The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

EDITORIALS

Heil Fuhrer Jayalalitha!

IN this ancient land of the most populous democracy, there is a dark area of pure despotism. Welcome to Tamil Nadu under the jackboot of Ms Jayalalitha. This retired film actress scripted and directed a horror play which has shaken the nation into disbelief. She ordered her minions in the state police to arrest her predecessor Mr Karunanidhi at an unholy hour, in an unlawful manner and in an inhuman way. It is needless to describe what she did since television channels and newspapers have run chilling clips and accurate accounts of her vendetta game in all its grisly detail. Not only did she want to settle scores for her own arrest in December, 1996, but also wanted to enact it in medieval style brutality. As the very epitome of an arrogant authoritarian ruler, she now justifies her action and blames the DMK leader and a television channel for “stage-managing” the police atrocity to malign her! This is Hitler-speak after the Reichstag fire which he organised but used it to crackdown on communists. The only difference is that he manufactured a cause first and acted second; Ms Jayalalitha proclaimed her decisions first and digs up a feeble cause second. It is instructive to trace the crime for which Mr Karunanidhi has been lodged in prison. It is about building nine mini flyovers in Chennai when his son, Mr M.K.Stalin, was Mayor. A minor politician complained that a huge kickback figured in awarding contracts and demanded a judicial investigation. Nothing was heard of it till Friday last when an IAS officer, previously under suspension, filed an FIR based on the bazaar gossip. He had been appointed Municipal Commissioner of Chennai only a few days back; obviously he did not have enough time to study the files and make up his mind. The inference obviously is that he had made up his mind before his posting and did the czarina’s bidding at the appointed hour.

The sordid happenings of the brutal arrest of Karunanidhi and two Union Ministers, Mr Murasoli Maran and T.R.Baalu, raise highly disturbing questions of Centre-state relations in a federal polity like in India. Arbitrary arrests of Union Ministers will not only inhibit their decisions but also concentrate more on their liberty than on the welfare of the nation. This calls for a definitive action by the Centre to insulate Union Ministers from any capricious move of the states. Two, the Supreme Court ruling on arrests in all cases of criminal misdeed has to be given a statutory cover so that people — in this case, arch political rivals — are not arrested on flimsy, if not unlawful, grounds mainly to show them in poor light. Three, there should be Central laws strictly enforceable in all higher courts to delink politically motivated cases from legally ordained ones. Ms Jayalalitha should know the difference since she claims to be a victim of this non-differentiation. These reforms should stem from the Chennai happenings which are a blot on the working of a democracy, as well-oiled as the system in Tamil Nadu. In sum, the Centre should lay the law and brook no defiance. Then there is the thing about the limits of power of an elected or appointed individual. What distinguishes democracy from dictatorship is the clear demarcation of personal power and personal authority. In India this is slowly but surely getting eroded. India has seen many tin-pot dictators but Ms Jayalalitha is a menace because she uses modern terms and arguments to justify her totally abhorrent actions. The Centre’s initial reaction of outrage was well taken; it should be followed by a matching action.

OPINION

General Musharraf’s self-coronation
Nothing new in it, say blase Pakistanis
Inder Malhotra

PERHAPS inevitably General Musharraf’s sudden decision to crown himself as his country’s President has got inextricably intermixed with the summit at Agra between him and the Prime Minister, Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee. The reaction to the sudden development in Islamabad within Pakistan and in this country adds up to an interesting study in contrast.

To India it makes little difference whether the Pakistani military ruler arrives here as some kind of a “trimurti”, a combination of President, Chief Executive and Chief of the Army Staff, or had come without enhancing his status. Mr Vajpayee’s telephone call to him congratulating him, several hours before the event, as it turned out, was evidently meant to indicate that New Delhi considered the General’s self-elevation an internal matter of Pakistan. Even so, the view in the corridors of power here is that the Pakistani Army Chief wished to step on the Indian soil as a full-fledged Head of State, entitled to all the pomp and ceremony. Otherwise, his unusual and indeterminate status could have been a source of uncertainty about his reception in terms of protocol.

Most Pakistanis brush this explanation aside. The pithy and pertinent comment of the distinguished Pakistani columnist, Mr Ayaz Amir — “The General as President: a Tale Foretold” — says it all. Every Pakistani military dictator so far has assumed the office of President sooner or later. Ayub did it within 20 days by kicking out President Iskander Mirza who had, in fact, abrogated the 1956 constitution, imposed martial law and appointed General (later Field Marshal) Ayub as the Chief Martial Law Administrator. Yahya, after taking over from Ayub, also made himself President within a short time. Zia waited nearly 18 months until the tenure of the elected President, Fazal Elahi, was over.

