E D I T O R I A L   P A G E

EDITORIALS

Apex court is angry
IT is a well-earned rebuke but has come at an extremely delicate moment for the Karnataka government and is hurtingly sharp. The Supreme Court is irritated that the state is seeking to involve the judiciary in its surrender to Veerappan as a trade-off for the release of film actor Rajkumar. It has made three harsh comments, two somewhat valid and one unfair to the state. 

Making police people-friendly
THE country’s only woman supercop, Ms Kiran Bedi, is known to be a fitness freak. Since fitness, like charity, begins at home, the first woman IPS officer has set for herself a punishing schedule of physical exercises and yoga. She has earned the respect of the lower ranks because she protects them from being used as errand boys by senior officers, bureaucrats and politicians.  

OPINION

ISSUE OF CONSTITUTION REVIEW
Examining the parameters
by Rajinder Sachar 
THE last date fixed by the Constitution Review Commission for the receipt of memoranda from the public has just expired. Now it is going to get engaged in its in-house deliberations. I, like many, have had misgivings about it in the run up to the appointment of the commission. This was not without reason. 

After power, it’s free irrigation water 
by G.S. Dhillon
IN spite of the fact that “Water resource development and management” was a state subject as per the provisions of the Constitution, the need for evolving a national water policy was keenly felt in mid-1980’s. So, in 1985 the National Water Resource Council (NWRC) comprising the states’ Chief Ministers was set up by the Government of India. 

A king-size flower 
by O. P. Bhagat
THEY were talking of flowers. Each named his favourite bloom and said something in praise. In the midst of it another chap joined them. He listened for a while, then aired his opinion.

Apex court against surrender to brigand 
Anupam Gupta
LET the whole nation stand up and salute the Supreme Court.From Punjab to Kashmir to Assam, rarely before in history has the Indian state inflicted greater humiliation upon itself and capitulated to blackmail and terror more blatantly and facilely than the states of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu did last month over the abduction of cine idol Rajkumar by forest brigand Veerappan.

 

DIVERSITIES — DELHI LETTER

Israeli PM’s date with writers, artists 
by Humra Quraishi

TWO prominent foreign dignitaries visited New Delhi last week. Former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres, who was one of them, did take out time to spend an evening at the Academy of Fine Arts and Literature. Ajeet Cour, the founder chairperson of this Academy, informed me that Mr Peres spent time talking to Indian writers and artists.

 

SPIRITUAL NUGGETS

Apex court is angry

IT is a well-earned rebuke but has come at an extremely delicate moment for the Karnataka government and is hurtingly sharp. The Supreme Court is irritated that the state is seeking to involve the judiciary in its surrender to Veerappan as a trade-off for the release of film actor Rajkumar. It has made three harsh comments, two somewhat valid and one unfair to the state. It castigates the government for invoking its executive power to withdraw TADA cases to appease a forest brigand by raising the bogey of street violence to justify this. The court also criticises the state for not doing anything for eight long years to neutralise the criminal who has several cases against him. The first accusation is very valid. The attempt to bail out as many as 51 TADA detenus is at the instance of Veerappan; they were rounded up in 1992 after a score of policemen were killed obviously by his gang. But these men and women belong to a village where the killing took place. Nine of them are over 75 years of age and several are women and hence entitled to early bail. Ideally, the court should have gone into why they were arrested and the validity of the charges. The history of TADA detention shows that the victims spend long years in prison on mere suspicion and are finally set free. The impression is that all these 51 detenus belong to this category. Respect for their human rights would dictate their release, even if in the present circumstances it is at the command of Veerappan. The fear of rioting in case something nasty were to happen to the Kannada icon is very real. There is a history of anti-Tamil violence in Bangalore and some border areas, and the people of Karnataka adore the film actor as much as they hate the Tamil Veerappan. To ask the state government to control the riots or quit is unfair in the extreme. There have been many cases of rioting, looting and loss of lives and property without the state governments being subjected to this kind of tongue-lashing. Incidentally, the court has to decide on the Srikrishna Committee report on Mumbai rioting in 1992-93 and will it order prosecution of Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray knowing that he may incite the burning of the metropolis?

