Many ills of industry
IT was a subtly changed Prime Minister who went to address the annual meeting of FICCI (Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry) on Saturday.

Promoting VIPism
SURVEYS conducted by professionally competent organisations have shown that a vast majority of Indians are in favour of doing away with the colonial practice of according VIP status to individuals holding high public office or performing sensitive state duties.

INDO-PAK RELATIONS
Musharraf puts the clock back
by T.V. Rajeswar
HISTORY often repeats itself but not so starkly as it has happened in Pakistan, Mr Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the Prime Minister of Pakistan during 1971-77, appointed Lt Gen Zia-Ul-Haq as Pakistan’s army chief superseding a couple of his seniors. Little did he expect that he would be overthrown in a coup by him. Not only was Mr Bhutto thrown in jail but after a contrived judicial process he was hanged by the vengeful army chief.

Credit policy: no respite for business
by Bharat Jhunjhunwala
“WHY is it that Indian businessmen cannot produce quality products like the multinationals?” asked a housewife during a “swadeshi” meeting. It is, indeed, a valid question. The government cannot impose sacrifices upon the people for the inefficiencies of the Indian business. But, in this case, the government itself appears to be responsible, in part, at least.

Bhutto, Sharif; and, yes, Munir!
by Anupam Gupta
WILL Pakistan relive the tragedy of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto? Confined, like Bhutto initially was, in the hills of Murree outside Islamabad and driven to court on November 19 in an armoured personnel carrier, will Nawaz Sharif too be judicially murdered?

Focus on prison conditions
by Humra Quraishi
WITH the recent outbreak of violence in the Central Prison at Chennai, some focus has come about on prison conditions. In fact, just a while back I was talking to Mohini Giri (former chairperson of the National Commission For Women and now heading the Guild Of Service) and she told me that last year she had visited 80 jails all over the country to study the conditions prevailing there.

DC with a difference
by Harwant Singh
TO be deputy commissioner of a tribal district in a remote corner of the country, where the people are still struggling to come out of a primitive way of life, mired in rituals, tribal laws and superstition, can be a fulfilling experience.

75 Years Ago

November 22, 1924
Definition of Swaraj
NO objection will be taken in any national quarter to the opinion expressed by the recent UP Political Conference, that Swaraj means full freedom and that the form of the future government of India should be democratic.

Many ills of industry

IT was a subtly changed Prime Minister who went to address the annual meeting of FICCI (Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry) on Saturday. Last year he was on a win-the-big-men expedition and held out an assorted set of promises and unveiled his pet project of a highway linking the four corners of the country. Not this year. He was affable, even humorous on occasion, but tough in his attitude. He made five demands on the assembled gentry, which evoked mild agreement to shocked acceptance. Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee started off pleasantly by appealing for generous help to the cyclone-devastated Orissa people. Being fair to the small scale units and improving quality of the products and efficiency on the plant floor were gentle rebukes but easily acceptable. There was then an attempt to sensitise the captains of industry to the economic and social reality outside their small world; he felt that they should involve themselves in strengthening the social infrastructure. The implied accusation of indifference was hurting but bearable. Then came the stinging rap on the knuckle. “Please fulfil your obligations to banks and financial institutions,” he exhorted. This translates to, pay up the accumulated loans which have already turned bad or threaten to do so. The bad debts of banks alone comes to over Rs 50,000 crore and if the industry repays even a part of it, Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha will breathe easy for some days. The Prime Minister had only the financial health of the banks in mind, but industrialists are normally a nervous lot when the government demands its money back. Is any harsh measure in the offing and is General Musharraf providing inspiration with his savage crackdown on loan defaulters? The FICCI members and their compatriots have plenty to mull over.

There was also the feel-good part of the Prime Minister’s speech.There will be focused efforts on all promised reforms, particularly in the telecom and financial sectors and in reining in the mounting revenue and fiscal deficits. There was even praise for the tradition of smooth election of the FICCI president and others. Mr Sinha was more specific and, as is his wont, reeled off figures. The government cannot lower the bank interest rate but can do its mite to push the rate down, he said He meant that the government will borrow less from the banks and the lower demand for money will make it cheaper. Uncomfortably for him, his Ministry was saying the opposite. Up to October borrowing has gone up by nearly 7 per cent, although a better inflow of revenue in the coming months may reverse this process. But the point is that government efforts to depend less on banks to meet its day-to-day expenses are not visible. There is this other problem about the ongoing reforms. Early this year the government liberalised import of several goods and among them small domestic appliances. Free import made Chinese goods very cheap, because of a combination of subsidy, pressure to export and quixotic Indian tax laws. As a result, giant marketing organisations are poised to tap this lucrative source and flood the local shops. The hitherto local suppliers feel stranded. The Prime Minister’s appeal about being fair to the small scale units reflects this plight.