General Musharraf had no time for this nicety for the simple reason that the term of the unceremoniously ousted President, Mr Rafiq Tarar would have ended only in early 2003. General Musharraf’s own tenure as Army Chief is due to end in October this year. Since only the President can appoint the Service Chiefs, General Musharraf had to act fast to assume the presidency. Therefore, according to most Pakistani observers, General Musharraf used the Agra summit as a “convenient excuse” to do what he was determined to do in any case well before October 12, the second anniversary of his seizure of power. This, incidentally, still leaves him a whole year before the expiry of the Supreme Court’s deadline for holding elections to the federal and provincial assemblies that now stand dissolved.

The main concern in Pakistan is not what General Musharraf has done but whether or not his action has weakened him in his dealings with India at the Agra summit. Many Pakistanis believe that it has. A former Army Chief, Gen Mirza Afzal Beg, has strongly articulated this view. His reasoning for his conclusion is plausible enough though not necessarily compelling. The adverse international reaction has certainly added to Pakistan’s isolation. The USA is particularly sore because hours before the “coronation” in Islamabad’s Aiwan-e-Sadr (President’s House) the American Secretary of State, Mr Colin Powell, after talks with his visiting Pakistani counterpart, Mr Abdus Sattar, had actually “welcomed” the assurances that Pakistan was moving towards fresh elections and restoration of democracy! An embarrassed Mr Sattar explained that he was unaware of what was afoot back home.

Secondly, the reaction of political parties in Pakistan has been even sharper than that of the international community. Several of them boycotted the 24-party conference that President Musharraf had called to work out a consensus on negotiations with India. Former Chief Justices have declared, in dismay, that General Musharraf’s action in sacking the luckless Mr Tarar (who, let it be admitted, enjoyed scant respect) and promoting himself is unconstitutional.

To these must be added a third significant factor. There have been rumblings of discontent and dissent among the military top brass even during the lengthy stints of Zia and Ayub. But this time around disagreement among the Corps Commanders has been more pronounced than before and more public. Never mind the reports of which Corps Commander said what at their conclave. The stark fact is that Lieut-Gen M. Usmani, Deputy Chief of the Army Staff, and Lieut-Gen Mohammed Aziz, Corps Commander based in Lahore, stayed away from the ceremony at which their chief was anointed. Equally unusual is the fact that two other Corps Commanders, Lieut-Gen Jamshed Gulzar (Rawalpindi) and Lieut-Gen Ahsanul Haq (Peshawar) found it necessary to speak in public in defence of General Musharraf.

Does all this mean that, instead of entrenching himself, General Musharraf has bought trouble that could overwhelm him? The answer to this question must be a firm no. General Aslam Beg himself had discounted the dissent within the higher reaches of the army as of no consequence. The discipline and cohesion of the armed forces usually holds. Moreover, like the sly and smiling Zia, General Musharraf also knows how to keep his Corps Commanders on line, according to authoritative reports, he had already decided to kick Lieut-General Usmani upstairs by giving him the four-star post of Chairman, Chiefs of Staff Committee, but with little power Lieut-General Aziz, who has more than a year of service left, will remain in Lahore or move to another Corps headquarters.

Like Zia but unlike Ayub, General Musharraf looks like holding fast to the post of Chief of the Army Staff, the real and practically impregnable source of power in Pakistan. And, like Zia, he appears to have picketed on a safe individual to be his Vice-Chief, a post yet to be revived since it was last held by General Aslam Beg before Zia’s death in that mysterious aircrash. His choice is reported to be Lieut-Gen Mohammed Yusuf.

As for international criticism and political discontent at home, the point to remember is that those who, after protesting vehemently, swallowed the seizure of power by General Musharraf 20 months ago would swallow his present transgression also. Especially now that the IMF and the World Bank are pleased with the Musharraf dispensation, and could be even happier over his choice of the Finance Minister, Mr Shaukat Aziz, a former Citibank executive, as the next Prime Minister. Moreover, since neither Ms Benazir Bhutto nor Mr Nawaz Sharif is in a position to return to Pakistan, there is no leader around to mobilise the people.

