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Saturday,
September 1, 2001, Chandigarh, India   |
Jaya’s game is up Losing jobs |
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Where are we headed?
Vajpayee-Musharraf meeting again
Of a govt that can’t protect a
hospital
Disturbing economic
situation
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Jaya’s game is up SUDDENLY, as it were, an impregnable roadblock has risen on Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa’s yearning to retain power beyond November 13. On that day she will complete six months as an unelected member of the Assembly and on constitutional grounds and Supreme Court orders she has to quit. She tried to overcome this handicap by seeking a speedy hearing of her appeal and the Madras High Court Judge was sympathetic to her cause, wanting to head off a constitutional crisis. All these lies in ruins with the apex court stayed further hearing and indicating that it may favour transferring the case to a High Court outside Tamil Nadu. There are two implications of the highest court’s order. One, there is an unstated but unmistakable stricture of the Madras High Court judge, Justice Balasubramaniam, for rushing through with the hearing in two ways. First, he delinked the Chief Minister’s appeal from that of 16 others clearly to compress the time needed to complete the hearing. He promised to deliver his verdict in the court immediately after the arguments. This is very unusual since judges reserve judgements wanting time to digest the weight of arguments and the requirements of the law. Obviously this judge believes in instance justice, the lok adalat style. Two, he also turned down the special public prosecutor’s plea for more time to study the case papers running into more than 2200 pages, some of which the court officials failed to give him. This prosecutor is a High Court nominee and replaced a government (read Ms Jayalalithaa) nominee. He rushed to the Supreme Court for relief and got it. The Madras High Court’s efforts to put the case in fast forward has come to naught. What has also come to naught is the madam’s eagerness to rejoin the NDA. She does not stand to gain anything except to deliver a snub to the arch rival, the DMK. But the Centre has scotched the political rumour by asking Attorney General Soli Sorabjee to plead the case of the special public prosecutor. Of course he had a transparent fig leaf in the presence of an advocate, but it was his powerful presentation that went to make up the Supreme Court’s mind. With the BJP-led alliance government hitting the AIADMK where it hurts the most, all possibilities of a reconciliation have evaporated. Ms Jayalalithaa faces more problems. The Supreme Court will hear this month three public interest litigations challenging the constitutional validity of her assuming power. Now her appeal is being transferred to another state and she cannot be sure of a favourable disposition. It seems she is set to lose her power even her cloud remains intact. |
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Losing jobs DRIVEN
partly by competition and partly by global slowdown, public sector undertakings and private enterprises are resorting to job cuts. According to a financial daily, which has carried out a survey of job losses in various sectors, about 10 lakh jobs have vanished since the economic reforms began almost a decade ago. During this period six PSUs, including SAIL, BHEL, Coal India, Hindustan Zinc and ONGC, have together axed about 1,20,000 jobs. Not to be left behind, the railways, the world’s numero uno employer with 15.7 lakh employees on its rolls, plans to drop 30,000 jobs every year in the next 10 years. Among the worst affected is the hotel industry. The ITDC hotels have been forced to cut about 1,500 jobs, while the three private hotel chains Taj, Oberoi and Welcomgroup cut 1,800 posts by offering VRS (voluntary retirement scheme) to their employees. Cement is the other major sector which has reduced its strength by 6,000 jobs. Among the major companies that have cut flab are Tata Engineering, Bajaj Auto, Escorts and Daewoo
India. This gives a broad view of the grim situation. While one reason for the job losses is the adoption of the latest technology, the other is the Central Government’s clear signal to the PSUs to be self-sufficient and not to expect any assistance or bailouts. The introduction of computers in banks, for instance, has made many jobs redundant. But the exodus of senior bank officials, specially those with specialised skills, accepting the VRS has affected banking services in many areas. Many of those who first opted for the VRS soon realised the mistake as avenues for reliable and attractive investment are shrinking. Job cuts all over and the alarming situation of unemployment have dimmed their chances for re-employment. The use of new technology and the directive to the PSUs to fend for themselves are in the long run expected to improve efficiency and productivity. If on the one hand those previously employed are losing jobs, the entry of fresh job seekers has further worsened the situation. According to the figures made public by the task force on employment set up by the Planning Commission, 