P A G E
Monday, March 29, 1999
today's calendar
|
E D I T O R I A L P A G E |
Monday, March 29, 1999 |
| weather n
spotlight today's calendar |
||
|
Revised
phone tariff
GAPS
IN HANDLING TERRORISM |
 |
When
Madras HC was both right & wrong
Crime
situation worsening
That’s
right, and wrong
Assam
Legislature: Reductions in grants |
||||||||
 |
|
Revised phone tariff BOTH telephone subscribers and service providers have plenty to be happy about. The rental and call charges will remain unchanged though the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) gave the nod for a marginal increase. But its recommendation to slash the long distance tariff by 22 per cent for national and 30 per cent for international calls will come into force on April 15. It is the best of both worlds for those who do not make more than 200 local calls but occasionally use the STD facility. As for those who are already in the business of basic and cellular phone services, there is a clear signal that their demand for a revenue-sharing arrangement will receive a positive response. After flatly refusing to allow them to switch over from a hefty licence fee, the new telecom policy, announced on Friday, promises to refer the issue to the Attorney General for a final decision. True, he has earlier rejected the demand but it was quite a while ago and the situation has changed drastically. Now there will be more than two players in each district with the Department entering as the third operator and those seeking licence to the vacant districts — seven in basic and six in cellular services — will take the revenue-sharing option. Anyway, the system cannot have two different sets of rules for the old and new service providers. Union Communications
Minister Jagmohan is a stickler for rules. He went
strictly by the letter of the law in successfully
confronting the non-paying licence holders for basic and
cellular services and also the TRAI. But once the Group
on Telecommunications rewrote the basic rules to guide
the sector on to a fast forward path, he quickly reversed
gear. The TRAI will have the power to arbitrate all
disputes between licence holders, specifically including
the Department of Telecommunications. The DoT will be
restructured, and will shed its power to issue licences.
In fact, the new policy is designed to speed up the
reforms in this vital sector so that the number of
telephones will multiply in the years to come. At present
there are only 1.8 crore phones, including about 32 lakh
in rural areas. The plan is to push this to about seven
crore by 2005 and then double it in the next five years.
The DoT’s initial objection to the sharp reduction
in the tariff for long distance calls stemmed from its
justified fear that the revenue loss will hamper, if not
jeopardise, the expansion project. Incidentally, the
lowering of the international call charges ends a
long-standing dispute with the American telecom
regulator. The end to the DoT-TRAI dispute is doubly
welcome as it clears the grey area in their respective
roles. In the days to come, the government should
redefine the ambit of the regulator’s powers and how
much it is prepared to follow the latter’s
intervention. This is important before a similar
authority comes into existence to guide the insurance and
electricity sectors. |
Spare Netaji, please WHAT purpose would be served by ordering yet another enquiry into the disappearance of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose in South-East Asia while mobilising support for the Indian National Army? The nation has more or less accepted the theory that Netaji, one of the tallest leaders of the freedom movement, was killed in an air crash and the urn kept in a temple in Japan contains his ashes. It is not that serious attempts have not been made in the past by the government and friends of Netaji to reconstruct the circumstances of the air crash and whether the charred remains were rightly presumed to belong to him. The announcement about the possibility of a fresh enquiry was made by Union Home Minister L.K. Advani in Delhi last week. He explained that the Union Home Ministry was merely carrying out the directives of the Calcutta High Court which in April, 1998, had asked the government to "launch a vigorous enquiry to end the controversy". However, it is not clear whether a fresh enquiry into the circumstances leading to the death of Netaji would start a new controversy or effectively cap the old one forever. The fact that the West Bengal Assembly too passed a resolution in December,1998, supporting the Calcutta High Court directive for a fresh probe too cannot be ignored. Since the proposal drawn up by the Home Ministry is yet to be cleared by the Union Cabinet it is still not too late to raise a few questions. Netaji was a Bengali by birth just as Mahatma Gandhi was a Gujarati. Yet the two leaders because of their selfless contribution to the freedom struggle belong to the entire country. By this logic, the legal
merit, if any, in the demand for a fresh probe in the
death or disappearance of Netaji should have been decided
by the Supreme Court. Why should the people of Bengal
have exclusive claim over the glorious legacy of Subhas
Chandra Bose? By the same token the resolution of the
West Bengal Assembly too seeks to reduce the status of
Netaji to that of a regional leader. It would do no harm
if it were to be re-emphasised that Netaji belonged to
the entire nation and, therefore, only Parliament and not
a State Assembly should be the proper forum for
discussing his disappearance or deciding whether a fresh
enquiry in his disappearance was necessary. Without
meaning to hurt the sentiments of the countless followers
of Netaji it may also be in order to point out that two
enquiries have already been conducted for resolving the
controversy about his disappearance after the air crash
somewhere in the jungles of South-East Asia. The first
was conducted by his colleague and confidante, Shahnawaz
Khan, in 1956, and the second by Justice B.B. Khosla in
1970. Both believed that he was killed in the crash. Yet
there are those who insist that a third enquiry is
necessary to give the controversy a satisfactory ending!