It is unjust to blame the state government of not doing anything during the past eight years to neutralise the brigand. In association with Tamil Nadu, it set up a special task force to track him down and end his menace. But working in deep jungles for years, lack of motivation, the presence of senior officers with their posse of security men and vehicles and the absence of a clear strategy led to its collapse. For some time, even the BSF was part of the force to take on Veerappan but it gave up because of these problems. The point is that he is a clever and ruthless customer. For instance, he seized three forest officials of Tamil Nadu in 1986 and set a 20-day deadline. The state government decided to demonstrate its firm resolve and collected the three bodies on the 20th day. If something remotely like that were to happen to Rajkumar, the lumpens in Bangalore and elsewhere will rise in revolt and bring the life in the capital city to a stop. The state government wants to prevent this and its task has been made difficult by the Supreme Court order. It should have taken a larger view of the majesty of law and agreed to the plea of Assistant Solicitor General Harish Salve that in line with its three earlier judgements, it should allow the state to act in larger good. It did not and many outside the state will hope that everything goes without a hitch and there is no violence.

Making police people-friendly

THE country’s only woman supercop, Ms Kiran Bedi, is known to be a fitness freak. Since fitness, like charity, begins at home, the first woman IPS officer has set for herself a punishing schedule of physical exercises and yoga. She has earned the respect of the lower ranks because she protects them from being used as errand boys by senior officers, bureaucrats and politicians. The one failing among colleagues and ordinary constables which makes her livid with rage is the pot on their bellies. A recent report on police reforms submitted to Union Home Minister L. K. Advani last week reads like Ms Bedi’s agenda for improving the image and efficiency of the Indian police force. The report was prepared by a committee headed by former Union Home Secretary K. Padmanabhaiah and covers a wide range of issues which need urgent attention for making the police force people-friendly. Of course, the recommendations make sense, but the structural flaws which have crept into the system of civil policing and general administration may not lend themselves to routine repair or even renovation. The entire edifice needs to be brought down for raising a people-friendly structure of administration and policing. Independent India made the mistake of retaining the system which was tailored to serve the interests of the colonial masters. Consequently, brown sahibs took over the system without the efficiency and relative integrity of the white masters in running the affairs of the country. Free India needs the British Bobby, who is trained to be polite and courteous to those who approach him for saving even a kitten trapped on a hot tin roof! The Padmanabhaiah committee has raised these issues in the comprehensive document presented to Mr Advani.

Among the key suggestions is the one for reducing the number of policemen earmarked for security duty. It is indeed true that the current policy of providing security to all and sundry has reduced the average policeman into an errand boy of the self-appointed high and mighty of the land. The committee has recommended police security for only a select group of dignitaries, including the Prime Minister, Union Home Minister, Chief Ministers and holders of constitutional posts. It has said a firm no to providing security at state expense to MPs, MLAs and zila and panchayat samiti heads. Those demanding police security must pay for the service. The committee has also laid emphasis on improving the fitness level of members of the police force. While recommending annual fitness tests, the report used graphic language to emphasise that “ pot-bellied policemen appearing in public, shoddily dressed, wearing chappals and chewing paan” should be eliminated through a new system of recruitment. However, few states are likely to take this recommendation seriously. If a professional yardstick were to be adopted for the recruitment of policemen, the politicians would protest the most because their clout in their respective territories depends on the number of cops at their beck and call. India is not Britain where Prime Minister Tony Blair apologised for the misconduct of his son, and he and his wife presented themselves at the police station for receiving the mandatory reprimand prescribed for the parents of under-age children found misbehaving in public. In India the first thing a politician does is to have the district Superintendent of Police transferred for not carrying out his orders. Simply put, the country must replace the colonial model with the more people-friendly British or rather Western model for making the common man respond to the one in uniform with the same warmth and degree of trust which the British show to their law enforcers.

