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US-India
bonhomie Pawar in
fresh trouble |
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Hooda’s
flip-flops
The
impasse in Nepal
Lessons
from Seoul
Power
reforms in Punjab Faced with flood in
Kashmir Chatterati
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Pawar in fresh trouble
Union
Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar is a great survivor. He has survived the disastrous performance of his ministry and the spate of suicides of farmers, especially in his home state Maharashtra. Pawar’s is a classic case of a minister who has great administrative prowess but has little time or interest in his allotted portfolio while indulging in the questionable politics of his favourite sport cricket. Recently, he emerged virtually unharmed from the uproar over the murky goings-on in the Indian Premier League which first led to Shashi Tharoor’s resignation as a Union minister and then forced the ignominious exit of Lalit Modi, whose brainchild the IPL was. As erstwhile President of the Board of Control for Cricket in India, which fathered the IPL during his time, Pawar should have been called to account. But he manoeuvred his way out of the controversy. The wily founder of the NCP is again on a sticky wicket amid allegations that he, his wife and his daughter Supriya Sule, M.P., hold a 16 per cent stake in City Corporation, a Pune-based construction company, which made a failed bid of Rs 1,176 crore for the Pune IPL franchise. Pawar insists that the company’s managing director, Aniruddha Deshpande, made the bid in his individual capacity. This is indeed difficult to believe considering that the bid was made in the name of the company. Pawar’s long-time assertion that he and his family did not own any stake in any IPL franchise is justifiably being contested on the ground that two companies owned wholly by the Pawars were stakeholders in City Corporation. The BJP, which has in the past been soft towards him has this time demanded his resignation.The Congress, whose ally the NCP is, has for long been suspicious of Pawar and is unwilling to bat for him on the issue. Pawar is indeed fighting with his back to the wall. But his capacity for manipulating to survive is indisputable. Will he weather this storm too is a question to which only time will have the answer.
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Hooda’s flip-flops
Haryana
Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda has been on the mat for his flip-flops on khap panchayats and same-gotra marriages. Given the snub he had received from his party leadership after the Mirchpur misadventure, his latest claim at Manesar that same-gotra marriages are prohibited and that khap panchayats are “social organisations” will further embolden his detractors to intensify their campaign against his leadership. There will be few takers for his assertion that the issue was not that of the khap panchayats but related to old customs of the state which prohibited solemnisation of such marriages in any of the castes. If the Chief Minister does not strongly condemn khap panchayats, what message would it send to the administration, the police and all others down the line? Earlier, Kurukshetra MP Naveen Jindal had stirred a hornet’s nest by lauding them. It is only because of these leaders’ public appreciation of khaps that the government is failing in its duty to tame the khap panchayats. Congress president Sonia Gandhi was reportedly disturbed over the Hooda government’s inaction in the Mirchpur incident in which a teenaged polio-affected girl and her father were burnt alive when certain members of the dominant community set their houses on fire on April 21. Surprisingly, the state government provided relief to the victims only after the Congress leadership’s intervention. Mrs Sonia Gandhi had sent a strong message to Mr Hooda describing it as a “matter of shame”. Her intervention was followed by a visit to Mirchpur by the party general secretary Mr Rahul Gandhi. To Mr Hooda’s chagrin, Mr Gandhi called on the Dalit families without even informing the state government and the ruling party’s state unit. Of late, factionalism in the Haryana Congress has increased and Mr Hooda’s hold on the party seems to be weakening. At the party’s coordination meeting recently, he came under attack on the issue of centralisation of power. As all this is adversely affecting day-to-day governance, the Chief Minister would do well to act tough. He must unequivocally reject the khap panchayats’ ways so that the officials get the right message to tackle them firmly.