In this context it may be pertinent to point out that a
similar question was raised in the Lok Sabha by Samar
Guha in 1978. And the reply of Morarji Desai, the then
Prime Minister, was that no useful purpose would be
served by ordering a fresh enquiry. While taking a
decision on the Home Ministry's proposal the Union
Cabinet would do well not to ignore Morarji Desai's
observation on the issue. |
GAPS IN HANDLING TERRORISM I AM unable to subscribe to the view that terrorism is only a passing phase, and that in the next century we will be able to clean up our democracies of gun culture and settle down to a happy life ever after. In fact, I foresee just the opposite. We will have to face much violence of the Mumbai underworld type, even more cross-border terrorism of the J&K and Northeast types, and much infiltration from Bangladesh. The indications are there for all to see in the arms drops from the air, and the much larger inflow of weapons and explosives from all sides. Then there is turmoil in Afghanistan, unemployment and Taliban-type schools, and the guns and drug trade which has become an industry in some of the border areas in the North and the East. As long as we have guns and explosives available in plenty, and accept wayward governments in border areas, we will have terrorism. There is hardly any part of the world in which there is as much bloodshed as South-East Asia. We have to be grateful for the fact that our security forces have been able to contain the menace. The price that we have had to pay has been considerable in that we have neglected the development of our poverty-stricken areas. It is an irony of our times that America that started the turmoil in Afghanistan, and distributed weapons recklessly that led to the killing and maiming of millions, now gives lessons to us on human rights and friendship. I feel that we have not given enough thought to improving our methods of dealing with terrorism.Our methods will have to be radically improved. The laws are lax, judicial responsibility is absent, police knowledge of criminals is inadequate, preventive action is almost nil, computerisation of information is not fully developed, the watch on suspicious characters is negligible, and growth of slums has made it difficult to spot terrorists who are hiding there. The availability of weapons is almost unchecked because our traps for them are never laid continuously. Our criminal justice system is not designed to deal with the types of heinous crimes that have appeared in our country in the past 50 years. Our laws and the legal system were never intended to deal with terrorism. The Mumbai blast cases are an instance in point. Mumbai was rocked by the blasts in 1993. In my opinion, the registration and investigation of cases were not correct. Too many people were prosecuted together, and the result is that the trials have made scant progress. If we want to deal with terrorism effectively, we have to make our laws and procedures effective. The real cause of Pakistan-sponsored terrorism in J & K is not a plebiscite or a chance to the people of the state to vote for their future, but to channel the overflow from the war-ravaged areas of Afghanistan, which would flood Pakistan if it is not directed elsewhere. It is true, however, that it has caught the imagination of the Pakistani people and has become a sort of pre-condition to any “settlement” of the India-Pakistan question. Every person in Pakistan knows that India will not give up Kashmir, not even agree to plebiscite if suitable conditions are not created, and if freedom to choose