E D I T O R I A L   P A G E

EDITORIALS

Flight of fancy
THE criticism by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Defence seems to have stung the light combat aircraft bosses real hard. In a matter of days, they have rigged up a flight of the elusive plane. 

Resignation farce again 
WITH Mr George Fernandes at the helm, splits and mergers should be routine in his Samata party. Also threats of resignation. The resignation bug has bitten the most authentic caste leader of Bihar and Union Agriculture Minister, Mr Nitish Kumar. 

Farm sector reforms
A day after Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee promised more funds for developing appropriate technologies for the agricultural sector the national executive of the Bharatiya Janata Party took the debate forward. It emphasised the need for extending economic reforms to the farm sector and demanded that the problem of burgeoning foodgrain stocks and falling market prices resulting in distress sale should be tackled on a war footing.

OPINION

KHANNA JUDGEMENT
Crippling blow to settled law
by Rajindar Sachar
THE two-Judge Bench judgement of the Supreme Court in the State of Punjab re Khanna (former Chief Secretary) (November 30, 2000) quashing the chargesheet against Mr Khanna when the matter was still pending before enquiry officer is a masterpiece of update summary on theory of administrative law in England in the context of bias.

India’s emerging IT revolution
by Dhurjati Mukherjee
INDIA’S role in triggering an information technology revolution has been widely recognised. In fact, the growth of Indian markets will be spearheaded by IT and the media, and this has been reiterated even by the Morgan Stanley Dean Witter Chairman, Mr John Wadsworth, who predicted that the markets will touch $1 trillion by 2005 against the current worth of $150 billion.

MIDDLE

Happy landing, darling!!
by V. N. Kakar
I WAS sitting in the room of the babus in the Municipal Committee office in Peshawar. It was in February, 1939. I had gone to that office for the registration of my grandfather’s death. The babus had just started settling down to work. They had finished their kawa (green tea) and were rubbing their hands to warm them up.

ON THE SPOT

by Tavleen Singh
Whom should we blame for blackout?
BEFORE I sat down to write this my first column of the year 2001 I intended to write an optimistic piece. It’s the least any columnist can do for a New Year, I thought, and sat before my laptop with a happy smile on my face and only good intentions in my heart.

 

WINDOW ON PAKISTAN

Back to 1971 and with rancour
AS expected the official release of the Hamoodur Rehman commission report that probed the dismemberment of Pakistan in 1971 has lead to a heated debate. It is not only the mainstream newspapers which had been commenting often ever since India Today went public with that report and offered it the readers on its web site, common people are how asserting and demanding strict action against those responsible for the humiliating defeat at the hands of the Indian Army and the creation of Bangladesh.

SPIRITUAL NUGGETS

Flight of fancy

THE criticism by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Defence seems to have stung the light combat aircraft (LCA) bosses real hard. In a matter of days, they have rigged up a flight of the elusive plane. An attempt has also been made to touch the patriotic nerve of the public by listing its numerous merits, but very few people are taken in. Thursday would have been a red-letter day if it had come about, say, a decade back but in circa 2001, it is more an occasion for introspection. When it is a matter of the country’s security, you cannot hide beyond platitudes like “better late than never”. In cutting-edge fields like the air warfare, a decade almost amounts to an eternity. As an article by a retired Lieut-General in The Tribune mentioned the other day, the LCA is so far behind schedule that whenever it becomes operational, it will fly straight into the museum. Its manufacture should have started way back in 1995, but it may not begin till 2012. What has been test flown is no more than a technology demonstrator. And to call it an indigenous prototype is a travesty of truth. The plane that 42-year-old Rajiv Kothiyal flew around for a 20-minute spin on Thursday had a US-made General Electric GE 404 engine, that cannot be used for serial production of the aircraft because of the sanctions. Many other vital parts were also imported. And to say that the time schedule went awry because of the Pokhran nuclear tests and the subsequent sanctions is also not correct. The development of the Kaveri engine, the airframe, flight control system and digital electronic control was way behind schedule even otherwise.

