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Doping
mess Nepal
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Shimla
cries for care
Stone-pelting
by Kashmiri youth
Kebabs, kheer and
mangoes
Weakest
link in the government Devolution
of powers holds the key
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Nepal without PM
Those
who have been closely watching the political scene in Nepal were not surprised when even the sixth attempt on Sunday to find a Prime Minister for the Himalayan country failed to bear fruit. Communist Party of Nepal (Maoists) candidate Pushpa Kamal Dahal alias Prachanda did all he could to divide regional parties like those belonging to the Madhes region to capture power but in vain. That he might not succeed was almost clear before the votes were cast by the members of Nepal’s Interim Parliament. Whatever little chance he seemed to have had disappeared after the surfacing of an audio-tape, revealing that his party was trying to seek financial help from China to purchase at least 50 MPs. Mr Prachanda, whose party has the largest number of MPs — 236 in a House of 601 — could secure only four more votes. His score was 60 less than the required number to become the next Prime Minister of Nepal. He is now blaming India for having thrown a spanner in the works through RAW. Blaming India or any other country or group will not do. The time has come for Mr Prachanda to make the “sacrifices” he promised last Wednesday. He had declared that in case the election result did not go in his favour during the sixth round, he would make some “sacrifices”. He did not elaborate what exactly he had in his mind, but in the interest of stability and democracy in Nepal he should be prepared to step aside and support the case of a person who can emerge as a consensus candidate. There is no better sacrifice than this he can make. Nepal’s search for the head of government must end during the coming round of polls for the Prime Minister’s post. How long can the caretaker government, headed by Mr Madhav Kumar Nepal, be allowed to last? He resigned as Prime Minister on June 30 under pressure from the Maoists to pave the way for someone else, to be acceptable to all political groups, to take up the reins of power. The failure to find Mr Nepal’s replacement can shake the people’s confidence in the democratic system, which is yet to take root in a country earlier ruled by a monarch.
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Shimla cries for care
The
sinking of a part of Shimla’s Ridge is nature’s way of flashing a danger signal. In 2008 too cracks had appeared in the Ridge. Obviously, no lessons have been learnt. After some hasty repair work again, it will be life as usual. No one, least of all the politician in power, wants to be reminded that a disaster is waiting to happen. And it is man made. This place of natural beauty is no longer a source of joy for anyone. Old-timers must be watching the decay and degradation helplessly. The haphazard, furious growth that this once-admired hill town has witnessed defies all common sense, expert advice and ways of nature. Originally built by the British for a population of 30,000, the fragile hill town of Shimla carries the burden of 7.2 lakh residents, according to the 2001 census. The wild growth of concrete structures and vehicles has shrunk the green cover, polluted the air and disrupted the natural flow of rainwater. The pressure on civic amenities is acutely felt. The damage to the environment is all too visible. How could a hill area afford to have so many tall buildings? There is one 12-storey concrete monster, two 10-storey structures, 13 buildings eight to nine storey high and 170 others have five to six storeys. Both the BJP and the Congress that have been in power since the state was carved out of Punjab have contributed to the present chaos. Over the years short-sighted politicians and self-serving bureaucrats have ignored public complaints, media campaigns and NGOs’ cases in courts and allowed things to come to such a pass. Why should Shimla have so many government offices? Why is advanced health care available only in Shimla? Attempts to wean away tourists to lesser known destinations have been feeble. The problem is: the state did not have any visionary leader after Dr Y.S.Parmar. The present crop of politicians does not look beyond the next elections.