the alternatives is not given to the people who are voting for India, Pakistan or independence. I reckon that if these three choices are freely given to the people of J&K after suitable conditions have been created the voting would roughly be 25 per cent for independence, 20 per cent for Pakistan and 45 per cent for India — 10 per cent undecided. If we obtain a full vote in the Hindu areas of Jammu, the Buddhist areas of Ladakh and the border areas of Poonch and Rajouri, it is likely that we will have a much larger number voting for India, probably 55 per cent. It is clear that the situation has radically changed in the past few years, and few in Pakistan or even in India are aware of it. If we analyse the sentiment in the Kashmir valley we will find that it is not as much pro-Pakistan as it is anti-establishment, due to the unforgivable mistakes we have committed, for which we have never given proper compensation. People in Jammu & Kashmir know the prevailing conditions in Pakistan. They are not likely to want to move into a country that is mauled every second day by ethnic violence, or where people are mowed down in mosques by motorcycle-borne gunmen; and a country which is so deeply in a financial mess that every second month there is an appeal for help to save it from bankruptcy. The Muslims who went to Pakistan from India are struggling for life in Karachi, and many, I think, may want to come back to India given a chance. People who say that India wants to subjugate Pakistan do not know that even the view in favour of a confederation. (which I too held) is no longer favoured. The first requirement in the state of Jammu & Kashmir and the North-East is good governance. Have we been able to provide it? Do the crores that we provide for the development of the border states reach the border people? Or are these used to build hotels and swanky houses in the neighbourhood of our cities? I would go on to say that unless we introduce quick and punitive punishment to all those who are corrupt in the border areas, the funds that we expend will not be used to reduce poverty and unemployment the driving force for terrorism. The price we have had to pay for extra vigilance in J&K is evident in the laxity on the borders on West Bengal, Assam and Tripura on the Bangladesh side. We have kept on reducing battalions on this border to strengthen the situation in Jammu and Kashmir. In consequence we have made this border porous. Nobody can estimate how many have come or are coming into India to settle in border areas. There may be a great deal of exaggeration in what is happening, but the government owes it to the people to give an accurate and clear picture, and state what can be done to improve the arrangements. Despite all the heroic endeavours of Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee and Mr Nawaz Sharif, it is a vain hope to think that terrorism will decline in the near future. Nor can we expect that on both sides politicians can break away from the fanatic lobbies. The fanatics on both sides
never win elections. The people dislike them, but they
have an enormous nuisance value. They can create street
violence at any time. Our laws and police cannot cope
with them or with the mob rule and looting that breaks
out. The leaders are afraid of them because in our
democracies we have come to believe that creating
disturbances is the divine right of every individual.
Even the Lahore Declaration, which is the first sign of
maturity in our subcontinent, is viewed with suspicion by
those whose existence is based on hatred and destruction.
