E D I T O R I A L   P A G E

EDITORIALS

Rebuff to Mamata
THE Union Cabinet’s decision on Monday not to reverse the notification on the bifurcation of Eastern Railway is a clear rebuff to the Trinamool Congress president, Ms Mamata Banerjee. Ever since notifying the formation of the Eastern Central Railway zone with its headquarters at Hajipur in Bihar, the Trinamool Congress, a constituent of the ruling National Democratic Alliance at the Centre, has been crying foul over the “injustice” meted out to West Bengal.

Underworld links
WHETHER the audio tapes of the purported conversation between film star Sanjay Dutt and Chhota Shakeel, the Karachi-based underworld don, are admissible in court or not, whether these recordings made in November, 2000, have been released by the police now in an attempt to jeopardise Sunil Dutt’s peace mission Sadbhavana ke Sipahi, as alleged by Dutt senior, or not, these are being seen and heard by shell-shocked men on the street as a clinching evidence of a fact of life which was known to them all along: that Bollywood has been systematically overrun by “bhais”.

OPINION

Punjab’s bloated bureaucracy
Downsizing has to begin at the top
Amar Chandel
IT is a mandatory ritual performed by every Chief Minister. He reiterates forcefully that the earnest endeavour of his government is to cut down wasteful expenditure and streamline the administration. Since the word “downsizing” evokes unpalatable images, a more acceptable synonym has been found: rightsizing. But most often, this exercise remains confined to the lower ranks of the administration. A Class III post here and a Class IV post there gets pared, while the white elephant called bureaucracy rambles on without any real loss of fat where it matters.

WORLDVIEW

Austria’s leap into the future
S. Nihal Singh
AUSTRIA is a country that is employing its past to further its future to striking effect. For what role can there be for a rather small country, the once great Austro-Hungarian empire, in the new world of the European Union and heavyweights (in European terms) such as Germany, France and Britain? And Austria has a past it is still wrestling with.

FOLLOW-UP

MPs unite on development issues
Reeta Sharma
ON the initiative of Mr Suresh Chandel, a BJP MP from Himachal Pradesh, the MPs from Punjab, Haryana, Himachal, Rajasthan and J and K have come under a United Forum and are collectively approaching various ministries for joint infrastructure development projects.

TRENDS & POINTERS

Elderly can think themselves into grave
OLDER people can literally think themselves into the grave by feeling bad about getting old, researchers said. People who said they had more positive views about aging lived an average 7.6 years longer than those with negative perceptions, the researchers report in the August issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, published by the American Psychological Association.

• Honda drivers can talk to cars

SPIRITUAL NUGGETS

EDITORIALS

Rebuff to Mamata

THE Union Cabinet’s decision on Monday not to reverse the notification on the bifurcation of Eastern Railway is a clear rebuff to the Trinamool Congress president, Ms Mamata Banerjee. Ever since notifying the formation of the Eastern Central Railway zone with its headquarters at Hajipur in Bihar, the Trinamool Congress, a constituent of the ruling National Democratic Alliance at the Centre, has been crying foul over the “injustice” meted out to West Bengal. However realistic her concerns may appear to be, Ms Banerjee is equally responsible for the mess in the Railway Ministry. Having been increasingly isolated from the mainstream, she has been using West Bengal as her pocketborough for achieving her political goals. Monday’s decision was the fourth in succession in favour of bifurcation and this shows that the dice was heavily loaded against Ms Banerjee in the Cabinet. Prime Minister Vajpayee tried to mollify her after her mammoth rally in Kolkata on July 21 in which she had threatened to paralyse West Bengal for three days if the bifurcation plan was not shelved. This obviously did not cut much ice because of the Cabinet’s resolve not to succumb to her threats. What decision she would take at her party meeting on Wednesday is in the realm of conjecture. But the fact that Ms Banerjee does not have even a face-saver (like the reported retention of Dhanbad division in the Eastern Railway) to help her rejoin the Cabinet shows her predicament. This, however, does not entirely absolve the Cabinet of the blame. In view of the fears expressed by experts and a constitutional body like the Comptroller and Auditor-General, the Cabinet should have re-examined the issue more closely, especially the economic viability of the decision, instead of being guided by political considerations. No doubt, it was the Deve Gowda government that created the new zones in 1996. But for quite some time, the move was put on the backburner following reports of serious financial implications of the proposal. What makes Railway Minister Nitish Kumar’s credentials suspect is the very timing of the notification.