The bungling has not been fully exposed only because it is a defence project. In fact, that is all the more reason to go to the bottom of it. If this is the state of affairs in such a prestigious field, can we expect anything better elsewhere? The project was originally estimated to cost Rs 560 crore. It will actually cost upwards of Rs 3,000 crore. What has been delivered so far is too little and too late. A sceptic IAF has almost washed its hands off the plane by not even scheduling the LCA for induction till the eleventh Plan. Air Chief Marshal Tipnis was not being sarcastic when he said that the test flight was the “end of the beginning”. There is far too much that remains to be done. The air chief was only being realistic when he said: “Many more aeronautical heights need to be achieved. The efforts of all those working for the project need to be doubled to ensure that the aircraft becomes a frontier fighter of the IAF.” But if the project has floundered on the plain road itself, what will happen when the going is uphill? It has been given out that it will be cheaper than other aircraft. The relevant question is whether it will be as good, if not better. Other things being equal, it is the superiority of the machine that wins a war. In patriotism, professionalism and commitment, our magnificent airmen are among the best. They need equally good equipment as well. Fight to finish they always will, come what may. To fight to win, they will have to have the finest machines under their command. The DRDO’s efforts have not been in step with the defence services’ valour. Whether it is the LCA, the Arjun tank or the advance light helicopter, the quality leaves much to be desired. 

Resignation farce again 

WITH Mr George Fernandes at the helm, splits and mergers should be routine in his Samata party. Also threats of resignation. The resignation bug has bitten the most authentic caste leader of Bihar and Union Agriculture Minister, Mr Nitish Kumar. He is not protesting against any policy deviation, as used to be the trigger for leaving the ministry in the good old days. He has learnt to be less rigid with ideological commitments as time and political compulsions warrant. This time the brief resignation letter is meant to frighten his detractors in the Bihar unit of the party into silence and allow him to select the next president. He knows that George saheb has already made up his mind to get Mrs Jaya Jaitley elected as national chief. He is also keen on merging his party with the Janata Dal (U) led by Mr Sharad Yadav so that his party can become the second biggest in the ruling alliance. That was incidentally the idea when Mr Fernandes mooted the merger proposal seemingly to oust Mr Laloo Prasad Yadav in Bihar but in reality to increase his clout within the NDA. Mr Nitish Kumar is agreeable to the merger but is adamant on controlling the state unit at present headed by Mr Raghunath Jha, who wants to retain his job and is egged on by Mr Prabhunath Singh, a member of Parliament and an obsessive aspirant for a ministerial post at the Centre. Mix these self-contradictory elements and one gets to a state of permanent disequilibrium. Mr Jha and Mr Prabhunath Singh have seized high moral ground by describing Mr Sharad Yadav as a liability and saying that the proposed merger of the Samata with the JD(U) will alienate the voters. This has pitted them against Mr Nitish Kumar who wants the merger to promote the new party as the main opposition in the Bihar Vidhan Sabha by ousting the BJP from the spot. Mr Yadav is not a Bihari by birth nor are Mr Fernandes and Mrs Jaitley. They are “outsiders” and control the party levers by virtue of their vantage positions. This is the root cause of the protests and the threat of a split.

The man who is instrumental in sparking this turmoil is Mr Ram Vilas Paswan. By breaking away from the JD(U) and forming his Lok Janshakti, he has divested his former party of much popular support. His dalit constituency seems to be holding on or that is what the Samata rebels believe. So old grievances have blended with new developments to create chaos. The dissidents want a merger with Mr Paswan’s party and think that a dalit-Kurmi coalition can take on the Yadav-Muslim combination of the ruling RJD. They are right but the problem is that this will hurt the electoral chances of the BJP, a party of the upper castes and wipe out the Congress in the state. There are two strange factors about the resignation of Mr Nitish Kumar. One, as a Minister who has resigned twice in the past (one after the Ghaisal rail accident and, two, to become Bihar Chief Minister for a few days), he should know that quit letters are addressed and sent to the Prime Minister and not to the party leader. Obviously he does not mean to be a former Minister or he merely wants to embarrass Mr Fernandes. Two, his lofty stand is that with the revolt of six of the 12 Samata MPs, he does not have the right to be a Cabinet Minister. If this logic is taken seriously, he should call on the Prime Minister and recommend the name of Mr Prabhunath Singh as his replacement. That he would not do for narrow political reasons. These are his personal dilemmas. His farcical resignation will not destabilise the government and perhaps not even the strength of the Samata if the JD(U)’s six MPs join it. But the legitimacy of small caste-based regional parties stands weakened.

