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| Wednesday,
July 18, 2001, Chandigarh, India   
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Disappointment at Agra Militancy & counter-militancy Russia-China bear hug |
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Efficacy of public audit system in India
Come to Shimla!
HUMAN RIGHTS
VIOLATION A new spirit of liberation
Dev Anand plans film on Nepal
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Disappointment at Agra INDIA-Pakistan relations received a setback – some would call it mild and pessimists would dub it damaging – at Agra. The summit meeting between Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and President Pervez Musharraf broke down abruptly shortly after midnight on Monday. The hour-long farewell call by the guest on the host failed to produce an agreement and the General flew back home. He promised to come to the talks with an open mind but on Monday morning revealed that he had a closed mind on Kashmir. Pakistan says Kashmir is the central issue and India is ready to accommodate this point of view with a suitable alteration in phraseology. And this country wants to promote cross-border terrorism as another core issue but Pakistan rejects this. This difference of perception could not be bridged and the summit ended without even producing a joint statement, much less a joint declaration. What actually triggered the breakdown of the summit was the breakfast meeting the visiting President had with senior journalists and editors. It was billed as his interaction with a section of a sensitive section of society but he converted it into an occasion to present Pakistan’s case on Kashmir and to present his chargesheet against this country. The Indian government got wind of this from the frequent replay of his comments on government-controlled Pakistan TV and the riposte came quick and firm. The Prime Minister’s opening remarks at the delegation-level meeting earlier on Sunday was released although this is never done. The war of posturing had been joined and the end result could not but be a verbal confrontation. Mr Vajpayee has accepted the invitation to visit Islamabad to continue the peace process. But he has to start from a negative base, not a hope-plus point that the Agra summit indicated. Two, liberal opinion in both countries is deeply disappointed at the failure of the summit and should soon coalesce on a mutually acceptable position. That will influence the thinking of the two governments. President Musharraf’s breakfast ballast must have shocked the diplomatic community. Core issues are not discussed at a press conference in the middle of a summit meeting but in closed door away from journalists. A new comer to the political arena, the General relapsed to the army tradition of briefing area commanders on war games expecting total obedience. He did not realise that in a democracy and in a political set-up his incendiary remarks will provoke a sharp reaction and they surely did. There is much hope that the lost ground can be recovered and the problem is to prepare the popular opinion to this arduous task. It is easy in India but tough in Pakistan. That indicates actually the root of the Indo-Pakistan problems. |
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Militancy & counter-militancy AS
Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf arrived in New Delhi on Saturday for summit-level talks with Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, the situation in the Kashmir valley took a turn for the worse. And in accordance with Pakistan's unholy designs. India's intelligence agencies had alerted the authorities that there was an unusual troops build-up on the other side of the Line of Control, obviously aimed at facilitating large-scale infiltration of terrorists and other saboteurs. The security forces, therefore, did what they could, but militants know how to sneek in. This is not to say that militants have proved to be one up in such situations. They have certain advantages and they did manage to strengthen their bases in the valley and elsewhere. In a matter of days militancy reached a new high. They carried out 16 blasts in border areas. But it must be said to the credit of the security forces that their preparedness to meet the challenge was well calculated. They had upgraded and intensified patrolling to foil any attempt at mayhem in the valley. The result is before all to see. Of course, in the past four days ( from Friday to Monday) as many as 120 people lost their lives and some of them are men of the security forces and innocent civilians. But militants have not been allowed to have a free run. At many places, mostly in Poonch and Kupwara districts, the security forces launched major operations and eliminated 50 militants on Sunday alone. Of them, 20 were gunned down in a single operation in the Mandi area in Poonch district, the biggest achievement at any one place in the past one year. It is a matter of great relief that a terrorist plan to attack Amarnath pilgrims has been pre-empted. The security forces' extreme vigil and alertness prevented the enemies of peace from indulging in the kind of massacre they had done before the Lahore bus yatra of Mr Vajpayee when 20 innocent persons were mowed down at a place in the Jammu region. However, successful anti-militancy operations are not enough. When Pakistan in unwilling to make any commitment on reining in the militant outfits it has been remote-controlling for over a decade, as the Agra dialogue has proved, India will have to restructure its strategy vis-a-vis cross-border terrorism. It must find sufficient resources to launch a counter-terrorist campaign in enemy areas. This is not to say that two wrongs make a right. But sometimes even mature nations have to adopt such tactics with a view to making a belligerent adversary understand the language of sanity. Today terrorism is the most dangerous enemy of mankind. The sooner the policy planners on the other side of the Indo-Pak divide realise this, the better it will be for the entire South Asian region. |
