E D I T O R I A L   P A G E

EDITORIALS

Soft budget, harsh realities
FOR the past several years, it has become de rigueur to present a “tax-free” budget, which actually means a budget in which no new taxes have been imposed. It yields good headlines and also keeps the public off the back of the government. A logical pre-condition for this bonanza is that the financial health of the state should be good.

The more the merrier?
A Cabinet expansion these days is often undertaken not to ensure a balanced development of the state or give a fair representation to the neglected sections and regions, but to buy peace from trouble-makers within the ruling party. Ministers are not made and unmade on the basis of their past performance or conduct in public life or their contribution to society. 

Malaysian nightmare
IT was almost like the dreaded midnight knock during the 1975 Emergency days in India. In fact, it must have been a bit more scary for the 270 Indian professionals who were picked up by the police in Kuala Lumpur on March 9 for no apparent reason.

OPINION

Problems of defence forces
How budget allocations fail to provide remedies
Harwant Singh
Finance Minister Jaswant Singh in his hour-long budget speech did not make a mention of the security scene in the region or the rationale for the financial allocations for defence. In his book, “Defending India”, he records, “National security is acknowledged as the first charge on the treasury.” 

MIDDLE

A visit to Chandigarh
V.N.Datta
When I took the distinguished poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz to his friend’s residence in Chandigarh about three decades ago, a young poet told him of his poem on the city of Chandigarh entitled “Pathron Ka Shehar” (the town of stones). Faiz patted the young poet with an affectionate smile, and said: “Not that, my dear but ‘Shehar-I-mahbooba’ (the city of the beloved)” Faiz’s response to the poem’s title was perhaps emotional or possibly he thought the title unpoetic.

FOLLOW-UP

NRIs rise to the call of their motherland
Reeta Sharma
This is a follow-up on “A silent movement”, which has dug its feet in Punjab. Readers would recall that the media in general and The Tribune in particular had informed them about the beautiful story of a wretched, neglected village, Kharaudi, having been turned into a role-model village for the entire country by the efforts of devoted NRIs of the same village.

TRENDS & POINTERS

Wanted a nice girl to buy dad
A Norwegian woman is trying to auction off her father in an Internet sale. Nina Melhum Gronland from Trondheim says she’s had enough of him living with her. The 25-year-old is inviting offers for cab driver Odd Kristiansen, 52, on the Finn auction Web site. 

• Men know cars easily, not in-laws

EDITORIALS

Soft budget, harsh realities

FOR the past several years, it has become de rigueur to present a “tax-free” budget, which actually means a budget in which no new taxes have been imposed. It yields good headlines and also keeps the public off the back of the government. A logical pre-condition for this bonanza is that the financial health of the state should be good. But that criterion has hardly been an inhibiting factor for the Finance Ministers while trying to woo the potential voters. Haryana too has traversed the straight and narrow path while presenting a “tax-free” budget. It is another matter that a Rs 671-crore deficit has been left uncovered, a gap which Finance Minister Sampat Singh says is “within manageable limits” and independent financial experts describe as “yawning”. The government’s line is that it would try to contain the deficit by an increase in the share of central taxes and other devolution which was expected as a result of the inherent resilience in the national economy. Apparently, it is talking of the best-case scenario, whereas the actual situation might very well swing to the other extreme. The glossy touch given to the whole document cannot really hide all the warps and woofs. Nearly 43 per cent of the proceeds of the government are to come from public debt and grant-in-aid in 2003-4. The Finance Minister himself agrees that it is too large a figure. Interest and loan payments will eat up more than 60 per cent of the state’s revenue receipts. Salary and pension liability is equally huge. Still, the budget speech speaks of retaining surplus staff, filling nearly 30,000 posts and recruiting another 20,000 persons “wherever essential”.

While non-Plan expenditure is spiralling, the state administration has hardly applied any fiscal correctives. One will have to be exceptionally optimistic to expect “prudent financial management” to show dramatic results in the days to come when it has not become functional in the years gone by. On the positive side, the budget puts focus on infrastructure development and social sectors. Out of the Rs 2,100 crore meant for development projects, nearly 43 per cent is earmarked for infrastructure sectors such as irrigation, power, roads and road transport. While the higher allocation made for the power sector is welcome, care must be taken that it does not continue to be a drain on the economy by perpetuating its profligate ways. Higher allocation for public health, agriculture, education, etc, is on expected lines. What matters more is a judicious utilisation of this money.

