CPM: soft on Congress
POPULAR perception and media judgement have it that the CPM has decided to knock at the Congress door with a message of warmth and friendship. And that it is a one-to-one affair, strictly between the two parties.
Yet another postponement
THE much anticipated call to join the Union Cabinet has eluded the aspirants yet again. They will have to get their newly tailored “achkans” ironed yet again, hopefully next month.
Well done, private channels!
WITH Divali round the corner private television channels have started putting out programmes to educate the people about how to make the festival more cheerful for everyone.

WAR CLOUDS OVER KABUL
by Bhabani Sen Gupta
WAR clouds are gathering over the skies of Afghanistan. More than 200,000 Iranian troops and unknown contingents of the Revolutionary Guards have taken position along Iran’s border with western Afghanistan.

Cohabiting with corruption
by Harwant Singh
GENERAL Sunderji in his fictional work, “The Mad Men of Hindustan” writes of a CCPA (Cabinet Committee of Political Affairs) meeting where the Cabinet Secretary records a particular decision, as taken by that committee, the note pertaining to which was never put up to the committee.

. True colours of Rabri Devi by Tavleen Singh UNTIL I actually met Rabri Devi last week I had, if truth be told, been more than slightly sympathetic to her. In the pictures I had seen of her and the glimpses on television programmes, she had always seemed to be like a woman who had been thrust into a job she had no desire to have. Spare us the politicians by Amita Malik CHAT shows, after-news discussions, interviews are proliferating at such speed on our TV screens, that one can hardly find anything besides talk, talk, talk most of the time. And as if this were not bad enough, most of the talking is done by politicians. Primary English: why not? by D. R. Sharma I SALUTE the Punjab government for its revolutionary bid to introduce the teaching of English right in the first primary class. Never before did our leaders show their foresight in such an impressive manner.

75 Years Ago

Murshidabad Act Amendment
MR DENYS BRAY asked for leave of the House to introduce a Bill to modify certain provisions of indenture confirmed by the Murshidabad Act 1891. The Nawab Bahadur of Murshidabad holds at present as a life tenant certain properties specified in Schedules annexed to the indenture but is prohibited to lease out the same for a term exceeding 21 years or accept rents which included bonus of salamee.

CPM: soft on Congress

POPULAR perception and media judgement have it that the CPM has decided to knock at the Congress door with a message of warmth and friendship. And that it is a one-to-one affair, strictly between the two parties. This view makes news since the leading Left party has always riled at the erstwhile ruling party and vowed to fight and defeat it. But reality is different as is evident from the past political postures of the CPM and the deliberations of the ongoing congress in Calcutta and also the writings in the party press. The CPM is not giving a good conduct certificate to the Congress, describing it as a reformed pro-people organisation, free of its accumulated blemishes. But what it has done is to promote the BJP and its sister outfits of the sangh parivar as the main political enemy, which has to be fought and isolated. And it also admits that it is too weak both in depth and spread of ideological following to take on the job by itself. The CPM finds in the Congress an acceptable ally in this broader task, and nothing more. As the Left party views it, this nudging closer to the Congress is a single-point programme, limited to sharpening the fight against the Hindutva forces. The latest change in emphasis is neither unexpected nor dramatic. Right from the day the BJP-led combine assumed power in Delhi, party general secretary Harkishen Singh Surjeet has been offering unconditional support to the Congress, if it were to topple the Vajpayee government and stitch together an alternate coalition. The Calcutta plenum has now formalised this line.

On the surface, it looks like one of those paradoxes of Indian politics that a party confined to three states should excite so much political interest and media fervour. The answer is to be found not in the party’s real strength but in its potential. In company with the CPI, it is the last uncontaminated repository of the ideals that lit up the freedom movement. And to that extent, the CPM enjoys what can be loosely termed as ideological hegemony. The liberals continue to share with it such egalitarian goals as removal of poverty, improved civic rights as education, health and shelter and an end to social and cultural oppression. Non-Left parties have either turned their face away from these issues or are going soft on them. But the CPM’s appeal remains unrealised since it has ceased to focus unerringly on these critical points and since its political and economic policy frame sounds unattractive, clothed as it is in an outmoded context and idiom. In other words, its political and economic thrust evokes indifference in just that region — namely the Hindi belt — where its ideology has the greatest potential. In marketing jargon, its USP (unique selling proposition) suffers for want of appropriate packaging and a sales network. This is the party’s insurmountable dilemma, and explains the media attention disproportionate to its electoral clout.