Farm sector reforms

A day after Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee promised more funds for developing appropriate technologies for the agricultural sector the national executive of the Bharatiya Janata Party took the debate forward. It emphasised the need for extending economic reforms to the farm sector and demanded that the problem of burgeoning foodgrain stocks and falling market prices resulting in distress sale should be tackled on a war footing. The adoption of a resolution on the shortcomings in the present approach by itself is not going to solve the problem. The BJP-led government at the Centre will have to display the necessary political will for discarding policies which have neither helped the farmers nor the consumers. The assertion by the Director of Central Food Technological Research Institute, Dr V. Prakash, at the Indian Science Congress that poor technological inputs were contributing to the wastage of huge amounts of foodgrains in the country every year should serve as a wake up call. The farm scientists and the planners are both guilty in equal measure of not doing enough for making the farm sector economically and technologically sound. Dr Prakash stated at the Indian Science Congress that foodgrains worth Rs 70, 000 crore literally go down the drain every year because of the use of outdated technologies for storage of surplus stocks. As head of the Central Food Technological Research Institute he must have checked out the veracity of the figures before making a public announcement about the mind-boggling scale of wastage of food in a country which has to live with the contradiction of starvation deaths in certain regions and surplus food stocks elsewhere. But he must also explain the role, or lack of it, of the institute he heads in evolving technologies which could increase the shelf life of wheat, rice and other perishable commodities like potatoes and onions.

Making politically correct noises at the national executive committee meeting of the BJP or scientifically sound assertions at the on-going science congress by it self is not going to help solve the problem of preserving surplus food stocks and ensuring their distribution among people in the drought-hit areas. The Union Agriculture Ministry instead of depending wholly on Indian farm scientists for developing technologies for the farm sector should explore the global market for picking up ready-to-use techniques. Why waste funds on the R and D of farm technologies which can be picked up from the shelf in most developed countries and at affordable rates? The BJP national executive's proposal for the scrapping of the Essential Commodities Act of 1955 deserves serious notice. It may help at least solve the problem of wastage of surplus stocks for want of adequate domestic outlets. The law placing restrictions on the movement of foodgrains from one state to another was introduced to prevent market manipulation by growers, hoarders and blackmarketeers during the period when India had to import huge quantities for meeting the domestic demand. It may have indeed outlived its utility with the countrywide increase in food production. However, an issue which the political leadership feels embarassed to discuss is its own please-the-farmers approach which results in the procurement of substandard foodstuff. The proposal to involve the private sector in the PDS needs further debate. Experience has shown that in the name of privatisation politicians and their families usually end up cronering the benefits. Had the BJP national executive suggested transparency in the running of the PDS, the proposal would have deserved unqualified support.

KHANNA JUDGEMENT
Crippling blow to settled law
by Rajindar Sachar

THE two-Judge Bench judgement of the Supreme Court in the State of Punjab re Khanna (former Chief Secretary) (November 30, 2000) quashing the chargesheet against Mr Khanna when the matter was still pending before enquiry officer is a masterpiece of update summary on theory of administrative law in England in the context of bias. But unfortunately it may deal a crippling blow to the settled law laid down by the Supreme Court for over a decade by the Constitution and larger Benches where the Supreme Court had consistently been hitting the High Courts on knuckles and warning them that they had no jurisdiction to quash the chargesheet even before the matter had been examined by the inquiry officer. The casualty thus is the settled principle laid down by the Supreme Court itself that the disciplinary authority being the fact finding authority has exclusive power to consider the evidence with a view to maintaining discipline and that it is not the function even of the administrative tribunal, much less that of a court exercising judicial review jurisdiction to come to its own decision as to the merits of the case.