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our democracies, but in
our criminal justice systems, which see nothing wrong in
destruction and fanaticism, and in violating the
political will. |
PPE syndrome
in
Third World AS we enter the 21st century, the most important problem affecting humanity, and specially the countries of the Third World, is what has been termed as the poverty -population-environment (PPE) syndrome. We know poverty contributes to population growth by maintaining the demand for high fertility, and population growth, in turn, perpetuates poverty by impeding development. Environmental stress is both a cause and effect of poverty and population growth. With the population rising sharply in the underdeveloped (or developing countries of Asia and Africa, the PPE syndrome is expected to pose a major challenge to development in these countries as we enter the next century. Around 30 per cent of people in developing countries are affected by poverty and about 1.3 billion live there on less than $ 1 a day. The harm created by over-population are actually more compelling as illustrations of the baneful environmental consequences of poverty. Peasants do not have the same access as their better-off compatriots to natural gas and petroleum, and so they must destroy the forest. According to a World Bank expert, the connections among population growth, poverty and environment are usually exacerbated by powerful economic and political factors. “Distortion of any pricing policies, urban basis in development expenditure ... half-hearted agrarian reforms and failure to establish rights of land tenure, mismanagement of common lands, massive international indebtedness, intergroup conflicts, ethnocide, and genocide have all contributed to the vicious downward spiral of poverty and environmental degradation. The poor have been exploited, shifted and marginalised to the extent that they have no choice but to participate in the denigration of resources with full knowledge that they are mortgaging their own future”, says the report. Ironically, some development strategies have and may actually make PPE problems worse by failing to account for fundamental inequities between the rich and the poor. The example of the world food production is pertinent in this context as the green revolution produced enormous increases in per capita food production, but that bounty was not evenly distributed. Global food markets have been plagued by surpluses, yet more than one billion of the world population, remains malnourished. According to Mark Sagoff, Director of the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy at the University of Maryland, “the vast increases in yields per acre of recent decades depend on technologies that do nothing for subsistence farmers who cannot afford to purchase them”. And because Green Revolution techniques make agriculture more profitable, rich farmers buy the best, flattest land while poor peasants are forced into environmentally fragile marginal lands. In India, the Philippines and Indonesia, all of whom have benefited from the Green Revolution, half of the rural population lives below the poverty line. It has generally been agreed that the development models, which aim at gaining profits and satisfying market forces, do not meet the basic human needs of the population. In this context mention may be made of structural adjustment policies (of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund) which, though intended to foster economic growth, have had the opposite effect. The 33 African countries that received structural adjustment loans in the 1980s experienced a steady decline in gross domestic product, food production and social spending and a 17 per cent increase in people living in poverty. It may be pertinent in this connection to refer to Prof. Amartya Sen who rejected the contention of neo-classical economists and emphasised that the intervention of the government was necessary in certain sectors such as health and primary education, and the role of market forces in these sectors was limited. Similarly, he contended that famines and starvation deaths had taken place in spite of the availability of foodgrains which once again proved that the state’s intervention in certain sectors was imperative. During his recent visit to India, Professor Sen very rightly pointed out the need for emulating China and giving proper stress on health and basic education for only then can population growth be checked and people made conscious of their rights in society. The proper distribution of resources and wealth of a nation has also been pointed out by him, for only then can the poorer echelons of society get their due share of the basic necessities — food, clothing and shelter. On a global level, the
unequal distribution of resources is even more striking.
Globally, 20 per cent of the world’s population in
the highest income countries account for 86 per cent of
total private consumption expenditures, the poorest 20
per cent a minuscule 1.3 per cent. In fact, 20 per cent
of the world’s population has been left out of the
consumption explosion. The inequalities that persist
between the rich and the poor and between the urban and
the rural sectors have indeed assumed glaring
proportions. — INFA |
That’s
