The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Feminine aspirations
Valley’s liberal Muslims should speak up

Nothing can be more unfortunate for a secular, democratic country if young girls of a particular religion have to cut their dreams to size. That, too, to accommodate illogical misogynist demands of a few cave men who use modern technology to threaten them. Certainly, if these men were men enough, they would not hide behind some fake identity to give vent to their twisted assumptions of propriety on seeing three 16-year-old girls realise their dreams. Now, these girls from Shrinagar have to close down their first- ever all girls music band Pragaash, after winning the best band prize in December last year, because some men think that playing rock band is un-Islamic. Remember Junoon, the very successful music band from Pakistan, which has sold 25 million records so far?

It is all about misogyny rather than religion, is evident from the kind of sickening threats posted on the web by these men. The threats include rape and murder of the girls if they ever dared to play music again in public. This kind of righteous misogyny is not new in our country, some trigger-happy Mullah had filled blogs after blogs with venom against the size of Sania Mirza’s skirt, which had acquired proportions of a national debate. It was a firm and adamant Sania who gave a befitting reply to them when she said as long as she was winning, people shouldn't care whether her skirt was six inches long or six feet.

The repetitive insanity of such instances raises serious questions about the constitutional obligation of our government that ensures equal opportunities to its citizens, irrespective of gender, class and religion. The sickening threats passed under the veil of religion should be met with exemplary punishment under cyber laws so that none ever dares to repeat it. The girls in Kashmir should get inspiration from their counterparts from Banglore, who sent pink chaddis to embarrass members of Shri Ram Sene and put their foolhardy to rest.

Mending Maqboolpura
Welcome focus on a needy village

An area on the outskirts of Amritsar had the dubious distinction of being equated with all that is drug addiction — the problem and its long-term effects. Maqboolpura is sometimes referred to as the 'locality of widows'. It figured in the columns of the paper first time 14 years ago. Since then, it has gone from bad to worse as drug addiction among its residents took a toll of individuals, families and even local institutions.

The village is now the focus of a concerted effort by the local administration which seeks to implement a multi-pronged strategy to provide education, health care and even social security to residents. While it remains to be seen if it can indeed rise to the occasion and deal with the situation, the initiative is laudable. On the face of it, the administration has done its homework. Thus, it has identified the common afflictions that residents face, including TB and HIV, and has factored in help for them. Other than that, even providing basic health care to residents, many of who can’t afford it, will help in improving the overall situation.

Drug dealers should be dealt with firmly. It is often the case that their identities are commonly known, but somehow they manage to evade the police and other authorities. This should not be allowed to happen. We realise the magnitude of this disaster when we see that almost 300 families have been effectively destroyed by drugs in this locality alone. Then there are the official figures, according to which it has 298 widows, out of whom only 100 are receiving the pension earmarked for them. Indeed, the scourge of drugs has spread widely, and even as one area is being sorted out, there are many more that need such help. It is an unfortunate fact of Punjab today that there are many Maqboolpuras in it. May this transformation also be the harbinger of change for the rest of the state.

Thought for the Day

Night comes to the desert all at once, as if someone turned off the light. — Joyce Carol Oates

ARTICLE

A study in contrast
Disturbing developments in Egypt, Syria
by S. Nihal Singh

Recent events in Egypt and Syria have sent out disturbing images to the world. Revolutions are never staid affairs, but the duration of the crises in these two countries and the chaos and ugliness they portend have tended to place the Arab Spring in new light. Yet a comparison between the two is more a study in contrast than situations of similarity.

Egypt, we must remember, overthrew a dictator, Hosni Mubarak, after the Tunisians had overthrown their dictator. But convulsions in the former have taken a chaotic turn even after the installation of its first democratically elected leader, Mr Mohammad Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood. In Syria’s case, on the other hand, a movement that began nearly two years ago has degenerated into a vicious civil war with neither side willing to compromise or talk to each other.

The question people in the region as the rest of the world are asking is: Where do we go from here? In historical terms, it is hardly surprising that ossified societies ruled by dictators of the military or dynastic varieties can hardly transition to smooth democratic dispensations. In Libya, for instance, the fall of Muammar Gaddafi, brought about with the help of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, yielded place to a successor regime which has had to cope with deep east-west divisions and a country with no real institutions to count on. Gaddafi had ruled through an eccentric brand of family and tribal norms as bizarre as they were arbitrary.

Egypt occupies a special place in the Arab world and regained its central role after it was placed in a purgatory for making peace with Israel. Mubarak’s rule was marked by a balancing of forces - the United States on the one hand, which opened its purse strings for Cairo’s indirect protection of Israel, while claiming a larger Arab role on the other. Mubarak was a mediator between Israelis and Palestinians with an eye on protecting American interests.

