The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Nuisance of VIP security
Can court discipline politicians?

It is amusing to see Congressmen in Punjab protesting the withdrawal of their security. Instead of surrendering it on their own, they are cribbing about it, alleging discrimination as Akali leaders, big and small, still have it. Punjab Congress president Partap Singh Bajwa’s grouse is that the privilege granted to his mother has gone. A bankrupt Punjab government, which is unable to pay staff salaries on time, spends the maximum in the country on guarding its so-called VIPs and a concerned Supreme Court has asked for details. The government is doing only a half-hearted job since the elaborate security network may still remain intact.

After militancy ended some two decades ago, Punjab, fortunately, has not witnessed any major incident of violence. Still ministers, MLAs, out-of-work politicians and their hangers-on move around in cavalcades of vehicles, wasting the taxpayer’s money. Gypsies loaded with gunmen are used to intimidate ordinary road users and clear the way for VIP vehicles. The ruling politicians and the police brass seem to have a vested interest in keeping the bogey of terrorism alive as they all stand to gain. One can understand the state protecting the lives of a select few constitutional and other key functionaries who can be obvious targets of criminals. But why should every politician have dozens of policemen surrounding him? If the country is unsafe for citizens, so it should be for politicians.

P. Chidambaram as the Union Home Minister reduced his own and others’ security. However, after he moved to Finance, politicians queued up for Z-plus security. Among the latest beneficiaries are Steel Minister Beni Prasad Verma and BSP MP Brajesh Pathak. This is despite the Supreme Court recently decrying the obnoxious VIP culture. There is a need to break the police-politician nexus. The Supreme Court had recommended reforms to stop political meddling in police affairs. But few states have implemented these. Will politicians listen to a court suggestion on reducing VIP security?

The end of a beast
Opportunity for justice denied

Good riddance to a beast. That’s how many among us would be tempted to react to the death of Ram Singh, prime accused in the December 16 Delhi rape-cum-murder case. This arises from the bestiality the gang of six displayed in first sexually assaulting the 23-year-old woman and then doing physical harm to her body in a manner that surgeons said they had seen nothing like that till then. A cry for vengeance arises from within anyone who has a sense of justice. Such is the revulsion that even some of those who oppose the death penalty, ended up agreeing these men deserved to die. All this hatred because people wanted justice.

It is precisely because of this sense of justice that the end for Ram Singh should not have come the way it did. While the exact cause and circumstances of his death are a matter of investigation, it was fairly certain he would have been given the death penalty. If he has committed suicide entirely of his accord, he has denied society the opportunity to see justice done. If his circumstances were made such that he preferred death to living — or was murdered — then, in any case, the cause of justice has been harmed. The system cannot allow a man to be punished without a fair trial, no matter how horrendous his crime. Street justice is not something that can be condoned.

The very crime the man committed was indicative of his propensity to violence and lack of mental balance. Criminals in such situations do tend to be suicidal. That, and the particularly high attention this case was subjected to, should have made the jail authorities more careful. This death could even trigger similar action in any of the remaining five accused, who need to be watched. It would be hard to conduct a fair probe into the death for the simple reason Ram Singh is not likely to have any sympathisers, but the authorities — and we as society — have to keep justice as the goal.

Thought for the Day

A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you the less you know. —Diane Arbus

ARTICLE

Budget indicative of future policies
Allocations are corrective in nature
by Jayshree Sengupta

Much dust has settled since the presentation of the Union Budget 2013-14. Many people belonging to the middle class have expressed their disappointment with it as there was nothing in the Budget for them. Most people expected the exemption limit of income tax to be raised to Rs 3 lakh but the slabs have remained unchanged. The surcharge of 10 per cent on the super-rich is quite acceptable except that the numbers seem too small at 42,800! Tapping the black money circulating in the economy and broadening the tax base, however, have not been attempted in the Budget. There were no signals given for reducing corruption which seems to be growing by the day, or address other serious issues of rising inequalities, increase in unemployment and rising food prices.