8.7 million young people enter the job market every year. To absorb them, the economy must witness a growth rate of at least 8 per cent. But the present growth rate of 6 per cent or less cannot provide them employment even in the next five years. The government, on its part, has not yet put in place any safety net for those losing jobs while the labour laws are being made flexible. In the early years of reform, Dr Manmohan Singh did talk of the need to have a fund for those displaced by the economic shake-up, but nothing concrete has emerged. While the need for such a provision is obvious, the Centre must also speed up investment in road and house construction works to create job opportunities as also spur demand for cement and steel. The job losers from the IT sector can afford to wait for the change of fortunes in this sector at the global level. Many in India will have to learn to live with job insecurity. Life-long employment is becoming a luxury. |
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Where are we headed? PEACE
has returned to Thane, but not normalcy. There are several disturbing questions waiting to be answered. What had Singhania hospital and other institutions done to deserve the mindless violence that Shiv Sainiks indulged in after the death of their leader Anand Dighe following a road accident? Their explanation that the death was caused by negligence of the hospital staff just does not wash, given the factual position. Nor can it be called "spontaneous outburst", considering that the orgy of violence continued for more than 36 hours, targeting everything from a blood bank to life-saving equipment. Shiv Sena hoodlums did not have any sympathy for critically ill patients either who had to run for their lives. After such behaviour, will any hospital willingly allow any Shiv Sena activist to undergo treatment in its wards? The whole ugly episode is yet another proof that lumpen elements have been given a free run of not only Mumbai but also of various other places in Maharashtra. What is all the more shameful is the fact that the police remained a mute spectator while Thane burned. Their assertion that they were outnumbered is a cruel joke since this was not the first time that the Sainiks were employing such tactics and senior officials should have anticipated the trouble that was brewing. The fact of the matter is that the State simply withdraws itself out of harm's way whenever such storm- troopers go on the rampage. This pusillanimity only further emboldens the antisocial elements. Strong-arm tactics have always been employed by the Bal Thackeray men first to terrorise Tamils and then members of the minority community. They also appropriate to themselves the role of the cultural police. They have taken over trade unions to do their bidding. Society as well as the law-enforcers look the other way with the result that the criminals run amok. In fact, politicians of all hues have used the goons to further their own agenda, in the process giving them respectability and acceptability. Over the years, the extortionists and roughnecks have moved up the social ladder and now brazenly contest and win elections. The Thane mayhem is only a trailer of things to come. At least Mr Bal Thackeray has some political understanding, howsoever warped it might be. The real threat arises from the younger elements for whom the only worthwhile ideology is muscle power. Unless they are made to realise that the arm of law has not atrophied, Maharashtra may be in for worse times. Home Minister Chhagan Bhujbal knows the mind of these organised bands, considering that he has been one of them once upon a time. Now is the time for him to come true on his "bold" declarations to set them right. |
Vajpayee-Musharraf meeting again THE decision of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee to meet President Musharraf at the UN conference reopens the vainness of his first encounter with him. While we all wish for the success of his proposed Close Encounter at the UN and may be later in Pakistan, it is all the more important to recapitulate their first meeting and rummage around the blemishes and the stains of imperfection committed before Agra so as to avoid their recurrence in the months ahead. It is true that neighbours engaged in the act of raising eyebrows and folding wrists have often desired chance meetings around the corner, with or without the good offices of a third party, to bring about harmony. Such chance encounters usually help in breaking the ice, reduce communication barriers and raise the confidence levels of parties to come together and talk. After all, no one wants to live in an environment of trepidation and fear. A passing hello, if conducted properly, surely makes the feeling less uneasy at heart. In this context, however, looking in retrospect at the Musharraf-Vajpayee summit in July this year; that should have with a little foresight and planning, raised immense prospects, eventually turned out be a case of an opportunity gone abegging. The chief reasons, according to me, for such a letdown were a lack of planning, inadequate agenda, policy reversal as also choosing the wrong time and person to talk to. The importance of the summit could