E D I T O R I A L   P A G E

EDITORIALS

Cold war in Sangh Parivar 
DISINVESTMENT is always a risky gamble and is open to charges of underpricing and worse. This is particularly so with a profit-making ultra modern undertaking like IPCL (Indian Petrochemicals Corporation Ltd) based in Gujarat. 

Passport to security
THE introduction of a system under which those travelling by air between India and Nepal will require a passport from October 1 may come in for criticism from some quarters but this is a step in the right direction. 

OPINION

Why is life less stressful in India?
by K. Rajbir Deswal
NEWS has reached us that the Indians are the second most happiest people on earth after the Americans. The US people might have scored over the Indians because of the comforts and the abundance of resources available in their country, but culture, religion, faith, domestic and community life and, above all, the Indian lifestyle, coupled with a feeling of contentment, perhaps, are the major contributing factors in this country. These factors enable the people in India to lead a less stressful life compared to that in the West.

MIDDLE

REALPOLITIK

SPIRITUAL NUGGETS

Cold war in Sangh Parivar 

DISINVESTMENT is always a risky gamble and is open to charges of underpricing and worse. This is particularly so with a profit-making ultra modern undertaking like IPCL (Indian Petrochemicals Corporation Ltd) based in Gujarat. Ever since the Centre announced its decision to offload 25 per cent of equity in this key industry, controversies had begun to swirl around it. Many have questioned the very wisdom of selling off well-run plant in the name of disinvestment which aims at freeing the government of loss-making laggards. The then Minister in charge of IPCL showed his annoyance by extending the service of the top official despite an express disapproval of the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO). Around this time the BMS (Bhartiya Mazdoor Sangh), the trade union affiliate of the Sangh Parivar, got into a bruising skirmish with the government. It is the majority union in the plants and wanted permission for a workers’ cooperative to take over and run it. The Minister sabotaged the proposal, saying it was not right for political parties or their front organisations to buy out government-run undertakings. A period of comparative calm descended on IPCL and the government shortlisted three potential buyers of the shares on offer. Reliance, which has varied interests in petrochemicals, headed the list, followed by Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) in collaboration with American giant Dow Chemicals and Japanese multinational Mitsubishi. The government first refused to entertain the IOC bid, and when it fielded Dow Chemicals it was upbraided for stepping out of line. The clinching argument was that IOC itself was on the block and hence should keep off the disinvestment game. But Dow Chemicals is very much in the picture as is Mitsubishi. Now comes the twist suggesting some hanky-panky. Reliance wants to pick up the shares for Rs 1250 crore but Dow Chemicals values the equity on offer at about Rs 3000 crore. During the past six months of policy contortions the share price has tumbled by 50 per cent, now hovering around Rs 60 a share.

All these are not charges being levelled by same anti-liberalisation opposition parties but by the BMS. In a letter to the Prime Minister, it accuses sister Sangh Parivar branch, Swadeshi Jagran Manch (SJM) of virtually acting as a Reliance lobbyist in the IPCL deal. It also suspects help from other sources in propping up the lower bid in preference to a more reasonable one. The letter refers to the Prime Minister’s oft-repeated call for zero tolerance to corruption and appeals to him to order a re-examination of the issue in this context (of corruption). The meaning is clear. The BMS is accusing politicians and bureaucrats of striking a deal with Reliance and the SJM of facilitating this. There are several ironies. Two RSS spawned organisations are trading charges in the open and the more senior of them has uttered the C word (C for corruption). The BMS, normally opposed to the control of key segments by multinationals, finds itself supporting a foreign company buying into the biggest manufacturer of petrochemicals in the country. It is possible that the BMS is infuriated by the government’s rejection of its own proposal or is genuinely alarmed at the whiff of a big scandal. But, by the way the letter has been leaked to the media, ensuring a big play of its contents, it is more likely that the trade union is targeting one or two political bigwigs and a few senior officers in the PMO. The BJP leadership has one more firefighting operation in hand and this one is going to demand greater skill than patching up the factional feuds in its state units of UP and Madhya Pradesh.