Mr Najam Sethi, editor of The Friday Times, has best summed up the likely scenario and I cannot do better than to cite him at some length. Writing under the heading “What’s new about Pakistan’s Bonaparte?”, he says that General Musharraf has reason to be “pretty sure of getting away with his audacious fait accompli. Barring an accident,he probably will. Nawabzada Nasrullah Khan (convener of the Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy) & Co will rant. Benazir Bhutto will shriek. Nawaz Sharif may squeak. Qazi Husain Ahmed will bluster. But who cares?”

“The Commonwealth”, Mr Sethi goes on, “will protest. The EU will condemn. So what? The Japanese and Americans will cluck disapproval, urge him to note their concern and go on doing business with him. And General Musharraf will start sprucing up in sherwanis and suits for his visit to India...”

As Gen Aslam Beg (retired) argues, should General Musharraf go back from Agra “empty-handed that could be the “end of him”. Surely the new Pakistani President knows this, too. To go back empty-handed or not is also within his control. No one in his senses can expect a breakthrough over Kashmir in the course of one meeting between the two top leaders even if it is scheduled to last all day. A broad agreement on forgetting Kargil, reverting to Lahore and restarting the procedures and processes agreed to there in February, 1999, to deal with all issues, including Kashmir, would be achievements enough. Should there be a credible enough assurance, even if private, from Pakistan to lower the level of violence in Kashmir, India could be persuaded to even announce a reduction in the number of its troops not only on the Line of Control (LoC) but also in the valley. The choice is entirely General Musharraf’s.

Beyond this nothing more need be said about the summit at Agra that is only a fortnight away except to make one suggestion. If the two countries can abide by their moratorium of nuclear tests, surely they can agree on a similar moratorium for a two-week period on the pre-summit rhetoric.

MIDDLE

Has the geek turned meek?
Anurag

“INDIA is like my mother, I have my roots here but please do not ask me to leave America. For America is like my wife and I have to make my future with her. My love for my mother remains intact while I move on with my wife.”

This is what the celebrated management guru C.K. Prahalad told an Indian newspaper recently while waxing eloquent on all that is exciting and exotic about America. Few, I am sure, would disagree with the semantics and substance of this meaningful message.

Yes, even after the Silicon Valley has hit a trough setting off the Great Exodus. With the downturn in the US economy, the omnipresent slump could not but hit the software sector to the pits. What has panicked most of us is the spectre of sudden joblessness of our creme de la creme who had stormed the Silicon Valley on their way to making India an IT superpower.

Let us appreciate that the New Economy was wrongly understood as a mere technological. It was a financial revolution as well, which made it far more volatile and vicissitudinous. It was the fuel of finance which fired the engine of technology. The boom, which has just gone bust, was driven by risk and venture capital funds. Interestingly, Japan and Germany, though had access to the same technology, did not witness that boom, apparently because they lacked the risk-taking capabilities of the American financial markets.

But such cycles of boom and bust come and go with uncanny regularity. India witnessed a civil engineering boom in the 1950s, a mechanical engineering boom in the 1960s, a chemical engineering boom in the 1980’s, followed by ubiquitous MBA mania, which led to a boom in financial services. However, a negative fallout of the IT boom has been an alarming decline in enrolment in the traditional disciplines of engineering. Too much emphasis, any craze, for IT-related disciplines to the exclusion of everything else, may prove to be counterproductive in the foreseeable future. In fact, most of the jobs require IT skills plus knowledge of an engineering discipline. Our engineering colleges would do well to combine IT skills with other engineering disciplines through inter-disciplinary programmes so as to avoid skewed options on the part of ambitious youngsters.

It would be instructive to note that the ongoing cyber slump has hit the “body shopping business” the hardest. Body shopping is not a part of the software industry. Body shoppers recruit Indian software engineers, enable them to secure HIB visas, send them to the USA and earn their commission.

Whereas the IT industry will continue to flourish despite the downturn and the professionals with real knowledge will survive the scare, we would do well to adopt a strategic growth path rather than live off the usual hype. Indian software remains largely export-oriented but low on value addition. Our inability to combine programming skills with domain skills has not helped innovations or production of specialised products. with the emergence on the software horizon of China, the Philippines, Israel, etc, India’s position as the low-cost option stands challenged. Indians should assiduously explore the markets of Europe to secure business. “Embedded software” used in household appliances has been suggested as a happening area.

What about the domestic market? We have huge potential waiting to be tapped. Agriculture and automobiles, to name a few. Did we not declare the year 2001 as the year of electronic governance? E-governance is synonymous transparency, so sorely needed to restore the faith of the citizenry in the efficiency of the government machinery.

