Involuntary share buying
IT is variously called cross-holding, equity swap, buyback of shares and vertical integration. But the purpose is the same: to help the government lay its hands on a minimum of Rs 5000 crore as provided for in last budget, if not more to partly meet the financial crunch.

Misplaced anger
PUBLIC property has come to be considered no one's property and hence becomes the first target of every marauding mob. On Thursday, it was the railway property which came in handy to irate passengers at Rohtak, worked up because of the late running of trains.

Healers feel hurt
IT is a pity that healers at the PGI have been compelled to show their feelings of hurt to the public by wearing black badges. The treatment with regard to the salary and emoluments meted out to them is blatantly unfair.

AFTER THE DISMISSAL
by Inder Malhotra
MORE than a fortnight after the unprecedented and utterly questionable dismissal of Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat, Chief of the Naval Staff until the penultimate day of 1998, far from dissipating, the crisis has escalated and continues to do so.

Sack has damaged the Navy
by D.R. Chaudhry
THE performance of the BJP-led government at the Centre has been consistently dismal in the field of governance but its recent act of unceremonious dismissal of the Naval Chief, Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat, has been the most shoddy and atrocious.

Why India is Third World country
by Tavleen Singh
ON a warm, sultry afternoon last week I returned to Mumbai after a week’s sojourn in east Asia. And, from the moment I stepped into the dusty, diesel-smelling bus that was to take us from the aeroplane to the arrivals terminal I was reminded sharply of how important it is to go away from India to see her as she really is: one of the last, remaining truly. Third World countries on the planet.

Hard-working, professional lot
by Amita Malik
I HOPE I shall be forgiven for not giving detailed coverage of television this week, because I am at the International Film Festival in Hyderabad, ironically enough, covering it for TV. But I can certify to one thing. The TV teams, including camerapersons, covering the festival are a young, hard-working, highly professional lot, who are doing my heart a log of good. Many of them are from our premier training institutions, such as Jamia Millia and Pune, and they are constituting a new, professional workforce which, I am sure, will do India proud.

75 Years Ago

The presidential address
WHEN the history of the national movement in India in the final stage comes to be written, there is no name, whether Indian or European, which will stand out in more glorious prominence than that of the gifted and illustrious lady who in the evening of an impressive life, filled with many and varied achievements, had undertaken the stupendous task of leading that movement to victory.

Involuntary share buying

IT is variously called cross-holding, equity swap, buyback of shares and vertical integration. But the purpose is the same: to help the government lay its hands on a minimum of Rs 5000 crore as provided for in last budget, if not more to partly meet the financial crunch. So the two oil giants ONGC and IOC, and their natural gas cousin, GAIL, are being asked to invest in one another’s shares. On the face of it, the three public sector units should be both buyers and sellers. No, the seller in this case is the government and hence its purring at the prospect of an inflow of Rs 7500 crore. IOC will fork out Rs 3000 crore, ONGC Rs 2800 crore and GAIL Rs 700 crore. The government also hopes to raise another Rs 580 crore when MTNL buys back about 3 per cent of its shares which it now holds. Then there is Concor (Container Corporation of India) which will pump in a very modest Rs 23 crore after it finalises the sale of a million shares; it disinvested 10 million shares at Rs 225 each some months back. There is also talk of ITDC (Indian Tourism Development Corporation), the 33-hotel chain, unloading majority share in the market and has asked a well-known consultancy service to initiate the necessary move.

By the end of the financial year IOC will shed 5 per cent of its equity in the open market, not the stock market but by inviting bids from institutional investors, like Concor did. That can, at best, be called partial disinvestment. All other efforts are to find funds in a non-controversial manner, as a newspaper has commented. The original proposal was for the government to withdraw from commercial ventures but in favour of ordinary shareholders. That has been nearly forgotten in favour of symbolic gestures. The main reason is the depressed state of the stock market and the absence of a tradition for fixing the right price. During Dr Manmohan Singh’s stewardship, the government mixed the shares of good and bad companies and offered them in lots. A few crafty stockbrokers ganged up and quoted prices markedly on the low side. The government accepted the offer, not because it was in dire need of money but because it was in a great hurry to establish its credentials as a zealous reformer. Now the situation is exactly opposite and hence its compulsion to pin a reformist tag on an essentially fund-raising ruse.

