P A G E
Monday, October 25, 1999
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E D I T O R I A L P A G E |
Monday, October 25, 1999 |
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Bofors
and after
INDIAN
POLITICAL PANORAMA |
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Self-denial
in democratic spirit
Selective
displacement at fag-end
Lest
we should forget it
October 25, 1924 |
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Bofors and after BOFORS is booming again.This time at the highest level of politics in the national Capital. It has scored a direct hit, pulverising the slim chances of a consensus between the ruling group and the main opposition party, which is so necessary to push through Parliament a number of important Bills. The Congress has already promised to relentlessly keep the focus on telecom, sugar and wheat import and sundry other issues. The idea is to build an opposition consensus on the demand for a parliamentary enquiry into these deals. The BJP-led alliance seeks one type of consensus and the Congress is trying to forge another, and the two will clash head on. Home Minister Advani says that the Prime Minister, who is in charge of the CBI, delayed the filing of the case for two months to delink the charges from the election campaign. Obviously now he has given the nod, convinced that the fight against corruption enjoys a higher priority in his scheme of things than going out of the way to enlist the cooperation of the Congress. It is sad. The ruling group has also accomplished something else, although unwittingly. It has united the party behind Mrs Sonia Gandhi at a time when dissenting voices were being heard during introspection into the causes of the humiliating performance in the recent elections. The CBI chargesheet has as its core a puzzle. Rajiv Gandhi has been listed as the main accused but in the second column since he is dead. That means there will be no trial and whichever way the case goes, he will remain an unproved suspect. It is clearly an example of vilifying a person, a dead one at that, without giving his family and party a chance to vindicate his honour. The anger in the Congress camp is just because of this. If the political fallout
of Bofors is devastating, the legal impact may be the
equivalent of firing a dummy shell. Frankly, it is
difficult to work up lather on so weak a case. Rajiv
Gandhi has been accused of conspiring to cause loss of
money to the government. To bring home this crime the CBI
should have clinching evidence of his complicity in
selecting a defective gun at an inflated price. This
certainly is not what happened and the latest proof came
from Kargil. His and the then army chief’s
preference for the Bofors gun over the French and
Austrian ones and the late Prime Minister’s request
against a Swedish government probe and cancelling a visit
by the Bofors boss, both after the formation of a joint
parliamentary committee, are no criminal offence; to
promote them as one, the CBI has to collect a mountain of
circumstantial evidence which is beyond its ken. Mr
S.K.Bhatnagar’s name has to figure in the list to
prop up the conspiracy theory. Curiously, there are three
men living outside the country in the list of the
accused, two of whom are foreigners and the third a sort
of permanent NRI. They will not return and their absence
will thwart the start of the case. The CBI is not very
truthful when it claims that it is trying for their
extradition. Has it forgotten the fiasco of senior
official Mr Revanasidhaiah’s visit to Kuala Lumpur?
