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Tuesday,
April 8, 2003, Chandigarh, India  
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US double standard Shanta speaks, leaves Handmaidens of politicians |
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State of India’s colleges
“Milna hai to mil lo ...
Iraq under belligerent occupation
Women too at risk of heart disease death
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US double standard BEING the lone superpower has many advantages. You can have one set of rules for yourself and another for the rest of the world. That is why what is sauce for the US goose is not sauce for the Indian gander. Iraq is a fit case for attack without UN sanction; Pakistan isn’t. “Any attempts to draw parallels between the Iraq and Kashmir situations are wrong and overwhelmed by the differences between them,” pontificates US State Department spokesperson Joanne Prokopowicz, in reaction to External Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinha’s remarks that India had a better case to attack Pakistan than the US had vis-à-vis Iraq. And what are these “vastly different circumstances” which put the two on an entirely different footing? The spokesperson reminds us that for 12 years, the Saddam Hussein regime refused to disarm despite several resolutions adopted by the UN Security Council. May we remind President Bush and his men that the very same United Nations never authorised an attack on Iraq? Put these two facts together and the US argument destroys itself. In fact, the US would have strengthened its own case somewhat had it stood by India. In any case, India should realise that there is no point in lamenting the US double standards. It has already been proved time and again that a country has to defend itself on its own strength. Even if a thousand innocent civilians are shot dead by ISI-sponsored marauders, the maximum that we can expect from the international community is “strong condemnation” and an appeal to sit across the table and discuss everything amicably. And if, by some miracle, UN members do agree to take action against Pakistan, chances are that Washington will veto the proposal. That is the kind of umbrella it extends over the heads of dictators who agree to do its bidding. But things would have been different had it refused to join the Afghanistan campaign. Then General Musharraf might have been branded as vile a person as, say, Saddam Hussein. If you are with me, you are a saint; if you are against me, you are a sinner. Period. No appeal. No arguments. No adjudication. That is realpolitik for you. Instead of getting agitated over the blatant injustice of it all, Delhi must focus on the real reasons which weaken its position. It does not have the financial, military or strategic strength to discipline a rogue neighbour, with nuclear weapons at that. Moral? Gain the requisite muscle to take on the bullies, for no one else is going to stand up for a weakling, even if his cause is just. |
| Shanta speaks, leaves MR SHANTA KUMAR is among the handful of politicians who enjoy the reputation of being “ clean”. After the Bharatiya Janata Party lost the assembly election in Himachal Pradesh he showed that he could be outspoken as well. In politics being outspoken, at least in public, is seldom liked by the leadership. That he is a critic of former Chief Minister Prem Kumar Dhumal is a fact that he never tried to hide. But the analysis that the BJP lost because the party failed to fulfill the promises it had made was, perhaps, too personal for Mr Dhumal and the BJP’s central leadership to ignore. There is a difference between dissent and democratic functioning within the party. One is an act of discussing party matters in public while the other encourages the cadres to express their views on shortcomings in forums that any democratically-run political party should have. It is true that during the five years Mr Dhumal was in power he did not remove the faultlines that come with exercising power without responsibility. But why rub it in, and that too in public? Mr Shanta Kumar’s supporters may argue that he was made to resign as union minister because he had dared to identify the shortcomings in the Himachal unit of the BJP. Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee had said much the same thing, but the context was different. He said at Indore that mere slogans and rhetoric do not help win elections. In the final analysis, the people vote on the basis of the party’s performance. In sharp contrast, Mr Shanta Kumar chose an inappropriate forum for expressing his sense of disappointment over the defeat of the BJP in Himachal. The choice of words too was not happy. Had he confined his reaction to merely congratulating the Congress, he would have followed the healthy tradition of being magnanimous in defeat. The comment that made the BJP high command issue a show-cause notice was in the nature of a personal attack on the style of functioning of Mr Dhumal. Nevertheless, had the decision to make Mr Shanta Kumar pay for the political indiscretion not been an internal affair of the BJP, a case could have been made out for a milder punishment. The fact remains that he has a better rapport with the BJP cadres at the grassroots level than Mr Dhumal. Only the BJP can explain why he was eased out of state politics five years ago when the party does not have another leader of his stature. He is to the Himachal unit of the BJP what Mr Vajpayee is to the party at the national level. |