Yet another postponement

THE much anticipated call to join the Union Cabinet has eluded the aspirants yet again. They will have to get their newly tailored “achkans” ironed yet again, hopefully next month. In a way, it is good that the expansion has not come about. Considering the mind-boggling cost that the country has to bear for every new minister, the fewer the better is the policy to adopt. But such exalted considerations have nothing to do with the latest postponement. It has taken place merely because of the unusual dynamics of running a coalition government. Now, selecting candidates to head various ministries is a difficult job even when the government is made up of a single party. It is the modern equivalent of distributing a limited number of loaves and fishes when there are just too many mouths to feed. The responsibility becomes all the more onerous when the eager mouths belong to various parties which have no love lost between them. Naturally, getting one’s candidate a ministerial berth has come to be established as the quid pro quo for continuing to extend support. Every party is bent on displaying its (nuisance) value and grab as many berths as it can. The government is so precariously perched that it cannot afford to annoy even a single constituent.

The whole exercise has become so blatant that it churns one’s stomach. The Prime Ministerial “discretion” in this regard stands almost fully debased. In fact, one cannot help pitying the Prime Minister, Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee. He is being made to juggle so many balls and is being pulled in so many directions simultaneously that it is a miracle that he is still in one piece. Perhaps that is why Mrs Sonia Gandhi has decided — wisely — not to step in. The ultimate sufferer is the country. While being engaged in such a complex balancing act, hardly anyone seems to have time for actual governance. That is why setbacks stare us in the eye on every front, be it political, social or economic. Mr Vajpayee will have to adopt a more authoritative posture if he has to manage the contradictions because whenever he has succumbed to one party, the others too have upped the ante. That is how the government has come to acquire the title of being a “rollback” dispensation. Things are not going to get any better even after the Cabinet expansion finally takes place. There are already rumblings in the existing Cabinet that some of them have not got ministries that they deserved. So, there will have to be a lot of upgradation as well. Interestingly, the policy of “appeasing” the participating parties has angered many within the Bharatiya Janata Party itself. These MPs feel that they are being ignored while those from regional parties are being pampered. Since they do not appreciate the compulsions of the Prime Minister, the common man should not be expected to take a charitable view.

Well done, private channels!

WITH Divali round the corner private television channels have started putting out programmes to educate the people about how to make the festival more cheerful for everyone. The one on the dangerous consequences of the bursting of crackers and use of fireworks by children without adult supervision has become standard fare. But it does serve the purpose of creating “fireworks awareness’’ among the people. However, the programme on the “manufacture’’ of artificial milk to meet the increased seasonal demand for the product for making sweets must have made the viewers throw up. Of course, the artificial milk racket was reported by The Tribune about a year ago. It is evident that the report was ignored by the authorities concerned and the result is that the abominable practice of making artificial milk has spread to Rajasthan and other parts of the country. In any case, the advantage which television has over the printed word is that with the help of visuals it is able to convey the story more effectively. The programme on artificial milk must have killed the urge among the viewers to consume milk products made by halwais in large quantities to meet the Divali demand for gift-wrapped boxes of sweets. Who in his sense would like to consume a piece of “burfi’’ which may have been prepared from the “milk’’ made by mixing detergent powder with urea and other lethal substances? The programme was not meant to create a scare but inform the viewers about how drivers of milk supply vans in cahoots with unscrupulous elements siphon off wholesome milk from the tankard and replace it with the urea-based product. According to the programme Delhi is the largest consumer of this potentially lethal product.