The more the merrier?

A Cabinet expansion these days is often undertaken not to ensure a balanced development of the state or give a fair representation to the neglected sections and regions, but to buy peace from trouble-makers within the ruling party. Ministers are not made and unmade on the basis of their past performance or conduct in public life or their contribution to society. Ministership is wrested by exercising pulls and pressures on the Chief Minister. Those with maximum nuisance value and leading powerful factional interests manage to secure a berth in the ministry. Viewed in the light of this prevailing political reality, the much awaited and speculated Cabinet expansion in Punjab on Monday has appeased some dissident groups in the Punjab Congress and left others disappointed. The Chief Minister inducted two Cabinet ministers and three ministers of state, taking the total strength of his Council of Ministers to 26. Besides, there are five parliamentary secretaries, including the three picked on Monday. In terms of Cabinet strength, Capt Amarinder Singh is still way behind his immediate predecessor, Mr Parkash Singh Badal, who headed in January, 2000, a 41-member jumbo ministry. But his ministry is awfully large in comparison to the 10-member team headed by Mr Om Prakash Chautala in the neighbouring Haryana. And the Captain has not yet finished his job. He has promised representation in his ministry to the first-timers at a later stage after they gain some legislative experience. Ironically, while there is a virtual ban on government recruitment in the state due to the financial squeeze, the Punjab administration continues to be top heavy.

A Cabinet expansion taking place in the backdrop of a vigorous power struggle and in the absence of a well-accepted criteria is bound to leave many aspirants dissatisfied. The voice of dissidence is already being heard. One of the two new Cabinet ministers, Mr Harnam Das Johar, who was an education minister in the previous Congress government, is accused of illegally amassing property worth crores by his own party men in Ludhiana. Another new entrant, Mr Malkiat Singh Birmi, publicly raised the issue of two Congress ministers’ questionable activities in Gujarat. Indications are that dissidence is here to stay despite the Chief Minister’s well-planned strategy to silence and weaken his opponents. He has inducted a few moderate dissidents and left out the more outspoken ones like Mr Bir Devinder Singh and Mr Raj Khurana, obviously irked by their public criticism of his government’s functioning. Capt Amarinder Singh has chosen not to drop any of his existing ministers despite the public perception of non-performance by some and alleged acts of moral turpitude by two of his colleagues. Performance and merit are no longer any criteria to retain or drop any minister. To reward his left-out MLAs, the Captain government has bought multi-utility vehicles for each of them at a cost of Rs 2.56 crore despite the critical financial situation in the state. Besides, he has promised to make them chairmen of various state corporations, which is a common practice in Punjab. Spoils of office obviously must be shared, if dissidence is to be kept in control. As for development work, it is yet to find a place on the Captain’s agenda.

Malaysian nightmare

IT was almost like the dreaded midnight knock during the 1975 Emergency days in India. In fact, it must have been a bit more scary for the 270 Indian professionals who were picked up by the police in Kuala Lumpur on March 9 for no apparent reason. To be woken up early in the morning by policemen in a foreign land can be a very traumatic experience. It was, perhaps, a case of police highhandedness, that is not the exclusive right of the cops who raided the snooker parlours in Chandigarh the other day looking for chain snatchers. The stated objective of the pre-dawn raid by the Malaysian police was to smoke out illegal immigrants. They did not feel the need to follow the prescribed procedure because the draconian Malaysian laws for curbing internal political and media dissent provide them enough protection from penal action. For once the Indian response was sharp and swift. The Malaysian High Commissioner, Mr Choo Siew Kioh, was summoned by the External Affairs Ministry and was told that such action as resulted in 270 Indian IT professionals being ill-treated by the police in Kuala Lumpur could strain bilateral relations between the two countries. India has strong cultural and trade links with Malaysia. The IT boom has created a market for trained professionals across the globe. India has taken the lead in meeting the ever increasing demand in this sector. The silicon valley in the USA is called mini India. Indian professionals have played an equally important role in helping Malaysia register its presence in this globally important sector of the economy.