ISSUE OF CONSTITUTION REVIEW
Examining the parameters
by Rajinder Sachar

THE last date fixed by the Constitution Review Commission for the receipt of memoranda from the public has just expired. Now it is going to get engaged in its in-house deliberations. I, like many, have had misgivings about it in the run up to the appointment of the commission. This was not without reason. It needs to be noted that when a few years back the BJP had suggested a review of the Constitution, one of its spokespersons had openly said that the party did want a debate on whether socialism and secularism should be retained in the Preamble to the Constitution and whether the minorities’ right to run their own educational institutions did not need to be curtailed.

That was when the BJP was dreaming of forming a government by itself. But now that it is a part of the NDA, RSS bosses have decided on diversionary tactics. The BJP knows it full well that the Constitution Review Commission would never buy its shibboleths. It is also aware that it cannot get any such amendments because it lacks a two-thirds majority in Parliament. Its only objective is to use the commission as a sounding board to find a respectable way to put forth all these divisive issues and programmes before the public. It will take cover under the pretext that it is only facilitating a discussion on these issues. To me this is a strategy to unlock the BJP’s hidden agenda, sugar-coated in the language of presentation to the commission. That is why the BJP has persisted in constituting the commission notwithstanding the sweep of opposition to it from various sources, including the President.

But there is now the redeeming feature of composition of the commission consisting of former Chief Justice Venkatachalaiah, Justice Sarkaria and the various working groups constituted by it. Among the others associated with it are Justice Krishna Iyer and Justice Chinnapa Reddy which gives reassurance of the matter being looked into objectively and in all solemnity (of course, vigilance and monitoring by the citizens concerned still would need to be continued).

It is for this reason that I venture to suggest certain amendments which are required for effective and proper functioning of the Constitution.

Part III containing the Fundamental Rights, except for a change in Article 19(1) (2), requires to delete “public order” which restricts the sweep of free speech. Also there is need to specifically mention the freedom of the Press in Article 19(1) (a).

The right to privacy, one of the important human rights, should be included in Part III because of a somewhat different interpretation given by different Supreme Court Benches.

The right to education has been held to be a fundamental right by the Supreme Court, but by a very narrow majority. This needs to be placed beyond the danger zone by including it in this part.

The right to work, without which Article 21 will remain a pious wish, needs to be included because though the Supreme Court does mention Article 21 to include the right to shelter and livelihood, when it comes to coming to grips with the problem, the court, understandably, steps back and contents itself with hopes, expressing its inability to do anything about the implementation of these rights.

Part IV, containing the Directive Principles, needs to be retained as such. Notwithstanding the bug of globalisation hitting the middle classes, the danger of globalisation is staring us all around, and we require the reassurance of Article 39 (1) (c) to prevent the concentration of wealth and power in fewer hands.

Certain other provisions, of course, would need to be amended substantially or even have additional amendments. Thus the appointment and transfer of High Court and Supreme Court judges has now, by judgements of the apex court, become almost the sole preserve of a collegiush of five Supreme Court justices.

It is true that normally a body of judges and lawyers will be in a better position to know about the competence and performance of the candidate to be appointed. But it must not be forgotten that in the selection of judges, more knowledge of civil or criminal laws alone cannot be the consideration for, in the course of their functioning, judges have to decide vital questions concerning the human rights of the less advantaged, the conflict between globalisation and the rural economy, gender justice and other living problems.

A very strong and overwhelming public opinion, therefore, wants this power to be given to the National Judicial Commission consisting of the executive and the judiciary and, of course, retaining the primacy of the latter.

The present talk of making a fixed period of five years for the Lok Sabha and the state legislatures is an unacceptable undemocratic suggestion. This goes against the grain of our glorious precedent — the JP movement — on the right of people to demand early dissolution of the legislature when the legislators have disgraced themselves by their conduct indulging in corruption, etc. After all, the legislatures provide only a practical mechanism to carry out the mandate of the real sovereign in a democracy — the people. The legislators cannot arrogate to themselves the right to continue even after their real master, the people, have lost confidence in them.

The presence of a number of new faces in Parliament — almost half of the strength of the present Lok Sabha — shows how unrepresentative the previous House had become.

There is, of course, the need to amend the Constitution to provide for reservation for women in the legislatures — one of the objections raised is that if women constituencies are rotated, personal contact with the constituency will not be possible. This can be overcome by increasing the strength of the Lok Sabha to 750, and having 250 double member constituencies which may keep women seats non-rotational.