Doordarshan should follow the example of the private channels in the matter of putting out socially relevant programmes for retaining its rating as the channel with the largest viewership. Recently another private channel programme exposed the network which supplies spurious drugs throughout the country. The anchor picked up samples of certain well-known brands of medicines from a shop from the infamous Bhagirath Palace complex in Chandni Chowk in Delhi. Lab tests showed that the medicines were spurious and some of them could even kill rather than cure patients. During the mustard oil-related dropsy “epidemic’’ the private channels once again took the lead in creating consumer awareness. The recycling of discarded and used surgical equipment — it is a flourishing parallel industry — was another useful programme put out by the private channel. However, television programmes, or even newspaper campaigns, can only expose the flaws in the system, but not remove them. Perhaps, the only way to make the authorities concerned act against the perpetrators of what can be called crimes against humanity is for public spirited individuals to draw the attention of the courts to such programmes or newspaper campaigns. The only programme in which the police, after initial diffidence, started cooperating with the producer is the one captioned “India’s Most Wanted’’. A week after the programme on the criminal activities of Shri Prakash Shukla, Uttar Pradesh’s most wanted criminal, along with two accomplices, was killed in a police encounter. The rate of success of the programme in helping the police bust organised crime and smoke out notorious criminals is indeed impressive.

WAR CLOUDS OVER KABUL
India has big stakes
by Bhabani Sen Gupta

WAR clouds are gathering over the skies of Afghanistan. More than 200,000 Iranian troops and unknown contingents of the Revolutionary Guards have taken position along Iran’s border with western Afghanistan. Taliban has been compelled to pull out troops from northern and eastern Afghanistan to confront the Iranian mobilisation. Ominous signals of an imminent clash of arms are coming from Teheran, Kabul and the UN headquarters in New York.

The Taliban’s foreign ministry has told the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan that a devastating war with Iran is inevitable if the UN does not take immediate steps to defuse the crisis. This appeal is ironic because Taliban has systematically turned down efforts by the special envoy of the Secretary General for Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi, to get all the warring factions in Afghanistan to agree to an all-party coalition government and to get a National Shura elected under UN supervision. Iranian spy planes have been flying over Afghanistan on military reconnaissance missions. The Pakistan Government has declared that it will remain “neutral” in a war between Iran and Taliban.

Around the middle of last month nine divisions of the Iranian army began to move towards the border to hold “military exercises”. The Iranian naval forces also were asked to take part in the manoeuvres. According to the Iranian news agency, IRNA, the military exercises, code-named Zolfaqar-II, have already started. Iran’s Foreign Minister, Mr Kamal Kharazi, has said that diplomatic and peaceful approaches would be given a last chance before military actions are taken. Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Sartaz Aziz flew to Teheran recently for emergency talks with the leaders of the Iranian Government as well as Ayatollah Khamenei who, as the clerical supremo, is commander-in-chief of the Iranian armed forces. His mission ended in a failure. Iran holds Pakistan mainly responsible for the sinister phenomenon called Taliban. This super extremist Islamic force is a hand maiden of the ISI and the Pakistan army, helped financially and politically by the Islamic elements in Pakistan. Iran has recalled its ambassador in Islamabad as a sign of grave displeasure at the role of Pakistan in Afghanistan.

Iran’s charges against Taliban are serious. A group of Iranian diplomats was slaughtered by Taliban as it took Mazar-e-Sharif in August. Taliban conceded this crime after weeks of denial. The Hazara tribe in Bamiyan, in Central Afghanistan, who are Shias, are particular targets of the Taliban determined to carry out ethnic cleansing in Afghanistan and establish the unquestioned dominance of Sunni Pushtuns in Afghanistan. More than 300 Shias are reported to have been massacred in Central Afghanistan and many more are endangered in the northern provinces.

Around the middle of September, Ayatollah Khamenei put the onus of taming and restraining Taliban squarely on Pakistan. In a statement he said that the threat from Taliban “will not come to an end until the Pakistani army is forced to stop interference in Afghanistan and until the Taliban are forced to surrender to logic and abandon their criminal ways and make up for their past errors.” Ayatollah Khamenei asked the Shia Muslims in Afghanistan to resist Taliban fundamentalism. Iran also seems to be arming the million strong Shia Afghan Mujahideen who have been camping in western Iran since the Soviet invasion in Afghanistan in 1979.