Another retrograde consequence of the judgement is the damage to the model election code evolved after such a long persuation of the political parties. This is because one of the grave charges against Mr Khanna was that he had with undue haste and interest referred two cases to the CBI purporting to act on the orders issued by the outgoing Chief Minister passed on February 6 and 7, 1997 from her constituency 150 km from Chandigarh (polling being on 7th) especially when Mr Khanna as Chief Electoral officer knew that even routine transfers were forbidden by the code.

The court seems to accept as self-evident that the note of February 7 directing the matter to be sent to the CBI immediately was a good justification for Mr Khanna to so act ignoring not only the election code but more oblique action in having kept this information deliberately concealed by not mentioning it in his note and personal discussion when he saw the new Chief Minister, Mr Parkash Singh Badal, on February 14.

The court appeared to have been perturbed at the State Government in seeking to withdraw the reference to the CBI and sought to read it as an effort at concealing charges of corruption made in the reference. Apart from the fact that there was nothing on record to support allegations made in reference, there was the election manifesto of the Akali Dal, which was emphatic against incursion of central agencies to encroach on state power, and there are many states like West Bengal who have the same policy and in that context it would be most natural to seek to withdraw the reference.

However, the court gave a gratuitous compliment to the CBI as an organisation known to be fair and impartial, which assessment is not shared not only by an average person but is rather contrary to the conclusion of no less a person than Mr L.K. Advani, Home Minister of India, who recently commented on a chargesheet filed by the CBI thus: “When I saw the contents of chargesheet, I began to wonder on the way it functions”. As it is, the final report of the CBI has found no charge proved against any officers, which showed the motivation in making reference.

One of the serious charges against Mr Khanna was of having pre-dated the reference to the CBI by putting the date 7th whereas preliminary inquiry had revealed that the direction from the Chief Minister was received by him only on the morning of 8th. The deliberate antedating was by itself sufficient to call for disciplinary action, but the court was willing to assume that it may have been inadvertently done (though that was not the pleading of Mr Khanna). This view seems to conflict with the law laid down by a Constitution Bench in the Pratap Singh Kairon case over three decades back, namely “that the court has no jurisdiction to substitute its own view as to the necessity or desirability for initiating disciplinary proceedings for the entirety of the power, the jurisdiction and discretion in that regard is vested by law in the government.”

Another charge against Mr Khanna was that he had not even looked into the various factual details on the record, before referring the matter regarding a cricket stadium because it was on record that a foundation was laid in 1991 and that funds had been sanctioned by the former Chief Ministers belonging to the same party as Mrs Bhattal right from 1993 onwards. The final CBI report produced in court also showed that the Governor of Punjab at the relevant time had taken full responsibility for sanctioning funds for the cricket stadium. No one had suggested the ignoring of former Chief Minister’s note of February 7. All that was expected was that Mr Khanna should have waited for a new government to take over in a few days and to get fresh orders on this very note. After all, a reference about such serious matter should have been the responsibility of new government and not that of the former Chief Minister.

Indeed, in the matter of pre-dating of the reference to the CBI a much graver situation arose during the hearing. The court in order to reassure itself as to when precisely the reference was made by Mr Khanna had asked the CBI counsel to inform it the date when the reference was received by its office. The CBI counsel after obtaining instructions from the department filed in court an application along with a document which showed that the Director of the CBI had been delivered the reference personally on February 17. This was a very vital information which clearly supported the case of the state. This is because it needs to be noted that Mr Khanna had himself admitted that the files containing the reference to the CBI were kept by him exclusively in his possession right up to February 23 and 25, though he had relinquished charge as Chief Secretary on February 14, and that he had consciously withheld this information from everyone, including the Chief Minister and Chief Secretary. Thus the information was not with the State Government prior to February 25.

