The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Joint commands
Need for greater synergy in the armed forces

In an era when warfare is getting more sophisticated and complex with the ongoing revolution in military technology, there is need for greater synergy. It therefore makes sense for the Indian armed forces to move towards establishing joint commands. In a latest proposal that has been under discussion for some years now, the three services have proposed the setting up of three altogether new joint commands which would be headed by each of the three services. The proposed commands are the Special Forces Command, the Cyber Command and the Aerospace Command which will involve the merger of assets of the three services and will be headed by a Lt General rank officer belonging, respectively, to the Army, the Navy and the Air Force.

The rationale behind a Special Forces Command is because all three services have their respective commando units and, to a large extent, share the same equipment and yet have separate training institutes. There are some differences, however. For example, Chariot warfare is unique to the Marine Commandos just as high altitude high opening and high altitude low opening parachute manoeuvres are unique to the Army Special Forces. However, a combined Special Forces Command could result in a better appreciation of a situation and therefore better employment of Special Forces resources considering that each situation could be different and may need expertise that the other service has. Then again, both the Aerospace Command and the Cyber Command would be in keeping with these new dimensions, i.e. space and cyber that have become a full-fledged integral part of future warfare.

The government needs to, in fact, consider merging the existing operational commands of the three services and form tri-service Theatre Commands. This means that instead of having four Army commands, two Air Force commands and one Naval command on the western front vis-a-vis Pakistan, it may be a better idea for the country to have one consolidated Western Theatre Command. The government could similarly consider doing the same on other fronts such as on the eastern, northern, southern or Indian Ocean fronts. The specifics would require intensive debate. There is no doubt that the need to evolve more jointness and synergy between the three services is long overdue.

Punjab hospitality
A tourist has to feel secure, welcome

One thing is certain that it is beyond the Punjab Tourism Department to run resorts and restaurants successfully. Over the past three decades, the condition of the large number of such establishments set up with much enthusiasm has steadily gone down, with most lying shut, and some already sold. To talk of revival would be a waste of time and money. To be fair to Punjab, the hospitality business in the public sector has been a failure anywhere in the country, isolated success stories notwithstanding. However, this does not mean tourism cannot be promoted in Punjab or that the government has no role in it.

In modern economies, the governments' role is increasingly becoming that of a facilitator, as is also repeatedly stressed by Punjab Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal. Tourism can do with a lot of help. Providing good hospitality is only one part, and can be handled very well by the private sector. When a tourist comes from far, she is visiting not a resort but a state or city, and its people and their life. Personal security and transport are major concerns too. And all of this has a role for the government. The experience of many foreign visitors to Amritsar - Punjab's pride of tourism - has not been worth recalling. Before a person decides to visit a particular area, she has to get information in detail about the place. There is hardly a government source that can be used to plan a detailed itinerary. To attract a potential tourist's attention to Punjab is altogether a different challenge.

In the present scheme of things, 'property' is a word that makes the state government immediately take note. And in the miserable condition of the tourism holdings it smells an opportunity - making money from sale. There is no requirement that a resort has to function as just that. Promote the private hospitality industry by giving it all help it needs, but retain government properties; they can be used for alternative public purposes too; they have little brand value in any case. Yet, there is one brand that endures, and it's called 'Punjabi hospitality'.

Thought for the Day

One man is as good as another until he has written a book. —Benjamin Jowett

ARTICLE

Question mark on CBI
Gauhati HC raises a serious issue
by R.K. Raghavan

“...the CBI is neither an organ nor part of the Delhi Special Police Establishment (DSPE), and the CBI cannot be treated as a 'police force' constituted under the DSPE Act 1946” — the Gauhati High Court in Navendra Kumar vs Union of India on November 6, 2013

It is carnival time for CBI-baiters. Those who had for long been assailing the premier investigating agency for its alleged bias in favour of the ruling party have now additional ammunition in the form of a bold judgment of the Gauhati High Court, which has held that the CBI is an unconstitutional body and its continuance as an investigating agency is untenable. In the process the petitioner before the High Court, Navendra Kumar, an accused in a case investigated by the CBI, got a major relief through the quashing of the case against him. The High Court nevertheless declared that the case in question could be investigated again by an agency which was legally constituted and was, therefore, competent to discharge police functions. Of course the judgment has since been stayed by the Supreme Court, and the case posted to December 6 for a regular hearing.