Promoting VIPism

SURVEYS conducted by professionally competent organisations have shown that a vast majority of Indians are in favour of doing away with the colonial practice of according VIP status to individuals holding high public office or performing sensitive state duties. Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit evidently belongs to the rapidly proliferating class of politicians and public servants which believes that vulgar display of power makes democracy look as majestic as the discarded monarchy. That is why she has decided to amend the Delhi Motor Vehicles Rules. These rules in their present form place troublesome limitations on the use of red or blue lights on official vehicles or private cars the VIPs may be using in their official capacity. The ever obliging Delhi Transport Minister, Mr Pervez Hashmi, has been directed to put into place the necessary amendments. Reports suggest that he has already done the needful in double quick time for enlarging the list of VIPs who would be entitled to flash their status with the help of red or blue lights. The legally approved sound and light show on "sarkari" wheels would be of immense help to the ever-abusive policemen in forcing other road-users into according the VIPs, sitting behind tainted glasses, the right of way on the over-crowded roads of Delhi. After all the important business of state cannot be allowed to slow down for the convenience of ordinary mortals! The need for amending the rules arose following a letter from the Deputy Commissioner of Police {Traffic} requesting the Delhi Assembly Speaker and the administration to have the unauthorised beacons atop the vehicles of bureaucrats and legislators removed or face action. It is unfortunate that the Delhi Government has decided to defy rather than respect popular opinion against the proliferation of VIP culture not only in the national capital but across the country.

But who cares for public opinion? If public opinion had any value, the promotion of VIPism would have by now been abandoned by the political leadership and the bureaucracy. If public opinion had carried any weight, there would have been a substantial reduction and not addition of names in the list of VIPs entitled to various types of security cover at the tax-payers' expense. Those who say that the VIP culture is a legacy of the Raj days need to understand the distinction between the British and the colonial systems of governance. The British system was on display less than a month ago when Prime Minister Tony Blair got caught in a traffic snarl in London. He, along with his entourage of five or six personnel including securitymen, walked up to the nearest underground rail station and paid {for all} for the ride back to office from his own pocket. The colonial values were totally different and were meant to establish the superiority of the British rulers over their Indian subjects. However, it may not be wrong to say that the days of VIPism in the country are numbered. It is a negation of a fundamental principle of democratic functioning. Increased awareness of the rights of " we, the people of India", as was evident in television coverage of the general elections, should play a major role in removing the thorn of VIPism from the body of democracy. In Orissa politicians and bureaucrats avoided visiting the cyclone devastated areas because the red lights on their vehicles or their VIP status may not have stopped the hungry mobs from lynching them. The fact of the matter is that no one now likes to be ridden rough shod by pompous officials and politicians. What Mrs Sheila Dikshit is trying to do in Delhi by expanding the list of VIPs is akin to swimming against the dangerously strong current of public opinion against such a move.

INDO-PAK RELATIONS
Musharraf puts the clock back
by T.V. Rajeswar

HISTORY often repeats itself but not so starkly as it has happened in Pakistan, Mr Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the Prime Minister of Pakistan during 1971-77, appointed Lt Gen Zia-Ul-Haq as Pakistan’s army chief superseding a couple of his seniors. Little did he expect that he would be overthrown in a coup by him. Not only was Mr Bhutto thrown in jail but after a contrived judicial process he was hanged by the vengeful army chief.

Ten years later history repeated itself. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif handpicked Lt Gen Pervez Musharraf as army chief after superseding at least two other Lt Generals. His choice proved to be his undoing in that the General led him into the Kargil misadventure, but worse was to follow. Just a year after he appointed Gen Musharraf as army chief he was thrown out and also put in custody. Investigations have been instituted and there is a murder charge among others, coming up against Mr Sharif.