Now let us have a look at the defection question. I feel that there should be a simple provision that if a legislator, either of a state assembly or of the Lok Sabha, having been elected on the ticket of a party joins another political party, his seat will automatically stand vacated. All this pretence of conscientious objection to a particular change of policy is nothing but a sham pretence in most of the cases, specially now when we are in the era of coalition politics. I, however, agree that there should be no disqualification attached to only disobedience of the party whip, excepting in cases involving a vote of confidence or a vote of no-confidence or a vote on a money Bill. In all other cases, the member’s right of free speech and voting should be protected.

The Legislative Councils in the various states are a needless financial burden and serve only the purpose of accommodating political favourites. These should be abolished.

A long time back Parliament had passed a resolution suggesting an amendment to the Constitution so that the maximum strength of ministers should not be more than 10 per cent of the members of the Lok Sabha and one per cent of the Rajya Sabha. The same yardstick was also to be applied in the various states. This needs to be suitably amended.

In the states there is the practice of appointing legislators as chairpersons and directors of public sector corporations. This misuse of the position of the legislator leads to nepotism and inefficiency, and must be prohibited.

There is also a suggestion that before a general election (at least in the states) there should be a caretaker ministry in order to avoid political interference. The Election Commission has suggested it. The Bangladesh constitution provides for it. That government will, of course, only take routine decisions.

According to the constitutional provisions interpreted by the Supreme Court, the Prime Minister can be even a member of the Rajya Sabha. In my view, in all democracies the Prime Minister is always, by convention and practice, a member of the House of People. For India, the biggest democracy, the position cannot be otherwise.

The writer is a retired Chief Justice of the High Court of Delhi.

After power, it’s free irrigation water 
by G.S. Dhillon

IN spite of the fact that “Water resource development and management” was a state subject as per the provisions of the Constitution, the need for evolving a national water policy was keenly felt in mid-1980’s. So, in 1985 the National Water Resource Council (NWRC) comprising the states’ Chief Ministers was set up by the Government of India. The Prime Minister was to act as the Chairman of the NWRC and the Central Minister of Water Resources as its convener and member-secretary.

At its first meeting, the NWRC formulated a sub-committee called the Group of Ministers for preparing the draft of the National Water Policy. In this Group, the Chief Ministers of Punjab, UP, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu were the members while the Union Minister for Water Resources was to act as the Chairman. The Secretary of the Ministry of Water Resources was to function as member-secretary.

The Group held four meetings and by June, 1986, was ready with the draft of the National Water Policy, which was submitted to the Chairman of the NWRC — the Prime Minister — for further necessary action.

The second meeting of the NWRC was convened in September, 1987, in New Delhi. The draft was introduced to the members of the NWRC with the following presentation: “The Working Group (Group of Ministers) has produced a valuable document, in consultation with experts, state governments, and the political leadership of the country.”

It reiterates the view that “water” should be treated as a scarce and precious national resource and its planning, development and conservation must be conducted on this premise and in this perspective. Formulation of the National Water Policy must ensure an optimal use of water resource in the overall national interest.

The Prime Minister went on to stress that “the water rates collected for the supply of water for irrigation must reflect the scarcity value of the resource. Unrealistically low water rates have resulted in low irrigation revenues, with the result that it has not been possible to meet even the annual maintenance charges of the system, resulting in neglect and deterioration of the irrigation system. (It may be mentioned that at that time no state was providing “free” irrigation water to the farmers).

The Prime Minister suggested the formation of an “Action Plan” to cover every facet of development of the water resource, its better management, conservation of the environment, forestry, animal husbandry, etc. Irrigation planning must be integrated with agricultural planning and irrigation must lead not only to economic growth but also ensure equality and social justice.

The draft was adopted by the NWRC without any amendment, and so it became the document of the National Water Policy (1987).

Clause 11 of the National Water Policy deals with water rates and provides: “The water rates should be such as to convey the scarcity value of the resource to the users and to foster the motivation for the economy in water use. The water rates should be adequate to cover the annual maintenance and operation charges and a part of the “fixed” costs. Efforts should be made to reach this ideal over a period while ensuring the assured and timely supplies of irrigation water. The rates for surface water and ground water should be rationalised with due regard to the interests of small and marginal farmers.”