Technical education & quality 

QUANTITY without quality is meaningless. It is the extreme quality consciousness at the Indian Institutes of Technology (popularly known as the IITs) that has made the “products” of these institutions the most sought-after technically qualified personnel in the world from this country. It is mainly these IITians who have enabled India to earn an enviable image in the field of computer software technology. In the area of software-related knowledge the contribution of other technical institutions is also admirable. Over the years if India has emerged not only as a leading software exporter but also as a major supplier of technically qualified personnel in this particular field, it is because of the combined efforts of known and not-so-known institutions plus the innovative entrepreneurship of certain individuals. If nothing disturbs the momentum, India’s dream of becoming a software super power may become a reality very soon. It is a matter of great pride that many Western countries, including the USA, Germany and the UK, have created special cells in their embassies for recruiting our software engineers and other personnel. But there is a catch. This demand is there so long as India is able to maintain the required quality. The moment this factor disappears the countries which have today made a virtual beeline for India’s computer personnel will change their attitude and create hindrances in the way. We have to remain extra vigilant to protect this hard-earned image.

There is a lurking threat from the mushrooming of technical institutions offering courses in software technology and other computer-related areas without having sufficient infrastructure. The recent case that has come to notice is that of 15 institutions in Punjab having been warned by the All-India Council of Technical Education (AICTE) that they will face action if they fail to fulfill the prescribed criteria within three months. This concession has been given besides the long period which has elapsed when they were supposed to satisfy the AICTE. Five of these institutions are “full-fledged” engineering colleges and one has been specially opened for providing computer and business-related education. The AICTE will withdraw its show-cause notice if it receives a favourable report from Punjab’s Department of Technical Education. Knowing the way our officialdom functions, one should not be surprised if some of these institutions manage to get the case disposed of in their favour even without having the required infrastructure and a properly qualified staff strength. In the circumstances, it is necessary to evolve a mechanism to prevent the grant of undue recognition to any technical institution irrespective of the money power or the connections its management has. As the situation exists today, the AICTE does not have a foolproof system to prevent the role of money and political connections in the grant of its recognition. In fact, no institute should be allowed to enroll students unless it secures the AICTE recognition, which should come strictly on merit. This is necessary to ensure that the products of any Indian institution are world class technically qualified personnel. Passport to security

Passport to security

THE introduction of a system under which those travelling by air between India and Nepal will require a passport from October 1 may come in for criticism from some quarters but this is a step in the right direction. The need for passengers to carry some identification documents became pressing following the hijacking of Indian Airlines flight IC-814 on the Kathmandu-Delhi route in December last, shortly after it took off from Kathmandu airport. The security lapse took place mainly because the passengers were not required to prove their identity. Actually, even now the passport will only be one of the admissible documents. There is no need to obtain a visa for travelling by air from India to Nepal or from Nepal to India. An Indian could also establish his identity with the help of the Election Commission identity card or the Central/State Government identity card. Similarly, a Nepalese citizen wishing to fly here would be required to carry either a passport, a citizenship certificate or the voter’s identification card. This requirement had been dispensed with all this while just because the two countries enjoyed the best of relationship. But mischievous elements have taken undue advantage of this gesture to further their own dirty designs.Sooner or later, this kind of restriction may have to be applied in the case of land travel also. The two countries share an open and porous 1,041 - km long border. Of late, the ISI and other subversive agencies have cast their evil eyes on this “loophole”. They have been smuggling men and weapons to foment trouble in India through this route. No country can allow such sacrilege on its unity and sovereignty. Madarsas have been mushrooming along the border in furtherance of such designs. Even otherwise there has been an increase in criminal activities, particularly in 20 districts of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal and Sikkim adjoining the border. These can be checked more effectively if those crossing over are called upon to establish their identity. Thousands of Nepalis come to India every year in search of jobs. A handful of them indulge in criminal activities here and then escape to their country, without a trace. Because of these few black sheep, Nepalis in general are getting a bad name and finding it difficult to obtain employment. These difficulties can be gotten over once the people are asked to carry their travel documents. This may be tedious to begin with, but the benefits far outway the difficulties.