Ironically, though the Indian Railways is the pride of the nation and symbolises the unity in diversity of the country, successive governments have eroded its national image, having sown seeds of regionalism, parochialism and casteism. New Delhi’s Rail Bhavan has long ceased to be an impartial agency for fair and equitable development of all regions. While politics rules the roost here, development of any particular region depends upon the whims and caprices of the Railway Minister. The very portfolio has become an instrument in the hands of the Railway Minister for distributing largesse to his constituency and the chosen ones. Ministers from Kamalapathi Tripathi, A. B. A. Ghani Khan Chaudhury and C. K. Jaffer Sharief to Ram Vilas Paswan had, during their tenures, pumped in huge funds in their constituencies, at the cost of the neglected regions, either in the form of opening new lines, introducing new trains or even issuing complimentary passes. Ms Mamata Banerjee too is no exception. It is time this trend was reversed if the Indian Railways was to achieve its national goals. Despite all the criticism, one factor that cannot be lost sight of is the immense benefits of small zones and divisions from the administrative and operational angles. Over the years, there has been an exponential growth in the railways network. Big zones have become unmanageable and senior officers find it difficult to pursue things to their logical conclusion. Surely, decentralisation is the need of the hour for smooth, faster and effective decision-making. The ongoing reorganisational plan may achieve its purpose if this fundamental question is taken note of by the powers that be.

Underworld links

WHETHER the audio tapes of the purported conversation between film star Sanjay Dutt and Chhota Shakeel, the Karachi-based underworld don, are admissible in court or not, whether these recordings made in November, 2000, have been released by the police now in an attempt to jeopardise Sunil Dutt’s peace mission Sadbhavana ke Sipahi, as alleged by Dutt senior, or not, these are being seen and heard by shell-shocked men on the street as a clinching evidence of a fact of life which was known to them all along: that Bollywood has been systematically overrun by “bhais”. And it is not as if only Sanjay Dutt who has developed contacts with them. He is only a minuscule tip of a very large and treacherous iceberg. There may be many more but his involvement is baffling He continues to be a suspect in the serial blast cases, having been named as having received a firearm from Anees Ibrahim, Dawood Ibrahim’s brother, and yet he has no hesitation in talking to Chhota Shakeel from a Nasik hotel in an intimate manner, indicating a long association. That means that the fear of the law has all but vanished. Worse, he is heard talking in his famous voice about setting right his co-actor (Govinda) and eliminating another (Hrithik Roshan). Unless the tapes are doctored, as has been alleged, Sanjay Dutt has a lot of explaining to do to his fans who treat him as a role model who can do no wrong. Such villainy and murderous behaviour may get you claps when it is confined to film roles, but it has no place in real life.

The underworld has invaded the film world in three ways. One, the black money generated by illegal means has been pumped into film-making like nobody’s business. That is why some producers keep on making ever more lavish but inane films as if they own a goldmine. Two, the dons blackmail film actors and producers to cough up huge sums as some kind of “hafta”. Not only that, they force them to give distribution rights of films to their own minions for a song. Hrithik’s father Rakesh Roshan refused to comply and almost paid with his life. And three, actors and actresses are made to give bulk dates exclusively to films being made by “bhais” or their frontmen. Needless to say that the mega-bucks being made through the film route are being used to finance terrorist activities in the country. The industry has been agog with these horror stories for long, but the police has never been in a position to provide foolproof security to the few principled men who have tried to stand up to these criminals with international connections. Even now, the focus is on framing just a few persons selectively. Unless the police unravels the nexus in its entirety, Bollywood cannot be pulled out of the jaws of these bloodhounds.