The mechanism for monitoring is yet to be evolved by the NWRC. At its recently held meeting “guidelines” were put forward for acceptance. But in view of certain differences, the task was entrusted to a working group constituted for the purpose.

But it was hoped that each state would “march forward” and implement the various clauses, particularly Clause 11 relating to water rates.

However, Punjab, instead of moving forward, has “made a complete about-turn”. It has not only made canal water free but is also providing “free” electricity to farmers for operating irrigation tubewells.

The step has led to an excessive use of ground water and canal waters going waste. The schedule of water rates evolved over time provided some control over crops which the farmers should grow, as the rates for certain crops regarded harmful to the environment and having excessive water demand were fixed much higher. Certain crops were prohibited to be grown in some areas (e.g. near urban centres) so as to control malaria. But all that is lost.

In Punjab, there has been a rise of 30 per cent in the area under paddy, the increase being both in the waterlogged areas and those affected by a severe watertable decline. The situation is best described in the words of Dr G.S. Khush, the famous rice expert and awardee of the Wolf Prize by Israel:

“The policy of giving ‘free’ electricity and canal water for agriculture is not only ‘shortsighted but also suicidal’. Anything given free is bound to be misused. The farmers are willing to pay for electricity. What they want is ‘regular supply of electricity. That would have made them happier’.”

The writer is a consultant on water resources at the CII, Chandigarh.

A king-size flower 
by O. P. Bhagat

THEY were talking of flowers. Each named his favourite bloom and said something in praise. In the midst of it another chap joined them. He listened for a while, then aired his opinion.

“There is no flower,” he said, “like the cauliflower...” What he added was lost in the roar of laughter that greeted his choice.

So many kinds of flowers are there. Whether they are large or small, pleasing or gaudy, we do not laugh at them. Then why do we at the mention of the cauliflower as a flower, or at the person who says so?

Cauliflower is a variety of cabbage. But what you eat are delicately flavoured florets, not leaves. Together they form a fleshy flower-head. In fact, it is indeed a king-size flower.

While talking of the cauliflower, you forget all this. Or if you refer to it as a flower, it is by way of a joke. If you are a bit serious, others laugh at you.

The mali may allow a weed in a flower-bed, but no cauliflower. Actually it is banished from all parks and gardens. Or, to use diplomatic lingo, the cauliflower is persona non grata there. Only a vegetable plot or backyard is for it.

You may ask a florist for any flower. If he hasn’t got it, the man politely says no. Say cauliflower, and he at once frowns. Or he mutters something rude.

This is nothing new. It has been so from the beginning. That is why the cauliflower does not figure in myths. No legend tells of its birth, or celebrates its size, or hints at its boycott as a flower. Floral tales end where cauliflower talk begins.

It has no place in poetry either. In every age poets must have enjoyed cooked or pickled cauliflower. But none cared to pen a lyric or sonnet on it.

To me the meanest flower that blows can give

Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears,

says Wordsworth. This make you dig into his works. Well, you will be rewarded with many poems or verses on flowers. But you will not find a stanza or even a passing line on the cauliflower.

The poet never stopped to look at cauliflowers, smiling their pure white smiles. Had he done so, the arch-priest of nature would have mused or philosophised, or later let his feelings overflow in the form of a poem.

One or two Hindi songs do touch on the cauliflower. But the lines will make you grin or giggle. Remember the Sangam song in which the girl moans about what her hubby did? While others brought their wives flowers, he fetched her a cauliflower.

In painting too it is the same story. No artist has ever painted cauliflowers. Many wild and garden flowers have been honoured in stamps. But the cauliflower has all along been kept out. Stickers also ignore it.

No wonder if you do not see a cauliflower at a flower show. Not even at an ikebana show where some dry twigs or odds and ends may be used for making cute or exotic arrangements.

“Training is everything,” says Mark Twain. “The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.”

This sounds like a compliment. But it could be one of the flashes of his wit or a sample of his humkour. Or a left-handed compliment.