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY-I
A 21st century revolution in the making
by Rajendra S. Pawar

FROM the Rigvedic prayer for noble thoughts to blow into our homes from all sides to St Augustine’s concept of intelligence as the “prime author and mover of the universe”, pursuit of knowledge has distinguished human civilisations from all other living creatures down the pathways of time. The library at Alexandria, for instance, had several million parchment books even during the early Roman pre-Christian period. In his wonderful history of human civilisations, “The Ascent of Man”, J. Bronowski wrote: “Man is not a figure in the landscape — he is a shaper of the landscape.” As we step into a new millennium, we can see the progress of human civilisation, as Bronowski perceived it, as a hop from successive peaks of achievements to a mosaic of many convergences. There are enough indications that the next millennium will create the harmony through these convergences to bring out the best in human mind, institutions and creativity.

The history of man can be viewed from different angles. One of these views is that the discontinuities that created quantum difference in human civilisation were actually the inventions that breached the limits of man’s physical power. The wheel, for instance, breached the limits of movement, the fire that of energy, the bridge that of jumping, the crane multiplied the power of the muscle, and the telephone that of hearing and TV that of sight.

In this process, the transistor discovered almost 50 years ago marked the most significant turning point. For the first time man could build precision and transport that precision without attenuation with the speed of light. When the digital language was used to capture information, man acquired the capability to move information at speeds that surpassed that of the brain by many orders of magnitude.

The beginnings of the knowledge era could be traced to the attainment of this capability to capture, store, move and retrieve information faster and in greater quantity than the brain could ever do. Information connectivity made possible by the transistor, the light pulse and radio wave led to the connected world and the inter-connectivity led to universal knowledge access and knowledge multiplier. It did not take long to discover that if six billion people are networked, it would mean their minds would fertilise one another and creative big bang would transform all the institutions that man had built up over the last five millennia. Mankind seemed to be at the edge where the value chain moves up from information to knowledge and from there to wisdom. A new inter-relationship between man and machine seems to be beginning.

At the NIIT, experts began with the vision of “bringing people and computers together”. This beginning was also the initial period of the PC. It was found that as the power of the PC grew and it became feature-rich, the human-computer interface was changing value systems and institutions. Step by step the PC world was seen as necessarily a distributive world which gave primacy to the opportunities that information in the hands of each individual in an organisation could give to the whole of it. Networking multiplied the power of each participant in the network not only by the number of participants in it but also by a multiplier of that number. This revelation led to the rapid popularity of the networked world through such devices as Information Super-highways and finally the Internet and the enabling technology of the World Wide Web.

The next step was the realisation that each networked grouping was itself a matter of great worth that could continuously expand. That gave rise to the concept of the knowledge corporation whose stakes would continue to generate value without end. The kind of people in that knowledge corporation, the way they are inter-linked and function symbiotically and asynchronously, became the value determinant in public perception more than the individual products the corporation created.

In India, the NIIT was the first to declare itself as a “knowledge corporation”, as early as 1985. By 1998 a few Indian corporations had already brought out their knowledge asset-liability balance sheets. At the end of 1999 Assocham made knowledge the focus of the discussion in their AGMs. The Indian Science Congress caught the knowledge fever under its president, Dr R.A. Mashelkar. The focus of the next Science Congress is to deliberate on how India should be moving into the knowledge millennium. Business and academia both have recognised the opportunities and responded to the knowledge era.

Political leaders are now joining the bandwagon. Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee has announced specific steps his government would take to drive India into the superpower league of the knowledge era. Seven state governments are in the lead for building an IT-driven society and an IT-enabled government. Some of them are launching a high-speed Internet backbone with assistance from such international financing bodies as WorldTel. Sankhya Vahini, a nationwide high-speed Internet access network, is under government consideration that an academia-government joint venture is to implement.

Behind such steps as the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and every other global coming together is this visible and invisible hand of transformation that is nothing less than a revolution. And those who are the Lenins and Maos of this revolution are not political creatures but academicians, scientists and businessmen. The spate of books on the information age that have come — like “The Road Ahead” Bill Gates, “What Will Be” by Prof Michael Dertouzos, “Being Digital” by Prof Nicholas Negroponte, “The Power of Imagination” by Prof C.K. Prahlad or “The New Realities” by the guru of all management gurus, Peter Drucker — are all replete with the word “revolution”, a word which in the early 20th century was the password of progressivism of the Left. Indeed, it is these visionaries of the computer who are the New Left.

This revolution is even more radical than the ones that fired the imagination of millions in the initial years of the 20th century. The knowledge era would transform education into learning, work into creativity, medicine into health care, society into communities of shared interests over regressing national borders, and entertainment into infotainment, and every other aspect of human activity would be transformed. Governments would shrink into networks of communities or self-administering entities through discussion, participation and consensus built on a day-to-day basis.