A glaring failure

THERE is something fundamentally wrong with the functioning of the chain of Navodaya Vidyalayas in Punjab. Blaming the students will not do. Two incidents in less than a month about groups of students running away from the hostels raise serious questions about the commitment of the staff to providing a safe and healthy atmosphere of learning to children from low-income groups. These institutions were set up with the laudable objective of taking the light of learning to impoverished and dark areas of Punjabi society. Chief Minister Amarinder Singh should take a personal interest in the strange goings-on in these institutions that are forcing students to take the risk of running away. Their actions are unnatural and disturbing. Children usually prefer the safety of the known even when they are not happy with the general atmosphere at home or in the school. But Navodaya Vidyalaya children from Zira in Ferozepur were the first to take the extreme step of running away from the hostel. They were later traced to the dera of a religious sect in Beas. Why did they choose Beas? Because of the good quality of food served free at the dera. Yes, all the boys said they had run away because of harassment by the school authorities, the appalling quality of the food and the lack of basic amenities in the hostels. The tale of the students who were reported missing from the hostel of the school in Sandhuan in Roopnagar is likely to be similar. Honest introspection of the factors that have turned most government schools in Punjab and other states into institutions of child abuse and terror would reveal violation of the prescribed selection norms.

An independent enquiry would reveal that most appointments of teachers were made either because of “sifarish” from bureaucrats and politicians or hefty amounts were paid as “bakhsheesh”. Those that find employment on the strength of “sifarish” are incompetent and those that come through the “Sidhu route” are too busy making money by misappropriating funds to worry about the poor living conditions in hostels and the appalling quality of food served to the students. Since the culture of “sifarish” and “bakhsheesh” has become an integral part of the style of functioning of most government institutions the cynics may see no hope for the children of Navodaya Vidyalayas. They need to be told about the importance of creating public awareness for setting most things right. The Navodaya institutions can be made to mend their ways by encouraging parental involvement in the affairs of the schools where their children are enrolled as students. It is simple. And it works. Parents should be encouraged to take turns for visiting the schools and seeing for themselves the condition of the hostels and the quality of the food served to their children as also the quality of classroom lessons. Parental involvement in the affairs of the school in the West is a precondition for admission. Why cannot the same rules be implemented in the sarkari schools for putting an end to the cussedness of the teachers that forces students to take the risk of running away?

OPINION

Punjab’s bloated bureaucracy
Downsizing has to begin at the top
Amar Chandel

IT is a mandatory ritual performed by every Chief Minister. He reiterates forcefully that the earnest endeavour of his government is to cut down wasteful expenditure and streamline the administration. Since the word “downsizing” evokes unpalatable images, a more acceptable synonym has been found: rightsizing. But most often, this exercise remains confined to the lower ranks of the administration. A Class III post here and a Class IV post there gets pared, while the white elephant called bureaucracy rambles on without any real loss of fat where it matters.

Since nobody dares to touch the senior posts, there is discontent among the lower and middle ranking staff which erupts in the form of agitations. The feeling of betrayal can be easily eliminated if the government starts the rightsizing exercise from the upper echelons.

It is here that the leviathan has accumulated the maximum flab. Parkinson’s law is in action. Over the decades the IAS/IPS/PCS and PPS lobbies have fragmented the entire administration into non-descript and redundant posts to keep their members blissfully (unfortunately, not gainfully) employed.

A classic case is Punjab. The state is almost broke, but that has not prevented it from having a whole battalion of senior IAS officers. At present, there are as many as 33 Financial Commissioner/Principal Secretary level officers against a sanctioned strength of only 12. That is why Chandigarh is choc-a-block with white Ambassador cars with red lights edging out ordinary citizens onto the footpaths with sirens, hooters and jammers, all of which are avoidable prestige symbols that create a public nuisance and are misplaced in a domestic setup.

The paradox is that many of them head departments which are semi-functional at best and redundant at worst. As many as eight Financial Commissioners are engaged in looking after various branches of education alone like technical education, school education, higher education and languages. Same is the case with animal husbandry, fisheries, dairy development and poultry development. The fund-starved Punjab continues to have a Principal Secretary catering to freedom fighters, another to social security and yet another to relief and resettlement. There is a Commissioner for Enquiries and a Commissioner for persons with disabilities.

