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Monday,
January 20, 2003, Chandigarh, India  
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Of scams
& small investors Gorshkov
is coming |
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Idea
behind non-resident jamboree
A voyage
of tragic events
Radhakrishnan
and the Supreme Court: distorting a legacy
Amnesty:
end custodial violence in Punjab
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Of scams & small investors PRIME Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee has at last realised the significance of domestic savings. Underlining the role of small investors in the country’s economic advancement, he has admitted that the Tenth Plan target of 8 per cent growth may be difficult to achieve unless domestic savings are channelled into productive areas — which means boosting industrialisation. Expressing these meaningful thoughts on the occasion of launching the Securities and Exchange Board of India’s Market Awareness Campaign on Friday, the Prime Minister obviously wanted small investors to take greater interest in buying shares of the companies listed on the stock exchanges. His idea is that there are chances of better returns than that offered by banks. No one can disagree with Mr Vajpayee. But the problem is that of security. Small investors prefer zero-risk avenues even if the returns are a little less attractive. They consider investments in shares too risky, particularly due to the different stock scams which have come to light in the post-reforms period. The image of the share market has got too sullied to evoke the interest of domestic savers. This is not to say that investors from this area are totally ignoring the stock exchanges. The point is that this is not their preferred area which it should be in the wake of the interest rates on bank deposits being on the decline. Now the question is: what should be done to restore the confidence of small investors in the stock business? The government should go in for financial reforms in a big way. The underlying message should be that manipulation of the operations of the stock exchanges is no longer possible and the era of the Harshad Mehtas and Ketan Parikhs is over. Anyone found involved in share-related frauds will be dealt with severely and firmly. Does the government have the necessary will? This is the key to attracting domestic investors to the share market. No doubt, the law has been amended to enable the market regulator (SEBI) to enhance penalties for those indulging in financial irregularities. But this is not enough. Till now the promoters and directors of a company with questionable antecedents succeed in defrauding the gullible investing public by mentioning their brief background as part of the risk factors in the prospectus while floating a public issue. They create a hype about their venture through the media and those even with their life-time’s savings fall in their trap. The best course is to prevent such industrialists from entering the capital market itself with the enactment of a law. This is how the government can deter any promoter from even thinking of cheating the investing public. In such a situation, domestic savers are bound to show increased interest in the goings-on in the stock markets. There is no better way to get the Prime Minister’s wishes fulfilled. |
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Gorshkov is coming DEFENCE Minister George Fernandes had announced even before going to Russia that India was set to acquire the old-generation aircraft carrier
Gorshkov. Now, he has added from Moscow that the package deal will be ready for signing by March-end. But the most important factor, the price, is yet to be announced. The decommissioned Kiev class aircraft carrier comes as a gift, but Russia has been insisting on an exceptionally high price for refitting and retrofitting it. Not only that, Russia has been bargaining hard to not only sell TU-22M-3 (Backfire-C) long-range bombers and
Akula-class nuclear submarines along with it, but also include MiG-AT advanced trainer jet in the package. That is why negotiations have been lingering on for nearly a decade now. Earlier, there were indications that the deal would be signed during President Putin’s visit but that did not happen. Mr Fernandes has now denied that the AJT was part of the package. That is heartening news and one hopes that India has been equally firm in bringing the price down. Russian Minister for Industry, Science and Technology Ilya Klebanov has been under fire for ceding positions on the Indian defence market to western companies. The negotiations at this stage have to be on rational rather than emotional terms. While some defence experts have questioned the advisability of purchasing a large and potentially vulnerable aircraft carrier, the Navy insists that it needs the floating carrier badly, considering that INS Viraat will be out of commission after a few years, further depleting the Indian strength which had already gone down after Vikrant fell into disuse. The government’s claim that an indigenous aircraft carrier can be built in nine years has a hollow ring to it. The multi-billion dollar deal for Gorshkov has to include accompanying squadrons of ship-borne MiG-29K multi-role aircraft. Now that there are indications that defence purchases are set to be re-started in right earnest, the government needs to address itself to the repeated pleas of the Air Force to buy a suitable AJT as well. Their absence has been a major chink in the Indian
