A tryst with realism
PRESIDENT K. R. Narayanan, the Head of State and the Supreme Commander of our robust Armed Forces, has sent clear signals to the nation and to the belligerent Pakistani establishment.

Congress goes pro-poor
AN election manifesto is like a kundali, a political party cannot cast a new one for every election or mid-term election. This is all the more true of the Congress which has been in the electoral arena all these five decades.

LAW PANEL'S RADICAL PROPOSAL
Leaders ignore poll reform report
by S. Sahay
I AM not at all surprised over the deafening silence maintained by the political parties and their leaders on the far-reaching suggestions made by the Law Commission on the much-needed political reforms in order to give better content and meaning to parliamentary democracy in the country.

TN: back to caste identity
by T.K.Ramasamy
A HISTORICAL reversal is slowly unfolding in Tamil Nadu. After the coming elections it may become unstoppable. In social and political terms, this process is likely to be as significant and profound as the intensification of the Dravidian movement in the late forties and the early fifties.

More on the Satish Sharma case
by Anupam Gupta
“CAPT Satish Sharma,” ruled the Supreme Court three years ago in a heady cocktail of populism and law (that inebriated the intellectual class), “has betrayed the trust reposed in him by the people under the Constitution” and is liable to be prosecuted for criminal breach of trust or any other offence under the law.

Alarming decline in number of girl children
by Humra Quraishi
BEFORE one writes about the election countdown or about the tension buildup with Pakistan, let me focus on the “missing” women of India. During the two-day national workshop on female foeticide and infanticide one was absolutely dismayed to see the long list of those killed in the very womb or immediately as they emerged from it.

Why did Harris leave Peshawar?
by V.N. Kakar
WHY did Haddow Harris leave Peshawar? The truth needs to be told. It was known to all those who had studied at his feet.

75 Years Ago

Protection for steel industry (August 20)
SIMLA: The first report of the Indian Tariff Board, which was constituted last July, is published.

A tryst with realism

PRESIDENT K. R. Narayanan, the Head of State and the Supreme Commander of our robust Armed Forces, has sent clear signals to the nation and to the belligerent Pakistani establishment. His address to the one-billion strong country was marked by caution, gentle chiding and the realities of the times. ".... We have been let down more than once in the past; it is prudent of us and it is our duty to our people to be prepared for any surprise attack on us," he has said, and added: "We have to remain united and prepared not only when warlike situations come upon us, but also in normal times so that we are never again taken unawares by surprise attacks." This, in essence, is the lesson from the Pakistani perfidy in the Dras-Kargil-Batalik region. This is also a warning to Pakistan: its future aggressions will be nipped in the bud. Besides honouring the brave, the President has underlined the need for paying special attention to the strengthening of the Armed Forces and equipping them with the latest weapons and force-multipliers. More men and more combat aids would require a considerably enhanced budgetary allocation. Mr Narayanan is aware of the weak spots in our defence system despite his belief in the invincibility of the will and the power of the three wings of the protective forces. The Kargil conflict has a brighter side too. It has shaken the people out of their "narrow shells" and forged unprecedented national unity amidst shrill threats from Pakistan, which naively wants to create "more Kargils in the future". Combining his recent agonising experience with his acute sense of history, the President has gone back to the days and cause of Partition, referring to our path-finders' passion for peace: "Indeed, it was due to this passion for peace and our desire to avoid a fratricidal civil war in the subcontinent that the leaders of the Indian National Congress agreed to the partition of our Motherland into India and Pakistan." The President has advised the short-sighted politicians to abjure narrow sectarianism and to control the hunger for power and pelf. He has also praised the Election Commission for its transparent actions and exemplary firmness. Nobody takes the Indian voter for granted anymore. The meaning of his mandate must be clearly understood. The nature of global power politics and the consequences of the evils of the population explosion in this country plagued by social fragmentation are among the other points emphasised by him. The nation is grateful to him for his wise counsel.

Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee has expressed himself like a true statesman, keeping election-oriented rhetoric out of his brief (26-minute) speech. He has given full credit to our scientists of superior calibre for Pokhran-II and the missile programmes. He has saluted brave soldiers. His regret must be shared by the thinking sections of the political world. He continued his peace efforts by a visit to Lahore. He wanted his conciliatory motive to be understood, but there was a stab from across the border in India's back. Cross-border terrorism continued. A Kargil was created and threats of more Kargils were uttered in Islamabad. Savagery was crudely imposed on civilisation. He believes that trust begets trust. So, he has said on Sunday that he wants the fratricidal tendency of the Pakistani politico-military setup to end at least in respect of India. The Rann of Kutch misadventure and the terrorism escalated in Jammu and Kashmir should be contained by Pakistan. What if the neighbour does not see reason? Well, the sacrifice of the soldiers will be preserved in the collective psyche. There will be no more Kargils. The economy will be made stronger. “Keep the powder dry” will be a primary resolve. The Independence Day utterances should be taken as an exercise in introspection by the Head of State and the Head of Government. These are, in effect, sound statements on our tryst with realism.

Congress goes pro-poor

AN election manifesto is like a kundali, a political party cannot cast a new one for every election or mid-term election. This is all the more true of the Congress which has been in the electoral arena all these five decades. It remembers the country’s problems and the promises it has to make to tackle them. There is also the Pachmarhi pledge where it decided to revive to the garibi hatao theme. Another factor has persuaded the party to return to its old moorings. Newspapers and amateur pollsters are convinced that the bulk of the dalit and Muslim voters are trekking back to the Congress and the manifesto takes a deep bow in their direction, hoping to hasten this reconciliation and cement it. Given this total picture, the Congress election manifesto has to reinvent its pro-poor past and also speak the modern lingo. In other words, it is very much like the persona of the respected Mr Manmohan Singh — having a socialist past and a liberal future. It is a fusion of the best of the yesterdays and the hopes of the tomorrows.

There is a clutch of pledges to the rural poor, unemployed and uneducated. A Congress government, if voted to power, will sharply increase the outlay on education (to 6 per cent or double the present share), health, irrigation (to add an additional two million hectares) and agriculture. Apart from their vintage origin, there is an element of exaggeration in all this, but then a manifesto is all about jam tomorrow. There is also the talk of comprehensive crop insurance and land reforms to help the dalits without explaining how the second assurance will be brought about without violating the right to equality. A similar clutch of reassuring promises flow in the direction of the minorities: Urdu, madrasa education, personal laws and a hint of reservation in admission and job.For the sophisticated urban dweller who wants the country to join the elite camp, the party holds out a bright economic future. A sharp reduction in import duty (to the South-East Asian level of 12 per cent), a healthy tax-GDP ratio (of 18 per cent from the present 8 per cent), slashing government borrowing to 4 per cent from 8 per cent, doing away with revenue deficit in the Union budget (now running at about 3.5 per cent of the GDP) and sharply cutting down non-merit subsidies. The one major difference between these commitments and the pro-poor ones is that with Mr Manmohan Singh at the helm, the Congress government will be able to fulfil them.

More than the party programme, the contents of the manifesto reveal the electoral strategy of the Congress. It has a major fight in its hands what with the BJP making Kargil the only issue in the coming elections. The manifesto is designed to tell the people that the Congress does not search for an emotive issue to win votes and that it is concerned with the welfare of the people — “Congress ke haath garib ke saath”. As for Kargil, the plan is to attack the BJP for its failure to be alert and being weak enough to embolden Pakistan to send intruders. The Congress realises that it cannot duck the Kargil issue and its only way out is to somehow turn it against the ruling coalition. It is a gamble and the party is looking to the new look Mrs Sonia Gandhi and the stepped up insurgent activities in the Jammu region to bail it out. As for the manifesto, it may gladden ageing political hearts but will not fire the imagination of party workers. Still it serves an important purpose: it throws the spotlight on social and communal oppression. Being aware of the chronic problems is the first step in solving them.

LAW PANEL'S RADICAL PROPOSAL
Leaders ignore poll reform report
by S. Sahay

I AM not at all surprised over the deafening silence maintained by the political parties and their leaders on the far-reaching suggestions made by the Law Commission on the much-needed political reforms in order to give better content and meaning to parliamentary democracy in the country.

Under the chairmanship of Mr Justice Jeevan Reddy, the Law Commission laboured long and hard before making its final suggestions. At first it prepared a working paper. Then it invited suggestions from political parties, scholars and individuals, including journalists. This was followed up by three seminars held in different regions of the country, and finally a national conference to hone up the recommendations.

Can one hope that, like many other Law Commission reports, this too would not be pigeonholed by the government?