There is similar proliferation in the case of the departments of science and technology, information technology, administrative reforms and general administration.

Ironically, Financial Commissioners themselves concede that while a handful of them are controlling the levers of power, the rest are virtually on a paid holiday. Some of these sinecure departments are considered punishment postings and reserved for officers who are in the bad books of the government of the day. The paradox is that IAS officers revel in this furlough, since they get all the perks and salary even when there is little responsibility. Actually, it is the taxpayer who is thus punished.

Mind you, the highest ranking IAS officers are designated as Principal Secretary or Financial Commissioner. They cost the exchequer something like Rs 2 lakh per month if you add up their salary, medical expenditure, special pay, official and residential phones with STD and ISD facilities, computers, concessional petrol, palatial houses and what not. Incidentally, under the All-India Service (Medical) rules, there is no limit on reimbursement for an IAS officer and his dependants even if the treatment is abroad and even after retirement.

The bare minimum infrastructure provided to a Financial Commissioner/Principal Secretary is one private secretary, one personal assistant, gunmen, one daftri and one peon. This is the position with regard to non-functional departments. In the case of essential departments such as industries, excise and taxation, health, agriculture, home, food and supplies, local self-government, finance etc, the Financial Commissioners invariably have two or three cars (which are all the time used by their family and household). These are provided courtesy the corporations and public sector undertakings (PSUs) that are under their administrative superintendence and are not accounted for in the government records.

The point to be noted is that the officers in the rank of Financial Commissioner/Principal Secretary are just one notch below the Chief Secretary and any one of them can be elevated to that post by giving him an extra allowance. Is the state justified in utilising such senior officers, who are — or ought to be — capable of superintending the entire state government machinery, only for looking after a ceremonial or redundant department?

Apart from the officers mentioned above, there are 30-odd officers designated as Administrative Secretaries or their equivalent who have facilities similar to those of Financial Commissioners/Principal Secretaries. Then there are 30 to 35 officers posted as heads of departments or managing directors of PSUs. These officers too enjoy five-star facilities, besides having gunmen and home guards while peons, malis, washermen and sweepers work as domestic servants at their residences. One can well imagine the total cost of maintaining this army of officers and the related paraphernalia.

With so much profligacy at the top, the IAS tribe in general has multiplied merrily like paramecium, their number far exceeding the sanctioned strength. The Central deputation reserve is never filled as few IAS officers are willing to go and work in the Government of India where there are only functional facilities and a hard work culture.

There is need for applying correctives at once. By September, 2003, about 12 IAS officers in the rank of Financial Commissioner will retire. In view of the large number of redundant posts in this category, many posts need to be abolished. The same yardstick should be applied to officers of the IPS and the PCS and the Punjab Police Service.

It is equally necessary to re-group departments so that redundant departments and officers do not continue to burden the state exchequer and senior officers do not sit idle while drawing huge salaries and perks.

Only one Financial Commissioner in a composite department of education can look after higher education, school education, sports and social welfare, technical education, industrial training, etc. The Controller, Printing and Stationery, too can report to the Principal Secretary, Education. Also redundant are posts like Commissioner for Enquiries and Secretary, Revenue (since the Financial Commissioner, Revenue, is also the Secretary, Revenue). All welfare departments can be brought under one Financial Commissioner.

Likewise, there is no need for the post of Presiding Officer Sales Tax Tribunal-I and II, because the appeals that are heard by these officers can easily be heard by the Financial Commissioner, Excise and Taxation. There is no need for the posts of Financial Commissioner, Appeals-I and II. If the Financial Commissioner, Revenue and Rehabilitation, is unable to handle the court work involved at the level of FCR, this work can easily be divided among Financial Commissioners in charge of the functional departments or the FCs/PSs in charge of non-functional departments.

The Health Department, which is under a Principal Secretary, can be combined with the Department of Medical Education and Research and Ayurveda. Similarly, the Principal Secretary, PWD, can very well look after the PWD (B&R) as well as PWD (Public Health).

