation at Tirunelveli in Tamil Nadu this week mentioned the name of a king called Hiranya. Interestingly, the place where the archaeological excavation was done is called “Iraniyan Kudiyiruppu” (Hiranya’s residence}. The scholars who read the Grantha inscriptions said the palace of Hiranya, described as a local hero, might have been located here. However, they refused to comment on possible links between Hiranya mentioned in the Puranas and the inscriptions found in the southern tip of Tamil
Nadu. |
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