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Here’s smell of the blood still: all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. — William Shakespeare
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Stone-pelting by Kashmiri youth Kashmir
is boiling, but it is a victim of wrong perception. Both Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah fail to understand the ethos of the Kashmir stir. They do not realise that their intelligence agencies over the years have become part of the establishment and have little contact with those indulging in stone-pelting. The Prime Minister’s willingness to talk to all sections or individuals in Kashmir, as he said in his recent speech, is a shot fired in the dark. His dependence on the same old apparatus and individuals will yield no results. They are not relevant in the present situation. In the same manner, Omar Abdullah’s offer to create 50,000 jobs to engage the youth is too late. He should have done it when he came to power after the elections in which 62 per cent of the people voted for him. The youth movement that Abdullah faces has no economic agenda. It is a revolt against the entire system. It is spontaneous and it started with the killing of 17-year-old Tufail Ahmed Matto on June 11. He was a Class XII student, not part of the procession which was throwing stones on the CRPF. Matto was killed by a tear gas shell. Everything else followed. As Omar Abdullah has admitted that protests have led to the firing, and firing has led to more protests. One incident ignited the other and in no time the entire valley has been engulfed by young protesters. No separatist party led the agitation. They jumped into the arena after the event, not before. The youth is listening to them but they keep their own counsel. Mehbooba Mufti’s PDP is a supporter of the movement. She is a problem, not the solution. Her ambition is power. She wants to step in if and when the Congress parts company with Omar Abdullah’s National Conference and picks up the PDP to run the state. Such machinations on the part of politicians have been the bane of the state. By and large, the politicians and their furtive ways are responsible for all that is happening in the state. Today all political formations, including the Hurriyat, are irrelevant because the angry youth does not have any faith in them or their methods. Syed Ali Shah Geelani has some influence because he is talking in terms of fundamentalism which has brainwashed the youth. The vague, undefined leadership that has surfaced is radical, Islamist and ultra-fundamentalist. It is Naxalism of sorts, with a pronounced religious slant. Taliban elements have come into the picture now but they were not there when the movement got ignited. Yasin Malik, who is in jail, is respected but how far he can influence the movement is yet to be seen because he is against fundamentalism. There is validity in the argument that the separatists are not allowing the situation to be settled down. But the fact remains that people in Kashmir have given Srinagar and New Delhi many chances to sort out the long-outstanding problem. But both have failed to do so. Where do things go wrong in Kashmir? My experience is that the more a political party or the administration in Srinagar goes nearer to India, the greater is the resentment of people who want to preserve their own identity. A state government which is seen challenging New Delhi is liked because it gives them a vicarious satisfaction of being independent. Sheikh Abdullah, a popular Kashmiri leader, understood this. He did not question Kashmir’s accession to India but placated the Kashmiris by criticising New Delhi for eroding the state’s autonomy. For example, he would say that the Kashmiris would prefer to stay hungry if the atta from India was meant to trample upon their right to stay independent. It may have been a fiction but it worked. Even Jawaharlal Nehru, the Sheikh’s friend and supporter in political battles against the Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir, had to detain him without trial in South India for some 12 years. Nehru realised rather late that the violation of the accession terms -Srinagar giving only defence, foreign affairs and communications to India - had taken the shape of separation and a strong pro-Pakistan tilt. He released the Sheikh and sent him to Islamabad. Unfortunately Nehru died when the Sheikh was in the midst of talks with General Ayub Khan, Pakistan’s Martial Law Administrator. Kashmir remained a problem between India and Pakistan. They held talks and fought wars but reached nowhere. The Shimla Agreement in 1972 converted the ceasefire line into the Line of Control. But the two failed to go further because of their domestic compulsions. The Sheikh returned to power and entered into an accord with then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi that restored some autonomy which New Delhi had appropriated in his absence. But the Sheikh did not have a free hand because the bureaucracy and intelligence agencies, by then strong, wanted to guide him. They treated “me like a chaprasi (peon),” the Sheikh often told me. His son, Farooq Abdullah, much less in stature, tried to retrieve the situation by asking New Delhi to go back to the terms of accession, the Centre retaining only three subjects — defence, foreign affairs and communications. The successive governments in New Delhi felt that they could not go back as they feared a backlash. Former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee was the only person who foresaw the danger in not reaching an early settlement. He set up a back channel which almost found a solution when Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was ousted by General Pervez Musharraf, head of the military’s coup. The situation changed in the eighties. The Kashmiris, too, claimed a place on the table for talks on Kashmir. Rigged state elections in 1987 drove the youth from the ballot to the bullet, which Pakistan was willing to provide. The following 10 years saw a running battle between the Kashmiris and the security forces. Thousands died on both sides. The result was a further hiatus between the Kashmiris and New Delhi. The demand for independence may be genuine but it is not possible to accede. I wonder even if Pakistan would agree to an independent, sovereign state. I opposed the demand at the Kashmir Conference in Washington last month on two counts: first, India would not agree to another partition on the basis of religion. Second, borders could be made irrelevant but not changed. I also cautioned that Jammu and Ladakh would not go along with the valley to the point of secession. My feeling is that a solution within India is possible if not within the
Constitution.