The Chief Election Officer works only during elections while the Principal Secretary, Parliamentary Affairs, works only during sessions of the Vidhan Sabha. These two departments can be attached.

The Financial Commissioner, Development, who is in charge of Agriculture, can look after Animal Husbandry, Fisheries, Dairy Development and Poultry Development since these subjects are the second arm of agriculture. He should also look after Forestry, Wildlife Preservation, Agro-Forestry and Environment and superintend the working of the Punjab Poultry Development Corporation.

Similarly, the departments of Science and Technology, Information Technology, Administrative Reforms and General Administration can be clubbed into one as these are related.

The departments of Finance, Planning, Expenditure and Programme Implementation are inter-related and should be merged.

The office of the Advocate General has 25 sanctioned posts of Law Officers. Yet, there are as many as 100 law officers. Many of them are of mediocre calibre. It will be better to stick to the sanctioned strength and for important cases, hire the services of top class senior advocates.

The Tourism Department and Corporation should have only a nominal role as a facilitator. The PSTDC should disinvest and collaborate with a private group in a 51:49 ratio so that important properties of the Punjab Government which are making losses can become functional.

There is no need for the government to create ex-cadre or non-sanctioned posts such as OSDs and Chairmen of committees from among retired IAS officers. The need of the hour is to cut down expenditure by utilising the services of officers already available and posted in non-functional departments.

Officers who are incompetent with a bad track record should be compulsorily retired after a review of their performance at the age of 50 or 55. There is provision for this in the All-India Service Rules. This is particularly relevant in the case of officers who have vigilance cases pending against them.

The same exercise should be undertaken in the police department. There is no need for four Director-Generals of Police. There should be only one DGP. The other wings should be manned by an IGP.

The nine police districts created during the period of militancy need to be abolished since these are no more relevant. There is no need for IGs on the border since the BSF is already there along the borders.

Similarly, there is no need for four Divisional Commissioners. The Commissioner, Ferozepore Division, in fact, looks after the area comprising the erstwhile Ferozepore district while the Commissioner, Faridkot Division, looks after the area comprising parts of the erstwhile Faridkot district.

In fact, four Financial Commissioners should be posted to the field so that revenue cases can be decided at the grassroots level at no additional cost as the court and administrative structure already exists and there are already two sanctioned posts of Divisional Commissioner and Commissioner in each division.

The Commissioner, Appeals, can continue hearing appeals against the orders of the Deputy Commissioner while the Zonal Financial Commissioner should hear and finally decide the revenue appeals against the orders of the Commissioner. This will alleviate the suffering of the rural people who are unable to travel to Chandigarh from far-off places and litigate in the FCR’s court. It is unimaginable that a widow living in, say, a village on the Wagah border should be forced to reach the Chandigarh Secretariat, hire a Chandigarh-based lawyer and get a final decision from the court of the FCR.

The zonal FCs would be in charge of all administrative and developmental work in the division so that they can guide relatively inexperienced DCs (it is better to have direct IAS officers posted in the district since they are enthusiastic with some ideals and not yet politicised) in implementing the government’s developmental initiatives on the ground.

The Indian Forest Service need not post one District Forest Officer in each district considering that the forest cover in Punjab is very low. To save the state exchequer, several districts can be clubbed together with one District Forest Officer in charge.

It is imperative to stop for five years the intake of all IAS, PCS, IPS and PPS departmental officers until a balance is achieved between the actual requirement and the number of functional officers.

If this exercise of abolition, drastic reduction and regrouping is undertaken, a saving of hundreds of crore of rupees can be effected. By properly grouping and re-grouping different departments there will be coherent and coordinated administrative initiatives and the government will be saved from a situation where the left hand does not know what the right is doing.

These suggestions are only illustrative and not exhaustive. But these can form a firm first step. As a Chinese proverb says, even the longest journey begins with a single step.

Trimming the leviathan is going to be a right royal challenge for the Chief Minister because a very powerful lobby is going to resist the move tooth and nail. But somebody has to bite the bullet because tomorrow will be too late.