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Russia-China bear hug THE
Russian President, Mr Vladimir Putin, and his Chinese counterpart, Mr Jiang Zemin, have been at pains to underscore that the Good Neighbourly Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation that they have signed is not an axis or alliance. Ironically, that is exactly how the western world is likely to see it. After all, when countries of such big size embrace each other, there are bound to be misgivings. It is quite obvious that commonality of interests vis-à-vis the USA has pulled them together. Both see the NMD shield as a common threat and have castigated it during this summit as well as in the past. They have made it clear that they will do all within their powers to avoid disrupting the current balance of military potentials and stability. The way they have expressed their firm support for the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty is an indication that they are determined to make the USA reconsider its insistence on the missile shield. Separately, they may not carry enough clout to do so, but jointly they are a force to reckon with. China can purchase state-of-the-art weaponry from Russia, which the latter is equally desperate to sell, thanks to a severe cash crunch. The USA may see in this coming together an attempt by China to gain a superpower status. Russia has the expertise and China the money. It is true that the previous 1950 treaty did not prevent the 1969 war between the two but things have changed a lot since then. They have come to realise that they have to paper over their border and other disputes if they have to play a key role in global strategic balance and stability. Both have been careful to raise demands that will win them international support. They have called for an international pact to ban the placing of weapons in outer space and have urged the establishment of a global regime for non-proliferation of missile technologies on an "equal, non-discriminatory basis". Interestingly, there is also talk of including India in the understanding that the two have signed on Monday. Earlier, China was not in favour of such a strategic triangle, but there appears to have been a change of heart of late. India will have to calibrate its response very minutely, weighing the pros and cons in terms of its relations with the USA. Right now, the possibility is in the domain of conjecture. The meeting of scholars from these countries in Moscow in September may help concretise the tie-up that can have global ramifications. |
Efficacy of public audit system in India THANKS perhaps to the preoccupation with the search for the so-called hidden agenda in the appointment of the National Commission to Review the Working of the Constitution and the controversy generated by the commission’s consultation paper dealing with the issues of electoral reforms and the form of government, some of the other papers put out by the commission have escaped adequate attention. One such paper is addressed to the issue of the efficacy of the audit system in India as an instrument of public accountability. Broadly speaking, public accountability is the obligation of persons/authorities entrusted with public power and/or resources to report on the management of such resources and be answerable for the fiscal, managerial and programme responsibilities conferred thereby. The Comptroller and Auditor-General of India (CAG) is the institution prescribed in the Constitution as an instrument of securing public accountability and the financial supremacy of the legislature over the executive. The CAG’s reports highlighting cases of programme failures as well as fraudulent, nugatory and infructuous expenditure are submitted to the President/Governor who causes them to be laid before the legislature concerned, whereafter these are automatically remitted to the Public Accounts Committee (PAC). The PAC summons official witnesses, examines them and makes recommendations for necessary corrective, remedial and preventive action. Other similar cases detected in audit but not included in the CAG’s reports are brought to the notice of the superior executive authorities for appropriate action. Although Dr Ambedkar had described the CAG as “probably the most important official of the Constitution” whose duties “are far more important than the duties of the judiciary”, it is no secret that the institution of public audit has not proved adequately effective in controlling and preventing the waste of public funds and resources. During the eighties, Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi had expressed the view that only 15 paise out of every