Handmaidens of politicians THE manner in which Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Ajit Jogi has accused Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee of having launched an investigation called the ‘Operation Black Sea’ smacks of political opportunism. He says that the Centre has directed the Intelligence Bureau to probe the role of all the Chief Ministers of Congress-ruled states. It would be difficult to take Mr Jogi’s charge at its face value. For one thing, his own position is at stake following increasing dissidence in the ruling party against his style of functioning. For another, veteran Congress leader Vidya Charan Shukla is all set to leave the Congress and team up with the BJP. Possibly, the charge levelled by Mr Jogi against the Prime Minister is aimed at diverting the people’s attention from the failures of his government. The other reason could be to checkmate the popularity of the state unit of the BJP, by blaming no other person than Mr Vajpayee himself. But the charge is not that simplistic. Considering the seriousness of the allegation, Mr Vajpayee has promptly refuted it and called the document submitted by Mr Jogi as a forged one. He has also ordered a probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). However, Mr Jogi wants a Joint Parliamentary Committee
(JPC) probe. The issue in question is whether a JPC probe will help ferret out the truth. As in the Bofors case or the UTI scam, these probes were agonisingly slow and had failed to bring the guilty to book. The one on the Bofors scandal, in particular, headed by the then Union Health Minister, Mr B.
Shankaranand, proved to be a laughing stock. Against this background, it is doubtful whether a JPC probe will achieve the desired objective. However, this is not to endorse the Prime Minister’s stand on the issue. Probes by organisations such as the CBI, the Intelligence Bureau and the CID in various states lack credibility as these institutions have unfortunately become tools in the hands of the Centre and the States to settle scores with their political opponents. In this context, the Vajpayee Government’s track record on checking corruption is dismal. Remember the Central Vigilance Commission Bill? Passed by the Lok Sabha, it is awaiting the Rajya Sabha’s approval. Section 6A of this Bill, that makes it mandatory for the CVC to seek the clearance of the Centre before probing charges against officers above the rank of Joint Secretary under the Prevention of Corruption Act, exposes the intentions of the Centre. This action has, in fact, invited strictures from the Supreme Court which maintained that the rule of law should be applied to the officers of all the ranks. |
State of India’s colleges HAVING discussed the management model of government colleges — even schools by implication — in these columns on March 26, 2003, it is important to discuss the issue of what the new model of governance should be. Before that issue is taken up, one preliminary point may be made. During the last few decades most state governments have sought to regulate the functioning of colleges and schools by virtue of the fact that funding comes primarily from the government. In other countries, Britain for instance, even when funding comes from the government, it does not automatically mean that the management too is vested in the same body. As a matter of fact, we continued the British-imposed model on the assumption that since funding came from the government, the latter also had the right to regulate their functioning. The two are not interlinked, if one may say so. Even when funding comes from the government, the management can be local. We simply followed the pre-1947 pattern, overlooking the fact that what suits a small operation (around 500 colleges when Pakistan and Bangladesh too were a part of India) cannot suit a large-scale operation. The scale of operation is crucial in every situation. We have only to contrast today’s 12000 against the 500 then to get the point. Not so long ago, I made an assessment of Haryana colleges in these very columns. At that point of time, out of 1600 teachers employed by the state government, almost 1000 were transferred every year. Have things changed since then? Perhaps, marginally. In this connection I recall an encounter with the then Minister of Education of that state. We happened to meet at an organised discussion when somebody made a reference to what I had written. The minister did not contradict the figure quoted by me. But he tried to explain it away by saying that it was pressure from the MLAs which was responsible for what was happening. As if the MLAs were men from the Mars and did not belong to the social setting in which we all live! The fact of the matter is that whichever party runs the government it misuses its powers, not in the interest of the general public but of its so-called representatives. Two preconditions have to be met before the following suggestions can be implemented. One is that the system of recruitment and management will have to change. The second thing is to devise a structure of management which represents different sections of public opinion. Furthermore, there has to be a system whereby the responsibility is cast upon the managers. And pray: who should be the managers? Some variation of the following formula can be devised. If the Board of Management consists