right, and wrong IT was our last evening in Canada before we moved on to our elder son across the border. “Let’s go to Sebastian’s,” said our bahu who is not exactly fond of cooking and whose idea for dinner every evening at five (yes, five o’clock) was some slices of meat and some potatoes, with lots of onion sprinkled on the meat in an attempt at taste. A table for four with a high chair for Julia and baby Peter barely two weeks old, perched on a chair in his car seat which doubled as a sort of carry bag, with me as an escort while the three adults went off to survey the fare on offer. Sebastian’s is very reasonable, very popular, and accessible by bus — important for us. The crowd is mostly young. I noticed the young woman sitting on a stool by the window, her plate of salad and carton of skimmed milk on the counter in front of her-regulation fare as recommended by the pundits. Later when it was my turn to go up to the long counter to choose my dish (no, no rabbit food for me) I saw her at the sweets and which had a simply enormous choice of tempting cakes and puddings, all guaranteed to put to nought the sacrifice just made at the altar of slimming at which all the priests and priestesses of good health worship. The next day in the aircraft I began to think of the contrariness of human nature, and of the bogus advice often dished out by so-called experts who have to earn a living, who have to churn out reports to justify their worth to the corporations or the research labs which hire them. Only the previous week in the public library in a book published by Vogue I read a warning that all cosmetics have chemicals in them, even baby products. (The saving grace is that American law requires that these be listed on the label.) So beware of using these (it said.) A few pages later I read another warning : Don’t go out in the sun without covering yourself with a sun block cream containing of course an umbrella of chemicals. Here are a few examples of recent conflicting advice culled from the Herald and some other newspapers. Don’t take estrogen to avoid osteoporosis; eat a high calcium diet – milk, yogurt, cheese. This from a magazine last month in the British Library in Pune. Later in the same article, it solemnly says that to avoid breast cancer stay clear of dairy products. Beware of caffeine: many eatables are strong in caffeine, specially tea, coffee and chocolate (which stimulates something in the brain which induces a state of euphoria). A day or two later: Tea is good for you, good against heart attacks, cancer, strokes and even caries. It so happens that we drink large mugs of tea three times a day, a practice going back to our days in Darjeeling–rather weak tea with a spoon or two of milk, not the revolting stuff most people have. Butter versus margarine; skimmed milk against milk with high fat or medium fat content. A cousin and his wife in Bryn Mawr got fed up and now take both butter and full cream milk in reasonable quantities. (In America milk is available in a variety of percentages of fat.) And only yesterday in the Herald I read that a high fibre diet guards against colon and rectal cancer. Eat fruits, vegetables, lentils and so forth. And recently the Asian Age has a front page article : Raw fruits can lead to impotence. So says an ayurvedic doctor. What price good eating and
good living — and health! |
When Madras HC was both right & wrong
OF all the branches of the law, that which pertains to the privileges and immunities of Parliament (or State legislatures) is perhaps the most difficult, complicated and obscure. And yet there can be no doubt that if there is one case where the legislature has legitimately and properly exercised its power of punishment for contempt, or breach of privilege, it is the Chennai case relating to AIADMK MLA, R. Thamaraikkani and his bleeding, physical assault on a Minister within the House. Equally undoubted, despite the perpetual conflict between the legislature and the courts over the exclusivity of the former’s power to punish for contempt, is the fact that in intervening to release Mr Thamaraikkani on bail and suspending till final judgement the State Assembly’s March 23 resolution sentencing him to 15 days imprisonment, the Madras High Court has acted illegally and wholly without jurisdiction. I have referred deliberately to the Assembly’s March 23 resolution rather than the Speaker’s March 22 order directing Mr Thamaraikkani’s detention for a week. The privileges of the House are the privileges of the House and not of the Speaker and he has no power of commitment for contempt, or breach of privilege, independently of the House. In mistaking himself for the House and exercising that power as if it were his own, the Speaker too acted illegally, totally illegally, and without jurisdiction and the order was rightly suspended by the High Court in a habeas corpus petition seeking Mr Thamaraikkani’s release. Unfortunately, however (though not surprisingly), the High Court followed up an absolutely correct decision with a palpably incorrect one. Not surprisingly (I said) because all institutions of the state have in recent times betrayed this tendency to slip from a proper exercise of power to an excessive exercise of it without realising the distinction between the two. As the latest, 1997 edition of