rupee released by the Central Government for the welfare of the poor reached the target group; the latest estimate of the Planning Commission places the amount at 10 paise. Thus 90 per cent of the government funds disappear in what are euphemistically described as “leakages”. This is not because cases of irregular, wasteful and nugatory expenditure escape detection in public audit, or because these are not reported to the legislature or the executive authorities, but the very persistence of such cases year after year is a telling comment on the effectiveness of the public audit system in India. The weakness of the public audit system is located in the absence of any powers to enforce adequate and deterrent follow-up action on the cases of financial malfeasance reported by the CAG. The PACs to which the CAG’s audit reports are remitted are in some states behind schedule by several years. The reports of the PAC, though having considerable moral force, are only recommendatory, and for taking its recommendations to the logical conclusion, it has necessarily to depend upon the government machinery. The follow-up action on the other irregularities which are not included in the CAG’s audit reports but separately brought to the notice of the higher echelons of the executive departments also depends on the government machinery only. There is little evidence, however, that adequate follow-up is actually taken, appropriate lessons drawn and in particular those responsible for the loss of public property or money have in any manner come to grief. An important issue dealt with in the Constitution Review Commission’s consultation paper on public audit system, therefore, relates to the effectiveness of the public audit system in its present form, bereft of any authority to enforce adequate and appropriate action on audit conclusions and observations. Inviting attention to the parallels of audit systems in countries like New Zealand, Japan, France, South Korea, China and Thailand, the consultation paper poses the issue whether the Indian Audit Department should be vested with quasi-judicial powers that are available under the Commission of Enquiry Act to summon public officials to give evidence on oath, fix any official found to have caused loss of public money and property through fraud, negligence and improper use and, if that is not possible, to advise the department concerned to take disciplinary action. The need for prescribing what may be called the wages for sins of financial omission and commission has been recognised since time immemorial. Kautilya’s Arthashastra prescribes a scale of punishment related to the magnitude and consequence of financial malfeasance; punishment is prescribed also for auditors who are found remiss in the performance of their duties. A similar arrangement is suggested in Aristotle’s “Constitution of Athens”. In more recent times, a sub-committee appointed by the Conference of Presiding Officers had recommended registration of certain specified categories of audit comments as FIRs! Viewed in the background of the ineffectiveness of the existing mechanism of enforcement of accountability and the almost monotonous persistence of instances of financial malfeasance year after year with impunity, empowerment of the Audit Department and vesting it with the power to order the delinquent officials to make good the financial loss caused by their action would appear to be an idea whose time has come. But a closer examination would show up the utterly simplistic nature of the suggestion. Effective enforcement of accountability presupposes the existence of unilinear definition of responsibility at each level of administrative hierarchy which is at variance with the highly complex decision-making process in the present-day administration, with numerous horizontal and vertical layers through which a proposal must pass before a decision is taken. Also, in several cases, the executive decisions, as distinguished from policy decisions, are taken at the level of the Minister or even the Cabinet, e.g. award of high value contracts. How can auditors be expected to be empowered to enforce accountability in such a scenario and order recoveries of financial losses caused by wrong-doing? The empowerment of the Audit Department on the lines mentioned in the consultation paper is also contrary to the accepted principles of separation of powers that is the bedrock of good governance and equity. It seeks to vest in the Audit Department the power to investigate, the power to prosecute and also the power to judge and award punishment. Such a concentration of powers in a single agency, however, enlightened and competent, is bad in theory and bad in practice. Add to this, the not-so-uncommon perception that the auditors tend to be insensitive to the constraints of administration and may be illequipped to exercise the proposed power in a judicious manner, and the envisaged empowerment looks even more flawed. In this context, the failure of a couple of PIL petitions filed in the Supreme Court on the basis of comments that starred in the CAG’s audit reports should be a sobering thought. The frequent cross-movement of audit officers from their parent cadre to the executive departments is another argument against the empowerment of audit in the manner envisaged. An alternative that needs to be considered is the establishment of accountability