be gauged from the fact that 500 journalists from all over the world had gathered at Agra to have a peep through the keyhole. The citizens of Pakistan and India were the biggest stakeholders and all eyes were glued at Musharraf and Vajpayee. So charged were the press and public that a mere slant of an eye or an innocuous jerk of the shoulders of any of these leaders would have sent vibrations of gossips and conjectures around the world. They all were looking as to what would be the outcome of that meeting. In India all the Opposition parties fully supported the government for talks because they all believed that ultimately dialogue is the answer to the disputes between the two countries. For that, India did announce some confidence building measures and we all appreciate that. The teeoff was in the form of unilateral ceasefire that was a good augury to create good conditions for the talks. Some Pakistani prisoners were also released. Next step that the government took was the reduction of tariff on goods imported from Pakistan and the offering of scholarships for Pakistani students to come and study in India, followed by a relaxation in the grant of visas. These are the things with which the government tried to create an atmosphere but unfortunately, it was not appreciated by Pakistan and not considered important by them. Since they did not reciprocate and no positive response from their leaders was elicited, there was no compulsion for us to go ahead and jump for talks. The government had always been emphatic that there would be no dialogue with Pakistan unless cross-border terrorism was stopped. The Prime Minister as also the Home Minister had stated in more than once. In such a scenario, it is intriguing as to what transpired so as to prompt the government to throw this out to the wind and take a U-turn on this important foreign policy and go whole hog with the talks? The country, perhaps, has a right to know about it. While changing this policy, did the Prime Minister consult his colleagues? Was it discussed in the Cabinet? Or for that matter, was it discussed in the NDA? The government has created a national defence security system. Could the Prime Minister not talk to his chiefs of the defence forces? These talks had a bearing on the Kashmir issue and legitimately, when a well laid down policy is to be changed, the government must be aware that it has to be based on a national consensus. It goes without saying that there are very good people in the Opposition who are interested and the Prime Minister should have consulted them so that a national consensus could have been evolved on this issue. The government is silent on the fact as to why it changed that policy and why it wanted to have the talks. There had been a lot of articles in the Press. Many political people had been asking the government. But the government had been totally silent. The silence of the government created much misunderstanding. There were a lot of speculations. India has an independent Press. The people were having their own conjectures and conclusions. Some people said that it was America that was forcing the two countries to sit around a table and have talks with him. The Press in Pakistan was claiming that their jehadis in Kashmir forced Vajpayee to come to the table. The Prime Minister never refuted it and went ahead with the talks nevertheless. The Prime Minister talked to the wrong person. He talked to Gen Musharraf who had usurped power in Pakistan. He was opposed by all the political parties so much so that some people even went to the court to dislodge him. Musharraf called a meeting of the Opposition leaders before coming to India but they all refused to talk to him. According to them, he had no status, no locus standi, no mandate of Pakistan. About the international situation at that time, America did not like the change in Pakistan. Similarly, Europe also did not like it. While they hardly had made up their mind on how to deal with the situation in Pakistan, our Prime Minister promptly invited him and granted him status and credibility. It must not be forgotten that the army in Pakistan has a vested interest. The military people have dislodged the elected governments four times in Pakistan and usurped power. The political thinking of the military dictators who ruled Pakistan at different periods of time, be it the domestic policy or their foreign policy is all based on only one point, the unipolar point on how to get Kashmir by aggression. Our Minister of External Affairs also belonged to the army and as such it was expected of him that he should have known their mindset and their way of thinking. Despite the patent thinking of the military, our government went ahead to invite him here for talks. While inviting Musharraf to India, our government should have recalled the history of Pakistan in the last 50 years. At the time of Partition, they claimed that the Partition had taken place between Hindu India and Muslim India. We are not surprised about it, but they have been insisting on the two-nation theory ever since. Second, according to them Kashmir is an unfinished agenda of Partition. They have maintained that Kashmir remains to be divided and they have to make a decision