of, say, 15 persons, the Principal would be Secretary in his ex-officio capacity. In addition, two teachers, one senior and one relatively junior in experience, should be put on the committee. Out of the remaining 12, there should be a four-fold division. One-fourth should be nominated by the state government and should mainly consist of government officials. They can be nominated by name or by designation, as convenient. Another three members, however, should be nominated by the state government from outside its ranks. Of them, one should be an educated woman and the other a retired teacher, belonging to that institution or some other institution. The third person should belong to the public. He or she could be anyone except an active politician. The third category should consist of preferably retired academics. And the fourth category should belong to ex-students, parents, a retired official, preferably someone who has worked in the armed forces, members of the public or anyone else interested in education. The term of those nominated should be two years and the chairman should be invariably nominated by the Vice-Chancellor in consultation with his executive council. A person may be nominated even for a second turn, but that should depend upon his performance and the leadership that he or she is able to provide. There is room for experimentation in these matters. The key thing to ensure is that the focus is on performance and the transparency of operations. None of the details given above is sacrosanct. The intention is to locate executive power in such a way that professional politicians by and large are excluded and, secondly, a substantial number of them are ex-academics. Some people might have reservations about a large number of academics being brought in. There is some merit in that objection. During the last quarter of a century the academics have not given satisfactory evidence of having a sense of commitment. What most of them are concerned with are higher scales of pay and such conditions of work where the teachers do not have to put in hard work. What most of them have overlooked is the fact that a situation is now beginning to emerge where what used to happen in the past — financial aid for the revision of salary scales by the Centre — may not be there in the same measure and with the same readiness as in the past. To put it bluntly, by having given this impression to the public that, regardless of what they are paid, teachers are reluctant to work with a sense of commitment, a certain amount of public disillusionment has been caused. If during the next few years funding is tightened up, as is beginning to happen, academics will not get what they have been getting so far. This is a cause for anxiety. By being indifferent to the quality of their performance, teachers have given cause for dissatisfaction to the general public. How to deal with this issue? Not by tightening up the bureaucratic control or increasing political interference. On the contrary, the academics should be given greater responsibility and made responsible for what happens in academic institutions. The way to streamline things is to partly increase their representation on the board of management and partly for the universities to regulate and assess the working of these colleges in such a way that there is no evasion of work nor any systematic underperformance. In this whole business, the distinction between private and government colleges would disappear to a substantial extent, as indeed it should. Certain state governments are unable to provide the same measure of funding to private colleges as was available till recently. The teachers are upset. In one or two states they have threatened to go on strike and so on. What they overlook is that, despite all their faults, the politicians are in close contact with the general public. They know precisely what the public thinks about the academics. Nothing is going to come out if the latter choose to go on strike. That phase of pressurisation is over. Threats did work at one time for the simple reason that the public was sympathetic to teachers. Not so any longer! In the new set-up, what will work is improved performance. While funding may come from the state, the supervisory part will have to be undertaken by the universities. It is not necessary to labour this point any further except to say that one important reason why fees have not been going up as they should is because decisions are made either on political or bureaucratic considerations. In both cases the tyranny of the past continues to prevail. In the new set-up it is visualised that these decisions would be made by each single college. Those of them that are popular and are sought after by students will be in a position to charge higher fees. The rest would have no choice except to charge lower fees. In course of time, even scales of pay may differ from college to college. The correct thing to do would be to lay down a ceiling below which no college should be allowed to fall. And, equally important, there should be no upper ceiling. If this plan of action is followed, two things will happen in consequence. The income from the fees will go up both in private and government colleges. To that extent, pressure on the government will decrease. At the same time, alternative arrangements will have to be made to help poor students who have academic potential but are unable to join a college. So far hardly any university or state in the country has managed to evolve a system whereby private funding is available for those who have the capability but lack the means to pursue higher or professional education. This is not the time to discuss the details, but one thing is clear. Unless both steps are taken simultaneously and in support of each other, our colleges and schools will continue to suffer from underperformance and academic confusion. The writer is a well-known educationist and commentator