It is more than a month since Gen Musharraf declared himself as the Chief Executive of Pakistan, a novel designation which is a thin disguise of his real role as martial law administrator. The provinces have been brought under army generals and it has been made clear that the army would be the final arbiter in every walk of life in Pakistan. Institutions like President of Pakistan and the Supreme Court are still there but only in form. Even before the army coup on Oct 12, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had handed over certain vital functions like enforcement of law and order in the strife-torn Sind province with particular emphasis on Karachi, but also not so vital functions like collecting electricity charges from the consumers. The spread of the Pak army over every limb of civil administration will, therefore, not cause any surprise and will be only a natural process.

The well-informed Jane’s Weekly recently released a report throwing light on the antecedents of Gen Musharraf and his direct responsibility for the Kargil war. President Zia had authored Operation Topac in April, 1988, and the Kargil intrusions were visualised as phase-II of Operation Topac. Gen Musharraf was indeed implementing this plan of his erstwhile mentor since he was selected by Gen Zia for training the Afghan mujahideen in their war against Soviet Union. Gen Pervez was said to have had close contacts with the notorious Saudi terrorist Osama bin Laden and in the course of the Kargil war a large number of Afghan mujahideen were reportedly inducted from Jalalabad to Kargil. As the inheritor of Gen Zia’s legacy, Gen Musharraf set in motion the Kargil aggression and at the height of the Kargil war, it had the potentialities of a larger conflagration between India and Pakistan. The possibility of a full-scale war between two nuclear states in the sub-continent alarmed USA and western powers, which joined hands and put all the pressure possible on the Prime Minister of Pakistan to bring about the withdrawal of his forces from the LoC. Mr Nawaz Sharif’s meeting with President Clinton on July 4 was more to demonstrate that he had no choice except to comply with US directive and to compel Gen Musharraf to order withdrawal of his men from the LoC. The Pak army felt deeply hurt by this humiliation but it was entirely self-inflicted.

Between July 20, 1999, when the withdrawal of Pakistani forces was completed and October 12 when Gen Musharraf struck, there were a few major incidents in the Kashmir valley involving bold and desperate attacks by the mujahideen on the camps of armed forces and para military forces. They were considered as the mujahideen’s revenge to the Kargil fiasco. The Badamibagh attack on November 3 in the heart of Srinagar by the Lashkar-i-Toiba militants was a clear demonstration of what is in store for India’s security forces and the administration in Kashmir. The unfortunate part of it is that only a week earlier, on October 26, there was a report from Pakistan quoting the Urdu daily Nawa-e-Waqt that Lashkar-i-Toiba which was holding a three-day ijtama on November 3-5 would intensify attacks in Kashmir to coincide with its congregation. And yet the Badamibagh cantonment attack took place and it was proudly owned by Lashkar-i-Toiba. Lashkar-i-Toiba, which had been termed as a terrorist organisation by the State Department of the USA, concluded its deliberations after giving a call for a jehad against India and the United States. The Lashkar Chief asked Gen Musharraf to wage a jehad for liberating Kashmir and extended full support of his organisation for the same. Moreover, Lashkar-i-Toiba also issued an ominous warning that after the Badamibagh cantonment attack the next target would be the office of Prime Minister Vajpayee. The bomb blast in the Puja Express near Pathankot on November 11 is the latest in the ongoing series of terrorist acts.

The manner in which Lashkar-i-Toiba had been allowed to hold its congregation and issue all these statements and also claim credit for attacks carried out within Kashmir are all evidence enough to show what is going to be the attitude of Gen Musharraf towards India, and Kashmir in particular. In short, the proxy war which was set in motion by General Zia in 1989 would not only continue but also intensify in the days to come and India has no choice except to meet the challenge squarely. Gen Musharraf has since made it clear that he does not believe in the Lahore Agreement and that matter has to be “renegotiated” Gen Musharraf believes that the Kashmir issue should be sorted out first and everything else should come thereafter and India and its leaders should talk to him with concrete plans to the effect. The Lahore bus trip of Mr Vajpayee, the track-II diplomacy which followed and the euphoria about the possibility of the peaceful solution to the Kashmir issue have all been nullified completely and Indo-Pak relations are back to square one.