A police inspector laughed their application out of the
police station, saying that Indians did not know
international law or the Malaysian reality. It did not
have better luck in Dubai either. As one expert on the
CBI has commented, its record is pretty dismal, from the
hawala case to the farce of Kalpnath Rai’s
conviction and now the MP bribery case. With this agency
as the prosecutor, none of the accused needs to lose
sleep. But does the government realise this? Is it
prudent to rely on the same CBI to make enemy? The nation
will know in due course, say, after two decades. |
Replacing Kalyan Singh THE coming few days are going to be crucial for the BJP. The reason: the BJP chief will interact with its MPs from UP on October 27 and its national executive, slated to meet on November 3 and 4 to review the party's performance in the just concluded general election, will finally decide whether there should be leadership change in the state’s legislature wing. There are indications that Mr Kalyan Singh will have to go. This raises a few important questions. Will Mr Kalyan Singh accept his party high command's decision as it comes? Who will be his successor? If any of his detractors in the state unit of the party is made the Chief Minister, will he accept it without doing what Mr Shankersinh Vaghela did in Gujarat some time ago? In the event of the BJP central leadership asking any of the dissident leaders to take the reins of power in UP, will the government, cobbled together by Mr Kalyan Singh with the help of two splinter groups—the Loktantrik Congress Party and the Janatantrik Bahujan Samaj Party—and a few Independents demonstrating his special political skill, survive? Will the whole exercise not further erode the BJP's already shrunken following in the state, specially among the backward classes, the social segment to which the present Chief Minister belongs? A close look at the questions shows that the saffron party is faced with a formidable challenge in the politically most significant state of the country, where its performance has been depressing in the recent Lok Sabha poll. Despite the truth that
the number of the BJP members of Parliament from UP has
got reduced to 29 from 57 in the previous Lok Sabha
mainly because of the anti-incumbency factor, aided by
the intense infighting in the party—which means Mr
Kalyan Singh should share the major portion of the blame
— any solution to the problem concerning the Chief
Ministership without taking him into confidence will do
more harm than good to the saffron party. His strong and
wide base among the backward classes, even now when he
has been badly mauled by his adversaries like Mr Mulayam
Singh Yadav and Ms Mayawati, cannot be wished away. One
cannot deny that the Chief Minister has alienated a
number of interest groups — teachers, state
government employees, milkmen, upper caste lobbies, etc
— through his ill thought-out actions and style of
functioning, and any move against him may reconvert some
of these people into BJP sympathisers. But it is
difficult to say that the gain will be enough to offset
the enormous loss the party may suffer, as showing the
door to Mr Kalyan Singh will amount to angering the
backward classes. That is why one fails to understand the
logic behind the reports doing the rounds that Mr Kalraj
Mishra, the PWD Minister, is emerging as a hot favourite
for the central leadership. The other names being
mentioned are that of Mr Rajnath Singh Surya, a Rajya
Sabha member, and Mr Santosh Gangwar, who have been
maintaining a low-profile during the drive launched
against Mr Kalyan Singh by the trio of Mr Kalraj Mishra,
Mr Lalji Tandon and Mr Rajnath Singh, head of the BJP's
state unit. It is believed that Mr Surya has the
blessings of the RSS bigwigs. Mr Kalyan Singh may agree
on the second choice, as that will give him the
satisfaction of preventing his principal detractors from
capturing the seat of power in the state besides
appeasing the RSS top brass. But he is unwilling to
accept an assignment at the Centre as the BJP leadership
wants after his replacement as Chief Minister. This
indicates that the wily backward leader has some hidden
plan which may be known soon. |
