P A G E
Saturday, November 21, 1998
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E D I T O R I A L P A G E |
Saturday, November 21, 1998 |
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Reformation of armed forces
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Security steps Security concerns have acquired a sharper focus with the decision to set up a National Security Council. The new council and its supporting structures are a vast improvement on the concept toyed with in 1990 by the V.P. Singh-led government. The new one is compact, and method and logic mark the proposed National Security Board and the Strategic Policy Group. Inputs will come from a Joint Intelligence Commission and the National Security Adviser will energise the work and monitor the implementation. All very neat. At the top is the policy-makers of the NSC, packed with political heavyweights presiding over various key ministries. Bureaucrats, including the chief of the Intelligence Bureau, will constitute the Group while outside experts will form the Board. The key feature is the induction of the three Service chiefs as members of the Strategic Policy Group, providing them with a direct role in the crucial job of mapping out short and long-term policies and giving them the same status as the Defence Secretary. It is worth stressing that for long the complaint has been that the Defence Ministry mandarins had grabbed too much power for the good of the country and its security. This has been corrected in the new edition of the NSC. Detractors will be quick to spot two weak points. One is the role and person of the National Security Adviser. The Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister, Mr Brajesh Mishra, will occupy this hot seat. He is already a very busy person, managing the political and administrative sides of the PMO. In addition, he takes a direct hand in guiding the country’s foreign affairs and conducts the so-called strategic talks with France. To saddle him with the new responsibility, which is a tough 24-hour job, is not being fair either to the man or to the mission. Mr Mishra has the reputation of being an interventionist rather than a typical bureaucratic team leader. Maybe the Prime Minister wants him to finalise the set-up, streamline the functioning and yield place to a new executive. He should pursue that idea. The second critical observation is the ex-officio status of all members of the policy group. They will merely duplicate the job they do at their desk, leaving it to the Adviser to coordinate their differing perceptions and mutually exclusive plans. At the nitty-gritty level, there is little room for fresh ideas and inputs. That has to come from the yet-to-be formed National Security Board, where non-official experts will look at the big picture and offer long-term analysis. The board’s partial segregation cuts down its scope while depriving the secretaries group of alternate ideas. National security should
ideally concern itself with external aggression, direct
or indirect as is the case in the Kashmir valley,
internal disruption and energy, whose availability can
fluctuate and which is vital for the transport of men and
material. But the new scheme widens the ambit to cover
economic well-being, financial viability, technological
strength and foreign policy. If the NSC and the SPG were
to seriously and fully take up the ambitious charge, they
will emerge as an alternate government with a Cabinet
system of its own. That cannot be the intention. Such an
interpretation will prompt some bureaucrats to indulge in
their favourite game of interfering in other’s work,
and the primary tasks of national security will have to
take a back seat. Incidentally, the PMO has been
hyper-active these past few weeks, in sharp contrast to
its very low profile during the first six months or so.
The nation is told that the NSC is based on the report of
the K.C. Pant committee, but many will see the strong
hand of Mr Brajesh Mishra in the final shape. His
fingerprints are far too many to escape the eye. |
Faith and fatwa Has the Uttar Pradesh government issued an official order or a directive to schools functioning under its supervision in which it has been stated that Vande Mataram and the Saraswati Vandana must be sung by all the students every day? The Minister for Basic Education, Mr Ravindra Shukla, says a contemporary, has made it "clear" that orders have been issued in this regard. Mr Shukla is reported to have said:"We have issued orders for the implementation of the 'Kalpa Yojana' in government schools which makes the recitation of the Saraswati Vandana a must." The Yojana provides the following guidelines: Every school must have a 30-inch x 19-inch picture of Ma Saraswati. The portraits of Saraswati and Bharat Mata should be kept in full view at the time of the assembling and dispersing of the collectivity. The students must recite the Rashtriya Geet (Vande Mataram?) after the Saraswati Vandana. They should leave their school only after saying "Bharat Mata ki jaya". Chapters on H.J. Bhabha and J.C. Bose should be introduced in the physics curriculum. This plan has also been described as the saffron agenda. If no disinformation is inherent in reports about the compulsory singing of such songs as can be attributed to a particular religion, the fatwa issued by the Muslim Personal Law Board does not amount to a surprising step. The dispensation comes from Dar-ul-Uloom, Deoband. By definition, a fatwa is usually a written decision on a point of Islamic law given by a Mufti who is a cleric as well as a legal expert. All accusing fingers pointing to the reported decision of the UP government rest upon Article 19 of the Constitution which relates to the right to freedom. The right in the present case is connected with the Preamble which proclaims that one of its objectives is to secure Liberty—"Liberty of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship". The Muslims have a sound
case if whatever is being stated about Kalpa Yojana and
the Basic Education Minister's declaration is true. Vande
Mataram has the status of the National Anthem although
mostly Jana gana mana is sung on various occasions. There
is an element of conspicuous metaphorical personification
about Bamkim Chandra's national song which inspired the
freedom struggle and was given a place of honour by the
Constituent Assembly. A representation of Mother India in
human form may also be said to have a formal connotation.