Of course one should expect the official spokesman to come up with a fanciful explanation. The nation is told that the share swap in the oil and gas sector is the first firm step in vertical integration, rather bringing all these units under a unified command and management. It is pointed out that each of them operates in exclusive areas like oil prospecting and production (ONGC), refining and marketing (IOC) and gas production (GAIL). If all the three merge to form a monolith, the new entity will be a world leader, if not a world beater. There is a small snag though. Only some months back IOC entered into an agreement with Reliance to jointly lay a long pipeline to carry petroleum from its giant refinery. In other words, IOC has already undertaken horizontal integration on its own. Does the government plan a two-way integration and carry Reliance with it?

Misplaced anger

PUBLIC property has come to be considered no one's property and hence becomes the first target of every marauding mob. On Thursday, it was the railway property which came in handy to irate passengers at Rohtak, worked up because of the late running of trains. They not only damaged the railway station but also set the railway police station on fire. Such display of anger is condemnable even under the greatest provocation. This time it was all the more reprehensible because the trains were running late only because of the natural phenomenon of heavy fog. One wonders what exactly they wanted the railway authorities to do? Run the trains at the regular speed in near-zero visibility and thereby put the lives of thousands of commuters at risk? It is this mob mentality which worsens things instead of improving them. That is not to belittle the difficulties being faced by the passengers. Thousands of them travel daily between Rohtak and Delhi. The arrangements for their journey leave much to be desired. Trains are few and are perpetually late. The government's plans to develop nearby towns as counter-magnets so that people can settle far away from the national and State Capitals have always remained on paper. But that does not mean that the commuters should take law into their own hands. As it is, it has been noticed that they maltreat passengers having confirmed berths and rush into every compartment without even proper tickets. Those with confirmed tickets have as much right to comfortable travel as those who commute daily. Such tendencies should be curbed with a firm hand.

While a thousand charges can be levelled against the railway authorities, there is also need for a bit of introspection among the passengers. Do they really take care of the railway property? And most important, do they travel with the right tickets? Till everyone cooperates in this endeavour, the situation cannot improve. Some years ago, gadgets were put on railway tracks which could give a warning if a train was stranded midway. These were promptly stolen, because the metal in them could be sold as scrap. Lives of thousands of persons were endangered because somebody wanted to make 20 or 30 rupees. Better facilities can be put in place only if the majority -- if not all -- become deserving of them. While the railway authorities can be requested to run more trains keeping in view the problems of the commuters, the passengers themselves have to show a lot of restraint and understanding when the delays and other such difficulties are caused by factors which are out of human control. Resorting to violence can only make matters worse. After all, what is nothing but public property. It is called government's property is purchased from taxpayers' money.

Healers feel hurt

IT is a pity that healers at the PGI have been compelled to show their feelings of hurt to the public by wearing black badges. The treatment with regard to the salary and emoluments meted out to them is blatantly unfair. The AIIMS,New Delhi, is already seeing the negative impact of the anger of an illumined faculty. A new pay scheme had been suggested by a committee headed by the Union Health Secretary, Mr K.K. Baxi. The recommendations of the Baxi committee amounted to an improvement on the scales prescribed by the Fifth Pay Commission. The commission's formula was rejected by the doctors of the two major institutes along with a large number of experts in their fraternity. No effort was made to make a compromise through discussion and debate and now a stage has been reached when the Union Government will have to see the combined faculties of the AIIMS and the PGI holding a rally and demanding a fair deal for them . It was a sad sight at the premier medical institute in Chandigarh on Thursday and Friday when senior doctors with black badges went round their wards and OPDs. They did not stop work. Compassion and their sense of discipline did not allow them to do so. Briefly, what can one do in these days of rising prices with total monthly emoluments of Rs 29,500? This sum is the result of a bar. A very senior specialist of the city has rightly remarked:"The apathy of the government is a major setback to our morale and it is hoped that our peaceful protest would draw the attention of the government towards our plight."