The Iranian demands on the Taliban are mainly three. First, Taliban will have to surrender the killers of the Iranian diplomats for trial in either Teheran or a third country. Second, Taliban must be accountable for the slaughter of hundreds of Shia Muslims in central and northern Afghanistan. And, finally, Taliban must fully cooperate with the United Nations’ special envoy for creation of a broad-based regime in Kabul. The Taliban leaders have so far refused to concede any of these demands. There is no evidence to suggest that Taliban is under strong Pakistani pressure to concede the main Iranian demands.

Meanwhile, Taliban’s diplomatic fortunes are at a serious ebb. Saudi Arabia, which was patronising Taliban with funds as well as arms, has withdrawn its diplomatic presence from Afghanistan and ordered the Taliban diplomats at Riyadh to leave. The United Arab Emirates, the third country to have recognised Taliban as government of Afghanistan, the other two being Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, has also withdrawn its diplomatic mission from Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, which claims at this time to control 90 per cent of Afghan territory. Mobilisation of troops on the Iranian side of the border and transfer of a large Taliban force to the western border have enabled the Ujbek warlord Massoud to liberate certain areas in Northern Afghanistan from Taliban. Iran then, has already achieved the first strategic objective of its war threat, namely relieving Taliban pressure on the northern provinces where the government led by Rabbani, which is still regarded as the legitimate regime in Afghanistan, has been functioning since Taliban occupation of Kabul.

For unexplained reasons, the Security Council is still to be seized of the Afghan-Iran crisis. Iran has lodged a complaint but the council has not yet met to discuss the issue. Now Taliban has also lodged a counter-complaint accusing Iranian fighters of violating Afghan air space. Meanwhile Secretary General Kofi Annan has asked Taliban as well as Iran to defuse the tension. His envoy, Mr Brahimi in an interview with a UAE newspaper has asked Taliban to respect human rights and “help the United Nations to put an end to the tension on the border between Afghanistan and Iran.” Mr Brahimi plans to travel to Kabul, Islamabad and Teheran in search of a solution to the problem.

In the meantime, Osama-bin-Laden, the Saudi billionaire who is in self-exile in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan mobilising terrorist groups to strike at American establishments anywhere in the world and to fuel in a big way terrorist militancy in Kashmir, has once again leapt into limelight. The Times of London, said in a recent report that foreign mercenaries trained, armed and financed by the Pakistani army, “have hijacked the secessionist movement in Jammu and Kashmir.” The newspaper said: “There are no longer effective Kashmiri militant groups left in the valley and foreign mercenaries are firmly in control.” The authoritative Jane’s Defence Weekly in its current issue has not only confirmed The Times report but has added that the Pakistani army had raised “a new mercenary formation” called Harkat-ul-Jehad-Islamee-Tanzeem to fight Indian forces in Kashmir. All the mercenary groups have disarmed local Kashmiri insurgents finding them no longer reliable. The Jane’s Weekly report says that the money for mobilising Pakistani, Sudanese and Arab mercenaries to carry on terrorist militancy in Kashmir is coming from Saudi Arabia or Bin Laden.

India, therefore, has a big stake in developments within Afghanistan and between Afghanistan and Iran. Iran is a friendly country. According to reliable information, the Iranian government has already approached the Indian government for political and moral support and, if necessary, military help.

Developments in Afghanistan and mercenaries operating in Kashmir will certainly be discussed at the resumed dialogue between the Foreign Secretaries of India and Pakistan later this month. Meanwhile, Indian diplomacy must work vigorously with Russia and the Central Asian republics with a view to building a strong coalition of countries which consider Taliban to be a threat to not only the much ravaged Afghan society and people but also to human rights and dignity in the entire region. India should also try to include America in this coalition.

Cohabiting with corruption
by Harwant Singh

GENERAL Sunderji in his fictional work, “The Mad Men of Hindustan” writes of a CCPA (Cabinet Committee of Political Affairs) meeting where the Cabinet Secretary records a particular decision, as taken by that committee, the note pertaining to which was never put up to the committee. Neither did the subject come up for discussion nor any decision as such was taken. In the case of the Ordinance for the appointment of a CVC (Chief Vigilance Commissioner) the Cabinet was asked to approve a draft that never was. A crafty draft, other than one prepared by the committee of ministers appointed by the Cabinet and as approved by the Law Commission was presented to the Cabinet for approval. A fraud on the political executive and the people of India.