Those followers of Islam who take a rigid view of
representative human religious forms, howsoever symbolic
they may be, become sensitive on the issue of idolatry. A
symbol can be very well applicable to an idol. In the
light of this ideational situation, the invoking of one's
"liberty of thought, expression, belief, faith and
worship" does come into play — legalistically
speaking. But the concept of Motherland or Fatherland is
not a religious one. The trouble with the reported order
and the consequent fatwa lies in the fact that godhood is
being brought in where mere respect needs to be
emphasised. We have heard a lot about the Saraswati
Vandana controversy. Nobody is prepared to specify which
particular version of the invocation is sought to be
formally introduced into the programmes of various
educational ceremonies. There is one song in Hindi
written by the great poet, Suryakant Tripathi
"Nirala". Then there are quite a few beautiful
Sanskrit prayers to Saraswati; a couple of them are
recited on the occasion of Saraswati Pooja (worship).This
word "worship" has created a lot of confusion.
The Goddess of Learning is a dignified conceptual
representation of divinity. When there is an element of
disbelief or that of communalism in a
religio-philosophical matter, words are torn apart from
their context and projected belligerently. We hope that
there will be no imposition of any seemingly sectarian
song or prayer on any school. We have several examples of
tolerance and universality in this country. What about
the recitation of "Hail Mary" or "Our
Father" in Christian schools? Why don't people
protest against the singing of "Hey Prabhu,
Anandadata, Jnan humko deejiye"? Does the holy name
of Wahe Guru make a Punjab school non-secular? The
controversy emanating from the Kalpa Yojana must end
immediately in the interest of communal harmony and the
dignity of our secular educational system. An all-faith
meeting should be convened to discuss the (f)utility of
injecting perceived religiosity into various programmes
which have multi-religious implications. |
Sugarcane prices The sugarcane prices of Rs 95, Rs 93 and Rs 91 quintal announced by the Haryana Government for early, mid and late varieties, respectively, are on a par with those fixed by the Punjab Government and higher than the rates announced by the Uttar Pradesh Government. Haryana has been matching Punjab for quite some time in this regard. But there the similarity ends. Whereas Punjab made the announcement more than a month ago, Haryana did so only this Thursday. This delay can make or mar a farmer and naturally there was much heart-burn on this count. Any further procrastination would have led to an agitation. The farmers’ demand was for about Rs 100 per quintal. Still, the rise of Rs 13 per quintal is quite substantial, considering that last year, the prices were increased by only two rupees per quintal. One wants to hope that this increase will give a fillip to sugarcane production but so many factors are stacked against the farmer that the picture is none too rosy. The area under sugarcane has been shrinking constantly. If there has not been a major shortfall in production, it is only because the yield per hectare has been increasing. It has already touched 56.2 tonne per hectare while the crushing period has gone up to 193 days. Still, there are miles to go before the state can hope to catch up with others like Maharashtra, Gujarat and Karnataka. There are some natural constraints. For instance, crop growth is only for four months in the northern states whereas it is a year-long process in the southern ones. The sugar recovery in Haryana is 8.35 per cent as against 9.42 per cent on the national level. While changing this situation might require a herculean effort from the scientists, there is need for looking into other factors which hamper production. Farmers have very many
genuine grievances, which have never been fully
addressed. The late announcement of prices is just one of
them. The demarcation of areas for the purchase of
sugarcane by cooperative sugar mills has been causing
much resentment in some districts. There are instances
where certain villages have a sugar mill only 15 km away
but their residents are asked to sell their produce at
another one which is situated 35 km away. Under a quaint
system prevailing in some mills called "padta"
(viability), farmers have to sell more sugarcane than
their share to the private sugarcane crushers at
throwaway prices. Then there is also the issue of the
sugar mills charging the farmers for loading and
offloading of sugarcane at the mill. The farmers thus
have to incur extra expenditure. It may be only a matter
of a few rupees but causes a lot of friction. Even
otherwise, there is a lot of corruption at the lower
level and the farmers who are not willing to grease the
palms of officials are made to wait at the mill gate for
a long long time. Payment too is not made promptly. In
short, they are made to feel like beggars. All these
difficulties have to be promptly removed if the sugar
production is not to suffer. The country is already
passing through a very difficult phase, what with the
prices of vegetables going through the roof. If the sugar
also spurts, as it did some years ago, there will be even
bigger trouble. |
