Bomb, Clinton, bomb
PRESIDENT Clinton and his European sidekick Prime Minister Blair are close to developing a permanent bombing itch. Their favourite target is Mr Saddam Hussein and his Iraq, but a diversion or two is welcome, as Sudan and Afghanistan earlier or Kosovo now.

Law and order in UP
IN its election manifesto in 1996 the BJP had promised to create a “bhayamukt samaj” if it came to power in UP. The people favoured the party, and it became part of the power structure in alliance with the Bahujan Samaj Party with Ms Mayawati as Chief Minister.

To the aid of tribals
THE fact that the country is in dire need of protecting its environment and wildlife cannot be overstressed. Unfortunately, the official agencies often go about the task in such a heavy-handed manner that the exercise degenerates into a government-versus-the citizens tug of war.

COLLAPSE OF BIHAR
by S. S Dhanoa
BIHAR had been described as the heart of India by one of its British Governors. Geographically it is the jugular vein of India. It is a bit depressing when one realises that everyone in the rest of India seems to be content in making fun over various happenings in the state.

For a crime-free society
by S. Subramanian
CRIME in our society has increased manifold and people are living in mortal fear of losing their properties and lives or of suffering injuries and indignities at the hands of lumpen elements.

Why not highlight good governance?
by Tavleen Singh
SOMETIMES I think it could be the fault of us in the media that good governance remains such a rare commodity in India. Could we be highlighting all the wrong issues? Could we be making a fuss about the wrong things and ignoring the few good things that do manage to happen?

Shekhar’s Indian touch to Oscar show
by Amita Malik
SHEKHAR SUMAN, who was presumably there for the filmi touch for the launch of the DD Sports Channel, seemed to think that Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium was Red Fort and he was doing the August 15 “bhashan” — so patriotic was his entire approach.

There is something...!
by K. Rajbir Deswal
NEWS has reached us from Sonepat and Karnal in Haryana that Muslims will not offer sacrifice (Qurbani) on the occasion of Id this year since Mahavir Jayanti falls on the same day. Now I understand what the famous poet Iqbal had in his mind when he said, “Kuchh baat hai jo hasti mit-ti nahin hamari...”

75 Years Ago

Plague at Sialkot
THE havoc that this epidemic of plague did in the year 1923 in taking away the lives of good many souls was not yet completely obliterated from the minds of its inhabitants when they were suddenly caught in its clutches once again.

Bomb, Clinton, bomb

PRESIDENT Clinton and his European sidekick Prime Minister Blair are close to developing a permanent bombing itch. Their favourite target is Mr Saddam Hussein and his Iraq, but a diversion or two is welcome, as Sudan and Afghanistan earlier or Kosovo now. But Kosovo is different. It is Europe, the dreaded Balkans, and the people are white. What is more, the intended victims, the Serbs, are of the Slavic stock, the same as the Russians. The USA is not supposed to be directly fighting, though Press briefing is on round the clock in Washington. NATO is in charge and as befitting the biggest war machine ever assembled in history, it has no use for peace-makers like the UN Security Council. It says the bombs are raining over Kosovo to head off a wider war, to complete the flowering of democracy in all of Europe and to prevent further human suffering. It may end up achieving exactly the opposite. The Kosovars want an independent country, the same as the Bosnians and Croats got in 1995. Those two countries emerged after NATO dropped a few bombs. Yugoslavia, rather the rump that remains of what Tito built and held together, will not grant anything more than controlled autonomy. If the Kosovars succeed, there will be another bout of balkanisation, a country collapsing into bits. If Serbs succeed, there will be more homeless refugees among the two-million strong Kosovars. Not for nothing everyone refers to the “Balkan tinder box” ready to explode anytime.