INDIAN POLITICAL PANORAMA MR A. B. Vajpayee has taken over as Prime Minister for the third time with a coalition government, which we all hope and wish would be far more stable and cohesive than the earlier one. Looking back at the events since April, 1999, and the electoral outcome, it is realised that some major events in the Indian political life have taken place. The BJP is back with exactly the same number which it held previously while the Congress has lost 30 seats, though the percentages of votes polled by the two parties are somewhat different. The NDA partners have gained, thanks to their association with the BJP, while the constituents of the so-called third front have scored less. There are, however, certain important political changes which have been brought about by the elections. When the Vajpayee government fell and he was asked to continue as caretaker Prime Minister, pending the holding of elections, Kargil was yet to loom large on the horizon. Once it burst upon the Indian scene towards the end of May, the Kargil war became the most obvious and absorbing topic for the people of India, thanks to the media focus, particularly the role of television. The way the martyrs of the Kargil war were honoured with their bodies being flown home and their funeral ceremonies being attended by senior political leaders and Service officers and the generous contributions made for the welfare of their families, had all left an indelible impact on the minds of the people. It was a positive impression when the Pakistanis were eventually made to eat the humble pie and withdraw from the Kargil heights. All this undoubtedly helped the BJP and Prime Minister Vajpayee in particular. The allegations that the Central government was not vigilant enough and that the neglect at the initial stages led to the needless war and the death of about 400 officers and men of the armed forces did not click in the minds of the people, for the basic reason that the Pakistanis were beaten back and the borders were made secure. The BJP leadership realised — based on its experience from the coalition days of Morarji Desai in 1977-79, when the saffron party was a constituent, and what it learnt later on — that power at the Centre could not be captured without the help of regional allies. The unpleasant experience which it had from some of the constituents, especially the AIADMK, in 1998 did not deter it from going in for a coalition arrangement as the electoral arithmetic and its implications had been closely studied. Thus the BJP had been very active in promoting alliances throughout the country. This paid handsome dividends. These alliance partners have contributed well over 100 seats without which a viable government at the Centre would not have been possible. The BJP leadership also understood quite clearly that it would be difficult to do business with the diverse alliance partners without abandoning some of the major components of its own agenda such as the construction of Ram Mandir at Ayodhya, the abolition of Article 370 of the Constitution, the demand for a uniform civil code as well as postponing indefinitely the question of expulsion of infiltrators numbering over a crore from Bangladesh. All these long-held goals and objectives of the BJP would have been the proverbial red rag to most of the alliance partners and hence they had to be shelved. The Sangh Parivar — the RSS, the VHP, the Bajrang Dal, etc — had seen the writing on the wall and, therefore, it quietly accepted the new dispensation. The 13th Lok Sabha election results show spectacular gains of the Mandal parties. The Samajwadi Party of Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav secured 26 seats while the BSP of Ms Mayawati and Mr Kanshi Ram won 14 seats. These major gains were primarily at the expense of the BJP in UP. The alienation of Swami Sachidanand Sakshi led to his campaign against the BJP and in favour of Mr Mulayam Singh and this undoubtedly helped the SP in getting more votes and seats. Similarly, the Yadavs and the Kurmis of Bihar helped the JD(U) to do well while Mr Laloo Prasad Yadav’s Rashtriya Janata Dal saw its base shrink. In the South, the DMK and its allies, the MDMK and the PMK, as well as the AIADMK had also done fairly well. These Mandalised and Dravidian parties in the North and the South held between themselves about 100 seats, the significance of which could hardly be missed. The Muslim minority and the Dalits have particularly asserted their voting power in the elections. In UP and Bihar, the Muslims resorted to what was described as “Strategic voting” — they voted in such a manner that this would benefit the candidates and parties in a better position to win. As for the Dalits, the rationale frequently expounded by Ms Mayawati and Mr Kanshi Ram was understandable. Mr Kanshi Ram believes that the Dalits should vote for the BSP irrespective of the outcome of the results, and if the BSP candidates do not win, they also have the satisfaction of not voting for a party whom they do not wish to help. In the recent elections Ms Mayawati was also clever enough to set up a number of Muslim and backward candidates whose victory was facilitated by the support of the Dalits in their respective constituencies. By these tactics both the BSP and the SP have emerged as major players, after the BJP, in UP. Even in the South, the Dalits had been, for the first time, brought under a new political party, Pudhiya Tamizhagam (PT), by Dr Krishnaswamy, a leader belonging to the community. He aligned himself with the TMC of Mr Moopanar, but neither the TMC nor the PT could get any seat because of the peculiar political configuration in