The USA, which has been closely following the events had recently come out with a statement that there are continuing reports of Pakistan extending material support for some militant groups on the Indian side of Kashmir. Mr Michael Sheehan, USA’s coordinator on counter-terrorism, had added that the numerous Kashmiri separatist groups involved in terrorism used Pakistan as base. The logical step after the State Department’s own counter-terrorism coordinator had made these findings, was for the US administration to categorise Pakistan as a terrorist state in the same category as Iraq, Libya, Sudan etc. However, that is not going to be and the US administration is soft-pedalling its attitude towards Gen Musharraf as it has its own calculations. During the entire decade of Afghan-Russia war Pakistan was USA’s ally and base for mounting the war against Russia. In this process Pakistan was able to get all the nuclear components and assistance from China and go nuclear around 1987. Pakistan also imported missiles from China and North Korea and the US administration went on insisting that it had no authentic evidence to that effect. After the army coup in Pakistan, however, the USA is asking for time-bound restoration of democracy but has not said much about Pakistan’s continued encouragement to terrorist organisations like Lashkar-i-Toiba and Pakistan based terrorist groups mounting attacks in Kashmir. The twist now is that since Pakistan and India are both nuclear states Pakistan cannot be completely ignored or pushed around too much and the USA has to negotiate with it patiently.

Whatever may be the course of events during the next few weeks and months one thing is clear, Gen Musharraf has put back the clock by several years in the matter of Indo-Pak relations and if anything we have to expect more law and order problems in Kashmir, and may be in Punjab and elsewhere too. The Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) at Durban, South Africa, condemned the imposition of army rule, called for the immediate release of former Prime Minister Mr Nawaz Sharif and the observance of the rule of law and confirmed the suspension of Pakistan from membership of the Commonwealth of Countries. The communique issued at the end of the CHOGM meeting also reaffirmed their strongest condemnation of acts of terrorism in all its forms and manifestations and asked the member countries to ensure that terrorists did not find safe haven in any part of the world. Viewed in this context, the question of resuming talks with Pakistan, as urged by the US administration, does not arise. Pakistan’s self-appointed Chief Executive, Gen Musharraf has to first demonstrate his keenness for genuine peace with India by suspending Pakistan-sponsored cross-border terrorism in J&K and elsewhere in India.

Credit policy: no respite for business
by Bharat Jhunjhunwala

“WHY is it that Indian businessmen cannot produce quality products like the multinationals?” asked a housewife during a “swadeshi” meeting. It is, indeed, a valid question. The government cannot impose sacrifices upon the people for the inefficiencies of the Indian business. But, in this case, the government itself appears to be responsible, in part, at least. The problem lies in the high cost at which Indian businesses have to borrow money for investment.

MNCs have access to cheap credit at 3-4 per cent interest rates. They can invest heavily in brand building and research which give returns in the long run. Hindustan Lever is able to invest heavily in the advertising of Lifebuoy but Godrej is unable to do the same for Ganga, straddled as it is with borrowing costs of 12-15 per cent. If our industries have to produce goods as good as those by the MNCs they have to be provided credit at rates comparable to those available to the MNCs in their home countries. The credit policy of the RBI has failed to do precisely this. In fact, it has given an advantage to the MNCs.

The long-term rate of interest in the West is about 6 per cent while in India it is around 14 per cent. But the rate of interest only partly determines the real cost of credit. Inflation is the other factor that has to be taken into account. I had purchased a Maruti van in 1885 for Rs 65,000. I sold it for Rs 67,000 in 1992. I could do so because inflation during this period was around 10 per cent per year and as a result the price of a new Maruti van had increased to about Rs 1,20,000. Had I borrowed the money from a bank, all I would have paid was the running interest. But if there had been no inflation and a new Maruti van would have still costed the same 65,000; then my old van would have fetched only Rs 35,000, and I would have had to shell out another Rs 30,000 from my pocket to repay the bank. The cost of my borrowing was less because there was inflation.

The businessman who borrows in order to invest stands to gain if inflation is high. The disadvantage due to high rates of interest in India could be so eliminated.

An MNC borrows at 6 per cent in the USA, gets 2 per cent relief from inflation, and its real cost of credit is 4 per cent. An Indian businessman till recently borrowed at 14 per cent got 10 per cent relief from inflation, and its real cost of credit too was 4 per cent. This was the general situation prevailing till about a couple of years ago.