tribunals for trying cases of financial malfeasance which will have the power to award punishment by way of recovery of financial loss caused in proven cases. Such a tribunal should be a triumvirate comprising experienced persons drawn one each from the judiciary, public administration and audit who are known for their probity, competence and fair-mindedness, besides having wide exposure to public affairs. The terms and conditions of their service, including the security of tenure, shall be such as will enable them to discharge their functions without fear or favour, that combine security of a non-renewable tenure with well-defined restraints on their eligibility for holding any other public office. Cases of financial malfeasance may be filed before the accountability tribunal by the Audit Department, or may be suo motu taken cognizance of by it from the audit reports, but the role of the Audit Department would be limited to the presentation of cases only. The tribunal will have full powers to call for departmental records, summon officials, and determine the extent of their involvement and culpability and pass orders against which an appeal can be filed only in the Supreme Court. This will go a long way in securing and enforcing accountability, act as a deterrent against deliberate financial wrong-doing and ensure that the best value is obtained for each rupee of the tax-payer’s money. Needless to say, the tribunal will also have jurisdiction over the officers of the Indian Audit Department. The writer is a former Deputy Comptroller and Auditor-General of India. |
Come to Shimla! “COME to Shimla!” was my standing invitation to all those who used to meet me in plains. And believe me, their visit and then their departing remark, “a thing of beauty is joy for ever” always jazzed me up. I still invite people with the same sincerity because my love for Shimla is inborn although the town is said to have lost its old charm. And when they quiz, “What is there in Shimla?” I do not get muzzled up; I have a ready answer. Shimla is known for “walks”. There are three beautiful rounds, each measuring about five kilometres — The Jakhu Round, the Bharari Round and the Summerhill Round. If I name these Rounds by the trees that abound there, these will be called Deodar (Cedar) Round, Himalayan Oak Round and the Rhododendron Round respectively. It is a different matter that unscientific roadside construction, felling of trees and on top of it the never-ending digging of roads by the authorities concerned, first for laying water pipes, then for sewage pipes and lastly for telephone cables may make the visitor uneasy. But the beautifiers of Shimla nourish no mala fide towards the guest. Their purpose is to give such good roads in the peripheries that one’s walkabout appears to be a “two-peg in” gait without spending a penny on the intoxicant. I have also heard that The Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals is thinking of giving an award to the Health Wing of the Municipal Corporation for providing free access to stray dogs and cats, cattle and crows to the garbage dumpers whose covers remain open. These wild friends of ours thrive on the palatable kitchen waste and litter the rest around giving the humans the feel of stink good odour. And the Mall, today, has become the ideal “Manekian” promenade where man and monkey stroll side by side. Yes, man only, not the woman. The simians too have weakness for the fairer sex, a living organism of which withdraws herself from them uttering that nationally recognised expression, “Oh, shit.” What better place can it be than the Mall where one can chew paan to one’s leisure and be all eyes to the batteries of decked out belles! Spitting the maroon juice is no problem now. You may do it anywhere on the Mall or go to the government run beautiful building Indira Gandhi Khel Parisar and spit on its walls. I was really pleased to see the result there — a gallery of modern art by unknown artists and at no cost. “Come to Shimla!” I extend invitation to you for the summer. |
HUMAN RIGHTS
VIOLATION IT
was the long hot nights in the dirty interrogation centre in Pappatot, on the border between Kashmir and Pakistan, that broke 18-year-old Chaudhary Aurangzeb. Thousands of miles from his home in Longsight, Manchester, Aurangzeb endured relentless beatings and electric-shock treatment at the hands of the Indian secret police. Now 25, the Briton was held without trial in an Indian jail for seven years. On 19th April 1994, he was caught walking over the Kashmiri hills with three friends -one British and two from Pakistan, where he had been staying with friends. The Indian authorities, under emergency laws passed because of fighting with the Pakistani forces in Kashmir, arrested the three after they accidentally strayed over the border. His friends were soon freed, but he was not. Despite a campaign by his family, India denied him a trial and left him in a series of cramped jails until two months ago, when judges were forced to admit they had no further case and ruled that he should be freed. Last week Aurangzeb arrived back at London Heathrow Airport. Speaking for the first time about his ordeal, he said he had almost given up hope of freedom. “I didn’t believe I was going to be released and thought I would never see my family again. I am angry at the eight years of my life they have taken away from me.” He