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Kebabs, kheer and mangoes WE keep time for others. Left to ourselves, we take liberties with it, stretch it to suit our mood, or openly flout it. No one likes his stern, reprimanding visage. If you are employed, you keep time to save yourself from the fire from your employer; if married, from the ire of your better half; if a golfer, from the sardonic satire of the remaining three pals of your ‘four ball’. When I was working, there was the nerve-wrecking, mad, morning scramble to the Secretariat. As a result, many a time I reached the ‘corridors of power’ when they were still almost deserted, shrouded in ghostly silence. I sometimes even found my room locked, yet to be swept and dusted. What blissful relief it was to be free from the tyranny of Time at my retirement about 10 years ago! Before my retirement, my wife Savitri respected my time – getting my clothes, shoes and breakfast ready, putting a smile on my coming late from office, adjusting dinner time, and all that. But it changed dramatically after my retirement. As I reveled in the bliss of timelessness, I ignored her repeated calls that the dinner was laid by saying, ‘What’s the hurry, dear?’ But she had begun to be a stickler for a time schedule at least on the dining table. The dinner was on the table at 8.30 p.m. during summer and 8 p.m. in winter. That was that. You might be on the tenterhooks of breaking news on TV, or on the brink of discovery of the real murderer in the thriller you were reading, or trying to catch the elusive word in the poem you were trying hard to compose, she didn’t care. She was totally unrelenting. I couldn’t understand it at all and one day I asked her why all that hullabaloo? ‘Can’t you understand?’ she gave me a stern look and brought her voice to a whisper, lest Deepak, our man Friday, would hear, ‘he has been working from early morning; he has to go now to his wife after washing the plates.’ You see, before retirement we had other domestic help too from the government. Now Deepak was our sole servitor, nay, saviour. His wife worked at someone else’s household in a nearby sector, where they had a room to live. I had to willy-nilly mend my ways. But now she is not there and I employ a part-time maid who cooks two subzies and daal, rice and chapattis, and leaves them to cool in the fridge. I am lord and master, free from all shackles, and eat what I like and when I like. Dark monsoon clouds come thundering in the evening, breaking the sultry spell of heat and dust, the pitter-patter of rains slaking the earth, and I am reminded of Faiz’s lines, ‘Aaye kuchh abra…’, and open my little bar and toast the clouds. In that mood of celebration, I don’t like the look of the subzies in the fridge and call the home delivery for some kebabs, which the Moguls had brought to India. I top it with kheer, which is our legacy straight from the hoary Vedic days (ksheer in Sanskrit), and long, delicious dashari mangoes, the fruit of India! It’s nearing eleven in the night, and I have to go for golf in the morning, but who
cares?
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Weakest link in the government
Democracy
rides on effective governance at three levels — at the Centre, in the states and by the local community. Nations such as the USA and the UK derive their strength from grassroots institutions, variously termed as counties, city councils or boroughs. These elected local bodies in towns and villages wield authority for taxation, development and regulation, police administration, and even adjudication in respect of local laws. After the tragic events in the US on September 11, 2001, the world witnessed how Rudy Guiliani, Mayor of New York City, led the emergency relief work, even as President Bush stood meekly in the background. In India, by contrast, the organs of local self-government, municipal councils in towns, and panchayats in rural areas, are the weakest of the three tiers of government. The panchayat bodies have few financial or administrative powers. Inspired by Mahatma Gandhi’s concept of the village as a republic, the Panchayati Raj has been given much lip-service in India. Most states set up a three-tier structure consisting of Zila Parishads in the districts, the Panchayat Samitis in development blocks, and village-level Gram Panchayats. In states like Punjab and Haryana, these bodies are bereft of financial or administrative authority. At best they are offered crumbs by way of petty grants for inconsequential items. In Punjab, we witnessed the astonishing public spectacle of the MLAs distributing government grants in villages. The scene was symbolic, falsely projecting the MLAs as dispensers of charity. In actual fact, the MLAs were superfluous middlemen between the state and the panchayats. Many states plead for autonomy in relation to the national government, but stoutly resist decentralisation from the state to the villages. The unwritten approach has been “state powers good, village powers bad”. For years on end, some states did not conduct panchayat elections, as they were legally bound to do. In Punjab, hundreds of elected panchayats are currently suspended, under government orders, on one ground or the other. Suspension of an elected local body, and placing it under a small government functionary, is akin