The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Pakistan makes history
But not enough for sustaining democracy

It is celebration time in Pakistan. For the first time in its turbulent history Pakistan’s parliament (National Assembly) got dissolved on the stroke of midnight on Saturday after completing its full five-year tenure. Earlier either the all-powerful army dismissed an elected House with its brute force or a belligerent head of state got rid of it because of its being inconvenient to him. This time also there had been speculation ever since the 2008 elections that the PPP-led government might have to go in for a mid-term poll owing to the rising pressure from the higher judiciary or the Opposition led by the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz). There were also reports at various stages that the Pakistan Army might take over power because of the failure of the government on every important front.

The army could have intervened and recaptured the reins of administration from the civilian rulers during or after the anti-Taliban operation in the Swat valley in the Waziristan tribal area despite the army chief, Gen Ashfaque Parvez Kiyani, not being interested in political power. But in the process of half-heartedly taking on the Taliban and the extremist movement’s sympathisers, the army got so much unpopular among the masses that it could not gather enough courage to dislodge the elected government. In fact, the Pakistan National Assembly has been able to complete its full term mainly because of the army having become the most hated institution as a result of various developments during Gen Pervez Musharraf’s rule and the subsequent tenure of the elected government.

The lovers of democracy in Pakistan, therefore, will have to remind the next government that it must concentrate on the socio-economic and other problems affecting people’s lives directly. Wasting time and energy on subjects like Kashmir or the search for strategic depth in Afghanistan cannot be in the larger interest of the people of Pakistan. The masses must be made to realise that an elected government is more caring than a military dictatorship from all angles and under all circumstances. Dictatorship of any kind has no place in today’s times.

End game
Measures needed to prevent suicides

Fatal choices that people make, embracing death over life, underline not only individuals’ inability to cope with pressure but also society’s failure to provide them a mechanism where they can vent their feelings. The tragic case of a family in Fatehabad, Haryana, is a case in point. The woman’s suicide bid along with her three daughters not only ended fatally for her daughters but also led to the suicide of her spouse. Whatever might have been the cause of her action — whether it was depression or harassment over not being able to bear male child — the bottomline is that precious lives have been lost. What is worse, the only survivor in this suicide saga, the woman, who has been slapped with a number of charges, now faces a lonely battle ahead.

This is not the first time parents have pushed their children on the tragic path. In many suicide pacts, the members of the family, including small children, have died together. More recently, a mother strangled her children and ended her own life over a minor squabble with her spouse. Indeed, suicides can be triggered by both minor and major issues. The reasons could be pathological as well as sociological. However, to dismiss suicide as an individual act of desperation alone would be missing the big picture. Suicides might be unpredictable behaviour but by definition these are preventable tragedies and can be averted provided positive interventions are made at the right time.

Sadly, a country that has one of the highest suicide rates in the world rarely shows any signs of taking proactive measures to deal with the problem. While mental health is not a priority, even simple steps are not taken with the urgency the issue calls for. Helplines and counsellors at educational institutions can go a long way in abating despair and countering the feeling of helplessness among the younger generation that is increasingly becoming suicidal. The alarming frequency with which Indians are taking their lives has to be taken seriously. Both the state and society have to keep a watch on the warning signals and respond to the cries for help before these become desperate enough for many to call it a day.

Thought for the Day

There is nothing on this earth more to be prized than true friendship. — Thomas Aquinas

ARTICLE

Sustainable agriculture
It requires integrated agro-industrial policy
by S. S. Johl

SIMPLY put, sustainable agriculture entails an optimum production pattern of agricultural commodities moving upward the shifting growth path, not only without depleting the scarce production resources but enhancing and ensuring the conservation of these resources for continuous use for all time to come. The fast increasing demand for agricultural commodities due to the unabated increase in population and changing consumption patterns because of improving incomes in society as well as acutely skewed distribution of incomes has necessitated a strong emphasis on enhancing production, especially of foodgrains. As a result, augmentation and conservation of scarce natural resources have been put on the back-burner for decades in the past, and the situation continues to be the same even today.

For decades, the underground watertable has been receding, water balances have been deteriorating, chemical and biological pollution of irrigation and drinking water as well as poisoning of soils with chemicals has been continuing in almost all the intensively cultivated areas of the country under the nose of the policymakers and administrators of the country. Chemical fertilisers and pesticides have been used indiscriminately to enhance production, especially of foodgrains. As a consequence, soils in most of the double-cropped irrigated areas of the country have become virtual cultures requiring higher and higher doses of scarce inputs to maintain the same level of output of agricultural commodities. This has also led to the depletion of micro and trace nutrients in these soils and has created environmental hazards too.

