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Wednesday,
July 2, 2003, Chandigarh, India   
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Another Lok Pal Bill Checking birth rate |
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What others say
Vajpayee’s gains in Beijing
‘What they fought each other for’
Affirmative action is not job reservation
Wedding feasts in Kashmir shortened
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Another Lok Pal Bill THE Union Cabinet’s clearance for the new Lok Pal Bill to check corruption in high places is bound to be viewed with scepticism as this issue has been hanging fire for well over 34 years. Almost all political parties dutifully promise to set up an ombudsman-type institution in their election manifestoes. But once they come to power, there is no follow-up on the proposal. This charade has been going on without a break. There is a clear pattern in the conduct of the political parties. In the name of sorting out differences in the provisions of the Bill, they would refer it to the Joint Select Committee of Parliament. On its part, the committee takes its own time to study the whole issue. By the time it completes the task, the term of the Lok Sabha comes to an end. That this is all deliberate is borne out by the fact that the government takes up the Bill only towards the fag end of the Lok Sabha’s tenure. A positive signal this time is the statement by Union Parliamentary Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj that the Atal Bihari Vajpayee Government has been trying to ensure the smooth passage of the Lok Pal Bill in the monsoon session of Parliament itself. Equally encouraging is the report that the Congress has agreed to support the Bill. The Bill keeps intact the provisions intended to secure the independence and autonomy of the Lok Pal. It is, in fact, an improvement on the previous Bills. The new Bill seeks to bring the Prime Minister under the purview of the Lok Pal — a question on which other prime ministers have held a different view. It provides for a broadbased panel to choose the Lok Pal. It also specifies the manner in which the Lok Pal can be removed if such a need arises — after an inquiry by the Chief Justice and two sitting Judges of the Supreme Court. All this shows that the government is serious this time. Nonetheless, the issue in question is to what extent the new Lok Pal regime will be able to deliver the goods. The institution in itself will be of little consequence if it has no teeth. The Lok Ayukta experiment in states like Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka has not succeeded because of lack of support from the respective governments. For instance, in Punjab, the post of Lok Pal has been vacant since the death of Justice Dharam Vir Sehgal last year. Another problem is that of follow-up action. Of what use is the institution if the Lok Ayukta’s recommendations are not implemented by the government? If the Centre means business, the proposed Lok Pal should not be a lameduck ombudsman like the Lok Ayukta. It should be vested with adequate powers to do justice to its work. Needless to say, the increasing number of scams and scandals involving politicians and bureaucrats these days justifies the need for a Lok Pal to check corruption in high places and make the wielders of power more accountable for their misdeeds. |
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Checking birth rate THE Union Government’s decision to route population stabilisation funds through the state governments is welcome for two reasons. First, the states are at present not directly involved in the exercise as the Centre has been directly funding the NGOs and voluntary organisations for schemes such as the reproductive and child health programme. And secondly, the Centre’s failure to involve the states effectively in the programme has resulted in poor and ineffective linkages among NGOs, local governments and related government departments. The new norms formulated by the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare seek to remove these shortcomings. NGOs are also expected to move away from advocacy and awareness generation to capacity building and actual delivery of reproductive and child health services through government infrastructure. There will also be enhanced focus on male involvement and partnership in improving the health status of women and children. These objectives are, no doubt, laudable. However, in its effort to empower the states in the population stabilisation programme, the Centre should not absolve itself of its own responsibility in the exercise. As family welfare is in the Concurrent List, both the Centre and the states are required to play a concerted role in close cooperation with each other. Unfortunately, the record of many states in population control has been poor for various reasons. The BIMARU states (Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh) account for a major share in the increase in population. It has been recognised that rapid population stabilisation can be achieved only by sustained improvement in healthcare facilities concentrating on social indicators like infant and maternal mortality, literacy, women’s empowerment and life expectancy. Above all, education holds the key for growth and it has been proved that educated couples tend to follow the small family norm. Kerala, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu have made rapid strides in population control, mainly because of the increase in the literacy rate. A lot needs to be done in the north, especially in the BIMARU states. Sustained progress on this front can be achieved only by a combination of strategies aimed at upgrading the socio-economic status of the people and effective promotion of birth control measures. Population control is linked with the overall standard of living and GDP growth. It should, therefore, be accorded due priority by the Centre and the states. The corporate sector, NGOs and the media too need to play a constructive role in spreading the small family norm. |
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What others say THE Prince of Wales presumably hopes that, by opening his finances to public inspection and publishing further brochures to explain his work and role, he will begin to become a less criticised, and perhaps even a more admired, public figure than he is currently. However, if one of his 91 personal staff found time yesterday among their other duties to provide their employer with a copy of yesterday's Daily Mail, the prince will have realised glumly that his task may prove to be just a little bit more difficult than he had hoped. For the policy of princely glasnost raises more questions than answers. When a paper with the Mail's conservative views gives over its front page to a story headlined "Charles: I Don't Live in Luxury (Honestly, it's tough getting by with £2m a year, 17 personal servants, an ancient car and no house of one's own)", it is clear that the prince and his advisers still have a little bit of selling to do in parts of middle Britain.