The greatest change will come in the case of corporations. The knowledge era will make product corporations into people corporations. More than products they will build and enhance value. That value will grow out of the values within the corporation, among the people that constitute the corporation and through their own value-based interaction.

Corporations will grow in the recognition and respect they command, through pioneering and leading in the effective deployment of technology and knowhow. In fact, we have already coined a new word “teknowlogy”, signifying synergy between technology and knowhow, between people and machine. “Teknowlogy”will drive corporations; those who do not consciously develop will fall by the way, those who do will prosper. In such a “teknowlogy”-driven corporation training, retaining and value-embedding in the people will take precedence over everything else. The role of the chairman would be to lead from behind, using the minds of the people in it to create capabilities that measure up to his aspirations. The corporate leadership would be all about turning the capabilities within into possibilities through infusing inspiration of leadership into the people around. The market value would go up as the frontiers of the possibilities are relentlessly pushed forward; any shrink will at once get reflected manifold in the market value.

One way in which the public perception of value will impinge on corporations will be that the corporations that try to market the products perceived by the public as environment-unfriendly will have to wind up. Every corporation will be forced to become transparent in its dealings to protect its own market capitalisation. Their employees will be their first and foremost business partners. Instead of designated superiors challenging sullen employees, the new workers will welcome challenge and often create that challenge themselves, even for their superiors. In effect most corporations will become networks of creative colleagues, located in geographically distant places.

(To be concluded)

The writer, a leading figure in the area of information technology, is the Chairman of the NIIT.

Why is life less stressful in India?
by K. Rajbir Deswal

NEWS has reached us that the Indians are the second most happiest people on earth after the Americans. The US people might have scored over the Indians because of the comforts and the abundance of resources available in their country, but culture, religion, faith, domestic and community life and, above all, the Indian lifestyle, coupled with a feeling of contentment, perhaps, are the major contributing factors in this country. These factors enable the people in India to lead a less stressful life compared to that in the West.

Talking of India, Mark Twain says: “Land of dreams and romance. The country of a hundred nations and a hundred tongues; of a thousand religions and two million gods. Cradle of human race, birthplace of human speech, mother of history, grandmother of legend, great grandmother of tradition; the land that all men desire to see and having seen once by even a glimpse, would not give that glimpse for the shows of all the rest of the globe combined.”

Without passing any value judgement and simply commenting on the lifestyle of Westerners, I, having been afforded an opportunity to see alien lands for a couple of months, and thus being witness to the monotonous life they live, with their daily dose of boredom, getting the better of the most affluent even, has a saga of its own to be told when contrasted with the Indian lifestyle. The street fights, a shave at the barber saloon, a tete-a-tete at the paan shop, the mohulla corner gossip of women, a family get-together on festivals and a myriad of other such encounters have spice and soul in them in comparison to the “holidaying on weekends” of a Western couple, reading newspapers, with their car parked at lake-side, idling for hours and hours and returning home to wait for another day to begin and planning another “holiday” the coming week, pales into boredom of sorts.

Gunnar Myrdal, the Swedish economist and author of many works on development economics, who shared the Nobel Prize in 1974, has described India as a soft state but in a different economics-related concept. But even if the expression — soft state — in the Indian context is taken to be relevant in its real and literal sense, there should be no exaggeration, rather an admission of facts, since the culture and tradition, as practised in India, seem to be as old and acceptable a reason as any known and sensible (read respectable) civilisation which flourished anywhere in the world. The age of any civilisation still pulsating with the relevance of existence is undoubtedly the yardstick of the contentedness and happiness in that society.

Ours is a society of optimistic people. To ward of pessimism, Indians have their own ways and means devised in the form of various faiths. That the Indians are fatalists only confirms their being God-loving or God-fearing.

An average Indian is not at all an ambitious person. Although the get-rich-quick bug is affecting the younger generation of late, this again is a legacy of the industrialised countries. Indians have proved it to the world that their simplicity of lifestyle and thought is matchless. We are a people who are lovers of idealism.