The cauliflower’s tragedy is that God made it a flower, but man had made a vegetable of it. 

Apex court against surrender to brigand 
Anupam Gupta

LET the whole nation stand up and salute the Supreme Court.

From Punjab to Kashmir to Assam, rarely before in history has the Indian state inflicted greater humiliation upon itself and capitulated to blackmail and terror more blatantly and facilely than the states of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu did last month over the abduction of cine idol Rajkumar by forest brigand Veerappan.

And rarely before in history has the Indian judiciary sensed the challenge, risen to meet it and called the bluff of brigandage and terror more splendidly and with greater timeliness than the Supreme Court did last week in Veerappan’s case.

“The question simply put,” Editor-in-Chief C.R. Irani wrote in The Statesman on September 1 with ruthless exactitude, “is whether this is a nation governed by the rule of law or the law of the jungle — that it happens to be Veerappan’s jungle only adds a certain poignancy.”

Kashmir is virtually such a jungle today and Punjab was verily such a jungle in the not so distant past.

A past, which if it had not been vanquished and overcome the way it was, would have snuffed out the rule of law in the country, leaving the “government and the apex court of the land (to) preside over a jurisdiction from Delhi to Palam,” as an incensed KPS Gill stated publicly on May 24, 1997, a day after the former Taran Taran police chief, Ajit Singh Sandhu, hounded and harassed by human rights litigation, committed suicide.

A “constitutional commission should be set up,” Gill wrote in a letter to Prime Minister I.K. Gujral after Sandhu’s funeral a week later, “to examine the records of judicial processes and judgements during the years of terrorism in Punjab, to identify the judicial officers who failed to discharge their constitutional obligations and to honour their oath to dispense justice without fear or favour; to determine their accountability; and to take suitable action to ensure that the judicial and criminal justice system does not collapse or fail ever again in the face of lawlessness.”

As a corollary to this point (Gill added, and I quote from this paper of June 1, 1997) “ a commission also needs to be appointed to identify officers in all branches of government and administration who were guilty of wilful and gross dereliction of duty during this period, in order to ensure a system in which acts of cravenness are punished rather than, as is the present case, rewarded.”

Three years after the demand was made by the former DGP to the then Prime Minister, with a copy to the Chief Justice of India, every word spoken by him about Punjab in the context of terrorism appears to fit, to the hilt, the tragedy of “cravenness” competing for reward that has struck Karnataka and Tamil Nadu today while dealing with India’s oldest surviving terrorist, Veerappan.

With the exception, the sole exception this time, of the apex judiciary assembled in the Supreme Court.

Or at least, three of them (if not all) assembled in a Division Bench last week under the chairmanship of the seniormost puisne judge of the Supreme Court and one of the court’s most conservative judges, Justice S.P. Bharucha.

“We make it amply clear,” said the Bench, and let all states of the Indian Union, and the Union itself, pay heed, “that it is Karnataka’s responsibility to maintain law and order. If you cannot do it, quit and make way for someone who can.”

“What have you done for the last eight years?” asked the Bench, dismissing the latest pretext for inaction. “What protection have you given to the people? Such an incident was waiting to happen. Now you say that you cannot do anything.”

It is, to the best of my knowledge, perhaps the first time that the Supreme Court of India has publicly chastised the state, any state, for not protecting the people at large in the face of terrorism. Judicial discourses on how not to deal with terrorism, on subordinating the exercise of the coercive power of the state to the need to respect “human rights” are, of course, a familiar experience.

It might, in this context, be more than a curiosity for the reader to know that that one of the demands put forward by Veerappan for releasing Rajkumar is that Karnataka should take steps for expediting the probe by the Justice Sadashiv Commission of Inquiry into the alleged atrocities committed by the personnel of the Special Task Force (STF), set up to hunt for Veerappan, by getting the stay granted by the Karnataka High Court on the Commission’s proceedings vacated.

Believe it or not, but the Commission was appointed by the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) in June, 1999, with retired Justice Sadashiv and Mr C.V. Narasimhan, former CBI director, as members.