Why, then, did the Indian businesses not borrow and invest heavily in research and brand building as the MNCs did? The problem appears to lie in the instability of our economy. The rate of inflation is not steady, and, therefore, the real cost of borrowing by the Indian businessman is volatile. Suppose an Indian businessman had borrowed Rs 1 crore in 1997 at an interest rate of 14 per cent and in expectation of relief of 10 per cent from inflation. But since then inflation has fallen to a low of 4 per cent his real cost of credit has jumped from the planned 4 per cent to 10 per cent. It is because of this instability that Indian businessmen do not borrow and make huge investments in brand building and research and produce quality goods like the MNCs are able to do.

In order to build up our domestic industries, therefore, it is essential that the cost of credit to Indian businessmen is brought down to international levels. It would have been ideal if we could have contained our rate of inflation to 2-3 per cent for long periods and kept it there. In that case we could have brought down the interest rates gradually to 6 per cent as in the USA and provided a level playing field to our businesses. But we are unable to do so for reasons. One is that banks have themselves borrowed at fixed rates for upto five-year periods. If they now lower their lending rates, they would still have to pay high rates of interest on deposits already accepted. Therefore, they prefer to continue with high deposit and lending rates.

The second problem is that agriculture still accounts for a reasonable 25 per cent of our economy. The volatility of monsoons, therefore, translates into a volatility of inflation. Even if the banks were to bring their interest rates down, inflation could still shoot up and that would wipe them out. They would get a low income from interest, and high inflation would wipe out the real value of their money.

Given that we cannot assure a low rate of inflation, what are the alternatives? How can we yet provide low real rates of interest to our businessmen? The obvious solution is for us to keep inflation stable at a reasonable 10 per cent or so. The long-term interest rates of about 14 per cent would then have translated into the real cost of credit of 4 per cent. Then we would have macro-economic “stability” and also low real rates of credit. That would have enabled our industries to compete with the MNCs. The Reserve Bank of India, however, in its wisdom has done exactly the opposite. It has followed a policy that leads to a high real rate of credit for our businesses.

Our government has to borrow regularly to meet its ever-growing expenditures. This can be done in two ways. The RBI could print notes and provide credit to the government. This would lead to high inflation due to the printing of notes. It would also lead to low interest rates in the market because the government would not be there to borrow huge amounts. High inflation and low interest rates would lead to a lower real cost of credit to Indian businesses.

Alternatively, the government could borrow from the market by issuing long-term bonds. This would lead to low inflation because the RBI would be printing less number of notes. It would also lead to high interest rates because the government would be competing with private borrowers for the money available. Low inflation and high interest rates would lead to a high cost of credit for Indian businesses.

The two ways of borrowing have an opposite impact on the fate of Indian businesses. Borrowing from the RBI leads to a lower cost of credit, and borrowing from the market to a higher real cost of credit for the Indian business. It is here that the RBI’s credit policy comes into play. If the RBI wanted to provide cheap credit to Indian businesses it should have printed notes and provided credit to the government itself. But it has done the opposite. It has encouraged the government to borrow from the market and that has led to a higher real cost of credit for our businesses.

Perhaps the Indian business is recognising the reality of this policy. Many industrialists are ambivalent about the impact of the credit policy while the bankers are happy. They have the best of both worlds — low inflation and high lending rates. The RBI has not put pressure on them to bring down interest rates in tandem with inflation. But the business is the one that has to suffer.

The RBI is working less in the interest of the Indian economy and more as an agent of MNCs. It is breaking the back of Indian businesses by subjecting them to a high real cost of credit. It is for this reason that they are unable to face MNCs. The housewife is correct in asking why it is that Indian businesses cannot produce quality goods. The answer, alas, is that the “swadeshi” government does not want them to.

DC with a difference
by Harwant Singh

TO be deputy commissioner of a tribal district in a remote corner of the country, where the people are still struggling to come out of a primitive way of life, mired in rituals, tribal laws and superstition, can be a fulfilling experience. It is a vast district of high mountain ranges, thick forests and fast streams. There are only two seasons, the rainy season and the monsoon period. The main valley called the Lohit Valley takes its name from the Lohit River that flows through it. Except for one defence road, it could not boast of even a dirt track. From the rail head at Tinsukhia to the district headquarters at Tezu, the journey took the whole day. One had to use five different modes of transport and the last stream could only be crossed on elephant back. There was no telephone link with the outside world. Military wireless was the only means to communicate with those outside the district. As for the administration, there was no police, because there was no crime. Crime started once the police was posted. Assam Rifles and military units guarded the border with Burma on one side and Tibet on the other.