Indian High Commissioner Veena Sikri articulated the sentiments of the country she represents in Kuala Lumpur by describing the incident as a “black day for all of us”. According to reports, the police allegedly defaced the passports of some of the Indian professionals and slapped and kicked them and made them do sit-ups All but five of them were later released. There is no official statement either from the Indian High Commission in Malaysia or the Malaysian diplomatic staff in New Delhi on the fate of the remaining five Indians. According to NASSCOM, all the 270 Indians were working with either Malaysian companies or Indian companies that have set up overseas outlets in Malaysia. Not one of them was an illegal immigrant. The association of software companies is collecting more information about the episode. Whatever may have been the reason for police brutality, the MEA should send a high-level team to reassure the Indian professionals that they would get justice and also take up the issue at the highest diplomatic level in Malaysia.

OPINION

Problems of defence forces
How budget allocations fail to provide remedies
Harwant Singh

Finance Minister Jaswant Singh in his hour-long budget speech did not make a mention of the security scene in the region or the rationale for the financial allocations for defence. In his book, “Defending India”, he records, “National security is acknowledged as the first charge on the treasury.” Elsewhere he notes, “It is self-evident that resource inelasticity affects all government spending, including expenditure on defence. But it stands equally established that the armed forces cannot be permitted to degrade by denying them the monies to modernise and to keep them in fighting shape. That would be to court grave national danger.”

True to his beliefs, the Finance Minister raised the allocations for defence to 3.1 per cent of the GDP from the average of 2.3 per cent of the last many years. Undeniably, the meagre financial support to the armed forces during the last decade and a half has resulted in their degradation. To correct this adverse situation, sustained allocation of 3.5 to 4 per cent of the GDP will need to be allocated to defence in the coming decade. This level of financial support for the defence budget is affordable and sustainable.

The re-organisation of the MoD and its merger with the defence headquarters was aimed at streamlining the procedures, cut out duplication and triplication of work, bring about substantial savings, speed up the decision-making process, etc. Similarly, the formation of a Defence Procurement Board (DPB) under the Defence Secretary with a Special Secretary, Acquisitions, and separate land, maritime, air and systems divisions, besides a separate finance division as part of this set-up, was expected to reduce the time taken for new acquisitions of weapons and equipment. This has not happened and consequently, as during the previous years, more than Rs 900 crore as an unutilised amount from the capital expenditure head, allotted during the financial year 2002-2003, was surrendered. This, in spite of the fact that Special Secretary, Acquisitions, had considerable experience in the field of defence acquisitions.

It is generally perceived that the value of a rupee spent on defence is about the same as that of a rupee spent on social services/development. In reality, this is not so. While a large percentage of monies spent on social services/development are siphoned off into private pockets, those spent on defence are more focused and result-oriented. This is due to greater discipline and accountability in the defence services. Also a good part of the defence budget is spent on infrastructure such as housing, roads, hospitals and clinics which eventually adds up to social services and national assets.

In another area, the defence services do not get the full worth of the funds made available to them. There are a great many reasons for this unhappy situation. Not the least of these being the archaic and bureaucratic procedures of the MoD, its recent reorganisation notwithstanding, where decisions are delayed for years resulting in higher costs and continued lower defence capabilities.

Almost the entire range of major defence equipment is imported, often at inflated costs. This in spite of the setting up of Defence Science Organisation soon after Independence with the sole purpose of making the country self-reliant in defence technologies and equipment. This organisation has grown manifold and is now called the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) with a network of 52 laboratories/establishments. It is a full-fledged department of the MoD and takes up approximately 5 to 6 per cent of the defence budget. Its mandate has been the development of emerging technologies required for defence weapons and equipment for future programmes. In this basic task the DRDO has singularly failed with the result that almost every piece of major weapon systems and equipment (in many cases even minor equipment such as items of snow clothing, etc) has to be imported at a high cost.

In countries where defence equipment is indigenously produced, it creates jobs and develops technologies, which find use in civil application and boosts the overall economy of the country. This obviously does not happen in India where, by importing thousands of crores of equipment every year, we merely add to another country’s economy and employment. The constant depreciating value of the rupee, too, has been resulting in our getting less for more money. In this sad situation there has been no individual or organisational accountability. Above all, it has made us totally dependent on one source for the supply of defence equipment and spares, etc, which, in the event of drying up of that source, as it happened on the break-up of the USSR, can result in serious voids in weapons and equipment serviceability and re-supply.