is now barely recognisable to his friends. He has lost weight, and a thick beard hides his boyish features. The memory of his arrest is still vivid. Denied vital medication by his captors during the first 17 months in Pappatot, Aurangzeb’s chronic asthma worsened. “The attacks came at night. During the day they would torture me with a telephone: they tied the wires to different parts of my body and used a battery to run volts through me. The police kept asking me the same two questions — how did you come to Kashmir? Who sent you? They kept asking me to say I was militant. They took a bucket of water, tied my arms behind my back, and thrust my head into it.” Memories of his arrest are still vivid. “I was walking along the mountains when I was arrested by the Border Security Force and they took me to a detention centre. I said I was a civilian, but they wrote in my file that I was a militant and that was the end of it in their eyes. I then spent 17 months in the centre.” Aurangzeb broke down as he described the horror of the detention centre and the conditions inside. `The sort of torture I experienced was happening to many people in the jail. We were all put in separate rooms — kept in solitary confinement. I was given two to three chapatis a day and a little rice to eat, with some dirty water. There were hundreds of boys there said to be involved in militancy. “Some were as young as 10 years old. The officials killed many people, some right in front of my eyes. After a while he was granted treatment for his asthma. His family hired a solicitor to pursue his case and began writing to Foreign Office officials to put pressure on the Indian government. In October 1998, the police walked into his cell and said he was to go on trial. Less than two weeks later he appeared in court for the first time. But his case was never completed as he was moved to another prison, hundreds of miles from the court. Aurangzeb had to suffer another three years in prison before his case came to court again. On 28th May this year, he was brought before the Indian High Court to answer the original charges of entering Kashmir without proper documents. But the case against him was pitiful and, despite police objections, the judge ordered his release within 15 days. Last week, his ordeal came to an end when he was transferred to Delhi and into the custody of the British High Commission. `The first thing I did was call my family and tell them I was coming home,’ he said. He returned to London on Friday before travelling to Manchester for a tearful reunion with his mother, who fell ill during the long fight for his freedom. Stephen Jakobi of the UK organisation Fair Trials Abroad, who campaigned for his release, said: ‘The issue here is not what he was doing on the border, but why he was held for seven years without charge. If we are to believe the Indian government’s allegations that he is a “terrorist” or spy, then a Yorkshire-born teenage asthmatic seems an odd operative. “The current Foreign Office administration has worked hard to secure his release, as also his family. But one wonders if a white Briton would have seen similar apathy to his plight in the early stages of his detention.” A spokesman for the Foreign Office said Britain treated all allegations of torture against UK citizens seriously, but rejected claims of any racial bias. An Indian Embassy spokesman stressed that India ‘does not practice torture’, has an independent judiciary and a strong human rights record. The spokesman was unable to comment on the specifics of the case. “For a young man from Pakistan to stray across the Line Of Control would be like a member of Hizbollah wandering into Israel by accident,” said the spokesman. The Indian government had long alleged that Aurangzeb was a recruit of Islamic fundamentalist guerrillas in the area where he was arrested. But for Aurangzeb, no explanations can make up for the vital years he has lost. At present he has no plans to pursue the things he has missed in British life, like university or a career. He just wants to be with his family. By arrangement with The Observer |
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A new spirit of liberation I
have just finished reading what is perhaps the most stimulating and rewarding book I’ve read. It’s called A Terrible Beauty by Peter Watson, journalist and writer. He has worked with various distinguished newspapers and journals and is now a research associate at the University of Cambridge. The sub-title of the book, A history of the people and ideas that shaped the modern mind, indicates the scope of his subject. It is, in other words, a history of the arts and literature, the sciences and philosophies of the twentieth century. It is so absorbingly written that I read through its 772 pages without skipping a line. It is published by Weidenfeld and Nicholson. This is the living twentieth century, a century disfigured by wars and disasters and genocide of a scale unknown in previous eras of human history. It is an affirmation of the ever-resurgent spirit of mankind and you meet in these pages the writers, artists, scientists and philosophers who were not defeated by the disasters around them. Beginning with Freud and Picasso, Darwin and Einstein, he brings together the great minds of the last century and discusses the most original and influential ideas of our times, be it relativity