to imposition of the President’s Rule in a state. The public perception is that the real authority lies at the state headquarters. Consequently, there is hardly a murmur of protest when hundreds of panchayat secretaries, who are technically employees of panchayats, are recruited, not by the panchayats, but by a Minister. For decades, the Panchayati Raj remained merely a national slogan. The year 1992 saw the Rajiv Gandhi government legislate the Constitution (73rd Amendment) Act to strengthen and empower the panchayat bodies, then numbering 496 Zila Parishads, 5905 Block Samitis and 230762 village panchayats. To effectuate empowerment, the states are to enact appropriate state laws and implement them. However, the states have shown little alacrity. The reform measures have been mainly cosmetic. These include the reservation of leadership in the village institutions for women and members of the Scheduled Castes, the establishment of State Election Commissions to conduct panchayat elections, and the setting up of State Finance Commissions. There is still no genuine devolution of financial and administrative powers to the local bodies. The villagers are concerned primarily with issues of schooling, healthcare, welfare and services for their day-to-day existence. The key functionaries that can help fulfill these basic needs such as school teachers, medical and veterinary staff, rural water supply officials, agriculture inspectors, and even engineers engaged in rural projects, continue to be answerable to their departmental superiors. In the absence of control of elected bodies at the district and village level, absenteeism of government employees is rife. The local panchayat, for example, has no institutional link with the village school or with service departments. All cadres of departmental officials are centralised. In Punjab, the state cadre of school teachers numbering three lakh is jealously controlled by the Department of Education. The teachers, who should be imparting quality education, spend considerable time and energy in seeking postings and transfers to stations of their choice. The employees of other departments as well seek greener pastures with the political support of local leaders. Instances are not uncommon where a post sanctioned for a particular village is shifted to a distant town, merely to accommodate a well connected employee. In this industry of postings and transfers, the panchayat institutions are helpless and hopeless bystanders. The centralised authority at the state level is self-perpetuating. The departmental heads and lower staff prefer to report to bosses who are removed from the field. Their accountability would improve if their performance were to be appraised in the village by legally chosen democratic bodies. A common argument against empowerment of panchayats is that the village leaders are unskilled and untrustworthy. It is wrong to doubt the competence and integrity of the local bodies without affording them an opportunity to perform. Graft is less likely when members of the community, who are in the immediate vicinity, are vigilant. Several years prior to the 73rd amendment, Karnataka had completed considerable devolution of power to the panchayats. The Punjab government has recently made a slow, hesitant start. The panchayats will be entrusted with some limited financial and administrative powers in respect of just six departments. At the national level, there is commitment to village empowerment. Resistance is at the second tier, the states, for fear of loss of patronage and authority. Tier three, the panchayat, demands not delegation of authority vested at the state level, but the transfer of power to where it rightfully belongs — the village. Stronger and abler governance at the grassroots will make for a stronger state, and a more powerful nation. The writer is a former Chief Secretary, Government of Punjab
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Devolution of powers holds the key THE Constitution (73rd Amendment) Act, 1992, has created a myth of paradigm shift in the devolution of powers to the Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs). This illusion has to be ascribed to the insertion of the XI Schedule listing 29 subjects in the Constitution. These were to be devolved by the state legislatures for making them institutions of self-government to make and implement plans of economic development and social justice. However, this myth could not become a reality even 16 years after the enactment of the Act after due ratification by all the states in 2004. This is amply evident from a perusal of The State of Panchayats — A Mid-Term Appraisal (Ministry of Panchayati Raj, Government of India, 2006). It revealed that only Assam, Chhattisgarh, Haryana, Karnataka, Kerala, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu and Tripura had devolved all the 29 subjects on the PRIs through their respective Panchayati Raj Acts. While Goa and Punjab had devolved less then 29 subjects, Arunachal Pradesh did little. Even in the document on Activity Mapping released by various states since 2006, only Assam and Karnataka have covered all the 29 subjects. It has been less then 10 subjects in Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Orissa and Uttarakhand. It is conspicuous by its absence in Himachal