For the common woman (Finance Minister P. Chidambaram used the word "she"), the home loan scheme by way of deduction of interest of Rs 100,000 for a loan of Rs 25 lakh may have thrilled a few first-time home owners. More realistically, many would find it difficult to buy a nice flat for Rs 25 lakh in a metro city.

No big ticket items were announced because the fact remains that this was not a 'normal' Budget and it is the last Budget before the elections in 2014. It had to be 'corrective' in nature and indicative of the government's future policies. Certain populist elements with an eye on the polls were interwoven in the Finance Minister's Budget speech.

The one big thing that has been averted by the government is a credit rating downgrade by international credit rating agencies. The fiscal deficit has been contained at 5.2 per cent of the GDP. This was done in a very clever way and it has largely gone unnoticed that capital expenditure has been cut quite drastically. The total Plan spending is 18 per cent short of what Pranab Mukherjee, a former Finance Minister, had budgeted for. Next year's Budget will see a smaller fiscal deficit at 4.8 per cent. Yet all key ministries have got more money and that shows that the government is concerned about poverty alleviation and development. But the same ministries, especially rural development, agriculture and water resources, have large unutilised funds from last year. So why give them so much more?

The latest Economic Survey, on the other hand, gives a realistic picture of the economy. It points out clearly the dangers implicit in the general economic slowdown and the high current account deficit (CAD) that India is facing. It is not just the big imports of gold, oil and coal that are contributing to widening of the CAD but also slow export growth. The wayout is to boost export growth and there seems to be a faint likelihood that demand for Indian exports will pick up soon. Even service exports have declined in the last one year from 8.2 per cent to 6.6 per cent.

To finance the CAD, India will also require massive foreign exchange inflows in the form of FDI and FIIs. Though remittances from abroad have been high, we will still need $75 bn to finance it. The Survey points out that FDI has been slowing down from $15.7 bn to $12.8 bn but FII inflows, which have been rather erratic in the past, have been increasing of late. They were at $9.9 bn in the last quarter of the current fiscal. It would, however, be risky to bank on them to finance the CAD as they keep floating between countries and park the funds in whichever county the returns are the best.

Borrowing from abroad has been through ECBs (External Commercial Borrowings) and NRI deposits. External debt has increased by $20 bn to $365.3bn and the Survey points out: "Of some concern is India's increased dependence on foreign borrowing as growth has slowed." Indeed, GDP growth has fallen to 4.5 per cent in the last quarter.

The slowdown in manufacturing growth is another point of worry. Investment needs are growing for raising productivity and competitiveness. The Survey reveals that the corporate sector's investment has been declining significantly. The 15 per cent investment rebate on investments above Rs 100 crore in the Budget is a good gesture but may not be enough to revive industry and manufacturing. Only with interest rate cut can industry revive again.

The savings rate has been coming down and people are actually saving in the form of valuables ( mostly gold and jewellery). This form of unproductive saving has been rising. For boosting savings and diverting them to equities, an incentive has been given via the Rajiv Gandhi Equity Savings Scheme.

This trend of saving less in productive assets has much to do with inflation. While the WPI has been brought under control to 6.6 per cent ( January 2013), food inflation has been in double digit. To control it, the supply constraints and the need to increase agricultural productivity have been addressed in the Budget.

A lot of incentives for raising productivity have been included — specially the much needed increased allocation in storage facilities in the villages. But will it take care of inflation which has mainly been in the case of cereal prices? Cereal price inflation was at a shocking 17.05 per cent in the third quarter of 2012-13. The outlook for all the kharif crops in the current year is bleak according to the Economic Survey. This may aggravate food prices further.

Getting votes from the youth, women and the poor have been aimed at in the Budget. A women's only public sector bank has been proposed but all banks should be women friendly instead. Access to micro-credit would be more important for rural women rather than a public sector bank. Frankly, women need to be assured of their safety than banks at the present juncture.