Tamil Nadu. A significant feature of the recent elections was that most of the regional as well as the Mandal and Dravidian parties were not prepared to align themselves with the Congress. They would rather do business with the BJP for the simple reason that it did not pose any threat to their political power in their respective states. The alliances with the DMK in Tamil Nadu and the TDP in Andhra Pradesh are prime examples. The Congress had to pay a heavy price for its dominance in Indian politics for the last 40 years, both in the states and at the Centre. From 1989 onwards the Congress has found it difficult to get allies to join them which would have helped it secure a working majority at the Centre. The situation changed temporarily in 1991 when it had a near majority in the Lok Sabha, but from 1996 onwards it has been the same anti-Congressism everywhere. As for the performance of the Congress, it has reached its nadir, going by the number of Lok Sabha seats since Independence. Even during the traumatic 1977 elections it secured 154 seats, and nearly 100 of them came from the southern states. In 1989 when the Congress lost its two-thirds strength in the Lok Sabha, it still secured 197 seats. Viewed against this background, the loss of 30 seats in the just concluded election should be a matter of serious concern for the Congress. It has the consolation of getting 10 seats in UP where it had none in 1998, while in Punjab it nearly wiped out the Shiromani Akali Dal. In Karnataka the Congress has returned to power. It should be noted, however, that the outcome in Karnataka and Punjab was due to serious dissensions in the Opposition camps. The Congress was wiped out in HP, Delhi, Goa, Haryana and J & K while in the North-East it continued to maintain its traditional predominant position. In terms of voting percentage, the Congress secured a marginal lead over the BJP, but this is no reason for satisfaction. The explanation is quite simple — it was the strategy of having alliance partners which paid the BJP rich dividends. The Congress was still tied down to its Pachmarhi thinking, and even when the election results were announced its spokesmen were unable to spell out its strategy. The Congress leadership has to make an exhaustive analysis of its recent policies to draw the correct lessons. (The writer is a
former Governor of West Bengal and Sikkim.) |
M’rashtra: politics of convenience DESPITE all the apparent pulls and pressures and discordant noises, the Congress-NCP government in Maharashtra is likely to last out its full term. The two parties have been egged on into the alliance not so much by the voters’ mandate but by other unseen forces which considered a change from the Shiv Sena-BJP rule essential. The alliance between the NCP and the Congress, which together had the necessary numbers to form the government, was ordained from the beginning. But it took both parties eight full days to create a public opinion that would accept the two rival parties coming together to annex power. The Governor’s intervention also helped create the facade and coax the seemingly unwilling partners to sink their differences to a point where they could cooperate in running the government. It was ultimately the power of the sugar lobby and the reigning industrialists of the state that clinched the issue. It was they who had suffered the most under the incompetent, non-performing and corrupt government run by the Shiv Sena and supported by the BJP. The two parties together could muster only 125 seats as against the 145 required to form the government. The popular vote was clearly against those running the government. It would have been more decisively so if the Congress had not acted rashly and thrown out Mr Sharad Pawar, Mr P.A. Sangma and Mr Tariq Anwar so unceremoniously on the eve of the elections. If the Congress had contested the elections as a united party, it could have got at least 200 seats, as against the 133 now. The dice had been loaded against the Shiv Sena and the BJP from the time the elections were announced. The BJP hoped to cash in on the popularity of the Prime Minister, Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee, and persuaded the Shiv Sena to go in for state assembly elections also six months ahead of schedule. It did work, as much as the split in the Congress, but not enough as the final tally showed. For the BJP, however, the ouster from power, is a blessing in disguise, for it has been able to leave its alliance partner, since it had not helped it improve its image as a party above corruption and with some modicum of efficiency. Since it was uncertain about the number of seats it could win in Maharashtra for the Lok Sabha, it went along with the Shiv Sena. It took care throughout the campaign not to be seen together on the same platform with a party that had disgraced itself. The Sena had been involved in a number of scandals — from blatant