Mr Mursi, of course, is quite another kind of ruler and sought to consolidate power for his Muslim Brotherhood by pushing through a flawed constitution, for a time giving himself all powers; the latter attempt he has had to temper in view of the outrage it caused among his more secular opponents and members of the important Coptic Christian minority. On the other hand, he did succeed in clipping the wings of the Army, a traditional major power factor, even as he bribed it by continuing its perks, particularly in the economic field.

Although football hooliganism and the shocking deaths it caused last year followed by the first sentencing to death people decreed to be guilty played their part in the new mayhem enacted in Cairo and the Suez cities, the central problem that brought opponents to the famed Tahrir Square yet again was the diverse opposition’s disaffection with how President Mursi has chosen to govern.

It is as if President Mursi conceived his primary role as one of strengthening his parent organisation, the Muslim Brotherhood, over the necessity of running an inclusive administration. After days of rioting and bloodshed, his invitation to the opposition for talks was met with the response that he should first form an inclusive transitional government. Expectedly, he has rejected this demand.

Syria’s problems are of another kind. The continuing bloodshed has led to more than 60,000 estimated deaths and more than 600,000 refugees seeking shelter in neighbouring countries. President Bashar Assad has lasted longer than anyone expected but he is living on borrowed time. The disparate opposition forces, also including jihadis, are supported by outside powers, particularly Saudi Arabia and Qatar and western countries. The United States seems to have no appetite to get itself militarily involved in yet another Muslim country, but the opponents’ neighbourly patrons have no such qualms, except for Turkey adopting a more cautious line than it did last year.

The convulsions in these two countries and elsewhere in the Arab world will continue because they are undergoing a cataclysmic change. There are no easy answers because the new and old rulers must learn the hard way that violent change, when it comes, is no respecter of rules or pedigree. Syria is such a knotty problem because of its pastiche of religious and tribal groups, with the ruling Alawites in a minority.

As Libya’s example shows, outside intervention often complicates, rather than simplifies, the tasks of a post-dictatorial regime. But the revolutionists’ dilemma was that Gaddafi’s military muscle was such that only outside intervention in the form of consistent air offensives by NATO powers could lead to the dictator’s fall. Yet nature, as well as politics, abhors a vacuum, and the longer the stalemate in Syria lasts, the more tempting it will be for outside powers to intervene in their own national interest.

What can the world then do to help countries in throes of a violent change to lead them to a quicker transition? There is no magic wand that can bring peace to the roiled waters of the Arab world. The United Nations Security Council has been unable to act on Syria because Russia and the US are on opposite sides of the conflict. Moscow seems let down by how the western powers interpreted the resolution on Libya, which served as the cover for NATO military intervention. In any case, it has long been a tenet of Russian foreign policy that it is against regime change through outside intervention. Moscow is still hurt by how the US and other western powers helped dismember Yugoslavia without even the fig leaf of a UN Security Council resolution.

In the ultimate analysis, it is the peoples of individual countries and their regional peers who will have to resolve crises. It does not, of course, help that each of the regional powers has its own agenda. As the traditional leader of the Arab world, Egypt must take the lead in resolving its problems. Therefore, a heavy responsibility rests on the shoulders of President Mursi to abandon his exclusionary agenda to bring in secular and liberal elements into a transitional arrangement. He must learn to stoop to conquer.

MIDDLE

Hung by the neck till...
by P.R. Chari

Would you like to come and see a hanging? We are having one tomorrow morning.” This was the Additional District Magistrate speaking. Let’s call him Aniq Sa’ab. A jovial person and fond of story-telling replete with humour and practical wisdom. But his ever- smiling, rotund face concealed a very sharp judicial mind. I was an Assistant Collector under training, and Aniq Sa’ab was assigned to teach me the elements of criminal law and procedure.

Those were the bad old ill-liberal times, when the executive was not separated from the judiciary, and the magistrates came largely from the Subordinate Civil Services of the state. There was no hesitation in sentencing accused persons to death if they were found guilty of heinous crimes that were so punishable. No wooly-headedness either in searching assiduously for the rarest of the rare cases, nor in proving a case beyond the shadow of a doubt, and, in short, dispensing justice to favour the accused while forgetting about the aggrieved.

Executive magistrates were naturally inclined to construe the law even-handedly, as they were also responsible for maintaining law and order and peace in the state. Their multifarious functions also equipped them better to understand the vicissitudes of human nature and how things happened in the real world of men and women with strengths, weaknesses and passions. Hangings in this milieu were not infrequent, And one did not have to search all over for hangmen; they were easily available, usually silent, withdrawn men who were greatly feared in the mohallas.