or the ‘Big Bang’. New thoughts and discoveries and inventions flowed from universities and laboratories. In all this, the contribution of the Third World was marginal. This is what made me sad as I progressed through the book. The intention of the author (and the publisher) was to cover as wide a spectrum as possible, but the outcome turned out to be different. The book was to have included not just European and North American (that is, Western) ideas, but would delve into the major non-western cultures to identify their important ideas and thinkers be they philosophers, writers, scientists or composers. Peter Watson writes, ‘I began to work my way through scholars who specialised in the major non-western cultures: India, China, Japan, southern and central Africa, the Arab world. I was shocked to find that they all camp up with the same answer, that in the twentieth century, the non-western cultures have produced no body of work that can compare with the ideas of the west’. Watson goes on to add that a good proportion of these scholars were themselves members of those very non-western cultures. ‘More than one made the point that the chief intellectual effort of his or her own culture in the twentieth century has been a coming to terms with modernity, learning how to cope with or respond to western ways and western patterns of thought, chiefly democracy and science.’ Both Frantz and James Baldwin have stressed the point that for many groups in the Third World the struggle is their culture for the present. Watson agrees that there are distinguished scholars from the Third World — Edward Said, Amart ya Sen, Anita Desai. But, ‘whatever list you care to make of twentieth century innovations, be it plastic, antibiotics, the atom or stream-of-consciousness novels, free verse or abstract expressionism, it is almost entirely western.’ For an explanation of this discrepancy, Watson goes to V.S. Naipaul who has written three books — India: An Area of Darkness (1967), India: A Wounded Civilisation (1977), India: A Million Mutinies Now (1990). ‘The crisis of India,’ he wrote in 1967, ‘is that of a decaying civilisation, where the only hope lies in further swift decay,’ In 1977, though he found the Indian scene somewhat improved, he said, ‘The crisis of India is not only political or economic. The larger crisis is that of a wounded civilisation that has at last become aware of its inadequacies and is without intellectual means to move ahead.’ Hinduism, wrote Naipaul, has exposed Indians to a thousand years of defeat and stagnation. ‘It has given men no idea of contact with other men, no idea of the state...... Its philosophy of withdrawal has diminished men intellectually and not equipped them to respond to challenge; it has shifted growth.’ Octavio Paz, Mexico’s Nobel-prize-winning poet, in his book, In Light of India, writes about India’s stagnation in these words: ‘Hindu thought came to a halt towards the end of the thirteenth century, the period when the last of the great temples were erected. This historical paralysis coincides with two other important phenomena: the extinction of Buddhism and the victory of Islam in Delhi and other places.’ He speaks about the great lethargy of Hindu civilisation, ‘a lethargy that persists today.’ Peter Watson, in his concluding remarks argues that the stagnation and apathy in many Third World societies may be due to the intellectual segregation brought about by religious fundamentalism and through it a technological lag. In a Million Mutinies, Naipaul reflects that a new spirit of liberation has come to India in the form of rage and revolt. Let’s hope that this spirit will live on! |
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Dev Anand plans film on Nepal IRREPRESSIBLE Bollywood actor-director Dev Anand plans to make a film on the palace massacre in Nepal in which virtually the entire royal family was wiped out. The evergreen 77-year-old Anand, dubbed India’s Gregory Peck at the peak of his acting career, is looking for fresh faces for the still untitled film which he says will recreate the June 1 bloodbath. Nepal’s Crown Prince Dipendra mowed down King Birendra, Queen Aishwarya and seven members of the royal family in a drink-and-drug-fuelled shooting spree. The 29-year-old prince then shot himself and died three days later in hospital. “I’m deeply disturbed by what happened in Nepal... I was very close to the (royal) family and that’s the reason I’m making this film,” Anand told Reuters. “I’m ready with the script and want to complete this (film) really fast, definitely within the next 6-8 months.” Anand, who has acted in some of the biggest Bollywood hits such as Guide and Hare Rama Hare Krishna, has had a string of box-office flops in the past few years. But the never-say-die Anand is unfazed. He says that apart from making the $ 2.97-million movie he will also play a role in the film. “I will shortly visit Nepal to finalise the locations though I’m not sure a film of the magnitude I’m planning can be entirely shot there,” said Anand whose Hare Rama Hare Krishna was shot in Nepal. “I have always tried to promote new talent through my films and there would be no exception this time,” he said. Anand, who rose to fame in the late 1950s as a dapper and suave romantic hero, is credited with having launched the careers of two famous Bollywood actresses, Zeenat Aman and Tina
Munim. Reuters.