— The Guardian It is just as well the European Union - in the draft constitution already presented to its government leaders for further negotiation - seems set to ditch its six-month rotating presidency. For this automatically lowers expectations of what Italy can achieve with its EU presidency, which starts today. Nevertheless, the prospect of Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's controversial prime minister and media magnate, with his pen-chant for loose talk and loose policies, in the chair still creates trepidation. Holding the EU presidency usually restricts a country's freedom of manoeuvre. In the past, too, Italian politicians have bowed to EU policies as a way of imposing difficult measures at home. But Mr Berlusconi is a brasher nationalist than his predecessors. — The Financial Times
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Vajpayee’s gains in Beijing IN recent times although Sino-Indian relations have never been as strung up as those between India and Pakistan, there has always been an element of uneasiness, if not edginess, in New Delhi’s interactions with Beijing. India, in improving its relations with China, has been trying to practise what it preaches to Pakistan: put more contentious issues on the back-burner, try to resolve relatively minor problems first while focusing in the meantime on perking up trade and commerce and encouraging contact between the peoples of the two countries. However, Mr Vajpayee ended his six-day official visit to China on June 27 on a note of cautious optimism. Shortly before his departure from Shanghai, he said: “The road is long. But we have made a good beginning.” Though the visit is widely regarded as having been a foreign policy success for New Delhi, the Prime Minister listed what he considered the major achievements of the tour. These included the shifting of negotiations on the border dispute to the political level rather than the official level. Mr Vajpayee stressed: “On previous visits, we have never moved forward on the border issue as much as we have on this trip.” A spokesman of the Indian team pointed out that also significant was the Chinese acknowledgement of Sikkim as a part of India. “We have started the process by which Sikkim will cease to be an issue in Sino-Indian relations.” Mr Vajpayee claimed that the decision to establish a joint study group of economists and officials was particularly significant for the expansion of economic cooperation between the two countries. In his view, India-China relationship needs to go back to the cooperation of the past, forgetting the “state of estrangement” and the “dead end of mistrust”. He quoted Deng and argued that while India and China will always compete with each other, the two countries need to understand the difference between healthy competition and divisive rivalry. The Prime Minister is obviously happy with his “achievements” in China. But a close look at the joint declaration that he signed with his Chinese counterpart clearly indicates that New Delhi gave away much more than it got from the Chinese leaders. India has explicitly recognised Tibet as a part of China, something it withheld for long, but has not won reciprocal recognition from Beijing of Indian sovereignty over Sikkim. According to many analysts, it is assumed that by agreeing to set up trading posts on the Sikkim-Tibet border, Beijing has implicitly recognised Indian claims over Sikkim. Trading through Sikkim does not, however, preclude Beijing from using the state as a bargaining counter in future border negotiations. It, in fact, works to Beijing’s advantage — not only easier entry for Chinese-manufactured goods into India but also a more convenient transit route for supplying Tibet by sea and road instead of through the Chinese mainland. In China, Mr Vajpayee’s approach seemed to be to concentrate on economic cooperation for the present and leave the contentious issues for the future, and consequently one wonders if he raised such matters as an end to the disquieting Sino-Pak trade in nuclear weapons and missiles. The danger, in fact, lies in the fact that Beijing may well conclude that India is a pushover, an impression that will hardly be dispelled by Mr Vajpayee reworking the old Nehruvian clichés about Panchsheel, trysts with destiny and so on. If Islamabad is watching anxiously to see if a Sino-Indian rapprochement could jeopardise its own links with Beijing, it can now breathe easy. Every Indian should keep it in mind that the China-Pakistan nuclear axis took place when Beijing’s relations with Washington were on the upswing. The Chinese were conscious that the Americans will be influenced by their trade interest in China. The current relations between India and China are, at