The Gauhati HC judgment made three major observations: The government resolution of April 1,1963, which created the CBI, did not make any specific reference to the Delhi Special Police Establishment (SPE) Act 1946 under which the CBI was conferred its powers by the impugned resolution. Secondly, the resolution was not sent to the President of India for his approval. Finally, the HC said that the resolution was per se bad in law as the Union Government did not have any authority under the Constitution of India to create a 'police force'. This was the prerogative of the States under Entry 2 List II (State List), and the Union of India could not usurp such a power.

Ironically, the CBI has been observing this year as the golden jubilee year of its founding. The nearly revolutionary order of the Gauhati HC has taken everyone in the organisation and the Government of India by surprise. It is easy to speak on hindsight and say that the CBI's legal basis had always been suspect. One did not even dream that a court could go to the extent of decreeing that the CBI had no legal status whatsoever to do what it has been doing for 50 years. Nevertheless it would be totally irresponsible to describe the judgment as 'perverse' or illogical. My reading of it gives me the impression that it places all relevant facts in the right perspective and reveals a more than the usual application of mind. A stay by the SC is only temporary relief for the establishment. In my view the battle between the petitioner and the government is far from over. In fact it has just begun, because a number of serious issues need to be thrashed out in arguments when the SC takes up the case for a full hearing.

It is anybody's guess whether the HC judgment will be overturned or upheld by the apex court. It is no comfort to say that since the latter itself had never raised the issue earlier and since it had been entrusting case after case to the CBI, there is no way it would disown the CBI. I would personally compliment the petitioner (although he is an accused person arraigned by the CBI) as well as the Gauhati HC for bringing the issues to a serious public debate and a legal dissection.

If the CBI now faces an uncertain future, the blame lies squarely with the government. Those in position in 1963 were obviously men in hurry. However honest their intentions were — there can be no doubt whatsoever about this — it is strange that instead of bringing in exclusive legislation, they chose the shortcut of using an existing law that was put in place before the Constitution came into being. It is too late in the day for fathoming what drove them into such a decision. In retrospect the strategy of avoiding going to Parliament seems to have backfired now. There is no evidence also that the states were ever consulted, although under List II, it was the states which had the authority to create and govern a “police force”.

What is the way out of the imbroglio? If the SC quashes the HC order, the temptation would be to celebrate it and do nothing. The ‘business-as-usual’ approach is, however, eminently condemnable. A responsible and conscientious government should do a lot more. The fact that an HC in the country went as far as to declare that the CBI had been formed without any legal backing is an indictment enough to make those concerned wake up and ponder the issues raised. This plea for an enlightened response is against the backdrop of the continued low credibility of the body in public eye. However uncharitable this assessment might be, a long process of scrutiny of the CBI’s existing legal foundation is imperative. The apex court's observation during a recent Coalgate hearing that the CBI was a “caged parrot” said it all. To believe that everything is hunky dory will be a short-sighted view.

If the CBI has not been totally derailed yet, it is the commendable proactive guidance of the apex court that has saved the day. If we have reached a stage where there seems a reasonable consensus that even the Prime Minister could be examined by the organisation to obtain fundamental facts relating to an investigation, it is because of the courage given to the CBI by the court. If we need to maintain this agreeable momentum towards probity, the whole nation should demand an exclusive law which would not leave anything in doubt and certainly protect the CBI from legal assaults on its very basis.

This is the occasion to push through with a comprehensive CBI Act which would not leave anything to imagination. Such legislation has been far too long in the works because of a culpable lack of political will.

Several drafts of the suggested Act are gathering dust in the corridors of the North Block. Successive governments have been fighting shy of this move. The reason? Fears of an autonomous CBI that would throw the rule book at a meddling Executive. Significantly, the present government, while responding to an apex court directive during the Coalgate hearing, went on record to say that a powerful CBI Director was a ‘danger’. This shows a certain mindset that is not conducive to bringing about new legislation to fortify the CBI. Fears of an Indian Edgar J.Hoover (who headed the FBI in the U.S. for a record 48 years through sheer blackmail of successive Presidents after building a dossier on them) are imaginary. The measly two-year tenure that the CBI chief in India now enjoys is not enough even to understand the ethos of the organisation, what to speak of building a clout to challenge a lawfully established government. We need an executive with a vision for the future if we are serious about constructing an autonomous, professional and fearless anti-corruption agency that would be equal in excellence to the best in the world.