We swear by the name of Amartya Sen in every field of development. Professor Sen wants better educational facilities and improved health care in India. He is worried about the flight of talent from institutes of excellence. Senior doctors are leaving the AIIMS and the PGI to join corporate sector hospitals and research organisations. Brain drain must stop at least in the field of health. If men of the stature and equanimity of Dr Jaswant Rai, Dr P. Kulhara, Dr Yogesh Chawla and Dr Awasthy decide to make their views public in New Delhi and Chandigarh, the reputation of the PGI would get a great drubbing. There is no way to prevent the ongoing agitation at the AIIMS. One hopes that senior doctors would not lose their interest either in the institution or in the Hippocratic Oath. The hospitals in Sectors 16 and 32 are flooded with emergency cases. Most of these are destined to land up in the PGI for a "miracle". Does the government not understand that the senior doctors are the “miracle makers”? The public fully sympathises with the doctors. Will someone have sufficient common sense to work out a compromise even at this late stage? Private practice is lucrative and rewarding but too expensive for the common man. We hope against hope that the rally planned for January 18 in Delhi would not materialise and positive steps would be taken to redress the grievances of the doctors.

AFTER THE DISMISSAL
A steadily worsening scenario
by Inder Malhotra

MORE than a fortnight after the unprecedented and utterly questionable dismissal of Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat, Chief of the Naval Staff until the penultimate day of 1998, far from dissipating, the crisis has escalated and continues to do so.

The criticism, indeed condemnation, of the government’s precipitate action has been widespread to the point of being overwhelming. Even those who aver that the former Navy Chief had no business to “disobey” the decision of the Appointment Committee of the Cabinet (ACC) have argued that the situation could have been rectified well before reaching this dangerous state. What is overlooked in this connection is that the dismissed CNS had not said that he would not implement the ACC’s directive. He had only pointed out that, under the Navy Act and the relevant regulations, the order was “unimplementable”. Evidently, the expectation was that the matter would be “reconsidered”.

Not only that this did not happen, but also the aggrieved Chief’s request for a meeting with the Prime Minister was turned down. Nor did the Defence Minister, Mr George Fernandes, who had written three letters to Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee against the sacked Admiral, think it necessary to see him for a face-to-face discussion, a procedure which has traditionally proved to be useful whenever similar differences between service chiefs and the Ministry of Defence (MoD) have arisen in the past.

As for the sanctity of the ACC’s decisions let it not be forgotten that various courts have thrown out several of its decisions on promotions and postings in the higher echelons of the three services on the ground that they were “flawed”, “unfair”, based on “incomplete facts” or downright “illegal”. The former Defence Secretary, Mr Ajit Kumar, shifted to the Ministry of Industry on the evening Admiral Bhagwat was removed from service, is to appear before the Delhi High Court within the next few days to face charges of contempt of court in the case of an Air Vice-Marshal who was denied promotion to the next higher rank. The charge against Mr Kumar is that he concealed from the ACC vital information, “including the court’s earlier directions”.

Under these circumstances, can one dismiss out of hand the plea on behalf of Admiral Bhagwat that the ACC’s decision, giving the job of the Deputy Chief of Naval Staff (DCNS) in charge of operations to Vice-Admiral Harinder Singh, who had accused the Chief of being “communal” and “anti-Sikh” because Mrs Niloufer Bhagwat is “half-Muslim and a card-carrying member of the Communist Party of India”, could also be based on “doctored” information submitted to the ACC?

It is no less important that, as a rule, it is an unwise policy to impose on a military Chief his principal staff officer in charge of operations, and certainly not in the circumstances that Vice-Admiral Harinder Singh had created by the communal slur on Admiral Bhagwat as part of his petition to the Calcutta High Court. As if all this was not enough, the Prime Minister, after sacking the Naval Chief, repaired to the Andamans to enjoy the hospitality of the favoured Vice-Admiral Harinder Singh, still the Fortress Commander in the offshore islands. The crowning irony is that now even the new Navy Chief does not want Harinder as DCNS.