It is also significant in this context that in spite of having relinquished charge on February 14 and his new posting orders having been passed on February 17, Mr Khanna remained untraced till February 23, obviously finding in between an opportunity to hand over the reference personally to the CBI without bringing it to the notice of the new government. The only person, therefore, who could have handed personally reference to the Director, CBI, on February 17 was Mr Khanna himself. This conduct of Mr Khanna in handing over these papers though purporting to be dated 7th but actually delivering it on 17th when admittedly the Badal government had taken over on February 14, but without taking orders from the lawful government at that time was itself such a motivated and a malafide act on the part of Mr Khanna that the chargesheet would stand completely proved. Unfortunately, for reasons not clear, notwithstanding the information having been provided to the court as directed by it, no reference at all has been made to this vital document with the result that the court has had no opportunity to consider this aspect, which obviously would have had an important bearing on the ultimate finding.

As a political event, it is unprecedented that a Chief Minister a day before the poll and even on the day of poll would not be thinking of votes but how to pick up two matters which were years old and to direct them to be referred to the CBI. No prescience is required to appreciate the political motivation. Should a senior officer have joined in this political game still remains an open question.

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

India’s emerging IT revolution
by Dhurjati Mukherjee

INDIA’S role in triggering an information technology revolution has been widely recognised. In fact, the growth of Indian markets will be spearheaded by IT and the media, and this has been reiterated even by the Morgan Stanley Dean Witter (MSDW) Chairman, Mr John Wadsworth, who predicted that the markets will touch $1 trillion by 2005 against the current worth of $150 billion. Foreign countries are eager to invest in the IT sector in the country, and recently both Japan and Britain have expressed their interests in this direction.

After the visit of the Japanese Prime Minister, they are looking forward to a larger share of software exports from India which is limited to only 4 per cent of the country’s total export of software. Moreover, the Japanese are also serious in training Indians in information technology and their language and work culture before recruiting them. It may be mentioned here that Japan has the second largest world market for IT equipment and services at $ 120 billion and India is ambitiously aiming to command 10 per cent of the Japanese IT market by 2001. Much of this burgeoning demand has been the result of several spectacular developments in the IT front, leading to an ambitious target in the Japanese human resource market. The Indian Government has not been lagging behind and has decided to set up a task force for enhancing manpower from the current 1,00,000 to 3,00,000 and in this direction an investment of $ 1 billion in IT and human resource improvement will also be made.

The British Minister for E-Commerce and Small Business, Ms Patricia Hewritt, also called for harmony in the areas of IT, communications and entertainment between India and the UK if both countries work together. The UK, which is the world leader in digital technology, has evinced interest in accommodating more and more IT professionals in the country. But though delegates from Britain, the USA, Singapore and even China showed interest in the rapid growth and development of India’s IT industry at the recently held third Bangalore IT com, it was Japan which is seriously interested in developing the country’s information technology and other related sectors.

Lately, as a part of the agenda charted out by India to increase business cooperation with Singapore, specially in the IT sector, a software pact was signed between the National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM) and Singapore Information Technology Federation (SITF) to facilitate investment, including venture capital funding in the information technology industry between the two nations.

One has to admit that India’s information technology has boomed in recent times. It is expected that software exports will rise from over $ 5 billion in March, 2000, to more than $ 10 billion by 2008, according to a study by NASSCOM and Mc Kinsey and Co. In fact, the estimated size of the Indian software industry stands at around $ 97 billion. This is expected to grow by $ 1.8 billion by 2008. The demand for investment in hardware in India is estimated to go up to $ 25 billion by 2006.

The passage of the Information Technology Bill, establishing a legal framework for the IT sector, and the decision of the government to continue the existing tax break on software exports for an additional 10 years (a concession that will remain in force until 2010) have given a further boost to the IT sector. As part of the package of measures, the government agreed to tax employee stock options only when exercised and at a 10 per cent rate on the capital gain (in the USA the tax rate is 20 per cent).