This is election time. I hope the contending parties will have something to say on this vital subject in their manifestos. Given the current ambience in the country I will be more than surprised if they ever did so.

The writer is a former Director of the CBI.

MIDDLE

First with Everest news
by Lieut Gen (retd) Baljit Singh

By courtesy of friends, I have enjoyed scripts emerging from the mountaineering fraternity, mostly in the UK and Europe as also some from Japan, the US and China marking the year-long celebratory-calendar of the Diamond Jubilee of the ascent of the Everest, back in 1953. Altogether, it has been an exceptional reading experience, though I was surprised that no one recalled the quintessential episode from the Everest memorabilia. Breaking the news first on June 2, 1953, was a hilarious journalistic scoop by the Editor-in-Chief of The Times, London, who had succeeded in concealing the fact from the world, for some time, not by default but through a deliberate and pleasant subterfuge!

Once Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay were spotted descending from the summit on May 29, with success writ large on their countenances, James Morris, The Times correspondent, sprang into action. For The Times had partly sponsored all Everest expeditions beginning with 1921 and was naturally anxious to be “the first with the news”. But this time around the stakes seemed higher, as rival correspondents from The Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail (especially positioned at Kathmandu) had also deployed tentacles far and wide.

So the stage was set for an Oriental intrigue, and Morris was quick to first devise a secret code to cover the names of the climbers, of success, failure etc, and more importantly, he got two Sherpas motivated to convey his report within the day, to the police post at Namche, an incredible 48 km away. In the event, Morris' news-breaking message had read "Snow conditions bad stop advanced base abandoned may twenty nine stop awaiting improvement stop all well,” and the two Sherpas practically ran the distance, handed in the message to the radio-operator and earned a bounty of pounds 30!

When decrypted in London at 4.15 pm on June 01, 1953, it in fact read “Everest climbed Hillary Tenzing May 29!” Just as many eyes had misted at the Base Camp, so presumably they did at The Times office in London. Be that as it may, the Editor was in a quandary whether to break the news in the evening edition or keep it “hidden” till the Queen’s coronation the next morning? Buckingham Palace approved the latter option, and the rest is history.

The Everest has since been climbed by hundreds; men, women and even a 13-year-old Canadian lad but in my reckoning there are simply three befitting icons of the Everest. The first is surprisingly, from the genera of the “Unknown Soldier” namely, Naik Tejbir Bura from the 2nd Battalion of 6 Gurkha Rifles, Indian Army. Being the orderly of Brigadier C G Bruce, the leader of the 1922 expedition, Tejbir prevailed upon his sahib to take him along. Having reached the Base Camp, Tejbir felt that he could match any “sahib-climber” on the mountain and indeed emerged one among the four who reached 25,725 ft ASL on 24 May 1922, the highest that man had ascended, yet! Besides the sahibs, Tejbir was also awarded the Winter Olympics Gold Medal which is on permanent display at the Gurkha Brigade Museum, London.

My second icon is the Austrian, Reinhold Messner who in 1978 set out solo from the North Col Camp VI, summited successfully and descended via the South Col, all without oxygen and in one day! Lastly, perhaps no one will grudge that the ultimate Everest Summit should belong to the New Zealander, who a few years ago ventured out on the Everest with two artificial legs. Short of the South Col, one leg got damaged beyond spot-repair. Unfazed, he contacted his wife in New Zealand over the cell-phone, who arranged a replacement flown to Kathmandu and thence lowered by a helicopter close by his tent. That indomitable man strapped the new limb, reached the summit and exchanged the happy news with his wife, before descending! The mystique of the Everest and the poise of Queen Elizabeth II are simply among the cherished elements of our times!

OPED CULTURE

In order to look at the future one has to look back at the past. Unless we know where we came from, we won’t know where to go and who we are. Cinema is the reflection of who we are and where we came from
Cinema — an endangered history
Shivendra Singh Dungarpur

Dadasaheb Phalke’s “Raja Harishchandra” released in 1913 — advertised as “a performance with 57,000 photographs. A picture 2 miles long. All for three annas”.