Besides that, global warming is playing its debilitating role by way of uncertain, abnormal and truant rainfall patterns and weather conditions deviating vastly from their normal levels. Yet, the policy makers and authorities in power remained oblivious of the developing debilitating conditions by design or default at the cost of the economy. No doubt, feeding of the nation with foodgrains remained the main focus, and rightly so, yet the agricultural ecology was taken for granted and vote-bank oriented electoral interests were nurtured, ignoring the much-needed corrective and ameliorative measures. At best, the policy makers paid only lip service to the emerging disastrous conditions. Soft-paddling by the politician in power and politicised bureaucracy avoided rightful hard decisions. Now when the situation is visibly getting out of control, there is a lot of talk in the air about the diversification and sustainability of agricultural production patterns in the country.

The fact remains that problems are very well known and their solutions too. Yet the million-dollar question is whether the political and administrative authorities concerned, especially at the level of states, will ever gather courage to take hard decisions. The first priority should be to make handsome investment in agricultural research and development, especially in the state-level research institutes and agricultural universities, to develop technologies that become instrumental in promoting desirable production patterns that economise on scarce resource use, restore and improve the soil health, control water, soil and air pollution, enhance productivity and improve farm incomes. If the research system in the states remains starved of funds as it is today, whatever efforts may be made on other fronts, one cannot even dream of desirable changes in the production patterns and agricultural ecology. Today the good coin is being replaced by the bad coin. The public sector research system is yielding place to the private sector corporates. Their overriding commercial interest is putting the farmers, especially small farmers, at a disadvantage.

Secondly, the public sector dissemination system for improved technologies has gone almost morbid and ineffective in reaching out to the farmers. It needs to be realised that millions of farmers cannot be reached personally, especially in the remote areas, by the limited number of extension workers. There is, therefore, a need for extensive use of information and communication technology (ITC) for extension education of the farmers as well as development of early warning and quick alert systems through creating knowledge centres in every village and networking them with the servers of central technology dissemination centres located in agricultural research institutes and universities.

Market clearance at competitive prices is another crucial factor in the introduction of desirable alternative farm enterprises like fruits, vegetables and other high-value perishable and semi-perishable crops as well as animal enterprises, including meat, milk, fish and poultry production. The Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP) was created to make price and non-price recommendations that take into consideration the interest of the producers as well as consumers and facilitate adjustments in the production patterns in alignment with the changing consumption patterns. It seems the Commission has been almost sidelined and rendered irrelevant. Their recommendations are invariably being overruled and ignored with impunity due to the myopic vision of politicians in power for misplaced short-term political considerations.

Another important aspect of developing and maintaining a sustainable agricultural production system is the right pricing of scarce resources, especially the underground water for irrigation and power supply. Across the board free or subsidised supply of irrigation water, power and other inputs gravitates mostly to the larger farmers and invariably gets translated into corresponding higher land rents and has a deleterious effect on financial resources of the states. Such unfocused input subsidies, in contrast to investment subsidies, distort production patterns that go inconsistent with consumption patterns and adversely affect the sustainability of agricultural production systems.

Further, the need of the hour is not only to diversify the agricultural production patterns that conserve scarce productive resources and ensure environmental sustainability, but to diversify the rural economy that has a healthy mix of farm and non-farm enterprises complementary to each other for sustainability of fast-growing progressive rural economy maintaining healthy rural environment. This requires a well-integrated rural agro-industrial policy which is totally lacking at this stage. Separate agricultural and industrial policies, even if developed diligently, will not help the rural economy and will not ensure sustainable agricultural production that would conserve scarce production resources and improve rural and agricultural ecology. Yet, the question remains whether the governments at the Centre and in the states would wake up to the field realities and act in consonance to prioritise the allocation of the much-needed financial support and exhibit an express concern to handle the fast deteriorating ecological situation on the rural front, particularly so in the farm sector

The writer, Chancellor of the Central University of Punjab, is a well-known agricultural economist.

MIDDLE

The discarded stereotype
by Harish Dhillon

There is one stereotype from my schooldays which I am glad has now been discarded — that of the spinster schoolteacher. She was harsh and bitter, and her frustration found an outlet in the venom she spewed on the children. It is inexplicable that this stereotype existed for so long — for every one individual who fitted the stereotype there were 20 who were the exact opposite.

Ms Banerjee, the acting vice-principal in all girls' school, fine-tuned her harshness till it bordered on sadism. Her vicious tongue could destroy a child's spirit and she would gloat over this destruction. No action was taken against her because there were never any witnesses, and in this situation it is the teacher who is always right. What made her conduct truly reprehensible was her selectiveness in
choosing her targets.