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“Milna hai to mil lo ... SIR Evan Meredith Jenkins, KCSI, KCIE, was the last Governor of Punjab before partition. He came from the famous Jenkins family of Scotland. He was born on February 2, 1896, in Darjeeling where his family owned big tea gardens. Sir Jenkins had his initial education in Darjeeling and was in Eaton School in England and at King’s College, London. He stood first in the ICS examination in 1920. Sir Evan Jenkins was a bachelor. He was diligent, strict, had simple habits and a cool mindset. His favourite means of transport was bicycle. He had worked as DC of Lyallpur (1928-1932), Rawalpindi (1932-1937) and Commissioner of Delhi from 1937 to 1941 before taking over as Principal Private Secretary to Governor-General and Viceroy of India, Lord Linlithgow, and later Field Marshal Lord Wavell in 1941-1946. Sir Evan had an Anglo-Indian servant named Tom with him who was a bachelor and used to live with him and do all his household chores in addition to giving him company like a personal friend. Sir Evan had a lot of love and affection for him. Tom had fair colour almost same features and height as his boss. Tom came to Sir Evan’s house at Lahore when the latter took over as Governor of Punjab on April 8, 1946. It was in the month of September, 1946, that the Governor went for a visit to Simla and on his return journey stayed for the night at a forest hut at Barog near Solan. He had kept the visit discreet and ordinary people were not allowed to meet His Excellency. A rich businessman from Rawalpindi, who had known Sir Evan since his days as DC Rawalpindi, was also camping nearby with his family and thought that it was a good opportunity to meet his old acquaintance. The businessman had heard about Tom and knew that Tom remained with His Excellency like a shadow. In Barog, the ADCs to the Governor were staying in nearby forest huts but at some distance from the hut in which Sir Evan and Tom were staying. In the cold sunny morning the businessman with a basket of imported scotch wrapped elegantly in a beautiful paper knocked at the gate of the forest hut. The lone constable on duty did not stop him. He had just gone a few steps when he saw Sir Evan, sitting in a chair with only an underwear on his body. He was eating some fruit. The businessman mistook him to be Tom and told him that he wanted to meet His Excellency the Governor of Punjab. Sir Evan looked towards him; could not place him; and asked him as to what brought him there. The businessman ignored the question and again put his request of meeting His Excellency. Sir Evan again enquired about the reasons for his visit. This continued for three or four minutes, when the businessman, a patient of high blood pressure, suddenly lost his temper and threatened to hit Sir Evan (whom he had presumed to be Tom). But before he could do anything Sir Evan stood up, pushed the businessman and pinned him down and while sitting down on his stomach and said in Hindustani “Tum Governor se milna chahta, lo mil lo Governor se.” The businessman could only mumble an apology. |
Iraq under belligerent occupation “ROMAIN Rolland was right,” Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet leader, wrote in 1959, “when he said that ‘freedom is not brought in from abroad in baggage trains like the Bourbons’. It is ridiculous to think that revolutions are made to order.” Revolutions may be not, but four decades after Khrushchev’s article on peaceful coexistence, containing these words, was published in the prestigious American journal, Foreign Affairs, creating a stir in international relations, US-led armed forces appear all set to make freedom, American style, to order in Iraq. When freedom needs defending, President Bush told cheering US Marines at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina on April 3, America turns to her military. Make no mistake about it. This, America’s new passion for freedom with a militarist slant and her ability to export it to as far as Cruise missiles can reach, will be the benchmark of international relations and international law for quite some time to come and nations around the globe, India included, must prepare accordingly. “For anyone trained in the British tradition,” observed Sir Alfred Zimmern in his work on the League of Nations and the rule of law, “the term ‘International Law’ embodies a conception which is, at its best, confusing and at its worst exasperating. It is never law as we understand it, and it often, as it seems to us, comes dangerously near to being an imposture, a simulacrum of law, an attorney’s mantle artfully displayed on the shoulders of arbitrary power.” Even this last vestige or image of the law, the attorney’s mantle, slipped off the shoulders of President Bush three weeks ago when he ordered American troops into Iraq in defiance of the United Nations, the British riding piggyback. Eighty five years after Great Britain