“Be sure,” Aniq Sa’ab continued, “to reach the main gate of the Central Jail by 5 o’clock in the morning. We do these things around 6 o’clock in summer, and there are some formalities to be completed.” Being in a talkative mood, he continued that he could not remember how many persons he had hanged, but each hanging was different. One thing was certain. They did not happen like in the movies with the condemned person walking briskly to the gallows with a patriotic song on his lips, and slipping the noose over his head shouting slogans.

Some came quietly; others muttered prayers. More often than not, however, the condemned man would lose control over his bodily functions, and have to be dragged to the gallows sobbing, “Please, give me one more chance. Let me please make one more mercy petition,” Unpleasant for all concerned, including the magistrate, the doctor and the Superintendent of the Central Jail, who had to be present. Only the hangmen remained unmoved.

Aniq Sa’ab was all praise for the current Superintendent of the Central Jail. Let’s call him Pandey. Apparently, he adopted an avuncular attitude in bringing the condemned man to the gallows, putting a comforting arm around his neck and coaxing him along, saying, “Ghabrao nahin. Kucch nahin hoga.” (Don’t worry. Nothing will happen). Aniq Sa’ab had remonstrated with him for such frivolity, but Pandey stood his ground, “My job is to bring the man quietly to the gallows. Anyway, what does one tell a person who will be dead in a few minutes? ”

A final admonishment was administered by Aniq Sa’ab. “Be sure to eat nothing before coming tomorrow morning. We can’t have you throwing up. That is most embarrassing. Anyway, you are coming home for breakfast. My begum always has a good breakfast waiting for me on the days I have to do a hanging.”

Oped Neighbour

Village democracy in China
Though Deng Xiaoping’s reforms have lifted the rural Chinese standard of living, these have also led to socio-economic disparities and imbalances. Parts of China's countryside have become a dynamic new source of economic growth
Abhilaksh Likhi

The number of Internet users in rural China stands at 530 million

Among the most significant political reforms implemented by the Chinese government since 1989 is the introduction of competitive elections in villages. The basis for village elections is a law promulgated in 1987 by the National People’s Congress, China’s legislature, which specifies that village leaders be directly elected by the villagers themselves for three years. India, since Independence, has constitutionally affirmed the importance of village democracy through grassroots local bodies though they acquired legal teeth only in 1993 after the 73rd Constitution Amendment.

Towards decentralisation

Village democracy in China is an example of a centrally driven policy change towards decentralisation and participation. Through much of China’s long history, the central state has ruled the countryside only indirectly. In fact, during the Ming (1468-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties, the imperial bureaucracy extended only to the xian (county) level, leaving control of the countryside largely in the hands of local gentry and elites. It was not until the modern era, comprising the Republican Period (1911-49) and the People’s Republic of China (1949-present), that the central government consolidated its control of the countryside. Beginning with land reforms in 1949 and accelerating with the collectivisation of agriculture in the mid-1950s the state established official bureaucracies at the county, township and village levels.

It was not until the 1970s that administrative power was decentralised to the rural communes that were converted into townships and villages. In these new entities, the more entrepreneurial officials soon began using their new-found authority and discretion to take advantage of opportunities opened by market liberalisation. Within a few years, China’s countryside became a dynamic new source of economic growth too.

The electoral processes enshrined in Article 14 of the Organic Law on Village Committees combines a process of public nomination with secret ballots. The design of this process was based on a series of pilots encouraged by the government in as many as 24 provinces making China one of the few countries in the world where popular deliberation have been organised to determine electoral mechanisms. Interestingly, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) maintains a parallel structure at the village level of a party village branch in addition to the basic and more representative grassroots’ institution i.e. Village Development Committee (VDC).

Local self-governance

In India, participatory institutions of local self-governance amongst rural communities have existed since time immemorial. Local self-government in India, as an accountable representative institution, was the creation of the British colonial masters. Lord Ripon instituted local government reforms in 1882 for the primary purpose of providing political education and reviving India’s indigenous system of government. Since the Constitution of India came into effect in 1950, the foundations of such village democracy, as a three-tier structure at the grassroots, (though extremely unevenly implemented across various provinces) have been strengthened by systemic improvements contained in the various recommendations of committees and consequent legislation that has been enacted.

But decisive reforms happened only in the 1990s when the 73rd Constitution Amendment strengthened the three-tier Panchayati Raj Insititutions (PRIs) with the Gram Panchayat comprising a group of villages, Panchayat Samitis at the community block level and the Zilla Parishad at the district level. It systematised PRI elections at all three levels, established independent election commissions and gave PRIs more fiscal authority and political power. For over two decades, the constitutionally mandated PRIs, despite challenges of elite capture and clientiesm, have led to the emergence of a large number of locally elected leaders, including for the first time over one million women!