Skill development fund for training the youth has been increased, which is a good thing but unless the manufacturing sector picks up there is no hope for rapid job creation in the organised sector.

For the unorganised sector, which employs 430 million people, Chidambaram announced a wider social security coverage, but the very next day the trade unions' agitation revealed that the coverage is not universal and only minuscule numbers are being covered. For the poor, he has also emphasised that the direct cash transfer scheme will be continued in the future.

For infrastructure, more roads have been promised and more port facilities announced. These types of announcements are a regular feature of every Budget. What was different in this Budget? Almost nothing except that there has been fiscal consolidation. Obviously, it is not going to satisfy the common man, farmers, industry or foreign investors.

MIDDLE

Uncoiling the news reel
by Rajbir Deswal

There was a time when cinema houses ran a news reel which was a black and white documentary relating to a specific period and produced largely by the government’s PR departments. Those were the days when news only in still images, or with the text in the newspapers, was available, but not on the small or big screen. Even All India Radio broadcast a news reel then — a capsule containing briefs.

Many people liked to see the news reels before watching the movies. But there still were many others who let it spool off, for they thought it was just a waste of time and an unwanted and boring prologue to a colourful scenario that was to follow, watching the movie itself. Running of the news reel was often interfered with allowing entry to the halls, simultaneously letting people be seated with the entry-exit doors wide open.

Generally the leaders in power were featured in these reels and no input from the Opposition was ever taken into account obviously. But due care was taken that not much of hard-boiled political thought, or leaning, dominated the presentation.

Meetings held in the Capital were generally covered, as also the visits of foreign dignitaries. The guard of honour presentations and taking of the salute was a repeat performance, to be followed by mostly the President or the Prime Minister shaking hands with their visiting counterparts. Maybe once in a while, their visit to the Taj Mahal was also covered.

Sometimes the news reel also covered incidents that were local, with which the cinema lovers largely identified and associated. At this footage, the necks craned out of the seats to spot a familiar figure.

Natural disasters like fires, floods, famines and earthquakes were also regular parts of the news reel timeline. Cattle-head skeletons and the drought affected cracked earth was shown with a trademark, Black Eagle, perching on a dried up branch of a denuded tree. Train accidents also made news.

Next to follow was perhaps a vocal recital by M S Subbulakshmi, or a Shehnai performance by Ustad Bismilah Khan. Film stars never made it to the news reels except a Nargis and Sunil Dutt couple interacting with soldiers on the outposts on the borders with China at high altitudes. Raj Kapoor’s visit to Moscow and his popularity in Russia was also featured, but not many others who dominated the silver screen in those days found a slot in the news reel.

A new arrival in the zoo or snowfall scenes were my favourites. I don't recollect his name, but a husky male voice generally did the voice-over for many of the presentations in the news reel. Last to be featured in the news reels was the sports news. It was hockey in those days that dominated the footage, not football or cricket.

No, the sarkari advertisements too were not a part of the news reel then, not even the home-made condoms. It was only one or two aspirin tablet-ads or a couple of brands of bathing soaps that were screened besides the news reel. The trailers, of course, scored above the news reel since it was again as if you had ‘watched another movie’ to add to your tally of ‘having had seens’.

OPED WORLD

How the world forgot about Iraq
It is 10 years since the start of the war in Iraq, which led to the toppling of Saddam Hussein. The diplomatic map of the world has been redrawn as a consequence. What is the state of Saddam’s former empire?
Patrick Cockburn

A combination of two file pictures taken in Iraq, shows on the left the reflection of women in the glass protecting a large photograph of late former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein on January 25, 2003, in Baghdad and on the right the reflection of women in a mirror displayed by a street vendor on February 4, 2013, in Baghdad’s central Karrada neighbourhood. Iraq is due to mark the 10th anniversary of the US-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein on March 20, 2003. AFP Photo

Iraq is disintegrating as a country under the pressure of a mounting political, social and economic crisis, say Iraqi leaders. They add that 10 years after the US invasion and occupation the conflict between the three main communities — Shia, Sunni and Kurd — is deepening to a point just short of civil war. “There is zero trust between Iraqi leaders,” says an Iraqi politician in daily contact with them. But like many of those interviewed by The Independent for this article, he did not want to be identified by name.