invaded and occupied the Ottoman provinces of Basra, Baghdad and Mosul, laying the foundation of the modern state of Iraq, and 71 years after the termination of the British Mandate over Iraq and her admission to the League of Nations as a sovereign state — the first Arab state to be so admitted — Iraq stands once again on the threshold of occupation. Based on a scheme proposed by General Smuts, the soldier-statesman from South Africa, at the end of World War I and employing the phraseology of Roman law — General Smuts being himself a lawyer trained in Roman-Dutch law — the Mandates system of the League of Nations introduced the notion of “tutelage” or guardianship of peoples in international law. The tutelage of the former German colonies and Turkish territories, read Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, “should be entrusted to advanced nations who by reason of their resources, their experience or their geographical position can best undertake the responsibility, and are willing to accept it, and.. this tutelage should be exercised by them as Mandatories on behalf of the League.” In actual practice, however, this “incursion of idealism into the domain of the conqueror” — as Norman Bentwich, the Attorney-General of Palestine (also a British Mandate) described it in 1930 — saw Iraq turn into what Charles Tripp, in his recent history of Iraq published by the Cambridge University, calls an “unmistakably.... British imperial project”. That project will now be replaced, after a long historical gap, by an American imperial project deriving its authority solely from belligerent occupation rather than from the League’s successor, the United Nations. “Territory is considered occupied,” reads Article 42 of the Regulations annexed to Hague Convention IV of 1907 (defining belligerent occupation), “when it is actually placed under the authority of the hostile army.” The occupation extends, it adds, to the territory where such authority has been established and can be exercised. Professor Oppenheim’s view that “there is not an atom of sovereignty in the authority of the occupant” notwithstanding, the American position on the point goes back to Hackworth’s well-known statement of May 7, 1936, as Legal Adviser of the Department of State. “A military occupant, especially one who has conquered and subjugated a country,” said Hackworth (later a judge of the International Court of Justice from 1946 to 1961), “has supreme power over the territory occupied and, to all intents and purposes, is the sovereign during the period of occupation.” Going even further in his three-volume work “International Law Chiefly as Interpreted and Applied by the United States”, Prof Charles C. Hyde — another eminent American authority — identified belligerent occupation with martial law. Martial law, in a generic sense, he said, writing immediately after World War II, truly exists when a belligerent occupant of hostile territory proceeds to administer the same by military authority. That, the administration of Iraq under military command, is precisely what the Americans are now proposing to do, as disclosed by Colin Powell himself in Brussels last week. But it is Hyde’s closing words on the issue that compel attention, anticipating, as it were, by five decades, the real problem that now lies ahead for the United States. “The outstanding fact,” he said, “to be reckoned with (in such a situation), is the sharp opposition between the inhabitants of the occupied area and the hostile military force exercising control over them. At heart they remain at war with each other.” Restraints on war as laid down in multi-partite conventions, he warned, will remain inconsequential unless by some process there is brought home to the occupying power “a sense of the injury to itself, through loss of prestige, popular opposition to its cause in neutral countries, and the goading of the enemy to retaliation, that are to be anticipated from the lawless treatment of a defenceless people”. Long after the fall of Baghdad these words will remain relevant. |
Women too at risk of heart disease death A new study has found that women too have greater risk of dying from heart disease as men and at times even greater when they have diabetes. The researchers suggest a stress test which provides a quick, safe, and effective means for identifying both women and men with potentially fatal heart disease. They say that not only women are referred for testing less often then men, but some non-invasive tests don't accurately determine the presence or degree of heart disease in women. Now, researchers at Cedars-Sinai Medical Centre have conducted the first study to compare how well a non-invasive imaging procedure performed with a medication-induced stress test identified women and men at high risk of death from heart disease. The findings, published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, examine adenosine stress myocardial perfusion scans and show that women have as great a risk of death from heart disease as men for every kind of scan abnormality.
ANI |
Bhagavan Shri Krishna is pleased with him who listens to all discourses on dharma and bows to all gods, is free from jealousy and has subdued anger. —Vishnudharamottara I.58
*** If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man’s life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility. —Longfellow: “Driftwood” |
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