Most of the other requirements of the defence services are met by the Ordinance Factories, which since World War II have worked on the philosophy of “cost plus”. With the defence services as the captive customers and the virtual elimination of the private sector (competition), the defence budget has been compelled to bear the entire burden of wasteful expenditure, overheads, over-staffing, outdated production techniques and technologies and idle labour of the defence PSUs. Through a skewed system of pricing, the defence PSUs not only fix the prices on their own but also the MoD allows them to charge an additional 10 per cent to the self-determined cost.

Consequently, the defence services have been paying much more than the fair price of the goods received from the defence PSUs. Often the goods are shabby and substandard. Thus, in this area too the defence services have been short-changed and the defence rupee is made to travel less. The current move to open up defence industry to the private sector is less likely to meet much success, because private enterprise requires substantial investments and this can happen only if firm long-term projections of requirements are made.

On the one hand, long-term planning by the services has never found favour with the MoD, and on the other, financial allocations on a long-term basis have never been forecast or assured. This situation is less likely to be set right in the near future. Consequently, not much involvement and investment from the private sector can be expected in this area. In fact, most of the defence PSUs need to be privatised and that by itself will bring in competition with all the attendant benefits. Only very limited areas of defence production have security implications, and in their case it is possible to introduce certain safeguards.

Of the funds made available for the maintenance of buildings and other assets, 60 to 70 per cent of these are used up towards the pay and allowances of the Military Engineering Services staff (MES). Therefore, out of the meagre allocations made for the upkeep and maintenance of buildings and other infrastructure, the bulk is eaten up by this surplus staff of the MES, resulting in the continued deterioration of these assets. Here again the defence services are able to extract less mileage out of the sums allotted.

Much too frequently the defence forces are called out in aid of the civil administration. The expenditure thus incurred is required to be reimbursed to the defence services. But often this does not happen and such expenditure, which is substantial in financial terms, is eventually borne by the defence sector and this results as an additional burden on its budget.

The sub-allocation of the defence budget to the three services is often an ad hoc exercise based on lobbying and bears little relevance to the building of desired capabilities to meet the emerging threats to national security in the medium and long term. The correction can be applied only if the security scene in the region is accurately assessed, its implications in the light of national interest determined, and the best force combination worked out.

Such an assessment and evaluation could take place only when a full-fledged Chief of Defence Staff, with appropriate authority, is installed. Till then the MoD will continue to play one service against the other and resort to adhocism in resolving urgent defence issues.

Such whimsical distribution of financial resources can only result in lop-sided force structuring, devoid of balance and rationale. Short-and-medium-term security concerns of the country relate to cross-border terrorism, proxy wars and the building of viable deterrence capabilities. Therefore, our equipping policy, force structuring and consequently service-wise financial allocations should correspond to our likely responses, and eventually and yet gradually get tailored into long-term security needs.

The writer, a retired Lieut-General, is a former Deputy Chief of Army Staff.

MIDDLE

A visit to Chandigarh
V.N.Datta

When I took the distinguished poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz to his friend’s residence in Chandigarh about three decades ago, a young poet told him of his poem on the city of Chandigarh entitled “Pathron Ka Shehar” (the town of stones). Faiz patted the young poet with an affectionate smile, and said: “Not that, my dear but ‘Shehar-I-mahbooba’ (the city of the beloved)” Faiz’s response to the poem’s title was perhaps emotional or possibly he thought the title unpoetic.

In my recent visit to Chandigarh I asked a friend who has been living there for long: “How do you feel to be in this town?” He paused for a moment, and changed the topic. He said: “I lived in my village which lies in Pakistan. I greatly miss it now. I had to leave it due to the Partition in 1947” To another resident of the town, I asked: “What are the places worth seeing in Chandigarh?” He instructed me to the sights of the city such as the High Court, Museum, Assembly, University, Rock Garden, Rose Garden, Sukhana lake, etc. He impressed upon me that nothing was more worthy of my attention in Chandigarh than the government secretariat which Jawaharlal Nehru had described as “magnificent”.