NATO’s punitive air raids are totally unauthorised, and lack a well-defined objective or plan. It is a blatant interference in the internal affairs of an independent nation. And it has been launched to massage a few bloated egos in NATO. These worthies have for long psyched themselves into believing that they can pommel President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia into accepting their hare-brained plan. But he has proved to be a tough nut to crack. He enjoys the solid support of Russia and President Yeltsin has hinted at “appropriate response” and “an extreme plan”. He has drastically cut his country’s representation at NATO and Prime Minister Primakov angrily called off a visit to the USA. China and India are the other two countries to denounce the savage raids. All this will not restrain NATO. It has embraced the US doctrine that obeying international law is an occasional gesture of grace and not a mandatory obligation to civilised global community. “Have bomb, will drop,” says the USA and ditto says NATO. Even during the bitter and tense days of the cold war, NATO did not fire a bullet either in defence or offence. Now the cold war is dead and it will celebrate its 50th birthday next month. The raids are a curtain raiser to the great event!

Law and order in UP

IN its election manifesto in 1996 the BJP had promised to create a “bhayamukt samaj” if it came to power in UP. The people favoured the party, and it became part of the power structure in alliance with the Bahujan Samaj Party with Ms Mayawati as Chief Minister. This position, however, lasted only six months. Since then Mr Kalyan Singh has been running a BJP government as he had established his majority with the help of defectors. But the state is nowhere near having a “bhayamukt samaj”, which the people so desperately wished for. Despite the Chief Minister’s claim to the contrary, as he made in the assembly on Wednesday, the law and order situation in UP is getting worse with every passing day. Some of the dreaded criminals who are in jail are continuing their operations from there itself, “ordering” the kidnapping and killing of their targets. There are mafia dons who are part of the crime-politics-religion nexus. They have been operating without fear because the government cannot dare to destroy their nexus. In its search for power by any means the party has not hesitated in taking the help of even those with a questionable past. It is a known fact that 10 or 12 ministers in UP have a criminal background. How can the government eliminate criminals when they are so well-connected? It is not without reason that fear stalks the entire length and breadth of the state. Someone has rightly said that if Article 356 of the Constitution is to be used because of a serious deterioration in law and order, it will be difficult for the Centre to save the UP government.

The most damaging news has come from the state capital, Lucknow, which also happens to be the constituency of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee. Lucknow-wallas are avoiding going for shopping or to cinema houses in the evening. The Hazratganj shopping area remains deserted after dusk. Owners of business establishments are so scared that they prefer to put their shutters down immediately after sunset. Shell-shocked parents of school-going children no longer rely on rickshaw-wallas or school bus drivers. Most of the parents are doing the job of taking their wards to school and back home themselves. The development is the result of the fear psychosis that has gripped the city after the daylight murder of the District Jail Superintendent and a police sub-inspector in the recent past. Mr Kalyan Singh calls it a political conspiracy to defame his government, but such explanations are not going to restore the confidence of the people in the law and order machinery Hardly a day passes when there are no cases of kidnapping or extortion in the western part of the state. Only the other day well-known cartoonist Irfan Hussain was found murdered in the NOIDA area, on the outskirts of Delhi. Traders in Ghaziabad are up in arms against the police as it has failed to provide them the much-needed security without which no business can be carried on.

This is the ground reality. It cannot change so long as the dreaded mix of politics, crime and religion is there. While the nefarious activities of criminals associated with politicians are visible everywhere, religion is being used to indulge in unlawful acts in the Ayodhya area of Faizabad district. The BJP being the ruling party must give the lead by dissociating itself from shady characters or their protectors so that other political organisations are forced to take to this path. No other remedy can be effective under the circumstances.