All this apart, the crucial fact is that to this day the government remains strangely shy of confiding to the country the reasons for its action so drastic that it was never taken before and, after being seriously considered on two separate occasions, was prudently dropped. The specific reasons cited — such as the former Naval Chief having “shielded” Rear-Admiral Purohit from the MoD’s inquiries, the despatch of a communication to the Pakistan High Commission directly by the Naval headquarters (NHQ) and so on — are basically trivial. Even so, each one of them has been categorically and elaborately contradicted by Admiral Bhagwat or his lawyer wife.

During his holiday in the Andamans, the Prime Minister did imply in a statement that Admiral Bhagwat had “damaged” the Navy and even “affected” national security by his acts which also constituted ‘deliberate defiance” of the principle of civilian control of the military. Mr George Fernandes has spoken on the subject with greater regularity and at considerable length. But at no stage has he taken the trouble to be specific or go into any details. He has consistently hidden behind the claim that facts are so “serious” and “sensitive” that he cannot speak about them “now”, nor for “years to come”.

This is manifestly wrong and unacceptable. Either do not question the patriotism of a service chief or nail him with the charge of treason by making it stick. There are many friends and supporters of Admiral Bhagwat who feel that his wife would have served his cause better had she spoken less or not at all. Even so, Mrs Niloufer Bhagwat cannot be blamed when she says that if the Admiral’s role was tinged with treason, removal from service is not the punishment for him. He must be tried for treachery and meted out his just deserts. Nor is she alone in arguing thus.

A large number of people agree with her. Responsible sections of the strategic community, who know more about matters military than the general run of civilian bureaucrats, including those manning the MoD, have wondered aloud whether the Defence Minister, regarding himself as the present-day Krishna Manon, has a gameplan of his own of which the removal of Admiral Bhagwat is only the first step.

While nothing is being done to try to dispel this alarming miasma, the atmosphere is being befouled immeasurably by calculated and motivated leaks in the media in which no holds are being barred. Such mud-slinging has not been unknown in recent years. But never before has it assumed such shocking proportions as now. Quite clearly whole files, not only current ones, but also those of the period 1989-90 when Admiral Bhagwat, then a Rear-Admiral, was himself involved in litigation against the government on the issue of own quest for a posting as Fleet Commander, have been handed over to “friendly” scribes.

But, quite apart from the dismal fact that a very unhealthy precedent is being set, and this would make it extremely difficult for future Chiefs to express themselves candidly on the file, what does the massive campaign amount to. That Admiral Bhagwat, whose own communications to the MoD have also found their way into print, took one position on the ACC’s powers in relation to senior-level naval appointments a decade earlier and a totally opposite one now. If so, is it a capital offence?

Any expectation that an early end will be put to the unholy mess that cannot but sap the morale of the armed forces — already there is a big gap in the officer corps of the Army and the other two services and young people would think twice before volunteering to join the forces — must be abandoned. The government seems wholly uninclined to accept the sound suggestion of a quick and confidential inquiry into the circumstances of the regrettable episode so that the credibility of the government in general and the Defence Minister in particular can be re-established.

On the other hand, a retired Army Commander, Lieut-Gen P.N. Hoon is filing a public interest litigation (PIL) in the Bombay High Court. A whole shipload of dirty linen will now be washed in public and there would be a colossal addition to the backlog of bad blood.

Let Mr Vajpayee, Mr Fernandes and others concerned take some time off from politicking and ponder what the world at large may be thinking of a nuclear weapon power making such an awful hash of its handling of its military command and control structure.

Sack has damaged the Navy
by D.R. Chaudhry

THE performance of the BJP-led government at the Centre has been consistently dismal in the field of governance but its recent act of unceremonious dismissal of the Naval Chief, Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat, has been the most shoddy and atrocious. According to George Fernandes, the Defence Minister, Admiral Bhagwat had been displaying “disturbing tendencies for over a year.” While throwing light on this unfortunate decision the Prime Minister, Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee, has charged Admiral Bhagwat with “defiance of civilian authorities on a sustained basis” and with having caused” damage to the Navy specially and the national security in particular by various actions.”