The child of a parent who was important or who could be useful to her was never reprimanded or punished. No wonder, those who controlled the school affairs felt that she was the best thing that had happened to the school. It was the poor "ordinary" girl who bore the brunt of her cruelty. She was ambitious and used the girls as pawns to further her ambitions.

With an eye on her confirmation, she decided to prove that she was a strict disciplinarian. She found her target in an "ordinary" girl who was talking to a boy outside the school gate. Seeing her car, the girl ran into the watchman's hut and the boy, after a moment's hesitation, ran behind her. Ms Banerjee charged after them, screaming like a banshee, and pulled them out. She told the Principal: "She was in the watchman's hut with a boy for 20 minutes." She didn't let the girl tell her side of the story—the boy and the watchman were never asked for their versions. It was a 12-year-old who pricked the bubble. "Twenty minutes! She must have timed their running into the hut. But why did she wait for 20 minutes?" Everyone, including the members of the "inquiry committee", knew that the girl had been framed. But she did become the Vice-Principal.

The next Vice-Principal, Ms Malhotra, was the very antithesis of the stereotype. She was firm but fair. For her all girls were equal, even her own nieces who studied in the school. Whenever a girl was in trouble she would call her home, give her a cup of coffee and a slice of cake and let her pour her heart out. She never punished a child without hearing her side of the story. No wonder, the girls worshipped the ground that she trod upon.

It is not as if the world is now inhabited only by the Malhotras — that the Banerjees have ceased to exist. But children today are far more sensible, perceptive and fearless than we were. They have decided, not to waste their mental and emotional energies on the Banerjees — to treat them as a joke and consign them to the dustbin of memory. The stereotype has been firmly discarded and the Malhotras are at last getting their due.

OPED Governance

Being forewarned is forearmed
Rohit Choudhary

It is time the police forces in all Indian cities followed the lead of neighbourhood watch implemented in other countries and developed the community as an asset for gathering and sharing intelligence to prevent terror strikes

Bodies of CRPF jawans killed in a suicide attack in Srinagar last week being sent home after a wreath-laying ceremony. PTI

The recent terrorist attack in Srinagar that killed five CRPF jawans and the twin blasts in Hyderabad — another shocking addition to a long tally of serial blasts in the last decade in major cities of India — have severely dented the credibility of the security forces in preventing such incidents. The huge city population and large number of crowded areas have put tremendous strain on the security apparatus, rendering preventive measures ineffective and making our cities vulnerable, enabling terrorists to strike at regular intervals, choosing the place and time to inflict maximum loss of life and psychological scars.

In the current scenario, the internal security in India needs reinforcement from all quarters and community can play a vital role in defeating the designs of subversive forces in India. While the debate rages on to find ways and means to secure our cities, several forces across the world have adopted community participation measures wherein residents share the responsibility with the police and help in implementing crime prevention strategies. A terrorist strike broadly has three distinct stages — pre- strike preparatory stage, execution stage and post-strike response. Community participation measures of China, Holland and Singapore are of considerable relevance for prevention and response at these three stages, respectively.

Neighbourhood watch scheme of China

During the time span of nearly 30 years, before the implementation of the policy of economic modernisation, the Chinese police had developed extremely effective policing strategies. The main components of Chinese policing were a closely monitored household registration system and an extensive surveillance system of mass-line organisations. Under the household registration system, everyone must register his or her residence in a locality with the police. To ensure the enforcement of the household registration law, a tightly knit police and mass-line supervisory system was set up. Neighborhood committees were established in all neighborhoods. Corresponding to the mass-line organisation network, a police substation was set up in each larger community. The larger community was divided into subsections, with each subsection containing several neighborhood committees. A police officer, known as the household registration officer, was assigned to each subsection. The officer visited the neighborhoods within his jurisdiction on a daily basis and was informed by the neighborhood committees about all happenings in the community. In addition to making sure that all residents were properly registered, the household registration officer also maintained the security and order in the neighborhoods and investigated minor offences. Since an officer usually worked in a community for a long time, he soon became extremely familiar with the residents, as well as the conditions of life in the community. The advantage of the system was that it enabled the police to keep close contacts with community residents and to keep a tight surveillance on everything and everyone in a neighborhood. No strangers could come to a neighborhood without being noticed immediately and reported promptly to the police.

To combat the current rise in crime, the government advocates an overall strategy that is referred to as “comprehensive management”. The strategy calls for mobilising all possible social forces to strengthen public security and prevent crime. The traditional cooperation between police and mass-line security organisations is a key part in the strategy. For that reason, the government is taking all possible measures to strengthen the neighborhood security system. To attract more residents to participate in the neighborhood security work, the government does not only rely on the traditional methods of recruiting volunteers, but also resorts to economic inducements by giving participants a small allowance for their services. Because of the government’s auspices, the number of neighborhood security committees in urban areas is growing.