To the aid of tribals

THE fact that the country is in dire need of protecting its environment and wildlife cannot be overstressed. Unfortunately, the official agencies often go about the task in such a heavy-handed manner that the exercise degenerates into a government-versus-the citizens tug of war. The people in general think that it is only a "sarkari" mission, in which they have no role to play. Worse still is the situation where the people come to suspect that the government is more concerned about the welfare of the flora and fauna than that of the human beings. That is what had happened in Uttar Pradesh when it was proposed to set up Rajaji National Park in the Shivalik range of the Himalayan foothills near Dehra Dun, Hardwar and Rishikesh. Even before the final notification as required by law under the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, was issued, the forest authorities started coercing the Van Gujjars to leave the forests. At one go, the nomadic tribals, who had been enjoying such traditional rights as grazing their cattle there since time immemorial, were told to pack their meagre bags and vanish from the area. Harassment and torture were the tools allegedly used freely. All that they were offered in exchange was a two-acre plot of land for agriculture located in Pathri or the Gaindikhatha region. The Van Gujjars were lucky that their case was taken up by the Rural Litigation and Entitlement Kendra, a Dehra Dun-based NGO, before the National Human Rights Commission. The NHRC has now decided that the forest authorities are not entitled to coerce Van Gujjar families to move out of their habitation until their rights are legally determined in accordance with law. This far-reaching decision will come as a breath of fresh air to many tribals in the rest of the country who are the victims of government high-handedness.

There is considerable truth in the government's plea that the Van Gujjars have been destroying the forests to get fodder for their cattle and wood for fuel. But this destruction is only because of their ignorance. For these nomads, a forest is not just land covered with trees but their entire world. Wherever efforts — mostly through private agencies — have been made to educate them as to how they can get the fuel and fodder without disturbing the forests, these people have been more determined than even forest officials to save "Mother Earth", whom they worship in their own innocent ways. Alas, this kind of sensitivity has been lacking in the government's otherwise well-meaning drive. Once their needs are understood and recognised sympathetically, the government can easily convert them to the cause, which is not that of the government alone but that of every single Indian national. It is only the dismissive and haughty "off with their heads" attitude which turns potential friends into foes. The important moral that everyone must imbibe is that the forests, the wildlife and the human beings can not only co-exist but can also promote one another.

COLLAPSE OF BIHAR
Caste tension acted as the trigger
by S. S Dhanoa

BIHAR had been described as the heart of India by one of its British Governors. Geographically it is the jugular vein of India.

It is a bit depressing when one realises that everyone in the rest of India seems to be content in making fun over various happenings in the state. A perceptive observer recently wrote: “Bihar has everything for rapid economic development, coal, iron ore, bauxite, mica, steel mills and a fertile agricultural belt fed by four major rivers, yet it has nothing. Infrastructure has collapsed. Without law and order, there is no investment worth the name. Instead, there is acute poverty, gross inequality, unparalleled violence, appalling caste hatred. Bihar is retrogressing at a frightening pace.”

The recent Jehanabad killings are a part of the long chain of killings generated by the forward-backward caste tension prevailing from before the Independence in certain pockets of the state. The Central Government took the extreme step of dismissing an elected government in the state holding the Rabri Devi government responsible for its failure to maintain public order but the charge cannot really stick. The record of the Bihar government in the maintenance of law and order is better than many other states and the backward-forward caste tension in Bihar has persisted from long before the advent of Laloo Yadav in Bihar public life. It will be wrong to take it as a mere law and order issue.

The author had joined Bihar as an IAS officer in the field in 1955. One phenomenon that was obvious was that Bihari social and political affairs were controlled by four so called forward castes, i.e Rajputs, Bhumihars, Brahmins and Kayasthas and constituting only about 15 per cent of the total population. The rural areas of the state were dominated by Rajputs, Bhumihars and Brahmins while the Kayasthas dominated the services. The Kayastha domination of services can be judged from the fact that the first non-Kayastha Bihari officer in the IAS who happened to be a Bhumihar got selected for the service in 1959. Not only these forward castes were dominant in services but virtually they were the only groups that mattered in the social and political affairs of the state. Bihar Chief Minister Rabri Devi recently inaugurated an Amar Jyoti memorial to honour the seven students who had died in police firing in front of the state Secretariat in 1942 while coming in procession in support of the Quit India movement. There is no Yadav or Dalit among them because at that time the national and Bihar aspirations were articulated by only the forward castes. The 85 per cent of Biharis were non-persons and non-franchised. It was the practice that the leaders of the forward castes would decide whom to vote and others either followed them or permitted them to vote in their place. The booth capturing culture of Bihari owes its origin to the social reality prevailing in Bihar. The hold of “Manu Smriti” in Bihar was strong. The backward and the Dalit in the village had to stand up if a Brahmin or a Thakur, i.e. Rajput, would be passing by. The land owned by the forward caste farmers and cultivated by them, had necessarily to have a backward or a Dalit ploughman because the forward caste farmer would lose his caste if he was seen driving a pair of bullocks. The struggle for power was between the Rajputs and Bhumihars with Brahmins and Kayasthas joining either of them.