China’s IT industry is expected to log a turnover of $40 billion this year. This comprises mostly hardware. Driven by the domestic demand from the consumer electronics, computing and telecom sectors, China is expected to be the third largest market for semi-conductors in the next couple of years. Global IT majors are hugely spending to customise products for the Chinese domestic market. The growth of domestic market can be attributed, inter alia, to significant investments made by the Chinese government in telecom infrastructure.

The economy, old or new, let’s not forget that the fundamentals have to be strong if we have to break out of the bearish market, mode and mood, in that order. Lack of implementation of economic reforms has played havoc with the augmentation of and addition to the existing infrastructure — power, roads, railways, ports, telecom, etc. Poor transportation adversely affects every aspect of the economy. Unsustainable subsidies, inept management coupled with pro-labour laws continue to fetter our public sector enterprises. Palpably, we need political reforms ahead of any other reform !

Lack of physical and social infrastructure is liable to hinder growth of the services sector as well. Tourism is a case in point. High cost of production of Indian goods has already blunted our competitive edge. Are these not the portents of a prolonged bearish stock market? Somebody computed as 7.2 per cent the compounded annual growth since 1993. Me and my ilk are, therefore, happy with the fixed deposits!

Optimists opine that the prevailing showdown may last a year or so. We can still redeem the promise of emerging as an IT superpower provided we overcome our shortcomings and perceive the threats emerging on the horizon and turn them into opportunities. Incidentially, it is time we re-read the IT Act, 2000, and rid it of its infirmities, inadequacies and idiosyncracies.

POINT OF LAW

Microsoft, new economy and loss of monopoly
by Anupam Gupta

JUST a year after he had received the biggest rebuff of his career from a little-known district judge, putting his whole business empire in jeopardy, the world’s richest man, Mr Bill Gates, earned last week a judicial reprieve from a seven-member US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.

Unravelling with daring eloquence the “full extent of the violence that (Mr Gates’) Microsoft (Corporation) has done to the competitive process” in the computer industry, and halting its triumphant march to monopoly status, Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson had, on June 7, 2000, decreed that the Corporation be carved or split up into two — one company that would develop and sell Windows and another that would develop and sell all else, including MS Office and the Internet Explorer.

It was as if, wrote Steven Levy in the Newsweek magazine a few days later, Mr Gates’ $ 360 billion empire “were a chicken breast on a butcher block”. Rarely has an analogy so picturesque been so devastatingly applied.

“(N)either the desire to bolster demand for Windows nor the prospect of ancillary returns from Internet Explorer can explain the lengths to which Microsoft has gone,” Judge Jackson ruled.

“In essence, Microsoft mounted a deliberate assault upon entrepreneurial efforts that, left to rise or fall on their own merits, could well have enabled the introduction of competition into the market for Intel-compatible PC operating systems.”

If a single firm or cartel, he said, controlled the licencing of all Intel-compatible PC operating systems worldwide, it could set the price of a licence substantially above that which could be charged in a competitive market. Microsoft possessed a “dominant, persistent, and increasing share” of this market, exceeding (at the time of his judgement) 95 per cent.

Having early on recognised “middleware” as the Trojan horse, Microsoft (observed Jackson) strove over almost four years to prevent middleware technologies from fostering the development of full-featured, cross-platform applications other than Windows that could pose a threat to Microsoft.

“Middleware” refers to software products that provide their own Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) — routines or protocols that perform certain widely-used functions ranging from data storage to font display.

“Two incarnations of middleware that posed the greatest threat” — Netscape’s Navigator and the Java technology evolved by Sun Microsystems — were thus prevented by Microsoft for several years, and perhaps permanently, from fulfilling their potential to open the market for Intel-compatible operating systems to competition on the merits, Jackson ruled.

Both Navigator and Java were middleware products written for multiple operating systems and could, in a level playing field, have become a viable substitute for Windows.

Besides maintaining a monopoly in the market for Intel-compatible PC operating systems, Microsoft (said Jackson) had also attempted to gain a monopoly for internet browsers; and had illegally “tied” two separate products, Windows and Internet Explorer, in violation of the principal anti-trust (or anti-monopoly) law in the USA, the Sherman Act of 1890.

The finding of attempted monopolisation turned on Microsoft’s June, 1995 proposal to Netscape that it abandon the field to Microsoft in the market for browsing technology and its subsequent, well-documented efforts to overwhelm Navigator’s browser usage share with a proliferation of Internet Explorer browsers inextricably attached to Windows.

At the time Microsoft presented its proposal to Netscape, the latter’s share of browser usage stood well above seventy per cent and no other browser enjoyed more than a fraction of the remainder.