The charges levelled against Admiral Bhagwat are of grave nature, to say the least. Even if there is an iota of truth in these charges, the Naval Chief should have been arrested and courtmartialled in the first instance itself. To dismiss him is to let him go scotfree and condone his act of perfidy, treason and indiscipline. Even now the government should move against him. But keeping in view the totality of circumstances, all this seems to be an afterthought and a desperate attempt to justify a patently unjustifiable act by taking recourse to a series of half truths, innuendoes and total lies.

The whole ruckus started with the decision to post Vice Admiral Harinder Singh as Deputy Chief of Naval Staff. Harinder Singh’s insinuation that Admiral Bhagwat’s wife is a half-Muslim and he did not properly perform funeral rites at his father’s death is utter nonsense. Whether Mrs Bhagwat is a half-Muslim or a full one or whether Admiral Bhagwat is an orthodox Hindu or a rational being or an atheist has nothing to do with his competence as a naval officer. The new Naval Chief, Admiral Sushil Kumar, has applauded Admiral Bhagwat’s achievements in the field of information warfare and technology and credited him with putting the force on the right track. Harinder Singh’s “conduct towards his chief” as correctly put by Lt General Harwant Singh (retired) “has been defiant, defamatory and mutinous” (Tribune, January 4) and the Defence Ministry’s soft attitude towards him can be explained only in terms of extraneous considerations. The attempt to lend a communal tinge to the controversy is highly deplorable and deserves to be condemned.

If any section of Indian society is to be held responsible for debasing our polity, it is the class of shortsighted, self-serving and wily politicians. They have successfully destroyed the elan of civil services to suit their ends. Most of the bureaucrats act as pliable tools and relentless hatchet men in service of their political masters. These so called generalists claim to be experts on every department ranging from animal husbandry to atomic energy and lord over the administrative structures at every level. They have acquired expertise in all kinds of manipulative devices. The erstwhile Defence Secretary of the Indian Government has been charged by the Delhi High Court with having obtained decisions of the authority concerned in other cases by withholding facts and presenting a one-sided picture. No action against him as he belongs to the tribe of holy cows!

In the process of emasculation of our political system, the security of our country has not been compromised so far, thanks to the professional character of the Indian armed forces. But unfortunately, the act of dragging the army into the mud through arbitrary dismissal of Admiral Bhagwat has injected the virus into the body of the Indian army also. There is an urgent need to start a serious debate to redefine the relationship between the generalists and specialists in different walks of our system.

In the existing setup the tension between the bureaucracy in the Defence Ministry and the top brass of the army is at times unavoidable. This is all the more likely if a chief happens to be strong-willed and a thinking being (Admiral Bhagwat has been characterised as a strategic thinker by some military experts). In such a situation one is likely to feel piqued at the unimaginative and unhelpful attitude of a bureaucrat who may not be familiar with all the intricacies in a given situation (George Fernandes had to deal sternly with two officers in his ministry who wilfully shot down the demand of snow-scooters at Aksai Chin). There have been tension-ridden moments between bureaucracy and army in the past as well but the problem every time was amicably sorted out. This could have been possible in the present case also but for the immature and cussed handling of the situation.

Mrs Bhagwat’s charge that her husband’s dismissal was communally motivated and also the result of a nexus between arms dealers, politicians and bureaucrats is too serious to be dismissed lightly. The episode needs to be probed deeply from different angles. The least the Central Government can do is to appoint a parliamentary committee to hold an in-depth enquiry into the whole thing followed by a white paper. Nothing short of this would do. Any attempt to keep the ugly episode under wraps in the name of national security would be devastatingly demoralising for the Indian army and the nation would have to pay a heavy price for this.

Why India is Third World country

by Tavleen Singh

ON a warm, sultry afternoon last week I returned to Mumbai after a week’s sojourn in east Asia. And, from the moment I stepped into the dusty, diesel-smelling bus that was to take us from the aeroplane to the arrivals terminal I was reminded sharply of how important it is to go away from India to see her as she really is: one of the last, remaining truly. Third World countries on the planet.