The social milieu of Bihar was resistant to any change. There has been no religious renaissance or reform in Bihar. The Arya Samaj movement did not make much headway. The caste mould did not allow any universal humanitarian response to any of the problems at an individual level or collective level. It was shocking for someone from Punjab to see groups exploiting distress of strangers visitors and others. In Punjab any person in distress got a spontaneous succour unlike Bihar where victims of a train accident got robbed before any relief reached them. A visitor stranded in crossing an unbridged stream could get local people to assist him in giving a push to his car after he agreed to pay a hefty amount of money after a good deal of bargaining. All over in day to day life in Bihar one comes across events which go to confirm that it was a fractured society.

The permanent settlement of Lord Cornwalis further contributed to the hardening of boundaries between the backward and forward castes. The land in Bihar and Bengal got divided among big zamindars who were invariably from the four forward castes and the contact point of the colonial administration was the zamindar. The lowest administrative unit was a subdivision of a district. The village patwari who maintained land records and collected land rent was an employee of the zamindar. The tenant/farmer cultivating the land/or tilling the land was generally from the backward castes or Dalits. The upper class farmers recorded as tenants rarely did cultivation with their own hands as it lowered their caste status. There was always a tension between the zamindars and tenants in the collection of rent. The state ensured their land revenue payment by what was called the sunset law i.e. the zamindari right automatically got auctioned if payment of land revenue that was due was not made before the sunset of the last date on which payment was due. The recovery of rent from the tenant by the landlord depended on the capacity of the landlord to extort. The strong ones among them not only could realise full amount of the rent due but also were able to impose additional levies of their own. One landlord called such levy as “motoriana” i.e. a cess for purchasing a motor car for the landlord. Although zamindari got abolished in 1949 but the zamindari left a tradition of obeying authority only if it was backed by strength, secondly, a certain legitimacy of strong arm methods, thirdly, an inclination to disown obligation and duties if one could get away with it and if it was beneficial to oneself.

The state machinery was firmly in the control of the forward castes till about 1989 although earlier there were Chief Ministers belonging to backward castes or Dalits. In 1977, Karpoori Thakur, a barber by caste, became the first backward caste Chief Minister but his being a Chief Minister did not weaken the hold of the forward castes on administration. He, however, set in motion the process that changed the class complexion of the administration in Bihar. He introduced the reservations for the backward castes in the state government in 1977-78. It was only the coming in to power of Laloo Yadav in 1989 that brought a conscious policy of picking up Dalit, backward castes and Muslim officers to be placed in key positions of authority at all levels of administration. He paid attention to the location of polling booths in villages and ensured that the backward caste, Muslim and dalit voters did not have to go to polling booths in the localities dominated by the forward castes. The social transformation that these steps brought about is there for all to see. Without doing much for the development of the state Laloo Yadav succeeded in carving out a constituency under the peculiar conditions prevailing in Bihar despite fodder scam, hostile media and all political opposition. He has to be given credit for successfully preventing outbreaks of communal riots for which Bihar had been notorious.

The Naxalites appeared on the scene during the sixties and organised the Dalits to resist oppression of the landlords and they openly advocated violence. The power for them came out of the barrel of the gun. Ranvir Sena was the landlords’ answer to the Naxalites. Ranvir Sena is recruited from Bhumihar and Rajput farmers and very interestingly Bhumihars these days are with the BJP and Rajputs continue their rivalry with Bhumihars by being with Laloo Yadav or the Congress. Samata Party came in to being to wean away backwards other than Yadavs from Laloo Yadav.