Chandigarh is not a historical town. It is neither ancient nor medieval. It did not develop over the years from a small settlement as towns usually do. It was a command performance, a creation of the Partition to meet the exigencies of difficult times. Under the Radcliffe award, Lahore, the capital of united Punjab, was allotted to Pakistan. So a new capital for East Panjab was to be set up. Amritsar with its proximity to the Indo-Pak border, and Ambala due to the scarcity of water were found unsuitable. Jawaharlal Nehru, the Prime Minister, ever anxious to embark on new ventures, acted as the main impulse to the building of a new capital of Panjab.

Chandigarh was designed, planned and completed by the renowned architect Le Corbusier and its foundation was laid by Nehru in Sector 9 of the town on October 7,1953. Today it is the joint capital of Punjab and Haryana, and continues to be a part of the Union Territory.

Chandigarh was built on entirely different principles from those that gave stimulus to the indigenous towns of Punjab. It is no direct replica of Lutyen’s New Delhi either. It is a modern city with new buildings, roundabouts and roads lined with rows of trees standing like sentinels. The town is divided not in mohallas and nagars but into sectors and markets of their own specific types and reflecting thereby differentiation in the strata of society, a clear demonstration of a socio-economic segregated class-divide. By no means does the town astound you as do some parts of the old Calcutta or Bombay. Chandigarh is primarily an administrative centre, a functional place that serves a definite purpose initiated by a sizeable floating population that stays for a limited period of time. There are no narrow, tortuous lanes winding through the town huddled together with houses built haphazardly—things here work out specifically according to plans.

For a person like me having lived in Amritsar and Delhi, there is a feeling of uneasiness because, while moving in Chandigarh one notices a timeless symmetry and monotony of the “fine” buildings, colour designs and roads. The whole plan seems to fall into a set pattern.

As compared with Delhi, Chandigarh sleeps early, a few central streets remain busy with people, but the rest are deserted, and there is oppressive silence. But, Chandigarh is indeed an open, broad, neat city with an idyllic background of the hills what is its real character, its spirit. This question can be answered properly only by those who have lived there for long because they are the only people who can exercise what is called an “instinctive feeling” for the place, and not an outsider like me.

FOLLOW-UP

NRIs rise to the call of their motherland
Reeta Sharma

This is a follow-up on “A silent movement”, which has dug its feet in Punjab. Readers would recall that the media in general and The Tribune in particular had informed them about the beautiful story of a wretched, neglected village, Kharaudi, having been turned into a role-model village for the entire country by the efforts of devoted NRIs of the same village.

Kharaudi has not only proved to be a source of motivation but also an unprecedented example of the saying “Where there is a will there is a way”. Many sons of this soil had immigrated to various parts of the world and achieved enviable and admirable positions. Their love for their motherland and specially their village would often bring them back home. Only, the home-coming, was never a pleasant experience — stagnant water in the filthy streets, power cuts, no school and only diseases greeted them.

Back to their civilised world, they would bemoan about the plight of their village. It was this agony, which one day beckoned these NRI sons of Kharaudi to sit down and resolve the fate of their village. These Kharaudians rose to the call of their mother in an unprecedented manner. Within no time, Rs 50 lakh was collected and out of it nearly Rs 20 lakh was donated by the families of Dr R S Bassi and Dr Gurdev Singh Gill. Thus was born the Village-life Improvement Board (VLIB). While, Dr Bassi was chosen as the Chairperson of the Board, Dr Gill and Dr Sukhdev Singh Bassi were elected as president and treasurer, respectively.

Dr Bassi is a Harvard graduate in finance and business administration. He had risen to the position of Vice-Chancellor of Alaska Pacific University. Dr Gill, on the other hand, had left India in 1949 after completing his high school. He studied medicine in Canada and became the first doctor of Indian origin to start private practice. But he soon got involved in community work and was awarded the ‘Order of the British Columbia’.