Reformation of armed forces DEFENCE Minister George Fernandes in a brain-storming session recently said that the armed forces would be reformed so that the three services would operate under an integrated command structure. The session was also attended by Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, Home Minister L.K. Advani and senior officers from ministries of defence, external affairs and finance to review security threats and formulate the strategies for future. Addressing the annual conference of commanders of the armed forces, Mr Fernandes emphasised the need for a strategic defence review and reforms in the armed forces. "The fighting capabilities of the future will involve the use of the assets of the three services under integrated direction and command", he said. "The nature of modern weapon systems and their usages is increasingly transcending single service boundaries," said Mr Fernandes. The suggestions for the reformation of the defence forces and the Ministry of Defence have already been sought by the Defence Minister from the three service chiefs. The rider has been that the reform should be "systematic changes" and not mere "tinkering with the existing system". "Proposed institutions like the National Security Council (NSC) would be more meaningful only in the context of a larger change," he said. The Defence Minister’s statement on the possible creation of an integrated command assumes significance as the only one such structure is now existing at the Combined Fortress Command in Andaman and Nicobar Islands. It is also in keeping with the new international concept of "jointry" which envisages greater integration between the different branches of a country’s armed forces. The responsibility for defence of a democratic country rests with the elected government and the responsibility for execution of this onerous task rests solely with the armed forces. Lord Ismay, who was given the task of organising higher defence organisation by the Britishers enunciated — (i) ensure control and direction of the higher defence organisation by the elected representatives of the people; (ii) coordinate smooth functioning of the three services with the government; (iii) adequate consideration to the viewpoint of the services by the government and (iv) ensure higher committee meetings regularly to facilitate expedicious disposal of business reducing discussion on files to the minimum. The Defence Secretary is a non-professional, tenure-based bureaucrat. The whole team under him though highly competent in their own field of administration lacks a detailed knowledge about professional military matters which are highly specialised. Direct interaction and advice of the three service chiefs to the highest policy making body (CCPA), particularly on the defence and security matters is essential and vital. It is quite evident that there is a triplicity of command in our defence functioning — ministerial, bureaucratic and financial. Ministerial and financial controls are quite understandable in any democracy. But gradual substitution of the bureaucratic control to replace the intended controls by the elected representatives of the people has been a basic ill in our system. The bureaucratic machinery together with the service headquarters should ideally be designed to speedily achieve the objective by transmitting the policies into quick executive action, rather than merely act as the superiors when they are actually not. The civil servants, moreover, come for a short spell of time in the MoD from other ministries. They, therefore, cannot acquire the required expertise on defence matters and by the time they do acquire some knowledge of defence functioning, they are posted out. It is, therefore, imperative that authority and responsibility structure of civil servants be defined clearly. The authority should be limited to the areas of their expertise or where clear-cut accountability could be defined. Areas requiring specialised professional military knowledge should be delegated to the services through Joint Chief of Staff/Joint Service Coordinator, who would be directly responsible to the political leadership. The bureaucratic set-up should be fully integrated to the service headquarters. There is no need of duplicity of the staff. If the Defence Secretary is a civil servant, the Additional Secretary should be from the services. Similar policy should be there for the lower staff. Joint Chief of Defence Staff/Coordinator should exercise control over the integrated MoD. The defence finance should also be integrated with the service headquarters. If the NSC is formulated as expected and given in the present government’s national agenda a number of security problems can be well coordinated and implemented in the national security interests. The author, a retired
Colonel, is a defence analyst based at Panchkula. |
The house where Mujib was killed THE High Commissioner of Bangladesh called me in Delhi last week and said that he was sending me some papers on the trial of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s killers. Could I go through them and see if I could write something. The papers turned out to be a booklet titled ‘The Call of Justice’, 33 pages long and full of the kind of flowery prose that is characteristic of English writing in the sub-continent. "The peaceful dawn over Dhanmondi, a residential area in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, was shattered on August 15, 1975, with gun-fire and treachery. On that fateful day, in less than an hour, the darkest chapter in the political history of Bangladesh was writ on its blood drenched soil". Along with this emotional account of the murder of the man who created Bangladesh and his family were annexures detailing the slow course that justice had taken. A copy of the indemnity ordinance of September 26, 1975, by which the Bangladesh military government allowed the killers to go free, a preliminary report by a British commission of inquiry that investigated the massacre of Mujib and his family and extracts from an Amnesty International report. But, for me, the most chilling document was a list of those killed on August 15, 1975. Twentyeight names listed in small print.... Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Begum Fazilatunnessa Mujib, Sheikh Kamal, Mrs Sultana Kamal Khuki, Sheikh Jamal, Parveen Jamal Rosy, Sheikh Russel, Sheikh Abu Naser. Just a cold, a long list of names but if you had seen as I did the house in Dhanmondi, as the killers left it, then the names are enough to bring back the horror of what happened. I saw the house by accident the first time. I was in Dhaka to cover an election in 1986 and they told me that I should go there if I wanted to interview Sheikh Hasina Wajed. She was downstairs, seated at a desk in a large sunny room and it was only by chance that I looked up and noticed bullet marks on a wall and then through the glass panes of a door, dried blood stains on a staircase. "That’s where they killed my father" she said and asked if I would like to see the rest of the house. I was then taken on one of the most gruesome guided tours imaginable. The stairs led to bedrooms in which the rest of the family were killed. There were bloodstains on the walls and whoever it was who showed me round gave me details of exactly where each member of the family had died. "That’s where they killed Sheikh Russel he was only 10... in this room they killed Bangabandhu’s eldest son and his wife. The two older sons had just got married". The rooms seemed to still be filled with the smell of death. Till then, more than 10 years after the massacre, nobody had cleaned up the mess the killers left behind. Mattresses had been ripped open with bayonets, cupboards broken open, drawers flung around and furniture smashed. Everything was left the way they left it as if Sheikh Hasina wanted people to come and absorb the full of horror of what had happened to her family. Four months ago when I went to Dhaka to interview her for my television programme I asked her if she still went to the house in Dhanmondi and if she would go there for the sake of the programme. She said that the house was no longer the way it had been when I saw it in 1986. "I cleaned it with my own hands and with the help of some of my aides" she said her eyes filling with tears "I never dreamed that I would one day be given this.... responsibility". The house is now a museum. Hundreds of Bangladeshis file through it every day to look at pictures of the father of their nation and to remember the terrible manner of his death. Sheikh Hasina has kept a few small rooms for herself at the back of the house where she goes, her aides told me, at least once a week to sit quietly and gain strength from the memories that the house evokes. When I asked her how she had learned to live with the pain of what happened to her family her eyes filled with tears again and she said that she gained strength from the love that ordinary people had given her. But, she still found it hard to talk about what had happened without being filled with pain and anger. "Can you imagine that the government of Gen Ziaur Rahman sent some of the killers abroad as diplomats? Can you believe that they could do such a thing?" She talked as if she herself had given up hope that justice would ever be done. After becoming Prime Minister on June 23, 1996, Sheikh Hasina had initiated the process of justice by arresting those of the killers who were still in Bangladesh but it was not till this month that it looked as if justice would finally be done. On November 8, nearly 25 years after the killings, a court in Dhaka sentenced 15 people to death. They were all ex-soldiers and army officers. Of the 19 men charged with murder only five were actually standing trial, the rest were being tried in absentia. But, among those present in court was Col Farook Rahman, one of the men believed to have personally killed Sheikh Mujib and one of the main plotters of the coup. Eleven of those sentenced are still hiding in Europe and America but according to the Bangladesh High Commissioner in Delhi C.M. Shafi Sami, they hope to be able to extradite them soon. One of the killers, Major Bazlul Huda, was extradited from Thailand within hours of the verdict. The High Commissioner said that if I wanted to quote him on anything I should say, "In this case justice has been delayed but it has ultimately not been denied". He added that I should also mention that the killers have been punished under the ordinary law of Bangladesh. There were no special courts in case this led to charges of kangaroo trials. Bangladesh, under
Mujib’s daughter, is trying to move into a new phase
of its existence. It is no longer the basket case it once
used to be and in many areas like healthcare and rural
banking has done better than India. Sheikh Hasina talks
of liberalising the economy and moving towards more
modern ideas of development. Dhaka, though still the
poorest capital city in the sub-continent, is also
beginning to show signs of prosperity. Restaurants,
banks, new housing estates and five-star hotels have
sprung up in the past few years. So, perhaps, with
justice now beginning to be done peace will finally
descend upon the house in Dhanmondi. |