armour. Many of the MiG crashes can also be attributed to the improper training. If the government has already zeroed in on the British Hawk, then it must acquire it at the earliest possible. Since the Defence Minister has denied that Russia has been pressing India on the inclusion of
MiG-AT AJT in the package, the aircraft must be purchased from the best available source without any further delay. |
Idea behind non-resident jamboree THE recent jamboree of non-resident Indians reminded me of a man with whom everyone sympathised because his family had forced him to give up his girl friend and marry a woman of their choosing. No one stopped to consider that he might have been more of a man if he had stuck to his guns (and girl) and to hell with the family fortune. Or that he has lived perfectly contentedly ever since with the wife he did not want. The nostalgia of exile, the romance of homecoming and Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee’s eloquence about the diaspora’s “richness of experience” rather than its riches was all very well. But it seemed that cold calculations underlay much of the euphoria. Generally speaking, both sides were assessing the price of a bargain from which India expects financial dividends while Indians abroad expect protection and facilities. This is of course a generalisation. Not all immigrants, or their descendants, are interested in any kind of deal. Many have neither riches nor richness of experience to barter. Some like Lord Naipaul expect nothing from this country. Some, like Malaysia’s Prime Minister, Dr Mahathir Mohamad, will not even acknowledge the connection. Others, Prof Amartya Sen for instance, already enjoy the best of all possible worlds. But a growing community also remains rooted in this country even if physically resident in Dallas or Darwin. The link can be emotional, political or commercial, or a combination of all three. They are mostly first generation immigrants. They are doing well, and they want, as Lord Swraj Paul once said of himself, to be “100 per cent Indian and 100 per cent British.” The second label might be American, Canadian or Australian. The entire show was staged for the benefit of this increasingly influential group. Absence makes it ultra-loyal, and patriotism is easily transferred to the traditional totems of national identity — the lotus, the lamp, the swastika and saffron. It induces support for an ideal whose custodian the Bharatiya Janata Party claims to be, and it finds expression in demonstrations of loyalty and, more to the point, vigorous fund-raising. Apparently, 60 per cent of Indians in the USA are from Gujarat and solidly behind Mr Narendra Modi. In conceding the demands of these people, the grateful authorities had to decide how much to charge them for the privilege of eating their cake and having it too. Not that it was only a Tammany Hall conclave of political fund-raisers, for the entire question of immigrant and mother country is also undergoing review. When Idi Amin was evicting Indians in the late sixties, I had a long talk on the subject with Lord David Ennals, then Home Secretary in the Harold Wilson government. Lapsing into blunt colloquialism, Lord Ennals said that India, which was insisting that London should take in all these people, had “got Britain by the short and curly and wouldn’t let go. “As he saw it, India had legal but not moral right. Moreover, he sought New Delhi’s zeal on behalf of the East African Asians (as they were called) misplaced and shortsighted. They had education, capital and skills and were hardworking. They were just what India needed. But they were drawn to Britain, and India backed them to the hilt, cutting her nose to spite Britain’s face. East African Asians took over all the corner shops in British cities, entered public life, collected honours and rapidly moved up the social scale. Their children, who have gone to university, are getting out of the retail business. For some years now, India has tried to make up for its ardour in sending East African Asians to Britain. Indeed, it has been trying to backtrack on Jawaharlal Nehru’s original exhortation to immigrants to identify wholly with the country of adoption. The new remittance-inspired mantra is that immigrants must simultaneously be loyal to both countries. In short, they must follow the Paul formula. Not everyone who attended the conference can have agreed. Sir Sridath Ramphal may be well disposed to India but I doubt if his loyalty extends beyond Guyana. Having fought to be recognised as South African when the white regime would gladly have repatriated “coolies,” the anti-apartheid activist, Ms Fatima Meer, was quoted as saying, “We are not a diaspora of India.” Others, too, must have stood aside from the bargaining for a variety of reasons. Few descendants of indentured plantation workers in Fiji, Mauritius and the Caribbean