There is nothing new or unusual in this game the bureaucrats play with our political leaders and the nation. It is not an issue of integrity, loyalty or propriety but merely of protecting the turf and securing the future. After all, the two former top bureaucrats involved in the Bofors bribery case have been shielded by their co-brothers from prosecution all these years; even long after the two worthies retired.

The Supreme Court’s judgement of Dec 18, 1998 has been hijacked by our babus. While the court directed that the “CVC must be picked up from a panel of outstanding civil servants and others with impeccable integrity” somewhere along the line the word “others” was omitted and only the “civil servants” remained. Therefore, those of us who cherished the pious hope that the Supreme Court had finally put its hand to the till and the Indian government acting faithfully on the court’s directive will open a new chapter to combat corruption, will have to await another dawn.

The Supreme Court’s directive, ministerial efforts and the Law Commission’s draft have been turned upside down by the bureaucracy. The infamous “Single Directive”, which had stonewalled investigations and consequently shielded the corrupt in the higher echelons of the bureaucracy and which the highest court wanted to be done away with, has not only been left intact but now, with the addition of the Presidential Ordinance, the possibility of corruption in the government leaving the shores of India has become remote. Why have only civil servants on the CVC? The acronym CS (civil service) will more and more come to mean. “Cheat with Security”.

Did the Cabinet Committee, which approved the draft other than the one prepared by the Law Commission, not know that they were being handed a fare other than what the committee of ministers and the Law Commission had served? Or is it merely a case of one hand not knowing the doings of the other. What the Cabinet has approved is a CVC which shall be deemed to be a civil court where its proceedings will have the status of judicial proceeding within the meaning of the Indian Penal Code. It would be near impossible to dislodge the Chief Vigilance Commissioner. The President can do so on grounds of “misbehaviour” but this charge will require to be proved before the Supreme Court. Someone has aptly put it. ‘Ordinance is of the bureaucracy, for the bureaucracy and by the bureaucracy.’

There are some features specific to the Indian setting. First, it is a fairly safe enterprise, because its spread is near universal and there is a sort of bond and brotherhood amongst the practitioners of this art. A covenant of collusion and covering each other exists. Then there is near absence of will and skill on the part of the investigating agencies to take matters to their logical end. Those who control these investigating agencies are themselves not lily white and therefore, there never is that pressure from the top to get on with the job. Instead, there are invariably, signals to go slow or simply bury the cases, a la Bofors.

Consequently, no one really gets caught, except for the small fry who may have run foul of some worthy. This is the special elastic nature of the Indian net where the big fish can easily slip through and an odd small fry finds the mesh too narrow to escape. Another remarkable, though disturbing, feature of corruption in India is the sheen of legitimacy it appears to have acquired. Therefore, the corrupt are no longer apologetic or concerned with concealing the ill acquired wealth but take pride in its naked and vulgar display with a touch of arrogance. Corruption has come to be deeply entrenched in this land and we ought to learn to cohabit with it. The Ordinance has given it a new lease of life.

Primary English: why not?

by D. R. Sharma

I SALUTE the Punjab government for its revolutionary bid to introduce the teaching of English right in the first primary class. Never before did our leaders show their foresight in such an impressive manner. After lamentable exercises in school education they now realise that the future of our children lies in the competitive world beyond Patiala and Pathankot.

This laudable decision seems to have upset some child-specialists among the educators who fear that an early exposure to a “videshi bhasha” would hamper the growth of toddlers. They swear by the holy minutes of the curriculum committee of the NCERT — National Council of Educational Research and Training. The committee feels that such an early introduction of English would burst the voice-box of our tiny tots.

The actual job of the NCERT is to prepare school textbooks and devise strategies to eliminate illiteracy from the country — and not to decide at what stage a language, native or foreign, is to be introduced. When its personnel start acting like anatomists, one begins to wonder whether they know the difference between pedagogy and pediatrics. They can’t fathom the sense of deprivation among the late-learners of this language.