WORLDVIEW

Austria’s leap into the future
S. Nihal Singh

AUSTRIA is a country that is employing its past to further its future to striking effect. For what role can there be for a rather small country, the once great Austro-Hungarian empire, in the new world of the European Union and heavyweights (in European terms) such as Germany, France and Britain? And Austria has a past it is still wrestling with.

Austria’s answer is to convert the past of emperors and their palaces into cultural riches. Vienna itself is a jewel of a city and the land of Mozart and the most famous home of opera after Italy is host to an array of festivals, including Salzburg, and the second Austrian city of Graz is preening itself as Europe’s cultural capital of the year 2003.

Yet amazingly, Austria does not entirely live in the past, which continues to haunt the country. The Museum Quarter in Vienna, one of the world’s largest such enterprises, is taking shape, complete with art galleries focused on the future, and the works of famous Austrian painters are on display. There is a theatre as well. The accent is on the daring and the new.

The past, the present and the future jostle with one another in a mix that does not offend the senses. An emperor’s stables are the setting for a modern auditorium in the museum of modern art. The theatre was recently playing an outlandish Belgian director’s view of Indian cinema and kitch. The famous Egon Schiele is on display in another hall.

In this world, diplomacy and culture converge. Career foreign service officers leave the mainstream of diplomacy to devote their time to running arts complexes and departments. And the newly-appointed director-general for cultural affairs and arts in the Federal Chancellery, Dr Klaus Woelfer, told me that Austria was the only country in the European Union, apart from Italy, to integrate culture in diplomacy, using several figures on the different denominations of the euro. Mozart is given the pride of place on the one-euro coin.

In Graz, they are building a space ship-shaped structure to house the art gallery, a new auditorium with state of art accoustics and an island in the river. The year-long innovative programme will cater to the wider world, apart from giving the German-speaking peoples a rare feast in literature and the arts.

The futurist vision rubs shoulders with the past - the world heritage site of the old city of Graz, the internet-connected bar of the office of the city government, the clock tower that is the only remnant of the castle destroyed by Napoleon’s soldiers. Old homes of Vienna retain their facades while being converted into modern apartments.

Yet Vienna is, relatively speaking, small with a population of 250,000 and a city centre close to homes and offices. As the homes of emperors and bishops loom on the horizon, the debate on the past bews, with Joerg Haider’s Freedom Party stirring the broth.

The debate swirls around such issues as whether Austria won or lost the war, whether the occupation by the victorious forces should be described as a deliverance or an occupation. It was Haider and his party who are saying the politically incorrect things about the country’s Nazi past.

The truth is that the collapse of the Habsburgs after World War I, the murder of Chancellor Dollfuss in 1934 and the 1955 treaty on permanent neutrality giving Austria freedom have never been fully debated. It was, ironically, the present federal coalition including Haider’s Freedom Party that approved the laws giving compensation to those employed as forced labour during World War II.

Haider has played a useful role in the process now meandering towards cathersis. But the debate remains far from reaching a consensus, except that the future should perhaps not remain a prisoner of the past. The truth about the past, in Austrian eyes, comes in many shapes and sizes rather like the characters in the famous film Roshomon with the characters’ different recollections of one event. How does one treat Hitler’s invasion and annexation, for instance?

The remarkable fact is that the Austrians are pressing ahead with propelling their country towards a new European future while extending their cultural heritage to seek new frontiers. This audacious leap into the future in the arts is a demonstration of Austrians’ ability to strike in new directions even while debating the past.

In Vienna’s Museum Quarter, the youthful-looking managing director, Dr Wolfgang Waldner, told me that artists from around the world would be invited to live in the studios in the complex to absorb impressions of Vienna life.

The refurbished baroque stables of the Habsburg Imperial Court have certainly been given a new meaning.

FOLLOW-UP

MPs unite on development issues
Reeta Sharma

ON the initiative of Mr Suresh Chandel, a BJP MP from Himachal Pradesh, the MPs from Punjab, Haryana, Himachal, Rajasthan and J and K have come under a United Forum and are collectively approaching various ministries for joint infrastructure development projects.