corruption to murder and misappropriation of public funds — right from the start of the alliance government. The BJP had sought to keep itself away from them, but now that the earlier government is out, charges against one of its own ministers, Mr Nitin Gadkari, are surfacing. Mr Gadkari is alleged to have enriched himself on the 55 flyovers he undertook in Mumbai city and a couple of them in Nagpur from where he hails. Many of the flyovers are alleged to be unnecessary, and some of them have been constructed in too much of a hurry. Compared to the Shiv Sena ministers, the charges against the BJP ministers were negligible. Some of them may surface now that the party is out of power, but one can be sure that none of them could amount to the reckless misuse of power that some of the Sena ministers indulged in. The BJP would undoubtedly gloat over it, and may even use it against its Sena partners at the Centre. The NCP has already made it clear that it would implement the Srikrishna Commission report on the communal riots of 1992 and 1993 in Mumbai. Justice B.N. Srikrishna had pinpointed the involvement of Mr Bal Thackeray, Mr Madhukar Sarpotdar (former Sena MP) and several others in inciting attacks on the minority community and their active participations. Charges had also been levelled against police officers for either involvement or for dereliction of duty. The Sena government had put the report in cold storage, claiming that it was biased and “anti-Hindu”. Anticipating a Sena backlash on losing power, the Vilasrao Deshmukh government has taken elaborate precautions in several parts of Maharashtra. There has been a sobering impact on the behaviour of the ministers of the outgoing Cabinet — particularly of the former Chief Minister, Mr Narayan Rane, and the ex-Deputy Chief Minister, Mr Gopinath Munde. Both of them vacated their official residences on their return from the swearing in of the new Chief Minister and his deputy. The implicit message of corrupt behaviour in a democracy is likely to go down to the cadres. What will the Sena do now? It may not be able to go back to its old agitational methods. Its top leadership now understands the compulsions of power even though it has threatened to launch an agitation for the implementation of the Slum Redevelopment Scheme. If in five years of its rule it could make no headway with its rash promise of providing 40 lakh houses for slum-dwellers it cannot humanly expect the successor government to make much headway with it, particularly with an empty coffer. Mr Vilasrao Deshmukh has already stressed that he has inherited an empty exchequer three times over in two days. The industrialists, on their part, have focused attention on the acute discontent among industrial workers. Mr Chhagan Bhujbal, a former Shiv Sainik, known for his organisational skills, defected to the Congress in 1991 along with some Sena MLAs. Since then he has been a staunch critic of the Sena and Mr Bal Thackeray. He is reported to be still in contact with several key Sena leaders and, as Home Minister in the new dispensation, could be expected to inflict some damage on that organisation. The Sena is widely perceived to be a creation of the Congress leaders from the time of Chief Minister, V.P. Naik in the sixties down to Mr Sudhakarrao Naik in the nineties. The umbilical cord still exists, and that is why the Congress leaders will sit back and watch a former Sainik, now Home Minister, handle his erstwhile colleagues. The one fear that haunts the Sena leadership, however, is: who from their ranks would switch loyalties to the Congress or the NCP? Having tasted power, the Sena now realises that they might never get a chance to exercise power if they remain in the Sena. Besides many of them have a great affinity with Mr Sharad Pawar, who had drawn them into active politics in the early eighties and abandoned them in 1986 when he went back to the Congress. The Marathas have got back the reins of power and they would be bent on making the best use of it. The Chief Minister is a Maratha along with a dozen others in the new Cabinet. Except for the short break of five years of Shiv Sena-BJP rule, they had been in total control of the affairs of the state ever since its foundation in 1960. Mr Pawar’s greatest problem in the coming months would be the strange mix of partners he has acquired in seeking legitimacy for the NCP. The Marxists are in alliance with the NCP in Maharashtra, while the Kerala Marxists have ostracised it. The Congress (S) unit there, with three members in the state assembly, has one minister in the Left Democratic Front government. In the first flush of enthusiasm the Congress (S) threw its lot with the NCP. Now it faces the threat of losing its seat in the Cabinet, after having lost its flag, which the Election Commission froze on its merger with the NCP. The NCP has a tie-up
with the BJP in Meghalaya and with its bete noire, the