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Human beings are perhaps never more frightening than when they are convinced beyond doubt that they are right. — Laurens van der Post
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The impasse in Nepal Nepali
political leaders have lived up to their reputation of stitching together an eleventh hour deal extending the life of the Constituent Assembly by one year and their own political longevity, thereby averting a constitutional crisis. A vaguely worded three-point agreement is the latest addition to the dozens of “package deals” and agreements between the government and the Maoists, and the government and marginalised groups and fringe political parties, most of which cannot be implemented. Take the most pivotal agreement between the government and the Maoists — the integration of combatants, return of property seized during the war and dismantling the paramilitary Young Communist League (YCL) — on which hinges the peace process. These conditions have been included afresh in the latest three-point agreement as prerequisites for Prime Minister Madhav Nepal’s resignation and formation of a national unity government, the long-standing demand of the Maoists. The Maoists are claiming that there was a verbal agreement that Mr Nepal would resign within five days. Reneging on that promise, they say, is “immoral, a grave betrayal and political dishonesty”. By supporting the passage of the Eighth Amendment Bill extending the Assembly’s term, the Maoists have done themselves a favour: maintaining their primacy as the single-largest party in the House. Otherwise it could have been President’s rule, the least desirable option for the Maoists. They have boycotted the House for the umpteenth time and threatened to stage protests again. The annual budget has to be passed before July 8 and that, too, requires Maoist assent. The Constituent Assembly plans to draft the constitution by February 26, 2011, three months before its expiry. With some political compromise amongst the political formations, the eight thematic committees and three basic committees are expected to complete their work in two weeks followed by the Constitution Commission requiring one month to complete all the 11 reports. According to the revised plan, sufficient time will be available to discuss the report before presenting the draft constitution to the House. All this is predicated on the Maoists implementing the six-point package deal to facilitate power sharing. The sticking point is the integration of Maoist combatants into security forces. Of the 19,600 combatants, Maoists are required to indicate the numbers that wish to be integrated with the security forces, including the Army; and those who want to be rehabilitated. The Maoists do not wish to surrender control of their Army before the constitution is drafted and a general election held. The May 28 deadline has passed without either side yielding ground. The Maoist objective remains returning to power, everything else being secondary. The new power-sharing arrangement will not be constitutional but through consensus removing a democratically appointed Prime Minister in national interest to keep the peace process alive. Breaking the political impasse to end the irrelevance of a government bereft of authority and the will to govern, is imperative. The donor and diplomatic community in Kathmandu has been very active in trying to break the deadlock but it could turn into too many cooks spoiling the broth. The internal mechanism of dialogue between the big three parties has become ineffective. Two options are available to break the impasse. First, get the mandate of the UNMIN extended to beyond “management and supervision of the armies” to include the role of “facilitator” in the peace process. UNMIN’s term has been extended for the sixth time by four months, till September 2010, presumably the time it estimates will be required for integration and rehabilitation of Maoist combatants. An extended mandate would mean the UN role will become bigger and its life prolonged, matching that of the peace process. India, which is allergic to a UN presence on the subcontinent and was opposed to the UNMIN in the first place, will not be happy about any expanded UN role in Nepal. The non-Maoist political formations have frequently accused UNMIN of being biased towards Maoists and named its former chief Ian Martin for it. India too was critical of him particularly for meddling in Madhesi affairs. The current head of UNMIN, Mr Karl Landgren, is also not in the good books of the government for refusing to share the numbers of Maoist combatants in the 28 camps. UN Secretary-General Ban ki Moon drew the ire of the Nepal government when he suggested the formation of a national unity government in his latest report to the UN Security Council. Mr Nepal’s government asked why he had not mooted the idea when the Maoists were in government. The second option is for India to return to peacemaking. Many Nepalese say that as it was India that brokered the 12-point agreement between the Maoists and the other political formations in 2005, it is its duty to put the peace process back on the rails. Considerable suspicion and distrust has been created between India and the Maoists during the last one year since the fall of the Prachanda government that the latter are not likely to accept India in any mediatory role. But the Maoists’ public posturing of India-bashing may have been tempered by better comprehending ground realities about New Delhi’s pre-eminence in the region and the limits on their China card. The Maoists would also have drawn lessons from their failure to dislodge the Madhav Nepal government from within the House as well as from the streets. In an unprecedented public statement, US Under Secretary of State William Burns noted earlier this month that the US would want India to be more involved in South Asia, including “easing tensions” in Nepal. There has never been such a suggestion by the US for India to act. The public perception that India has thrown its weight behind the Nepal government to keep the Maoists out at any cost is not inaccurate though this policy requires to be recalibrated now. India cannot allow Nepal to remain on the boil, given the China and Naxal factors. The Maoists are the new and powerful political force in Nepal with whom it must establish a working relationship as it cannot ignore them. What will India do if the Maoists win the next election as according to a Himal publication poll, the Maoists are still ahead of the Nepali Congress and the United Marxist Leninist parties. The ball is in India’s court. It must offer to facilitate the restoration of the peace process provided the political formations want it to do so. A year has already been wasted. Front and back channel dialogue must be reopened with the Maoists to build trust and confidence. New Delhi must reaffirm its willingness to work with a future elected Maoist government. For the present, a high-level political visit should be followed by an all-party friendship delegation, including friends of the Maoists like Mr Sitaram Yechuri, to help rebuild confidence with the Maoists. The Maoists may or may not have realised that their grand vision of “Looking Beyond India” is ideologically and economically flawed, even if it has a certain romantic appeal of nationalism. In strategic and practical terms, too, it is unsound. Given the geography and open border, both countries have enormous stakes in the prosperity and well-being of each other. The opportunity to renew and reset India-Nepal relations is now and must not be
missed.