Pradesh, Maharashtra, Punjab, Sikkim, Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh. This has been confirmed by a comparison of the Devolution Index of 15 major states by Sahib Singh Bhayana (2009) which he had designed by taking into account the average of percentage share of devolution in respect of functions, functionaries and funds in these states. It was found that the Devolution Index was cent per cent in Karnataka, 60 per cent in Kerala, Maharashtra and West Bengal, less than 40 per cent in Andhra Pradesh, Orissa and Rajasthan and below 20 per cent in Punjab and Haryana. In Assam, Bihar and Gujarat, the scenario was far more depressing. These variations in the degree of devolution in various states have to be ascribed to the differences in the levels of commitment to the ideal of democratic decentralisation among the political dispensations in the major states since 1994. The logical outcome has been the failure of governance and inefficient delivery mechanism at the grassroots level. The implementation of the recommendations of the Second Administrative Reform Commission (Sixth Report, 2007) for functional and financial empowerment of the panchayats brooks no delay. It sought amendment of Article 243G to stipulate that “...the legislature of a state shall, by law, vest a panchayat at the appropriate level with such powers and authority as are necessary to enable them to function as institutions of self-government in respect of all functions which can be performed at the local level including the functions in respect of matters listed in the XI Schedule”. The ARC sought a clear-cut demarcation of functions for each level of local government. This should not be a one-time exercise and has to be done continuously. The provision for appropriate devolution to each tier must be done through legislation. The Centre should draft a model law for this purpose. Panchayats can be assigned such functions as rural policing, enforcement of building byelaws, issuance of birth, death, caste and residence certificates, voter identity cards and enforcement of regulations pertaining to weights and measures. In terms of the XI Schedule, local level activities of elementary education, preventive and promotive health care, water supply, sanitation, environmental improvement and nutrition need to be transferred to the appropriate tiers of the PRIs. The ARC has sought the abolition of parallel bodies like the District Rural Development Agencies and their merger with the PRIs. The community level bodies should be made accountable to them. For the devolution of funds, it said that the state legislatures should consider the State Finance Commissions’ recommendations within six months of their submission. The annual statement on the devolution of grants to the local bodies and on the implementation of other recommendations of the SFCs should also be made by them. The revenue base of local governments must be broadened for their resource mobilisation. The potential for taxation, fixation of realistic tax rates, widening of tax base and improved collections, too, should be explored. The tax domain of panchayats should be expended through statutes. However, it should be made obligatory for them to levy taxes. They should be given a substantial share in the royalty from minerals collected by the state governments. The gram panchayat must have primary authority in the taxes assigned to the PRIs. The major Centrally-sponsored schemes and special programmes of the states and all other allocations to panchayats should be untied. A separate panchayat sector should be provided in the state budget. The funds to the panchayats should be released in time for proper utilisation. They should be encouraged to borrow from banks/financial institutions for infrastructure building. In addition, the PRIs should be given adequate secretarial, administrative and technical staff. The officers and functionaries of the line departments should be under the PRIs’ administrative control. Otherwise, they will not be able to take full advantage of the functional and financial devolution. Besides, there is need for the capacity building of the representatives through regular training. In fine, the mindset of the bureaucracy, technocracy and political leadership should change. Otherwise, the entire exercise of devolution will be futile. The writer is Consultant, Haryana Institute of Rural Development, Nilokheri
(Karnal)
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Corrections and clarifications n
In the headline of the box “Spot-fixing scandle,” (The Tribune, September 6, Page 18), the word “scandal” has been
misspelt. n The headline “Travel agents are the biggest POs in Punjab” (The Tribune, September 6, Page 1), is inaccurate. It is the largest number of proclaimed offenders. n
In Lifestyle, the headline “Paddle pushers” (September 6, Page 1) should have been “Pedal pushers” because the report is about cyclists. n
The headline “De-addiction Centre rendering yeoman’s service” (Chandigarh Tribune, September 6, Page 4) is wrong. It is “yeoman service”. n
The photograph with the report “Badal flags off relief trucks to Leh” (The Tribune, September 6, Page 4) does not show Parkash Singh Badal. 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
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