There is a strong feeling among Samata and BJP leaders that Laloo Yadav’s constituency existed in Bihar because of the political power vested in Laloo Yadav. This reading of the situation may not be correct as the foregoing would indicate. The Congress leadership has not been able to build a base among the backward castes. There seem to be some signs of Muslim and Dalit votes coming back to the Congress party due to the favourable image projected by Sonia Gandhi. The tragedy is that no one has been showing a real concern for the social, economic and administrative turmoil that is not permitting Bihar to move forward. All drama with sound and fury is about capturing political power at the Centre and in the State.

For a crime-free society
by S. Subramanian

CRIME in our society has increased manifold and people are living in mortal fear of losing their properties and lives or of suffering injuries and indignities at the hands of lumpen elements. Peace, tranquillity and crime-free ambience are essential for economic, political and social growth. Historians and travellers to India of yore, who described the Gupta Period as “Golden Age”, gave the example of an old woman walking unescorted in the dead of night with ornaments and a golden pot. In India of today, even a healthy young man is unable to walk in the main thoroughfares of our metropolises during day time, without the fear of being waylaid and dispossessed of his belongings! It is time people of India shed their indifference to the crime situation and took positive steps to restore confidence in the society. Fighting crime calls for the collective endeavour of the society and the police can only act as its fighting arm. Parliamentarians, legislators, judiciary, people at large and media, have an important role to play.

People’s representatives in Parliament and the legislatures should realise their responsibilities in controlling crime and collectively take steps to break the politician-criminal nexus. It is not our case that all our representatives are corrupt or are in league with criminals. Our pleas is that the majority of our representatives, who are virtuous, should assert themselves and ensure that the few with criminal links do not hijack our democracy to ill-fame. They should take energetic steps to resurrect and pass appropriate legislation on the recommendations of the Law Commission to make criminal law more effective; enact a new Police Act; force the government to implement the recommendations of the National Police Commission to enable the police to perform impartially and effectively; mobilise and provide leadership to the public to fight mafia and lumpen elements; and to ensure that there is no political interference in the functioning of the police. They should vociferously articulate the security needs of the people in their constituencies and spearhead police reforms.

Judiciary often forgets that it has a duty to protect the society from evil doers. Mere interpretation of law is not the role of the judiciary. Law can be an ass, impersonal and heartless. Judiciary dispenses justice, which means interpretation and enforcement of laws with humanness. Hence the phrase law and justice. A feeling is gaining ground among the public that there is an unholy nexus between some sections of judiciary, unscrupulous lawyers and criminal elements and this trio is supported by corrupt police officials. While everyone is waxing eloquent on the Vora Commission report on politician-criminal nexus, do we have the courage to set up a commission under the chairmanship of a retired Supreme Court Chief Justice to go into this alleged nexus? Marauders get bail at the drop of a hat, get acquitted on flimsy grounds and criminal trials are prolonged for decades. Even after conviction, they hardly stay inside the jail but come out on parole. Do these give confidence and build credibility in public minds about the supremacy of law and judicial process? Cannot judiciary take energetic steps to ensure that the wheels of justice move efficiently and with speed. It is said that the severity of punishment does not deter crime but the certainty of punishment does. While “due process” mandates that every one is innocent till he is proved guilty, in our country, it is being interpreted to mean that prosecution and police have to prove their innocence and bona fides in filing a criminal case against a suspect. Rule of law can prevail, only when people have faith in the credibility and impartiality of judicial process. It is time that the much touted “judicial activism” turned the mirror inside and came out with practical solutions to render speedy justice in criminal cases to the society.

Lack of credibility in the judicial process has spawned a dangerous disease among the police, the “shoot to kill syndrome”. These days police is loath to take notorious and “important” criminals in custody and file criminal cases against them. Some time ago, there was an interview in a magazine of a police officer in a metropolis, who had killed over a score of mafiosi. Have we heard of these in the past? Are we living in “wild west”, where the fastest draw becomes the local hero? As the police is accountable to the public and has a duty to protect the society and since it knows the futility of taking the dangerous criminals to court, it resorts to the shortcut of eliminating the criminals in encounters and shootouts. There is always resistance to an arrest with violence and the use of force by the police can always be justified. No one can support this practice. Yet it is a stark reality. This syndrome has dangerous portents for our society. Trigger-happy policemen spell danger to the citizens and the values of a liberal democracy. While everyone condemns the policemen for lack of sensitivity and non-observance of human rights, good policemen often ask back, are human rights a suicidal pact entered by the society to kill itself and allow the mafiosi to thrive? These are not questions of semantics but of substance.