Frankly speaking, the learning of English has never affronted my patriotism; rather it has refined it. But I can’t forget the sense of loss when I couldn’t study this language in my village primary school called madarsa in those days. Our madarsas, situated on the bank of a canal, taught us not bigotry but the values of sweetness and light.

As a bewildered hick when I started learning the English alphabet, and later honing my calligraphic skill with the help of blue ink and a glistening G-nib, a new world opened up with its own challenges and mysteries. I think I owe my love for this language to my first English teacher whom I can call the best in the world — without his having ever heard of the facilities at Harvard or Hyderabad. I call him the best since he enjoyed teaching his subject. Mahajan Sahib enjoyed drawing the letters on the blackboard and then pronouncing them with a smile on his face. And, later, when he started the text, he would often pause and say: “At times English can be treacherous in its ‘buts’ and ‘puts’, but with an alert mind you can avoid those slips”.

It was one such slip that proved to be fatal to Fakir Chand, my inseparable playmate. Mahajan Sahib explained umpteen times that in “would” the letter l was silent. But Fakira had his own rationale to disbelieve the teacher. So whenever he was asked to read a passage bristling with “woulds”, he would pronounce the word without worrying too much about the silent letter. As he neared that crafty word, the class would anticipate his performance and burst out laughing. To escape the tyranny of silent letters, the poor fellow dropped out and is now a renowned chef in London.

But that was a long time ago — more than 50 years. I’m sure by this time our country children have grown smart enough to be wary of the treacherous silent letters. I firmly believe that a Punjabi child — every child for that matter — is resilient enough to learn and enjoy any language, be it English or Italian, Spanish or Sinhalese.

True colours of Rabri Devi

by Tavleen Singh

UNTIL I actually met Rabri Devi last week I had, if truth be told, been more than slightly sympathetic to her. In the pictures I had seen of her and the glimpses on television programmes, she had always seemed to be like a woman who had been thrust into a job she had no desire to have. She looked uncomfortable and bewildered and was clearly doing whatever she was doing on the orders of her husband. If this were not already hard enough she then had to put up with the humiliation of being turned into a laughing stock, a joke figure, in the national press. Nobody wrote about her without a sneer in their tone and this always seemed unfair to me since if Sonia Gandhi could become Congress President simply by being Rajiv’s widow then why should Laloo’s wife not be similarly qualified to become Bihar’s Chief Minister?

In any case, it was in sympathetic mode that I arrived at the Chief Minister’s residence in Patna last Saturday. It is an imposing colonial structure — yellow-washed, double-storeyed, rolling lawns — but it has been converted by the Yadav family into a sort of urban farm. Goats graze in unkempt lawns, wheat, rice, vegetables grow in what must once have been a kitchen garden, fish are being bred in a pond behind the house and fullscale poultry and dairy farms function in one section of the grounds. When the needs of Laloo’s vast family (nine children) have been met the Yadav household makes a bit of spare income by selling eggs and milk.

On this particular Saturday evening I walked into a tableau of rural domesticity, the kind people make commercials out of these days on MTV. Laloo and Rabri sat surrounded by their many daughters, beside a field of corn (I think) while their two small sons played cricket with their friends. Crickets made a racket that seemed to verge on hysteria and birds joined them in this infernal din which seemed, to a city person like me, to signal danger of some kind but the Chief Minister explained that this was normal at dusk. She knew because she had grown up in a village, “Why don’t you sit separately and talk to her” Laloo suggested so we sat, a little apart, and tried to record an interview for the television programme that had brought me here. But, the crickets and birds were too noisy so she took me upstairs to a drawing room so filled with knick-knacks that it looked like a curiosity shop. They were all gifts, she said, reappearing after a few moments absence in a pretty, green sari.