Congress in Maharashtra. Principled ideological
consistency is difficult to attain in politics of
convenience. |
Lest
we should forget it LOTS of people in the government are taking credit for driving the last Pakistani soldier out of Kargil. Lots of people outside the government are running it down for its failure to anticipate Kargil. The soldier on the front, meanwhile, continues to perform his duty. For him, in the words of Tennyson, “There’s not to reason why/There’s not to make reply/There’s but to do and die.” Lots of his comrades have lost their lives at the altar of the country’s freedom. “Cannon to right of them; /Cannon to left of them;/ Cannon in front of them,” they “Volleyed and thundered;/Into the jaws of death;/Into the mouth of hell.” Aptly, the nation has given gallantry awards to its soldiers. Those awards are the precious heritage they have left behind for their families. “If I should die, think only this of me;” Rupert Brooke says in one of his immortal poems, “that there’s some corner of a foreign field; that is forever England.” Our jawans didn’t go to any foreign field to conquer it or for loot and plunder. They died in the defence of their own sacred soil. Their ashes are buried in their own land or lie scattered in the waters of their own rivers. Every time they brought the dead body of a soldier to Delhi, every time the last bugle sounded somewhere, from Punjab to Nagaland, Kashmir to Kanyakumari, I rose in my seat and saluted the departed soul. And I was reminded of another English poem, I don’t remember by whom. Duke of Willington’s body is brought to Westminster Abbey for burial. Close to the grave they have dug for him lies the grave of Lord Nelson. “Who comes to disturb the peace of my grave?” screams Nelson. “It is he,” Willington replies, “who was great by land as thou by sea.” Both were great warriors who died in the service of their country. Unlike for them, there is no Westminster Abbey for the soldiers who die for the rest of us in India. There is none for those who laid down their lives in Kargil. There is none who “gave their today for our tomorrow” in 1948, 1962, 1965 and 1971. And uncharitable though it may sound, it occurs to me also — how come that not a single member of Parliament or any of the state legislatures has his son or son-in-law serving in the armed forces? Is it because there is more money and less risk in the import of fodder, urea and things like that than what a soldier’s widow or mother may get in lieu of the sacrifice her man makes? Maybe, we can draw at
least one lesson. Pardon me for the parody, but I would
say — “One bullet from a Paki gun;/May tell you
more of Pakistan;/Of its evil mind and evil design;/Than
all the buses can.” |
Self-denial in democratic spirit
THIS is my third and final piece on the unprecedented eruption of judicial interference in the recent Lok Sabha elections. I beg to be forgiven for hammering away at the same point. That judicial interference with elections while the elections are in progress is impermissible, impractical and undesirable. But the point is fundamental to the very existence of Indian democracy and no amount of repetition can perhaps be enough. “We faced it in the Patna High Court,” an anguished Chief Election Commissioner M.S. Gill told The Hindu on October 15, addressing this very point, “we faced it in the Lucknow High Court, we faced it in the Kerala High Court, we have faced it in the Maharashtra High Court in the Aurangabad Bench, we faced it in Andhra Pradesh and who knows where else.” Litigation after litigation around the country, diverting the energies of the Election Commission and threatening to stall the election process in one State after the other, or in one part of a State or the other. “Now think about it,” said Gill in a wide-ranging interview. “Had in the 1950s and 60s dissatisfied candidates gone to court, then the whole process would have been brought to a grinding halt, stay orders given, in all good faith, and then, the long legal process, what Shakespeare calls ‘the law’s delay’ can carry on and on and on, and democracy would have ended.” And democracy would have ended. For some strange reason, there was practically no debate in the Constituent Assembly on Article 329(b), the provision in the Constitution embodying the “judicial hands-off” policy of the founding fathers during the while elections are in progress. But I have no doubt that the provision was the product of the same historically grim foreboding as the Chief Election Commissioner gave voice to ten days ago. A guarantee that elections will always be held and never injuncted or stayed, Article 329(b) is as indispensable to the survival of democracy as the institution of judicial review generally is to the survival of the Constitution. And it shall redound to the eternal credit of the Supreme Court that it grasped this fundamental truth in the very first encounter it had with the provision 47 