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Lessons from Seoul Conflict-free
faces, lean physiques, glowing skins, hair that are envy of the world, level of courtesy we are not used to and world class infrastructure symbolised by the world’s longest 18-km bridge in the sea, a 33-km-long dike that is second only to the Netherlands, was somewhat more than what we had expected on landing in Seoul for the mid-career training for civil servants. We also noted with curiosity the school students laden with school bags meandering along footpaths or sitting quietly in the neat metro compartments, on our daily 8 pm hunt for a semblance of Indian food. Endowed with little natural resources, harsh winters and bullied by big brothers China, Russia and Japan, Koreans embraced Confucianism that best ensured their survival and propagation. Through corner-stones of filial piety or respect for elders, ancestors and the king and reciprocal benevolence, politeness in conduct and pursuit of moral perfection, Confucianism aims a honeybee or antlike society. A clan here is the immortal organic being with individuals fleeting segments making up the continuum. Intriguingly, half of the Koreans follow tenets of Confucianism and no religion. The country thrives on extreme hard work and synergy of trust between the government and private sectors, elders and youngsters; just the opposite of free-for-all we have here. It points to a hard gene in the DNA of this race, as with the Japanese, that the proxy war of 1950-53 that witnessed the carnage of 4 of 40 million Koreans as the two super-powers burst more ammunition on their soil than was used during entire World War II, splitting the strategically located country, triggered the survival instinct of the race by way of rapid economic development rather than mowing down their morale. Park Chung-hee, the benevolent military dictator backed by the US , true to the Confucian definition of a “legitimate ruler” who propelled the country on the path of rapid industrialisation and universal education for 18 years, can be safely called the father of modern South Korea . He was shot in 1979 paving the way for democracy. Before long it became clear to us, why they are obsessed with education which is expensive, compelling most to stop at the first child; why their household income, on a par with us 50 years ago, has leapfrogged to 20 times of ours today; why Samsung, Hyundai, LG and Daewoo, propped by the government initially, have become household names the world over; why South Korea is a respected name in ship building, high quality steel and memory chips. North Korea is a different story that gets enough coverage for wrong reasons. One also pondered, geography, history and circumstance are the forces whose point of equilibrium draws the trajectory of a nation’s destiny. Blessed with bountiful Mother Nature and plenty of sunshine, survival hasn’t been a predominant force shaping the psyche of us Indians. Perhaps that’s the reason why the Hindu belief system is liberal, offering the luxury of “tailor-made god” that best facilitates an individual’s journey to the core of his existence. It cannot be ignored that it was on our soil that philosophy, astronomy, astrology, architecture, mathematics and literature emerged first. Decadence that followed was also by nature’s design, “What goes up, must come down; what goes down, must come up.” As we headed back and glanced inside the Air India plane, my hope re-kindled; we have touched the nadir; it’s about time we started the upward
march.