The escalating crisis in Iraq since the end of 2011 has largely been ignored by the rest of the world because international attention has been focused on Syria, the Arab uprisings and domestic economic troubles. The US and the UK have sought to play down overwhelming evidence that their invasion and occupation has produced one of the most dysfunctional and crooked governments in the world. Iraq has been violent and unstable for so long that Iraqis and foreigners alike have become desensitised to omens suggesting that, bad as the situation has been, it may be about to get a great deal worse.

Far from normal life

The record of failure of post-Saddam governments, given the financial resources available, is astounding. One of the reasons many Iraqis welcomed the fall of Saddam in 2003, whatever their feelings about foreign occupation, was that they thought that his successors would restore normal life after years of sanctions and war. To their astonishment and fury, this has not happened, though Iraq now enjoys $100bn a year in oil revenues. In Baghdad, there is scarcely a new civilian building to be seen and most of the new construction is heavily fortified police or military outposts. In Basra, at the heart of the oilfields, there are pools of sewage and heaps of uncollected rubbish in the streets on which herds of goats forage.

It is not just political violence that darkens lives but a breakdown of civil society that leaves people often looking to tribal justice in preference to police or official courts

I was in Baghdad at the end of January when there were a couple of days of heavy rain. For years, contractors — Iraqi and foreign — have supposedly been building a new sewage system for the Iraqi capital but none of the water was disappearing down the drains. I drove for miles in east Baghdad through streets flooded with grey, murky water, diluted with sewage.

I only turned round in Sadr City, the Shia working-class bastion, when the flood waters became too deep to drive through. Shirouk Abayachi, an advisor to the Ministry of Water Resources, explained to me that “since 2003, $7bn has been spent to build a new sewage system for Baghdad, but either the sewers weren’t built or they were built very badly”. She said the worst flooding had been where in theory there were new sewage pipes, while those built in the 1980s worked better, concluding that “corruption is the key to all this”.

Bribery and unemployment

Theft of public money and incompetence on a gargantuan scale means the government fails to provide adequate electricity, clean water or sanitation. One-third of the labour force is unemployed and, when you include those under-employed, the figure is over half. Even those who do have a job have often obtained it by bribery. “I feared seven or eight years ago that Iraq would become like Nigeria,” says one former minister, “but, in fact, it is far worse.” He cited as evidence a $1.3bn contract for an electricity project signed by a minister with a Canadian company that had only a nominal existence — and a German company that was bankrupt.

Iraqis looked for improved personal security and the rule of law after Saddam, but again this has not materialised.

The violence is much less than during the mass slaughter of 2006 and 2007, when more than 3,000 Iraqis were being butchered every month. But Baghdad and central Iraq remains one of the most dangerous places on earth in terms of bombings, assassinations and kidnappings. It is not just political violence that darkens lives but a breakdown of civil society that leaves people often looking to tribal justice in preference to police or official courts. One woman said, “If you have a traffic accident, what matters is not whether you were right or wrong but what tribe you belong to.”

Repression and insecurity

The same sense of insecurity in the face of arbitrary government taints political life. If there is not quite the same fear as under Saddam, it often feels as if this is only because the security forces are less efficient, not because they are any less cruel or corrupt. The rule of Nouri al-Maliki, Prime Minister since 2006, has become a near dictatorship with highly developed means of repression, such as secret prisons and pervasive use of torture.