The creation of the IT Ministry will definitely help to promote the industry, particularly as IT gains increasing global acceptance for its technological quality and human resource quality. As rightly pointed out by Mr Vivek Paul, the CEO of Bangalore-based Wipro Technologies, “if you look at the challenges ahead, starting with how this whole Internet wave is changing the way business is done, that requires a new regulatory framework.

The reality is that the IT Ministry can act as a central tool. At present, it is widely believed that giving adequate attention to the telecom infrastructure and the high cost of Internet access should be the key issues for the IT Ministry. “High bandwidth at low cost is critical if we are to really gain from the Internet economy”, pointed out the CEO of a well known infotech company.

Though the Indian economy may be experiencing a slowdown, the infotech sector continues to grow at breakneck speed. Software exports have grown 63 per cent in the first half of 2000-01 defying predictions of a slowdown, even after performance of IT companies in the USA deteriorated. Software exports totaled Rs 13,100 crore in the first half of the current year against Rs 8060 crore in the corresponding period last year. NASSCOM survey is bullish about the prospects of such exports for the second half of the current year which has projected a revenue of Rs 28,500 crore in 2000-01.

A major chunk of the exports has been directed to the USA. Though the dependence on the American market has come in for criticism, most software companies disagree. “American initiative paid with dividends with accelerating growth and sharper focus on the internet business”, pointed out Mr Vijay K. Thadani, Chief Executive Officer of NIIT. Most software companies have reported high double digit growths in their revenues with Infosys Technologies, Satyam Computers, HCL Technologies, Wipro Ltd., and Hughes Software being the star performers.

It is thus quite natural for NASSCOM to be bullish about the prospects of the IT sector, specially exports. While the USA has increased its HI-B annual visa cap for the next three years, Germany has sought 20,000 IT professionals from India and Japan has demanded 35,000. Thus there is every prospect of a boom in this sector in the coming years. But State Governments will have to give greater attention to the development of the IT sector (specially hardware) and train professionals in this sector so that they can take up challenging assignments in any part of the globe with authority and conviction. The future lies in IT, communications and telecom and unless infrastructure in these areas are not built up at the required pace, India will miss the bus of the new millennium. 

Happy landing, darling!!
by V. N. Kakar

I WAS sitting in the room of the babus in the Municipal Committee office in Peshawar. It was in February, 1939. I had gone to that office for the registration of my grandfather’s death. The babus had just started settling down to work. They had finished their kawa (green tea) and were rubbing their hands to warm them up. Suddenly an elderly Pathan walked into the babus’ room and announced, “Hazoor, Habibullah’s wife has given birth to a boy.”

“When was it,” asked one of the babus, “and how?”

“Last night, hazoor,” said the man, “Habibullah’s father came this morning and informed me.”

“But how can that happen?” said the babu, “last night it was raining heavily?”

“It was raining heavily, no doubt,” submitted the man, guiltily, “but the baby was born. That is what Habibullah’s father has told me.”

Mischievously, the babu looked at the man, surveyed him from head to foot and then put it to him: “As the mohalladar of your mohalla, don’t you know that under the orders of Hakumat-e-Britannia, no baby can be born in rain?”

“Khuda ki kasam,” hazoor?" asked the man in all innocence.

"Khuda ki kasam," said the babu, “if as the mohalladar of your mohalla, you don’t know even this, then what kind of a mohalladar are you?”

Perplexed, the man said: “God is my witness. I have committed no sin. I am a law-abiding citizen. And if this is the farman (order) of Hakumat-e-Britannia that babies should not be born in rain, I will go back to my mohalla and ask Habibullah to find out how his wife has violated the farman.”