Indian social life has no parallels in the world. The fairs organised with fervour not only add spice to the life of average Indians but also go a long way in preserving their culture. Customs, rituals, rites, ceremonies and marriages are some of the things which ensure an incessant flow of happiness and Indianness to us. The festivals celebrated with regularity and with indulgent participation not only unite the people but also assure a perfect assimilation of diverse cultures and mutual acceptability.

The Western society is surely a stressed society. In the face of personal tragedies, misfortunes catastrophes, people in the West consult psychiatrists to be normal. They too seek happiness. They too long for relatives. They too love their parents. But the situation is entirely different in their case. They experience a crisis of faith when it comes to relations, of whatever kind. One can see foreigners sitting on Har ki Pauri at Hardwar. The attendance during the discourses of Indian scholars of spiritualism in alien lands proves beyond doubt that the Indian lifestyle does have something in it that is really “remedial” in matters mundane or spiritual, whether one is in India, America, Japan or Germany.

The youthful English
by Shriniwas Joshi

I boarded a bus at Sanjauli for going to Chhota Shimla. My berth mates happened to be two attractive young girl-students of a local college. Their chit-chat was lively:

“My pait went maha upset last night. Churned like a mixie. I puked and puked. Even the nashta came out, yaar.”

“Tab to there must have been a big lafda.”

“Oh ya! even Pa and Ma got up. It was hungama in house.”

“You should have dikhaoed yourself to a doc then.”

“No yaar, the doc on our side is fuddy-duddy. Not even a single fundaa straight. He is to be avoided like DD (Doordarshan).”

“Oh, rats!”

Their conversation then switched over to Pam Dab (Parminder’s Dhaba) whose parathas were so swad that mouth got filled with paani. One of them, there and then, decided “to phooto (bunk) her Eco class that day or ask Ruhi to get the parathas lapetoed and bring them to college.”

This may not be the English that prudes would like or even tolerate, but the fact is that it has come to stay in India and is flourishing. “Yeh dil mange more” or “Yehi hai right choice baby” or “khao biscuit fifty-fifty” are some of the advertisement jingles extremely popular with the youths.

I am reminded of my school going days when we used to coin such poetry to gibe at those who showed even slight englishness:

“Raining barsa chhum, chhum, chhum, / Paon my phisla, gir gaya hum

Head my toota, chot aayi come, / Up tha basta, down thei hum.”

Today, when “anti-pollution” is a common word in every household, even the strictest of conservationists overlooks the pollution in the language and merrily joins the young ones to hum:

“What is your mobile number? What is your style number?

Karni hain private baaten, de de koi easy number.”

Despite the shock that I had received when a female hosteller introduced her guardian, at his back, of course, to her friend in the words, “he is like periods yaar, must come once in a mahinaa”, I shout chatpati! lachhedar ! for the youthful English and cheer it up Ilu, Ilu.

The fight for the federal cake
by P. Raman

THE BJP Government’s decision to summarily reject Farooq Abdullah’s autonomy resolution at the Cabinet level has been prompted by two factors. The intense RSS pressures to disown outright any kind of special status for Kashmir and the BJP’s fear that any further debate on the issue will open a pandora’s box of controversies on Centre-State relations. Even while the Kashmir Assembly was debating the resolution, support for a diluted kind of autonomy had come from Assam Chief Minister P.K. Mahanta.

There was more panic following the alert by the official agencies about the possibilities of the hardliners in parties like the Akali Dal and the DMK seeking to revive old ghosts. Chief Minister Karunanidhi’s Assembly resolution in 1974 and the 1973 Anandpur Sahib resolution were strikingly similar to the AGP’s autonomy recipe — the Centre should retain limited powers like defence, currency, external affairs, communication etc, leaving all other subjects to the states. The BJP top brass had feared further loud debates in Parliament and media might make it out of control.

Fortuitously, both the Akalis and the DMK have over the years moved far away from the new Mahanta model of Centre-State ties. This apart, pressures have been building up in the past few months for a fair deal for the States, especially in fiscal matters. Though such demands have nothing to do with the autonomy controversy it is bound to give a fillip to the growing grumblings in States. But an exaggerated sense of security has made Vajpayee to ignore all such warning signals. In 1983, four southern Chief Ministers had ‘ganged up’ to fight against the misuse of power against the elected State Governments. Indira Gandhi, despite her near two-thirds majority, had promptly responded by appointing the Sarkaria Commission.