World’s most expensive dinner
A group of six high-flying investment bankers, who remained the talk of London’s trading floors for a week for blowing 44,000 pounds on dinner at a London restaurant, was headed by a Pakistani and an Indian banker. The bill, which worked out at £ 7,334.50 per head, is now billed to be entered in the Guinness Book of World Records as the most expensive meal per head. All six banking fat cats are employees of Barclays Capital, the investment banking division of Barclays Bank, revealed to The Sunday Times, and were “believed to have been celebrating a huge coup in the bond markets”. The tab was mainly met by four of the party of six, said the paper. They were Iftikhar Hyder, a senior risk analyst who recently joined the bank from America; Ruth Cove, a colleague from the bank’s New York office; Mahish Chandra and Dayananda Kumar, both based at Barclays London trading floor in Canary Wharf on the Isle of Dogs. The bank, which closed more than 170 branches last year and came under criticism for axing thousands of jobs, told TST that the bill was not paid by the company. Interestingly, the bankers were not charged for their food. The bill was all about vintage vines, one of which cost £ 12,300. The bill at Petrus, Gordon Ramsay’s flagship restaurant in St James’s, dwarfs the £ 13,000 that a Czech financier spent on himself and two friends at Le Gavroche in central London in September 1997. That dinner, which worked out at £ 4,363.73 each, is currently listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the “world’s most expensive meal per head”, the paper wrote.
ANI
Wife claims $116,400 as damages
In the first-ever case of its kind where a woman has claimed damages from her husband for “intentionally” infecting her with the AIDS virus, a South African High Court ordered a Durban businessman to pay his wife some $ 116,400 for “pain and suffering”, according to a newspaper report. The unidentified woman met her future husband while on holiday in Mozambique in 1995 and they married three years later. She said her husband, who was sick from the time they met, did not tell her of his HIV status. South Africa has one of the highest rates of AIDS infections in the world, with one in nine of its population estimated to be HIV positive.
ANI |
Do not judge your neighbour before putting yourself in his place. ***** With increased possessions comes anxiety; but the more righteousness the more peace. ***** Who is wise? He who learns from everyone. ***** Who is strong? He who can master his passions. ***** Who is rich? He who appreciates what he has. ***** Who is honourable? He who honours his fellowmen. ***** Revere a spiritual teacher as you would rever heaven. ***** The world stands upon three foundations: religious learning spiritual striving and deeds of kindness. ***** Jealously, lust and the seeking of honour destroy human life Know the physical end of man is dust and worms. ***** When a person departs this life, neither gold nor silver accompany him, only spiritual knowledge and righteous deeds. — From The Ethics of the Fathers, (an excerpt of the Talmud) ***** Here are some of the things that must be avoided: Hardening our hearts, wronging our neighbour, associating with impurity, spurning parents and teachers, committing violence, profaning God's Name or engaging in impure speech, unchastity, idle gossip pride, slander, envy, contentiousness, vain oaths, breach of trust and so on. — Rabbi Asher Block, "Spiritual Practice in Judaism", Prabuddha Bharata, March 1960 ***** We are Thy children and Thou art of Parent. We are Thy faithful and Thou our Beloved. We are Thy subjects, and Thou our King. We are Thy flock, and Thou our Shepherd. We are Thy vineyard, and Thou our keeper. We are Thy word, which Thou hast spoken. — A Jewish prayer |
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