Her daughter, number three in the brood, sat beside her. She said she was studying at Mayo College in Ajmer and that although Biharis always came top of the class in her school, Bihar continued to have a bad image. She felt bad about this, she said. Then, the cameras came on and I got a truly charming interview with Rabri. She told me that she had burst into tears when she heard that she had been made Chief Minister. “I was in the other room” she said “and the meeting with the MLAs was going on in here. Then someone came and told me what had happened and I started to cry. I don’t want this job. I keep saying to my husband that I am ready to leave it whenever he says. I much preferred my life the way it was”.

She told me that she had been a girl of 15 when she married Laloo Yadav. She saw him for the first time only after the wedding ceremony. It used to happen that way in the old days, she said, but now she would not impose the same sort of thing on any of her daughters. They would be allowed to do what they wanted.

We chatted in this way for more than half an hour and arranged to meet the next day to continue our conversation and complete the programme. We should come at 8 a.m. She said if we wanted to get some shots of her doing her puja. So, we duly arrived only to find that the welcoming atmosphere of yesterday had quite disappeared. The Chief Minister kept us waiting for more than two hours and then descended only to ignore us completely as we followed in her wake. Laloo Yadav’s friendly manner had also changed and I heard whispers about how someone had turned her against me.

It was while we were taking some shots of her in her office that I discovered the reason for her sudden hostility. “You wrote in a magazine that I was a fool’ she said. I denied this, pointing out that I was one of the few journalists to have pointed out repeatedly that if it was alright for Sonia to be Congress President it was alright for Rabri Devi to be Bihar Chief Minister. This did not mollify her, she seemed to want me to offer more concrete support, I found this hard to do and admitted that I did not think what had happened in either case was right. “Doesn’t Advani keep his wife with him” she said angrily “so what is wrong if my husband is with me, why do people say he is running the government”. Mr Advani had not made his wife Home Minister, I pointed out, but she was angry by now. “Well, that’s bad luck for him” she said. I asked her if she would consider it alright to be treated by her doctor’s wife if he was sick. She glowered.

Then things got steadily worse. I tried changing the subject by asking her if she found governance difficult and which particular departments she found most complicated. Did she think it was easier for educated people than for someone like her who had dropped out of school in the fifth standard. She took this as an attempt to cast aspersions on her and really lost her temper. What did I think, she asked, did I think that illiterate people could not see or hear? Did I think that only literate people should be allowed into politics? It was hard for me to deny that I did, in fact, believe that education helped when it came to those who sought to govern states and countries. This infuriated her and our meeting ended badly. I left with the distinct impression that I was dealing not with some victim in need of sympathy but a woman who was very much a partner in what her husband was doing.

Spare us the politicians

by Amita Malik

CHAT shows, after-news discussions, interviews are proliferating at such speed on our TV screens, that one can hardly find anything besides talk, talk, talk most of the time. And as if this were not bad enough, most of the talking is done by politicians. One would think that other interesting people are at such a discount in this country that one can’t get, anyone besides Rajesh Pilot, M.R. Malkani, Ram Jethmalani and Co. Lucky that at least Sonia Gandhi plays hard to get and that in some ways Atal Behari Vajpayee is more quoted than performing. Of course some politicians are fun. My colleague Andrew Whitehead of the BBC recently said in a TV programme that Laloo Prasad Yadav is one of the most clever TV personalities in the country. He certainly knows how to use the medium and may I add that he is always entertaining, because he is also a consummate actor.

But when it comes to the other politicians they not only seem insincere, but they mouth the same old platitudes and end up as bores. Even politicians who should know better, such as the Minister for Information and Broadcasting, Sushma Swaraj, shout and scream their bhashans and interrupt others in a manner more apt for the U.P. Assembly. They get badly exposed on an intimate medium like TV which people watch in the privacy of their homes.

When it comes to choice of panellists, everyone is to blame — Karan Thapar, Vir Sanghvi, Prannoy Roy, the anchors on TVI, Zee India News, the lot. Paranjoy Guha-Thakurta, in India Talks, sometimes ropes in economists for what is his favourite subject. Priya Tendulkar has a better mix of subjects and people and in her own orbit, so does Kiran Kher. The other talk shows, notably Kiran Juneja’s and Malvika Sanghvi’s are so pretty, pretty anyway, that they hardly matter.