The sharp differences over the Centre’s powers and the States’ genuine rights have been highlighted at a series of meetings in the past few weeks. At the sixth meeting of the Inter-State Council in May last, Chief Ministers cutting across the party lines had decried arbitrary economic decisions being imposed on them by the Vajpayee Government. Some Chief Ministers insisted that the Centre hold prior consultations with the States on measures that would affect their finances. Questions were raised about the Centre’s unilateral decision on slashing subsidies and raising prices of essential items. Chandrababu Naidu insisted on 50 per cent share for the States in the Centre’s gross tax revenue. Some sought scrapping of the centrally- sponsored schemes.

Some of them responded to Vajpayee’s routine homily for fiscal discipline by reminding him that much of it stemmed from his own Government’s economic decisions. Soft-pedalling by the media apart, sharp differences cropped up at the meeting over Articles 256, 257 and 365. Thy forced the Government to form a sub-committee under George Fernandes to review the Centre’s powers under Article 356. The Chief Ministers also wrested an assurance from the Centre on time-bound assent to the Bills passed by the state legislatures. Many such crucial Bills have been awaiting assent for years due to the Centre’s dilatory tactics.

Last month’s conclave of nine State Governments had made many specific fiscal demands to the Prime Minister. Called by the Congress Chief Minister of Rajasthan, two NDA governments — Punjab and Haryana — also attended the conclave. In fact, even some BJP Chief Ministers seemed to subscribe to the conclave’s conclusions. They asked for the immediate release of Rs 11,000 crore included in the current year’s Budget as non-Plan deficit to the states. Release of states’ share in the VDIS as one-time grant on stand-alone basis has been the other demand. Yashwant Sinha wants them to be adjusted against their entitlement under the 29 per cent formula.

The conclave insisted on raising the states’ share of divisible taxes from the present 29 per cent to 33.3 per cent of the national kitty. Also, they wanted to change the grant-to-loan component of the Union Plan fund assistance from 3 : 7 to 5 : 5. The interest on loan from the Centre and all-India financial institutions should also be lowered from the current rate of 12.5 per cent to 10 per cent. The surplus generated on account of small savings should be advanced to the States as grant, and not as loan. Vajpayee listened to the non-BJP states’ requests but avoided making any commitment on any issue.

The inherent political contradictions of a loose coalition of regional outfits and the Centre’s helplessness to assert its powers have led to the present curious spectacle. Watch the two diametrically opposed trends. While the State Governments, whose cumulative numerical strength in the Lok Sabha keeps alive the Vajpayee Government, seek more fiscal powers and more functional freedom, the Centre itself is trying to intrude deeper into the areas reserved for the States. Many such subtle moves were frustrated due to stiff public anger.

Every ruler, irrespective of the past pronouncements, tries to usurp more powers. The moment a Ministry begins to feel secure at the Centre the first response will be to grab more sweeping authority for itself. Never mind if this is being done even by those who had once fought tooth and nail such concentration of powers in a single entity. L.K. Advani’s proposal for a ‘federal law enforcement agency’ (Flea) is one such project which seems to have already achieved some marketing success. ‘Flea’ is designed as a police force with powers to be deployed anywhere in India. The existing all-India forces like the CRPF can be deployed on the request of the State Government concerned. This is because law and order is a state subject.

This draconian move calls for an amendment to the Constitution to shift ‘police’ and ‘public order’ from the State List to the Concurrent List. Under Article 355, the Centre is obliged to protect the states from external aggression and internal disturbance. But the Centre has never invoked this Article for suo motu deployment of its forces. Similarly, it had never intervened by issuing directions under Articles 256 and 257. Even the much-maligned Indira Gandhi had considered it sacrosanct. Why then Vajpayee seeks to deploy his own parallel police in States with all parallel powers?

It is based on the need for “pro-active intervention” in the management of internal security. Its “paper advisories,” the Centre laments, were being routinely ignored by the states. Even the “next step” of despatching central teams ended in fiasco after the West Bengal Government bluntly decided not to entertain such ‘armstwisting’. The logical conclusion is that the Centre should acquire powers to deploy its own forces as and where it liked. The failures of states like Bihar to stem the ‘caste’ violence is cited as another reason.