One would have thought that the election time was most appropriate to seek the views of the voters on the far-reaching proposals made by the Law Commission. One would have to wait and watch for the manifestos of the parties if they figure in them.

The only suggestion one has heard is from the Prime Minister — he wants a full five-year term for the government. Mr L.K. Advani has supported the idea. In this area too the Law Commission has made some useful suggestions.

The first suggestion is that only those parties can send their candidates for the Lok Sabha which have obtained at least five per cent of the total votes cast in the parliamentary elections. And ditto for the parties that contest state Assembly seats.

This is hardly likely to find favour with the political parties. Judged by this test only three national parties would have found seats in the Lok Sabha in 1998: the Congress, which obtained 25.82 per cent of the valid votes cast, the BJP which secured 25.59 per cent and the CPM, which got 5.16 per cent. In 1996 the parties that would have qualified for seats in the Lok Sabha would have been the Congress (28.20 per cent) the BJP (20.29 per cent), the Janata Dal (8.08 per cent) and the CPM (6.12 per cent).

What the Law Commission has aimed at is the polarisation of the parties and formation of larger parties. The second aim is sought to be achieved by defining a “political party” in the Tenth Schedule so as to include a pre-election front or pre-election coalition. This implies that the defection of a member of such constituent party or the pre-election front or of the constituent party as a whole from the pre-election front would be treated as defection that would attract disqualification under the Tenth Schedule.

A less controversial recommendation is that the Lok Sabha Speaker should insert a new rule in the Procedure and Conduct of Business that would state that once a no-confidence motion had been voted on, no fresh motion would be permitted for the next two years.

Further once a motion of confidence, pursuant to the direction of the President had been obtained, no motion expressing lack of confidence in the ministry would be permitted for two years.

It has also been suggested that a motion expressing lack of confidence in the ministry must be accompanied by a motion expressing confidence in an individual. Both motions must be debated and voted on simultaneously. This implies that no no-confidence motion can be adopted unless the House can name a new Prime Minister.

One may point out here that, impliedly, the Law Commission is not impressed by the views of some constitutional experts that the President has no right to tell the Prime Minister that he must seek a vote of confidence of the House. Secondly, the commission has not gone into the question whether the Lok Sabha can name an outsider to become the Prime Minister. The use of the expression “individual” would seem to indicate that it has left the question open.

Another suggestion that is likely to make most of the political parties uneasy concerns internal democracy and accountability.

The commission quotes the Supreme Court ruling in the Bommai case to make the point that if the Constitution requires the State to be secular in thought and action, that if democracy and accountability constitute the core of our constitutional system, the same concept must bind our political parties. A party cannot have dictatorship internally but expected to be democratic in its functioning outside.

The commission has proposed a whole new chapter in the Representation of the People Act. It suggests that the aims and objectives of a political party must not be inconsistent with any provisions of the Constitution.

Only political parties registered with the Election Commission can fight parliamentary and Assembly elections. While political parties may freely be formed, they must bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution as by law established, and to the principles of socialism, secularism and democracy.

The Law Commission wants the executive committee of a political party to be elected; even sub-committees can be elected only by the members of the executive committee.

It wants the candidates for parliamentary and legislative Assembly seats to be selected by the executive committee of the political party “on the basis of the recommendations and resolutions passed by the concerned local party units.”

Even party elections are required to be held in the presence of a person nominated by the Election Commission.

The suggestions are certainly ideal and would go a long way in restoring parliamentary democracy in the country, but don’t they make a sharp departure from the existing practice?

The Congress never had internal democracy, not even at the time of Mahatma Gandhi. Such democracy as existed during the Nehru era evaporated after Indira Gandhi consolidated power. Where is the question of internal democracy when the party executive, by whatever name called, routinely leaves all important questions to be left to be decided by the leader? It is not without interest that Mr Rahul Gandhi is rushing back to India in order to come to the aid of “mom”, her other principal adviser being Priyanka.

And as for parliamentary candidates being selected on the advice of local units, all one need to note is that Mr Chandrababu Naidu pointedly ignored the local unit of the BJP and directly dealt with the Prime Minister and Mr Advani, in that order, and got away with it.

Has internal democracy any meaning in the AIADMK, where Ms Jayalalitha is supreme, or in the National Conference, where Dr Farooq Abdullah’s son is being groomed to succeed his father? It must not be forgotten that Andhra Pradesh politics is dominated by loyal or alienated relatives of the late Rama Rao.