The DC of our story was young, dynamic, pragmatic, unconventional, a doer, out spoken and outgoing. Somewhat restless and always on the move. Touring was on top of every month’s programme. Remotest villages and hamlets were visited. Every mode of transport was pressed into service; from forest department elephants to military mules and sometimes a hitch-hike in an Air Force helicopter. Some people claimed to have seen the DC riding a “mithun”, an animal somewhere between a yak and a buffalo; very sure footed and capable of traversing terrain difficult for a mule to cover. It is a highly valued animal and forms the most important part of the offerings by the bridegroom to the bride’s father. In fact young brides are valued in terms of number ‘mithuns’ offered.

When Jawaharlal Nehru visited the district accompanied by Indira Gandhi, one of the local chiefs offered him one hundred “mithuns” for Indira. If only Jawaharlal had some business acumen, he would have accepted that attractive offer. India would have been spared the emergency and much else!

While touring, the DC carried the administrative setup along, examined the cases and gave decisions on the spot. It was a case of administration home delivery. When no geography teacher was posted in the local school for some time, the DC took the classes. Then there was the case of an inebriated tribal who forced an entry into the DC’s bungalow carrying an unsheathed “dah” (an ultimate implement, used for cutting and shaping bamboo to giving a fine haircut) because he had been stopped by the forest guard from cutting a tree. This he thought was totally unacceptable, because all the forests belonged to his people and their forefathers. Coming down the steps with a disarming smile the DC welcomed a somewhat perplexed intruder. The DC agreed to the ownership of the forests, but explained that the government was merely trying to preserve forests for his future generations as his ancestors had left these for him and his children with all the game to hunt. A cup of tea and some more homilies, a happy and satisfied tribal took leave.

On another occasion, the tribals threatened to kidnap the DC. Since there was no police, the military took the precaution to place a rescue party some distance away, ready to intervene should the threat materialise. The DC had undertaken a drive against “jhooming”, a tribal practice where patches of forest are cleared for cultivation and after two or three seasons new sites are selected and the process goes on, leading to deforestation of vast tracts of land. To the beating of drums and waving of dahs, the tribals went into a sort of war dance. The DC came out of the house, dressed as a tribal, and went into a huddle with the chiefs. There was much heated discussion for a long time followed by a “hurrah” and beating of drums. The dance recommenced with the DC in the midst of it. The DC could do the tribal dance with the same ease and grace as waltzing in the army mess.

There was always a steam of visitors at the DC’s house. Some came calling, others to merely convey good wishes or seeking help, a few to discuss serious issues of ecology, tribal customs and skills, communications, healthcare and education in the district. It was a small world by itself. The DC came to be loved by some, admired by many and respected by all. They called the DC, “The Lady of Lohit Valley.”

Bhutto, Sharif; and, yes, Munir!

by Anupam Gupta

WILL Pakistan relive the tragedy of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto? Confined, like Bhutto initially was, in the hills of Murree outside Islamabad and driven to court on November 19 in an armoured personnel carrier, will Nawaz Sharif too be judicially murdered?

“An independent judiciary is the antithesis of martial law,” Bhutto said in October, 1977, in a rejoinder filed in the Supreme Court of Pakistan. “An independent judiciary can only function under the umbrella of the Constitution and not under the shadow of the gun of a brown Duke of Wellington.”

That was in Constitutional Petition No 1-R of 1977, Begum Nusrat Bhutto vs the Chief of Army Staff, invoking the court’s original jurisdiction to enforce fundamental rights under Article 184(3) of the Pak Constitution. Begum Nusrat was challenging the detention of her husband and ten other leaders of the Pakistan People’s Party by the martial law regime of General Zia-ul-Haq, who had seized power in July that year.

Proving Bhutto right, a nine-member Bench of the Supreme Court unanimously dismissed the petition as not maintainable.

The new martial law regime, ruled Chief Justice Anwarul Haq, speaking for the court, represented “a phase of constitutional deviation dictated by necessity.” The Chief Martial Law Administrator “having validly assumed power by means of an extra-constitutional step” (sic), he wrote, is “entitled to perform all such acts and promulgate all legislative measures” as fall within the scope of the law of necessity.