would have any prize to offer the Indian government even if they had wanted to do a deal. Not many complacent members of the Indian Singaporean middle class have any desire to explore Asia’s outer darkness beyond their airconditioned nation. Some are too poor, some too rich, some have been too thoroughly assimilated, some are critical of New Delhi’s indifference to their social plight (in the Persian Gulf) or their political rights (in Fiji). Understandably, India is mainly interested in British Indians who have the highest income among minority groups there and Indian-Americans with an average income that is 50 per cent more than the national average. Fiji’s former Prime Minister, Mr Mahendra Chaudhry, was wasting his breath in warning against “focusing too much on the affluent sector of the diaspora.” That is what the gathering was all about. It was not about persuading immigrants to donate medical equipment or set up village schools. It was about getting their cash. Idealistic or supercilious strictures matter less than whether the bargain will be honoured. I say this because of the haste with which the diaspora scrambled out a decade ago when the Gulf War and political instability left India with a rock-bottom credit rating and just enough foreign exchange for two weeks’ imports. The foreign debt, which had stood at $ 20.5 billion in 1980, soared to $ 70 billion in 1991. In addition, there were short-term obligations of about $ 4 billion. India pleaded with the Sheikh of Abu Dhabi to deposit a billion dollars in an Indian bank account, approached the USA for a bridging loan, asked Venezuela for oil, and finally, packed off its gold to London and Tokyo. Overseas Indians, to whom the mother country also looked for succour, turned out to be very different from the overseas Chinese. They invested in India when the going was good, but took out their money when things became rough, Of the $ 2 billion that non-resident Indians moved out of the country’s external rupee accounts during the Gulf War and the political upheavals of 1991-92, a billion dollars were withdrawn between April and June, 1991, alone. Could that happen again? Yes, it could. No matter how many reforms Mr Jaswant Singh might devise to make investment simpler, no matter how many passports Lal Krishan Advani showers on the chosen few, the very fact that immigrants want a second passport means they are not putting all their eggs in India’s basket. They will not sink or swim with India. East African Asians chose Britain in the sixties because India did not inspire confidence. They were not certain of conserving their capital, of being able to add to it in India or, having made money, of being able to keep what they made. Confidence has increased since then because of India’s economic progress, but it is still dependent on the annual growth rate. Addressing American businessmen, Dr Manmohan Singh once quoted John Maynard Keynes. “In the final analysis,” he said, “investment is also an act of faith.” Neither faith nor the diaspora’s commitment can be taken for granted so long as so many bright young Indians continue to vote with their feet. Prominent in the brain drain are the sons and daughters of the very men who are expected to uphold national values and institutions. The answer lies not in stopping them but in improving growth so that there is less inducement to migrate. |
A voyage of tragic events SEVERAL years ago I with my family moved to take up my appointment at Liverpool by passenger ship MV Cilicia. Most passengers who boarded the ship at Mumbai were students or members of diplomatic missions. It was early 1957 and two staff members from the Indian high commission in Karachi boarded the ship at Karachi to visit their Indian brethren. However, there was discreet presence of a dozen of local security men who were prying at what all was being talked about. As the ship sailed towards Aden radio news announced commencement of bombardment of Suez canal by British and French forces. Within hours, at dawn, two Israeli jets were seen swooping from Sinai side and struck a solitary Egyptian warship anchored at the port of Ismailia in Egypt. A heavy aerial raid followed and within 15 minutes the ship was no more. As our ship altered course towards East Africa the wind force built up to force seven resulting in heavy rolling and pitching. Most first timer passengers were seasick while their kids were alert and watched the waves pounding the ship. During early morning the sea was still rough when a number of sick parents asked my wife to oblige them by taking their kids to the dining hall where a breakfast of assorted cereals, eggs and muffins awaited them. My wife escorted seven kids towards the dining hall when suddenly the ship’s captain greeted her: “Good morning, madam. I had anticipated large families in this part of the world but I did not expect you would be having seven kids of similar age group at this young age. Congratulations.” I overheard this and clarified the position to the old man. He was amused. Next day news came that one of the Indian diplomatic staff who had visited Indian passengers at Karachi had been expelled with orders to return to India. More trouble followed when