These broad developments in the evolution of village democracy in China and India have been supplemented with the emergence of other grassroots democratic forums. The number of Internet users in rural China stands at a staggering over 530 million! Although blogging is a relatively recent phenomenon, blogs and chat rooms are a popular means of organising and spreading news even in rural areas, whether about socio-cultural stories of mass interest, perceived injustices, demands for private property rights, inequity concerns, environment, corruption, minority assertions issues etc. A study of four environmental NGOs (Greener Beijing, Green Web, TAIC, Han Shai Sha) shows how the Internet in China has helped myriad grassroots organisations to achieve institutional growth, mobilisation of resources and spread of online environmental activism.

In India, in the backdrop of a robust social and electronic media, the revival of PRIs has been supplemented by the recent proliferation of a large variety of local bodies whose numbers are increasingly exponentially. Apart from a mushrooming of non-governmental organisations (3.3 million and one NGO for less than 400 Indians active in the rural space) other new types of groups have also emerged. These include user groups for natural resource management such as forests and water, stakeholder committees, and self help groups (SGHs) for micro- credit and various livelihood creation activities. It is important to note that national or international donor agencies often prefer to route their assistance through NGOs, SGHs and user committees, ignoring the fact that these are non-elected bodies paralleling the already existing PRIs and the fact that they are equally vulnerable to elite capture or clientelism.

Poverty reduction efforts

Interestingly, in China since 1986, the Leading Group on Poverty (LGOP) and its executive agency, Poor Area Development Office (PADO), that has roots in counties and townships, has effectively been responsible for the overall success of poverty reduction programmes. But while it has increased its commitment to a broader poverty reduction, social protection and the human development agenda there is no evidence to indicate that grassroots units of village democratic institutions such as the VDCs have been structurally and systemically involved in the implementation process. In fact, there has been a move away, in the latest LGOP Report 2012, from making the poor-led community-driven development through VDCs the driver of rural poverty reduction programmes.

This is quite surprising since the last decade has seen the launch of a large variety of poverty alleviation programmes such as the launch in 2000 of the Western Region Development Strategy, training programmes to support he transfer of rural surplus labor, coordination of the nationwide rural social assistance programme -- Di Bao, universal primary education programme, the rural health insurance scheme, medical assistance scheme for rural areas, a compulsory education finance scheme and many more.

In India on the other hand, the 73rd Constitution Amendment provides legal backing to the Gram Sabha (village assembly that constitutes the Gram Panchayat). In fact, the Gram Sabha’s crucial role in decentralised planning based on an area’s resource endowment, people’s felt needs and their relative absorptive capacity has been envisaged to be a realistic input into district plans that will form the basis of 2012-2017 macro-planning by the Planning Commission at the national level. The constituents of micro planning include literacy, elementary education, rural water supply, rural roads, housing, nutrition, employment guarantee and rural electrification as minimum needs. Despite the challenges of lack of convergence, adequate capacity building and stronger social audit such a system stands on a firm footing.

Institutional trajectories

There appear to be three institutional trajectories that will shape the nature, pace and expanse of democratic reforms in China, including village democracy. The first is the stimulation of social democracy through an inner-party collective leadership system. With more than approximately 70 million party members, the CCP has over the years skilfully absorbed and co-opted the vast majority of the country’s social and political elites, including those in rural areas.

Secondly, China’s democratisation will be characterised by the further growth and proliferation of the Internet and social media. Currently a virtual civil society is continually contesting in urban and semi-urban China with the forces of networked authoritarianism to express and flower. The party-state can at no cost ignore the future palpable vibrancy of an information rich and rights’ asserting civil society that is bound to form the core of transparent governance.

On the other hand, it is evident that in India it took nearly four decades for the PRIs to be integrated into the country’s core quasi-federal polity. Besides, the delayed integration has had severe systemic implications for effective service delivery in sectors such health, education, social protection, rural employment vis-a-vis umpteen parallel and local bodies that have now emerged in the rural space. As a result, the primacy of the legally backed PRIs as robust and thriving last mile grassroots bodies that act as an accessible and accountable fulcrum for the rural community has suffered in time.

The initiation of devolution of funds, functions and functionaries to PRIs through ‘activity mapping’ by the unbundling of 29 subjects in Schedule Eleven ranging from agriculture to education, which PRIs should actually supervise, implementation and monitoring are a critical step. Actual devolution through realistic mapping coupled with PRIs entering into public-private partnerships with civil society organisations could create an incentive compatibility that would bring effectiveness in the public delivery of multi-sectoral rural interventions.

The writer is an IAS officer and currently a Research Fellow at SAIS, Johns Hopkins University, Washington DC