Town watchers of Holland

Some 4,000 town watchers assist the Dutch police by patrolling in public places, thus enhancing safety and amenity. They carry out their duties on the basis of municipal safety and security programmes, whether for particular neighbourhoods or otherwise. They are often under the operational control of police officers. In general their duties are confined to observation and supervision and they do not have powers of investigation. As they are in direct contact with the control room through their walkie-talkies, they can call in police assistance if necessary.

The presence of uniformed town watchers makes people feel safer and helps to prevent anti-social behavior. They are one answer to demand of municipalities for a more visible policing presence on the streets. Moreover, they free up time for the police to concentrate on investigation offences and providing emergency assistance.

‘Corporate first responder’ scheme of Singapore

The police force in Singapore is hardly seen on the streets yet there is lot of work going on behind the façade. Officers spend time visiting all kinds of associations and citizen groups like senior apartment dwellers and religious leaders from the mosques and temples and forge a partnership and educate the public. The concept that is developing there for the past eight years is that of “from police to policing”. Their Corporate First Responder (CFR) scheme aims to forge a win-win partnership between the government and business community in dealing with the aftermath of a terrorist attack. The scheme allows key business personnel from CFR members to access the restricted sites post incidents to take mitigation measures to help expedite return to normalcy.

Initiatives in Indian states

Under the “Eyes and Ears Scheme”, the Delhi Police seeks to involve rickshaw-pullers, hawkers, security guards, shopkeepers and volunteer citizens to provide information regarding suspicious activities of undesirable elements with a bearing on terrorism and crime in general. The Himachal Police has introduced the concept of beat policing team, aimed at community participation for keeping a vigil.

In Tamil Nadu, any member of the public who is not involved in civil or criminal case can become a member of “friends of police”. The members can provide useful information leading to solving crimes.

What must be done
Adopt integrated security architecture.
Bring community participation measures to centre stage by making them part of core policing activities.
Form vigilant groups of city residents.
Implement neighbourhood watch scheme in cities.
Maintain data bank of residents’ phone numbers, emails, Facebook accounts for dissemination of alerts and collection of information on crime and criminals.
Form resistance groups in villages for crime prevention, information collection.
Form rural sports clubs for contact with rural youth.
Revive and strengthen chowkidari system.
Collaborate with private security personnel for exchange of information.
Form Police Private Partnership committees for innovations and leveraging existing facilities especially in the area of information sharing across networks and financial transactions for terror funding.

In Madhya Pradesh, under the leadership of the district Superintendent of Police, committees have been formed in urban and rural areas as per the Madhya Pradesh Gram Thatha Nagar Raksha Samiti Act passed in November 1999. Local citizens have been nominated as members after police verification. At present, 65,356 members are working in 5,781 samitis. On the above pattern, in village areas “gramraksha samiti” (defence societies) have been formed. They perform night patrolling in areas and gather intelligence for anti-Naxalite and dacoity operations.

At present, about 4,87,209 members are working in 46,835 samitis. Similarly, Maharashtra has set up mohalla committee, village defence party, gram surakhsha dal and ekta committee, while Andhra Pradesh has the Maithri programme and Assam Prahari and Janamaithri Suraksha.

Another flagship project of Kerala, Janamaithri Suraksha Project, is a three-tier structure with the beat and community police officer at the bottom. The beat officer has to personally know at least one member of every household in his beat and constantly interact with service providers in the area like postmen, linemen, milkmen and gas agencies to get information about the area.

Measures like joint patrolling, area security and new residents’ verification are also part of the project. Kerala also has Costal Vigilance Committee to protect its 590-km shoreline against possible seaborne terrorist threats and infiltration bids. Such projects, if implemented with sustained commitment and integrated in core police working and provided with adequate institutional support from the government, can lead to significant community involvement resulting in crime prevention, including terrorist strikes.

Integrated security architecture

As an innovation in police organisation and philosophy, community participation needs to come to centre stage as it offers solutions to some of the most challenging problems of internal security like prevention of terrorist strikes. Joint ventures by the police in partnership with the community that shares common goals and operations can lead to community involvement, resource augmentation, expertise sharing and improved results.

Strategically speaking, the police can be positioned as an organisation that helps to increase safety, working in partnership with groups to enhance safety, rather than an organisation that provides safety solely. There is an urgent need to identify the required linkages to be strengthened and the measures through community participation initiatives to do so.

The measures proposed (see box) would not only ensure the flow in human intelligence from community to the security forces, but would also act as force multiplier resulting from the community involvement and coordination resulting in more alert and vigilant community willing to aid and inform police forces.

This would turn the community in India from being “vulnerable” to “valuable ally” in the fight against terror.

The writer is an IG in Punjab Police.