(The writer is a former Director General of the CRPF and the NSG)

There is something...!
by K. Rajbir Deswal

NEWS has reached us from Sonepat and Karnal in Haryana that Muslims will not offer sacrifice (Qurbani) on the occasion of Id this year since Mahavir Jayanti falls on the same day. Now I understand what the famous poet Iqbal had in his mind when he said, “Kuchh baat hai jo hasti mit-ti nahin hamari...”

Iqbal perhaps hinted at this tolerance and Mahatma Gandhi perhaps had only such feelings when he propounded the “Sarva Dharma Sambhav” theory and left no stone unturned in practising the concept, much to the annoyance of some of his own ardent followers but in the larger interest of nationalism, Indianness and, above all, brotherhood of mankind.

I remember a very touching number in a movie, “Dhool ka phool,” rendered soulfully by Mohammad Rafi, “Tu Hindu banega na Musalman banega; Insaan ki aulad hai insaan banega” and further in the song were the finest expressions of amity and respect for each other’s religion — “Qur-aan na jisme ho wo mandir nahin tera; Geeta na ho jisme wo harem tera nahin hai.”

Only a couple of years back people of both communities celebrated Id and Ram Navami in Hazaribagh together by joining felicitations collectively and by exchanging gifts, sweets and greetings. Such signals should not be allowed to go unnoticed by the media for they act as balmy material on the wounding stories of communal violence.

I remember a scene at Moscow airport when I and my wife were waiting for breakfast to be served to us. Sitting next to us were two correspondents of a daily of Pakistan, Nawai-Waqt, as we could gather from their conversation. We did not know that beef slices were served to us with black, milk-less coffee. When one of the two gentlemen picked up one slice and announced that it was beef, we removed the paper-plates from our table.

The other one noticed this. When he was asked by his friend to go ahead with his beefy-helping, he looked at us, smiled and said, “No, thanks, you please carry on!” He might not even be knowing us yet he thought it proper to respect our sentiments. Our reciprocal smile to him confirmed millions and millions of spiritual bondages tolerant human beings can boast of.

It is high time people had shown the vested interests the door. I am reminded of a beautiful couplet by the noted poet Bashir Badr: Dushmani ka safar ek din, do din; Tum bhee thak jaoge, hum bhee thak jaayenge.

Id Mubarak and Jaya Jainendra!

Why not highlight good governance?

by Tavleen Singh

SOMETIMES I think it could be the fault of us in the media that good governance remains such a rare commodity in India. Could we be highlighting all the wrong issues? Could we be making a fuss about the wrong things and ignoring the few good things that do manage to happen?

We will, for instance, make headlines out of the latest “uproar” in the Rajya Sabha or the Lok Sabha and we will travel to distant corners of the country to cover some political leader’s routine speech but when it comes to pointing out that officialdom in Andhra Pradesh has forced Chandrababu Naidu to slow down his attempts at making governance faster and more efficient we say almost nothing.

So, were it not for a few paragraphs buried in the inside pages of national newspapers and a handful of editorials in some of our financial newspapers we may not even have noticed that Naidu has shelved the Andhra Pradesh Value-Added Network. It has been shelved mainly because of opposition from the state’s government employees and the sufferers will be Andhra’s citizens who, if the programme ever goes ahead, will be able to pay taxes, obtain licences, register land records and do a variety of other currently complicated things with almost no trouble at all.

To the average citizen the ugliest face of the state becomes visible when he has any interface with government at all. Things that are automatic, and take minutes in countries that have computerised these aspects of governance, can take weeks, months and even years here. Naidu is the only Chief Minister in the country who understood the need to make these things quick and easy and when I spent a day with him in Andhra Pradesh, last month, proudly showed me how even village land records have started to be computerised.