That, though a virtual oxymoron, was not a new law in the history of Pakistan. It had been judicially legislated two decades earlier by a scholar well known to the then generation of Indian judges and lawyers but whom history has now totally discredited. Chief Justice Muhammad Munir of Pakistan, whose commentary on the Indian Evidence Act, written before Partition, still sells hugely this side of the border.

An act “which would otherwise be illegal becomes legal (said Munir in 1955 in Federation of Pakistan vs Moulvi Tamizuddin Khan, the first of Pakistan’s famous constitutional trials) if it is done bona fide under the stress of necessity, the necessity being referable to an intention to preserve the Constitution, the State or the Society and to prevent it from dissolution.”

Just three years later, in State vs Dosso, Munir expanded upon this principle to hold that “a victorious revolution and a successful coup d’etat is an internationally recognised legal method of changing a Constitution.” After a change of this character has taken place, he said, “the national legal order must for its validity, depend upon the new law-creating organ. Even Courts lose their existing jurisdiction and can function only to the extent and in the manner determined by the new Constitution.”

A day after he pronounced the judgement for the Federal (now Supreme) Court on October 27, 1958, General Ayub Khan deposed President Iskander Mirza. The two had collaborated to slap martial law on the country three weeks earlier.

“No judiciary elsewhere in the world had to pass through what might be described as judicial torture,” Munir told the Lahore Bar Association in April, 1960, on the occasion of his retirement from the Bench. It was a revealing, though unsuccessful, attempt to exculpate himself from the judgement of history for his politically loaded constitutional verdicts permanently legitimising military rule.

“Who could say,” he asked, that “the coercive power of the State was with the Court” and not with the executive or the military? “At moments like these public law is not found in the books; it lies elsewhere, namely, in the events that have happened.”

That is as complete a confession as there possibly can be. But let us get back to Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (and Mian Nawaz Sharif).

“The trappings of justice were everywhere,” Benazir Bhutto writes in her autobiography, “The Daughter of the East”, describing the courtroom in the Lahore High Court where her father was tried for murder in early 1978. But justice there was not. Bhutto was found guilty and sentenced to death by a handpicked five-member Bench headed by Justice Maulvi Mushtaq Hussein. A judge the ex-Prime Minister had superseded for promotion as Chief Justice and who hated him bitterly for that reason.

Of course, as Prof Stanley Wolpert points out in his “Zulfi Bhutto of Pakistan: His Life and Times”, it never occurred to the learned Judge to rescue himself from the trial. Rather, he denied several pre-trial motions that he do so.

The conviction and sentence were upheld by the Pakistan Supreme Court less than a year later, by a majority of four to three. Bhutto was hanged on April 4, 1979.

“A regime not established by law is devoid of the attribute to dispense law,” Bhutto pleaded before the Supreme Court in a 300-page statement penned on his knees in the death cell and tagged with his appeal. Censored in his own country, it was smuggled out and published in India just before his execution. “A regime which puts in a bunker the highest law in the land does not have the moral authority to say that nobody is above the law. I do not want to escape from the law. I do not want anyone to escape from the law. But I definitely want to escape from the lawlessness of Martial Law.”

Can Nawaz Sharif succeed where Zulfi Bhutto failed?

Focus on prison conditions

by Humra Quraishi

WITH the recent outbreak of violence in the Central Prison at Chennai, some focus has come about on prison conditions. In fact, just a while back I was talking to Mohini Giri (former chairperson of the National Commission For Women and now heading the Guild Of Service) and she told me that last year she had visited 80 jails all over the country to study the conditions prevailing there. Though she had prepared a detailed report based on her findings but there has been no implementation of the suggestions mentioned in it.

In fact, at present Giri has another issue to deal with and, that is, trying to build support to waive the death sentence pronounced on Nalini — one of the co-accused in the Rajiv Gandhi murder case. Last week when she met Sonia Gandhi and brought up the topic, “I was a little hesitant, for don’t overlook the fact that I was asking her to waive off the punishment of one of the murderers of her husband. But she told me not to hesitate talking about it and even added that she had already written to the President to waive off that sentence, in the context of Nalini’s daughter being left an orphan if both she and her husband Murugan are put to death.”