Little wonder, the political parties are behaving as if the Law Commission report simply did not exist.

The thrust of the Law Commission’s proposal is too radical for the political parties. It aims at the elimination of independents in elections; at non-representation of the parties that secure less than 5 per cent of the valid votes cast in Parliament, or in a state Assembly, as the case may be. It wants to encourage merger or alliances before an election is held. It wants to prevent defections in Parliament and the state legislatures, once an election has been held, even though party mergers and defections outside may continue.

All these are laudable aims, but are the political parties prepared for it, essentially when one-man representation is not unknown — for instance, the presence of Mr Chandra Shekhar and Dr Subramaniam Swamy in last parliament.

The trouble is that, as the Chief Election Commissioner, Dr Gill, has observed, no Prime Minister in power favours wholesome electoral reforms and no opposition party would agree to any reform that would help the party in power.

TN: back to caste identity
by T.K.Ramasamy

A HISTORICAL reversal is slowly unfolding in Tamil Nadu. After the coming elections it may become unstoppable. In social and political terms, this process is likely to be as significant and profound as the intensification of the Dravidian movement in the late forties and the early fifties. Paradoxically, an unlikely leader is spearheading it and under political duress mostly brought about by his own miscalculations.

Mr G.K. Moopanar, the amiable pan-chewing avuncular leader, is assembling a third front of what he cryptically calls “the Dalit classes”. His lieutenants are more forthcoming. The classes they speak of are actually castes, and the term Dalit is used in its generic sense of embracing long-oppressed sections of society.

This is actually a slogan, a sort of moral justification for the Tamil Maanila Congress opening the door to assorted groups to come together to fight the elections. Not so much to really fight as to test the electoral waters.

So there is, apart from the TMC, a representative of the mostly upper caste rural gentry, the Janata Dal, a shadowy party with little support base and hence no caste affinity, and the Indian Union Muslim League, the original League but emaciated after the walk-out and formation of a more broad-based Muslim party.

Now comes the soul and it is rather thinly spread. The Dalit Panthers, the RPI and the BSP are there and also the big daddy of all militant Dalit grouping, the Pudhia Tamizhagam (PT). The first three are one-leader relics or what the Tamils dismiss as “name board organisations”, and the last is a newly floated party which clearly enjoys the fanatical loyalty of the Dalits in the southern districts of the state. The latest exploit of the PT was a rally which led to the drowning of 26 Dalits last month.

After October 6 the state will know how strong or weak the front is. If it does strongly mark its presence, it will be a force to reckon with. If it turns out to be a paper tiger, Mr Moopanar has to ride to the sunset. The TMC leader has no illusions though. It is the first round, a sort of qualifying match, he says. The real test will come in two years’ time when the state will elect a new Assembly. Local leaders with pockets of influence and backed by the organisational muscle of the TMC can win in several constituencies; more important, they will set the right mood. For that to come true, the combination has to record at least 10 to 12 per cent of the votes this year.

If it does, and many observers concede it will, the grassroots level political alignment of castes will change dramatically. The Dalits (around 20 per cent of the electorate but so far unorganised on caste lines) and the most backward castes (MBC, a legally and administratively recognised term) will find it compelling to rally round the third front. They have the numbers and if they get an organisation, they can claim their share of power. If and when that happens, it will arrest one trend and unleash an arrested trend.

The day the Dalit-MBC alliance becomes real, and not nominal weilders of power, the state will resurrect the derailed revolution of Periyar. He wanted to end the social (not economic) oppression of every Tamil. But the upper and middle castes, the educated and well-off sections, froze the reform movement when power was within their sight. The reform movement has to become alive again if the social tensions which rock the state ever so often have to end. This is the theory-scripted scenario.

The real turn of events may be unsettling. The Pudhia Tamizhagam will take over the leadership of all Dalits, and as the case study of other parties show, the unchallenged leader imposes his character and will on the outfit. PT leader Krishnasamy believes in generous use of violence to wrest back the dignity of his followers. A good showing by the third front will project the PT leader as the leader of all Dalits and he will aspire for the leadership of the front itself in opposition to Mr Moopanar. The general rule is that a weak (meaning non-ruling) party tends to look for a strong (meaning tough and domineering) leader. Mr Moopanar clearly has a handicap.