we passed Durban. The ship’s starboard propeller was detected vibrating excessively, presumably due to a broken propeller blade. The owners directed the ship to drydock at Capetown and have the propeller replaced. Hectic meetings of prominent passengers with the captain followed to sort out the problems of dealing with apartheid prevailing in Capetown. As the ship docked, luxury buses arrived to carry white and black passengers separately to be lodged in different hotels. Many women were made to stay in hotels 10 miles apart from their husbands. Anticipated stoppage was eight days. Indian passport holders had no endorsement for South Africa on their passports. Still, the local tourist department arranged a special excursion for passengers to the gold and diamond mines located north of Capetown. The Dutch workers in diamond mines showed amazing skills in handling rock cutting material without causing any structural damage to the rock shafts. Next we visited the gold mine where gold coin krugar rand was being minted. The industrial mine lift carried 50 workers at a time with separate lifts for black and white workers. South Africa produced annually 27 cubic metres by volume of pure gold while India produced a mere 2 kg per annum in Kolar mines those days. At the refinery section attached to the mint we were shown gold ingots weighing 25 kg each of pure gold. Moving on conveyor belts across the foundry hall visitors were encouraged to have a feel of the gold bricks. As one of the curious visitors tried to push an ingot to feel its weight it slipped, came out of its slot and fell on his right foot crushing most of the toe and fingers. The passenger was hospitalised and our ship sailed without him. We reached Liverpool after six weeks of long sea voyage without any further mishap. |
Radhakrishnan and the Supreme Court: distorting a legacy “WHEN questions of supreme educational interest are referred to us for decision,” said Lord Curzon, one of India’s most hated Viceroys, yet one of her pioneer reformers in the field of education, “we have no expert to guide us, no staff trained to the business, nothing but the precedents recorded in our files to fall back upon.” Much the same, I am afraid, can be said of the Supreme Court’s decision of October 31, 2002, relating to educational institutions, with the difference that (unlike the colonial regime) the court has turned its back on the most important precedent in the field, its own 1993 judgement in the Unnikrishnan case. Even though questions of supreme educational interest concerning both minority and non-minority institutions were referred to the court for decision, the verdict of the 11-member Bench stands out more for its lack of scholarship than anything else. Quite regardless of the point of view which might ultimately find favour with them, Constitution Benches — especially Benches as large as an 11-member Bench — are expected to address issues referred to them with a certain degree of sophistication and with a knowledge of the subject that transcends the impressions, and prejudices, of the common man. The only intellectual resource, however, that the October 31 verdict taps in order to justify its blatantly anti-statist approach to education is a passage from the report of the University Education Commission set up by the Government of India in 1948. Headed by Dr S. Radhakrishnan, the commission included, among others, Dr Zakir Hussain and Dr Meghnad Saha. “Exclusive control of education by the State,” reads the passage, “has been an important factor in facilitating the maintenance of totalitarian tyrannies. In such States institutions of higher learning controlled and managed by governmental agencies act like mercenaries, promote the political purposes of the State, make them acceptable to an increasing number of their populations and supply them with the weapons they need.... Higher education is, undoubtedly, an obligation of the State but State aid is not to be confused with State control over academic policies and practices.” There can be absolutely no quarrel with this passage, aimed at the Nazi and the Soviet systems of education, ideology and propaganda with their crushing impact on the mind and the individuality of the academia. But how the passage can be wrenched out of this definite historical, political and ideological context and made, without anything more, the measure of the limits set by the Constitution in the field of education, overlooking all the imperatives of development and all else that has been said by the commission in its report, 593 pages long, strains comprehension. The marked deterioration of standards in teaching and examinations, observes the report, for instance, in the introduction itself, and increasing dissatisfaction with the conduct of university administration are matters of great concern. A policy of drift, it adds, in the vague hope that, if the universities are granted full autonomy, higher education will take care of itself, will be dangerous. Automatic and spontaneous adjustment will not take us to the future we want. “Education has always, and from the earliest period of their history, been an object of public care and of public interest to the... governments