least in part, a reaction to the recent improvement in Indo-US relations. There is no reason why India should not take advantage of this situation. It used to be said of the USA that its business is business. We, in India, might as well learn to substitute China for the USA. Indeed, the operative phrase here is more likely to be “trade” than “trade-off”. What better proof of this can be there than the constitution of an expert committee to go into the Indo-China border dispute? Look at the language: A special representative on each side will “explore from the political perspective of the overall bilateral relationship the framework of a boundary settlement.” This is pure legalese — legalese for putting the border problem on the back-burner. Let us not forget that business interests motivated China into accepting the “one nation, two systems” policy for Hong Kong. And Taiwan is again a well-recognised international entity only because of its enormous trade. In contemporary international relations, trade is a very powerful instrument of realpolitik and nobody knows this better than the Chinese. Mr Vajpayee’s speeches were not only remarkable for what he said, but also for what he left unsaid. He did not say a word about China’s upgradation of Pakistan’s strategic capabilities, growing military presence in the Indian Ocean and construction of road and air heads in the Tibet Autonomous Region which continue to cause deep concern in India. India fears that the ongoing railway project to link Gormo in Qinghai and three other vital military centres in mainland China with Lhasa will convert Tibet into a potential springboard of attack, even with nuclear warheads, against any part of India. By failing to raise these and other such related issues, Mr Vajpayee has missed a golden opportunity to allay the concerns of his countrymen. Did the Chinese mandarins overawed the Indian bureaucrats with their superior negotiating skill?
— The writer, Emeritus Fellow, University Grants Commission, |
‘What they fought each other for’ OUR English teacher was a poet at heart. He taught poetry with gusto. We drank in every word that he spoke. How can I ever forget Robert Southey’s poem “After Blenheim” taught by him? I was a student of Class IX. The year was 1946. “After Blenheim” is an anti-war poem — quiet in tone but loud in message. It is a story poem, involving three characters — Old Kaspar and his two grandchildren — Peterkin and Wilhelmine. It is a summer evening. Old Kaspar is sitting in front of his cottage door. Wilhelmine is playing beside him. There comes Peterkin rolling something large, smooth and round, which he has found by the side of the rivulet. He has come to ask his grandpa what it is. The old man shakes his head with a natural sigh, and says that it is the skull of some poor fellow who fell “in the great victory”. (This sends a wave of revulsion in the reader’s mind.) As if this were not enough, the old man says that when he goes to plough, his plough-share often turns out such skulls.“For many thousand men”, quoth he,/“Were slain in that great victory.” (The reader’s revulsion mounts up.) Now the children are anxious to know what it was that led to the fierce fight. “ But what they fought each other for/I could not well make out,” admits the old man. (We rarely know the real issues involved in war; we only know its horrible consequences.) Old Kaspar says that his father’s dwelling was burnt and he was forced to flee with his wife and children. “With fire and sword the country round/Was wasted far and wide,/And many a childing mother then/And newborn baby died”. “They say it was a shocking sight/After the field was won;/For many thousand bodies here/Lay rotting in the sun:” Old Kaspar says that the victorious generals won great praise. But little Wilhelmine’s comment is: “Why, ‘t was a very wicked thing.” (The child’s reaction is the voice of human conscience against war.) Little Peterkin wants to know what good came out of the war at last. The old man says that he cannot tell what good came out of it. (Sufficient to tell the reader that all wars are futile.) The most artistic thing about the poem is the marvellous use of irony to condemn (not, deplore) war. Robert Southey’s Old Kaspar repeats at intervals: “It was a famous victory” in the manner of Shakespeare’s Mark Antony, who harps on the refrain : “And Brutus is an honourable man.” Just as Antony’s words turn the audience against Brutus, so do the old man’s remarks provoke an anti-war sentiment in the reader’s mind. |