What about Tamil Nadu itself? It has of late absorbed an uncharacteristic strain of social violence. In fact, Dr Krishnasamy and earlier Dr Ramadoss of the Pattali Makkal Katchi are the creation of this trend. The Coimbatore serial blasts and the periodic explosions in Chennai and other parts of the state are its manifestations. Frequent violence or a threat to violence weakens the democratic parties and strengthens or throws up forces with fascist tendencies. This is a universal truth and it cannot be otherwise in Tamil Nadu.

What the success of the TMC-led front will stop is the practice of cynical breaking and making of electoral alliances. The emergence of a counterpoint to this form of political manipulation is welcome. But the counterpoint can be both healthy and unhealthy. In the present polluted environment, it is somewhat reckless to hope for positive results.

Why did Harris leave Peshawar?
by V.N. Kakar

WHY did Haddow Harris leave Peshawar? The truth needs to be told. It was known to all those who had studied at his feet. But then, apart from the departure of Harris, so much else had happened in the Peshawar of those days in the forties that Harris’ story somehow got pushed under the carpet.

Harris was one of the noblest teachers I had had the privilege of receiving education from. A Scotsman, he was the head of the department of English literature in the Islamia College. We were in all five students doing our MA. He used to take our class more in his bungalow on the campus than in the classroom. And while doing that, he used to lavish on us all the hospitality he was famous for. Huntley and Palmer biscuits from England, cakes and pastries from Deans Hotel in Peshawar cantonment, he would keep everything readily available and let us have it to our heart’s content.

He was a bachelor past sixty. Poetry was his passion. So was beer. So was his determination to see that the MA (English) class in the college was not abolished and at least one of us should emerge out of it in flying colours with a master’s degree in hand.

“I am not worried about myself,” he would tell us again and again, “I am no doubt in love with the climate of Peshawar, particularly in winter. And left to myself, I would like to spend the rest of my life here. But I am worried about the future of you boys. For 11 years, no one has cleared his final examination from this blessed college and Punjab University has given us an ultimatum that if none clears it in 1947 also, the class will be abolished. What will happen to you chaps if the class is abolished? Where will you go to do your MA? To Lahore? Your parents may not be able to afford that. And over there, you won’t have the bloody fool of a teacher like me.

“I can pack up and go back home to Scotland any day. I won’t like to do that. But that may happen if none of you clears the exam next year, too, and the university is left with no alternative but to abolish the class.”

Every word of what Harris said was correct. But Harris did not leave Islamia College that year because of anything deficient in his students. Indeed, the examination was months’ away before his sudden departure. It so happened that one evening Harris was going to the Peshawar radio station for a broadcast. That day the tonga-wallahs were on strike and they had declared that they would not allow any tonga to move on the roads of Peshawar.

In the college, we had a tonga of our own. Harris was going to the radio station in that tonga. On the way, the strikers stopped him. They did nothing to Harris. They knew that he had the might of the British Empire behind him. They picked up the poor white mare and stabbed it to death.

That was too much for Harris. That was too much for his sensitive mind. He came back to the college, probably on some student’s cycle, scribbled his resignation on a piece of paper, packed up and left for home.

Some incidents get embedded in your psyche. They raise their head when something akin happens. Which civilised army in the world would do to its enemy’s captured soldiers what the Pakistan army had done to some of our soldiers?

More on the Satish Sharma case

by Anupam Gupta

“CAPT Satish Sharma,” ruled the Supreme Court three years ago in a heady cocktail of populism and law (that inebriated the intellectual class), “has betrayed the trust reposed in him by the people under the Constitution” and is liable to be prosecuted for criminal breach of trust or any other offence under the law.

“Betrayed the trust reposed in him by the people.” With that single sentence was created a penal offence that had never before existed in India since the year 1860, when the Indian Penal Code first saw the light of day. An offence created by judicial not legislative action, and created with retrospective effect in the teeth of Article 20, Clause (1) of the Constitution, the fundamental right against retrospective or ex post facto offences. With the exception of M.S. Ahlawat’s case now slated for reconsideration, no judgement in the history of the Supreme Court has taken such liberties with criminal jurisprudence.

Overturning the judgement last fortnight, the review Bench in Capt Satish Sharma’s case firmly struck at the notion that a Minister is a “trustee” for the people in the legal sense of the term.