We were in Kurnool, in a land registry office that from the outside looked as tumbledown and unkempt as the average government office, but once inside we entered another world. Banks of computers had been set up in a glass-walled cabin and the Chief Minister showed me how details were now instantly available of land records in some nameless village. He also explained to me how, once this kind of government function was computerised, it would reduce not just the time taken to do something like, for instance, register a land purchase but would also reduce chances of corruption.

Anyone who has tried registering the purchase or sale of property or land in India will be able to tell you of how you fall immediately into the clutches of the dreaded babu raj. Then, usually, begins a nightmare that can only be ended if the Kafkaesque network of petty clerks, that govern such transactions, can be sufficiently placated through bribery and corruption.

Everyone is a victim, from the richest of Indians to the poorest. The rich escape by paying the poor remain victims and can often spend years waiting for the “file to move”. It is an evil system which makes a complete mockery of the word governance and Naidu needs to be praised for having dared to try and change it. But, do we in the media praise him? Usually not.

Most stories from Andhra that make it to the national press (with the honourable exception of a few business magazines and newspapers) pillory Naidu for his computerisation. They hint that he will lose the next election because he lives in cyberspace while voters live on earth. Let even the most unsubstantiated of corruption charges be made against him by the smallest of Congress leaders and these will make the front pages across the country but we, who live outside Andhra, know almost nothing about what he has managed to achieve.

It is only when you drive through spotlessly clean streets in Hyderabad, that till recently were cluttered and filthy, that realisation begins to dawn. Naidu tried to get municipal employees to do their job properly but when this made no difference he simply privatised the cleaning of the city. Giving it out on contract to those who could do the best job. It is this kind of determination to get the job done by whoever can do it best that makes Andhra’s babudom quake in its shoes. They cannot keep up with their Chief Minister nor could they care less about his dream of achieving full development in Andhra by 2020. Its a vision that he borrowed from Mohammed Mahathir and he has a much longer way to go on a long, friendless road.

Not only are his officials up in arms but their political spokesmen in the state, notable the CPM and Congress, have also been up in arms. The Marxists as usual clothe their pathetic objections in jargon that, when translated, ends up sounding like some kind of defence of the poor. The Congress is too shameless to even need to explain its position but explains it anyway on the spurious grounds that computerisation of government services will hand over revenue potential to some private entrepreneur. They would rather, as happens now, that most of this revenue go into the pockets of officials and politicians as ones.

When I was in Hyderabad I ran into an editor-friend from Penguin. He had come in the hope of getting the Chief Minister’s consent to commission a book on the “Andhra vision”. As a journalist it shamed me that even publishers were getting ahead of us in understanding what Naidu was trying to do: it should be the other way around. Why are we, in the Fourth Estate, so reluctant to support Naidu in his attempts to create an indigenous model of governance that should be emulated in other states?

The only answer I have been able to come up with is that, perhaps, we ourselves do not really understand what it is that he is trying to do. Certainly, local journalists in Hyderabad appear not to. The other reason could be just plain and simple cynicism. We are so used to useless politicians that we cannot believe that Naidu is for real.

Naidu’s other problem is that he is fairly inarticulate in trying to explain his dream and this does not help the media form a more positive image. Perhaps, instead of shelving this most important of attempts at making governance more efficient he should instead hire an advertising company to publicise exactly who will benefit from computerisation. Ordinary people will benefit and officials will suffer. That slogan alone should win him the next election.

Shekhar’s Indian touch to Oscar show

by Amita Malik

SHEKHAR SUMAN, who was presumably there for the filmi touch for the launch of the DD Sports Channel, seemed to think that Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium was Red Fort and he was doing the August 15 “bhashan” — so patriotic was his entire approach.

Strangely, for such a seasoned trooper, he came armed with all too visible endless pages of dialogue, which must have been written for him, because it abounded in the kind of “shudh” Hindi which he certainly does not use in his TV chat shows and generously laced with references, every second sentence, to the Mananiya Pradhan Mantri and the Mananiya Soochna Mantri.