whether Kashmir has to go with Pakistan or India. They were claiming Kashmir because it is a Muslim-majority State and they refused to believe that the Maharaja of Kashmir had acceded to India. So, our government was dealing with a fixed mindset of a nation that does not believe at all in reality. By inviting Musharraf, our government ignored the history. At the time of Partition, the Muslim League would proclaim, “Hans ke liya hai Pakistan, Lad ke lenge Hindustan”. That mentality persists even now. Their stock edicts have been “first we will take Kashmir and then we will take India” as also “one Pakistani soldier is equal to 10 Indian soldiers”. They advocate the ‘two-nation theory’. “We say that India cannot accept the two-nation theory. India is a secular country. Sixteen crore Muslim did not decide to go to Pakistan. That is the secular policy of India. Their policy also failed when Bangladesh was separated from Pakistan. The Bangladeshi Muslims refused to live with Pakistan. In spite of the fact that their theory is wrong, their army is still continuing to have their base on that theory. It is in this background that one needs to rethink the futility of talking to such a leadership unless there are strong enough reasons to perceive a change in their approach or the stance by some manifestations. Was there any indication from the talks with US emissaries (who visited both the countries) that Pakistan had changed its mind and that they are ready to come to the table with an open mind and have a dialogue with us? It is in this context that the invitation was also at a wrong time. Practically on the eve of the summit, Gen Musharraf had declared that he did not agree with the 1949 agreement with India. He repeated the same thing about the 1972 agreement also. He did not appreciate even the Lahore declaration for which our Prime Minister went there to show the goodwill of India. It was catastrophic that despite this, we chose to bring this man to India. Now, let us examine — Did the government prepare for the final summit? Before all summits, a lot of planning and arrangements are made. While acknowledging that our Prime Minister is a very competent and a very wise person, it cannot be denied that we were half prepared for the summit. I vividly recall the summit with the Chinese President when Rajiv Gandhi was the Prime Minister, and I as General Secretary of the party accompanied him for the talks. We decided to first send some communist leader, either Harkishen Singh Surjeet or Jyoti Basu. The communist leader made a good rapport and brought a very good report that the Chinese were ready to talk. Then we sent a delegation of the Congress Party who talked to them and prepare them to discuss with us each and every matter. As a result, we prepared the ground. Then we sent our diplomatic officers, secretaries and others who made detailed agenda. Then Rajiv Gandhi went. There was a breakthrough in the relations and the summit was very successful. Their President Deng Xio Peng did not leave the hand of Rajiv Gandhi for five minutes and it was reported in the Press as the longest handshake in the world. However, the Agra summit was devoid of any such preparation from our side. The nation was at a loss to know with whom the government discussed while preparing for talks; whether they discussed with the Chief Minister of Kashmir or the people concerned in the defense setup or their Cabinet. Nobody came forward. The spokesperson would say that the agenda would be set by Vajpayee and Gen Musharraf themselves. However, in Pakistan, they were using media in full steam. Gen Musharraf had two conferences with the Press. One was a breakfast meeting in Lahore where they called Indians also and the other one was a meeting here where they explained fully what their agenda was. Not only that, they approached our intellectuals at the tea party of High Commissioner Qazi. They explained their point of view. But our Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister did not care to call the Press people or experts to discuss with them and give them a feeling that they were all being consulted. At the end, let us introspect and ask ourselves as to who was the real beneficiary of these talks? It was Gen Musharraf. His position, before the talks was not stable. People were against him. We made him stable. With the result, what we find are very disturbing consequences. Jehadis are very happy. They are in good spirits now. They say, “We have won in Kashmir”. There is further increase in their activities over there. The people of Pakistan are admiring General as their hero who stood over India, and he stood by his position. Now, as the Prime Minister prepares for the next round of talks, shall we remind ourselves of the worth and significance of right kind of preparation, the home work? It is also of paramount importance that before any such further talks, the government must fight out jehadis and finish them in Kashmir. We all must recall the dark days of Punjab, when the nation lost 3,000 Congressmen (I also received three bullets and my grandson was kidnapped for 34 days), who fought in villages before driving the militants away and out for ever. Such a pre-emptive and proactive action to flush out the militants in Jammu and Kashmir before any further meeting in or outside Pakistan will only be respected and something may come out positive from any proposed talks. The writer is a former Minister of State for External Affairs. |