“This, we may venture to say (said the Bench), is a philosophical concept and reflects the image of virtue in its highest conceivable perfection. This philosophy cannot be employed for determination of the offence of criminal breach of trust....Whether (that offence has been committed or not) has to be determined strictly on the basis of the definition of that offence as set out in the IPC...”

On being elected as an MP on the basis of adult suffrage, Capt Satish Sharma was inducted as a Minister of State in the Union government. On the advice of the Prime Minister, the department of Petroleum and Natural Gas was allocated to him by the President under the allocation of business rules.

“This allocation of business under the Constitution (said the Bench on August 3) is done for smooth and better administration and for more convenient transaction of the business of the Government of India. In this way, neither a ‘trust’, as ordinarily understood or as defined under the Trust Act, was created...nor did he (Capt Satish Sharma) become a ‘trustee’ in that sense.”

The original declaration of 1996 that a Minister is a “trustee” for the people was a declaration made ex cathedra, unsupported by precedent or authority. The rejection of that view on August 3 builds on a judicial tradition more than a century old.

Amongst the earliest cases repudiating the alleged legal status of the Crown as trustee is Alfred Kinloch vs The Secretary of State for India in Council, arising out of the Mutiny of 1857 and decided by the House of Lords in 1882.

Amongst the latest is the 1977 decision of the same august body, the highest judicial tribunal in England, in Town Investments Ltd vs Department of the Environment and the opinion that year of Sir Robert Megarry, presiding over the Chancery Division of the British High Court of Justice, in Tito vs Waddell.

Relating to the alleged fiduciary duties of the Crown towards the inhabitants of Crown Island (which lies halfway between the Hawaiian Islands and the coast of Australia and was occupied by the Japanese during World War II), the Megarry judgement runs into 171 pages of fine print of the All-England Law Reports and was delivered over 10,000 pages of pleadings and evidence after a hearing which lasted for more than a year and two months. It is, to the best of my knowledge, the first and the only judgement of a court of law which begins, like a book, with a regular “table of contents”.

The August 3 verdict quotes pertinently from Alfred Kinloch’s case, a case of the highest importance for it explores the legal position of the Secretary of State for India, and from Tito vs Waddell. And goes on directly to hold: “Applying the principles laid down above, the petitioner does not, on becoming the Minister of State for Petroleum and Natural Gas, assume the role of a “trustee” in the real sense nor does a “trust” come into existence in respect of the government properties.”

Though not cited in the judgement, the best summary of the principles relied upon by the review Bench is contained in that authoritative work, Halsbury’s Laws of England:

“Ministers of the Crown often administer property for the benefit of others in the exercise of the Crown’s governmental functions. No trust arises in such a case. If a person carrying out a public statutory duty is in breach of that duty, there is no remedy in breach of trust or equitable account. There are, instead, the remedies of judicial review, declaration, injunction and recovery of money if wrongly demanded and paid.”

It may not be possible for the common reader to fully understand all that I have written in this column today, the second piece on Capt Satish Sharma’s case. But it is important to write what has been written in order to do full justice to the August 3 judgement, to show that it is a product of substantial research and learning and takes a view that is eminently correct. And to dispel the popular impression that a judicial view which goes in “favour” of the government is necessarily wrong for that reason.

Of all the ambient pressures that serve invisibly to deter the judiciary from taking the right decision in a moment of crisis, this popular impression is the hardest to resist.