Erskine May’s hallowed classic on parliamentary practice puts it and as the Supreme Court ruled in 1964 in Keshav Singh’s case in its famous advisory opinion on the subject, the origin of the legislature’s power to punish for contempt is to be found in the medieval concept of the English Parliament as a court of justice: the “High Court of Parliament”. The nature and effect of the power was thus stated in 1771 by Lord Chief Justice De Grey in Brass Crosby’s case: “When the House of Commons adjudge anything to be a contempt or a breach of privilege, their adjudication is a conviction, and their commitment in consequence is execution; and no court can discharge or bail a person that is in execution by the judgement of any other court”. Much water, needless to say, has flown through both the Thames and the Yamuna since then. Especially the latter. Described by the late H.M. Seervai as the “most one-sided opinion ever delivered by the Supreme Court”, the majority opinion in Keshav Singh’s case considerably dilutes the rigour of the penal jurisdiction of the legislatures in India. And expands correspondingly, and to an extent unparalleled in England, the scope of judicial review of such jurisdiction. If in a given case, said Chief Justice P.B. Gajendragadkar for the court, the allegation made by a citizen is that he has been deprived of his liberty by the legislature not in accordance with law but for “capricious and mala fide reasons”, the court will be entitled to examine the contention for itself and pronounce upon its validity. It would be no answer in such a case to say, as it is open on behalf of the House of Commons to say, that the warrant in execution of which the citizen has been detained is a general, unspeaking warrant that does not disclose the particular facts constituting the contempt and the court has no jurisdiction to go behind it and conduct an enquiry of its own. Nor, ruled the Chief Justice in another major departure from the British position, are the High Courts or the Supreme Court powerless to grant bail to the citizen pending a judicial enquiry into the validity of his detention. The power to grant interim relief, he said, is an implied adjunct of the power to grant the main relief. But the most important point, a point that the High Court at Madras has totally and sadly missed, is that Keshav Singh’s case was limited to contempts committed outside the House as the CJI repeatedly stressed and has no application to contempts by members within the House or in full view of the House. “In rendering our answer” to the Presidential reference, said the last, the very last para of the Supreme Court’s advisory opinion, “we ought to preface our answer with the observation that the answer is confined to cases in relation to contempt alleged to have been committed by a citizen, who is not a member of the House, outside the four walls of the legislature”. Cases of contempt, or breach of privilege, by members within the House or in full view of the House raise totally different considerations. It is to those
considerations, and the law respecting them, that I
propose to turn next week. |
Crime situation worsening
I AM sitting confused. Confused whether I should just concentrate on the crime situation in the Capital, or else write about the usual activities that will perhaps continue amidst the murders and lootmaars taking place all around. But the worsening situation has made a difference. Even the diehards look at their watches if partying continues to proceed beyond a certain hour, with the invariable sentence following: “We have a long way to go and you know the crime situation around...”. And here in the Capital this situation is definitely and very obviously linked to the degenerating social fabric and the heady rise of materialism. A tight impasse of sorts. Sometime back when I had asked sociologist Ashis Nandy if there was an answer to the haphazard chaos on the social scene he had sounded dismayed and used sarcasm to convey the gravity “No, no way out unless, of course, you make it compulsory for people to drink 10 bottles of a soft drink or gulp down a similar number of burgers per day. This might produce a reaction of sorts and they could think of reverting to our home ground realities and situations....” But, here, who would have the courage to enforce a strict code along these lines. It seems to be the perfect do-as-you-want state of affairs. Or even a not-do-a-thing state, except pass orders on files. In this context it will be relevant to mention that when probed about the shift of the office of Chief Commissioner of Disabilities to Nagpur (the order is hanging on since February) one was dismayed to know that since the office is in a state of suspense there seems no headway at all in the work. So much so that even the slots of the State Disabilities Commissioners are lying vacant in the great majority of the state capitals. The officers manning CCD office cannot be blamed, for there seems total chaos, as to where they are expected to base their headquarters. For all obvious purposes it had to be in the capital city but, then sometime around last October they were told to shift to Guwahati, then came up Bhopal on the agenda, followed by Ghaziabad and Noida, then the mention of Wardha as the next possible place of