Of a govt that can’t protect a
hospital SINCE I write this having only just returned from the trashed remains of Singhania Hospital I want to make something clear at the start — there are no two sides to this story. One of the first of several silly rules they teach journalists is that there are always two sides to the story with the silly rule number two being that you must always be objective. Well, however, noble these rules may sound in a textbook they do not work in real life and there come times in the life of even the most insensitive hack when he knows that there is no point in looking for “both sides” because they quite simply do not exist. So anyone who is looking for the views of the Shiv Sena or the Thackerays in this piece can stop reading right now. I did not seek them because I do not believe in vandals and thugs being given the right to express their views in respectable publications. Does that sound unfair and too angry? Well, if you had walked through corridors covered in broken glass and hospital wards littered with the smashed remains of expensive equipment you would be angry too. Even in times of war it is hard to find instances when hospitals have been deliberately destroyed. It is part of the rules of engagement that you do not attack the sick, just as you do not attack women and children, the maimed and the elderly. But these are rules made for civilised societies in which the police do not stand by helplessly as a hospital full of patients is attacked by thugs. Societies that believe that maintenance of law and order is paramount, societies that do not vote in political parties that believe in taking the law into their own hands. Ours is clearly not one of them. And, people who vote for parties like the Shiv Sena should learn to live with the fact that even hospitals can be attacked and that no apologies, no remorse will be expressed afterwards by the vandals or their leaders. Singhania Hospital exists — or used to exist — in the Mumbai suburb of Thane. You drive passed Raymonds factories and housing estates and other orderly reminders of the Singhania empire before going down a narrow road that opens onto a once fine building that nestles against a backdrop of soft, green hills. It must once have been one of the prettiest, most modern hospitals in India but by the time I got to see it all that was left was wreckage. The main entrance had become a blackened shell with no windows or doors left intact. Electric cables had been ripped out and hung like gigantic cobwebs over the remains of burned medical equipment and furniture. In the main porch still stood the burned remains of ambulances and cars that had not escaped the fury of the Shiv Sena vandals. In the best traditions of Shiv Sena Hindutva, an orange ceramic Ganesha had been spared along with a small temple in which stood statues of Krishna and Radha. Everything else was trashed. I walked down corridors so covered in broken glass that it was hard to find bits of flooring to step on. Into general wards and private rooms whose beds were covered in pieces of glass. Smashed x-ray machines, computers and other medical equipment filled most other rooms and even the ICU (intensive care unit) would have been attacked if the hospital staff had not warned the vandals that patients might die if they were taken off oxygen and ventilators. Despite the warnings huge stones actually landed in the ICU and so terrified a young girl patient that doctors could not get her to stop screaming. In the words of an eyewitness, “she just screamed and screamed and there was nothing we could do to calm her. I was in the ICU with some other doctors because although the other patients had been evacuated it was difficult to move patients under intensive care. At one point we heard a huge explosion and thought they were blowing the building up with explosives, then we realised that it was an oxygen cylinder that had caught fire in one of the ambulances they burned. It was terrible, terrible, what can I tell you.” So why did it happen? For no reason that can be considered a real reason. Anand Dighe, Thane’s Shiv Sena boss, whose name was unknown outside Mumbai till he died last week, was brought into Singhania Hospital with a broken leg. He had been in a car accident and was put on a ventilator — in intensive care —because of a history of heart problems. His injuries and the trauma caused him to die of a massive heart attack last Sunday (August 26). News of the seriousness of his condition had filtered through Shiv Sena ranks and a large, angry mob had already collected within the compounds of the hospital. Doctors were careful not to announce his death without first getting a clearance from the police but once the news got out, Shiv Sena activists appear to have made it a point to let it filter through the party’s rank and file so that the mob swelled and became even more agitated. Raj and Uddhav Thackeray, second in command to big Daddy Bal, were present when things started