Shouting bouts raise poll fever AS the countdown to November 25 approaches, the TV channels are also reviving up their tempo. One can hardly switch on the set without some channel or the other staging shouting matches between politicians who should know better. The loudest shouters are the BJP whose members do not come for civilised debate and what used to be known long ago as parliamentary language but to simply shout down the other participants. This becomes particularly amusing in the case of its women members, like Sushma Swaraj and Purnima Sethi, who come dressed to the nines in silks, satins and jewellery and demurely dripping sindoor. But once the debate starts, the decibels rise alarmingly and the discussion deteriorates into a shrill street fight. Sometimes politicians interrupt others who are talking so crudely, that they forget that they cannot be heard either in that bedlam. Only last week I saw two seasoned anchors in despair. Mrinal Pande’s panel on DD got completely out of hand until one could not make out what the shouters were saying all at once. Mrinal’s polite and persistent efforts to make them calm down and behave like adults fell on deaf ears. They were still shouting at each other when she signed off. I once thought there was no one who could out-talk or out-shout Karan Thapar. But his flock also started shouting all at the same time and his pleas of "Gentlemen, gentlemen, please, please" went completely unheard. Once again the shouters failed to realise that they were not only making an exhibition of themselves in front of lakhs of voters but that they themselves could not be heard. Yet when Mrinal Pande conducted a discussion with Arun Shourie and a couple of other well-known journalists, everyone spoke in civilised tones and made their points accordingly. However, the election telecasts have also had their pleasurable moments. Arnab Goswami’s 24 Hours with Sheila Dixit was a delight, because it was relaxed as well as informative. In fact, Arnab, while anchoring the news has also come of age, experience and hard work having given him both sophistication and confidence. Ashu Dutt, a newcomer to business news on Star News is also very promising. On Zee TV, ex-ambassadors Uma Shankar Bajpai and Venkatesh-waran or "Venky" as he was addressed by the host Brahma Chellani, were both relaxed but for some reason Mr Chellani looked so mournful throughout that one wondered if India’s foreign policy had sunk that low. Perhaps it has. Having watched some programmes on cars which are getting more glossy, gimmicky and touristy every week. I must pay a long-overdue tribute to Veeresh Malik who week after week, does some very helpful analyses of cars and other vehicles on Star, packs them all into five minutes and last week even introduced us to the long unused railway station at Pragati Maidan, where trains can transport visitors to the fair from stations along the route and save them parking problems. He linked it up with intelligent use of public transport. Veeresh has a rugged charm and sturdy commonsense which I think come from his years with the merchant navy. One instinctively trusts his judgement because it is documented as well as dispassionate. Since Star Plus has been reviving a lot of forgettable serials and other low-grade programmes from DD’s rejects, one is glad they have had the good sense to revive Bhisham Sahni and Govind Nihalani’s Tamas which is one of the great serials of all time, with splendid direction and performances and on the human suffering during Partition, a theme which newer generations of TV viewers might not be aware of if not reminded again and again. I am told it had a large viewership in Pakistan last time, so all the more reason it should be revived. DD timidly shut shop at 11 p.m. on the night of the celestial Divali so as to protect its satellites, which was no great loss, since our public service national channels shut like government offices when the 24-hour channels are going full strength and only provide blanks after midnight. But Star News stood on the burning deck and one certainly appreciated the way in which it devoted its night transmission to the event, lined up experts like Dr Yashpal and Dr Raghavan to explain the scientific aspect and also collected reactions from different parts of India. It was not its fault that the celestial shower failed in North India, perhaps in punishment for its sins. Tailpiece: I would like to
tell Ms Ameeta Dias, who got a pain in the stomach in
Et-Laan-ta that I get a pain in the neck every time she
mutilates the name of At-lan-ta, one of the most
beautiful and gracious cities I have ever visited. And I
have no general assurance either. |
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Released
political prisoner sues govt. LALA TARA CHAND, Vakil, Ambala City, has filed a suit against the Secretary of State for India, in Council, impugning the validity and legality of Punjab Government Notifications Nos. 12890 and 12891 of October, 1923, removing his name from the membership of the Ambala Municipal Committee and claiming Rs 200 as damages. The case is fixed for hearing in the court of Lala Shankar Lal, MA, Sub-Judge III class, Ambala. The following is a copy of the plaint filed by the plaintiff:- Suit for declaration of invalidity and illegality of the Punjab Government Notifications: Nos: 12890 and 12891 of October, 1923, for injunction restraining defendant from putting the said notifications into force and for damages for Rs 200 resulting from his unjustified and illegal removal from the membership of the Ambala Municipal Committee. The plaintiff states as follows:- That he was duly elected as a member of the Ambala Municipal Committee, and that the term of the said membership has not yet expired. That he has suffered a
good deal in reputation and peace of mind by his illegal
removal from the membership of the Ambala Municipal
Committee by his being debarred from seeking re-election
in future on account of which he is entitled to the claim
of Rs. 1,000 as damages from the defendant. |
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