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Power reforms in Punjab
After
much dithering, the Punjab government has split the Punjab State Electricity Board (PSEB) into the Punjab State Power Corporation (Powercom) to manage generation and distribution and the Punjab State Transmission Corporation (Transco) to look after transmission. With the final notification regarding the sharing of assets and liabilities, these two companies have replaced the highly indebted but 43-year-old PSEB. However the most debated question is how and when the new structured regime will be able to deliver the goods and when the never-ending power cuts will cease. Most, however agree that mere restructuring will not make a substantial difference unless larger reforms are urgently done. Though the state achieved 100 percent rural electrification in 1980s, yet the interrupted supply has been bothering both the households and the industry. Everyone gets affected due to faulty and inadequate supply of power. While the students lose study, the labourers lose wages and industrialists lose committed production. At the national level, the shortage of electricity affects the economic growth adversely. In an agricultural state like Punjab, electricity affects productivity as it is used in pumping ground water for irrigation. After Gujarat and Haryana, Punjab has the highest annual per capita consumption of electricity in the agriculture sector (247.78 kWh). According to experts, the demand in agriculture has increased from a meager 463 million kWh units to 7,314 million kWh units from 1971 to 2006 mainly due to the increasing area under paddy. It is amazing that the state has 2,75,820 pending applications for electricity connections to farmers with an expected load of 1,32,505 kWh. One of the main reasons ascribed to the poor growth of industry in the state is the irregular power supply at high costs which otherwise is available in plenty at cheap rates in the neighboring hill states like Jammu & Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh. Though the total consumption of electricity has increased from 19343.93 million kWh in the year 2001 to 24192.49 million kWh in the year 2006, demand is many times more. Of the present consumption 75 per cent is self-generated in the state and the remaining 25 per cent is purchased from external sources at a high cost. In the peak demand season in June power is either not available from the national grid or is available at a high cost, further making a dent on the resources of the state. Power cuts ranging from 3 to 12 hours are not uncommon in the summer season throughout the state. A study by the National Applied Economic Research has pointed out that only 26 per cent of the households in Punjab receive 18 hours of electricity as against the national average of 57 per cent. The first major task therefore confronting Powercom is to generate additional power to bridge the gap between demand and supply. The power generation strategy should focus on low-cost generation, local generation using non-conventional resources such as biomass, optimisation of capacity utilization and controlling the input cost. Though the power generation efficiency of thermal power plants in the state is reported to be 80.2 per cent against the national average of 69 per cent, the loss becomes substantial when taking into account the total installed capacity of thermal power of 3774 MW. Time framework for new thermal projects envisaged at Talwandi Sabo, Goindwal Sahib and Rajpura will be of critical importance as the delay will not only escalate the project cost but also be politically costly. The plans to reduce the transmission and development losses (which are as high as 25.35 per cent) and to replace the old transmission lines along with stringent energy auditing are necessary for the economic viability of the new structured companies. The aggregate technical and commercial losses should at any cost have to be reduced to 15 per cent as projected by the Government of India. The distribution strategy with a focus on system up-gradation, loss reduction and commercialisation should be the other hall marks of ensuing reforms. Inadequate investments over the years for system improvement works have particularly resulted in unplanned extensions of the distribution lines and overloading of the system at some places. Transco has to adequately address these problems by advanced planning, assessing the industrial and domestic needs and preparing a roadmap for future expansions. The main reform envisaged in the Indian Electricity Act, 2003 is to make the availability of reliable quality power at competitive rates to the consumers. At present competition is virtually absent. The Act has provisions for free access to private participation in the power sector. Private investment up to 28 per cent in the 11th Plan period projected by the Government of India can be utilized for the maintenance of the huge network of substations, power stations and replacement of the old and inefficient distribution system. Given the clean balance sheets, the companies should strive to raise sustainable capital after meeting the liabilities and passing profits to the employees and the stakeholders to bring in a corporate culture. What, however, will bother Transco is how to reduce the theft of electricity. This is neither a new problem nor confined to Punjab. Theft of electricity in India leads to annual losses estimated at $4.5 billion. It is amazing to find that only 80 per cent households receive bills from the official agencies, 9 per cent pay to neighbours or landlords and 11 per cent of households with electricity do not receive bills at all and thus make no payment. Honest consumers, poor people and those without connections bear the burden of high tariffs, inadequate and unreliable power supply. Andhra Pradesh has shown the way to control this social evil since 1999 when only 42 per cent of electricity flowing was billed. The theft that occurred in several ways, including tapping power lines, tampering with or bypassing meters, often in connivance with the utility staff, was controlled by amending the Electricity Act and making electricity theft a cognizable offence, constituting special courts and appellate tribunals. About 2 million high-accuracy meters were installed and old meters recalibrated for low-value consumers. The results were a substantial increase in billing, increase in collection to 98 per cent and decrease in transmission losses. Punjab can also adopt this tested methodology; however, there is no substitute for educating the people. The conservation approach to optimize the utilization of electricity with a focus on demand side management, load management and technology upgradation to provide energy efficient equipment and gadgets is essential as energy saved is energy conserved. Punjab should follow the example of Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh where incandescent bulbs have been replaced with CFLs in the domestic sector, whereas in Punjab the need has not even been recognized in the Government institutions.