With Rs 50 lakh in their pockets, these NRIs, driven with a passion to develop their neglected village, approached the then Chief Minister, Parkash Singh Badal. Though he promised them a matching grant for fulfilling their dreams, they were aghast at the rampant corruption down the line, where in, BDOs, SDOs and engineers were hand in glove in looting the state. “The estimates these people prepared were beyond our liberal costing. For instance, for replacing broken PVC pipes of water supply, these officials gave an estimate of Rs 8 lakh. We found it to be too high and went ahead with our own effort. We completed the work at a cost of Rs 1.50 lakh. Similarly, for laying the sewerage line in the village, we were given an estimate of Rs 22 lakh. We again found it to be exaggerated and went ahead with our own and succeeded in completing not only the sewerage line but also the connections to 200 houses in mere Rs 11 lakh”, disclosed Dr Gill.

Aware and enlightened, they resolved to keep Punjab government’s red-tapism at bay. “We told them in no uncertain terms that it is up to the government to trust or not to trust us with the matching grant but we shall work on our conditions. We would not allow any joint account with the government for the corrupt government employees to slap red-tapism on us”, recalls Dr Gurdev Singh Gill.

Dr Gill and Dr Bassi began working on the project titled, “Nurture Your Roots” in September 1999. Within three years the village was transformed beyond recognition. Today, it has concrete streets connecting each house. The sewerage line flows through the village with a concrete cover on it. Each house has an outlet into it. Unlike most of our state government’s half-baked ideas of engineering, the sewerage water has not been allowed to pollute at its final disposal point. They made sure that the sewerage water treatment plant was included in the project.

The resounding success of Kharaudi as a super model village is being replicated by these very NRIs. Besides Ujjal Dosanj, the then Premier of British Columbia, the present Minister of Natural Resources of Canada, Harbans Singh Dhaliwal, have visited Kharaudi. The VLIB is hopeful that the present Premier of British Columbia will also come forward to give a matching grant for uplifting the other villages in Punjab. They have already 10 more villages: two in Sangrur, one in Patiala, five in Hoshiarpur, one in Kapurthala and one in Jalandhar. “The response to our projects by Capt. Amarinder Singh is overwhelming. We had a meeting with him and he has sanctioned Rs 6 crore for the proposed development of 10 additional villages over a period of two years. But I must say that this Chief Minister believes in results. For, he has already ordered Rs 3 crore to be released to us within this fiscal year, which means before the end of March. This also means that we shall be able to implement our project much faster”, said a beaming Dr Gill.

There is yet another heartening development, thanks to the efforts of Dr Gurdev Singh Gill and Dr Raghbir Singh Bassi. The Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), a government organisation, has also in principle agreed to give matching grants to improve the fate of Punjab’s villages. Interestingly, the CIDA has already released $ 58,000 for village Behrampur in mandi Ahmedgarh. One of the aims of the CIDA is to work overseas and give grants for development and poverty alleviation. Taking a lead from the NRIs of Kharaudi, Anantpal Singh, who had immigrated from Behrampur, has also given $50,000 to the VLIB for the development of his native village.

TRENDS & POINTERS

Wanted a nice girl to buy dad

A Norwegian woman is trying to auction off her father in an Internet sale. Nina Melhum Gronland from Trondheim says she’s had enough of him living with her. The 25-year-old is inviting offers for cab driver Odd Kristiansen, 52, on the Finn auction Web site. Her advert says: “Giving away my dad to a nice woman in Trondheim. Dad is tall, dark and slim and in his best age. I am tried of him living with me. Furniture comes with him. Serious!” Kristiansen told “Verdens Gang” he’s only received one offer so far.

Men know cars easily, not in-laws

Ever since cars were invented, women have complained that their husbands recognise the latest Ford more quickly than they do their in-laws. A study published over the weekend may help explain why. It seems that men who like cars recognise the different models using the same part of the brain that people use to identify faces, US researchers report in the April issue of the journal, “Nature Neuroscience”.

When car aficionados were shown pictures of cars and pictures of faces together, they tended to get a kind of traffic jam in the part of the brain normally used to identify faces, psychologist Isabel Gauthier of Vanderbilt University in Tennessee reported. Reuters

SPIRITUAL NUGGETS

Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.

Therefore, if thine enemy hunger, feed him; If he thirst, give him drink:

for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire. On his head.

—The Bible, Ramans 12:19-20

***

—Longfellow: “Driftwood”