to get out of control but appear to have quietly slipped away as the attack on the hospital began. The hospital staff tried desperately to contact Thane’s Police Commissioner, Surendra Mohan Shangari, but he was unavailable. There were also policemen present when the violence began but they later made it clear that they could do nothing because they were outnumbered by the vandals. Chhagan Bhujbal, Maharashtra’s Deputy Chief Minister, had this to say in an interview to the Bombay Times: “The crowd started gathering very fast and things went beyond control. Are you telling us that we should have started firing at the mob?” Yes. Why not? The police has been known to open fire on much less violent mobs. Besides, if Mr Bhujbal took the trouble to visit the wreckage of the hospital he might realise that it would have taken at least two hours to cause that scale of damage. The Government of Maharashtra, as much as the Shiv Sena, needs to hang its head in shame and apologise to the people. If they cannot protect a hospital in peace times, how can they be relied on to do anything in times of trouble? Thanks to the government’s total incompetence it was left to the hospital administrative staff and ordinary employees to evacuate the nearly 150 patients who lay helpless in their beds as stones smashed through the glass windows of their wards and huge swathes of black smoke billowed through the corridors. The exercise took all night and it was 7 a.m. when the last patient was evacuated. Dighe’s death was announced just after 10 p.m. and the violence began half an hour later and lasted several hours without any serious attempt to bring it under control. Are there any excuses? Any other side of the story? Is it possible to be “objective” about what happened? The Singhanias are not sure if they want to rebuild the destroyed hospital. It cost more than Rs 25 crore several years ago and was considered the only state-of-the-art facility between Nashik and Mumbai. It was a charitable hospital meant to serve the needs of ordinary people. The vandalism of Bal Thackeray’s storm troopers may have deprived the people of Thane of a facility that other towns would give anything to have. |
Disturbing economic
situation PAKISTAN’S economy is in a total mess. This is hardly news. Yet the newspapers daily draw attention to this alarming situation. The debt burden has risen to a staggering level of 78 billion dollars. This includes loans from the international funding agencies like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund and foreign governments and other creditors. The country survives largely on agriculture. Concerned citizens, as the newspapers reveal, are worried about the lack of industrialisation and poor trade with India. Pakistan could certainly benefit as it is importing either Indian goods through third countries or from other countries. These could be cheaply imported from India. It is not just the worsening law and order situation that should make President Pervez Musharraf sit up and do some thinking, but also the ever worsening economic situation which is disturbing. Here is what Sultan Ahmed has to say in the leading newspaper Dawn on August 30: “Pakistan is a medium-sized country with a large population that is subsisting on a small economy and bears the burden of a large government with over four million employed by the centre and provincial and local governments. In fact, the number of persons in the manufacturing and mining sectors — 3.9 million — is smaller than those on the payroll of the government.” Inevitably, there is a conflict in sharing the small economic pie between the demands of officialdom and the basic needs of the people. Hence education, or simple literacy, public health and environmental protection suffer. “To make matters worse half the number of people employed by the government is an instrument of corruption in one form or another. Their low pay is one of the reasons for that. But when too many are employed by the government each cannot be well paid,” the writer bemoans. And the excessive staff along with the tall hierarchy of officialdom it engenders delays completion of any kind of work a citizen or a private sector organisation needs to do with official approval. And that breeds the proverbial red tape. When too many signatures are essential for any official approval on ever-growing files work gets delayed and corruption thrives. Bhutto believed that if an old dog could not learn new tricks an old bureaucrat could not be taught Awami values, and so brought in a number of later entrants into his administration. In the case of Benazir Bhutto she had a number of party people and others in grades 20 to 22 and appointed them to high level posts. Pakistan today has another ailment, profusion of consultants. And they are very large in number, and as is the case with the iceberg the visible part is only a small fraction of the whole army. A recent headcount shows they are 211 and this figure excludes the Chief Executive’s secretariat, the National Accountability Bureau and the National Reconstruction Bureau. Also excluded are those employed by the public sector banks and other official institutions? Topping the list of such institutions is the Ministry