“Yes,” said the babu, “go back at once and make enquiries, if your life is precious to you, and then come to me again and let me know how this has happened. Thousands of khurafats (nonsensical things) are happening in Peshawar, but this kind of a thing has never happened. In my long service of 15 years in the municipality, I have never come across a single case of a baby having been born in rain. For all that takes place anywhere, I mean, all that I have to record in my registers, I am answerable to the sarkar and the sarkar is no bloody fool that it has appointed me to this post. I am holding a responsible position. One wrong entry in any of my registers, and the hakim (officer) above me will chop off my head”.

The mohalladar touched his ears and murmured: “Toaba, toaba, Khuda aisa na kare (mercy, mercy, may God not do that!) Have faith in Him. He who has none else, He is with him.”

So saying, the mohalladar dashed off to find out how against the farman of Hakumat-e-Britannia, Habibullah’s wife had given birth to a baby in rain. I can’t say what happened thereafter. But I am reminded of that hilarious episode from my days in Peshawar as I read in the newspapers all this khurafat about the pregnancy of Cherie Blair, wife of Tony Blair, Prime Minister of Britain.

How can a Prime Minister spare time to make love to his wife in the midst of heavy demands on him as PM? This they are debating.

Well, may I say, if a baby can be born to a man’s wife on a rainy night in Peshawar against the orders of the British Government, why can’t Her Majesty’s most obedient servant make love to his wife while serving Britain as its Prime Minister?

Whom should we blame for blackout?
by Tavleen Singh

BEFORE I sat down to write this my first column of the year 2001 I intended to write an optimistic piece. It’s the least any columnist can do for a New Year, I thought, and sat before my laptop with a happy smile on my face and only good intentions in my heart. But then — horror of horrors — the lights went out all over northern India and my good intentions were defeated. It was hard to feel good about the fact that we must be the only country left on the planet that does not have sufficient supplies of electricity in the 21st century. Of course, it is the fault of our leaders and policy makers who have talked about privatizing power generation for 10 years now but have moved so slowly that we still have only a miniscule amount of privately generated power. The main reason is that our processes are so slow that many prospective foreign investors have packed their bags and moved on to other countries.

But, right though we may be to lay blame primarily on our politicians and their minions, the bureaucrats, it would be unfair not to admit that some of the blame rests with us. If not with you and me directly than certainly with those who speak for us and if you have any doubts about this look only at the protests and court cases that have greeted every attempt at setting up a power plant in India. Enron is, of course, the most famous of these stories but at least Enron managed to win its cases and get on with the job so that it has managed to give Maharashtra a power plant that was built in the scheduled time and is generating as much power as it promised to give. There are protests about this too but more about that later.

Cogentrix tried to do the same for Karnataka but was hit by so many court cases, lies and delays that it decided to cut its losses and run. It was defeated not just by our cumbersome processes but by environmentalists and social activists who were relentless in their attempts to make sure that the power plant never got built.

If you meet these do-gooders, as I unfortunately have to, one of the main arguments they put forth is that India does not need more power. Nobody asks them how they would then explain the total power failure in northern India last Tuesday that caused trains to stop running, left people stranded in bitterly cold weather and even resulted in Delhi’s famed VIP areas going without power for a whole day.

In any case they disappear when such things happen and choose to become unavailable for comment but their silence is usually replaced by very vocal hacks who take on their role. So, you may have noticed that many newspaper reports last Wednesday blamed the collapse of the northern grid on Punjab ‘overdrawing’ its share. Many reports I read made it sound as if this were some sort of criminal activity on Punjab’s part, as if that state were ‘overdrawing’ to steal the power and sell it to someone else. Not one of my brethren in hackdom bothered to point out that if Punjab was taking more than its share it was clearly because in the middle of winter the people of Punjab need more power. If they did this it would amount to an admission that all those campaigns against power plants and privatisation of power supply would be proved wrong. And, let us remember please that many of these campaigns have been run by major newspapers and magazines who would not be able to publish without power and whose reporters, these days, cannot even write a story unless their computer screens light up.