Had Netscape accepted Microsoft’s offer, which it did not, nearly all of its share would have devolved upon Microsoft because, as Jackson noted, no potential third-party competitor could either claim to rival Netscape’s stature as a browser company or match Microsoft’s ability to leverage monopoly power in the market for Intel-compatible PC operating systems.

The third charge of “tying” or forcibly combining Windows and Internet Explorer refers to Microsoft’s consistent practice, beginning with Windows 95, of conditioning the licence to distribute Windows on the purchase of Internet Explorer. Despite consumer demand, licensees were generally not permitted a browserless version of Windows.

Consumers, said Jackson, often base their choice of browsers on their individual demand for specific functionalities or characteristics of a particular browser, separate and apart from the functionalities afforded by the operating system itself. Considering the character of demand for the two products, as opposed to their functional relation, Web browsers and operating systems are clearly distinguishable in the eyes of buyers.

Microsoft, he ruled, is the only firm to refuse to license its operating system without a browser. Its decision to offer the “tied” or bundled version of Windows and Internet Explorer “derived not from technical necessity or business efficiencies; rather, it was the result of a deliberate and purposeful choice to quell incipient competition before it reached truly minatory proportions.”

Accusing Microsoft of running a “predatory” campaign of anti-competitive actions which “trammelled” the competitive process through which the computer software industry stimulates innovation and conduces to the optimum benefit of consumers, Jackson summed up the corporation’s conduct in a phrase that must surely go down in judicial history as one of the finest ever written or spoken:

“Microsoft (he said) placed an oppressive thumb on the scale of competitive fortune,” effectively guaranteeing its continued dominance of the market.

A year and three weeks after Judge Jackson pronounced final orders in the case, much of what he said has only historical value, however.

“The judgement of the District Court is affirmed in part, reversed in part, and remanded in part,” ruled a seven-member Bench of the US Court of Appeals for Columbia last week on June 28, in the very last para of a voluminous 125-page judgement.

A careful study of those 125 pages shows, however, that in addition to the purely remedial part of Judge Jackson’s verdict splitting Microsoft into two, most of the substantive premises too of his opinion have invited the disapproval, or disagreement, express or implied, of the appellate court.

It is apparent as well that even though the Court of Appeals has, quite early on in its judgement, “upheld the District Court’s finding of monopoly power in its entirety”, its approach to the entire issue is marked by sharply divergent perceptions. Or values.

“We decide this debate,” ruled Chief Justice Edwards, speaking for himself and Justices Williams, Ginsburg, Sentelle, Randolph, Rogers and Tatel, “against a backdrop of significant debate amongst academics and practitioners over the extent to which ‘old economy’ monopolisation doctrines should apply to firms competing in dynamic technological markets characterised by network effects.”

In markets characterised by network effects, said the court, one product or standard tends towards dominance, because the utility that a user derives from consumption of the good increases with the number of other agents consuming the good.

For example, an individual consumer’s demand to use (and hence her benefit from) the telephone network increases with the number of other users on the network whom she can call or from whom she can receive calls.

“Once a product or standard achieves wide acceptance, it becomes (the court said) more or less entrenched. Competition in such industries is ‘for the field’ rather than ‘within the field’.”

For the field rather than within the field. As time passes — the verdict is just four days old — this single sentence in the appellate opinion is certain to attract volumes of discussion on its meaning, nuances and implications as well as the ideological motivations underlying it.

For it does away, in eight sweet words, the whole philosophy, perspective and rigour of the US anti-monopoly law as embodied in the Sherman Act. And the whole campaign against monopolies in the West.

“(T)he most momentous judicial decision affecting the economy rendered anywhere in the free world since the New Deal tribulations of President Roosevelt in the 1930s.” That is how I had described Judge Jackson’s ruling in this column a year ago on June 19, though the full text of the ruling was not immediately available.

Rendered on Microsoft’s appeal, last Thursday’s verdict of the Court of the Appeals — the full text of which lies before me — can only be described as a momentous retreat.

“(W)e note,” says the court, repeating itself, “that there is no consensus among commentators on the question of whether, and to what extent, current monopolisation doctrine should be amended to account for competition in technologically dynamic markets characterised by network effects.”

Indeed, it says, there is some suggestion that the economic consequences of network effects and technological dynamism act to offset one another, thereby making it difficult to formulate categorical anti-trust rules absent a particularised analysis of a given market.