of Communications with 61 consultants followed by the Ministry of Finance, which has 29 consultants in the finance division and 17 in the revenue division, making a total of 46. Dawn’s commentator further elucidates: “There is tremendous variety among the consultants. There are foreigners paid as much as 19,910 dollars a month. The National Reconstruction Bureau has now advertised posts of consultants, deputy consultants and associate consultants to fill vacancies in six fields. The consultants have been employed at a time when the low paid government employees are being retrenched in thousands and more of them are to quit on the insistence of the IMF and World Bank for downsizing the bloated government. The situation in public sector banks is pathetic.” These consultants have performed no economic miracles in the last 20 months. Dawn has also reported on the missing or unaccounted for Rs 30 billion from last year’s expenditure account. The government says it was not unaccounted as much as unidentified and the amount in question was actually Rs 17 billion. IMF has accused Pakistan of duplicity. And yet there is a new political experiment going on in Pakistan. This is what Syed Talat Hussain says in the same newspaper: “Pakistan has been a veritable laboratory of political experiments. Since independence martial laws, civilian rule, guided democracy, power sharing, and many other such formulas have been tested here. The results however have been equally dissatisfying in all cases. One measure of the failure of these experiments is that the country is again being readied for another trial run of a new political order. Some of the elements of this experiment are already visible.” What is this road map?” The roadmap for the revival of democracy, announced by General Pervez Musharraf, in his address to the nazims and naib nazims on August 14, is one element. This foretells how the ground for the new system is being prepared. It charts the course the Musharraf government will follow towards restarting the democratic process. While welcome in the sense that it at least dispels doubts about the holding of elections, it is short on detail and long on promises.” It does leave considerable room for changes the military wants to bring about in the basic structure of the political system. The paucity of details in the roadmap — it is more a like a rough sketch than a map — itself is a reflection of how the experiment is going to proceed. While the broader framework of the new political system is quite evident — a powerful president, an elected Prime Minister with National Security Council taking up issues of national importance — but its finer details will be worked out gradually. Hail this new democracy. The Election Commission will also lay down the law on the qualification of candidates for provincial and federal elections. Unlike in the past, when this was just a formality, there will be real shifting of those eligible for running for elections this time. Delimitation of constituencies, breaking up of the bigger constituencies into smaller ones and dozens of other seemingly small but politically significant procedural measures will further level the ground for new political players to come up at the national and provincial levels. Will the experiment succeed? Predictions are a hazardous game in a country that has historically defied all laws of political gravity. |
Following on the representations in Delhi made to the Secretary, Raisina Municipal Committee, a small deputation of the traders who have shops in the Raisina Municipal Market, waited on Mr Sale, Chief Engineer, New Delhi, and President of the Raisina Municipality, and urged the abandonment of the proposed system of tenders. Mr Sale heard them and promised, if possible, to postpone the date for tenders to the end of this month and in the meantime to place the matter before the Committee for consideration of the views put forward by the deputation. |
Oh mother Ganges! Thou art deep and sober. Having tied Kabir with chains, Thou hast made him stand in the waters. When my mind is not wavering, then why the body will fear? For my mind is attained to Thy lotus feet. Such a wave of Ganges came in my life that the chains got snapped and threw me on the river band and I, Kabir, sat down on deer skin. Kabir says there is no companion, Only Lord Ragunath is the saviour on waters and on earth. — Bhairau Bani Kabir ji, 1162 *** Oh Lord! Thou has caused the stones to float over the ocean on which was written Thy Name. Then why will Thy devotee who utters Thy Name Rama with his mouth not cross the ocean? Oh Lord! Thou has emancipated Ganka, the harlot; ugly Kubja; the hunter; and Ajamal, the sinner as well who was full of negative tendencies. And a marksman who shot an arrow in the foot of the Lord Krishna unintentionally also got liberated. Therefore I sacrifice unto those who utter the Name of the Lord Rama Bidur, the slave woman's son in whose home Lord Krishna stayed; poverty-stricken Sudama whose poverty Lord Krishna removed, and having killed Kansa restored Ugrasena on the throne.... Why Thou not emancipated me? Thou surely will. — Bhai Gurdas, var 10,
Pauri 7, 1-2 |
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