In an interview Rangarajan Kumaramangalam gave me, a few months before he died as Power Minister, he said in so many words that if we did not seriously start working towards privatising the distribution of power there would be darkness all over India in two years. Our systems of distribution are among the most decrepit and inefficient in the world so we lose something like 40 per cent of the power generated in our attempts to distribute it. Private companies handling this would, it goes without saying, be more efficient but us hacks we like to support the underdog so we support power workers unions who fear privatisation because this would mean that they would have to work a lot harder and better than they currently do.

You only need to read newspaper reports on the Enron story to know that journalists are as responsible for what has gone wrong as our social activists and environmentalists. Recently, front page stories have bemoaned the heavy cost of Enron power without bothering to point out that its price only goes up because the Maharashtra State Electricity Board (MSEB) is forcing the plant to run at nearly half its capacity. Not because it does not need power — it resorts to routine load-shedding — but because it is too bankrupt to buy the power it needs. Why is it bankrupt? Because it is run, like all our other state electricity boards, with criminal inefficiency but it does not get attacked for this because we would rather attack Enron.

We would also rather not travel through the dust and grime of rural India to find out whether ordinary Indians need power so you do not get to read many stories about how the demand for bijli and pani is desperately articulated wherever you go in India. So we are all to blame for the fact that India will be left behind by the rest of the world in the 21st century, just as it was in the 20th century. We are to blame because we refuse to recognise that nobody without access to regular, efficient power supplies has any access whatsoever to the 21st century. No computers, no television, no Internet, no information technology, no knowledge revolution.

Sorry, if this has turned out to be such a depressing piece but remember that it is not nearly as depressing as the fact that we began the year 2001 with the whole of northern India — including the Prime Minister’s office for a few moments — going without power for a whole day.

To end, though, on a note of slight optimism may I suggest that if we the people play our role in demanding that things change it will make a difference. Playing our role means withdrawing blind support and adulation to such exalted public figures as Arundhati Roy and Medha Patkar who represent — at least to me — the retardation of India’s growth. Ms Roy recently vented her spleen passionately and at considerable length in a well-known weekly and among the people she attacked was Jack Welch who transformed the General Electric Company and is widely regarded as one of the greatest business leaders in the world. When he was in India not long ago he urged Indians to remember that nothing was possible in the 21st century without power. Is there any doubt about this? So, can we please make a beginning by at least listening to him and not Ms Roy?

Back to 1971 and with rancour

AS expected the official release of the Hamoodur Rehman commission report that probed the dismemberment of Pakistan in 1971 has lead to a heated debate. It is not only the mainstream newspapers which had been commenting often ever since India Today went public with that report and offered it the readers on its web site, common people are how asserting and demanding strict action against those responsible for the humiliating defeat at the hands of the Indian Army and the creation of Bangladesh. Reasons and facts were too well known and did not need the stamp of any commission, but now the focus is on timely action and avoiding future shocks.

SPIRITUAL NUGGETS

The future is NOW

***

Starve the problems, feed the opportunities.

***

The key to success is knowing yourself.

***

The greatest loss is the loss of self confidence.

***

Nothing dies faster than a new idea in a closed mind.

***

Reading without thinking is like eating without digesting.

***

The human mind is like a parachute, it only works when it is open.

***

You cannot be anything if you want to be everything.

***

If you want to gather honey, do not kick over the beehive.

***

When the wise get angry, they lose their wisdom.

***

There is no indigestion worse than that which comes from having to eat your own words.

***

Have no quarrels with life as long as you have something to do when you get up every morning.

***

If I had eight hours to chop a tree, I would spend six hours sharpening the axe.

***

Any fool can criticise, condemn and complain — and most fools do.

***

The fire you kindle for your enemy burns yourself more than him.

***

Stop existing. Start living.

***

The world's largest fires can be extinguished by pouring a cup of water at the right time.

—Promod Batra, Management Thoughts, 4, 13, 20, 23, 31, 32, 28, 41, 46, 54, 62, 67, 679, 76-78