years ago. “It does not require much argument to show,” a Constitution Bench of the court ruled unanimously in Ponnuswami’s case in 1952, “that in a country with a democratic Constitution in which the legislatures have to play a very important role, it will lead to serious consequences if the elections are unduly protracted or obstructed.” As they would be for sure if the High Courts started entertaining writ petitions regarding elections in the very midst of the elections. The ultimate threat to democracy posed by such premature intervention, the larger threat to the polity as a whole, necessarily entails rejection of individual grievances before the elections are over and done with. “I am quite clear,” the Madras High Court had ruled in 1923, anticipating by 76 years a trend of judicial thought seen in the Lok Sabha elections this time, “that any post-election remedy is wholly inadequate to afford the relief which the petitioner seeks, namely, that this election be stayed....It is no remedy to tell him that he must let the election go on and then have it set aside by (election) petition and have a fresh election ordered. The fresh elections may be under altogether different circumstances....” A not unimpressive argument that, but the Supreme Court was not impressed. These observations, it held in the Ponnuswami case, represent only one side of the picture. They were made (it said, citing a subsequent Madras High Court judgement) when the “practice of individuals coming forward to stop elections in order that their own individual interest may be safeguarded, was not so common.” Now (the Supreme Court implied), the floodgates would open if this judicial approach were permitted to continue. Even more than local boards in relation to which the Madras High Court had spoken in those dormant times, decades before independence and democracy set foot in India, legislatures would function, if at all they would function, with a mere fraction of their total strength if the bar in Article 329(b) were not given effect to. The rest would be injuncted or stayed by judicial process. Words similar to those used in Article 329(b), said the court, had been employed in the British Representation of the People Act, 1950. And there, in England, which has no written Constitution and where the Parliament is supreme, such words “have been consistently treated” as words apt to exclude the jurisdiction of all courts including the High Court. The “same consequence”, ruled the Supreme Court in Ponnuswami, “must follow from” Article 329(b) of the Indian Constitution. The words “notwithstanding anything in this Constitution”, used therein to introduce the bar against judicial interference in ongoing elections, impart to that Article (it said) the “same wide and binding effect as a statute passed by a sovereign legislature like the English Parliament.” Thus it is that the Supreme Court, at the very dawn of the Constitution, upheld a denial of its own power and that of the High Courts in order that democracy in India may took root and survive. Less than a fortnight
after the military coup in Pakistan, let us not deceive
ourselves into believing that judicial priorities today
can be any different. |
Selective displacement at fag-end
IN last week’s major administrative reshuffle at the Centre, two secretary-level bureaucrats of the 1965 batch of the IAS were reverted back to their home cadres. They were Secretary (Youth Affairs and Sports) DK Manavalan of the West Bengal cadre and Secretary (Statistics) RS Mathur of the UP cadre. Both these bureaucrats have only one and a half years to retire and were by no means controversial so the question that is being raised is why have they been reverted. Sources state the Cabinet Secretary could not provide any explanation, nor could top officials in the PMO. So with no option left both these bureaucrats have proceeded on long leave. One of them is said to have even sought an appointment with the President of India. However, probings have revealed that these orders have been passed at the behest of a Joint Secretary level officials in the PMO. Manavalan’s case is said to be linked to the fact that a particular political faction is displeased with him because he is playing a very vital role in the Pope’s forthcoming visit. As a Roman Catholic (in fact the only Roman Catholic Secretary-level bureaucrat in the GOI) Manavalan is in the various reception committees and in charge of the public function schedule to be held at the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium on November 6, which the Pope will address. Unfortunate aspects to these transfers are that as usual the IAS lobby/ the IAS Association is silent. And though the Government of India has every right to revert back any official before his tenure ends, but this is seldom done, unless there is an urgency attached. We, of course, wouldn’t known if any urgency-riddled factors were related to these