It started with the bus itself. As we stood among our luggage, packed like travel-weary sardines in its hot, smelly interior we discovered that the bus could not move because, no matter how hard the driver tried, he could not get the doors to shut. No sooner did one door shut than the other would swing open. When this carried on for a good 10 minutes the foreigners among us started to laugh with an audible sneer in their laughter. Us Indians merely looked sheepishly at those doors and one man spoke for all of us when he said sarcastically, “Welcome home. Welcome to India”. The story did not end there either. When we got to the terminal the doors did the opposite of what they had been doing earlier and quite simply refused to open. More sneers, more laughter. Welcome to India indeed.

In itself a bus with a faulty set of doors should not besmirch our image but when the doors become symbolic of what’s going to follow then the image does take a battering. Further needless delays followed, you see, on account of our immigration officers having an inexplicable need to read every last visa in your passport and on account of baggage carousels that move at bullock cart pace. Then, when your are finally on the road that leads into the city, you look around you and discover very quickly that you are seeing poverty and degradation on a scale that has become rare even in darkest Africa.

You drive past slums that in most other countries would be considered unfit for human habitation, past open drains so filled with waste that it has solidified and through an urban landscape that is ugly and depressing. As you inch your way forward through traffic so dense that mobility itself becomes a luxury your car is besieged by barefoot, spindly-legged children who plead with you to buy their wares. We see these things every day of our lives so our eyes have grown accustomed to them but a short trip abroad is all it takes to change the way you see things and to make you more impatient for an answer to why we look so bad.

Personally, I found part of the answer wading through the newspapers and magazines of the week I had been away when I noticed that the stories of the moment were exactly the kind that we could do completely without. Nearly, every magazine had interviews, for instance, with leaders of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and other members of the Hindutva vanguard who were announcing proudly that the attacks on Christians in Gujarat would continue until every last tribal had been converted back to Hinduism. A Swami Aseemanand, who is among those leading the movement in Dangs district, was asked in one interview how long the attacks on Christians would continue. His answer: “So long as a single tribal remains Christian, so long as a single church is left standing there can be no peace in Dangs”. Why has this man not been locked up yet? Why is he, instead, wandering about giving inflammatory interviews? But, why only him? How is it that Bal Thackeray manages almost every week to get his mug splashed across front pages by making equally inflammatory statements about something or other? How is it that nobody is able to tell him that it really is none of his business whether Pakistani cricketers play in India or not. If he doesn’t want them in Mumbai that’s a problem for local cricket fans but who gives him the right to speak for India?

As the self-appointed remote control of Maharashtra’s government he should be paying more attention to the way Mumbai airport functions and the way the city looks. He should be explaining why his government has been so completely unable to do anything about improving living conditions in the city. But, instead of this his Ministers spend their time telling the country which films we can watch and which we cannot. Since they don’t just tell us they break up cinemas as well we spend weeks embroiled in a controversy over Fire and news filters through even to the international press. Everyone marvels at how a country with such serious problems of poverty, drinking water, housing, healthcare and sanitation can waste time making a huge racket about some film.

Our national obsession with irrelevant, utterly needless controversies is only part of the reason why we continue to remain Third World in every sense of the term. The more important reason is that our political leaders have quite simply lost the ability to make the bureaucracy work. This is, alas, particularly true of Mr Vajpayee’s Government because it is perceived as being weak. What other explanation can here be for the fact that Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat’s wife can get up on national television and charge the Central Government with communalism?

The Admiral and his wife are not the only ones so emboldened. If you talk to Ministers in either the central or the state governments they have no hesitation in admitting that they find it almost impossible to make decisions because the bureaucracy invariably manages to stop them. In the words of one Minister I met recently, “Its almost as if they have developed a vested interest in India never becoming a developed country”.