And now Giri leaves for Madras to pursue this case with Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Karunanidhi and Governor Fatima Bibi. “It is not the first time that we are trying to waive off a death sentence. In fact, we have always tried to do so whenever we feel that with the mother’s death the children will be left orphans. We did the same in the case of another prisoner-mother, Ramshri. Regarding Nalini’s case her relatives had met me whilst I was heading the NCW and after I studied her case I felt that the death sentence ought to be reviewed from the point of view that she would be leaving behind an orphaned daughter.”

Moving back to prison conditions. Last week I had written about Rani Dhavan Shankar Dass’s book and film on the prison conditions and right now when I got in touch with her for her comments on the Chennai prison outbreak she felt that the cramped and hopeless conditions prevailing in our prisons leave the prisoners frustrated and depressed. “Even a small incident like one prisoner accidentally stepping on the foot of another prisoner leads to violence and near riot-conditions. It is time that an indepth enquiry is instituted to look into the conditions in the prisons and how, they in turn, are affecting the prisoners and their mental health. Prison conditions are damaging the inmates.

She adds that if last week’s rioting in the Chennai prison doesn’t make us think in terms of full-fledged jail reforms then it would be more than unfortunate. “In this context let me mention that after the worst prison riots in the U.K. — in 1990, in the Manchester Prison — the Woolf Commission brought about sweeping prison reforms and it is time that attention is paid to the plight of the prisoner in our country. Not only to the conditions inside the prisons but also to the fact that more than 75 per cent of the inmates are undertrials, many even dumped with false charges.”

Right or wrong

And whilst Sonia Gandhi’s popularity may have got a slight upswing with her move to save Nalini from the gallows, there is some criticism coming from within Congress circles about Priyanka and husband Robert Vadra’s moves on the high society circuit. Earlier nobody paid much attention to whether the couple were spotted at shows or parades or whether they paraded a show of themselves. But after Priyanka shot into focus in these last elections party workers feel that circuit hopping could have long term damaging effects. But why focus on her alone when most of the ‘political’ offspring is bobbing on the circuit.

And in the context of most of the Orissa survivors starving to death or dying because of outbreak of disease, it is a pity that life moves with absolute ease on the soiree circuit here. Every single evening is marked by receptions, fashion shows, designer collection previews and of course, weddings. Is there something going amiss with our very character?

New Governors

Just as I file this column comes the news of the appointment of four new governors and the shift of one. Supporters of the governor-designate to Goa, Mohammad Fazal, say it was time he got governorship — not only has he and his spouse been keeping indifferent health but he had angered many close friends by his decision to join the BJP. And regarding governor-designate to Manipur, Ved Marwah, it is felt he should have been offered governorship some years back for the man has not only got experience in his favour (Delhi’s former Police Commissioner and Adviser to the J & K Governor) but he is a man of integrity, with an extremely pleasant personality. Regarding the governor-designate to West Bengal, Viren Shah, there is a lot of speculation, primarily because of the fact that he being an industrialist might upset some, for the rare combination of governorship and industrialist is a wee bit difficult to digest. And former Cabinet Secretary Vinod Pande’s appointment as governor of Bihar came as a total surprise for many, but at least set to rest all speculations on his health front.

Food — the biggest draw

Believe it or not the biggest attraction at the ongoing India International Trade Fair is the Food Plaza. At least 15,000 to 20,000 people are eating there daily and this, of course, includes the VVIPs who are visiting Pragati Maidan. I am told after Dilip Kumar and Saira Bano did four hours of shopping (which included shopping for garden chairs, carpets, a close circuit television) they also hopped into the Food Plaza and were seen eating Kakori kababs. And as for the other important visitors — which so far includes five governors and several cabinet ministers — the all time favourite seems to be ‘chaat’ stalls.

75 YEARS AGO

November 22, 1924
Definition of Swaraj

NO objection will be taken in any national quarter to the opinion expressed by the recent UP Political Conference, that Swaraj means full freedom and that the form of the future government of India should be democratic.

Swaraj has never meant anything else than full freedom. That, indeed, is the interpretation which was put upon the word even in the King’s Proclamation, in which India was promised the fullness of liberty.

As regards the form of government under Swaraj, it is not at all clear what other form of government except democracy, the essence of which is the government of a people by itself, can deserve the name of Swaraj.