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Faced with flood in Kashmir
Nestling
amidst the mountains and valleys of north Kashmir in Hanjipura village of Kupwara district, panic has gripped the population of 1,300 over the last few months. The reason is not the heightened militant activity which the region has been prone to, but the river Kahmil originating in the Kajinag cave in the Tangdhar area is in spate. There has been incessant rain, more than usual for this time of the year, pouring down in sheets till the river overflowed. The flooding is not only restricted to Hanjipura but threatening to affect the downstream villages of Goshi, Bahipura Mughalpura and Hadmulla. People here are largely engaged in agriculture and Animal husbandry. Now they had to flee to safer areas. The name of the village is derived from Hanjis or fisher folk. There is a small mohallah of this community. Muhammad Ashraf Dar from the Hanjis community says that the rain invariably brings with it trepidation and a sense of foreboding. ‘We are living on the bank of the river and we are scared of losing everything that we have in every rain.” Mughli Begum says, “We don’t have any facility in the village. We face the maximum damage during floods. We have very little in the name of fields. Floods destroy even that. We not only lose our crops but also the fields, which get filled with small stones and sand, making farming impossible in the next season.” She further said, “Digging Kahmil a little deeper and a strong dam could save us from these miseries. But who will do this?” Gulam Rasool Wani, the headman of Hanjipura, remembers how people fled from the fury of the swollen river, fearing for their lives, how they abandoned their homes, fields, their cattle. About 35 per cent of agricultural land was laid waste after the last flood, rues Wani. That was in 1991 but memories are painful enough to evoke a worried response. Meanwhile, life has been disrupted. Apart from livelihoods being affected, school routines have been disturbed. Muhammad Ameen Rathar, a teacher in a middle school, says “We have to declare a holiday during floods. We fear losing some of students to it. We can’t help but declare a holiday for one and a half months. This affects children’s studies.” The sense of fear runs through the children as well. Says Basharrat, a student of Class VIII, “I am afraid of the river flow. The river is very close to our school. We get scared as the water level increases. The road to the school is also not good.” In spite of the disruption, the lack of cohesiveness within the local community to effect change and a weak response from the authorities, there is hope which has an edge of despair. Ghulam Rasool Wani says “This river is affecting the future of our children. If they don’t get educated, our society will move towards decline. Only because of this river, the people of the village have to sometimes starve. It is a very painful experience. We, thousands of people from this area, demand from the government to dig the Kumhal river deep and build a strong dam on it. Only a government can do such a mammoth task. Charkha Features
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Chatterati
While a book on Sonia Gandhi’s life is catching the headlines, the capital is abuzz with pyrotechnics around the release of the movie “Rajneeti”. Director Prakash Jha is fixated on politics. After making several movies around politics, he himself jumped into the fray in Bihar and fought the elections in 2004. But, of course, he had to eat a humble pie. Making movies and fighting elections are two very different ball games. He made noises about development and changing the political scenario, but not many took him seriously. For the promotion of the movie, Prakash Jha claims that he was denied permission for press conferences at some historical places in Delhi, including the Habitat Centre. He says he was not allowed to show the film to celebrities at the Mahadev auditorium. So he travelled from one TV studio to another with the cast of his movie crying foul. He wonders why everyone thought that the movie was about Congress president Sonia Gandhi and dynastic rule. But it suited him perfectly. So just curiosity will take people to cinema halls. The Censor Board has made matters easier as it clipped a couple of scenes. This has given the movie further publicity. A VIP wedding A wedding in a political family usually makes news. It may be a low-cost wedding or an extravaganza. In Jaipur the other day we saw celebrities from Delhi and Bollywood attending the wedding of the daughter of Rajasthan’s Tourism Minister Bina Kak. It was quite a mix of politics, Bollywood and Page 3 crowd. If Bollywood personalities arrive, how can choreographed dance performances to Punjabi film songs be far behind? The sangeet ceremony was straight out of Yash Chopra’s movies Chandani and Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge. The venue was a farmhouse which was beautifully done up in white and Delhi’s politicians mixed freely with celebrities from Mumbai and Jaipur. The music by Amrita and Riju Jhunjunwala made the host, Bina Kak, dance. In fact the evening saw Bina in a light mood dressed in a traditional sari with gotta patti work. The guests danced, giggled and chilled out at the do. Salman Khan and Katrina Kaif were present. Though Kat had to leave half way through for the Capital to promote her movie “Rajneeti”. Salman was a part of the family, it was clear. He has acted as Bina Kak’s son in a film and must say even in real life he lived up to that reel image at the wedding. Salman is also familiar with Jaipur people as he is a frequent visitor there for his black buck case which is still pending in court. The reception was held in Delhi. You name the VIPs and they were there. Salman Khurshid, Shiela Dikshit with family, Amar Singh, Shashi Tharoor and Rajeev Shukla, among them. Murli Manohar Joshi and Karan Singh came and left dot on time like many other guests. For the first time, I witnessed a disciplined Delhi.
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