Affirmative action is not job reservation THE recent American Supreme Court judgement supporting affirmative action in the higher education system has provided enthusiastic Indian column writers another subject to pontificate on. Most of the time they provide light where there is darkness. But in the present debate that seeks to equate affirmative action with the policy of job reservation most writers seem to have confused cheese with chalk. Affirmative action can in no way be equated with the highly flawed policy of caste-based quota system that has been allowed to grow into a demon. If you bring up the subject of reservation with a white American, he will hang his head in shame. It will remind him of the period when the white settlers eliminated the ethnic tribes. They were called Red Indians, because Christopher Columbus lost his way en route to India and ended up on the virgin content of America. The handful of survivors of the unpunished act of genocide were allowed to live and prosper as tourist attractions. The territories that were allotted to them were called reservations. There is this interesting tale about a Navajo Indian wanting to send a message to the moon. The astronauts, who were practising for the moon-landing on his reservation, decided that it would have great publicity value and agreed to tape his message to “the people of the moon”. The other Navajos who heard the message burst into laughter but refused to translate it. So the astronauts returned to their headquarters and someone on the staff who knew the Navajo language offered to help. When he heard the message he too doubled up with laughter. The message of the Navajo Indian to the people of the moon was, “Don’t trust them. They have come to take your land”. Yes, the invaders pushed the location people to small Indian reservations and took over the rest of their land to fashion what is today called the United States of America. That is why reservation is a dirty word in American parlance. In India the repressive caste system resulted in the denial of basic human rights to the Dalits. There are similarly disadvantaged category of people in America. At the top of the list are, of course, the native people called the Red Indian. But the real fury of the policy of segregation of the white rulers was spent on containing the dreams of the vast black people, who had been brought as slaves from Africa and the Caribbean. Then there are linguistic and religious minorities who too have faced economic, educational and social discrimination. Uncle Tom’s Cabin is a touching tale of the period of black slavery in America. That was the system that Abraham Lincoln’s bold initiative destroyed. That was the beginning of what has come to be called affirmative action. There are valid reasons why affirmative action cannot be compared with the Indian policy of caste-based quotas for a large category of people mentioned in the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes list of the Indian Constitution. Or the other backward categories mentioned in the Mandal report. The distinction is clear. Lincoln abolished slavery, but did not create a quota for the freed Afro-American people in educational institutions or industry. The blacks became free to chart their own destiny in the land of opportunities. However, that freedom proved to be illusory because in the federal arrangement each state was free to frame its own laws. Most opted for a policy of segregation. And that was the signal for another round of confrontation between the pre-dominantly WASP (western Anglo-Saxon Protestant) establishment and the vast Afro-American population. Martin Luther King paid with his life, as Lincoln had done earlier, for raising his voice in support of affirmative action. What the minorities demand through affirmative action is not quotas in educational institutions or at the workplace for specified categories of socially and economically disadvantaged people. What the American Supreme Court conceded through its landmark 5-4 verdict too does not bear resemblance with the Indian Supreme Court’s verdict that allowed a quota of 50 per cent job reservation for specified categories. The US Supreme Court issued a qualified but resounding endorsement of affirmative action in higher education. It ratified diversity as a rationale for race-conscious admissions and laid out constitutionally acceptable means for achieving it. The majority upheld the University of Michigan law school’s approach to enrolling a “critical mass” of blacks, Latinos and native Americans (the politically correct reference to Red Indians) under which the school considers each applicant individually and sets no explicit quota. This is the most important point in the context of the distortions that have been introduced in the political domain in India for pushing a highly garbled version of social justice. The American laws at no point have sought to compromise on merit for creating a level-playing