A judicial inquiry not into the atrocities committed by Veerappan, who has defied and held the Indian state to ransom and abducted, murdered and plundered with impunity for over two decades, but into the atrocities allegedly committed by police personnel in the process of pursuing him!

This topsy-turvy state with its inverted sense of law and justice — will the Supreme Court go further in correcting it or will it stop at what it did last week?

Israeli PM’s date with writers, artists 
Humra Quraishi

TWO prominent foreign dignitaries visited New Delhi last week. Former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres, who was one of them, did take out time to spend an evening at the Academy of Fine Arts and Literature. Ajeet Cour, the founder chairperson of this Academy, informed me that Mr Peres spent time talking to Indian writers and artists. And here I must add that this academy one of those institutions that holds regular meets (every Saturday, if I am not mistaken) wherein writers, painters, theatre artists, singers, musicians and dancers meet and interact. And last weekend Ashok Vajpayee, Pavan Varma and Vimal Kumar recited their latest poetic verse. I am not sure whether Peres too came up with literary outbursts.

And the other dignitary to have come here was the Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori. Several members of Parliament (Indian Association of Parliamentarians on Population and Development) hosted a dinner in his honour. Though I was not invited but one of the hosts confided that several MPs were so keen to get close to the Japanese Prime Minister that there was a stampede of sorts. On the other hand, the Japanese Prime Minister himself went up to and greeted some of our women MPs — Chanderkala Pandey, Saroj Dubey, Ranee Narah, Girija Vyas — who were sported sitting at one end of the room. At least Japanese men still carry those traditional mannerisms which women yearn for.

Need for some transparency

Come September and the least that we could be offered is some transparency. We, as citizens, ought to be told what is the matter or what isn’t the matter with the Prime Minister. His health, to be precise. Just the other day, at the Republic Day reception, overheard several guests, who were closely scrutinising the Prime Minister’s gait, comment that times are such that we seem to know more about B grade film stars (what with the daily bulletins on their various dos etc) than about the leaders. Cynics could point out that it’s a leaderless scenario. They could also point out that it’s such a hapless scenario that reports coming in from New York state that at the United Nations hosted Millennium Peace Summit some members of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad were seen distributing booklets — not pertaining to any particular religious belief but containing the usual hate propaganda against certain religious minority groups.

And to get details on this aspect alone, when I contacted the spokesperson of the United Nations Information Centre, this is what he had to say: “Foremost, contrary to the popular notion going around, the UN did not host this summit...The UN provided the venue but only for the first two days of the meet.”

To my query whether the summit did have the blessings of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan otherwise why would he have given the go ahead for the venue, the spokesperson said: “ The Secretary-General has been supportive of the idea of hosting such a meet but beyond that he had no role to play, especially vis-a-vis the guest list etc...In fact, there is that rumour around that he had invited five senior Tibetan monks from Dharamsala but that’s not true.”

Decaying times, where even peace summits are getting shrouded in controversies.

Two concerts

Last weekend I attended two relaxing concerts. Vidya Rao’s thumri rendering at the Habitat Centre and Deepmala Mohan’s folk singing at the IIC. The only problem was that the timings of the two clashed and many music lovers were heard complaining just this. Vidya has been the disciple of the late Naina Devi and is in the process of bringing out the biography of her late Guru.

Deepmala Mohan is from Uttar Pradesh and rendered those near forgotten folk songs of the northern belt. In fact that evening the programme wouldn’t end as the audience would request her to come up with yet another folk song. For in these fast changing times it’s not everyday that one gets to hear them.

And before I move further ahead let also write that midweek, Satish and Kiran Gujral hosted one of the finest dinners. The guest-list included artists and writers.

And, then, two days back I met Dr Manoj Mathur who has started his own monthly magazine, in these times where marketing seems to be the biggest challenge. Sixtyfive- year-old Mathur is a medical specialist-turned-journalist-turned publisher and is bringing out this magazine “Eurasia Times” from Bhopal. It’s his optimism that left me wondering whether this quality alone can make us do the impossible — that is single bring out a sleek production, month after month.

SPIRITUAL NUGGETS

When a man’s way pleases the Lord, he maketh even his enemies to be at peace with him.

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