This particular minister is a doer. He has an important portfolio and he would like very much to do something while he can but he said that his biggest problem was that the officials working under him had got accustomed to doing nothing at all. It was this that they did not want to change. “I cannot sack anyone” he added “I cannot even transfer any of them without first checking whether they have some political godfather who has put them there, so you tell me what I’m supposed to do?”

So, the bottom line is we will remain the way we are until one of two things happen. Until, we get political leaders who can make our officials work like the servants they are supposed to be or until our officials discover a vested interest in India becoming a developed country. Meanwhile, welcome to an India of rickety buses, filthy cities and grim poverty.

Hard-working, professional lot

by Amita Malik

I HOPE I shall be forgiven for not giving detailed coverage of television this week, because I am at the International Film Festival in Hyderabad, ironically enough, covering it for TV.

But I can certify to one thing. The TV teams, including camerapersons, covering the festival are a young, hard-working, highly professional lot, who are doing my heart a log of good. Many of them are from our premier training institutions, such as Jamia Millia and Pune, and they are constituting a new, professional workforce which, I am sure, will do India proud. They are already into the 21st century. And, what is more important, I see that Doordarshan, given the competition, is catching up and proving that it is not lack of talent, but lack of encouragement that is tying them down.

Also very cheering is to note number of highly professional and highly interesting satellite channels which have come up in the Indian languages. Alas, not knowing Tamil, Kannada or Telegu, though I can follow some of the Sanskritised words in Malayalam or Telegu, I can see why they are offering you strong competition to the Doordarshan. And, what is more, they have taken away lakhs of viewers from the Hindi channels which seem to offer nothing more than Hindi films in return. It is the growing maturity reach and professionalism of the South Indian channels which will also act as an incentive to other channels.

Also, one can keep in touch with one’s own language wherever one is in India. Although I have not yet caught a Bengali channel — I am sure I will if I look hard enough — DD’s Marathi channel comes through clear, a challenging contrast to its National Channel, which seems as pale here as anywhere else.

I have not yet caught DD’s Metro Channel, which is showing the festival files every night at 11.05, as they announced. I hope they are not breaking FIAFP rules which permit only three showings of a festival film. But at least it gives people in all parts of India a channel see them if they are not in Hyderabad for the festival.

However, what one really wants when away from base is news. Somehow, away from Delhi one felt even more ashamed as an Indian as one saw the destruction of a 100-year-old church only miles away from us in Secunderabad. As also the yuppies in a BMW who had run over five innocent people in a drunken state. Somehow, away from Delhi, it seemed worse, because we have seen this kind of driving, even though not fatal, in the capital and it continues in spite of all the police grand plans.

However, even without knowing the language, everything in the way of entertainment seems a little more traditional on Telugu TV. One or two slightly modern-looking serials, but by and large blood-and-thunder melodramas which look mythological even if they are not.

Also, I have enjoyed the feast of classical Carnatic music on the screen, much more classical music than on Hindi or channels like Star Plus. The South loves its good music and we can only hope that the North Indian, Western and Eastern channels also realise this need and follow suit.

P.S.I have watched some of the coverage of the festival on TV and must mention Sutapa Deb of Star News whose coverage has been newsy, illustrated with good visuals and presented with sensitivity.

75 YEARS AGO

The presidential address

WHEN the history of the national movement in India in the final stage comes to be written, there is no name, whether Indian or European, which will stand out in more glorious prominence than that of the gifted and illustrious lady who in the evening of an impressive life, filled with many and varied achievements, had undertaken the stupendous task of leading that movement to victory.

The strength and volume which the movement had acquired since Mrs Besant appeared on the scene is undoubtedly due in a very large measure to the confluence of the deep impersonal elements of time, but individuals, too, have played a great and glorious part in bringing about the result, and of these there is not one who had either done more or suffered more than she.

To the magnificent services already rendered by her to India during the past eventful years Mrs Besant had added another. Her Presidential Address was no superb improvisation. It bore the stamp of deep study, of patient thought and of unremitting toil in every part of it.

It was without a doubt the strongest and most systematic, as it was the most eloquent, plea for self-government that had ever been made by a Congress President.