One would have thought a new beginning would be made with the two News Hours, in Hindi and English, which have started this month on Star News. The Hindi one had three BJP politicians in a row, H. Shettigar, K.L. Sharma (dull as ditchwater as usual) and the omnipresent K.R. Malkani. There was a slight change with Mr H.D. Shourie, but Arup Ghosh, unfortunately reverted to his old bad habit of cutting in rudely (there is always a magic pause when one can butt in, but he missed it every time). However, with phone-ins, and they come from places like Pune and Saharanpur, some pep has been added. Nothing like viewer participation to rev up a programme. However, I think Star Plus has to watch their step. I think it is a myth that viewers who watch the evening or night news do not watch Good Morning India. Which is why I found it boring that Pooja Bhatt chatted with Prannoy Roy in the night news hour and the very next morning chatted with Sharad and Shireen in G.M.I. Conceding that people have to be recorded for different programmes on one-day visits to a city, one still feels that unless there is urgent topicality, programmes with the same person can be spaced.

For years the film industry has fed to us the myth that the tripe they mostly dole out to us and which gets a beating at the box office, is only what the people want. Yet give them serious stuff (such as Satya) and they will accept it. Yet so pervasive is the influence of the cinema, that puerile farces like Tu, Tu, Main, Main pick up the same silly brand of humour and are held up as examples of TV comedy. In my audience research so far amongst friends and colleagues, I have found only two fans of the programme. A young child of seven and her ayah. The right level, it seems.

But the worm is slowly turning, ratings-wallahs please note. I find an amazing number of households glued to the Discovery Channel and The National Geographic. It will be recalled that in two months National Geographic has penetrated 22 million households in India of which eight and a half million are in Andhra Pradesh, Chandrababu Naidu’s high-tech territory. Anchors are also beginning to wake up. One of the most interesting and articulate personalities interviewed by Rajdeep Sardesai and Amrita Cheema in their News Hour was Geet Sethi. It was a revealing encounter because I, for one, did not know that Ahmedabad is the centre of billiards in India or that the Indian Railways have encouraged the game by having billiards tables in all their railway clubs. But above all, it brought forth a dignified but eloquent protest by Sethi about how other sport have suffered in India because of the obsession of the sponsors with cricket. And yet, India has produced four world champions in billiards. It was suggested at the end that Leander Paes, Geet Sethi and Jaspal Rana should form a club to fight this discrimination. Not entirely in jest.

75 YEARS AGO
Official Bills
Murshidabad Act Amendment

MR DENYS BRAY asked for leave of the House to introduce a Bill to modify certain provisions of indenture confirmed by the Murshidabad Act 1891. The Nawab Bahadur of Murshidabad holds at present as a life tenant certain properties specified in Schedules annexed to the indenture but is prohibited to lease out the same for a term exceeding 21 years or accept rents which included bonus of salamee.

The time limit has recently operated to prevent the Nawab from accepting an advantageous offer and The Bill is intended to make the restrictions less severe by removing the limit in respect of the period for which leases may be granted and the condition prohibiting receipt of bonus on salamee, and in lieu thereof stipulating that all leases entered previous sanction of the Government of Bengal who would ensure that the lease did not contain anything detrimental to unanimously agreed to introduction of the Bill.

Sir Malcolm Hailey next introduced a Bill to consolidate and amend the law relating to Naturalisation in British India of aliens resident therein. Certificates of naturalisation granted under the British Nationality and Status of Aliens Act, 1914, entitle the holder to the privilege of a British subject throughout the British Empire, whereas the certificate granted under the Indian Naturalisation Act, 1852, limits the concession to British India only.

The British Act provides as one of the conditions precedent to the grant of the certificate of Naturalisation, possession of adequate knowledge of English. A vernacular of the same status will also do.

There is however, no single vernacular in India which can for the purpose of the Act be regarded as equivalent to English and in view of recent developments in the Law of Naturalisation, the Government of India, after consulting local Governments, have decided to repeal the present Indian Naturalisation Act and replace it by a fresh and consolidated enactment generally on the lines of the British Act and embodying certain specific provisions so as to suit the special conditions existing in India.