Elaborating, Mr Suresh Chandel said: “There are many mutual problems which needed collective decisions. For instance, critical patients in Himachal are rushed to the PGI in Chandigarh. Why can’t there be a PGI-like facility in Himachal? Similarly, Himachal apple and flower growers, like potato and vegetable growers of Punjab, have to carry their produce all the way to Azadpur Mandi in Delhi. We obviously need a mandi in the centre of Himachal, Haryana and Punjab”.

The idea of building the United Foum got immediate support from Mr Pawan Bansal, the Congress MP from Chandigarh, who said, “ The MPs of the region have responded enthusiastically to the idea, cutting across the party lines. At the first meeting on December 19, 2001, in Delhi 20 MPs turned up. We all agreed that there should be extensions of diagnostic centres of the PGI in Himachal Pradesh, Punjab and Dehra Dun. All MPs rose above the ‘my constituency syndrome’”.

The first meeting also saw Mr I D Swami, MP from Haryana, sharing his concern about the large number of accidents on the Delhi-Chandigarh highway. “The accident victims have no option but to be rushed to the PGI, loosing precious time in travel. All agreed a trauma centre be opened at Karnal, which is mid-way between Delhi and Chandigarh.”

At the second meeting, held on April 16, 2002, Mr Simranjit Singh Mann’s idea of modernising regional education was lapped up unanimously. He stressed the need for regional educational facilities as well as a relook at the present system of recruitment to the defence forces.

Mr Raghunandan Lal Bhatia, another MP from Punjab, suggested the setting up of hydro-power projects in Himachal and J and K from which the entire region would benefit. Another suggestion by Mr Bhatia was that the MPs, who are entitled to Rs 2 crore local area development fund, should follow the example of Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka MPs. They had financed computers for educational institutions. As a result more than 20,000 computer-trained students from these two states eventually found jobs abroad.

The MPs studied the “missing” railway links in their respective states and identified routes that needed to be strengthened or extended or electrified. The key railway links mentioned by them were Jammu-Jalandhar, Jalandhar-Chandigarh, Talwara link, re-routing Bathinda-Jakhal via Sirsa and taking up work on sanctioned railway links like one between Abohar and Sirsa via Fatheabad and completing the 30 km link between Abohar and Fazilka, which will provide Rajasthan a direct link to Punjab and Haryana.

The MPs have avoided discussing controversial issues like the water dispute, Punjabi-speaking areas and regional languages which may “cause bitterness amongst us”, said Mr Chandel.

TRENDS & POINTERS

Elderly can think themselves into grave

OLDER people can literally think themselves into the grave by feeling bad about getting old, researchers said.

People who said they had more positive views about aging lived an average 7.6 years longer than those with negative perceptions, the researchers report in the August issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, published by the American Psychological Association.

How one feels about getting old is more important even than having low blood pressure or cholesterol, said the researchers led by psychologist Becca Levy of Yale University.

“The effect of more positive self-perceptions of aging on survival is greater than the physiological measures of low systolic blood pressure and cholesterol, each of which is associated with a longer lifespan of four years or less,” Levy’s team wrote.

“It is also greater than the independent contributions of lower body mass index, no history of smoking, and a tendency to exercise, each of these factors has been found to contribute between one and three years of added life.”

The researchers looked at a survey of 660 Ohio residents aged 50 and older who took part in the Ohio Longitudinal Study of Aging and Retirement as far back as 23 years.

Some of the questions, which have a yes or no answer, included, “As you get older, you are less useful.”

“Our study carries two messages. The discouraging one is that negative self-perceptions can diminish life expectancy. The encouraging one is that positive self-perceptions can prolong life expectancy,” said the researchers, whose work was funded by the National Institute on Aging. Reuters

Honda drivers can talk to cars

The voice recognition software, based on IBM’s ViaVoice product, understands different speech accents and has a larger vocabulary, according to IBM director of automotive and telematics solutions Raj Desai. “It’s closer to the natural ability to have a dialogue, rather than just remembering key words, which is what the previous generation systems had,” Desai said. Reuters

SPIRITUAL NUGGETS

— Sri Ramacharitamanasa, Sundara Kanda