There was only one occasion when a paratrooper landed a metre or so beyond the boundary line and that is the exact moment Suman chose to describe what a perfect landing it was. The bouquet to the minister was presented by the acting CEO of Prasar Bharati. It is only in India that grown men, and not charming girls or children, present bouquets to men? Looks all wrong to me. And I wonder what Mr Mahajan meant when he said that the foreign sports channels do not show Indian sport events sufficiently. I am watching the India, Pak cricket match at Jaipur on ESPN right now.

In fact, the entire function was reminiscent of the opening of our film festivals: one hour of tamasha unconnected with sports, speeches and then, at the end of all this, cricket, which was the whole point of the function and for which the crowded stadium was clamouring. There were, of course, some technical glitches, the DD crew under tremendous strain and no one minded, but those who watch the regional language programmes were irate. One Bengali viewer said she had been robbed of her Bengali programme as the channel was taken over for sports and she was not remotely interested in cricket. Others complained that DD’s international channel, where the news is usually much clearer had also vanished. But at least this column got some interesting angles on audience research.

And now I find my cable operator is giving me ATN instead of the Telugu channel. I suppose Telugu viewers will now get angry, and quite justifiably. Doordarshan’s arbitrariness in cancelling scheduled programmes, including the news, to fit in its tamashas is unheard of on other international channels. It is considered highly unprofessional and anti-viewer.

The Oscar awards function, as usual, was great fun and no doubt its nuances will be picked up by local awards function organisers although they will find it impossible to get an anchor as unique as Whoopie Goldberg, with her frequent changes of costume, including that of Elizabeth I. But I did wonder why, when Shekhar Kapur had put on a very Indian designer sherwani and Punjabi jootas, his wife had to put on a Western dress when all Western women in the hall were wearing beautiful and individualistic outfits by the world’s most exclusive designers. Our filmi women seldom have a sense of occasion. I firmly believe in the sari on international occasions. There is nothing to touch it!

“There was a bit of speculation when Shekhar came on Simi Garewal’s revived Rendezvous” without his beard and in the chat with Mahesh Bhatt just before he left for the Oscars with a freshly grown one. Shekhar appeared with and without his wife in two of Simi’s shows and did wince a bit when his wife, Suchitra, used the inelegant phrase “pissed off”.

“I think I preferred Simi in soft focus in her earlier show, her make-up looks a bit harsh this time. And, I also preferred the earlier set. This one seems to have walls on wheels and from certain angles the contraption looks like the fruit trolleys at Covent Garden. I feel nervous they will start rolling away. Simi, don’t take this to heart. To use the old-fashioned phrase, I am only pulling your leg!

Ru-Ba-Ru celebrated its second century by getting a long in-depth interview with the normally reticent Lata Mangeshkar. Rajiv Shukla had certainly done his homework, with meticulous details about her childhood and after, and she relaxed correspondingly. This is archive stuff and should be preserved. Planned archive interviews are non-existent in India and Doordarshan has either erased or lost such gems as a dialogue between Rasoolan Bai and Siddheshwari Devi.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) has a special unit which records people for posterity and is sworn to secrecy for a period of time. We are in a sorry position where even Nehru has not been properly archived for posterity by the media, only the Films Division having filmed him sporadically for news value as a politician. I think Simi Garewal did Rajiv Gandhi. But our general record is dismal. It’s about time something was done about it.

75 YEARS AGO

Plague at Sialkot

THE havoc that this epidemic of plague did in the year 1923 in taking away the lives of good many souls was not yet completely obliterated from the minds of its inhabitants when they were suddenly caught in its clutches once again.

A few days ago some cases occurred in some quarters of the city, but thanks are due to the city fathers who taught the people the necessity of inoculation.

A large number of persons, including a good many villagers, are daily seen in the compound of the Health Officer’s Department for inoculation. The daily average is about 200. The Sanitary Inspectors are putting their best in preserving the sanitation and in disinfecting the residential buildings.