He has sought to monopolise control over the army, intelligence service, government apparatus and budget, making sure that his supporters get the lion’s share of jobs and contracts.

Saddam Hussein and the US both found to their cost that Iraq can never be ruled by compulsion alone, something Mr Maliki has been slow to learn. The power of religious and ethnic communities is too great for successful coercion by the state and is underpinned by Iraqis’ loyalty to tribes, clans and extended families.

Iraqis who fought for years against Saddam Hussein, blaming most of Iraq’s ills on his regime, today express bitter disillusionment with his successors. Mustafa al-Khadimi, a veteran opponent of Saddam’s rule, says “I feel saddened and disappointed. I have given my life to destroying the old system and have seen members of my family and friends killed. Now I watch Iraq treated like a cake to be cut up between our politicians.”

Others, equally despairing, criticise Mr Maliki for exacerbating and exploiting political divisions to keep power in his hands. What makes these escalating conflicts so bizarre and damaging to Iraq is that they are fought by combatants who are part of the same power-sharing government. But because they don’t co-operate — and indeed hate and fear each other — government itself is paralysed.

Waning US influence

By 2011, Iraq had achieved a bloody and unsatisfactory stability that might have endured longer had it not been rocked by important changes in the political balance of power inside and outside Iraq.

The last American troops left at the end of 2011 and President Barack Obama made clear by his actions that he did not intend to be inveigled back into the Iraqi political morass. Polls showed American voters had a deep distaste for any involvement in Iraq. American influence plummeted.

But the Iraqi political system was in large part a US creation and many of its leaders owed their careers to US backing. This includes Mr Maliki who was appointed as Prime Minister by the US ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, because he was one of the few Shia politicians acceptable to the US and Iran.

The Sunni had suffered shattering defeats with the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, the formation of a Shia-Kurdish government and loss of the sectarian civil war. But the conflict in Syria marked a change for the better in Sunni fortunes.

The US departure, the Syrian crisis and the Sunni protests are all destabilising Iraq. The Kurds and the Shia religious leadership — the Marji’iyyah — regard Mr Maliki and his government with distrust, but the very divisions of Iraq that weaken central governments also make it difficult to get rid of those in power, because their opponents are themselves so divided. Opposed to Mr Maliki they may be, but they cannot agree on a successor. The Shias are also divided.

Political minefield

Iraq is one of the great political minefields of the world. It is full of ancient and modern battlefields where great empires have been humbled or destroyed. Saddam Hussein claimed to have built up an army of one million men in 1991, only to see it evaporate or mutiny.

Much the same happened in 2003. The US army marched into Baghdad full of arrogant contempt for what Iraqis said or did. Within a year, the US military controlled only islands of territory in a country they thought they had conquered.

Maliki may employ a million men in different branches of the Iraqi security forces. In most countries, this would guarantee government control but in practice Maliki only has full authority in about half the national territory. He has no power in the northern third of the country held by the Kurds and increasingly limited influence in Sunni areas.

No peace, prosperity

This does not mean the government is collapsing. It still has money, jobs, the army, intelligence services and electoral legitimacy. Qusay Abdul Wahab al-Suhail, the Sadrist deputy speaker of parliament, says that the problem in Iraq is that all parties have some degree of strength and therefore see no need to compromise with opponents. The result is a permanent political stalemate or paralysis.

Whatever the US and British invasion and occupation of Iraq 10 years ago was meant to achieve, it has not created a peaceful and prosperous country. If an Iraqi was arrested before 2003 for a political offence, he could expect to be tortured unless he immediately confessed, and this is still the case. The one improvement is that he stands less chance of being executed.

Ordinary Iraqis are pessimistic or ambivalent about the future. Professor Yahya Abbas says: “If you ask my students, ‘What do you want?’ About 95 per cent will answer ‘I want to leave Iraq.”
— The Independent

(The second and last part of the series will be published tomorrow)