because the other unfortunate aspect is that there is no transparency in the functioning of the very bureaucracy. All gets hidden in dusty files or else gets covered by smooth talk at the association get-togethers. Mr M.M. Joshi — What’s this? HRD Minister Murli Manohar Joshi has been often accused for appointing men belonging to his political thought and “old boys” from Allahabad University, at the various bodies directly or indirectly manned by this particular ministry. Readers let’s not forget that last year and even earlier this year controversies came up vis-a-vis some of the appointments done at the ICHR, IIAS and ICSSR. And now though the HRD Ministry lies bifurcated and the Culture Department is no longer directly under his part of the ministry but even then eyebrows are being raised as the director of the Allahabad-based NCZCC (North Central Zone Cultural Centre) has sent invites for the release of Nivedita Joshi’s poetic volume ‘Nange Paon’ on October 24, at the Lalit Kala Academy. Criticism is coming in because let’s not overlook the fact that Nivedita Joshi is the daughter of Murli Manohar Joshi, who till a few weeks back was the minister of the undivided HRD (with the culture department very much part of it) and also stands out the fact that this particular zonal cultural centre is based in Allahabad, which happens to be Joshi’s constituency. The Prime Minister will release this volume and will also inaugurate Nirmala Singh’s exhibition of paintings, which are said to be based on Nivedita’s poetic lines. And just before filing this column when I got in touch with Nivedita to ask her about her poetic volume and also the justification for NCZCC playing host she said “Nirmala Singh had approached them (NCZCC) and they agreed.” Perhaps, only the naive will believe this simple explanation! And commenting on her poetry volume she says though she has done her masters in Microbiology but has been writing poetry and practising yoga. That’s what human development is all about! Special attention on ‘chiru’ Though Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dixit couldn’t make it for the inauguration of WWF-India’s campaign to conserve the chiru, the Tibetan Antelope, but, nevertheless, it took off well. In the sense the campaign focused on the link between chiru and the Shahtoosh shawls (this antelopei is killed to procure wool for making these exclusive, high priced shawls), to the diminishing numbers of these particular antelopes as several thousands are poached every year, to the fact that India continues to be one of the countries where this trade thrives till date. “Last week there was a meet in China to focus attention on the diminishing population of chiru and one of the facts raised during this meet was exactly this — that is, this trade is still surviving in India, even to this day. On the other hand China has never encouraged this trade or made use of the wool procured from this antelope.... “said Manoj Kumar Mishra who is the director of WWFs unit —TRAFFIC (Trade Record Analysis of Flora and Fauna in Commerce). And though this campaign has at its objective to bring a ban on this trade but as the British envoy’s spouse, who spoke on this occasion, pointed out that though banning might be difficult at the initial stages or that it might take time but awareness has begun. Yes, at least it has been put across that antelopes are killed to weave these ‘shahtoosh’ shawl. Not far back most of us were not even aware of this link. Ravinder Jamwal’s ‘Mandap’ in Paris And just now comes the
news from the Embassy of France that an international
exhibition of contemporary sculptures opened at the
Champs-Elysees in Paris, as part of the city’s
millennium events. Works of 52 artists-drawn from
different countries of the world are set along the wide
tree-lined avenue and amongst them there is Jammu-based
artist Ravinder Jamwal’s sculpture titled
‘Mandap’. “Mandap based on the fire altar
where Hindu marriages are solemnised, tries to highlight
the aesthetic configuration of the object by transforming
the accessories...” |
October
25, 1924 ON some important points the Allahabad Hindu Sabha has effectively contradicted the allegations made against it by the Commissioner of Allahabad in his recent communique on the subject of the Allahabad riots. The most important of these allegations from the point of view of the general public was that the Sabha had publicly stated in a resolution that the Hindus were not bound by any resolutions which the Unity Conference might pass. The Sabha, we learn from
its rejoinder, had done nothing of the kind. The object
of its resolution was only to request the Hindu leaders
not to ignore the views of that large section of the
Hindu community which was represented by the Hindu Sabha.
This was, of course, a very different thing from the
statement that was actually attributed to it. |
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