Alarming decline in number of girl children

by Humra Quraishi

BEFORE one writes about the election countdown or about the tension buildup with Pakistan, let me focus on the “missing” women of India. During the two-day national workshop on female foeticide and infanticide (organised by IMA National Women Wing and UNICEF) one was absolutely dismayed to see the long list of those killed in the very womb or immediately as they emerged from it. Absolutely shocking and damning revelations. So alarming that the ministers/bureaucrats manning the Health, Women and Child, and Social Justice ministries/departments should hang their heads in shame, before indulging in some serious introspection regarding these facts and figures. I quote these from the report compiled by Dr Sharda Jain. Between 1981 and 1991 there has been a perceptible and alarming decline in the number of girl children allowed to survive. Sex ratio records show that the number of females for 1,000 males fell to 927 according to the 1991 census as compared to 972 per 1,000 males in the 1961 census or compared to 1901 census when the sex ratio was 1,072 women for very 1,000 men. And in certain states like MP, UP, Haryana and Rajasthan the sex ratio has worsened — 850 women for every 1,000 men. In specific communities of Bihar and Rajasthan the ratio is a mere 600 females for 1,000 males. Consequent to the 1991 census UNICEF expressed its concern over the ‘missing 10 per cent’ from our projected female population. Or as Nobel laureate Dr Amartya Sen has estimated that even in 1990, 100 million fewer women were alive than were projected by demographic studies. The situation is indeed grim. There are over 50,000 abortions of female foetuses annually done in our country. Of the 1.2 crore girls born here (in India) every year as many as 30 lakhs do not live to celebrate their 15th birthday. At least one in six female deaths is due to gender discrimination. And a Mumbai-based study revealed that out of 8,000 foetuses aborted, following sex determination tests, 7,999 were female. I could go on and on. One only hopes that instead of whipping up communal frenzy the politician of this country would divert his rath and yatra direction towards this glaring issue. This concept of parents themselves, with full social sanction, killing their daughters in the womb or just out of it.

Dr A.K. Walia — a bachelor boy!

During the course of this workshop the only time one could smile was when Delhi’s minister for Health and Environment, Dr A.K. Walia, began his speech with — “In the West there is no menace of the dowry — the boy and girl simply marry and live happily afterwards...” When this fairytale note brought in laughter from the delegates Dr Walia stopped and innocently quipped “What! Have I said something wrong...actually I don’t know about all this....you see I am a bachelor!

I am sure many in the audience would have loved him for his naivety that afternoon.

Monsoon ragas

And last Saturday evening Austrian Ambassador Herbert Traxl and his dancer spouse Shovana Narayan held a little monsoon do. Barkha-geets were rendered by Rita Ganguly, Reba Som and then the floor was overtaken for a bit of dance a lot of ‘hellos’...but just as one stepped out of the airconditioned lounges and living rooms, the realities of a humid monsoon struck.

Khajuraho — from another angle?

And last fortnight, publisher and scholar Aloke Mitra had come down from Allahabad with a documentary ‘A Pilgrimage to Khajuraho’. Screened at the IIC, he described it as the culmination of a three-decade long research on “the hidden tantric and mythological backdrop of Khajuraho’s temple art...the fundamental premise is that sex and religion are inter-woven into sculptures and the sense of religiosity with the poetic depth was an abiding feature right through. Tantric is a celebration and understanding of the whole human body and the holistic totality of the sculptures and must not be trivialised by uninformed interpretations”. And so with erotic images in the backdrop he tried to outline the dimensions of tantric philosophy on love, religion, motifs, traditions, coitus, orgies, courtships...

Mitra could reach this state of analysis after 30 years of research but then how can he expect an average viewer to connect rather disconnect the erotic from the rest within the span of “capsuled” information via a documentary? How can he expect that the layperson rise to philosophical heights, so as to see eroticism in such a perspective? Definitely not in the times we are living in where perspectives are skewed, where few have the inclination to dissect and then conclude.

Mood yet to set in

The mood is yet to set in for the coming elections. There is an air of disillusionment, as though not even of the so many politicians is to be trusted. Rather cannot be trusted. And then to top it all there is an uneasy quiet on the tension buildup with Pakistan. What if it escalates just before the elections? What if it snowballs into another battle cry? And as analysts point out that these elections would be the deciding factor whether we go the BJP or the Congress way (others on the political scenario have anyway been reduced to split-ups, almost akin to the hapless state of those who have been recently divorced and are still settling down or up) so their importance cannot be overlooked. We have to reach the electorate irrespective of any tension buildups — from within or from the outside.

75 YEARS AGO

Protection for steel industry
(August 20)

SIMLA: The first report of the Indian Tariff Board, which was constituted last July, is published. The report is unanimous and covers the case of eight steel products, which applied for protection in one form or another, namely, rolled steel, tinplate railway wagons, wire and wire nails, agricultural implements, steel casting, railway locomotives and enamelled ware. The board received 103 written statements and examined 41 witness.

Protection for steel: The Board observes that it is impossible to conceive of a stronger case for protection than the steel industry has made out and propose varying protection for five out of the eight products. The three in respect of which no recommendation is made being railway locomotives, steel castings and enamelled ware.

The proposals are a combination of Tariff duties and bounties so as to restrict, as far as possible, the burden on the consumer.