field for all sections of the people. It means that if a black or a Latino or a naturalised American or a native American fulfils the basic criteria for admission to an educational institution the system will operate on the principle of equal opportunities. No institution shall enforce the policy of segregation. Compare this with the quota system in professional courses to understand why the American doctrine of affirmative action is an improvement on the Indian policy of caste-based reservation. The implementation of the Mandal report would not have caused a nationwide backlash had it followed the principle of affirmative action. Column writers have gone to town without reading the complete verdict on affirmative action. The same Bench through a 6-3 majority rejected as too “mechanistic” Michigan’s undergraduate affirmative action programme, which gives members of these “under-represented” groups an automatic 20-point bonus on the 150-point scale used to rank applicants. No one gets an unfair advantage under the American verdict. There is talk of the Indian corporate sector being forced to create job quotas for the Dalits and OBCs. American industries have voluntarily taken affirmative action by offering employment opportunities to the socially and racially disadvantaged sections. But they have not compromised on merit. If a black American has the necessary qualifications, the doctrine of equal opportunities ensures “non-discriminatory selection”. Indian industry should have no problem if it is allowed to implement the American model of affirmative action for creating quotas for the socially and economically weak sections of job-seekers. Will the politicians allow this to happen? The occasions when Indian law makers take affirmative action are rare. One such was when they knocked down the hateful social custom of untouchability. That was the Indian equivalent of the American system of segregation. That the law has not helped banish the ghost is a different matter. Affirmative action has at least ensured that untouchability is now not practised openly. And that is a big gain keeping in mind the ugly competition for expanding the list of caste-based quotas for petty political gains. |
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Wedding feasts in Kashmir shortened WEDDINGS in Kashmir’s border districts are held under the shadow of the gun. These are finished hastily without any lingering celebrations and elaborate feasts. These weddings — particularly in the districts of Poonch and Rajouri — need the permission of the Army and are over in a matter of hours. Take for instance Nasir Ahmad Dar’s daughter’s wedding in Thanamandi in Rajouri district. Dar took the requisite permission from the Army for the marriage between his daughter Fareeda Akhtar and Manzoor Ahmad of another village. The permission was given for completing the marriage in six hours. The time was from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and the bride had to reach her husband’s home before the deadline expired. On the day of the wedding, the old, retired shopkeeper was understandably anxious. He paced the small courtyard in front of his house restlessly, looking at his watch every few seconds until the baraat arrived. Said a visibly tense Dar: “The bridegroom’s party reached our home at 12 noon. The qazi hurried through the ceremony. We rushed through the lunch and other ceremonies, but it was already 3.30 p.m.” With only 30 minutes to go, this man, who would normally be experiencing the emotional trauma of seeing his daughter leave for her husband’s home, was more worried about the impending deadline. Indeed, terrorism and the years of bloodshed have brought about profound changes in this state where an estimated 40,000 people have died since 1989 when the insurgency got underway. There are others who fondly recall the fun and gaiety that marked traditional weddings. Said Mohammad Nayeem, a relative of Dar’s who travelled to Thanamandi for the wedding: “Marriages used to be huge affairs with elaborate rituals. There used to be sumptuous food and singing and dancing.” Anger and resentment replaced the longing in his voice: “But all has been lost. The fun of marriage has been replaced by the fear of terrorists on the one hand and harassment at the hands of the security forces on the other.” The buses carrying the groom’s party are forced to display a white flag. The once noisy journeys are now silent affairs with no bands, no singing and no dancing. |
A hero among the common To love you and worship you Is now easy for the human And thou always dwell with me. — G.C. Mago, A Lofty Muddle, poem 18 If ye love me keep my commandments. — Bible. John 14. 15 |
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