The non-NDA states have already opposed the proposal. Others are debating the ill-effects of ‘Flea’, especially under an unfriendly government at the Centre. Vajpayee is scheduled to meet the Chief Ministers in this regard early next month. In the first place, the Centre’s own record of the law and order management has been dismal. Even in Delhi, under the very nose of the Union Home Ministry. Under the “pro-active” regime, militants have been more ruthless with a surge in killings in Kashmir. Activities of the ISI has increased. How such a regime can improve things in other states?

The Opposition sees “petty politics” in ‘Flea’ which is designed as a sharp tool in the hands of the Centre. The BJP now has only three State Governments. ‘Flea’ will enable it — for that matter any government at the Centre — to use power in its favour in any state. Existence of parallel forces armed with a more draconian TADA can play havoc with law administration. It can even lead to mutual clashes. There will be many practical complications. Even in Bihar’s case, the State Government always complain of the Centre’s refusal to despatch enough forces to help it deal with the violence. With the kind of polarisation in the State, situations like the ‘Flea’ protecting the pro-NDA Ranvir Sena cannot be ruled out. Coordination and exchange of intelligence are different from direct central intrusion into the State’s own domain.

The threat of fiscal intrusions into the States’ exclusive realm is more real. Many State Governments have fiercely opposed the Centre’s IMF-like conditionalities for allocation of resources. Under the new move, flow of central funds will depend on the progress of reform measures like cap on market borrowing and expenditure, cut in subsidies, raising more tariffs and restructuring of state PSUs. States argue that they enjoy certain constitutional rights which cannot be reduced to a patron-client relationship. Such conditionalities on the States tend to wreck the very foundation of a healthy Centre-State relationship.

This two-way tussle for more powers are taking place at a time when the regional partners of the coalition are coming under new strains. Fight against Congress centralism has always been their main plank. How long can they watch helplessly when the Congress and other rival parties appropriate the same plank against Vajpayee’s over-centralism? This dichotomy has its expression in a sudden surge in separatist demands, which the regional groups realise, alone would enable them to retain their hold. For the past few years, even the regional parties with a regionalistic baggage have shown considerable restraint.

Now for the first time after the Rajiv murder, BJP’s Tamil Nadu allies raise pro-LTTE slogans. The Shiv Sena seems retuning to the old son-of-soil campaign with its strong Maharashtrianism. The new central policies have splintered the entire J & K — from the Pandits to the Ladakhis and Jammu region. The AGP finds it profitable to raise its own brand of autonomy. When things go wrong within the States, exigencies of political survival will force the local outfits to resort to extreme regional gimmicks — as Farooq has done. 

SPIRITUAL NUGGETS

If you put a simple molecule of air in the bottom of a glass of water, it at once begins to struggle to join the infinite atmosphere above. So it is with the soul. It is struggling to regain its pure nature and to free itself from this material body. It wants to regain its own infinite expansion. This is everywhere the same. Among Christians, Buddhists, Mohammedans, agnostic or priest, the soul is struggling. A river flows a thousand miles down the circuitous mountainside to where it joins the seas and a man is standing there to tell it to go back and start anew and assume a more direct course! That man is a fool. You are a river that flows from the heights of Zion. I flow from the lofty peaks of the Himalayas. It do not say to you, go back and come down as I did. That is more wrong than foolish. Stick to your beliefs.

— From Swami Vivekananda’s lecture at Young Men’s Hebrew Association Hall, Memphis, January 21, 1894

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Never trust anybody not of sound religion, for he that is false to God cannot be true to man.

— Lord William Cecil Burleigh

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Let your religion be seen. Lamps do not talk, but they do shine. A lighthouse sounds no drum, it beats no going; yet far over the waters its friendly light is seen by the mariner.

— Theodore Ledyard Cuyler (1822-1909), American Clergyman

***

Religious fanaticism makes intellect dull.

— Swami Dayananda, Satyaratha Prakash, Introduction

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If men are so wicked with religion, what would they be without it.

— Leszinski Stanislas (1677-1766), King of Poland

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On the return trip home, gazing through 240,000 miles of space towards the stars and the planet from which I had come, I suddenly experienced the universe as intelligent, loving, harmonious.

— Edgar Mitchell, Apollo 14 astronaut, who walked on the Moon in 1971

****

Be a smile millionaire.

— Swami Yogananda, Man’s Eternal Quest