High profit margins, it adds, citing an academic source, might appear to be the benign and necessary recovery of legitimate investment returns in a Schumpeterian framework, but they might (also) represent exploitation of customer lock-in and monopoly power. The issue is particularly complex because, in network industries characterised by rapid innovation, both forces may be operating and “can be dificult to isolate”.

“We do not mean to say (observes the court) that enforcement actions will no longer play an important role in curbing infringements of the anti-trust laws in technologically dynamic markets...

“Even in those cases where forward-looking remedies appear limited, the Government will continue to have an interest in defining the contours of the anti-trust laws so that law-abiding firms will have a clear sense of what is permissible and what is not.”

From socialism to globalisation, from predatory monopolies trammelling free competition to technologically dynamic, law-abiding firms awaiting legitimate investment returns and benign official definitions, the wheel, it appears, has come full circle.

TRENDS & POINTERS

Marriage in decline in America

THE US Census Bureau has released new figures adding detail to the census 2000’s picture of the once-traditional nuclear family’s decline, confirming more people are putting off marriage and cohabiting or living alone.

A survey of 50,000 households showed the number of families led by women with no husbands present grew nearly three times faster in the 1990s than the number of married couples with children.

The survey said 46 percent of families headed by a single woman had more than one child, compared to 36 percent of families led by a single male. At the same time, 34 percent of single-mother families lived below the poverty level compared to 16 percent of single-father families. Income data from census 2000 will not be available for several months.

The CPS report also said less than half of black family households — where there are members of the household related to the householder but not necessarily spouses or children — in 2000 were married couple households. That compared to 68 percent of Hispanic households and 83 percent of white non-Hispanic households which were married couple households.

Married couple family groups were more likely to live in the suburbs and have college graduates than other family groups, the report said. Reuters

Acupuncture good for neck pain

Acupuncture works better than massage as a short-term treatment for chronic neck pain, German doctors said on Friday.

The ancient Chinese treatment, in which needles are used to stimulate pressure points on the body, has been shown to ease nausea and depression but previous studies of its impact on neck pain have been inconclusive. Doctors at the Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich, who compared acupuncture and massage on 177 patients, found the popular complementary therapy quickly improved mobility and made patients feel better.

“Acupuncture is a safe, effective form of treatment for people with chronic neck pain. Effects on pain and mobility were better than those achieved with conventional massage,” Dr Dominik Irnich, a researcher at the university, said in a report in the British Medical Journal.

The patients with chronic neck pain were randomly selected to receive acupuncture, massage or a sham laser acupuncture, which acted as placebo or dummy therapy.

After one week of treatment the acupuncture patients showed much more improvement than the other two groups. But three months after the end of the study the researchers found no significant difference.

Irnich and his colleagues said although acupuncture was effective as a short-term therapy, neck pain can be chronic and a single form of treatment may not be enough.

Traditional Chinese medicine also recommends 10 sessions of acupuncture but the patients in the study only received five.

“Further research is necessary to evaluate the optimum number of treatments,” Irnich added. Reuters

Muslim teacher ‘can’t cover head’

A German court has barred a Muslim woman teacher from covering her head with a traditional scarf in classrooms, in a ruling that could impact on the country’s advocacy of religious freedom.

An administrative high court in Mannheim passed the judgment after Fereshta Ludin, who hailed from Afghanistan, insisted on covering her head with a scarf while teaching.

Ludin was offered a teacher’s job in the south German state of Baden-Wuerttemberg. But the school authorities told her not to cover her head because the students might feel uncomfortable.

The 29-year-old Afghan was warned that she could lose her job if she defied the order. Teachers in German public schools enjoy the same rank and privileges as civil servants, including the right for indefinite employment. Annette Schavan, Baden-Wuerttemberg’s Education Minister, refused to employ her as a teacher if she conducted her classes with her head covered by a scarf.

Ludin then approached the court to assert her rights guaranteed under the German Constitution.

But a lower court in Stuttgart dismissed her plea in March and ruled that by insisting on covering her head, Ludin was “violating against the state’s principle of neutrality.” Her “demonstrative religious pronouncement” was not admissible while she taught the children.

Ludin then appealed to the higher administrative court in Mannheim, which upheld the lower court’s ruling. The Mannheim judges said covering the head with a scarf was a “demonstrative religious allegiance.”

She had argued the scarf covering her head was part of her personality and a religious practice as a devout Muslim. “I feel misunderstood and pushed to the wall.”

The teacher can still contest the Mannheim court’s decision by appealing to the Federal Administrative Court in Berlin. IANS