“Film is history. With every foot of film lost, we lose a bit of culture to the world around us, to each other and to ourselves.”
— Martin Scorsese

What is this magic of cinema that we all love? Those beautiful images of life projected onto a screen or, the interpretation of life projected on to the screen. I remember being fascinated as a child with my grandfather’s collection of Chaplin films. Cinema was magic for me at the age of five and it continues to be so. I still remember when I watched my first film, I cried. I couldn’t believe reality, or the life around me was being played on a screen in the dark hall, where the only light was the light streaming from the projector.

Who invented cinema? We can keep going back – back to our respective cultures – back to the beginning of civilization. In India, we can go back 30,000 years to the cave paintings of Bhimbetka. I remember when I was living in Bhopal during my early school days, my father used to take me to see the paintings in these caves. They were fascinating. You enter the darkness of the cave and look at the paintings, you get the feeling of motion, of time — who these people were, where did they come from? These paintings are nothing but depictions of daily life, but they make you imagine what is not depicted. That is the power of imagination that goes beyond this to create an illusion and that is what cinema is. When you look at these images you are already interpreting reality and that’s what we do at the movies.

A scene from Mrinal Sen’s restored film “Khandhar”

A lost heritage

The journey of Indian cinema began with the release of Dadasaheb Phalke’s “Raja Harishchandra” on May 3, 1913 — released as a four reel film, 3700 feet long. Interestingly ,Phalke advertised the film later, post the release as “a performance with 57,000 photographs. A picture 2 miles long. All for three annas”.

Suddenly you had several filmmaking units coming up, amongst them were Madan’s Elphinstone Bioscope in Calcutta, Maharashtra Film Company in Kolhapur by Baburao Painter. In Madras you had Nataraja Mudaliar, an automobile spare parts dealer who made the film “Keechaka Vadham” in 1917. He set up the Indian Film Company. The film industry in Madras went on to make 124 films and 38 documentaries in the silent era. I wish I could have seen all these films because sadly, only one film survives – “Marthanda Verma” which is interestingly not a Tamil film, but a Malayalam film made in 1931 by P.V. Rao in Nagercoil.

After the arrival of sound, between 1931 and 1941, more than 250 films were made and only 15 survive. If you look at the overall statistics of silent films made in India, there were a total of 1700 films. NFAI(National Film Archive of India) says, they have only 5 to 6 complete films and 10 to 12 films in fragments. One of these incomplete films is a film by Phalke titled “How Films are Prepared”. The idea was to educate people about this new art form.

By 1950, we had lost 70 to 80 per cent of our films. Tragically we had also lost our first sound film “Alam Ara”. The first surviving sound film is Prabhat’s “Ayodhyacha Raja” (1932). And of Phalke’s wonderful 2 mile long film “Harishchandra”, only 1 mile or 4 cans remain.

The lure of silver

If we look at the real reasons behind this loss, the majority of the early films before 1950 and before the advent of safety film were made on highly flammable cellulose nitrate. Many of them were destroyed in studios or vault fires or even during projection. In fact there was a major fire at B.N. Sircar’s New Theatre vault where most of his original negatives were destroyed. As recently as 2002, there was a fire at the Film and Television Institute in Pune in the Prabhat vaults and 45 original negatives and prints were destroyed by the fire. Some of them were the original prints that P.K. Nair had got from Dadasaheb Phalke’s family like “Raja Harishchandra” and “Kaliya Mardan” along with some of the old Prabhat classics.

Then of course there was the problem of silver extraction from nitrate films. Those of you who watched my film “Celluloid Man” would have seen the way silver is still being extracted from old black and white films. “Alam Ara” the first Indian talkie was a victim of silver extraction. The son of the filmmaker confessed to P.K. Nair that he himself had sold off the cans to extract silver.

But to me, one of the main problems is the way cinema has been looked upon in India, as a form of entertainment for the masses. Films were made purely for commercial reasons. Once they made their money, they were done away with. The Film Preservation Officer at the NFAI has an interesting story about how a lot of films came to arrive at the National Film Archive, thanks to the Indian Railways. He says a lot of producers find themselves with several prints of their film after the theatrical release of their films is done. Not knowing what to do with them, they put them onto trains with no destination marked on them knowing that if the prints are unclaimed, as per the law, it is the Indian Railways’ responsibility to deal with them. Thousands of cans have been sent to the archive in this way, courtesy the Railways.