shift. And now, of course, it’s Nagpur. There seems total confusion ongoing as to where they are expected to carry their packed bags and file bundles. The NGOs working in the disability sector sound frustrated, and say that if they point out exactly this to the Minister concerned, Ms Menaka Gandhi, she seems to get all the more determined that a shift to Nagpur has to take place at all costs. Perhaps, even at the cost of our 5 to 7 per cent disabled population. Focus on Jayalalitha Before I write about other distractions of the week, the biggest seems to be the arrival of the AIADMK chief Ms Jayalalitha. Forget about her being honoured by feminist activist Veena Nayyar or Dr Swamy’s tea party being hosted for her (almost akin to Alice’s peculiar tea party in Wonderland, except for the fact that we are not living in any ‘wonderland’ times) but the crucial factor remains whether she would be able to cause a furore of sorts over the issue of the dismissal of Admiral Bhagwat. This seems doubtful, for the stage of causing a furore seems far left behind. Unless, of course, Bhagwat supporters have prostrated themselves before her. No, I am not resorting to fertile sequences of imagination but have actually seen several of Delhi’s who’s who prostrating right in front of her. In fact, sources even insist that whilst she walks down the corridors of the particular five star hotel she chooses to stay in (whilst in New Delhi) there are several of those almost touching her feet. Before I move ahead I must mention that though even this time, on her arrival here, she had checked in that particular hotel but strangely checked out the very next morning. But the hotel spokesperson refused to say where she has shifted. In all probability to another five star hotel. Meanwhile, Admiral Bhagwat had been in town for most part of the last fortnight but had been maintaining a low profile. Croatians exposing ....... Ironical it may sound that though Yugoslavia is being bombarded by NATO but the country Croatia (carved out of it) is at present making every effort trying to project itself on the Indian scene. In one of my last month’s column I had mentioned that the Embassy of Croatia held a festival of Croatian films and now comes the invite for seeing Croatian folk dances and music by their socalled “Lado” group on April 1. And a further invite for witnessing Croatian fashion wear, at the poolside of a luxury hotel here. Another of those ironies Just about the time veteran theatre personality Zohra Sehgal joined hands with her Pakistan based sister Uzra Butt on stage here, after a gap of 40 years, trickled in news of the passing away of Uday Shankar’s son Anand Shankar. And that perhaps might have brought about considerable grief for don’t overlook the fact that both these sisters had broken all social and family traditions to join Uday Shankar’s ballet group and had initially been trained by him at his school in Ranikhet. In fact, Zohra Sehgal seems so obsessed with that phase of her life that during the course of an interview she’d told me details revolving around living in that ballet school. Also vignettes of Uday Shankar’s personality especially those pertaining to his personal life — how he’d suddenly proposed and got married to Amala, the birth of their children etc. .... Zohra seemed to remember every detail, even the dialogues he’d uttered and the consequences of each of those uttered dialogues. Here, there seems considerable anxiety vis a vis Pt Ravi Shankar’s health too. It is said he has been upset by the accusations that he had pulled strings for the Bharat Ratna and now the shock of the rather untimely passing away of his nephew Anand Shankar could further distress him. HRD minister The other news is that HRD
Minister Murli Manohar Joshi will be visiting Anandpur
Sahib on April 7 to inaugurate a light and sound
programme and thereafter, from April 8 morning, the
general celebrations will take off. |
Assam Legislature: Reductions in grants AT the meeting of the Assam Legislative Council the motion to reject the provision of Rs 93,160 for the Divisional Commissioner’s Establishment was opposed on behalf of the Government and it was stated that so long as the Commissioners were in office the removal of the establishment would seriously handicap their work. Hon. Mr Reid pointed out that the abolition of the Commissioners was not a provincial, but an all-India question and as such the local Council was not competent to deal with the motion. Col. Smiles moved an amendment for a nominal reduction of the provision by Rs 1,000 chiefly to impress on the Government the necessity for the ultimate abolition of the commissionerships and it was carried. The provision of Rs 15,400
for the steam launch Kestrel used by the Executive
Members and the Ministers was reduced to Rs 5,400 and the
provisions of Rs 16,270 for a saloon for the Railway
Police Superintendent and of Rs 36,600 for the salaries
of the Deputy Superintendents were refused; but the
motion to omit Rs 79,618 under the Criminal Investigation
Department was thrown out. |
 |
 |
| Nation
| Punjab | Haryana | Himachal Pradesh | Jammu & Kashmir | | Chandigarh | Business | Sport | | Mailbag | Spotlight | World | 50 years of Independence | Weather | | Search | Subscribe | Archive | Suggestion | Home | E-mail | |