on the peninsula of India,” concludes the report 585 pages later, quoting from Sir Alexander Johnston’s letter to Charles Grant, the President of the Board of Control. Ignoring all this — it would be churlish to accuse the court of not having read the entire report — the October 31 verdict picks up the term “autonomy” from the title of the passage relied upon (“university autonomy”) and, giving it a meaning that it was never intended to bear, uses it to deprive governments and universities of virtually all power to regulate not only the admission of students but even the recruitment of teachers and the composition of the governing bodies of unaided institutions while granting them recognition and/or affiliation. Noticing that the influx of affiliated colleges has “mufassalized” standards throughout the universities, and deprecating, in the strongest possible terms, the purely affiliating, non-teaching type of university which is “hardly more than a machine for conducting examinations”, the Radhakrishnan report insists upon universities laying down strict conditions of affiliation, including conditions affecting the structure of college governing bodies. And it does so in respect not only of aided but even of unaided colleges. “A well endowed college”, it says (in chapter 13), “may not find it necessary to claim any grant; but in this case the university must still satisfy itself that conditions in the college are such that the college would be eligible for grant if it chose to claim it.” “We consider it important (it says further, on the same page) that college governing bodies should conform more or less to the normal pattern for the governing bodies of universities” and should include the representatives of the teaching staff, the representatives of the university, a representative of the college alumni and, what is more, “representatives of enlightened public opinion”. Speaking not only of autonomy, on the other hand, but of “maximum autonomy”, the October 31 verdict firmly invalidates all attempts at “dictating the formation and composition of a governing body”, including, in particular, the “compulsory nomination of teachers and staff” thereon. That the Supreme Court has washed its hands off the Directive Principles of State Policy, as I wrote last time, is bad enough. That it has done so by invoking the authority of the Radhakrishnan report, a report which says precisely the opposite of what the court holds, is still worse. |
Amnesty: end custodial violence in Punjab “TORTURE and custodial violence continue to take place in Punjab despite the end of the militancy period in the mid-1990s”, Amnesty International has said in a new report. Torture in Punjab persists as a result of the continuing culture of impunity developed within the criminal justice system in the state during the militancy period. “Unless this trend is reversed and the procedures and attitudes which facilitated abuses during that period are dismantled, custodial violence will continue to take place in the state”, Amnesty remarked. In the new report “India: Break the cycle of impunity and torture in Punjab”, Amnesty shows that impunity for past abuses and the continuation of torture today are causally linked. “There is an urgent need to break this cycle and the recommendations contained at the end of the report are made as a contribution towards this objective”, the organisation said. Armed opposition ended in Punjab a decade ago, resulting in a marked decrease of human rights violations in the state. However, thousands of families are still waiting to know the fate of their relatives who “disappeared” during that period. “Until justice and truth is delivered to these families, the wounds left by the militancy period will remain open,” Amnesty International added. Only a small minority of the police officers responsible for a range of human rights violations - including torture, deaths in custody, extra-judicial executions and “disappearances” during the militancy period—have been brought to justice. This has led some state officials to believe that they can violate people’s fundamental rights with impunity even now. Some police in Punjab often use torture as a substitute for proper investigations, to extort money or for personal motives. Workload, lack of resources, intimidation or disinterest facilitate the recourse to custodial violence. “Victims of torture today are most often those who are socially and economically disadvantaged, including women, Dalits and the poorer sections of the community. Human rights activists are often victims of harassment and ill treatment,” the organisation explained. The Punjab Human Rights Commission has so far not been given the powers, resources or institutional autonomy to function effectively as a check on torture and ill-treatment in the state.
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Listen to what I say, Nand Lal. These are the deeds required of a Sikh: Let him perform only those which are in accordance with the threefold rule of meditating on the Divine Name, giving charity and bathing. — Sri Guru Gobind Singh to Bhai Nand Lal, Tankhah-nama. W.H. McLeod's translation |
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