Cinema is art

Nobody cared what happened to films as it was not considered an art form or an integral part of the country’s culture. Even though it has logically evolved from our culture and art, it’s still not recognised as an art form in the Constitution of India. In India, we don’t have a culture of preservation. We talk about our ancient civilization but have done very little to preserve it.

The Constitution of India mentions cinema in the Seventh Schedule at Entry 33 in List II (the state list) — “Theatres and dramatic performances; cinemas subject to the provisions of entry 60 of List I; sports, entertainments and amusements.” Strangely cinema is still classified as a luxury under entry 62 in the Seventh Schedule of the State List which deals with “taxes on luxuries, including taxes on entertainments, amusements, betting and gambling.”

If you look at the statistics from 30 years ago, in 1982 we produced 760 films in 17 languages. Today India produces over 1000 films a year. The National Film Archive established in 1964, has only 5000 Indian film titles even though we are celebrating 100 years of Indian cinema. In fact the NFAI was set up as a media unit of the Information and Broadcasting Ministry in 1964 and does not have a manual till date.

By contrast, the National Film Registry in the United States of America, established under the National Film Preservation Act, 1988, is a Selection Board that selects 25 culturally, historically and aesthetically significant films each year showcasing the range and diversity of American film heritage to increase awareness for its preservation. To be eligible for inclusion, a film must be 10 years old and is not required to be feature length or to have been theatrically released. The Registry contains newsreels, silent films, experimental films, short films, films out of copyright protection, television serials, home films, documentaries, independent films and music videos.

Art needs to be preserved

“Kaagaz ke Phool” (1959, India’s first cinemascope film directed by Guru Dutt), was not successful at the box office. It was only in the 1980s it started being viewed again at film societies and began to be regarded as a classic. In the 2002 Sight and Sound poll of the best films, it was ranked 160th in the world. “Mera Naam Joker” directed by Raj Kapoor had a similar story. A film may be released at a particular time, but it is viewed differently at different times and it is this timeless quality of cinema that makes it so important to preserve films. Because you don’t know how a film will be viewed 50 years from now even though the context, the values and the time has changed. As the American journalist Nani Faber said, “Every movie transmits the DNA of its time.” That’s why preserving and restoring films is important.

Like archaeologists’ constantly searching for past civilizations, we should not give up the search for films. For instance, during WW II a number of Tamil films were being shown in Singapore and Malaysia. A lost Modern Theatre film, “Burmah Rani” (1944) was discovered in Singapore. Similarly a John Ford silent film made in 1927 called “Upstream” was found in New Zealand. Missing scenes from Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis” were found in Argentina. A Chaplin film called “Thief Catcher” (1914) missing for years was discovered in an antique fair. Interestingly a lot of Indian films were screened in Algeria and Luxembourg. We need to keep looking and I’m sure “Alam Ara” our first sound film will be found like the Chaplin film.

People are now talking about the death of celluloid. But, cinema is all about technical innovation. First, it was black and white then came sound and colour. People were shooting different formats, different cameras, different stock and now the advent of the digital era has made it possible to restore films and to see them the way they would have been on the day they were released.

Cinema is a century old today. Throughout history cinema has been a powerful force in India’s culture and national life, often shaping our very notion of contemporary events. A national plan must be implemented to save Indian films and make them more accessible to the public. Greater public-private partnerships are essential. We must accept that it is only through the efforts of the film community and the support of the public, can significant progress be made to save films.

Films are a part of our culture and we need to preserve it for humanity. What is lost is lost; what is there we need to restore; and what we create we need to preserve.

The writer is an award winning filmmaker, producer, film archivist and restorer.

Survival plan for cinema

To recognise Indian cinema as an art form in the Constitution of India and to be included in both the state and central lists.

Cinema to come under the purview of the Ministry of Culture and not under the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting.

To have a National Film Preservation Act along the lines of the United States of America law that recognises not just feature films, but all other film forms.

NFAI to be an autonomous body and to be run by qualified film archivists.

All states to have their own film archive.

To educate people about the language of cinema and that not all visuals are for consumption like fast food.

All restored films to be screened to bring about awareness of our film heritage.

State support for exhibition spaces for small budget, independent, documentary, short films and other alternative forms of cinema.

Film schools and institutes to include film preservation and archiving in their curriculum.